FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER "A"

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Cycle “A”: John 14, 1 – 12

The event in today’s Gospel took place the night before Jesus of Nazareth died an agonizing death for us out of love. Let each of us say to themselves: “Jesus is the only person who has died for me.” (repeat) Today’s gospel smashes all false gods. Relationship with Jesus Christ leads us to the living God, the Father who, I may be permitted to say, is crazy about us, passionate about us, so passionate that he loves us as we are, yet too much to leave us as we are. Jesus is the threshold between a God who is a theory in our heads and a God who is a person in the bits and pieces of our everyday. Jesus is the difference between a God who controls me and a God who walks alongside me. Jesus is the assurance that God understands my struggles; so I am not so afraid anymore; I am set free to do God’s will rather than paralyzed lest I break the law. I am not saying that our lives can go morally unchallenged, that we are free to do whatever we like, whenever we like, and thus hurt others and ourselves. You can believe in an “anything goes” false god who is so loose as to let anyone in; and you can equally believe in that awful false god who, like a heartless slave-driver, sends almost everyone to hell !

One evening two Episcopalian ministers were discussing the Immaculate Conception over after-dinner port wine and cigars. One of them said, “It is highly unlikely that Mary said to Bernadette, ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’”  The other replied dryly, almost on cue, “I wouldn’t be too certain of that, Jack. After all, her Son is on record as saying, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.’”

You can recall that Jesus had just told his disciples that he was going away, and so he wanted to pick up and reinforce their sagging spirits. Jesus had also informed them that their good companion Judas would shortly betray him. The disciples must have gone into trauma at the news. Their small comfortable world was collapsing; they were in desperate need of some psycho-spiritual tonic and the Physician was offering it to them. The Teacher, besides, had most attractive plans for them; he had not finished with them yet.

The brutally honest Thomas articulated the thoughts of all present: “Lord, we do not where you are going. How do we know the way ?” Thomas wanted a heavily marked road map. His doubts provoked one of the greatest lines Jesus ever said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” That line must have rung a loud bell in the mind of Tom and his peers. And it still so sounds 21 centuries later.

Jesus is the Way to God, the God who loves and nurtures, invites and challenges, intolerant to sin yet loves the sinner, who heals and empowers that we may produce even better fruit. Let us have no doubts about the God of Jesus, no doubts whatsoever.  The German poet Goethe once got very irritated with the sermons of some of the preachers of his church. He shouted in exasperation, “When I go to listen to a preacher, I want to hear of his certainties, not of his doubts. I have enough doubts of my own.”

So let us confidently focus on Jesus, the Way. Suppose you’re driving your car in a strange city and you ask the way of a local man. A local yokel. The fellow thoroughly confuses you in several badly chosen words. You regret you even bothered to ask. But it would be an entirely different game if the man jumped into his own car and shouted, “Just follow me.” Your guide has become the way. You relax and put your car in drive. Happily for us, Jesus does not tell us about the way in tortured language. He informs us confidently that he is the Way, “Follow me, I am the Way.” Many an instructor has told us, “I have brought you the truth as I understand it.” But no instructor was presumptuous to say, “I am the Truth.” None, except One, and that is the reason why we come today to worship him.

The story is told of a man passing a funeral parlour. There in the window stood a bold sign: “Why walk around half-dead ? We can bury you for only $80.00 !” If that be the problem of any  of us here, we would do well to hitch our wagon to Jesus. The same Jesus who said, “I am the Life” will jump start each of us and get us moving at full drive; and not walk around half-dead.

PRAYER (the Mozarabic Sacramentary. This ancient Spanish liturgy is believed to retain traces of early Celtic worship. The Mozarabs were Christian subjects of a Moorish king)

Jesus, our Master, meet us while we walk in the way, and long to reach the heavenly country; so that, following your light, we may keep the way of righteousness, and wander away into the darkness of this world’s night, while you, who are the Way, the Truth, and the Light, are shining within us. We ask this for your own name’s sake. Amen