Easter 5, Year A, 2011
Text: Acts 7: 55-60; 1 Peter 2: 2-10; John 14: 1-14.
Let us bow our heads in prayer –
God of inclusiveness, when we want to remain in the confines of our comfortable understanding, open us to the wideness of your mercy and the depth of your grace. Amen.
__________________________
What is home for you? When you think of home what do you think of? Perhaps you think of a particular building. Perhaps you think of home as being a shelter, a place of refuge. Perhaps you think of a home as being more a place where families share their hopes and hurts and joys and sorrows in life. Perhaps you think of the Church as a home.
Some say home is where the heart is. Others say home is where you hang your hat, and others that home is a place, where - when you have to go there, they have to take you in! Somehow home has a special place in the human heart. It seems as though we are all longing for a place to call home.
In our gospel reading today, we hear words that speak directly to the longing of the human heart for a home. Jesus says, “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, there you may be also.
Today’s Gospel reading comes from a section of John’s gospel that is often referred to as Jesus’ “Farewell Address” in which Jesus is preparing his disciples for a time when he will no longer be with them in the flesh. And so Jesus assures them that even though their relationship is changing, it is not ending. Even through he will no longer be with them in the flesh, they will remain connected. He is going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, where they will remain with him forever.
Putting this passage in a wider historical context don’t forget that the entire New Testament was written from a post-resurrection perspective. The Gospel of John was written during the time of the Roman emperor Diocletian, near the end of the first century when the persecution of Christians had become vicious and was being encouraged throughout the Roman Empire. So for Christians at the turn of the first century this passage was a reminder that they were not abandoned, that they were not alone, that they didn’t need to be troubled, and that the God of Jesus the Christ is like the Jesus the disciples had known and loved and that this Jesus of history is the Christ of God and all eternity. It was a message that they were safe in their faith.
But is passage also held a deeper spiritual truth for those early Christians as it holds for us today and for eternity. Jesus assures the disciples that they know the way to the place where he is going. Thomas however turns around and says to him “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus answers, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to God except through me…”
So what does this rather exclusive statement mean?
In much of the rest of our Gospel passage Jesus claims Oneness with God. “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him”, he says to Thomas. And to Philip he says, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me…”
Jesus was a human being just like you and me. He lived the full life of a human being sharing all of our joys and sorrows. Our early Christian Creeds state that he was ‘fully human’. That much we can sort of understand. The difference between Jesus and you and me is that Jesus realised complete identification with God or complete Oneness with God, and it is for this reason that he has the right to be called the Christ. Something that is a little more difficult to understand - especially if you believe in the illusion of separation rather than the truth of Oneness, which most people do.
Oneness is the knowledge that there is in fact no separation, no difference between anything, between you and me, between us and creation and indeed between creation and God. All is one in the love of God.
Some theologians have called Jesus statement that he is the Way and the Truth and the Life the ‘scandal of Christian particularity’, the notion that this statement is somehow offensive in that it sounds so exclusive and unfair. And indeed many Christians feel uncomfortable with this claim of Jesus. However, by making this statement Jesus is not saying that truth can’t be found elsewhere, or that others also can’t point to truth, after all aspects of all of our lives point to truth, and God’s helpers are given many forms. Jesus is saying, however, that all truth and knowledge must be measured by Oneness and not separation and therefore against the same oneness and love he has with God, which is true knowledge. It is for this reason that Jesus can claim that he is the Way and the Truth and the Life, and that no one can come to God except through him. After all truth is truth, and there can only be one truth by its very definition. By following truth we enter into the same truth and love that Jesus shared with God.
The truth of Oneness was seen in the very life of Jesus. Jesus saw the face of God in all of his brothers and sisters and remembered God. He saw the false illusions of this life for what they are without accepting that they are true. In a way Jesus is a map back to God. He leads us back to God because he saw the road before him, and he followed it. He made a clear distinction, which is still obscure to you and me, between the false and the true, and he offers us a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God’s Son; and that nor can life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear or even death. And he also shows us that there is in fact no need for help to enter Heaven for we have never left!
Jesus shows us that our true home, ultimately, is not a place, but a relationship, a relationship in the very heart of God. The dwelling places in the Fathers house turn out not to be spaces - but you and me. Amen.
