Easter V

This Sunday's Gospel text is a well known one from John (14:1-14). Perhaps too well known. And, certainly, too misused over the centuries.

As we read it today, we'll practice 'lectio divina' - listening for a word or phrase that glimmers or speaks to you, whatever it may suggest. Our monastic sisters and brothers have done this for centuries to 'open up the text' - particularly difficult texts.

But, let's start with the beauty. Jesus is addressing his disciples in a long goodbye. They are growing fretful and worried. He responds, "Do not let your hearts be troubled."

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Words for us today, if ever.

What does it mean to try to 'follow' Jesus? For, this is what is best meant by the tradition reflected in the text that calls him, 'the Way.' The earliest ones who followed him sometimes referred to themselves simply as 'People of The Way.' Sounds rather Taoist to the contemporary ear, which may not be a bad thing.

How about this -- by the associative property (for Jesus calls God 'Love,' and in John's Gospel Jesus is God's speaking into the cosmos this Word of God's very essence...), read this Gospel text and simply replace the word Jesus (or, 'I' when Jesus is speaking) with the word Love. As a Proper Noun, as if it were someone's given name. For, after all, it is someone's Name. The name above all others, as Paul and Peter (and Mary Magdalene and so many others) both give witness.

Love is the Way. Love is the Truth. Love is the Life. Love prepares a place for us, beginning even now in our mortal, fragile lives. In the House of God, Love tells us that there is more room there than we could ask or imagine, both now and in that 'outside-of-time-ness' that the Judeo-Christian tradition calls 'eternity.'

Believe in this deepest truth to the cosmos, being remade in the image of Love, slowly over time. Work with this Way. Aspire to become this Way, yourself -- grow up in every way into the shape of this Love, which gives all things, hopes all things, bears all things (to switch to quoting Paul...).

It's not a competition; it's not a club to join (or keep others out of). It's a struggle and a release and a hope and a transformation. We have many sisters and brothers along the way, walking many paths. As the Sufi poet Rumi (who loved Jesus) writes, "...there are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground." If they are so, then they are all ways of Love.

This may be what it means to try to follow Jesus, in the Way and as The Way.