Easter 6 May 10, 2026 with The Rev. Angela Compton-Nelson

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster6_RCL.html

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. If you have not yet seen the television series The Good Place, I commend it to you now. Aside from its general storyline, following the characters as they venture into the afterlife of great interest to all of us, it's very hard to go wrong with anything that brings together Ted Danson and Kristen Bell. And you will gain a working, if ridiculous, image of the philosophical claims of utilitarianism. And you can come to consider several things that we might take for granted in new ways. One of those things is time, which, as one main character explains, is only assumed to move in a straight line. Those with a longer perspective, like the characters in the show who are millions of years old, know that it actually looks something more like the name Jeremy Baremy. In cursive script, of course. While I'm not sure that time actually does this, I am sure that this is a decent description of what the lectionary does. It moves through texts, a moment, a story, or an image at a time, not always in order. It loops back to earlier events or skips forward to later ones, taking them out of chronological order in the interest of placing them in theological juxtaposition to moments on the church's liturgical calendar. So, like cursive script, it moves backward and forward across a page, all Jeremy Baramy-like. In Eastertide, the lectionary makes this move among today's gospel text. This week is a particularly good example. As we loop back to John chapter 14, which is the night before Jesus dies. So while we are preparing in real time for the ascension of Jesus on the 40th day after Easter, which is this coming Thursday, we are also face to face with what Jesus is saying to his disciples the night before he dies. And both of these moments, the night before Jesus' death and his last earthbound hours before ascending into heaven, are tied together by the question of what followers of Jesus are to do when Jesus is no longer with them. On the horizon, the 50th day after Easter morning, the day of Pentecost, offers the question of how Jesus remains with his disciples when it seems as though he is not present. To go forward in hopes of even addressing these questions at all, we must go backward. In John chapter 14, Jesus has just shared the Last Supper with His disciples. He gets up from the table before kneeling to wash their feet and giving them a new commandment to love one another. This section of the story is called the farewell discourse. It is Jesus' famous last words, and with them he articulates what is going to happen, who he is, and what it all means. While Jesus provides the interpretive key for the events to come, the moment the scene plays out is laden with confusion, as the disciples, having received Jesus' ministry and teaching in the previous years and chapters, and his ministry and teaching on this night, grapple with its reality. Who he is and what he has done is compelling to them, but they're confused by the direction things are going as the story moves toward his arrest and death. The hopes for a Messiah to redeem Israel and Jesus' death are details that are seemingly at odds with one another, seemingly mutually exclusive. They have yet to witness the horror of the crucifixion, but they sit at the turning point. The fever pitch of activity over the past weeks has already become undeniable. It is the point at which they believe themselves to be in one story and are soon to find out that without their knowing, the script has been switched. Or maybe they're about to see the original script clearly, but for the first time. In this script, Jesus' followers must contend with the death of Israel's Messiah and its salvation being different than they had supposed, different even than that for which they have hoped and on which they have staked their lives. When Jesus tells them what is to come, he is telling them the old story, but framed in a new way. In this retelling, though, he says, nothing has changed. God is for you as God has always been, and I, your salvation, am from God the Father. I am in God the Father. Later in this same discourse, Jesus will say, I and the Father are one. He's trying to say that the whole story of God's relationship with Israel actually remains, that in this moment, his work as the Messiah of Israel and the work of God the Father are not separate, but one. And he's reminding them that God, who has always wanted to be with them in the garden, in the land, in the temple, is with them in him. This passage can feel strange and complex. The language sounds like it's being tied in knots, as though Jesus is speaking in circles. I'm in the Father, the Father's in me. If you're in the Father, then I am in you, and you also are in me. So it's no surprise that the disciples ask Jesus to clarify because what Jesus is claiming is not easy to understand. The dialogue itself is a Jeremy Barami, looping back on itself as it moves forward. But once this story is seen in light of the resurrection, Jesus' claim becomes clearer. In his death, Jesus unites a wholly other and mysterious God to human death, taking the divinity of God into death and making even the thing which most separates human creatures from God, that which is overcome by God. And then in his resurrection, Jesus brings human flesh into the new creation. In him there is a new space of communion with God. The one work of Jesus Christ in the incarnation, life and ministry, death and resurrection is one with the work of God the Father, and we are joined to God in this work. That work is to be with us. The resurrection makes it clear that there's no thing which breaks the bond that God has with God's creation. The work of God in creating and then caring for the world has always been to be with it. While the disciples fear what to make of their lives without Jesus and fear that they've lost the Messiah that they hoped for, or even that maybe Jesus is not the Messiah at all, Jesus makes the case that there is no part of their life or death in which Jesus is not with them. The whole project of God's being with people in the redemption of the people of Israel, of all of creation, and drawn into the union with God does not actually need to be detangled by the disciples anyway. It's not a project which belongs to them or to their effort any more than it belongs to us or to ours. Jesus is and has made a way, and that work belongs to him who is the way. While the resurrection offers this consolation, Jesus is with them in this particular way only for a short time. And this is why the lectionary offering of this text, so close to the ascension, is interesting. Because the disciples don't just have to deal with the reality of Jesus leaving the first time at his death, but they have to deal for a second time with understanding what God's ministry to them in Jesus Christ is and means when Jesus is not with them in the flesh. To this, Jesus says, I will not leave you without my ministry. Indeed, this ministry has a new dynamic because I am going to the Father to prepare a place for you. This part of the dialogue, too, is a little bit off the page of our lectionary text today, but it's here where we get the very famous claim by Jesus that we so often hear at Christian funerals. In my Father's house, there are many rooms. Were it not so, I would have told you. When I go, I do so to prepare a place for you with the Father. But there is more. Because while Jesus goes to do this, the ministry of God to the disciples and to us continues with the Advocate. The gift of God's own Holy Spirit dwelling with us, caring for us. I will not leave you orphaned. You will not be without a caretaker. You will not be without one who advocates for you, who ministers to you. Even though Jesus has left the disciples and gone into heaven, God has not left or abandoned the disciples, but continues to love them, to make them the object of God's attention and to be with them. And it is this way of being present that we bear witness to in Pentecost. The ministry of God in the Holy Spirit sustains the Christian community, enabling it to persevere and bear witness to God's ministry to the world, even in the face of the trials of their lives. For the first Christians in many sense, many since that's often meant to death by martyrdom. But it doesn't only mean martyrdom. In the face of confusion and uncertainty, in the most ordinary of lives and deaths, the community is called to offer testimony to Jesus Christ, the one who is one with the Father, the Word through whom all things were made in the beginning, the Messiah of the people, and the one who gives his own spirit as an advocate, nurturing the ongoing life of the community. In Jesus Christ, God ministers to and attends to the relationship that God has always intended to have with creation. And even as he leaves parting from them, he gives them himself. He gives them the advocate. His farewell discourse is nothing like a real farewell. It is a promise to come to God's people again and again. Thanks be to God. Amen.