May 3, 2026, The Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A

John 14:1-14, Psalm 66:1-12, 1 Peter 2:1-12

Alleluia! He is risen!

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you on this Fifth Sunday of Easter.

For four Sundays now we have been following the risen Christ as he finds his people. But this Sunday we step back in time — back to the night before the crucifixion, to the Upper Room, to the Last Supper. John 14 is not a resurrection appearance. It is words spoken on Maundy Thursday night, the night of his arrest — words we now read with resurrection eyes that the disciples did not yet have when they first heard them.

We are better positioned to hear this passage than the disciples were — we know what the cross cost, what the tomb gave up, and what he meant when he said he was going to prepare a place. They heard these words in grief and confusion. We hear them from the other side of the resurrection, which is exactly the vantage point John intended.

This passage opens what is often called Jesus' Farewell Discourse — the end of chapter 13 through chapter 17, all spoken on Maundy Thursday night. John 18:1 opens with "When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron" (John 18:1, ESV) — so everything in chapters 13 through 17 happens that same night, before the arrest. In it Jesus covers the rooms and the way — our passage this morning — then the Holy Spirit in 14:15–31, the vine and the branches in chapter 15, which we look at next Sunday, and comfort in persecution through 16:33. It is the longest sustained teaching in any of the Gospels, given on the night before the crucifixion, with the worst still hours away.

Just before our passage begins, Judas has left the table. Jesus has told the disciples that one of them would betray him. He has issued the New Commandment in John 13:34 — "love one another: just as I have loved you" (John 13:34, ESV) — and told them he is going somewhere they cannot follow. Peter has declared he would follow Jesus anywhere, even to death, and Jesus has told him that before the rooster crows he will deny him three times. 

Everything they believed about what the Messiah would do is beginning to collapse. It is the same collapse we heard two Sundays ago on the Emmaus road, in the most honest sentence in that passage: "we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21, ESV). These disciples will be on that metaphorical road soon enough — within days, some of them will have that same shattered hope. But right now they are still in the Upper Room, and Jesus speaks to them here, before the collapse, with words that will only make full sense on the other side of it.

Jesus opens with a pastoral command in verse 1, and it is worth sitting with its strangeness for a moment. He does not say “your hearts will not be troubled” — as if trouble were simply going to be avoided. He says “let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1, ESV). Therefore, it is an act of will, an orientation of trust, rooted not in circumstances but in a person, Jesus Christ. And into that room — Judas gone, betrayal and denial hours away, everything they thought they knew beginning to unravel — Jesus speaks verse 1: "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me" (John 14:1, ESV). The antidote to trouble is not the removal of the trouble. It is the deepening of trust in the one who knows what is coming and has prepared for it.

In verse 2 he gives them the reason: "In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?" (John 14:2, ESV). 

Last Sunday we sat with Psalm 23 and heard that the psalm is a pilgrimage, not a picnic — that green pastures and still waters are provision for a journey heading somewhere. The final verse tells us where: "I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever" (Psalm 23:6, ESV). That is the final destination — the ultimate fulfillment of this psalm, in the Father's house, with rooms prepared for all who come through him.

This is where Psalm 66 comes in this morning. Our psalm opens with corporate praise — "Shout for joy to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name" (Psalm 66:1–2, ESV) — but it earns that praise by the time we get to verses 10–12. "For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs... we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance" (Psalm 66:10–12, ESV).

Fire and water. A crushing burden. The net. This is praise wrung out of people who have been through the valley — who can say you brought us out to a place of abundance because they have been through the deep waters and are still standing. Those who were with us through Lent will recognize the pattern: God does not promise to remove the wilderness. He promises to bring his people through it and out to a place of abundance on the other side. The disciples in the Upper Room are on the near side of the fire. By Pentecost they will know what it means to have been brought through.

Thomas asks the honest question in verse 5 of our Gospel reading: "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" (John 14:5, ESV). This is exactly the right question, and Jesus gives it the fullest possible answer in verse 6: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, ESV).

Last Sunday we heard “I am the gate,” or “I am the door” (John 10:7, ESV), depending on your translation — one of the great I AM statements of John's Gospel. This Sunday we hear another: “I am the way” (John 14:6, ESV). The gate, or door, is how we enter. The way is how we travel. Both are the same claim from different angles: through Jesus, and no other.

This sounds narrow to modern ears — until we remember the invitation is as wide as the world itself. Anyone may come through him. But notice how Jesus answers Thomas's question. Thomas asked for directions. Jesus did not give him directions. He gave him a person. “I am the way” — not “I will show you the way”, not “I will teach you the way”, not “here is a map”. The way is Jesus himself. To know him is to be on the way. To follow him is to travel it.

There is one way to the Father, and that way is a person — not a religion, not a moral code, not a set of spiritual disciplines, but a person. The same exclusivity we heard last week: one gate, one way. Exclusive in that there is only one, but wide open to anyone who comes through him. "Anyone" — that word from John 10:9 has not changed.

And then he adds: “I am the truth” (John 14:6, ESV). Not I teach the truth, not I point you toward truth. He is the truth. Truth in John's Gospel is not a proposition to be mastered but a person to be known — always personal, always relational, always pointing to the one who embodies it. No amount of intellectual agreement with correct doctrine is sufficient on its own, as Philip is about to demonstrate. Remember, the demons have perfect doctrine, an a perfect understanding of who and what Jesus is, but do not submit.

And finally: “I am the life” (John 14:6, ESV). We have heard this before in this Easter season. "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25, ESV) — spoken over Lazarus's tomb at the end of Lent. "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10, ESV) — spoken through the gate passage last Sunday. Now the fullest statement: “I am the life.” Not simply the giver of life, though he is that. He is the life itself. To be in him is to be alive in the deepest sense. To be cut off from him is to be cut off from the only source of life that does not finally run out.

Thomas gets his answer and falls silent. Then Philip speaks in verse 8: "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us" (John 14:8, ESV).

It is a sincere request. Philip wants the vision of God that Moses asked for on the mountain, the glory that passed by in the cleft of the rock. He got something far better: God in the flesh, standing right in front of him, about to answer. Jesus' response is arrestingly plain in verse 9: "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?" (John 14:9, ESV).

Philip has been looking past Jesus for something behind him. Jesus tells him there is nothing behind him to look for. What you see when you see me is what the Father is — the words, the works, the compassion shown to the sick, the table kept with sinners, the feet washed tonight. That is what God is like.

This is the theological heart of the Christian faith. The eternal God, invisible and beyond all comprehension, has made himself fully known in a human face. Not partially. Not in a reduced or simplified version. In Jesus, "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9, ESV). Philip did not need to look past Jesus to find the Father. He needed to look at Jesus more carefully.

And so do we. Every time we want to know what God thinks of the broken, the doubting, the grieving, the straying — we look at Jesus. Every time we want to know what God's response to our failure is — we look at Jesus. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9, ESV).

The disciples in that Upper Room will become the first generation to carry the testimony of Jesus. What they cannot yet understand, they will spend the rest of their lives telling — Mary Magdalene, the Emmaus disciples, the Eleven — until the testimony carries to every nation, tongue, and tribe, and the one who prepared the place comes back for his people.

We are the descendants of that testimony. We believe because someone told us. We tell because someone told them.

Jesus closes this passage with a promise that has puzzled the Church ever since in verse 12: "whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father" (John 14:12, ESV).

The word greater does not mean greater in power — it means greater in reach and number. At Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus spoke these words, Peter preached and three thousand came to faith in a single day, something that never happened in Jesus' earthly ministry. What Jesus began, he promised to continue through his church until the Gospel reached every nation — and that includes this congregation today.

The key is in verse 13: "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:13, ESV). Praying in his name is not a formula — it is praying in alignment with his will and for his glory. Martin Luther put it plainly: "We by our praying are rather instructing ourselves than him." When we pray in that spirit, the answer — whatever form it takes — is always the wisest possible response from a Father whose knowledge and love far exceed our own.

This is also the vision 1 Peter 2 holds out for the community formed by that prayer. Peter writes to people who are "like newborn infants" — newly come to faith — and calls them to "long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation" (1 Peter 2:2, ESV). And then the extraordinary declaration in verse 9: "you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9, ESV).

A royal priesthood. A holy nation. This is the people the way leads toward, the truth holds together, the life sustains. Not individuals who happen to share a belief — a people, formed by the one who called them out of darkness. And their purpose is to proclaim. Deuteronomy 6:20-25 gives the instruction that has never changed: when your children ask what all this means, tell them. Tell them what God did. Tell them how he brought his people through the fire and the deep waters and out to a place of abundance. The testimony is handed down, generation to generation, until the one who prepared the place comes back for his people.

So let me ask three questions before we close — not rhetorical ones, but ones worth sitting with this week:

First: what is troubling your heart right now — specifically? Name it, and lay it against "Believe in God; believe also in me" (John 14:1, ESV). That is not a dismissal of the trouble. It is an act of will. What would it look like this week to practice that trust rather than waiting for it to arrive as a feeling?

Second: where has your picture of God become distorted — harsh, distant, disappointed, indifferent? The correction is always the same. Look at Jesus. Look at him with the sick, with the grieving, with the woman at the well, with Thomas, with the disciples on the Emmaus road. That is what the Father is like. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9, ESV). Whatever we think God might be in our worst moments — look at Jesus in that moment, and let him correct us — reorient us.

Third: who in your life needs to hear what happened to you? We are here because someone told us. The royal priesthood, the holy nation — these are not just grand ecclesial categories. They are the calling of every person in this room. Someone within reach of your voice is still in the Upper Room, or on the road to Emmaus, or behind a locked door. They need to hear not a lecture but a testimony. Psalm 66 ends with its testimony of personal witness, which was not part of our reading: ”Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul” (Psalm 66:16, ESV). That is the response. Not a lecture. Not an argument. Come and hear what he has done for my soul.

"Let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1, ESV). That is still the word for us. Not because trouble is absent — it is not. Not because the way is easy — it is not. But because the one who said “I am the way” (John 14:6, ESV) walked it first. He went through the fire and the deep water before us. And he is coming back for his people to take us to a place prepared for us.

Our relationship with him is the one thing in this life that cannot be taken away. Everything else — health, security, wealth, relationships, circumstances — comes and goes. These are good things, second order things, and we are right to be grateful for them. But Jesus is the first order thing. And if all the second order things fall away, the first order thing remains. We still have the way, the truth, and the life. We still have the one in whose Father's house there are many rooms.

The way is open. The truth is not a proposition but a person. The life is abundant and it is for anyone who enters by him. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in him.

Let us pray.