SERMON FOR MAY 10, 2020, FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER          TEXT: JOHN 14:1-14

          My mother worked hard on the announcement of my brother’s wedding for our local newspaper. Ralph and his bride were married in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they had met as graduate students. Mom was old school in the content. Folks in Annapolis expected details — information about birthplaces, parentage, education and honeymoon destination, and most especially what the bride was wearing. Mom addressed that last item with relish: “The bride wore a traditional sari of magenta silk bordered in gold brought to the United States by one of her relatives especially for the occasion.” Then there was her jewelry — the bangle bracelets, the ruby earrings that had belonged to my sister-in-law’s mother, who had died more than a decade before.    And the toe rings — they had delighted Mom, and she made sure to include them in her account for publication.   

          Mrinalini Chatta Rao, Meena for short, was born and raised in Bangalore, India. She studied at the University of Delhi and then came to the United States to get a Ph.D. in cell molecular biology at the University of Michigan. My brother Ralph was studying American history there at the time. They both belonged to the Quaker student coop. They were assigned to the same kitchen team and ended up getting a lot more cooking than dinner.   

          When Ralph told us about Meena, the family was like whoa, Nelly, she’s from where?!? This was a match my parents could never have seen coming. The prospect was unsettling for them at first, but as soon as they met Meena, their hearts embraced this wonderful woman, and she has loved and cared for them tenderly over the more than four decades of her marriage to my brother. Mom and Dad honored the cultural differences and eagerly explored them. They even traveled to India to meet Meena’s family.

          My sister-in-law told me that before she and Ralph were married she had a vey frank conversation with our mother. She asked Mom how she felt about the fact that her future daughter-in-law was Hindu. Did she expect her to become Christian because her husband and his family were? My mother did not; there was no place in an honest relationship for such coercion, she replied, no integrity in a love that would make such a demand.

          The situation rubbed my mother’s faith raw. I was in seminary at the time, and she confronted me with her distress. Mom zeroed in on verse 6 of today’s Gospel: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” “You know, Jane, if you’d been born in Bangalore rather than Annapolis, you’d be Hindu too,” my mother pointed out. It simply made no sense to her that God, who created this vast and varied world, would reject people for being the products of their diverse environments. It grieved her to think that God would hold them accountable for not confessing a faith they never knew, or if they encountered it, for remaining committed to the beliefs and practices that had shaped them, that continued to bind them to their families and communities. Different religions could have common values — was my sister-in-law’s generous, loving, honorable life less worthy than that of my brother?

          Questions like my mother’s haunt many Christians. The world is so much bigger for us than it was for the community addressed by the Gospel of John. Christianity began as a movement within Judaism but eventually separated from it. The bitter circumstances of that division are reflected in John’s either-or categories: you are either with Jesus or you are against him, you are either part of the way or you are left behind. Nobody in John’s community fell in love with a Hindu, or worked with a Jewish colleague whose parents died in the Holocaust, or had a child who, after reading the Dalai Lama, began exploring Buddhist meditation. Yet experiences like these are part of our world. The binary vision of the Gospel of John is an uncomfortable, if not unmanageable, fit.

          Often the conflict comes closer to home: the encounter with groups who insist that their understanding is the only true Christianity and dismiss all others as a false church; our experience of those who mark themselves with the cross of Christ and betray the Gospel; and most painfully, our relationship to the children we raised in the faith who have left the church behind. As an elderly Roman Catholic woman lamented, after spending years contributing to her church’s mission to save the pagan babies, it turned out she had raised one or two of her own. If no one comes to the Father except through Jesus, what will become of us all? How can our hearts not be troubled?

          We cannot ignore the biblical texts that make exclusive claims for the way of salvation through Christ Jesus. Neither can we yank them out of context and transform them into general principles. In today’s Gospel Jesus is speaking specifically to his disciples on the last night of his life. After washing their feet he foretells his betrayal by Judas, his imminent death and Peter’s denial. Their world is collapsing around them. And it is to their fear and confusion that Jesus speaks words of comfort. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” That is, trust God and trust me. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that 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, you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” And Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going How can we know the way?” In response to this anxious plea, Jesus offers reassurance, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” The disciples, who feel lost and uncertain, are on much surer footing than they realize. You don’t need directions or a map to find the way, Thomas, you already know it; you’re following me. You have seen the Father, Philip, because you know me, no need for any further revelation. In this story “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” are words of promise aimed at particular troubled hearts, not a threat to people at large that they had best “accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior,” or else.

          We most often hear verses 1-6 of today’s Gospel read at funerals. We don’t stand at the grave making a case before God as to why the dearly departed should be received as an “inny” rather than an “outy.” We come there not because of what we know about their character but because of what we know about God. As the prophet Isaiah writes, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). We cling to Jesus, who has shown us the way to God. We witness to him as best we can. And we trust God’s love for all that he has made. Amen.