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The Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 24, 2005
Acts 17:1-15, I Peter 2:1-10, John 14:1-14
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT
The Rev. W. Lee Shaw
We are back in the upper room. Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet. They have shared a meal. Judas has just left. It is night. He has told them to love one another for this is how others will know they are his disciples. Then he says he is going away to prepare a place for them. The disciples want to know how they can follow him. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me...I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”
In just a few hours Jesus will stand before Pontius Pilate and will be asked, “What is truth?” Jesus will stand in silence for He is the Truth.
We hear many claims for truth, from truth in advertising to truth in churches. How many here have heard someone claim they belong to “the true church?” So let’s talk a bit about truth and God and churches and us.
Bishop Irish once quoted a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah as saying: “Churches are not true or false. Propositions are true or false. Churches are better or worse.” I like that.
The Rev. Bill Countryman of CDSP writes the following about churches and truth: “Despite the claims churches sometimes make for themselves, none of them enjoys immediate divine authorization. None of them has received directly from God a blueprint for its institutions, rites, hierarchies, theologies, moral instructions, or other traditions. None of them has control of the Transcendent, or even exclusive access to the ear of the Divine. To claim otherwise is to give the church an effective monopoly on the Holy in this world and to render God’s own self expendable and unnecessary. It is, in other words, idolatrous.”
The Episcopal Church has never claimed to be “the true” church or to have all truth. We see our worship, our Sacraments, our understanding of Christian doctrine to be pointing us to the Truth found in Christ Jesus. We look through our religious traditions, teachings and sacraments to, hopefully, glimpse the divine Truth in Christ.
To those who claim such absolute truth in their church or their teachings I say this: I’m sorry you put your faith and trust in a human creation. My church does not claim absolute truth, but rather helps me see the Truth of the Gospel in Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life.
Many in our world will try to convince us otherwise. They say that this particular church is true, therefore yours is false. They say that scripture must be read in one particular way or else you are denying the truth of scripture. All of these elevate these human creations to that of absolute truth and therefore that of idols. And Episcopalians are as tempted as others to create idols out of our handiwork, such as Prayer Books, liturgies, or other parts of our tradition.
When we see Christ as the Truth of God, then we will obey his word to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. This is how we follow Christ as the way, the truth and the life.
And here is the good news of the gospel: It is not about us having all truth or claiming all truth. The Good News is in accepting Christ as the Truth in our lives, the Way of our hope, and the Life promised us in the resurrection. The Good News is that God calls us a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.” Once we “were not a people, but now [we] are God’s people; once [we] had not received mercy, but now [we] have received mercy.”
In that Good News we are free: free to be fully the unique and beloved person God created you to be, free to love others as you love yourself, free to love God and serve other’s in God’s name. The Good News of the Gospel gives you the freedom to be the person God created you to be and to live accordingly. Sometimes that means taking risks. But it also means living fully into the Good News of God’s love for you. You are beloved of God.
A friend of mine phrased it this way in a sermon: “Gospel expectancy means living without fear and with great hope. It means we live on the edge of things where things are not completely settled or well-ordered, nor are we certain how exactly they will be settled. So it’s where we can think imaginatively, act creatively, and love boldly because we don’t have to be afraid that God is watching us to make sure we’re getting it right. The only way we couldn’t get it right is not to act at all….Certainly, we’re going to make mistakes…But the freedom of the Gospel is the freedom to live without fear, and that means taking risks.” (The Rev’d Jay Johnson)
Live without fear. Live in the knowledge that Christ is the Way, and the Truth and the Life. Live knowing that you are marked as Christ’s own forever. Live in the knowledge that you are beloved of God.