Notes from a Sojourn
May 10, 2020
Going to God
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Acts 7.55-60 and John 14.1-14
The 50 days of Easter Season are a single unit of time in the year when we reflect deeply on the meaning and significance of Jesus’ resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of his Spirit at Pentecost. Naturally, it is a season marked by surprise, joy, gladness, healing, wonder and awe.
Every year we spend the first few Sundays of Easter telling our stories from scripture about the resurrected Jesus appearing to his friends – to Mary near his empty tomb, to Thomas among the eleven disciples in that locked house, to Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus.
And then, as we started to do last week, we begin using the Sunday readings to do something a little different. We begin reading backwards and forwards: backward to events that took place before Jesus’ death and forward to events that take place after Pentecost - in other words, we read about things that happened on either side of Easter Season.
Why are we doing that?
Because, I think, the meaning and significance of any life event increases when we take time to reflect and to consider all the things that took place before and after it. For instance, the birth of a child is often a moment of great gladness and joy, a time for wonder and awe…yet the fullness of its meaning and significance grows and deepens as we consider all the things that had to take place in order for it to happen, and all the things that will take place because it happened.
This is why, I think, we read backwards and forwards for the remainder of Easter Season – to reflect and consider all the things that had to take place in order for Easter to happen, and all the things that will take place in our lives because Easter happened.
So, as we embrace this new “reading strategy” for the next few weeks, my hope is that that the meaning and significance of Easter for your life will grow and deepen as you consider the thoroughness of God’s love for you not only in Jesus’ death and resurrection, but in his ascension too, and in the gift his Spirit that pushes and guides us in life until the fullness of Christ’s arrival in our world is complete.
//
Today we read backwards into John’s gospel to hear a selection of Jesus’ final words to his friends at the last occasion they are together before his arrest, trial, and death. And the main thing we hear Jesus say is this: “I am going to the Father.”
As is typical in John’s gospel, he says this with many words:
“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…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.”
Jesus also says to them, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” But Thomas replies, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus says to him, “I am the way…no one comes to the Father except through me.”
And finally, Jesus states, “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”
Jesus is clear: he is going to the Father. Yet the full meaning of hearing those words today, on this side of Easter, is that we know Jesus doesn’t go to the Father by means of escape from his humanity. He’s not taken up into a cloud in a chariot of fire; he’s not teleported by wormhole to another galaxy. Jesus - the Word that was with God in the beginning, that is God, the Word made human - will “pass over” his own death to go to the Father [passover; pascha; Paschal Mystery], thereby opening for each of us a way to the Father through our own humanity – through our own living and dying.
Going to the Father isn’t just for Jesus’ sake. As we confess in our creed, it is “for us and for our salvation.” As the writer of Hebrews puts it, Jesus has “authored” a way to the Father through human faith and obedience to God; Jesus “pioneers” for us the path to the place he has prepared and holds for us in the very life of God. “I am the way…” he says.
//
Now, let’s turn and accept the invitation to read forward into The Acts of the Apostles and look again at the vision Stephen sees on this side of Pentecost while he is put to death for proclaiming what the Spirit is saying to the Church. The main thing we see in Stephen’s vision is this: Jesus is where he said he would be!
“Filled with the Holy Spirit,” it says, “[Stephen] gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
The revelation to Stephen is an image of Jesus, the Son of God clothed in our humanity as the Son of Man, standing with the Father in the eternity that is God. Jesus stands ready to receive Stephen into the place that he has prepared for him. Stephen’s revelation is a visual affirmation of Jesus’ promise “that where I am, there you may be also.”
//
Now, having read backwards and forwards, a significant aspect of the Easter mystery is disclosed more fully to us: Jesus’ going to the Father is not his final bow after a remarkable solo performance of God’s signs and wonders in the world – it is a pioneering journey of divine faith made perfect in human weakness and freedom. It is the Son of Man (of humankind), authoring a way for your humanity and mine, by faith, to dwell in the very heart of the life of God!
And that journey doesn’t begin at death. It begins in life.
Stephen is, in many ways, the prototype of every believer: empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit, the ministry of Jesus is replicated in his life.
Like Jesus, Acts tells us that Stephen was “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6.5). It also says that, like Jesus, Stephen was “full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6.8). Like Jesus, Stephen was disputed and challenged by the religious leaders of Jerusalem; he too was arrested, tried, and convicted by false witnesses; he was taken outside the city walls to be executed; like Jesus, Stephen prays for his spirit to be received into God’s hands, he asks God’s forgiveness for his murderers, and he is buried by pious people.
As he was in life, Stephen is in death – full of grace and truth, forgiving others as he himself has been forgiven, and entrusting his spirit into the hands of God. Stephen’s journey to the Father began long before he was executed. It began in his life, through his faith in the Risen Jesus empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The Easter Mystery does not end on Easter Day! Because of Jesus’ ascension and the gift of his Spirit at Pentecost, the mystery of Easter continues today and always in the lives of everyone who believes it. Through your faith in the Risen Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, God’s life dwells in you now as it did in Stephen; and at the hour of death, your faith will lead you to dwell in God’s.
“I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says, “that where I am, there you may be also.”
Colin+
