Easter 5

April 20, 2008

Year A - RCL

The Rev'd Lloyd Prator

New York City

Do you ever get lost? It is a strange sensation. The other day, I got lost in Jersey City trying to get back to the Holland Tunnel. For those of you who know Jersey City, that is a difficult thing to do, since you can find markers for the Tunnel on almost every corner. But I rose to the occasion and got lost. In fact, I had to go back to where I had started and try all of the instructions again. A humiliating experience.

In today's gospel, Jesus is preparing his disciples for getting good and lost. The passage we just heard actually takes us back before the Resurrection, before Easter into the events right before the passion of the Lord. I am going away, Jesus said, and you know where I am going. Well, no, Thomas objects, we actually don't . Perhaps he was hoping for a map. But rather than responding in that sensible way, Jesus said “I am the way.”

Jesus was always saying things like that, especially as John recalled them. He was always saying that he was the shepherd, he was the gate, he was the bread, and now—he was the way. He offers them the way. He offers them the way he lived his life, the way he loved those he cared for, the way he faced his death and the way he conquered death. He offers what one scholar called a “human map.” Study that map carefully.

That map is interesting as much for what it does not offer as for what it does. He is not offering us a strong rope to pull us from a chasm. He is not offering us a pattern of scholarly discipline or a philosophical system, which will make life clear. He is not even offering a moral code which will guarantee right conduct. He offers himself.

What does it mean to say that Jesus offers us the way? There are a lot of ways to think of this. Here is one.

Left alone, we suffer and we die and all that we have goes down to dust. Now there is a nice cheery thought for a spring Easter morning. But we know that is true. Today we will baptize a little girl, Ella, and Ella's grandfather Tony died last year on this date Death is an inexorable part of the human scene, and the loss of a grandfather, while not unexpected, is a source of grief and sorrow. What the Christian faith suggests is that like Tony the grandfather, Ella, the little girl will face suffering and finally death. We don't like to think about this sort of thing, the notion of a child suffering calls forth the deepest sorrow and sometimes the deepest outrage known to the human spirit.

Today, as we bring Ella to the font of new life, God offers her a way out of the suffering which will face her through the course of her life. The pains of growing up, the isolation of adolescence, the challenge of new schools, the pain of first love. Ella will face all of these things. The disappointment of divorce, the death of friends, family spouse, the loss of career, Ella may well face all of these things. The onset of age and the erosion of sickness, and finally, the blackness of death, Ella will face all of these things. What God is saying to this little girl today is something like this: “All of these bad things, all of this pain—bring it on. We have a way to live through it. It does not have ultimate power over all of us.”

In face, we are going to fix it today so that no suffering which ever comes Ella's way can ever claim the last word over her. If you will pardon an electrical image, God is giving her a new source of power to be plugged into, and that power is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Whatever may befall humans in the human condition, bring ‘em on, Ella is fixed to face them and to face them down because today she will be in Christ.

Now, is there a downside to this business of being plugged into Christ? Perhaps there is. It means that your life is no longer entirely your own. Being in Jesus means having your life used for his own purposes, and we can count on God to have in mind a few things he wants to use Ella's life for. God needs a few lives to continue showing himself to the world. In a week or so, we will celebrate the Ascension of the Lord. That mystery speaks of the way in which the earthly body of Jesus was taken away from us, his followers. And ever since that event, God has been seeking human beings, men and women and little boys and little girls to be his instruments for loving and living in this world. We have no idea how he will use Ella, but we know that in some way, for some purpose, she will be sent into the world in the power of the spirit to know and to serve Christ.

So what we are really celebrating today is the dual way in which God loves this world. He loves it by offering to Ella, to you, and to me, a way through the pain of suffering and death that is inevitably a part of this world. And he offers to the whole world, men and women whom he has commissioned to be his agents of love within creation.

The latest to join the team will be Ella, today, as God, through baptism pours upon her the light and power of his love, nullifies the power of sin and death, and engages her in the love of the world for which his son Jesus died.

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