Fear Not, Troubled Heart

5th Sunday of Easter - Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Readings: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; John 14:1-14

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Explaining God is a hard job. Explaining the Trinity, is even harder. Impossible, in fact! It is something our brains cannot comprehend even if we were to stand face-to-face with the Triune God. Some have taken this John text and used verse 6, “no one comes to the Father except through me,” and turned it into a weapon of exclusion. ‘If you don’t know Jesus than you don’t know God and therefore you are not saved. I am in you are out.’ But today I want to take this familiar text and take a step back from it. Really look at it in its entirety. What is Jesus trying to say here?

Jesus is going out of his way to try and assure the disciples that he IS God. Each statement is reinstating the one before. To believe in God is to believe in Christ. To see Christ is to see God. To know Christ is to know God. Jesus is telling his disciples, ‘you DO know God! You have seen God! God is me, standing right before your very eyes!’ Jesus is talking in circles trying to explain the Trinity. No one comes to God the Father except through Christ because Christ is also God. Just like the disciples we are often left scratching our heads in confusion.. feeling like we’re still lost in the dark.

Yet Jesus goes through such pains to explain, to help us see, to shine a light in the darkness in order to reassure us that God has come to us through Christ. Reassuring us that our salvation is an act of God, not an act of our own. I feel as though in this scripture Jesus is jumping up and down, waving his hands around like, ‘guys, I’m right here! I’m God! I’m literally standing right in front of you. I have come TO YOU and your salvation is near.. literally and metaphorically.’ Our relationship with God is always one of God coming down to us. In this there is no room for exclusion. On the cross there is no room for exclusion. Everyone whom we wish to turn away, Christ responds, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’ (Luke 23:43)

This radical love takes the form of flesh and blood and it is so threatening, so incomprehensible that we nail it to a cross; sentence it to death and wash our hands of it. Why do we prefer to stay in the dark? So often we are comfortable in the dark, comfortable in our ignorance. When something is brought into the light we actually have to deal with it! A problem cannot be addressed until we accept that it’s a problem! But then the process of addressing it, of learning, healing, growing.. that’s hard work. Work we often don’t want to do. But friends, we follow our God to the hardest thing of all – the cross.

The way to life is through death.. the death of our selfish desires, wants, and needs in order to follow the way, the truth, and the life that is GOD alone. Jesus starts this conversation with ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God.’ Jesus is telling them, nothing in this world can cure the troubles of your heart except God and God alone. This conversation is happening on the same night, in the same room, as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and foretold his betrayal. The disciples are full of fear and uncertainty; their hearts are troubled to say the least. Jesus says, ‘Trust me. All you need is God.. and guess what.. I’m right here.’

The disciples had everything they hoped for, their messiah had come! And yet this messiah was nothing as they imagined.. and they were about to watch all of those unmet expectations, those hopes and dreams, be nailed to the cross. They did not know what we know. They did not know Jesus would rise again. They did not know the hidden power of what happened on the cross. Still Jesus says, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God.’ How hard it must have been for them to stand before their bloody and broken messiah and believe that God was up to something unimaginably, life-alteringly good.

We cannot wrap our minds around how God is Christ and Christ is God and God is Spirit and Spirit is God and on and on and on. We couldn’t understand the Trinity if God explained it Godself! We also cannot fully comprehend the salvation we have been given through Christ on the cross. And we don’t like to admit we cannot understand. It’s uncomfortable and hurts our ego. Yet what would it look like to let our hearts not be troubled and stand firmly on God, admitting our dependence and leaning fearlessly into the mystery that is God?..

Might we then, like the Psalmist, hold in tension our hopes with our affirmation. The Psalmist cries our in hope, ‘God deliver me! Rescue me! Lead me and guide me.’ The heart of whoever wrote this Psalm is certainly troubled.. and yet they clearly have hope that God is the only one who can calm their troubled heart. That God, their rock and refuge, is the only one they can turn to with such a request. They even end their prayer affirming this! ‘God I commit my spirit to you. You have redeemed me! My times are in your hands.’

Right now my heart is troubled and maybe yours is too. Troubled by the deaths due to the pandemic we are currently living through. Troubled by the senseless killing of people of color. Troubled by our culture of putting profit before people. Troubled by our uncertainties and darkness.. We are not much different than the disciples Jesus was talking to that evening after he washed their feet. Jesus, God in the flesh, stands before you this morning, looks you in the eyes and says, “Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe in me.”

God comes to us.

Redeems us.

Holds all of time in God’s hands.

Holds you in the palm of God’s hand.

Take heart.

Have courage.

Stand firm on the rock of salvation, your refuge and fortress where you are secure.

Commit your spirit to the one who gave it to you in the first place.

For in God and God alone do we find the way, the truth, and life itself.

Amen.