The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Orthodox icon of Christ the Lifegiver

I had a hard time pulling together the reflection for this week. A lot of it was due to time constraints, since I just got back from vacation yesterday afternoon. I had a lot of stuff to catch up on when I got home, and I knew I had to be up at 4:00 AM if I planned to watch the coverage of Pope Benedict’s installation. But the primary reason I struggled so much this week was because I had a difficult time seeing a clear connection between this week’s readings. The Sunday lectionary is structured so that there is a theme running through the readings for a given day, and most often the link is strongest between the first reading and the Gospel. Most weeks something will jump out at me -- sometimes right away and other times only after further reflection. So although I ruminated on these passages a lot as I was driving back through the Laurel Mountains yesterday, this was the best I could come up with. If this reflection feels rather underdeveloped and full of half-formed thoughts that don’t really hang together cohesively, that’s probably because it is. :)

Today’s Gospel reading is taken from the 14th chapter of John’s Gospel, which is part of the section sometimes called the Last Supper Discourses, where Jesus addresses his disciples extensively before his passion and death. In this particular passage we hear another of those famous “I am” statements from Jesus. These kind of statements are familiar to us, of course -- “I am the Good Shepherd,” “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” “I am the Light of the World,” etc. Today he tells us “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

This passage has always been a favorite of mine, which probably isn’t all that surprising. We philosopher types love to talk about truth, of course. A huge milestone in my conversion years back was when I finally grasped the stunning possibility that truth was not just some “thing” out there but was actually a person. Jesus tells us here that he is the truth. It initially took a while for that to sink in for me -- and of course it still hasn’t completely sunk in yet, as there’s still plenty of work for the Holy Spirit to do in me -- but when it finally did begin to penetrate my thick skull a bit, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Last week Jesus used the image of himself as the gate to the sheepfold. This week the image is much more abstract, but the key point is the same: Jesus himself is the point of entry. Entry into what? Well, Jesus began by telling us of the place he prepares for us in the Father’s house, so he’s talking about the entrance to eternal life. But lest we think that this boils down to just “me and Jesus,” let’s look briefly at some things found in the other readings.

The second reading is from 1 Peter, where Peter urges us “...like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Built into a spiritual house...offer spiritual sacrifices....through Jesus Christ. Sounds like Peter is talking about the Church to me.

Our life in Christ is connected very much to our life with one another; we come to Christ in the midst of the Church. The first reading from Acts gives us a rather concrete illustration of this, as we hear the story of the appointment of the first deacons in the early church. The community was faced with finding a new and better way to meet the needs of all the widows, and the apostles decided to set aside men for this task -- and they are to be “seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom.” Note that although the apostles gave the community the task of choosing the men, the chosen men were then presented to the apostles, “who prayed and laid hands on them.” It’s an important facet of the story which shows how important the visible figures of authority in the Church are -- today these would be the successors of the apostles, our bishops.

Our arrival at the place that Jesus has prepared for us in the Father’s house requires us to live and serve in the midst of the Church. Our call is not just to follow a list of rules, but to follow Christ. And part of following Christ means living in the midst of the Church, submitting to the authority of the bishops he has entrusted with the task of caring for us, his flock. That’s an especially important point on this day, as we celebrate the great gift of our new Holy Father and his ministry to us. Too many people are more concerned with critiquing the Pope or with saddling him with their expectations and agendas rather than being open to being led by him. That’s a problem that seems to be cutting across all ends of the spectrum in the Catholic blogosphere. Our time would be better spent praying for Pope Benedict, as he asked us to do so earnestly in his homily this morning. Let us ask God to strengthen the Holy Father’s love for the Lord and for the flock that has been entrusted to him. Today Jesus reminds us that the entire Church must strive to seek and know him more and more. He is the way and the truth and the life -- our hope and our salvation.