Fifth Sunday of Easter (A)
May 3, 2026
Text:
John 14:1-14
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
This is one of those Gospel texts so
rich in the articles of our faith (Jesus is catechizing His disciples on the
night before He dies), we cannot possibly do it all justice. But for our purposes today, I’d like to call
your attention to four particular points:
First, the Lord Jesus has
prepared a place for you in His Father’s House, in the Family of
God. We often read this text at
funerals, because here is the surpassing comfort that Jesus prepares a place
for us in heaven when we die. That is
wonderful. But don’t just limit it to
that. He has also prepared a placed for
you right here and now in the holy Church, in the congregation of His
saints. A home. A family.
A place just for you at His Table, where He doles out His gifts,
breathing His life and Spirit into you in His Word, washing you at the font and
in the Holy Absolution, and feeding you with His true body and blood from His
altar. And He has prepared a place for
you, eternally... not just as a spirit in heaven, but bodily, in the New
Creation, in the New Heavens and the New Earth, when He raises up you and all
the dead, and gives eternal life to you and all believers in Christ. (These are not different places, by
the way, but different phases, if you want, of the same place... namely,
the presence of God!). See in this
why you need not be troubled (as Jesus says); why you can simply believe
in God (trust Him!), and also in His dear Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. You have a place where you belong,
where you are wanted and loved beyond imagination, and even death
cannot take it away from you (or you away from it). Now, this is not simply a general invitation. Jesus has prepared this place specially for
you. How? By His coming into your flesh. By His sinless life for you, fulfilling His
Law. By His sin-atoning death for
you. By His victorious resurrection for
you. And now, by His glorious ascension
into heaven for you, where He sits, in flesh of your flesh, and bone
of your bone, in the Seat of authority, at God’s right hand, ruling for
you, interceding for you, and guiding you by His Word and Spirit, so that you
come to the place where He is. He
prepares your place by blazing the trail in His flesh... our
flesh. So, that is the first point. Jesus prepares a place. For you.
A Home. With the Father. With our Lord. With the Spirit. Where you belong. Where God Himself wants you to be for the
rest of eternity.
Second, Jesus is the Way to
that place. You know the Way, because
you know Jesus. Stick with Jesus, and
you’ll go to the place He has prepared. Thomas
asks the question, how we can know the Way, and we’re glad he does, because now
we can know. Jesus answers with one of
the seven great “I AM” statements in John’s Gospel (His claim to divinity),
undoubtedly one you learned by heart in Sunday School or Catechism class: “I
am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6; ESV). Now, He is the only Way. This is why we want everyone to know
Him, and why we want to make sure we know Him and stick with Him,
because, as he says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” That is called the scandal of
particularity in theology, the biblical teaching that only in Jesus of
Nazareth do we have eternal life and salvation. It is not the case (contrary to
popular belief) that all religions lead to God.
There is only one, because it is the religion given by
God, and that is Christianity. Beloved, you’ve
been given that. That is an amazing
thing. Give it to those who don’t know
it, by speaking it (confessing), praying for those who don’t have it, and
inviting them here for an encounter with Jesus.
(And, of course, raise your kids in it!)
He is THE Truth. Many things are
true, but He is the very definition of Truth.
Whatever else is true is only true in relation to Him, and He is the
Source of all Truth (even the quadratic equation and the second law of
thermodynamics... all truth... He is the Source). And He is the Life. “In him was life,” John says, “and
that life was the light of men” (John 1:4).
There is no life apart from Him.
Only eternal death. Hell. This is serious business. So, stick with Him. Be in Him.
Which is to say, always in His Word and gifts.
Third, when you do
know Jesus, you know the Father. Philip
makes the request for us, here. “Lord,
show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8). But we have to understand, we cannot see God
in His unveiled glory, in nudas maiestas (His bare majesty). If we did, we would die (“man shall not
see me and live,” says the LORD [Ex. 33:20]). But Jesus is God veiled in human flesh. That is what we sing at Christmas: “Veiled in
flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate Deity” (LSB 380:2). Jesus is the revelation of the Father. So, He says, to Philip and to us, “Whoever
has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Now, we understand that, in human terms. We often say of a human father and son, when
they look alike, or share very similar traits, “if you’ve met the father,
you’ve met the son.” But here, in
Jesus and His heavenly Father, we encounter an infinitely more profound
mystery, that of the Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity. “I am in the Father and the Father is in
me,” Jesus says (v. 10). Or, as He
says earlier in John, “I and the Father are one” (10:30). (And, of course, that is revealed to us by
the Spirit, who is also one with the Father and the Son, and so, here is the
Holy Trinity, a mystery beyond our comprehension.) In Jesus, though... in the Son,
the Second Person of the Trinity, who takes on our flesh... God becomes tangible
and available to our finite and fallen senses.
Now, it is true, unlike Philip and
Thomas and the rest, we don’t have the advantage of seeing Jesus with our
bodily eyes. But where do we
see Him? And how? With our ears in His Words. We feel Him with our nerve endings
as we’re drenched in the water of life (Baptism). And then there is the Supper, where we hear
what He says of the bread and wine, that they are His very body and blood,
given and shed on the cross for our forgiveness, life, and salvation, here and
now given us to eat and drink. And so we
use our senses of sight and touch as we receive Him in our
mouths. And we taste and see that
the Lord is good as we eat and drink.
And we even smell it, don’t we?
In the Cup. In the breathing of
our fellow Christians. When I leave the
altar with the Lord’s blood on my breath, I often think of something St.
John Chrysostom said: “The Eucharist is a fire that inflames us, that, like
lions breathing fire, we may retire from the altar being made terrible to the
devil.” Or, quite literally, what St.
Paul wrote: “we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being
saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to
death, to the other a fragrance from life to life” (2 Cor. 2:15-16). He wasn’t specifically speaking about the
Supper, but that is where the fragrance is infused.
What do you see (hear, taste, smell)
of the Father when you see Jesus in this way?
That He is not, for you, a God of wrath and vengeance, out
to get you for your sins. But a God
who loves you. He is your
Father. And you are His child. So that He sends Jesus... gives His
only-begotten Son, Jesus... as the price for your redemption, to
save you and make you His own. You would
not know that God apart from Jesus.
Jesus is the only Way to know that.
Jesus is, as Dr. Luther says in the Large Catechism, a “mirror of
the fatherly heart.”[1]
Okay, fourth, and finally...
Whoever knows Jesus, and so knows God... Whoever is on the Way, and in the
Truth, and a liver of the Life... Whoever has such a place in the Father’s
House, prepared by Jesus Himself... that one will do the works that Jesus
does, and even greater works than these. Now, in terms of the Apostles, we see this in
their ministry in the Book of Acts. They
literally do the things Jesus did during His earthly ministry, complete with
signs and wonders, miraculous healings, spiritual gifts, and even sacrificial
deaths. The apostolic ministry is
a continuation of Jesus’ ministry.
But this is also true (albeit in an often dramatically less spectacular
way) of the ministry of the Church.
You. We, who have a
place here in this House, continue the ministry of Jesus... how? As we preach the Gospel, and serve as His
hands and feet... His masks... in our various vocations and stations in
life. In other words, when we speak
His Word, and love with His love.
This is what He means, by the way, when He says that whatever we ask in
His Name, He will do it (John 14:13-14).
It’s not a promise to be a divine vending machine, or some kind of genie
granting wishes. He’s talking about whatever
glorifies the Father in the Son (v. 13).
He is promising to bless His continued ministry among us, and through
us. To accomplish His merciful
and saving will among us, and through us.
Greater works than His, He says, not because they are better or
more powerful, but exploding out on the world stage, not just confined to
Israel. The Gospel is preached to the
ends of the earth. That is the great
thing. And God does it through us. What an honor. What joy!
So, those four things. Remember them today. 1. Jesus prepares a place for you. 2. He alone is the Way to that place. 3. In knowing Him, you know the Father. And, 4. He is working through you, and
through His whole Church, to bring many more to know Himself, and so, to know
the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
