Sermon: Fifth Sunday of Easter, John 14:1-14, May 7, 2023 Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Fifth Sunday of Easter, John 14:1-14, May 7, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Today’s gospel reading which you just heard contains some beloved words of Jesus that John remembered and recorded. In fact, the first part of today’s passage is commonly read at funerals. Listen to it again, because it’s just so beautiful and reassuring: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.” Such wonderful words of promise.

But when the disciples Thomas and Philip ask Jesus reasonable questions and seek clarification about what he was promising, that’s when Jesus gets a bit weird on us – weird at least in terms of our human experience and understanding.

Both Thomas and Philip represent the human condition with our limited ability to understand and comprehend divine things. On our own, we just cannot see with God’s eyes. That’s why we’re the creatures and not the Creator.

Thomas asked, “Lord, how can we know the way to the place you are going?” (cf. John 14:5). That’s when Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” – still one more of those I AM statements that appear throughout John’s Gospel. Jesus goes on: “No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also.” (John 14:6-7a) What in heaven’s name is Jesus talking about?

That’s when Philip pipes up: “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Then Jesus appears to become exasperated with him: “Have I been with you all this time, Philp [three whole years, by the way], and you still do not know me?”

Then Jesus says some astonishing things: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but it is the Father who dwells in me who does these works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Woe, that really plays with our limited human minds’ capacities to understand. How can this be?

It's in this exchange that Jesus offers the most profound and astonishing statement of all, one that I believe is at the heart of John’s whole gospel and in fact, a centerpiece of the whole Christian tradition. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Whoever has seen Jesus has seen God, the Father.

That’s incredible. Think about it. Here’s what I think this means: in the human-divine face of Jesus, we see the face of almighty God, the creator of all things, the God which most religious traditions say cannot possibly be seen. This is what makes Christianity distinctive from most other religions – that in the human face of Jesus, we actually see God.

This is what it means in the first chapter of John’s gospel that the word that was at the beginning of creation, the word that was with God and was God, has taken flesh to dwell among us full of grace and truth. Jesus is that word from God that is God. In Jesus Christ, the unknowable, unseeable becomes fully known and seen. Amazing. And good news indeed for the likes of us mortals who cannot grasp on our own such divine things.

It's incredible, but through Christ, it all becomes credible. God the Father and God the Son dwell together, and Christ prepares that same dwelling place for us, that we may also dwell with Christ and with God. That’s another astonishing promise in this passage.

And we apprehend this only by faith, which itself is the gift of the Holy Spirit coming to us (which we’ll explore in greater detail when we hear next Sunday’s gospel reading).

And this gift of understanding the truth of Jesus’ promise that we, too, abide deeply with him and with God is given to us when Christ fulfills that promise by dwelling with us here in this place week after week in the word and in the sacraments – for it’s through these means, namely, Jesus’ word in scripture and the visible word we eat and drink in the sacrament that Christ makes himself known to us.

Then, in faith, believing in Jesus because he abides with us here, incredulity turns into credulity, the unbelievable becomes believable, unbelief becomes belief.

Dwelling as we do with God in Christ, we come to know the reality of what the author of 1 Peter writes in today’s second reading: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of the one who called you out of darkness into the marvelous light of God. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10) This reality is enacted here every Sunday as the Spirit assembles us in this place as God’s own people.

And all this ultimately can happen because of Christ’s death and resurrection. Again from 1 Peter quoting Psalm 118: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner” – a reference to the cross and the empty tomb as understood by early believers in Jesus. Jesus is that stone that the builders rejected on the cross, but who has become the cornerstone, emerging in resurrected new life from the stone tomb. These wondrous realities make us God’s own holy nation.

And as members of this royal priesthood, as God’s own people, we don’t just sit back and rest on our laurels. No, because we are God’s own people, we are given work to do to proclaim the excellence of the one who called us out of darkness into the marvelous light of God.

This is what Jesus has in mind when John reports that Jesus said – and this is yet another astonishing statement: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these” – wow. Think about that one. We’re destined to do greater works than Jesus himself. How can this be?

Remember that the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth when he walked this earth two thousand years ago was limited to one place at a time. Though divine, the fullness of his humanity made for that limitation.

But when Christ dwells in a whole people, the royal priesthood that we share in Christ, then the Son and the Father can be wherever we are – and in great numbers, making an impact all over the world and throughout the past two thousand years. The church in its universality has done these greater works. This is the theology behind our ELCA tagline, “God’s work, our hands.” We now, as Christ’s royal priesthood, are the incarnate hands and feet, the body of Christ, to be broken for the world in our words and works of mercy and love.

Indeed, churches have founded hospitals and orphanages and sponsor refugees and feed the poor as Jesus fed them and more and more. These are the greater works because these works are done by millions of Christians all over the world, and not limited to ancient Palestine.

But lest we get too puffed up about ourselves as a royal priesthood, let’s recall that the greater works to which we’re called often have a cruciform shape and may involve us in suffering, even martyrdom.

That’s what we see in the witness of the Deacon Stephen in today’s first reading: “Filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ Stephen said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’” (Acts 7:55-56)

Stephen saw in a vision the truth of what we heard in John’s gospel, that the Father and the Son, together with the Holy Spirit, dwell together. But that’s when they dragged Stephen out of the city and stoned him.

And then Stephen did his holy work, saying the words that echo the words of Jesus from the cross: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And kneeling down, crying out with a loud voice, expressing the grace and mercy and forgiveness of almighty God in Christ, Stephen offered his last word, his last work of absolution: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Having offered his killers forgiveness, Stephen died.

Friends, as members of Christ’s royal priesthood, this is the kind of work we are privileged to get to do in Jesus’ name – to forgive as we have been forgiven, to teach what Jesus taught, to feed as Jesus fed, in short, to be Christ’s body, the church, among a great multitude of saints throughout the world.

And in such work, God’s work, our hands, others will come to see Jesus’ face in our faces, and thus also to catch a glimpse of almighty God. It’s a wondrous thing, for Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed, alleluia. Amen.