Acts
7: 55 – 60
Psalm
31: 1 – 5, 15 – 16
I
Peter 2: 2 - 10
John
14: 1 – 14
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, May 7,
2023 by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“BRIDGE BUILDING”
(Homily text: John 14: 1 - 14)
Bridges allow us to go from where we
are to a place we need or want to go. Think, for example, about highway
bridges: They allow us to cross a waterway, another road, or a valley or other
obstacle.
Bridges are a useful tool in teaching.
Students can grasp a new idea or a new way of thinking, or a new reality, if
they begin that journey by starting from what they already know. Jesus uses
this method of teaching quite frequently in His parables. Many of the Lord’s
parables are centered around some sort of an agricultural theme. After all, the
society He lived and moved in was an agricultural one. Think, for example, of
the Parable of the Four Soils.[1]
Our appointed Gospel text for this
morning, taken from John’s account, chapter fourteen, is an example of the
Lord’s bridge-building.
We begin with Jesus’ instruction to His
disciples, as He says, “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, that
where I am, you may be also, and you know the way to where I am going.”
In response, Thomas says to Him, “Lord,
we do not know the way where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Jesus’ response is, perhaps, one of the
more well-known answers in all of the New Testament. He says, “I am the way,
the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus’ comment, that He is the way, the
truth and the life, is an exclusive claim. To many, it is a difficult concept
to accept. But, I don’t think, it needs to be.
Allow an explanation.
Jesus is telling His followers that He
is going on ahead of them, to do things that will be of enormous benefit to
them in the fulness of time. In essence, what He is saying is that He is
building a bridge, so that those He loves can follow Him into a new, better and
more wonderful place, a place with God the Father.
No wonder that Thomas can’t grasp the
idea. Thomas (and the other disciples) aren’t there yet, and, furthermore, they
haven’t really had a glimpse of what the destination looks like.
In His compassion for all who love and
follow Him, the Lord provides the assurance that He has built the bridge, and
that the bridge He has constructed will enable all who follow Him to cross over
into that more glorious place with the Father.
The bridge is the Lord’s resurrection
on Easter Sunday morning.
By rising from the dead, the Lord
assures us that He holds the key and the power over all that would harm us,
including the power of death. The Lord crossed over the bridge the Father constructed
for Him, creating a new reality in our relationship with our last and final
enemy: Death.
Our own journey across that bridge
begins in faith. In time, Thomas came to faith as the Lord showed him His hands
and His side, inviting Thomas to put his fingers into the print of the nails
and to place his hands in the Lord’s sides.
The Lord then says to Thomas, as Thomas
exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”, “Do you believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen, and who have come to believe.”
May the Lord grant us the gift of
faith, that with the eyes of faith, we may come to believe and to know that the
bridge the Lord has given us in the way to the Father.
AMEN.
[1] See Mathew 13: 1 – 9.
