The Fifth Sunday of Easter | May 3rd, 2026 | The Rev. Jim Friedrich
Come my way, my truth, my life; such a way that gives us breath, such a truth that ends all strife, such a life that killeth death.
To everyone who has been caught up in the story of Jesus and his call for us to follow him, Jesus says, “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.” These words are meant to encourage us; yes, you are on the right path, yes, you can truly trust me, yes, this way is life-giving. Jesus isn’t talking about the fate of those who do not know him by name. He’s talking about the Christian people. This gospel text is not addressed to those outside that life, telling them how wrong they are. It is speaking, rather, to those dwelling within that life who every day engage with the particular challenges and blessings of the way, the truth, and the life.
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, has a helpful comment on this passage. He writes, “When Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ it means that you are not.” In other words, Jesus’s entire ministry, including his death and resurrection, was an invitation to leave our ego and all its projects behind, and step into a far, far greater reality, a reality where you are not, at least in the old sense of self. Once we commit to the way, we’re going to be taken elsewhere. It’s a journey that will change us.
In John Bell’s hymn The Summons, Jesus asks us if we are truly prepared to take the journey of transformation. “Will you come and follow me? If I but call your name, will you go where you don’t know, and never be the same? Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known, will you let my life be grown in you, and you in me? Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name? Will you love the you you hide if I but call your name? … Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name. Let me turn and follow you and never be the same. In your company I’ll go, where your love and footsteps show, and I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.”
So here we are, walking the way. Will our journey deeper and deeper into God ever end? Perhaps the point of a journey is not its goal, but what Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century called “epektasis” which means straining forward toward what lies ahead. The journey out of ourselves into God is one that never has an end.
As TS Eliot reminds us, we must be still and still moving, into another intensity for a further union, a deeper communion.
Jesus also says, “I am the truth.” But what is truth? When Pilate asked Jesus that question, Jesus kept silent. He knew Pilate’s question wasn’t serious; tyrants aren’t all that interested in the truth. But for religious people, questions of truth are rather critical. We don’t want to stake our lives in something that’s not true. However, not every truth is self-evident, and finite minds can only know so much. We all suffer a measure of blindness and self-deception, and the way that every culture and every individual looks at things varies over time. Concepts and criteria for discerning truth in the 4th century may be quite different than those in the 21st century.
In religion, the quest for certainty is certainly understandable, but it’s not always good for us. The Anglican approach to truth is to live with differences and uncertainties, the way families do, combining humility about what any of us can ever know with a confidence that truth is a collaborative process, a dialectic of give and take as we figure things out together, over time. Such a process can be very trying for those who want truth to be something that’s easy to see and name, something simple and knowable so we don’t have to wrestle with its multiple perspectives and changing context, or live with any uncertainty. Our Anglican preference for toleration and mutuality and openness arose in the Reformation, when the authority of a single voice, the Pope, was rejected in favor of a multiplicity of voices. After some notable failures in the implementation of this generous vision, such as the burning of people at the stake for holding contrary opinions in the 16th century, the English civil war between Puritans and Traditionalists in the 17th century, and the inability to contain the Methodist movement in the 18th century, Anglicanism eventually became reasonably comfortable with truth as something worked out as we go. It can be frustrating at times, but our acceptance of uncertainty does not mean that nothing is true; it is simply the recognition that truth is contextual, many-sided, and not always immediately discernable. Today, there are some Anglicans around the world that want to replace our hard-won openness and toleration with simplistic and rigid certainties. That would be a tragic betrayal of Anglicanism’s gift to global Christianity.
It’s important to remember that when Jesus says, “I am the truth,” that doesn’t make him immediately knowable. The entire history of theology bears witness to the impossibility of narrowing Jesus to a simple definition. The identity and meaning of Jesus have been explored and contested from the very beginning, without a fixed doctrinal definition or image ever being settled on once and for all. Aryan and Nicene, roman and orthodox, catholic and protestant, mainline and evangelical; the polarities of Christological thought have been many through the ages. But this is to be expected. If Jesus were still in the tomb, maybe we could write a definitive epitaph. But Jesus lives, and the living cannot be pinned down or summarized. All of us humans are pretty much a mystery to one another, and we often surprise ourselves. Jesus is no less elusive and unknowable than any other human person. For example, would you presume to limit the reality of your spouse to your knowledge and understanding of them? You would not be wise to do so! Is not every person a mystery we can never get to the bottom of? Even more so is Jesus, who is uniquely human and divine, a conundrum and paradox beyond any final knowing.
So maybe the truth that Jesus offers is not so much about knowledge in an objective, factual sense, but about relationship. “You may not understand everything that is going on in your life with me,” Jesus says. “It may not always make sense to you, you may not always know where you’re going with me or what’s around the next corner, but you can trust our relationship. You can give your life to me,” says Jesus, “because I am the truest thing you will ever know. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. And by the way, we will never be parted, even by death.”
If the truth of Jesus is as complicated and head-spinning as the ancient 4th century Chalcedonian description of Christ, “two natures, without confusion, the distinction of the natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and in one subsistence.” Got that? Yes, it is as complicated as that AND it is also as simple as, “Jesus loves me, this I know.”
But whatever your understanding and grasp of the mystery of Christ is at any given moment, you can give yourself to it, surrender yourself to it, you can belong to it, you can trust Jesus as totally reliable. The consequences of that trust are not calculable in advance, but is there anything else you want to give your life to?
Which brings us, finally, to “I am the life,” say Jesus. In John’s gospel, this assurance is given over and over again. I am the bread that satisfies all hunger, I am the water that quenches every thirst, I am the life that will never never die, I will live in you and you will live in me. That is what the way is all about, this is the truth on offer; life, abundant life, life in Christ, which is participation in the very life of the divine Trinity, and nothing could ever take that away, not even death.
In the epic Jesus movie The Greatest Story Ever Told, Jesus is confronted by Mary and Martha outside the tomb of their brother Lazarus. They’re disappointed and angry that Jesus had not arrived in time. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!” they say. At that moment, the film cuts to a close-up of Jesus. His face was thirty feet tall when I first saw it on the big screen ad Cineramadome in Hollywood with my dad in 1965. And Jesus, like the Jesus of a Byzantine ikon, is gazing directly at the camera, directly at us, as he says, “I am resurrection and I am life. Do you believe this, Martha? Do you believe this, Mary?” As I watched, I felt addressed as well. Do I believe this? If so, how do I say yes to it?
I think that we say yes, by living the life, becoming disciples among other disciples, starting on the way, giving of ourselves wholly to Christ’s truth and Christ’s mission. On occasion, even though the stones of adversity may rain down upon us, we will see as St. Stephen did, the heavens open, and we will hear the sweet sounds of amazing grace. Stephen is one of the most dramatic examples of living a life in Christ. Look what he does with his very last breath. He prays, not for himself, but for his killers. “Father, forgive.” As Jesus said, and Stephen said, “Do not hold this sin against them.” We see in Stephen’s last act how perfectly he embodies the way, the truth, and the life.
Religion professor Robert Bellah used to tell his students that faith is not something we get or something we have, it’s something we live. He writes, “On occasion, students come to me and ask what church to go to, adding, ‘But I’m not sure I believe in God.’ I never tell them what church to go to, but I do say not to worry about believing in God. I tell them that if they become part of the life of the church, then they will begin to see how the word God is used and what it means. Believing in God, I say, is not something one decides in the privacy of ones’ own room, but something one comes to in a living community, which for Christians is the church.” Or as today’s epistle puts is, “once, you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.”
Faith is not something we decide so much as something we live on the way, and in the truth. As we embrace life in Christ and life with Christ, not only do our priorities and perspectives begin to shift, but we find ourselves becoming less ego and more Christ. More transparent, more loving, more just, more forgiving, more faithful. We’re all beginners, of course. Along the way of Christ, we will fall and get up, fall and get up, over and over again. Dying and rising, dying and rising, that is the way, the truth, and the life.
Lord your summon echoes true when you but call my name
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same
In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you, and you in me.