Easter 5 Year A 2026: John 14:1-14

In 1993 the Christian band Audio Adrenaline released perhaps the most 90s song with their interpretation of John 14:2. The song’s called “Big House” - does anyone know it? It was a huge Contemporary Christian Music hit - it reached #1 on Christian Radio and was named song of the decade by CCM Magazine. The chorus goes, “it’s a big big house / with lots and lots of room / a big big table / with lots and lots of food / a big big yard / where we can play football / a big big house / it’s my Father’s house”. I don’t know how I feel about that song. It somehow seems to do some great 90s youth group exegesis while simultaneously minimizing Jesus’ comforting words about his return by hearing in those words a promise about playing football on the lawn. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t watch the music video this week and enjoy every second of it and have the song stuck in my head for several days. Because not everything has to be high art.

If you weren’t here last week, to recap, Jesus told his “I am the gate/I am the good shepherd” metaphor. It is the only time in the Gospel of John that Jesus uses anything like a parable, as opposed to in the other Gospels where parables are a hallmark of his teaching. Following these metaphors, Jesus is rejected by the Jewish leaders, who don’t like Jesus’ equating himself with David and the Lord, drive him out of the temple after taking up stones to stone him.

We join the story now where Jesus has raised Lazarus and washed his disciples’ feet. This is towards the beginning of Jesus’ last discourse, which will last for several chapters until he is arrested in Chapter 18. Today’s text begins with Jesus saying, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” We see it as the beginning of Chapter 14 but not John’s original audience. John didn’t write in chapters. To the original writers, the Gospels were not parsed off into neat and tidy chapters and sections. Anything resembling paper was very expensive so there was no room wasted - no headings, not even spaces between words. This is particularly important today because of what comes before it. Jesus says, “Where I am going, you cannot come” and gives his disciples a new commandment: “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also shall love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” But Simon Peter backs up before Jesus’ new commandment to his statement about leaving, and asks Jesus where he’s going. Jesus tells Peter he can’t follow where he’s going now, but will later and Peter says, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” And Jesus escalates rather quickly when he responds, “Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” And that is where Chapter 13 ends. Jesus follows that with, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” He goes back to where he is going that they cannot go now, but how they can get there, almost like the denial line to Peter is a throwaway because Peter was distracting him from his point. It’s like when you’re in class and someone asks a question that, while it’s relevant, it isn’t where the teacher is going or what point they’re trying to get to and if you would just chill a second the teacher will get there. Jesus seems to be doing that here. Peter wants Jesus to address his concern and Jesus is like, “stop. You aren’t ready. You’re so not ready that you’re going to deny me three times. But here is how I’m going to guide you.” Notice Thomas asks Jesus essentially the same question as Peter did, just with better timing and less arrogance - Thomas isn’t making dramatic offerings of his life, he is just concerned about how to continue following Jesus to this unknown destination.

What Jesus is doing by calling himself the way is the same thing prophets have been doing since Moses: interpreting the Law (Law with a capital L) and finding a phrase to explain himself. There isn’t a great 1:1 translation of what was meant by Law here. When I wrote my sermon, I capitalized the “L” to denote it as different from a civic law or written code, but that doesn’t help y’all when I say it.

There are 611 or 613 distinct laws in the Torah, depending on rabbinic tradition. Throughout the Prophets, those laws are interpreted and sometimes narrowed down in a way that a legislative society like ours struggles to understand. Choices are made by people throughout Scripture that don’t use a written law as its reference point, but are still considered to be good and Godly choices. So how does that work? It is what the prophet Jeremiah was communicating when he wrote, “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days (of the new covenant), says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…no longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” (Jer. 31:33-34) Jeremiah isn’t offering the hope of a well-studied people. He is making the promise of a new covenant where the Law will be fulfilled because the people are so close to God they won’t need the guidance of the Law, but know within themselves - and do those things which they know they ought - because their wills are at one with God’s will. They simply won’t need a written Law. That is much easier for us to understand today than trying to figure out how people in the Old Testament functioned within the Law without constantly citing which statute they’re following.

“The source of obligation isn’t to a written text. It’s to a transcendent set of values of which the written law code is one expression.” (bibleproject) That’s one of the reasons why “the Bible says” doesn’t move me as much as one might think. The Bible contradicts itself. It does not have single authorship and it was authored over the course of thousands of years. It comments on itself and things change. While the Bible contains all things necessary to salvation, it contains a lot of other things too that can be distracting and confusing. That is why it is so important to look to Jesus, who is the way and the truth and the life, as our model for what we ought to do and the lens through which we interpret Scripture.

John 14 is a popular funeral reading. Oftentimes I will close funeral homilies where this is a text read by saying something like this: “Today, we celebrate Pat’s new life, reunited with Connie, in the resurrection - having followed Jesus to “my father’s house”. Here, they find their way to each other and to us. And, we can lean into the paradox in which we live. We have joy in Pat’s new life in Christ knowing that, because Jesus was raised from the dead we too will be raised. At the same time we have sorrow at being parted in this world. We can both cry tears of happiness because he was here and weep tears of sadness at seeing him no more.”

How comforting it is to know that Jesus cares so deeply for his friends, his disciples, that he guides them through what he knows they are about to face. And likewise how comforting it is for us to know that Jesus is there to guide us through whatever we face: uncertainty, fear, sadness, sorrow, pain. Through this text, we find comfort and hope in Jesus’ presence and promise. We are reminded that Jesus is the source of our wisdom, and he is constantly reminding us to love one another as he loves us: sacrificially, completely, and fearlessly. Amen.