God leads us along the Way – Jn 14:1-12

Fifth Sunday of Easter; Holy Cross - St. Stan's.

The disciples had much reason for their hearts to be troubled.  They were at table with their Teacher.  He had just taken off his garments, knelt down and washed their feet.  He had taken a morsel of bread, dipped it, and handed it to Judas Iscariot, declared that Judas would betray him, and told him to go quickly and do what he needed to do.  And then follows this speech.  “Do not let your hearts be troubled!”  How exactly?  They didn’t know exactly what was coming but they must have at least sensed that all was not well.  Their teacher would declare himself the Way, and then walk the Way of the Cross.  He’d declare himself the Truth, and then be questioned by Pilate as to what Truth is, and answer not with words but with the act of letting himself pierced.  He’d declare himself the Life, and then lay his down.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled!”  It’s less an impossible command than it is a daring prayer.  “Would that your hearts be calm when the sea around them rages!”  But, the disciples will consent to a time of trouble for their hearts.  Love opens double gates on suffering, and seeing the Passion of the Master they love, who has called them friends, will trouble their hearts.

But not forever.  For what they don’t understand is the Love which he has for them.  They’re incapable of understanding a Love so bold, so fierce, so daring; a powerful love which consents to suffer for them; a driving love which refuses to be separated, to be parted, which is stronger than death, which returns Jesus from the tomb and brings him back to them.  Can any of us dare to believe ourselves so beloved?  They’re too scared to even imagine it.  Their lives have been turned around in all kinds of amazing ways by this miracle-working sage they’ve come to love, and they’re scared stiff of losing him.  They can’t understand what we must, that Christ can never be lost.  What we have the Good News of resurrection to teach us, and the gift of the Spirit to repeat and repeat in our ears: that if he goes away, it’s not to abandon us, but to prepare a place for us.  To ready heaven to acclaim us with great fanfare as we enter to the place prepared for us, to enjoy the communion with the Father that the first disciples enjoyed with the Son on earth.

We’ll only fully encounter our belovedness in heaven, in that place Jesus has gone to prepare for us.  But we taste it here on earth.  We’re on pilgrimage from our Father’s first embrace in baptism to His final lasting embrace in heaven.  Walking in Christ’s footsteps, we can’t imagine that pilgrimage could be easy.  But, as St. Catherine of Sienna once said, “the whole way to heaven is holy, for He is the Way.”  We don’t walk this way alone.  God leads us along this way, because in Christ God has walked it for us.  Through the work of the Spirit, disciples can come to understand that in Christ’s Passion and Resurrection lies a sure and certain testimony to the embrace at the end of the Way.  In the Spirit, we are never alone as we walk it.

There is a Way to be walked, because sin separates us from God: others’ sin, our sin; we feel distance, we feel abandoned.  Sin clogs up our ears so we can’t hear the Spirit’s constant tender murmuring of love, of presence, of accompaniment.  The feeling of distance is entirely on our part, it’s an ingrained insensitivity to God, who surrounds us like the air we breathe.  But our throats are constricted.  We can’t breathe Him in and abide in Him and have Him abide in us as fully as powerfully as intimately as we dream of.  At least not if we dare to dream as big as we ought.  But, it’s to enlarge our airways and unclog our ears that Christ walked that way of divine love.

Philip dares to make an outlandish request.  He’s got that much down at least.  “Show us the Father.”  It’s a request that receives an astounding response: Jesus tells him that he’s already complied: whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father.

We dare to make an outlandish request here in this Eucharist: that the Spirit would descend and ordinary bread and wine might show us Jesus, might feed us with Jesus.  And then we’re sent out, to glorify the Lord with our lives.  What daring requests will we hear in the coming week?  Who needs to see the Father in the Christ in each of us?  Someone does.  Jesus promises his church, we will do greater works than His.  In Acts we see seven men devote themselves to feeding the hungry.  In that, they showed the world Jesus, who satisfies the hungry heart with gift of finest wheat.

No-one can discover their belovedness until they encounter another’s love.  No-one can dare to believe in the love of God of which we speak and sing unless presented human love, no matter how frail and fallible that might be.  To take our frail and fallible hearts, still troubled, though we know God has not abandoned us, and let them be tested in the furnace of risk, of living lives of extravagant grace… that’s to do a greater work.  That’s to show the world Jesus, and in showing him, discover him holding us, loving us, walking with us, on the Way hallowed by his feet, to the place prepared for us.