I have
preached many times on today’s reading from the Gospel of John. It is one of the passages that the Book of
Common Prayer recommends for funerals.
For those who are grieving, it is reassuring to hear the words of Jesus
that there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house, and that he is going
there to prepare a place for us. It is good
news, under those circumstances, and my job is to proclaim it, for strength and
consolation.
But
it is a little different to read this passage today, on a Sunday morning in Easter
season. Granted, the spring it not as
fresh as it was five weeks ago, when the green on the hills had not begun to
fade, and the roses that are losing their petals now were just breaking their first
bloom. Maybe the light that burst forth from the
empty tomb has dimmed just a bit, and the shadows are stealing back in around
the edges of the world. But when Thomas says
to Jesus, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the
way?" he is not yet thinking of the martyr’s death that he will someday die. That is still far away.
Thomas
asks this question because he has learned that Jesus, whom he followed along
the roads of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, out across the Jordan and back again,
who has led him and his friends here to Jerusalem, whom Thomas was ready to follow
even to death, is going away, and leaving him behind. Thomas’ question is not about the fate of
Jesus’ soul, or about how to cope with his own grief and loss. It is a question about how to continue the
journey they have begun. It is about
carrying on in Jesus’ absence. It’s a
question about discipleship.
It
is a question we might ask, knowing that Christ is risen, but our lives are
still in the midst of death. Where we
live, the Father’s house seems far away.
Jesus says he is going there to prepare a place for us, but there’s no
getting around the fact that he is going and we are staying here. He says he’s coming back for us, but he
doesn’t say when. And then he tells us
that we know the way to the place where he is going, as if to say it will not
be enough for us to simply wait around for him to get back, but we need to keep
moving forward and he’ll meet us on the way.
"Lord,
we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"
It
is a good question for a group of people, like this one, that is in a year of
discernment about its future. God seems
to have some purpose for us at St. John’s because, in spite of innumerable
obstacles, we are alive, after decades of debilitating conflict and the death
of schism. But the time is upon us when
the miracle of our existence is no longer enough to give us a sense of
direction. We are asking to know the
purpose for which God called us back to life.
For
the church, the answer to that question will always have something to do with
remembering. We know where we are going,
at least in part, because we know the way that we have come. But there is a danger in this, the danger that
we will be satisfied with the answer that has already been given. We might believe we have already arrived, when
the answer that Jesus gives is about being on the way. “I am
the way,” says Jesus, inviting us to keep moving, trusting his guidance; “and the truth,” he adds, not a truth cast in
bronze, or set in stone, but the truth that lives and grows as we journey
further with Christ. And finally “the
life”— life that is, by definition, dynamic, and changing, and ever renewing
itself, or it is not life at all.
We
are justly proud of the long history of our congregation. Our parish archives contain handwritten minutes
of vestry meetings and ledgers of accounts that go back to the pioneer days of
Petaluma. We also have a collection of old
parish newsletters that is not quite that old, but covers the first four years of
the 20th century, not long after this structure was built. And what strikes me, reading those papers, is
how entirely focused they are on churchly concerns. There are little notes about parish life and
reports of the rector’s travels, and appeals for the support of missionaries in
Yreka, and Alaska and China. There are
long articles about ancient church history, and summaries of doctrine and
biblical texts, but not a word about the social changes that are radically
transforming everyone’s lives.
In
those years this valley, like all of America, was rapidly urbanizing and
industrializing, integrating into an expanding national and global system. Her people were embracing the habits and
values of the modern consumer society, but the only clues in the parish
newsletter that all this was going on are the paid advertisements in the
margins of the page. It is as if the
church lives in a different world, one that looks backward to simpler times,
and forward only to heaven. The unspoken
message is that the modern world knows where it is going, and the church is
just along for the ride. And even if the
world is not following Jesus, it is not for us to resist or critique. Our
role is to stand on the sidelines, keeping open a place apart for rest and
inspiration, where religious culture and family tradition, and beauty, decency,
charity and reverence are not completely lost.
The
world still needs this from religion, but by itself it is no longer enough. On Monday, scientists from NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory released a report on the melting of glaciers in the
Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica.
Their observations show an ongoing collapse of the ice in the region
that has passed the point of no return. Just
this one source is causing a rise in global sea levels of about four feet. The thing that alarms the scientists the most
is that these are changes that used to happen in geological time, in hundreds
of millennia, and now they take one or two or three human generations.
In
the face of runaway change, the church can no longer sit on the sidelines. We must get out on the way. We have to bear witness, like Stephen in the
Book of Acts, that our leaders they do not know what they are doing. Our civilization
does not know where it is going. It has
no map, but is too proud to stop to ask for directions. Of course, some Christians have been saying
this for a long time. They say, we know
a different way, the way to the exits. We
believe the truth—the unchanging, fixed, literal truth of the Bible, and its
iron jaws are closing on the world. We hope
for the life, the life that is death. We
know where we are going—to heaven, and you and your world can go to hell.
But
there’s another way of being Christian, one that doesn’t hope for the destruction
of the world. It’s a way that reveres
what God has created out of reverence for a wisdom and design that we do not
understand. It’s a way of loving what is
passing, because it is not passing away to eternal death, but passing over into
the house of God. And wherever that is, we
say, with the author of 1st Peter, that it is a house that God is also
building here, from living stones. This
place is not forsaken, not if we are to believe what Jesus says about his own
future. Because he doesn’t say that he
is going to the Father to chill out, in a state of endless bliss and eternal
rest. He’s says he’s going to get
busy.
“Because
I am going to the Father,” Jesus says, “I will do whatever you ask in my
name.” His priestly work, reconciling the
world to God, making the love and wisdom, the compassion and justice of God come
true and come alive in the world—the work that he used to do, so to speak, from
our side, Jesus promises to continue from the other side, the side of God. So what about us, we who are still here—what do
we ask him for? It’s a good question, since
we don’t know where we are going. I
guess we ask him to show us the way.
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