Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 3, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and edited for clarity.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.
So lately, my son and I have been talking about the Ten Commandments.
You know what’s fun about living with a child? They ask you things like, “Mom, what are the Ten Commandments?” and then you realize you need to go back to Sunday School 101, because even though you’re an ordained member of the clergy, you can’t remember all of them.
So I’ve been studying really hard, and one that has been of particular interest to our son is the third commandment.
Can anyone tell me what the third commandment is?
No, that is a good one though. He should be more interested in that.
It’s “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.”
And it’s of particular interest to an eight-year-old who’s learning all kinds of words in school and other places.
So we talked about what it means to take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Of course, one of the first things we think of is: what do you do when you stub your toe? Whose name are you shouting? We’re not supposed to be doing that, right? We’re not supposed to throw the name of God around casually for our little frustrations.
We are supposed to treat God, and the name of God, with reverence.
Most of the time, I think when we think about the third commandment, that’s what we’re thinking of. You don’t go around shouting the name of God when bad things happen. And I think most of us find ourselves violating that level of the commandment from time to time.
But what I thought was really important to teach Max is that there is a deeper level to the third commandment.
And that is this: we do not use the name of God to justify anything that is wrong, immoral, or death-dealing.
So I talked to him about what it means to use the name of the Lord God in vain — that it is a violation of the third commandment to go to war under the name of Jesus.
And that is much more crucial.
What are the actions, the works in the world, that we justify in the name of God?
It is much more crucial to think about who we are and what we do in the world under the cross of Jesus Christ than it is to keep your mouth shut when you stub your toe.
And I’m thinking about that today because Jesus says to the disciples here, “Whatever you ask in my name.”
This whole discourse — this whole speaking of Jesus to his disciples that we hear today — is about knowing God. It’s about knowing God and knowing Jesus, and even more so, knowing that we know God, especially when the world tells us that we don’t.
And knowing God means asking: what is it that we are going to do in God’s name?
So I want to circle back now to this reading from the Gospel and talk about the context that we’re in.
Jesus is speaking to the disciples where they are gathered together on the night that he is betrayed.
He is with them, having washed their feet. You remember this from Maundy Thursday, right?
He’s washed their feet. He’s broken bread with them. He gives them that new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Then he says to Judas, “Go and do what you have to do.”
And the disciples see one of their own — the inner circle of Jesus — get up, leave the table where he has just broken bread with his friend, and go out into the darkness to betray the person who just knelt down and washed his feet.
And they all watch that happen.
There is a chill that comes over that room that was just moments before so warm with friendship and good food.
And then Jesus says to all of them, “You will all betray me this night.”
Peter says, “Not me. I will never betray you.”
And Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will have betrayed me three times.”
That is when he begins what we call in John the Farewell Discourse, which covers chapters 14, 15, and 16.
But that’s the setting: the coldness and fear in that room, and the doubt that has just been introduced.
We, his best friends, are about to betray him.
And there is also the betrayal — as we’ve talked about — of the hope these friends had put in him.
They had come with him into Jerusalem after he raised Lazarus from the dead. This man who has more power than anyone they have ever seen. He raises Lazarus from the dead, he comes into Jerusalem, and all the people of the city are laying their coats on the ground so that he can walk over them.
And now he has gathered them together to tell them that he is not going to take over the city. He’s not going to fix it.
That hope of theirs is betrayed. Instead, he is going to die — and it is at their own instigation that this will happen.
So fear and doubt among these people, who know Jesus better than anyone else on earth, fills this room.
And here is what Jesus says to them:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid. Believe in God. Believe also in me.
Did I not tell you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will bring you there to myself.
You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus is encouraging these frightened men to trust in what they already know.
Now Thomas says to him, “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
This is the same Thomas who, when Jesus was getting ready to raise Lazarus from the dead and the disciples said, “You can’t go to Bethany — that’s where they want to kill you,” rallied Jesus’ friends and said, “Let us also go with him. Even if we are to die, let’s go with him.”
See how Thomas is asking this question. He wants to know the way they are going because he is willing to go.
I think Jesus sees that about him.
Likewise with the other disciple who asks a plaintive question: Philip.
Philip says, “Would you just show us God? Would you just show us? And then I think we can get through this together.”
This is the same Philip who has just been approached in the marketplace, only two chapters earlier, by two foreigners who recognize something about him — that he knows Jesus. They come up to him and say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
And it is Philip who brings these men to meet Jesus.
So he knows Jesus, and it is so visible that strangers approach him in the marketplace wanting to know what he knows.
Thomas, who is willing to go anywhere with Jesus.
To both of these men — who in a moment of deep anxiety find themselves doubting the courage and knowledge that made them ask the very questions they are asking — Jesus says: “But you do know.”
To Philip he says, “How long have I been among you and you still fear that you do not know me?”
And to Thomas he says, “I am the way. From now on, you do know.”
But these disciples are like us.
When things are hard, when we see betrayal, it introduces doubt into our own hearts.
Do we really know God?
Can we really put our trust in all of this?
If you have ever found yourself in some crisis — internal or external — that has caused you to ask yourself, “But what is the way?” or “Who is God?” you are not alone.
You are in the tradition and footsteps of the closest friends of Jesus, who walked with him, and even they felt that doubt come in.
When Jesus says, “Believe in God. Believe also in me,” that Greek word pistis is better translated as “trust.”
Because we are not intellectually assenting to the presence of God in our lives. Nor is Jesus instructing the disciples to intellectually assent.
He is asking them to live from their hearts and to know what they know from the heart.
What they know, what I know, what you know — if we only will let ourselves know it — is that God is love.
God is love.
That love is the secret and hidden force in all creation, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
But we will find ourselves doubting our knowing because life puts our knowing to the test.
It just does.
And we have to live from the heart.
And it is important that we do so because there are many — and there are many who are very powerful — speaking in the name of God and proclaiming knowledge of God that is not the knowledge that God is love.
And the world needs people who know, and who are willing to know that they know, that God is love.
A few weeks ago, I was in a courtroom, and I read to the jury a series of emails that had been sent to me.
The last sentence in the last email I read said:
“I can’t wait to stand beside the accuser and laugh when Christ rejects you because you have never known him.”
I read that out loud, and I took a deep breath.
I’m telling you this because that is the doubt at work in this room that the disciples are feeling:
Do I know him?
And in the breath that I took, I heard him say to me:
“Oh yes, you do know me. And I know you. And I love you.”
Oh yes, you do know me.
Do you realize what a bold and wild claim it is to say what Jesus tells us to say?
“From now on, you know me. You know God.”
One of our young acolytes in training turned to me this morning — this was at the 8:00 service, an eleven-year-old holding the cross, all dressed up — and they said to me, “All my buddies at school know I’m doing this.”
That is: I know him, and he knows me, and he loves me.
Do our buddies at school know we’re doing this?
They need to.
They need to know what you know.
They need to know that you know.
Someone else said to me — I think it was in the same week I was in the courtroom — “All my life I have been a seeker. I have been looking. It’s time for me to know that I am a finder.”
I have found.
I know with my heart.
From now on, we do know.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.