For Sunday Easter 6A
Collect
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
We continue in the Farewell Discourse in John, where Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples at the Last Supper. Which always feels like a weird read for Easter. Like, this was all before this late unpleasantness. But I get it. Especially since Jesus is going to be going away again in the Ascension and this message of imparting on the disciples this sense of getting their work done remains relevant.
We continue this week from last week’s reading, when Jesus was talking about The Way and Thomas asks how he’s supposed to know he’s doing this following the way right if he doesn’t even know where he’s going! And then Philip jumps in demanding proof and Jesus is like, what do you think the last year way, my dudes!
Modern Christians will no doubt have an easier time with this week’s gospel reading. It seems like a defense of Trinitarian theology and a primer on the third persona of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. But I think it represents half of the assurance Thomas (and many, many followers after him) was asking for. How do we know the way? Well, the Spirit will guide you and help you know it.
In the 21st century, our relationship to certainty, truth, conviction, the Spirit, expertise, all of it, is complicated. We are drawn to evidence and systems which produce predictable outcomes and see in them a certainty we can’t have in just trusting each other. And this constitutes are biggest challenge, I suspect. Because trust is our calling card and we’d better get better at it!
Perhaps an accurate, literal accounting of fact is essential. So is trusting God. That these often connect in surprising ways is a big part of faith. And something all of us can count on.