Context is key.
Context is everything.
When we hear passages
like our one from John today,
I think it’s important to ask ourselves
“What contexts
have I heard this in before?”
Has it only been
the Sunday Eucharist?
Heard the first part
a good bit at funerals?
The mouths of those
sowing division and seeking to exclude
and weaponize their faith,
our Christian faith?
A prooftext that uses circular reasoning and
quotes the Bible
to appeal to the Bible
as the sole source of authority?
Have we, are we, can we
let the text
stand on its own
without those layers we may know?
Can we use interpretations and approaches to scripture
that are older than an American century?
Context is key.
Context is everything.
Although we’re hearing this passage
on the Fifth Sunday of Easter
Jesus is talking to his disciples
the night before he dies.
The setting is John’s very long
Farewell Discourse.
The context of this passage
is the same temporal context
As when Jesus gives his disciples
a new commandment
“Love one another.”
He’s teaching about himself,
and he’s talking to those
who have already deeply committed
to following him
as the way.
From various contexts
we may be familiar with the first part
of our passage today.
Maybe we know it as
“In my Father’s house
there are many mansions.”
I’ll spare you the history lesson
of how that came to be the most known
English translation but suffice it to say
that palaces for those who love Jesus the best
are not what Jesus is promising here.
He begins,
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God, believe also in me.”
The reality that he’s about to be arrested
that their rabbi is going to die
is sinking in.
The disciples feel it coming.
Jesus offers them words of assurance.
Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Where I am going,
in my Father’s house,
there are infinitely many dwelling places.
There’s room for all.
“I will come again
and will take you to myself,
so that where I am,
there you may be also.”
Context is key.
Context is everything.
Thomas, seeking to follow Jesus, says,
“Lord, we do not know where you are going.
How can we know the way?”
Then we get the big reveal.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This is Jesus making an authoritative claim
to be the way of salvation,
salvation for the whole of the cosmos.
Jesus’ claim of uniqueness
is not that unique!
“Hear O Israel! the Lord is our God, the Lord is one,”
is said twice daily by faithful Jewish people.
“Professor of classical rabbinic literature
Reuven Kimelman said
the Shema summons Jews to feel
‘an all-consuming love of God.’”
A major problem for Judaism with Christianity
is that in Judaism God is one
and does not have children!
That’s paganism.
One of the Five Pillars of Islam is
“There is no god but God,
and Muhammad
is the Messenger of God.”
Affirming that uniqueness three times
is essential to converting to Islam.
Context is key.
Context is everything.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This is Jesus making an authoritative claim
to be the way of salvation,
salvation for the whole of the cosmos.
Jesus’ being the way
is not being the access point,
a directive to turn or burn.
Rather Jesus through Jesus
because of Jesus we have the truths of God
and through those truths
we have life abundant.
Pilate asks Jesus,
“What is truth?”
In Easter, these Great Fifty Days,
we celebrate the truth
that Christ is risen from the dead
trampling down death by death
and on those in the tombs
bestowing life.
None of the Abrahamic religions’
truth claims is a call to dominance.
Rather each of them is a call to their adherents
to embrace the love of God
and do the work God has given them to do.
They’re calls to deepen one’s faith
and trust in the fullness and goodness of God.
For us, that’s beholding the Lamb of God
who takes away all the sin
of the whole cosmos.
It’s looking on the wood of the cross
on which was raised the savior of the world.
It’s joyfully singing,
“In Christ we see the first fruits of the dead.
Though Adam’s sin had doomed all flesh to die,
in Christ’s new life shall all be made alive. Alleluia.”
“No one comes to the Father except through me,”
is not a command to know Jesus in order to know God.
It’s a framing that if anyone knows God,
it’s because of the work of Jesus
and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God,
believe also in me.
In my Father’s house
there are many dwelling places.”
Even with my core belief
that Christ is risen from the dead
trampling down death by death
and on those in the tombs
bestowing life,
my heart is troubled.
It’s been almost a year since Buffalo
and ten days later Uvalde.
Yesterday’s massacre in Allen, TX
seems to have been particularly gruesome.
Combined with the ongoing legacy
and impact of slavery
including related to guns and self defense
my heart grows troubled.
Alongside that I hear Jesus’ loving beckoning —
not condemning chastising —
“Believe in God. Believe also in me.”
Sometimes when I hear that,
not always but sometimes,
I get reminded
that believing in Jesus
setting my life to be like his
changing my life
to follow his way of truth and life
pushes me to to the work I have been given to do
while leaning on God
and not just myself.
“??Very truly, I tell you,
the one who believes in me
will also do the works that I do
and, in fact, will do greater works than these,
because I am going to the Father.”
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God, believe also in me.” Amen.