FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR A

May 7, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Acts 17:1-15

Psalm 66:1-8

I Peter 2:1-10

John 14:1-14

 

Our Lord makes a bold and perhaps even audacious claim in today’s Gospel: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father but by me.” 

 

The Collect for the Fifth Sunday of Easter takes up the theme: “O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leadeth to eternal life …” The Collect affirms, first, that eternal life comes from the true knowledge of God; and second, that it’s in Jesus Christ that such true knowledge is to be found.

 

Notice also that Jesus doesn’t merely say that he shows us the way, or that he teaches us the truth by which we may attain eternal life for ourselves. Rather, he is himself the way, the truth, and the life. Our goal is eternal life through union with him. And as we enter into the process of being united with him, we discover that we’re already following his way, knowing his truth, and sharing his life.

 

Some readers of this Gospel passage become distressed at what seems to them its exclusionary implications. If no-one can come to the Father but by Jesus, then does that mean that those who do not know Jesus are thereby excluded from access to God? I don’t think that necessarily follows at all. 

 

Indeed, it could be argued that members of other religions or none who catch authentic glimpses of God’s way, truth, and life are thereby catching glimpses of Jesus implicitly if not explicitly. It’s not up to us to judge whether or how God will bring them salvation in the end. One of the distinctive features of yesterday morning’s coronation service was the intentional participation of representatives of the different faiths of people in the United Kingdom, even while King Charles swore to preserve and defend the faith of the Church of England as by law established.

 

But I digress. The question of what happens to those who don’t know Christ is really one that this Gospel text neither asks nor attempts to answer. Instead, Jesus is speaking words of comfort and reassurance to his disciples in view of his coming departure from them. Because they have seen and heard him in the flesh, they know him. And for all of us who know him and believe in him, he is the bearer of God’s way, God’s truth, and God’s life. Moreover, this saving faith is something that we’re called not only to savor and treasure, but also to share with any and all who are able to receive it.

 

So, in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we encounter Paul and Silas preaching the Gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection to members of the synagogues in the cities of Thessalonica and Beroea in what is today northern Greece: “And Paul went in, as was his custom, and for three weeks he argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Messiah.’ … Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.”

 

Paul and his fellow missionaries are willing to travel to the ends of the earth, and undergo enormous hardships and dangers, to share the good news with all peoples everywhere that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. And so, Paul’s success in winning new believers to Christ in foreign lands fulfills the words of Psalm 66: “Be joyful in God, all you lands … Bless our God, you peoples, make the voice of his praise to be heard.”

 

We know that those who heard the apostolic preaching and believed the good news typically responded by accepting the invitation to be baptized and thus incorporated into the fellowship of Christ’s Body, the Church. And today’s Epistle reading from the First Letter of Peter describes in wonderful imagery the consequences of baptism. Indeed, some New Testament scholars speculate that First Peter incorporates the text of a sermon originally preached to newly baptized converts to the faith.

 

Thus, Peter exhorts the newly baptized, “like newborn babes,” to long for the “pure spiritual milk” of sound teaching by which they’ll grow into their new identity as Christians, for they “have tasted of the kindness of the Lord”—almost certainly an allusion to their having received Holy Communion for the first time following their baptism. 

 

The letter goes on to offer a marvelous description of our calling as baptized Christians: We are to be “built like living stones into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Christ Jesus.” We are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that [we] may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

 

All this follows from knowing Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. So, we have cause for rejoicing and celebration. As Jesus reassures us, “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.” Having been baptized into Christ, we don’t need to find the way because we’re already on the way; we don’t need to seek the truth because we already know him who is the truth; and we don’t need to strive for eternal life because that life is already ours in him who is himself the way, the truth, and the life.