A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
I got to know Elaine quickly. She and her husband Gary lived close to the church in Stuttgart, just about a block away, in a little house with a big metal rooster out front. Elaine cleaned the church, so she was in and out a lot. And she was there every Sunday. Elaine sang on the first row–she sang loudly because she believed what she was singing. I tell you about her today because I think of her almost every time I read our gospel passage from John. Jesus gives us an invitation. He says, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Perhaps we can get tied up in questions about what if, and what about, hearing his statement as exclusionary, as pushing some people out. But I hear it as an invitation, an open door to knowing God completely and fully through Jesus Christ the Son of God. This invitation is about reeling us in close to the Father’s heart in a deep and abiding communion. When I hear this invitation, I think about Elaine; I think about her ordinary faithfulness. When Jesus says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” she believes him. When Jesus invites her into a relationship, she takes him up on the offer.
In today’s reading from John 14, Jesus is telling his disciples goodbye at the Last Supper. Jesus is giving his farewell discourse, his final parting words before his death. In a few moments, he will pray his high priestly prayer, asking God the Father to care for them, to strengthen them, to make them one as he and the Father are one. Jesus tells them that where he is going, they cannot go right now. He is going to prepare a place for them. But in time, he will come again and take them to his Father’s house, so that where he is, they may be also. This promise is for us today, as well. Christ is preparing a place even now for us. In the Father’s house are many dwellings. This is a way of saying there is enough room for you and for me, enough room for all the creation, within the Creator’s arms of love and mercy. He says, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
The disciples, not knowing what will take place over the next few hours and day–from arrest to trial to death to empty tomb–are understandably confused. Thomas says bluntly, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And so Jesus replies, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” What does this mean? It means that Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, is the one who is the path to God, who opens up a channel of grace, who reconciles us to God through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Jesus is at the center of our life, of our faith, precisely because of this. Only because of Christ, we have a means of grace, we have a hope of glory. Only because of Christ, we can become children of God through baptism, through participation in the saving life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we have seen Jesus, we have seen the way to the Father. If we know Jesus, we know truth, for Christ is truth. If we live in Christ, we have life, for Christ is Life itself.
This is not simply a doctrinal statement about who we believe Jesus Christ is–although it is that. This is not simply something we confess, only something we know intellectually–although it is that. But if faith is only an intellectual exercise, if faith is only something we talk about, we haven’t come close to understanding what Jesus is saying today. This is about how we live. Elaine understands that at a deep level. She understands this is an invitation to a depth, not just an intellectual faith, but an embodied way of trusting God in every moment in the world, knowing that God will not let us go.
Not long after I got to Stuttgart, I got a call from Elaine. “Come over for lunch.” Okay, I said, but when? I got out my calendar. “No,” she said. “You just come over whenever you can. All I need is about 5 minutes of warning. If I’m here, we’ll have lunch.” She was open like that. Lunch wasn’t about putting on a show. It was about sitting down on her back porch with pimento cheese sandwiches and talking. Her invitation was a lot like Jesus’s. Just show up, she was saying; the invitation does not expire.
A couple weeks later I called. “Is today a good day?” “Oh yes,” she replied. “I’ll see you in a couple of minutes. Come in through the side door; don’t knock, it will be open.” From the moment I entered, she treated me like family. Her hospitality and openness reminded me of Christ and his invitation to us. At lunch, she asked me a simple question: “Tell me what you know about Jesus.” She wasn’t asking about doctrinal statements. She wasn’t asking for an explanation of the Two Natures of Christ, or the perichoretic relationship between the Persons of the Trinity. She wasn’t even asking about some extraordinary spiritual experience that would prove my merit. She wanted to know about my friend, because Jesus was her friend, too. She wanted to know about my ordinary, everyday spiritual life, and she told me about hers–about her daily walk with her Lord.
By the end of that visit, I had no doubt, this woman knows Jesus. Jesus is her Master and her friend. She knows Jesus because they talk everyday. She knows Jesus because she took his invitation seriously. When he invited her to abide in him, to live in him, that’s just what she did. When he said he was the Way, she followed him on that Way. When he said he was the Truth, she plumbed the depths of that Truth. When he said he was the Life, she died with him, and she rose to new life in him. He is her Way, her Truth, her very Life. And day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, she has rededicated herself to following Jesus, her Master and friend, dying daily to sin, and rising daily to new life.
We live in a world that wants us to be sort of faith superheroes. To prove ourselves–how extra good we are, how extra holy we are, how hard we have worked to get ourselves to where we are. To show our merit by knowing more Scripture than anyone else, by reading more theology than anyone else, by praying harder than everyone else. We have turned faith into a competition, a way of one-upping our fellow man, a prideful exercise. And when we feel like we fall short, we feel shame and embarrassment. But here’s the good news today: that’s not faith. True faith is just walking with Jesus everyday in ordinary ways.
“Tell me what you know about Jesus.” Elaine would tell you about the humble prayer in the morning and before bed. She would tell you about the simple hug for a person in distress. She would tell you about her ministry to her family, to her mother in her final days, to her husband when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She would tell you about seeing Jesus in neighbors and strangers. She would tell you about showing up on a Sunday; singing a hymn because we believe it; hearing the promise of God’s grace in Scripture; receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord; and then sharing love and grace and mercy with the world. It’s not proving anything; it’s just abiding in Jesus in ordinary, everyday ways–like Elaine.
Today, Jesus is giving an invitation to all–to you, me, and all the world. The Way beckons us. The Truth draws us. The Life compels us. All of this is Christ inviting us to new life in him, not only eternal life in glory, but new life today, right now, full of everyday grace and everyday love. Elaine heard that invitation, and so have I, and so have you or you would not be here today. And we respond, inviting Christ to come to us. To become, once and for all, our Way, our Truth, our Life, the center of our very being. And then we will realize, with wonder and awe and hearts full of praise, that we know Jesus.
Storied Grace 