Easter V by Rev’d Lucy

Acts 7.55–end
Psalm 31.1–5, 15–16
1 Peter 2.2–10
John 14.1–14

Last week, Fr Jack reminded us that belief in Jesus is not chiefly a matter of thinking certain things about him. Belief, in the Bible’s sense, is trust. It is relationship. It is entrusting our lives, day by day, to the One who has called us by name. My sheep know my voice.

This morning’s readings take that question into harder territory.

Jesus’ first word to the disciples in our gospel reading is, Do not let your hearts be troubled. He has just told them he is going where they cannot come, and Thomas speaks for all of them when he asks, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? They don’t have it figured out. They’re on the verge of losing him. And it is into that not-knowing that Jesus speaks.

The psalm we have just sung is the prayer of someone in distress. In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge… Be my strong rock, a fortress to save me. The trust is prayed from inside the distress, not from a moment of repreive. Into your hands I commend my spirit is the prayer of someone who has nothing left but the One into whose hands they are commending themselves.

And our reading from Acts is the killing of Stephen, dragged outside the city and stoned by a crowd who wouldn’t hear what he had to say.

So this morning the question Fr Jack put to us last week, what does it mean to trust Jesus, to be in relationship with him, is being asked under pressure. What does that trust look like when we don’t know the way? What does it look like in times of distress? What does it look like when faithfulness costs everything, when the world refuses to listen or responds to truth with violence?

Jesus’ answer to the troubled disciples is not what they ask for. They ask for directions. Instead, he gives them himself. I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

The way is not a map. It is not a method. It is not a set of beliefs the disciples have to get right before they can be in. The way is the person.

And the way leads somewhere. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Jesus is going, but the going isn’t abandonment. The going is preparation. And he will come back, and he will take them to himself, so that where he is, they will be too.

That word, dwelling-places (μοναί, monai), comes from a verb (μένω, menō) that means to abide or remain. These are not waystations. They are places of staying-with. What Jesus prepares for the disciples is not a destination they will reach and then move on from. He prepares them a place to abide.

And the place he prepares is, in the end, himself. A few verses later he tells them, I am in the Father and the Father is in me. The Father dwells in the Son. The Son dwells in the Father. And later in this same discourse Jesus will say that those who love him, the Father will love, and we will come to them and make our home with them. The same word, home, dwelling. The disciples are being drawn into the same loving relationship that exists between the Father and the Son.

This is what trust in Jesus actually means. Not a set of correct opinions about him. Trusting Jesus himself, abiding with him, drawn into his abiding with the Father. And what John 14 makes clear is that the disciples don’t have to have this figured out before they can do it. They don’t know where Jesus is going. Thomas says it so plainly. And Jesus doesn’t rebuke him. He tells them: trust me. I am the way. The Father you cannot see is known in the Son you have walked with. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

There is one more thing to notice before we move on. In the verses that follow today’s reading, Jesus will tell the disciples that when he goes to the Father, the Father will send another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will teach them everything and remind them of all that he has said. The disciples are being asked to trust the One who is leaving, on the strength of a promise about a Spirit they have not yet received.

The lectionary is about to walk us through that whole movement. In a few weeks we will mark Jesus’ going, at the Ascension. And we will mark the coming of the Spirit he promised, at Pentecost. The disciples in our gospel reading are at the beginning of that movement, before the going and before the gift. We are on the other side of both. The going has happened. The Spirit has been sent.

In our reading from Acts, Stephen is one of the first people to live in the world Pentecost has made. He’s filled with the Spirit Jesus promised. And in his story, the trust Jesus invited the disciples into meets violence.

Stephen is among those the apostles laid hands on to assist them in the work of the early church in Jerusalem. He has been preaching about Jesus, working signs among the people, and his preaching has provoked enough alarm that he has been brought before the council, the Sanhedrin, on charges of blasphemy. He is said to have spoken against the temple and against the law of Moses.

The whole of Acts chapter 7, until the verses we have just heard, is Stephen’s answer to those charges. And his answer is to tell the story of Israel through Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the prophets, and the temple. And what he shows throughout is that God has never been contained in a building, and that the prophets and chosen ones of Israel have repeatedly been rejected before they were received.

The speech is a defence, but by the end of it, it has become an accusation. The verses immediately before our reading are how that accusation lands.

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers.

The council is on its feet now, enraged. And it is at this moment that Stephen filled with the Holy Spirit, gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God.

The Greek word translated gazed (ἀτενίσας) implies straining to see. Stephen is not waiting passively for a vision. He is leaning into the open heavens. The Spirit who fills him moves towards him; he gazes intently, and he moves towards what is being shown.

And what he sees is what John 14 promised: the place prepared, and the One who has gone there standing to receive him.

Look, he says to the council, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

The council does the opposite. They cover their ears. They won’t hear what Stephen has said, and they won’t look at what he sees. They drag him out of the city and they begin to throw stones.

And in the middle of that, Stephen prays. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

The same prayer travels from the psalmist into Jesus’ mouth, and from Jesus into Stephen’s.

Stephen prays a second time. Lord, do not hold this sin against them. That, too, is Jesus on the cross. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Stephen forgives his killers as Jesus forgave his.

The Greek says, simply, that he fell asleep.

The violence is brutal. The language is gentle. Stephen, filled with the Spirit, falls asleep where the dwelling-place opens to receive him.

There is a moment in our reading from First Peter where the image of the house comes forward again. Where John speaks of a house with dwelling-places prepared, First Peter speaks of a people being built into one.

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.

The dwelling-place Jesus prepares is a house being built of living stones, on the cornerstone Christ has become. Let yourselves be built. The verb is passive. The builder is God. But let yourselves is itself an act of trust, of yielding, offering, attending.

And what we are being built into, First Peter says, is a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. Not a nation of borders that defines itself by who it excludes. Not a nation that calls itself holy because it is powerful. The only thing that makes this nation a nation is mercy received. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

There is one detail in our reading from Acts I haven’t yet mentioned. The witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. Saul is watching.

That day, Acts tells us, a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and the believers were scattered. By Acts 11, those scattered are preaching as far as Antioch, where for the first time the gospel is spoken to those who are not Jews. The scattering becomes the mission.

Saul saw Stephen die. He heard Stephen pray for the forgiveness of his killers. Whatever those words did in him in the years that followed, Stephen’s prayer was answered in him. On the Damascus road, Saul will hear the voice of the Risen Christ, and be reborn as Paul, the apostle who will carry the gospel out to the nations. Stephen’s death looks like the end. Luke shows us it was a beginning.

This is the pattern Stephen has been rehearsing all along. Joseph rejected by his brothers becomes the saviour of his family. Moses rejected by his people becomes the deliverer through whom God brings them out. The Righteous One killed is risen. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

This fruit is what Jesus told the disciples about, in our gospel reading. The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. Greater in scope, not in nature. The work Jesus has begun is going on through Stephen, through Paul, through the scattered believers carrying the gospel into every nation. Because I am going to the Father. The going has made the works possible.

So when Jesus says, at the start of our gospel reading, Do not let your hearts be troubled, he is not speaking into a world where everything will quickly resolve. He is speaking into a world where faithfulness costs, where the way isn’t always clear, and where the trust we are called into can be tested by distress and violence. He is speaking into the world Stephen lived in, and into the world we live in now. And what he speaks is love.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.