In one church I know about, when a Bible is presented to a 3^rd grade student, the child recites a passage of Scripture they have memorized for the occasion. 

It seems that on one particular Bible Sunday, everything was going well, until the pastor came to a little boy who was so nervous, he couldn’t remember his Bible verse.

The boy’s eyes searched frantically for his mother, who was sitting near the front.  When he finally spotted her, he was greatly relieved as she whispered, “I am the Light of the World”…to which the boy immediately bellowed, “My mother is the Light of the world!”

And so should we all be, on this Mothers’ Day!  Or maybe not.  Of course Jesus said it about himself – I am the light of the world –and even suggested we might follow him in the lighting business ourselves; but it seems a little complicated, doesn’t it?

Life has a way of complicating even the simplest things… like the weather, for instance.

In April of 1995, the newscaster on the evening news show in New Delhi, India made this announcement:  “The weather has been cancelled until further notice.  It’s all got too complicated to explain, and we keep getting it wrong, anyway.”

What happened was this…it was an abnormal April with scorching sunshine one minute and bitter winds and rain the next. On Monday evening, the weatherman told viewers to keep their woolen underwear on – and the next day the temperature soared to 102 degrees!  On Tuesday, he promised more sunshine, and that night they had 4 inches of snowfall!

Now the weatherman was a professional meteorologist, and when the death threats from viewers came in, he took it all very personally.  He spent all day Wednesday memorizing a long report, trying to explain the freak weather conditions using satellite pictures and other technical evidence.

Unfortunately, halfway through the broadcast that night, the man forgot his speech, got tangled up in his facts, and just kept smiling nervously and adjusting his tie, until he started to cry and ran out of the studio.

It all got too complicated to explain…and we keep getting it wrong, anyway.  You could say that about many things in life…the current economic conditions, for instance, or the politics of this election cycle.  It’s too complicated, and we keep getting it wrong, anyway.  You could say that about the “best case/worst case” scenarios of Covid-19 and its impact on all of us.  You could say it about the relationships within our own families, with our friends, with ourselves, even about our understandings of God.

We who call ourselves Christian have fallen prey to the temptation to make faith too complicated to explain.  And just like Thomas – just like Philip – we keep getting it wrong, anyway.  Take the passage we read from John’s Gospel today.  Now I think Thomas gets a bad rap, when we call him “Doubting Thomas”, as if he was somehow less than the others who followed Jesus.  In this story Thomas asks a perfectly reasonable question, one which Jesus should have expected when he said “You know the way to the place where I am going”.   Thomas was right in asking, “What do you mean, Jesus – you haven’t given us an address, much less the GPS coordinates!  How are we to know the way?”

Then Philip gets in the act.  He seems to understand Jesus is speaking metaphorically,  that it is not about TRAVEL, but about TRANSFORMATION.  Yet still, Philip wants a sign.  “Show us the Father”, he says.  “Make God plain enough for us to see, and then our hearts will be at peace!”

Jesus does try  to spell it out for them…“Hello, I Am… the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

We think faith is all so complicated – we make it all so complicated, and then we get it wrong.  We get it wrong when we read this text as proof of the exclusive salvation promised to Christians alone, a sort of litmus test of who’s “in” and who’s “out” with God.

We get it wrong when we forget this is the same Jesus speaking who also said “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold; I must bring them also…”

Richard Rohr responds to those who want to make Jesus exclusively theirs and judgmentally limited, by reminding them, When Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life”, it means that you are NOT.

We get it wrong.  We make it complicated, and we get it wrong.  We get it wrong when we limit this text to a preferred future, an imagined heaven where Jesus has gone to prepare us our place.  The truth is the other place – the place where Jesus is going – the WAY he sets out, the TRUTH he unveils, the LIFE he offers … it is right here, right now.  It is found in the life we live with Christ, and the relationship with God which Christ affords.

The way to that home is not about going to some place; it is about the relationships that make every place home.  To go “home”, to go the Way that Jesus goes – is not about travel, it is about transformation.  Those many dwelling places Jesus promises us may not reveal changes in geography so much as they call for changes of heart.  We can move from troubled hearts to peace-filled ones when we remember that life with Christ is not a destination or an accomplishment, so much as it is a Way of being and becoming the people God has intended all along.

When we understand that, it’s not all that complicated.  When we understand that, then “home” becomes a moveable feast.  Home can be found in the midst of violence or suffering, as much as in the presence of love and peace.  Home can be found in the fear of disease or the loss of independence as much as in the manifestation of healing and hope.  Home can even be found in loneliness and isolation, in economic insecurity, in unexpected, unwarranted and unwelcome changes that catch us off guard.

Theologian Stanley Hauwerwas, writing about our current experience in The Christian Century, commented:

People are saying “Things will never be the same; we have to discover a NEW NORMAL”.  But,  Hawerwas contends, I’m not sure we had ever discovered an old normal – the language of normality seems quite misleading. 

The real NEW NORMAL happened in the resurrection.

Christ was raised from the grave, and that changed everything.

The real “new normal” was inaugurated that first Easter morning and it is available to us every morning thereafter.  Christoph Freidrich Blumhardt puts it this way:

Christ’s future is not one single point in an absolute remoteness for which we are to wait, a mere coming event…Christ’s future is now, or it is not at all…

The power of resurrection means that forces for life can now be seen within you and something holy can grow in you.

The power of resurrection means that Jesus can say to us “You also know where I am going”, because we are already there.  You are already home, even now.

It is Mother’s Day today, and I am a mother (be careful how you say that!), so maybe you’ll allow me one more small chuckle.  It comes from an old Frank and Ernest comic strip, in which the two dumpy little theologians have apparently died, and are standing outside the gates of heaven, where they read a sign which says “New Arrivals Wait Here for HER Supreme Holiness”.  In the last frame of the strip, Frank turns to Ernest and asks, “I wonder if it’s too late to donate something to the Equal Rights Amendment?”

Oh, it’s never too late.  It’s never too late to live into the “New Normal” of Christ’s resurrection for our lives.  It is never too late for something holy to grow within you and even within me.  It is never too late to find yourself at home in God’s love, never too late to wander through those rooms and take up residence in one of those mansions where our hearts are challenged and empowered to change.

“Hello” – Jesus says – “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.”  What more could we need?  Happy Mother’s Day.  Welcome home.  Amen.