Fifth Sunday of Easter
Year A
RCL
The Way through the Open Door
By +Brian Ernest Brown, CWC
It is a very human thing to feel homeless even when you have a roof over your head. You can be sitting in your own living room, surrounded by your family, and still feel a deep, lingering sense of displacement and anxiety. We feel it when our health takes an unexpected turn, when our community fractures, or when the political and cultural ground beneath our feet feels completely unstable. We look around at a world filled with conflict and change, and we find ourselves wondering if there is anywhere we truly belong, anywhere we can completely lower our defenses and be safe.
Our Gospel today places us right in the middle of a room where that exact feeling of homelessness is overwhelming. It is the night of the Last Supper. Jesus has just told His disciples that He is about to leave them, that one of them will betray Him, and that Peter will deny Him three times before the rooster crows. The entire blueprint they had built their lives around for the past three years is collapsing in slow motion. They are terrified, confused, and profoundly anxious about the future.
And right into the middle of their panic, Jesus speaks words that have comforted human hearts for centuries: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
Notice that Jesus does not promise them a geographical location on a map or a castle in the clouds. The Father’s house is not a piece of divine real estate; it is a relationship. The Greek word for “dwelling places” means a permanent, abiding home. Jesus is telling these displaced disciples that their ultimate home is not a place, but a person. Their security is wrapped up entirely in their proximity to Him.
But Thomas, who is always wonderfully honest about his confusion, objects. He says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Thomas wants a physical itinerary. He wants landmarks and a clear set of directions.
And Jesus responds with a statement that completely redefines the nature of faith: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you want to know how to navigate the confusing, dark valleys of your life, walk in His footsteps. He does not just point to a path or hand us a manual from a distance; He is the path.
This absolute security of being anchored in Christ is what the letter of First Peter is hitting home. The author uses architectural imagery to describe our new identity. He calls Jesus a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight. And then he looks at us and says that we, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.
When you follow the Way, you are no longer an isolated, wandering individual trying to survive on your own willpower. You are part of a grand, living architecture of grace. Peter uses some of the most beautiful titles in the New Testament to remind us of who we are: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
But living as a living stone in God’s house does not mean we are insulated from the hostility of the world. In fact, choosing the upside-down way of Jesus, the way of humility, forgiveness, and sacrificial love, often sets us directly at odds with a culture that values leverage, force, and self-preservation.
We see the ultimate cost of this choice play out vividly in our reading from the book of Acts. Stephen, a man full of grace and power, is standing before the very religious authorities who had condemned Jesus. He is facing a furious, violent mob that is grinding their teeth at him.
But look at Stephen’s posture. He does not panic, he does not scream for vengeance, and he does not try to fight back with the weapons of the world. Filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And as the stones are flying, as his life is being violently crushed out of him, he kneels down and prays the exact same prayers Jesus prayed on the cross: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” and “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
Stephen was able to die with that kind of radical peace and forgiveness because he knew exactly where his home was. The stones of the mob could break his body, but they could not touch his baseline reality. He had already entered the Father’s house through the open door of faith.
The Psalmist captured this total, defiant trust in Psalm 31 when he sang that in you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Incline your ear to me; make haste to deliver me. Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe; for you are my crag and my stronghold; for the sake of your Name, lead me and guide me. Into your hands I commend my spirit, for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth.
So, where are you looking for your home this week? What are the false strongholds you are building to try to protect yourself from the anxieties of life? Is it your bank account, your career status, your political tribe, or your exhausting need to control how everyone perceives you?
Hear Jesus standing in the middle of your troubled heart today, repeating His promise: I have prepared a place for you. You do not need to wander through the world like a spiritual orphan. You belong to Him.
Let’s pray this week for the courage to walk the Way of Jesus, even when that path demands sacrifice, forgiveness, and stepping into the unknown. When the world tries to drag you into the dark of fear or division, remember that you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, called into a marvelous light. Commend your spirit entirely into His faithful hands today, drop your armor, and walk into the week ahead knowing that the Maker of heaven and earth is your eternal home.
Amen.