The Way - Fifth Sunday of Easter

The Way - Fifth Sunday of Easter

Author: Pastor Scott Schul
May 03, 2026

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”  This is one of the seven famous “I am” statements of Jesus that are one of the most distinctive features of John’s Gospel.  They were Jesus’s way of identifying himself as not merely a man of flesh, bones, and blood, the son of Mary and Joseph, the prophet and wonder worker from Nazareth, but simultaneously the Son of God, just as divine as he was human.  Saying “I am” was a revealing and often even provocative way of teaching and proclaiming his divinity, because the only other force in the universe that had ever self-identified in this way was God. 

That happened way back in Exodus 3.  Do you remember the story?  Moses was in the Egyptian desert, conversing with God through a burning bush, and God was calling Moses to free the Hebrew people from enslavement and to lead them to a promised land.  Moses doubted he had the gifts to do all this, and he knew the people would be even more skeptical of his claims of authority and his ability to fulfill this call.  So Moses asked God for something that might validate his call and credibility.  He said, “How should I respond if they ask me your name?  What shall I say?”  And God responded, “I AM WHO I AM.  Tell them I AM sent you.”

Throughout John’s Gospel it’s clear that in the heat of the moment, as Jesus made these “I am” statements, the disciples rarely grasped the fullness of what he was claiming or what it all meant.  It would take Jesus’s resurrection and all those post-resurrection appearances for the full weight of the “I am” claims to become clear to Jesus’s followers.  Even then, they’d struggle to make sense of Jesus as fully human and fully God.  It would take more than three centuries of additional prayer, debate, and discernment before the Church could come together on a way of describing Jesus.  It’s in the Second Article of the Nicene Creed.  I encourage you to give it a read sometime.  It’s on page 104 of your hymnal.  The Church’s understanding of Jesus is also set forth in a more abbreviated way in the Apostles Creed, which we will be professing together today.

In time, the early Christian Church came to understand that Jesus, the Way, was not only the source of our salvation and the guarantor of our eternal life.  He was also the model for how his followers were to live and act and be and think and, perhaps more than anything else, how they were to be in relationship with one another.  And so we read in Acts 9:2 that the followers of Jesus in those first generations after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, became known as The Way, because what made them a blessing to some and a threat to others wasn’t simply what they believed or what they taught. What mattered most was how they lived.

Nowadays, I fear much of the institutional Christian Church has forgotten how to be The Way in the manner Jesus taught and the first generations of Christians lived.  So on May 3, 2026, what does it mean for us, here at Grace, to be followers of The Way?  We could spend all day answering that question, but this morning let’s approach it simply and briefly by examining the life of one of those early Christians, Stephen, whose death is detailed in our first lesson.  What does his story reveal about being followers of The Way?  I’ll offer you three lessons.

Lesson One: Stephen teaches us that followers of the Way of Jesus are servants.  We first encounter Stephen in Chapter 6 of the Book of Acts.  After the resurrection, the Christian community rapidly grew.  They were drawing from a variety of ethnicities, ages, and economic backgrounds.  But some, especially widows, were struggling to have enough to eat.  The Twelve Disciples decided they needed some help, so they appointed seven men to lead that important work of serving and tending the poor.  They were the first deacons of the Church, and Stephen was made their leader.

Two thousand years later, Jesus continues to call his Church, the assembly of followers of his Way, to love and serve our neighbors in need.  Sometimes that happens through dedicated programs and staff who have been trained and set apart, like Stephen was, to lead this work.  But ultimately it is the work of all believers.  Stephen’s story reminds us that from the earliest days of Christianity, Jesus’s followers were called to be a servant Church.  That holds just as true today.

Lesson Two: Stephen teaches us that following the Way of Jesus often stirs opposition and suffering.  It’s easy to fall into a reward-based mindset with God.  If we just do all the right things, God will show us favor and compensate us with joy, popularity, health, and worldly riches.  But in reality, we all know that’s not how it works.  We aren’t saved through our good works, and oftentimes doing the right thing just makes life harder.

That’s what happened to Stephen.  The opponents of Jesus’s Way saw Stephen as a threat to their economic power, political power, and religious power, because he operated outside of the Temple authority structure.  And so the self-appointed defenders of the faith drummed up false charges against Stephen and arranged a sham trial.  Stephen’s speech at the trial stirred such anger and outrage that the crowd covered up their ears to block out the truth he was proclaiming, and then dragged him outside the city and pounded him with heavy stones until he was dead.

Let that sit with you for a moment.  That crowd thought the best way to defend and promote their beliefs about God was to murder someone who believed differently.  I hope that shocks and outrages you.  Because even today there are crowds in our world and even in our nation who think this is OK.  So let me be crystal clear.  It is never justified, as a follower of Jesus and his Way, to hurt another person with your fists, your words, or your bombs in order to prove that your beliefs are superior or to eliminate whatever threat you perceive in their beliefs.  Don’t you think that with a wave of his hand Jesus could have wiped out everyone who was ready to nail him to a cross?  That is not his way.  It is not ours either.  We walk the way of the cross, which can be a hard pathway.  But it is the only holy road.

Lesson Three: In Stephen’s death, we learn that even in the midst of injustice and suffering, Jesus can draw out grace, forgiveness, and new beginnings.  In our first lesson, we read that the angry, murderous crowd laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.  Saul was one of the most zealous persecutors of the people of Jesus’s Way.  He was a very learned man, so confident in the correctness of his religious beliefs that he was willing to do anything to ensure that Jesus’s followers were wiped out.

Jesus of course saw something different and better in Saul, and just a few chapters later would miraculously appear to him and transform Saul, Christianity’s greatest enemy, into Paul, one of Christianity’s bravest and most brilliant champions.  It reminds us that as we walk the Way of Jesus, we may sometimes be tempted to join the angry crowd rather than take our place alongside the gentle martyrs.  But if that happens, never despair that you are beyond Jesus’ love and forgiveness.  Just like Saul, you too can be transformed by the love and grace of Jesus Christ.

Friends, Jesus is our way, our truth, and our life.  It is our calling and our privilege to walk that Way as his followers.  We walk that Way as Stephen did, humbly and sacrificially, with servants’ hearts.  And if we become tempted to take up stones, may our Lord transform us, just as he transformed Saul, because the Way of Jesus will never advance through violence.  Only through love… costly, gracious, irresistible love.  Amen.

© 2026 Rev. Scott E. Schul, all rights reserved

Gospel Text: John 14:1-14
Sermon Text: Gospel plus Acts 7:55-60

[Jesus said to the disciples:] ¹ “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. ² 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? ³ 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. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. ¹² Very truly, I tell you, 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. ¹³ I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

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