Easter 5A, 7 May 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• Acts 7:55-60. But they covered their ears.
• 1 Peter 2:2-10. 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.
• John 14:1-14.  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

O God of our redemption, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

When I was in seminary, I took a class called “Teaching and Preaching Texts of Terror.” The idea behind the title was that there are passages in scripture that scare the daylights out of people; and this was a course designed for us to face our terrors with some companions. We each had to pick our top-two-most-terrifying Biblical texts. (Picking only two was the hardest part!) Our Gospel lesson for today was one of the two that I picked because of Jesus’ claim that no one comes to the Father except through him. I do love Jesus, but I’m terrorized by the idea of Jesus as the only way: Jesus, the gatekeeper, rather than the gate; Jesus holding all the tickets; Jesus, the anti-Jewish Jew; Jesus on the shields of the Crusaders; Jesus, the champion of the Doctrine of Discovery; Jesus, who became definitively white in Warner Sallman’s ubiquitous depiction in 1940 of “The Head of Christ” with blond-hair and blue-eyes; Jesus on the minds of those who commit all kinds of hate crimes and enact hateful legislation; Jesus in the prayers of the “in groups” as they justify the exclusion of others. Isn’t it ironic, then, that this passage begins with “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Do not give in to your distress.

So in Teaching and Preaching Texts of Terror, I found myself telling this story of when I uprooted my family to come to seminary, now more than a quarter of a century ago. We were grieving a lot of loss (family, friends, jobs, school, church, and belongings of every kind). Saying goodbye to a life we had loved was excruciatingly hard. It happened that we had to leave our home in Virginia two weeks before we could move into our apartment in Cambridge. We had two weeks in the twilight between ending and beginning again. Maybe you remember this story?

A friend offered us her house as a place for my daughters, Sarah and Laura, and me to stay while she was on vacation, in exchange for caring for her dog, a husky named Chica. The fairly simple and straight-forward instructions included a warning that Chica liked to bolt, so we should be very careful not to let her near an open door when we were coming and going. We all agreed that we could be very careful; and, on the first day we were, indeed, very careful. By the end of the second day, when the girls, who were 10 and 8, got into an argument about whose turn it was to close the door, Chica did not hang around to find out who would win the argument. She bolted so fast that all we saw was a flash of her tail as she headed for the freedom of the woods. 

We set off after her, armed with a flashlight, her leash, and some cut up pieces of meat to entice her back. We called and called, and walked and called. Like the Roadrunner in the cartoons Chica zipped and stopped, and zipped never closer than 100 yards away, sometimes out of sight altogether. As it got darker, we sat down. We decided that maybe our strategy should be to be quiet and let her get curious enough to come find us. Chica was not the least bit curious about us. After 20 minutes or so we could no longer stand being eaten up by mosquitoes. We started walking and calling again. We couldn’t see her at all anymore. My attempts to remain calm were interrupted by thoughts like, “Huskies are the dogs that run a dogsled race of more than 1100 miles over two weeks, and then still have to be chained at night so they don’t run away….I have a friend whose husky ran away and ended up in another state.” My girls and I were overcome by distress. What on earth would we tell our friends? I tell you this story not because I believe that this is the worst thing that could ever happen, far from it. I tell you this story to remind myself (and you) just how easy it is to give in to distress, to have troubled hearts. The kids were blaming each other. I was mad at them and even madder at myself for agreeing to take care of Chica.

Suddenly we saw a very old woman with an even-older-looking dog walking very slowly toward us down the path in the woods, looking as if they were barely able to move. When they got near us the old woman asked sweetly, “Did you lose your dog?” “She’s not our dog,” irritated I snapped. Then as the feelings of despair washed over me, I could feel tears welling up. Softening I continued, “But we are supposed to be taking care of her, and she ran away, and now she won’t come back.” The old woman nodded at her ancient, overweight collie and said, “Laddie is really good at getting lost dogs.” I thought to myself, “Oh yeah. Right. That dog can hardly MOVE!” Not daring to make eye contact with the girls, I said nothing. What was there to say? I’m in the woods in the dark with two kids, a crazy lady, her old dog, and no Chica in sight. I have a LOT of mosquito bites. When the woman said, “Laddie, get the dog,” Laddie offered the deepest, oldest “woof” I’ve ever heard. In a split second, Chica came out of nowhere and sat in front of Laddie. The girls and I stood there with our mouths hanging wide open. The woman said quietly, “Now give them a minute together, and then you will be able to put the leash on her.” Well, I did as I was told and waited for her next instruction. After a moment, she nodded.  When I had attached the leash to Chica’s collar and thanked the woman and Laddie, we walked back to the house utterly amazed at what we had seen; and we wondered if it had really happened.

So I imagine it is with John the Evangelist’s audience. We hear this text (appropriately, I think) a full five Sundays into the Easter season. The lilies are dead but the horror of the cross and the struggle to make sense of Love that can endure even the most degrading death are still fresh in our minds; or, maybe we can’t make sense of it. Because it was written generations after Jesus had died, the early hearers of the Gospel of John already knew the way this story ended. Perhaps they despaired about all they’d lost. Perhaps they despaired that the dominant cultural voices, the voices of the powers and principalities, might be right: there would be no place for them – not here, not there, not ever. Perhaps they were grieving in the twilight between ending and beginning again. 

John’s Jesus is speaking words of assurance and compassion for people who feared that there would be no place for them in God’s realm. (I asked Bob to exchange the word Love for Father because, while Father is a word for God as is Love, I think the substitution helps us hear what this passage is all about.) “Do not give in to your distress,” Jesus said. “Give your hearts to Love, give your hearts also to me. There is a place prepared for you in Love’s house.” Thomas doubted they could get there even if there were such a place. But Jesus said, “You know the way, you know me. I am the way. I am.” 

I am: that’s the revelation of the Holy One in scripture; that is Love talk. While I may hear Jesus’ words that no one comes to Love except through him as a most audacious, even offensive, claim, according to John it was the words just before them that ended up getting him killed. According to John, it was Jesus’ claim that he was One with God that infuriated people and led to his execution. But don’t miss this:  Jesus is saying, “I am in Love, and Love is in me. If you don’t believe that (or give your heart to it), give your heart to me because of the works themselves; give your hearts to loving one another.” This is the news!

So what is the difference between a guy like Jesus, saying “Nobody gets to the Father except through me,” and some highfalutin priest, whose ministry is confined to a church, saying it? Huge, I’d say. If Jesus’ ministry was a street-based ministry (or its ancient equivalent), then it seems to me that he’s assuring us that God is neither confined to one particular room nor owned by a particular people; and that includes us Christians. Jesus, of course, did not know what a Christian was because the label had not yet been invented. In spite of the apparent exclusivity, I imagine that he’s saying, “I am one of you, God is among us, and we will find God only in and through each other, together” or “I am one of you, Love is among us, and we will find Love only in and through each other, together.” Is this core claim of Christian identity true? 

We Episcopalians are mighty uncomfortable declaring in church things that we don’t believe are true (that is, factual). Take us, however, to a basketball game, where an underdog team scores an incredible shot and the one who made the shot runs around with her index fingers extended upward, we, with the crowd, may shout, “We’re number one, we’re number one!” Is that true? Do we believe it? Number one in what: in the league, the state, the world? All are irrelevant; what is true is that they are number one in our hearts. It’s as true as when I hear Emmanuelites ask the rhetorical question, “Where else can you hear the best musicians in the world perform during a Sunday worship service?” It’s as true as when I say that I am married to the most amazing woman in the world.

Whether we are cheering a team, listening to glorious music, proclaiming our love, or professing our faith, we are offering our consent, freely choosing to associate ourselves with a myth we find uplifting, informative, and stirring. The consequences are considerable when we associate ourselves with the truth of Jesus’ claiml the stakes are very high.  While thinking we are making our way up to heaven, Christians have sometimes made a big conceptual leap from shouting, “We’re number one!” to putting Jesus’ name on various weapons that keep other people down. 

Here’s what I want us all to remember. We are not called to discern or declare who does and does not get to Love. We are called to live into the realm of Love as Jesus did, exuding compassion out of every pore. We are called to pray in Jesus’ name that in our every word and action we are striving for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being. We are called to seek and serve the redeeming work of Love, which we call the Christ, in all persons. That is our only way.