May 3, 2026

Easter 5 Year A

John 14:1-14

Epiphany, Winnipeg

“I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Right off the start, let’s notice this: When Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he’s making a promise. He’s not answering a question about other religions, or about how to believe the right things. What he’s doing is promising the disicples that he’ll keep his promises, that he won’t abandon them, and that they’re not going to wander around lost once he’s gone.

Jesus knows that he is going to be taken away by the ones who are in charge, and he knows that his disciples will be afraid and lost. They don’t know where he’s going, and he says, “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving you orphaned. I’m not leaving you on your own. I’m the way, and I’m not leading you on a road to nowhere. Don’t be afraid.”

He’s got to get that word out, because he’s trying to say goodbye, and it’s hard to say goodbye to good friends.

I have a very good friend – a very good friend – who lives a long way from here, in a tiny town in the mountains of BC. We don’t see each other more than once every year or two, or…six. It’s a long three day drive, or an expensive flight with at least two connections and a car rental. When we finally meet it’s such a happy reunion. He and his partner welcome me into their home, and although they’re really kind of poor there’s a warm room and a cozy blanket and a comfortable place to stay. There’s more food and drink than they can afford, but it’s there, and I stop at the Safeway in the town down the road and pick up a bit of this and that. There’s always enough, and in this small place there’s always enough room.

For a few days we laugh and we talk late into the night and we go for long walks if the BC rain is holding off for awhile, and we listen to weird music and we talk about the very different places we’re at in our faith and life. Sometimes we’ll each just sit and read our books, because friends don’t always need to talk, right?

It’s so good to be together – kind of an “in my father’s house there are many rooms” experience of a warm and safe place to be. But when the time comes to leave, we really dread the goodbye. We know there will be tears. We know that it will somehow be incomplete, because parting is always not quite finished. You know how it is? You can’t quite get all the sadness out, and can’t say enough how you’ll miss being together? So we put off the parting for as long as we can, and then it’s, “I’ve really got to go – I’ve got to make the flight.” That’s the way it is with saying goodbye. It just never seems to be the right time. It’s hard to say the right things. And it’s so hard to bring it to an end.

The way, the truth and the life is trying to say goodbye to his friends, but he just can’t draw it to a close. He’s spent three years with this group of disciples – they’re kind of his home - and now they’re sitting at the table one last time. The meal lasts forever… go home and read it sometime; it starts at Chapter 13, and finally ends once Chapter 17 is done. That’s five whole chapters - almost a quarter of John’s entire gospel – where Jesus and this band of followers are sitting at the table and he’s trying and trying to say goodbye because he knows that this meal is the last one.

So he draws out the conversation until it’s deeper and deeper. He repeats himself, he tries to make something clear to his friends about how he and the Father are one, and they are all one with him, and they’ll do what he does because he’s been sent to do what he’s doing and it’s just hard to make it clear so he keeps on trying. He’s troubled, he’s bothered, he tries to assure the people at the table with him that they’re not going to be left alone. They wonder where he’s going with all this talk, and they don’t get it; they don’t even know that this is goodbye.

So he keeps on trying to say the right thing, and after awhile the meal just ends. It’s time to go, and all he can finally end up with is a prayer that everyone will still be held together by love.

It really is hard to say goodbye.

While Jesus is trying to say goodbye, he drops this little line for his friends at the table: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places; if it weren’t that way, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” It calls up images of the best of what home could be, what a house could be, what a better home than the one you or I might know could be. There’s calm, there’s a welcome, there’s a warm bed and plenty to eat and drink and a place…to feel at home. Like my friend’s place up in the hills. And we might think that Jesus is only talking about heaven or some place far away. Far away from this world that God so loves. Far away from this place where Jesus the Word became flesh and made a home among us.

A home among us.

On your way home today, or some day as you’re making your way through your neighbourhood, look around and see all the homes. Maybe if we want to know something about God’s house with its many rooms and dwelling places, all we need to do is look around the neighbourhood.

Maybe you’ll see things like this: There’s that bungalow with the dusty windows and the peeling paint, and the front step slowing being swallowed up by Red River Valley muck. Around the corner and down the block there’s that three bedroom house with all the rooms partitioned off so that six students from three continents can live there and pay too much rent, and there’s the opulent home of the absent-minded professor who can’t for the life of them keep track of their teaching notes or find the keys to the car. In my neighbourhood there’s a house that still has its LED Christmas reindeer in the front flowerbed, and a fence that’s really not long for this world. You can always hear kids laughing and running around there. Maybe there’s a place with tinfoil over three windows and plywood over the other, and you wonder what’s happening in there. There’s a really nice retirement residence. There’s that house – there’s one on every block – with the perfect lawn and not a hair out of place, and it hasn’t had a dandelion for a decade or more. And of course, there’s that house – there’s one on every block – where a fine crop of dandelions happily sing loud praises to their maker.

There’s whatever the place where you live happens to be. Lift up your eyes and look around, out there among the people around you: this is God’s house; this is the place of many rooms, many rooms, enough rooms for all. God’s house.

We will have another home some day. We don’t really know what that might look like; it’s a promise, not a floor plan. But right now, our home is right here. So why don’t we just read this all backwards? We don’t need to imagine heaven, and then try to figure out what our home there might look like. Instead, we just look around at all the dwelling places, the rooms all around us, and we see that this is what God’s house looks like. The place with the dandelions and the place that is not blessed with those yellow flowers. The home of the students, and the absent-minded professor’s place. Even a bus shelter or Siloam Mission; no home at all, but God makes a home there. The home of God is in a house on a BC mountainside where good friends find it hard to say goodbye; the home of God is in a room in a hotel in downtown Jerusalem where Jesus struggles to say goodbye to his friends. God’s house is all these places. And in God’s place, there’s always a place.

This place, this world, is God’s house. It’s a beautiful place…and the Way finds a way to meet us here. It’s a struggling and scary place…and that’s where the Truth meets us. It’s a place where the Life – Christ who has died and who is risen – meets us to give us abundant life. Jesus goes there, wherever we go, to prepare a place for us. And wherever we go, we go with this one who is finished saying goodbye, and now just walks the way with us.