Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A
May 10, 2020

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

“Do not let your heart be troubled,” Jesus says at the opening of our Gospel lesson for this morning. And then Jesus says some things that have been troubling the heart of folks ever since! Troubles with this text notwithstanding, the beginning of John 14 is often read at funerals and memorial services for solace. The promise that God has plenty of rooms prepared for us is so beautiful and comforting. Whenever possible, I leave off the second half of verse 6, because it seems to me that a burial service homily is not such a good time to be reading something that sounds so exclusionary. A burial service homily is also not such a good time to be explaining about translating and re-punctuating ancient Greek. I also have to say that the experience of countless “zoom” meetings in the last two months has helped me to see more clearly some of the many rooms where the divine makes a home with you all. 

On a Sunday morning in the midst of a pandemic that is causing so much grief, so much loss, so much sorrow, so much anxiety, staying very close to our sacred texts is what I want us to do. It will be hard, though. On this Sunday morning in May, designated to honor mothers in our culture, the first thing that jumps out at me is that our Gospel portion uses the word “father” thirteen times. As a feminist, like most of you, and as someone born of a mother, like all of you, I am put off by the description of God as Father in this passage from the Gospel of John. I don’t mind its occasional use, but “Father” for God, in the Gospel of John, is used 118 times. (I have software that counts that up.) It’s so ubiquitous that most commentators don’t even bother to mention it as symbolic or metaphorical language for God.[1] Most commentators don’t bother to mention “Father” as a symbol or metaphor that points to or stands for something that is not the literally the thing. Of course our creedal statements and our Trinitarian theology lean heavily on this parental relationship word, but let’s be clear: Father is not a synonym for the Holy One. It’s a metaphor.

In the Gospel of John, “Father” is a metaphor for the Holy One whose voice is never heard and whose glory is never seen apart from Jesus the Son and his works. In the Gospel of John, “Father” is a metaphor for the Divine that Jesus’ followers found meaningful when they considered the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. John scholar, Gail O’Day explains that when Jesus said, “no one comes to the Father except through me,” he meant, “none of you come to the Father except through me.” I am the way, the truth and the life for you disciples. This was a statement of the conviction of a small minority in the ancient Mediterranean world, and not a sweeping claim of a major world religion. This was the experience of Jesus’ early followers, that the way, the truth, and the life were costly and completely worth walking in.[2]

Last week, our Gospel lesson was about Jesus as the gate to the sheepfold, the gate that works to allow the flock to come in for shelter and out for food and water. Today’s reading is considerably later in the Gospel of John, in what is called “The Farewell Discourse.” In the Gospel of John (and only the Gospel of John), Jesus gives a very long goodbye the last time he eats with his friends, after he has washed their feet and shared bread and wine with them. His speech goes on for about 20% of the whole gospel. This is the start of it, begun immediately after Jesus has told Judas that he knows that Judas will betray him and he has told Peter that he knows Peter will deny him three times before dawn breaks. Things were looking worse than the disciples could have imagined, and Jesus says to them, “do not let your heart be troubled.”

The word for “heart,” (in Greek, kardia) is not plural, it’s singular. The word for “your” is plural, but heart is singular. Jesus is talking about the heart of a community, not the hearts of individuals. Jesus is saying, “do not let the heart of the community be troubled, especially when the community is harassed and oppressed, discouraged and dispirited, threatened by circumstances beyond their control, because there is plenty of room in the realm of God, which is where loving one another means pooling resources, giving and forgiving.” Jesus was not talking about individuals who are “in” or “out” because of how they think or what their ideas about the Holy One are. Jesus was talking about the heart, the core of the group, the collective identity, the communal character. Jesus was confirming that every bit of his little flock belonged to God, and that they knew the way into God because they had seen Jesus teach them about pooling their resources, about giving and forgiving, about healing and freeing, about loving and serving as a radically inclusive community.

This was not a novel idea for Jesus or for 21st century progressive religious people. Testimony about the radical inclusivity and compassion of God goes back thousands of years. The God of Israel, sometimes called the Father of Israel, in the First Testament loves foreigners, Gentiles and even enemies, and calls on the people of God to love them too. In the First and Second Testaments, God’s presence is Love’s insistence that we are all one, and that we are being called deeper and deeper into the heart of the Divine through our loving actions. This is the Biblical narrative that we should be telling out from the pulpits and the rooftops, and the porches and balconies, through face coverings and gloves and plexiglass shields, through telephones and computer screens. 

I always wish that the appointed lesson from 1 Peter that we heard this morning (v.2-10) included verses one and eleven. The passage begins with: “rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice and all guile, insincerity, envies and all slanders..(be) like newborn infants.” The “therefore” in the first verse refers to a reminder at the end of the first chapter to love one another fervently from a pure heart. And verse 11 says, “so abstain from …whatever wages war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably so that others may see your honorable deeds and glorify God, even if they otherwise malign you.” The behaviors called for in the Gospel of John, in the Acts of the Apostles, in the letter of 1st Peter, are demonstratively about love and compassion, mercy and service. Believing is about beloving as I say over and over again, trusting that humble service — right-relationship is the way, the truth and the life.

The last part of this reading is a stumbling block for some and a bludgeon for others: If, or whenever, you ask in my name for anything, I will do it. If we can back away from the transactional interpretation and focus on the works of Jesus and the works that he imagines will be even greater, there’s a lot of love and promise in these words, much more like the words of a love song than some kind of contractually binding definition or condition. I hear Jesus saying, no matter how bad things get, no matter how badly you or anyone else behaves, do not let the heart of your community heart be troubled because God has room for you in the economy or household of Love. I hear Jesus saying that if you cannot believe that he is in God and God in him, then believe the works themselves – the works of compassion, of healing, of feeding, of unbinding, of foot washing and other acts of service. Believe in demonstrations of love.

Believe the works – Jesus’ works and the works done in his name. Believe or trust in the works and help them to happen so that others can trust in them too, because they will see them. They will experience them. Do you know what it means that Jesus brought good news to the poor? The good news, another term for Gospel, is that people who have more than we need are going to give to people who don’t have what they need. The good news is that people who are alienated are going to be included, not just tolerated but welcomed into the circle of care, into the heart of the community. Those who are friendless will be befriended. The good news is that people who are thirsty are going to get water and food from people who have and are using more than our share. The good news is that prisoners are going to be set free and cared for; that sick people are going to be made well through the compassion of others who are not incarcerated and who are not sick. The good news is that forgiveness and mercy will restore our common life, and we can all use some forgiveness and mercy, and some of us can use a lot. 

So how is the heart of this community, how is Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston? Well, in the past two months, along with the rest of the Boston area, we have moved into a time of such loss and grief. We have moved from asking “how soon can we get back to normal?” to understanding that we will not get back to normal, and asking, “what will be our new normal?” We are living in an intensely apocalyptic time. Apocalypse means revelation, disclosure, exposure, clarity, and it usually goes along with a major interruption and dis-integration. For our time, in our world, this is an apocalypse. Every routine and ritual, every practice and strategy, every assumption and everything that had been taken for granted, is being uncovered for examination. We can acknowledge now that we will have to find new ways to illuminate and glorify and praise the Holy One in our lives, at least for the foreseeable future.

What is not changing is our mission: to serve and advocate for the most vulnerable people who are on the economic margins; to offer radical welcome to people who are on the spiritual margins (and our reach is wider than ever); to explore the intersections of spirituality and the arts, and to be good stewards of our resources, including our building at 15 Newbury Street. What is not changing is our commitment to loving others – not theoretically, but through our ongoing works. What is not changing is the incredible generosity of spirit among those who call Emmanuel Church their home, as well as of Emmanuel’s friends — loved ones in the diaspora. Love is granting us all the grace to follow the way, the truth and the life, and the heart of Emmanuel Church is not troubled. The heart of Emmanuel is big enough to carry both grief and joy. The heart of Emmanuel Church is strong and capable because the heart of Emmanuel Church is in love.

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