For Sunday Easter 5A
Collect
Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
More than a year ago, I drove down to North Carolina for a residency. There had been terrible storms the year before, which had caused incredible destruction, wiping out roads and highways and even the whole downtown of a community I had visited years before. I recognized that my path to the retreat center might be more complicated than usual. But I also felt a kind of assurance that I could find the way there. You want to know why? Google Maps. It knew the best way to get me there and I felt confident.
Well . . . it took me on some sketchy roads in the Smokey Mountains after taking me into the mountains with assurance that I could get out of them. By the time I was stuck in the national park with no cell service, I was not at all confident that Google could get me to my destination.
I even gave Google a second chance on the way home. That was a mistake, too. By the time it tried to put me on a one-lane gravel road going up a mountain, I said “Nope!” and switched to Apple Maps.
When Jesus talks about “the way” he is talking about something that exists between literal and metaphor, that does require confidence and trust. And yet the disciples consistently miscalculate what that trust is actually about. They want assurance they aren’t allowed to have. It’s like gambling on a sure thing. And they want the path to be predictable.
None of this is what Jesus has taught or offered them.
Jesus’s teachings, though, are the point of confidence. These are how they know the way. Because he has been teaching them the path the whole time. He has taught them about faith and love because this is the path. The practices are the assurance. The doing, the walking and following the path, that’s on us.