This sermon was preached for the fifth Sunday in Easter, May 7, 2023 for St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Acts 7:55-60, John 14:1-14, and Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16.
Today's Gospel passage is a common funeral sermon because it's the words Jesus leaves with his disciples at the Last Supper before his crucifixion, words he knows will be what will carry his friends through what is to come, his death, their grief, the shock of the resurrection. Jesus wants his followers to know that they already have all they need for the journey ahead. You know the way, he reassures the disciples.
I will say, taken out of context, Jesus’ statement, “No one comes to the Father except through me” lands as uncomfortably exclusive. Certainly those words have been used to exclude: “No one…except.” Yet Jesus clearly intends for this whole passage to be reassuring, not threatening. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Don’t worry that you don’t know the way, you already do. Don’t worry that you do not know God, you already do.
What if we hear Jesus’ words as particular rather than exclusive? That is to say, what if we listen for how Jesus offers a specific kind of belonging to God - Jesus’ own relationship to God as a loving Father - rather than claiming that he is the only way to know the divine at all.
For those of us who have prayed the “Our Father” (the Lord’s Prayer) much of our lives, it can be easy to forget how radical the beginning of the prayer that Jesus taught his followers really was - and is. In Jesus’ native tongue, Aramaic, the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer is an informal and intimate address, Abba, perhaps more precisely translated as Dad (or even Daddy!) In the holy scriptures familiar to the people of Jesus’ time, a father-son relationship with the Lord God is most often reserved for kings, for heirs of David’s line. Yet here’s Jesus teaching his followers that they should approach God in prayer just as he the Anointed, the Messiah does. Jesus opens up that parent-child relationship with the divine to all of humanity. No longer must you be royal or even of the house of Israel to become a child of God.
In baptism, we are adopted as God’s beloved children right alongside Jesus. If you watched King Charles the Third’s coronation yesterday you may have noticed that the holy anointing is considered so exclusive it’s still done behind a privacy screen, even while the rest of the coronation is televised. Yet that holy anointing with consecrated holy fit for a king - that is what is bestowed on each of us at our baptism. In Christ, we are heirs of the eternal kingdom, we receive a place in God’s household, forever.
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| King Charles III is anointed behind a privacy screen at his coronation, Saturday, May 6. Getty Images |
You already know the way, Jesus says. The way is love. Love me and you’ll be loving God. This concept becomes all the more powerful when we remember exactly how Jesus has asked us to love him. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” When you serve the last, when you help the lost, when you welcome in the least, you are loving me, Jesus says to his followers. Love them, and you are loving me, too. Love me and you are loving God, too. This love is not just a feeling, it is a verb: "the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do."
Jesus tells us one particular way he will continue to love humankind, even after he ascends to heaven: he goes to prepare a place for each of us. He asks us to do the same for one another, here on earth. To give to one another the strongest form of belonging there is. There is a place for you here.
When I arrived here at St. Mark's just about one year ago, there was already a place prepared for me here; and not just me, my family, too! There were flowers on our new kitchen counter and even a toy for my dog. And snacks. (The snacks were key). There was my name on a sign on my office door and on the sign outside the church. I soon discovered that the people here had also made a place for me in their hearts. I wonder if you have known that wonderful feeling in your life, too. Arriving and finding everything set out and arranged just so, just for you.
When we prepare a place for someone, we anticipate their needs. We imagine what small touches will help them know that they belong. In tiny, thoughtful gestures, we appreciate the quirks of who they are, just as they are. We set out a nametag, a sharpened pencil, a highchair, a freshly made bed.
It is one thing to prepare a place for someone we love and know well; it is another to make a place for the stranger. Yet that is the love that Jesus calls us to enact, here in our spiritual home and out in the world.
My dream for St. Mark’s is that everyone who walks through these doors will feel as particularly welcomed as I did that first Sunday a year ago. My prayer is that folks who come into our building will find we’ve already thought of what they’ll need in order to feel that they belong. They’ll find there's a working elevator if they can’t do stairs. There's large print bulletins and gluten-free wafers. There's a rug to play on and toys your size. There’s a changing table in the all-gender restroom and a comfy armchair in the priest’s office where you can nurse your infant because that's where she does it, too. There’s an option for a blessing if you don’t feel ready to take the bread, there’s a door to escape through if you don’t feel like chatting. And there’s a chair at a table in the Great Hall if you want to linger at coffee hour, too. Most of all, I pray that each person will find that there is room in our hearts.
Jesus told us, here’s how you love me. You love me by loving the least of these, by remembering the forgotten, by bringing in the abandoned, by welcoming the cast aside. By thinking ahead to prepare a place for those who have none.
Later this morning I'm going to go preach this sermon to a group of folks living in the streets and homeless shelters of Springfield. Folks whose daily lives are bombarded with what urban design strategists call hostile architecture. You may not have heard of hostile architecture but you’ve definitely seen it. It’s those sloped seats designed to discourage sitting for a long time and those armrests on benches that mean you can’t lie down. It’s the spikes installed on steps and the tops of walls and it’s doorways arched to make rain drip unpleasantly so that folks won’t hang around. It's all the ways that a city says subtly and not so subtly there is no place for you here, you without a home or safe shelter. I became very aware of this kind of public seating when I was pregnant and no longer able to stand for long periods of time. Turns out this architecture also says to folks with disabilities and chronic illnesses and all sorts of temporary or permanent conditions, there is no place for you here, either.
That is quite surely the opposite of what Jesus would call love.
It’s possible there has been a perfect place prepared ahead of you wherever you’ve gone in your life. But maybe, just maybe there have been times when you’ve walked into a community or a family or a job only to discover that the place prepared for you didn't quite fit your needs. Or that it either intentionally or unintentionally didn't allow you to be yourself. Sometimes the good and right and brave thing to do in those moments is to simply leave. For those other times, when you’ve stuck around and still stayed true to yourself, thank you. Thank you for all the ways you rearranged furniture and adjusted people’s expectations, for the ways you jostled and cajoled and showed up again and again until you carved out a space that served you well. When you had the courage to make that place for yourself, you went ahead and made a place for others like you, too. Thank you.
The truth is that each of us can sit here today because someone somewhere along the way was willing to struggle to make Christianity and the Church a place where they and you and I could truly belong. If church isn’t that place for you or people you love quite yet, thank you for whatever you do to help us get there, too.
Jesus goes on ahead to prepare a place for us. Each of us. All of us. In doing so, he shows us how to be his love for others, right here and now.
There is a place for you at the heavenly wedding banquet. There is therefore a place for you here at this table, too. May we feel it, may we know it, may we help others know it, too.
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