Fred Thompson
5EasterA
John 14: 1-14
Jesus Teachings
Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
The Scriptures this morning
draw us to reflect on what it means to be community.
We each have our own communities that
we come here from on Sunday,
but we are part of the larger community of
the Christian faith—
…a community in which we can gather and
from which we can gain
wisdom, rejuvenation, and identity.
Within each of our larger communities,
there are smaller ones,
such as our families, our friendship circles,
our schools, our churches,
and our workplace communities.
Obviously, we define these in particular ways.
But this way of defining a community
is not a new thing that we
in contemporary society invented.
It has been going on from
the time people could group together
to share the responsibilities and burdens of survival.
Identity in tribal cultures came from the community,
not from individual accomplishments.
One thing that tribes knew
is that they were stronger together
and that to go off alone,
you would eventually lose your mind or die.
In Jesus’ time,
people identified themselves as being Jewish or
Roman or Samaritan or
one of the many other cultures and nations
that were intermingling under Roman conquest.
Jesus himself was Jewish and
worked within the framework of being Jewish
to call people back to God.
When we celebrate Easter,
we celebrate a very particular definition of
what it means to be a community:
We are the people who believe in the God
who has been revealed to us decisively in Jesus Christ.
As we say in Eucharistic Prayer A,
“Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
This separates us as a community,
just as it separated the community for
whom the Gospel of John was written.
Our Gospel of John wasn’t written in one sitting.
Instead, it was written over time to address
the developing religious and pastoral needs
of a particular community.
We don’t know exact times
but given the evidence of what was happening
in the social and historical context,
we can understand this Gospel
as originating in an early Christian community
struggling to separate itself from first century Judaism—
…that is, sometime between 75-100 AD.
The religious turmoil within emergent Judaism after 70 AD,
when the Jewish temple was destroyed, is critical.
The Gospel of John focused talk
about “the Jews” and its prediction of expulsion,
persecution, and martyrdom for believers
readily displayed the intra-Jewish conflict of the time.
John’s community saw themselves
to be a persecuted religious minority,
expelled from the synagogue,
expelled from their religious home,
because of their faith in Jesus.
There were, of course,
other religious beliefs swirling around during that time.
The early Christians were also living within a Hellenistic society—
meaning that much of the worldview held
at that time was that of the Greeks—
the principles, ideas, and pursuits
associated with the contemporary Greek culture
also permeated the Mediterranean world.
The way the Gospel of John was written is also influenced by this fact.
This Gospel was written to a particular community
in a particular time and place
so that they could define themselves apart
from the other religions that were around them.
This Gospel helped define them as a community.
Things haven’t changed much since then.
We have different religions and philosophies
swirling around us in this modern age now.
- So how do we define ourselves as Christians now?
- How do we live as Easter people?
Defining ourselves means that
we live out our lives in a particular way as
community so that people can clearly see
what being a Christian means.
Defining ourselves doesn’t mean that we throw stones at others.
In our lesson from the Book of Acts today,
this meant that even unto death,
Stephen echoed Jesus, asking God to receive his spirit
and to forgive those who were murdering him.
Stephen’s faithfulness compelled him
to behave differently than someone
who did not follow Jesus.
In our American culture,
we are not persecuted in
the same way that Stephen was treated or by
how Christians are treated in other parts of the world.
This is nice and comfortable for us,
but it often makes it more difficult
to show the world how a community
that follows Jesus defines itself.
The media makes this even more difficult
when it highlights Christians that
manifest bigotry, hate, and judgment on their neighbors…
…lumping us all into that category together.
- How do we continue to define ourselves in the midst of this?
- How do we show that we are God’s people?
- What makes us different from Habitat for Humanity or
the food bank?
They do good works, too, right?
In our Gospel lesson, we have part of the answer.
We know the way to the place that Jesus is going
because we, by definition,
claim to know Jesus as God incarnate—
God with us—God’s own son.
Jesus was always going to return to God the Father
because they were inseparable.
Jesus himself was and is simultaneously
the access to and
the embodiment of life with God.
This is our particular belief that
helps define us as a Christian community
and because of this belief,
…we are to love Jesus by doing his works
and by keeping his commandments:
to love God and to love one another.
- How have we defined ourselves
in our own community as Episcopalians?
- What does it mean to be Episcopalian?
- When we begin to lose our own identity and
lose our saltiness,
we need to be recalled to the larger community
of The Episcopal Church and
to the extended Christian community.
As Christians,
we are not called to be like everyone else
…and as Episcopalians,
we have our own distinct flavor.
“If someone were to stop at a gas station
and ask where your church was,
how would the attendant answer?”
Great question.
Would the attendant look at you blankly?
Maybe, give a vague answer? Is that the church near Ashley Hall?
Or would he or she say, “Oh, that church!
That’s the church where this, this, and this happens!”
- What is our identity in the wider community?
- What do we want to be known for?
Here are some further questions to ponder this week:
- What do we value about being Christians in our community?
- What is God calling us to do as the Episcopal presence in our community?
How do we define ourselves,
and as the community for whom the Gospel of John was written
…how would we define ourself?
May God give us wisdom and courage
to live into these answers
…for the future of St. Mark’s and
the Diocese of South Carolina.
Amen.