04 May Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year A
The Community here at Mucknell is, as with any group, made up of diverse individuals with varying opinions on just about everything! As such, sermons posted on our website represent the ideas of the preachers who wrote and delivered them, not necessarily those of the entire Community.
Sunday 3rd May 2026
What I am about to say owes a large debt to Working Preacher website and to Laura Holmes Professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC.
Today’s Gospel reading is not about resurrection, like so many of the Sunday readings after Easter.
St John places this conversation between Jesus and his disciples before the crucifixion. I am guessing that this passage is given today as a reassurance that the promises Jesus made before he died do come true after the resurrection. Death is not the end, nor is it to be feared. And the other two readings today hint that we are supposed to be thinking about living in the light of that hope.
The first reading was about the first Christian martyr, Stephen’s death and the way he faced that. The other about being a royal priesthood, a new people of God, centred on Jesus, living in hope. Neither look particularly easy, so does the Gospel help us with those two things?
“Do not let your hearts be troubled?”
Seriously? Really? Literally? It’s not working for me, Jesus!
But then…It can be too easy to rush to the first thing we think a Biblical text might mean. Maybe Jesus doesn’t simply mean, “Live in serene calm all the time”. In fact, in the preceding few chapters of John’s Gospel Jesus has himself been described as troubled, not once but three times and Jesus is not a hypocrite.
He is said to be troubled: first about Mary’s bereavement when Lazarus is dead (11:33); then in the face of his own death (12:27); and last in the face of Judas’ betrayal (13:21). If Jesus is allowed to be troubled in his heart about life’s awful stuff, then maybe so are we. We do not have to feel guilty about not being calm, collected and trouble free all the time.
So what IS he saying here when he tells us not to let our hearts be troubled?
Well, for starters each of the times Jesus is described as troubled, it is about a specific issue. So it is with this verse too. Jesus is not asking us to have trouble-free hearts all the time about everything. In this instance, chapter 14 verse 1, Jesus is specifically talking about not being troubled by his immediate presence being taken away.
For his disciples back then, Jesus was about to be taken from them with extreme violence. They will be scattered into betrayal, disarray, denial, terror. They are going to be extremely “troubled”.
Jesus, knowing this, pointed them towards something beyond, to another horizon, a different perspective. He knew they were unlikely to be able to hang on to his words when they were in the middle of it all, but he tells them that what looks like the end is not the end. He gives them hope (even if they cannot see right then). It isn’t fairytale either. Jesus is certainly not denying the reality of the suffering and death he will go through, nor the pain and loss his disciples will experience. He is saying that the apparent, the surface, the presenting problems – however bad – these are not all there is to it and to hang on in there. He was telling his disciples that he was both going and not going. Both things were going to be true at the same time.
One of the contributors at the Novice Guardian Conference I have just returned from quoted Rowan Willimas’ Christ on Trial:
“The reality – or we could say the “worthwhileness” of God is not the promise of safety, the possibility of escape from the world; there is only recognition here and now of God’s glory in the freedom that appears when the insane violence of the world meets immovable resistance.”
Jesus is himself the immovable. The immovable (and passive) resistance of Jesus got him crucified. He refused to meet violence with violence. He did suffer. He did die. He was buried. And the immovable resistance of Jesus also meant all the violence/death/obliteration could not shift him from being who he is: the resurrection and the life. Both things are true. Cross and New Life. Departure and presence.
Is this what Jesus is trying to help his disciples towards? He is both taken from them and profoundly with them. Not easy to grasp. But I am glad he said it. It gives hope.
Then, the next thing about this verse is its odd construction. The original New Testament Greek says literally:
“Not let be troubled of you [plural] the heart [singular].”
Many Bible translations have changed heart to hearts. They have interpreted – perhaps mis-interpreted – the verse to make tidy grammar. The good old King James’ version has heart, singular. This tiny difference actually makes a point:
“All of you, do not let the heart of this Community be troubled.”
“Steadfastly keep the treasure you hold collectively.”
Together, the community of disciples, is to have one heart. Together they can encourage each other. Together they can reassure one another, support each other. Together they can remind one another of Jesus’ words. It is much easier to stand in the face of adversity if you are not alone. My heart may be troubled – all over the place, but you can give me a hug, say, “I am here”, “Let me put the kettle on”. You can look me in the eye and say, “We can do this…” Community makes all the difference.
And who is at the heart of their group? The risen Jesus of course, (except at this point, they don’t know that yet). Jesus is preparing them for what is to come both at and after his resurrection. Jesus knows how easy it is for Community to drift into a collection of separated individuals: “Together, keep your centre on me” is Jesus’ message.
Then lastly, this colours the following verses (and the following verses help us to enable this togetherness to happen.)
Jesus is going away from his friend in order to:
“prepare a place (singular) for you (plural)…where I am, there you may be also…”
It is not the myriad of dwelling places we are to have our eyes on particularly. Not me and my personal idea of heaven (a conclusion so many jump to). Our place is with Jesus, who is the fullness, the many-ness, the abundance of God.
The Greek verb is menō, meaning “remain,” “stay,” or “abide,” Jesus says here and elsewhere that we are to abide in him. That is the place we are to be and that he prepares. And though we are not yet residing eternally in heaven, we are already at home, with/in Jesus, here and now. Jesus pressed home the point with:
…And where I am going, you (plural) know the way.”
Thomas gets it backwards when he asks about the destination, the place, where Jesus is going:
“Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (14:5).
Jesus wasn’t talking about where, or a place. He tells us we know the way, that is, himself. Jesus is saying they[/we] have the directions (map, GPS), so why do they[/we] need to know the final destination? …The directions and the destination are both Jesus![1] In the here and now, The crucified and risen Lord, and the Community built around him, enable us to travel well.
Rowan Williams again:
“the last thing we should be doing is turning our eyes away from the two things that other human beings see – the Cross and the reality of our life together…How very tempting…to turn our emotional energy and imagination towards a “better” Church, away from the embarrassing present moment. Nevertheless, it is here, in Jesus crucified and in the struggling and failing community, that the coming of the Human One [capital O] in glory is made visible to the world.”
Helping one another in our faltering way to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus Crucified and Risen – this is Jesus’ “Way”.
Jesus in these verses was trusting his disciples as well as asking them to trust him. His trust in human beings enabled them (eventually), and enables us, to believe (and to believe we can believe) a little bit more. The trust helps us look a bit deeper, below the surface, where we find we know more than we think we do.
I am the way…
You are already on it, whatever is happening – and you are not alone. Focus on Jesus and you are doing it! – and being it, travelling it, finding it, showing it.
I went to a very contemplative art exhibition on my little holiday recently of works by Gwen John. She often painted the same subject over and over again, as if she were trying to see beneath the surface, to grasp more than the apparent, the present, to something more eternal. She described herself as
“God’s little artist, a seer of strange beauties, a teller of harmonies, a diligent worker” (1920’s)
She also wrote:
“Do not listen to people (more than is necessary)’, ‘Do not look at people (ditto)’, ‘have as little intercourse with people as possible’… ‘when you have to come into contact with people, talk as little as possible’… ‘do not look in shop windows.’ (1912 diary)
Which might seem contradictory at first – a seer telling us not to look and not to engage. But what I think she was saying was, “Don’t be distracted by the superficial. Pay attention to the specific. This is the Way. It is not the finished painting that matters alone, not the destination; it is the way one lives while working towards it that is at least as important. Look deeply for Jesus, right in the midst of things – even terrible things. He is there even when he seems invisible. Point him out to one another, “It’s him. Come on. This way” We can do it!
[1] Italics in this paragraph are Professor Laura Holmes’ words.
Sr. Alison
McLean, Helen. Christ in Glory, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56321 [retrieved May 4, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apse_mosaic_Christ_in_Glory.jpg.