5th Sunday of Easter
Texts: John 14:1-14;
Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10
WHAT IS THE WAY AND THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE JESUS BRINGS?
NOT A NEW RELIGION (OR WAY TO HEAVEN)
BUT A BETTER WAY TO BE HUMAN
In my very first sermon here at Bethlehem (All Saints B 2021), I began to talk to you about substantially revitalizing our basic Gospel message. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, who are mostly missing from our churches, we need to recenter and reframe the Good News about salvation in Jesus the Messiah. The center of the Gospel I grew up with was about life-after-death. Over the past forty years, I’ve increasingly found that the center of the Gospel I find in the New Testament is about life in the here and now. So I’ve asked the question: As our children and grandchildren face many significant crises — like climate change, polarized politics, the rise of authoritarianism, gun violence, the continued threat of nuclear war, and so much more — wouldn’t they welcome a message of salvation that’s centered on these real life issues?
That was the main theme of my first sermon here. Today, we come to my last sermon here, and we have the opportunity to close the circle. By a gracious coincidence, we are given the Gospel Reading that is the “poster child” for reframing the Gospel message to a new center. There’s actually two central issues addressed in the text.
Let’s take the second one first. One of the key things I’ve proposed to you in my time here is that the Gospel message does not revolve around converting to a new religion. Salvation does not come to us by becoming an adherent to the ‘Christian religion.’ When I’ve suggested this possibility over the years, the answer has often been, “What about John 14:6?” And then they quote to me, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” — as if this settles the matter. But it doesn’t.
John 14:6 is about the exclusivity of the Christian religion only if you frame it as being about religion. I don’t. I frame the New Testament message about salvation as being about the way we are to be human, not what religion we adhere to. In fact, I might offer that our way of being human has been about practicing our religions precisely as means to divide us. If, on the other hand, one of the pillars of our salvation in Jesus is to overcome those divisions, then salvation cannot be about another religious option that continues to bring division.
Coming to the Father is about Jesus’ Way and Truth of us being one human family. As Jesus says to Nicodemus, we cannot see God’s reign here on earth unless we are born again from above. The way we human beings frame our perspective on the world has been through Us-vs-Them thinking. Religion has been a central player in those deadly games of division. The last thing we need is a new religion! No, we need nothing less than to be born again from above to God’s perspective on the world. We need to be able to see everything and everyone as part of Us, God’s family, God’s household. A key aspect of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ, then, is to convert to being human in a new way that leaves behind the old divisions and seeks to work together for the benefit of all life.
This brings us to the second central issue for which this morning’s Gospel Reading brings a gracious coincidence. When I talk about the afterlife not being the center of the Gospel, people often come back with the first several verses of John 14 as an example of how it is talking about ‘going to heaven when we die.’ Jesus is about to die and talks about preparing places for us and taking us there to be with him. Isn’t he clearly talking about going to heaven when we die? My answer is, “No.” It’s only clearly about that, if that’s what we already believe. In other words, if our frame for hearing the Gospel message is about the salvation of ‘going to heaven when you die,’ then that is what we’ll hear. But if our frame is a different way of thinking about salvation, we will hear something different. The question is which of those frames is more faithful to the one provided to us by the Gospel writer, St. John.
I can begin, for example, with a verse only nine verses after this morning’s text. Jesus says in John 14:23, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our abiding place with them.” First, it’s the opposite direction. It’s not about us going up to heaven when we die. It’s about the Father and Jesus coming to abide with us in the here and now.
This fits the context of John’s entire Gospel about the Word of God in John 1, the creator of all life, becoming fleshing and abiding with us. Then, in John 2, Jesus disrupts the workings of the temple sacrifices, saying, “Stop making my Father’s house an emporium house.” It’s the only other time Jesus uses the phrase “my Father’s house” in addition to John 14:2. If we take a clue from the first time in John 2, the other thing Jesus does there is shift the focus from the temple as a building to that of his body. He tells the temple leaders, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). They, of course, take him literally as referring to the building. John the Gospel-writer tells us differently, “But [Jesus] was speaking of the temple of his body” (John 2:21).
So do you see what Jesus might be talking about in referring to “my Father’s house” in John 14:2? Combined with John 14:23, where he and the Father will come to make their abiding places with us? In dying on the cross on Good Friday and then being raised from the dead on Easter, Jesus is preparing dwelling places not in heaven for us in the afterlife. He is preparing dwelling places for he and the Father with us in this life. Jesus is preparing the way for God’s power of life to abide in this world in a new way.
In this same part of John’s Gospel — namely, Jesus’ Farewell Address to his disciples on the night before his execution on the cross — Jesus goes on to say a whole lot more about the abiding places he is preparing for us. In John 15, he uses the metaphor of the vine and branches. Let’s listen to some of that:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. . . . Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. . . . As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. (John 15:1, 4-5, 9-10)
Do you see? Jesus isn’t talking about us going to heaven when we die. He’s talking about God’s loving presence coming into this world through him to abide in us!
God’s work is the work to give life abundantly to all creation. The other most remarkable verse in today’s Gospel reading is where he says, “I’m telling you the solemn truth: Anyone who trusts in me will also do the works that I’m doing. In fact, they will do greater works than these, because I’m going to the father!” (John 14:12).
Amazing grace! It’s not about the afterlife. It’s about continuing the work of Jesus and his Father to give abundant life to all the creation in this life! It’s about opposing the authoritarian human powers of death like Jesus did in going to the cross, and it’s about always championing the power of life for all people, for all creatures, for all the life on this planet. In short: Salvation through Jesus the Messiah, who is the Way, the Truth, and the life — nothing less than a new way to be human so that we do God’s work of helping all life to flourish.
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethlehem Lutheran Church,
Muskego, WI, May 7, 2023
