The Fifth Sunday of Easter

April 20, 2008, Year A

St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley

The Rev. Nancy Webb Stroud

Acts 7:55-6, John 14:1-14

Several years ago, a friend invited me and another woman over for dinner. Our husbands were out of town, and we thought it would be nice to have a girls’ only night. Both of these women were Christians—Episcopalians, in fact, although I did not attend the same church that they did. But faithful churchwoman that she was, our hostess was interested in all kinds of spiritual practices. And so neither of us were surprised when she exclaimed that she had just bought some new Tibetan prayer bowls and that we really must try them out.

Now, I did not then, and I do not now, know very much about Tibetan spiritual practice, but I gathered that the point of these brass bowls is to get them to make sound, and that the continuous sound is like a prayer rising to heaven.

Our hostess took one of the bowls, and placed it on her hand, and rubbed a fat stick around the rim. And sure enough, a high-pitched sound began to fill the room. It was something like the noise you get when you rub a wet finger around the rim of a crystal wine glass. I would have to say that for me, it was not particularly spiritually uplifting, but my hostess seemed quite cheerful about it.

Our other friend took the other bowl in her hand, and rubbed the stick around the rim—and she couldn’t seem to make any sound at all. As I watched my two friends, one cheerfully successful, and the other increasingly frustrated, I must say that my first thought was how delighted I was that there were only two bowls to go around.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. . . says Jesus, in what have to be among the sweetest words of the New Testament. These are the Gospel words that we often choose to read at funerals. Jesus is sitting at table with his very best friends. Judas has just left the room. We know, and Jesus knows, where he is going. But the rest of the disciples do not. They are sitting in the kind of anxious silence that we have so often seen from them. Ministry with Jesus has seemed to get more and more serious as the months have gone by. Tonight it is looking like friendship with Jesus is very dangerous indeed.

And what he says is, Do not let your hearts be troubled. . . .Jesus understands his friends’ anxiety and he wants to calm them, to let them know that everything will work out for God’s glory.

It is tempting to stop right there, isn’t it? It is tempting to quote those words, and hold on to them, to “ponder them in our hearts” as his mother did with the strange events of his birth. No doubt that is what the disciples wanted to do.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. . .I go to prepare a place for you . . .and you know the way to the place where I am going he says, and finally Thomas speaks up. “Lord, we do not know where you are going.” We only have the written reports, of course, but it is pretty easy to hear the anxiety coming down through the years. “How can we know the way?”

Do not let your hearts be troubled. . . says Jesus, and then he goes on to offer words that are very troubling to us, indeed. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

THE way, THE truth, THE life. That sounds so exclusive! How can those be the words of Jesus, who was always looking out for those on the margins of society? Besides, our American experience tells us that there are as many ways to know God as there are people. How do we reconcile the sweetness and mercy of Do not let your hearts be troubled with I am the way, and the truth, and the life? How do we hear these words of Jesus, meant to comfort and sustain in a time of trouble and sorrow, how do we hear them and live comfortably with our neighbors and friends who are Jewish or Muslim or some other religion or who profess no religion at all?

I sat in my friend’s living room all those years ago, as she made her prayer bowl sing, and our other friend gripped hers tightly as her frustration increased. I watched these two women, faithful women, convinced of the goodness of God and willing, eager even, to try a new way to hear God speak to them. I watched their hands as one bowl sang its prayer and the other remained frustratingly mute. Finally, I asked if I could have a turn.

When I took the bowl in my hand, I felt immediately what the problem was. The bowl was wobbly. It tippled on my outstretched palm, as though it would fall off. I wanted to hold it steadily, and so I began to cup my fingers around it—and that was the problem. As long as the bowl sat on my outstretched palm, it wobbled and tippled in the most anxiety-producing way, but I could rub the stick around it and it sang. As soon as I cupped my fingers around it, to keep it from falling off my hand, the singing stopped.

I am the way, and the truth, and the life, Jesus says, and it is tempting to hang on to those words, to grip them tightly, to use them to exclude others instead of recognizing the presence of God in all of God’s created ones.

I am the way, and the truth and the life, Jesus says, and it is like the song of the prayer bowls. Knowing Jesus is a way of knowing God. Knowing Jesus, following in his way of being, is life that is available to anyone who comes to know him. It is not a knowledge to be grasped, or forced—because forcing and coercion stop the song. If we know Jesus, then we can welcome others with open hands and our lives will sing out the good news of life in the presence of God.