1st Peter 2.2-10; John 14.1-14
If you made a list of the key quotes from Jesus in today’s gospel reading and put them in order from ‘clear and comforting’ to ‘puzzling and perplexing,’ it is likely that your list would follow the shape of the reading itself.
At the top is Jesus’ clear promise: “I go to prepare a place for you.” Now this place, as you know, is more than a parcel of heavenly real estate; it’s an abiding and enduring home in God, not architectural but relational—the assurance of life in God’s presence. Next on the list, near the middle of the passage, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” That’s clear. But in a diverse, multicultural world that values individual spiritual paths, it’s a bit perplexing; how do we interpret language that sounds to some as narrow or restrictive? That will need attention. So, too, will what Jesus says near the end of the gospel. “The one who believes in me will do the works I do…and greater works than these.” Greater works than Jesus? What could that possibly mean?
We’ll work our way through each of these sayings today. And we’ll do it in a way that is always wise when reading scripture: start with what’s clear and go from there.
First, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…I go to prepare a place for you.” Jesus offers this assurance to his followers the night before his death. We may be still celebrating the season of Easter but the setting for today’s gospel is the Last Supper, the night before Jesus’ death. Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet and commanded them to love one another as he loves us.
Yet the disciples, we hear at the beginning of the reading, are “troubled.” There is insider betrayal among them; Judas has left to set things in motion. Their strongest leader will fail them; Peter is about to deny Jesus three times. They are, as you might expect, shaken, confused, afraid.
So Jesus assures his friends this is not the end, and he calls them to trust him through the coming upheaval. “Believe in God. Believe also in me.” With the fullness of divine love made flesh in him, Jesus will take on the power of death and break through it with new and unending life. Yet after the resurrection, Jesus doesn’t walk off the stage of world history, look back over his shoulder and say, ‘It was good to know you.’ What he says that he will he will not leave us or forget us—not in our death, not even as we live. “Do not let your hearts be troubled…I will come again and take you to myself.” He prepares a place for us. There is a place for us in God. Clear, comforting, top of the list.
With this assurance from Jesus—that he does not dismiss our difficulties but invites us to trust him through them—we can move to some of the questions today’s gospel raises, beginning with Jesus saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Thinking through this ultimate claim invites our best efforts. It’s tempting to make a subtle change in what Jesus says, shift the article from definite to indefinite, have him say that he is ‘a’ way, not ‘the’ way. To an average listener, that shift sounds like open-minded fairness, especially in a word of diversity and self-determination.
I wonder, though, if making change is less about our own openness, or even that of Jesus, and more a reaction against a specific type of arrogant believer who sounds close-minded—the person who warns that unless you believe in Jesus exactly as they believe in Jesus, you have lost the way, rejected the truth, and lost life itself. This is maybe something you have encountered.
And note that this mindset cuts across the whole Christian spectrum. Progressive believers can be just as insistent that their way is the truth as much as the stereotype some hold about fundamentalist Christians. Ironically, it is progressive Christians that I’ve heard say things like, ‘There’s no room here to believe that. We’re smarter than that now.’ Yet is that what Jesus is saying: ‘It’s my way or the highway’? I have my doubts. I hope not. Maybe something Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel of John can help.
Two chapters earlier the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of his coming death on the cross and says, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself.” All things. With the fullness divine love made flesh in Jesus, all things—all people—are drawn into the way, truth, and life of Jesus. “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself.”
And not only do all things have their redemption in the Son of God, all things have their source in the Son God. In the very first chapter of John, speaking of the Son of God from the beginning, the gospel says, “All things were made in him and through him.” All things. The way that all things and people come into being is through the life of Christ, “full of grace and truth.”
Add to the ‘all things’ of redemption and creation, there is the most familiar passage of all in John: “God so loved the world.” The world. The whole world. Not the right-thinking world. Not the right-behaving world. Not even the ‘people who’ve never turned the wrong way down a one-way street’ world. God’s love for the world is given in the way and truth of Jesus’ life.
Thomas, on a night of trouble, confusion, and fear asks Jesus a very practical question. “We don’t know where you are going, how can we know the way?” How nice to have someone say out loud what we all think from time to time? ‘I just don’t get it! Give me something I can depend on.’ Yet Jesus, instead of giving GPS coordinates, gives himself. He is the one through whom all things came into being; on the cross he draws everyone into his life. “I am the way.” Just as the place that Jesus prepares isn’t architectural but relational, so, too, with the way: not a path but a person, the source and salvation for us and for the whole world. “I am the way.”
Jesus today calls the disciples, and us, to look to him when we are troubled and shaken, afraid and confused. Today’s reading from 1st Peter invites us to do the same, to keep our focus on Jesus—not merely as a path to get somewhere but as the person to build our life on. “Come to Christ, a living stone…and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house… to offer spiritual sacrifices.” Dwelling in God, and God dwelling in us, means life for us and gives us a particular way and purpose in the world as God’s people.
1st Peter is written to a group of churches along the northeast shore of the Mediterranean Sea. And about those Christians, Peter says something curious. He calls them strangers and aliens in a foreign land. Only they hadn’t moved anywhere. Rather, because they were people of faith in Jesus, they found themselves living a kind of strange ‘double life.’ They were clearly citizens of the country where they lived; yet in seeking to follow Jesus, they began to feel ‘out of place’ even in the place they called home—foreigners in their own land.
Maybe you’ve experienced this: the sense from time to time of not really belonging in the place where you’re at, whether it’s at work, among family and friends, or elsewhere. Are there times when the values and truth of Christian faith as you know them and try to live them out leave you feeling like an outsider even among your own people, as though you’re in unfamiliar territory? This is what Peter means by calling Christians strangers and aliens.
The letter of 1st Peter recognizes these challenges. And, at the same time, this New Testament letter gives us a clear-eyed look at what to expect when your values shaped by faith in Jesus are different than the values of your friends. ‘Your friends may be shocked; they’ll probably mock you.’ What to do when that happens: try to blend in; isn’t faith just a private matter? Peter shows a different way—Jesus the way, the truth of who Jesus is for us, and how his life changes how we live. ‘Have unity of Spirit, a tender heart, no malice or deceit, a humble mind,’ this is some of the guidance Peter gives. And elsewhere, ‘Be hospitable and maintain love for one another; serve one another with the gifts you have received; seek peace.’ And especially, “Do not fear what they fear and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts, reverence Christ as Lord.”
This single-minded focus on the way, truth, and life of Christ then takes us back to our list of verses from the Gospel of John and the third item on our list: Jesus’ promise of doing greater works than he did. Of all the things Jesus says in today’s gospel, this may be the most puzzling. “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”
Flawed followers out-performing Jesus? That seems unlikely. Yet consider how the Holy Spirit transformed a group of stumbling, fearful biblical disciples and made them witnesses to the true and living way of Jesus. They changed the world. That’s what Jesus means by ‘greater works’—greater than Jesus in terms of geography, extending beyond the little piece land where he lived; greater in terms of time, extending Jesus’ work for two thousand years beyond his own life; greater in terms of scope and scale because the witness of those first Spirit-filled disciple has reached across space and time to us. The way that Peter and Andrew, James and John, Philip and Thomas, and the others found life in the truth of Jesus as a person, and the message they proclaimed in word and deed, is the reason that you are here today—all of us together like living stones built on Jesus Christ.
To Thomas, who asks the most practical question in a life of faith, ‘Give me something I can depend on. We don’t know where you are going, how can we know the way?’ Jesus doesn’t give GPS coordinates; he gives himself. “I am the way.” To early Christians facing challenges in how to live as people of faith in a strange world, the letter of 1st Peter says, “Come to Christ, a living stone…and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”
And for us and for our lives? Built on the life and truth of Jesus, and filled with the Holy Spirit, there are good and greater works awaiting to be done in and through our way of life. This life may make us strangers in the world, but it is a life that the world needs: a tender heart; no malice or deceit; a humble mind, personal holiness, seeking peace in the way and truth of Jesus’ life. And in him, finding an abiding and enduring home in the place that he has prepared for us in God.
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