Easter 5A’26
3 May 2026
John 14.1-14
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be One flock, One shepherd.” Amen. – John 10.16
Today we continue with the themes of Easter Resurrection, Hope, and Eternal life. As a priest it has been my honor to officiate at multitudes of funeral and memorial services. One of the readings that consistently gets more airtime, hands down is John chapter 14. 1-6. When people are at their lowest grieving the loss of a loved one it is then we look for Easter hope, and this reading does not disappoint.
To fully appreciate the meaning, it’s important to understand the context. To get a proper context we read what precedes a particular passage, and what follows it. John 14 comes on the heels of Maundy Thursday in Holy Week where Jesus washed his disciples’ feet (all 12 of them including Judas) and then instituted the Eucharist with the bread and wine, to contain His real presence. The teachings that follow this bring out who Jesus is through his “I Am” statements: “I am the Good Shepherd, I am the gate, I am the Vine, and you are the branches.” Then comes the passage we have heard today (put a book mark there we’ll come back to it). But what follows this passage is Jesus’s betrayal, arrest, trial, and crucifixion. So, these are his last teachings and sermons before he dies – he is preparing for his own death but gives words of hope, resurrection, and preparation for his disciples’ own deaths, all of whom would die martyrs’ deaths. So how fitting it is for families throughout the centuries to desire to hear the reading from John 14 that begins:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
It’s truly a comfort to think of Christ bringing eternal life as the Savior of the world. Some folks get a bit crossway and a bit troubled by something else Jesus says in the same breath – but it’s truly the best news of all! “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father, except through me.” That may sound too exclusive for some not inclusive enough, so attempts are made to discredit the authorship or that it wasn’t in the original manuscripts and so on. Folks are generally coming from a good place on this wanting to see Jesus as more inclusive – but he is the way for the whole world – that is the gift He brought to us on the cross of good Friday. God had already made a covenant with Israel as the chosen people of God but what about the rest of us? As St. Peter wrote the following to all including the Gentiles (the non-Jewish people):
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 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.”
Earlier in John’s gospel the mission is made clear:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be One flock, One shepherd.”1
Out of many tribes and nations God wanted to have the reconciliation of all people. We certainly can see in our world the need for this oneness to see each other as siblings of the same family. You may have seen the disturbing image on the news this week where an East Jerusalem settler shoved a French Nun to the cobblestone pavement causing her to land on her face and then began to kick her as others looked on. Every time a synagogue is firebombed or a mosque vandalized, we see the need of the Savior who is the Way – the way of love, the way into the Father, the way into fellowship with the Holy Trinity. The disciples still didn’t get this. Phillip asks Jesus to “Show us the father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus flies off the handle and says, “Have I been with you all of this time Phillip and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father.” This is the Big truth that has been millennia in the making – God wanted all of us!
As we read through the Old Testament, we see images of God that are frightful, flooding the earth, sending plagues, sending earthquakes to split the earth open and swallow up thousands of disobedient people. As the story progresses in the days of the high prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, we start hearing of a God that has a more merciful side, but there was still only one group of folks who were the Chosen people. The story had some more installments to come. I always like to ask the question as God became more merciful towards humanity was God learning something, or was humanity? Finally in Jesus we have the clearest picture of who God is what God is really like.
Unfortunately, some of our religious teaching and training has presented us with a God that is too small. The Author JB Phillips in his book, Your God is Too Small, identified some of these smaller gods:
The Resident Policeman: A God who primarily exists to catch wrongdoers and enforce rules.
The Grand Old Man in the Sky: A humanized, archaic figure of authority.
The Pale Galilean: A domesticated, “meek and mild” Jesus that ignores the dynamic, challenging aspects of Christ.
The Perennial Grievance: A God who seems to exist only to cause pain or thwart human happiness.
God-in-a-Box: A narrow, predictable, and finite concept of God that fits into human doctrine, allowing Him to be brought out only when needed.
Second-Hand God: A God worshipped through the experiences of others rather than personal, current experience.
In Jesus the true image of God is revealed a God who is self-emptying and self-giving love. He ate and drank with people that no respectable religious person would dare to. He believed that an unclean Samaritan woman was closer to God than a Levitical priest, that an adulterer was just the perfect person to give a second chance to. He did not seek vengeance, and on the night of his arrest when Peter cut off the ear of one of the policemen, Jesus healed the ear and told him to put his sword away. He talked about and demonstrated this love by forgiving his very executioners and tormenters at his crucifixion. Jesus was here to show us what God thought about all kinds of people and how God treated all kinds of people with Truth, Justice, and all motivated by Love. He was not here to take over the government, or to try and legislate morality, His desire was and is to change people from the inside out, so that none should perish but all come to eternal life.
Priest and Poet, and a distant cousin, The Rev. Samuel J. Stone put it well in his great hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation:”
Elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth,
her charter of salvation, one Lord, one faith, one birth,
one holy name she blesses, partakes one holy food,
and to one hope she presses, with every grace endued.2
As God’s chosen, we are called to take and to share this message of God’s saving and loving deeds, who has called us out of darkness into God’s marvelous light! Amen.
1 John 10.16 NRSV
2 Stone, Samuel, J., “The Church’s One Foundation” The Hymnal 1982 (Church Publishing: New York) p.525