Sermon: Fifth Sunday of Easter 2020 - John 14:1-14

 

MAY 10, 2020 

Passage: John 14:1-14

Click here for video of the worship service. Below is a transcript of the sermon. 

So, we have John 14 as our gospel message today. A familiar passage: Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life. Those are words of hope and promise in the midst of a current reality that doesn’t have us traveling much at all. I’m also reminded that we are reading through 1st Peter this Easter season, and it is still Easter. 1st Peter begins, “Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Easter is about resurrection, and we live in the hope of resurrection and the promise that Christ’s resurrection brings us to new life.

The reality of resurrection is that first comes death, which got me thinking about a lot of the things that are perhaps dying right now, things that we are maybe even letting die: gatherings like graduations, end-of-the-year celebrations, even our typical Mother’s Day gatherings, spring sports seasons that we anticipate as the weather warms up and as we get outside and join together with friends and family to cheer on our athletes. We’re not able to participate in those right now; all of the end-of-the-year celebrations for the schools: the music concerts, the gatherings, the spring plays, even our weekly coffee with friends, our nights out, our card groups. Knowing that we have to let go of things brings grief and sadness and also, in this Easter season, we are reminded that after death comes resurrection.

 And I’m really intrigued right now with what is being born anew. I think about the things that were already being born anew here at Bethesda, before all of this happened: we were planning a fine arts camp this summer to take a different direction from the typical VBS, to invite multiple ages into the process of journeying together through God’s story of how God has called us to be creative beings. And now? We’re anticipating. What will happen? Will we be able to gather for that in July, or will something else be born anew? Our Splash Faith Formation had transitioned to cross-generational worship for two fun-filled weeks, where we gathered all kinds of different people from different age groups and different perspectives together to learn and grow together in worship. We were engaging differently: talking, acting things out, taking a different way of exposing our children to what it means to be life-long learners and life-long people of faith.

And now, that has transitioned too. We have had a new birth in which we are providing the family Sunday School and the Vibrant Faith Moments; and inviting you to take what has traditionally happened here in this building and do it in your own homes: to engage in those faith conversations around the tables where you eat, in your living rooms with your families as you grow in faith together; and inviting parents to take that additional step of being the one leading that conversation and relying on the fact that God has prepared and equipped them to do exactly that as parents. Service projects that were once done by a few people here and there were to be a Compassion Sunday where we were going to gather together here, and we were going to act out an act of service for an organization in this community. That was supposed to be next weekend; it’s not going to be, instead, I see compassion every day around us.

 I see groups of people making masks for everyone who needs them. In fact, in my community, there is a woman who just keep making them, many every day, hangs them out on the tree in her front yard, and invites everyone who comes to take one to make a donation to our Food Pantry. We have many new volunteers in our Food Pantry as we envision new ways of bringing the food out to people and reducing contact. I bet you can identify a few things that you’ve seen in your own community, in your own neighborhood as people reach out and take care of one another during this time.

And then I think about the resurrection that I’ve seen in my own home: instead of running around to various activities in the evenings (and we’re not even that busy of a family)- boy scouts, piano lessons, Confirmation on Wednesday nights, music concerts- instead of doing that, we’re able to eat dinner together nearly every night right now. And our mornings are so much different: instead of that hurry to eat breakfast, chow down the cereal, get out the door, get everyone on the bus on time, we’ve had slow awakening; we have cuddles, eggs and toast around the table together as a treat. And despite all this new life, which we look to and we celebrate, there is still death in the grief that has taken place.

It’s harder every day to maintain social distance; we miss laughing loud and long with friends, embracing the family members that don’t live with us, and even coming together to share in the feast of the Lord’s table with one another. And the separation that we feel, the separation that is so prevalent right now, is a separation that is much like what God has grieved, in God’s separation from humanity through sin.

Throughout scripture, community is the sight of God’s presence, and the ultimate community is the body of Christ: us, together. “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” perhaps doesn’t mean what we’ve always taken it to mean: not a gate keeper, not an if-then statement, but the very being of God in the world. A being, we as the body of Christ, dwell in and with. Philip asks, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus responds and clarifies, “The Father who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. We are one. And you are in me, so you know the Father.” In Jesus, that separation, that great separation that God mourned, God healed that divide, the divide between God and humanity, the divide between you and me, the divide between us and them. There is only we.

Perhaps one of the biggest points of grief for me during this time is seeing how this separation, this mutual experience of loss and of change has further sown seeds of division: people who choose to wear masks out of care and concern for the neighbor and people who don’t and criticize those who do; those who believe one set of scientists about what needs to happen, and those who believe another set of scientists. In the body of Christ, there is no us and them, only we.

The dwelling place Jesus goes to prepare isn’t the way we think about it; the word “house” makes us think of room, and we think of all these separate little rooms as if we’re going to all still be separated in God’s great reconciliation of creation. Think of it more as a space within God to abide, to dwell within. As Jesus said, “I will come again, and I will take you to myself; so that where I am, there you may be also, in the intimate presence and being of God.” We who know Christ get to experience the foretaste of this intimate love. We saw that in Christ’s life, as Christ reached out and stood between the woman about to be stoned and those who would throw the stones; Christ who promised living water to the woman at the well, the Samaritan, the person who, as a Jew, He would be least likely to extend love; to the leper, shunned and excluded from community; to the man born blind, those around questioned what had he or his parents done, who had sinned that he was blind, and Christ said no.

We too have this intimacy with God in Christ Jesus as infinite, overflowing fountain of water that quenches our thirst: the longing and thirst over grief and loss; the thirst to accomplish and to do, to feel productive; the thirst to go; the thirst for love and belonging. This intimate, overflowing love meets us in our lonely, isolated places and this intimate, overflowing love gently raises our chin, turns us around, and points us toward a dry, parched, lonely, grief-filled world, and through us, God points that love like a firehose, bringing about new life, expecting resurrection. Thanks be to God.

Amen.