KGL+
Sermon
Trinity Church Boston
Year A Easter 5
May 3, 2026
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together always be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Some days I sit in awe of the generations who have gone before me in the church. People and clergy who have loved one another so much, cared for one another so deeply, that if they wanted to visit one another, and did not know where one another lived, they would have to take out what could only be understood these days as a paper bedspread referred to as a ‘map’.1For timeframe context, I began work for our Diocesan Bishop in September 2008; my first paycheck gift to myself was a car GPS that would plug into the cigarette lighter outlet. I had done the math and figured that it was cheaper to invest in a GPS rather than purchase maps spanning the breadth of eastern Massachusetts, or pay for toner for all of my Mapquest printouts. They would have to use the key at the bottom to look up the name of the street (that is, if your paper map extended to that particular town, which meant that one held a great many maps in the car door pocket of the driver’s seat, all threatening to spill over). One would then find the coordinates for the street: Franklin Street would be found at D-11; a strange and unsettling form of Bingo-slash-Geometry would then ensue as you honed in on a radius of perhaps a half mile.2Did you know that April 5th was National ‘Read a Road Map Day’? No. No one did. But here is Rand McNally’s guide to using and reading a road map in case that would be helpful: https://randpublishing.com/blog/ask-a-cartographer-its-national-read-a-road-map-day-this-saturday-can-you-explain-the-basics-for-reading-a-map/ And, if one was searching along a longer street, you hoped to God that that coordinate key would indicate a range of building numbers. If not, you aimed for the middle of any given road and hoped that it would all go well. How far away was your destination? No one knew. You could guesstimate the distance using the mile scale found on the map, and then simply moving your thumb knuckle along the route you traced with a pen or pencil, so it might be eight miles away as the crow flew, but six days away in afternoon traffic.
And if you lived here in Boston throughout the Big Dig,31997 Leslie Stahl exploring the Big Dig is priceless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im4zC3-3Odo those necessary maps would shift every six months, creating what I imagine was a highly specific economic boom for Rand McNally and their mapmaking cohorts, trying to nail down a moving field to spare themselves the ire of Bostonians who would discover that streets on the map simply no longer existed as they tried to turn onto them.
Historically here in Massachusetts, there were efforts to try to build directions into the names of the streets themselves. All those streets named after towns? Those are meant to indicate the direction the street will take you, and the town name is the destination. In the town where I live, Lowell Street leads northwest towards Lowell; Salem Street leads southeast towards Salem. Where errors in judgment seemed to occur was when cartographers said to themselves, well, let’s make Lowell and Salem streets the same exact street and simply alternate their names every few miles. The people who will live there will totally understand that rationale.
In Somerville, where I lived for a number of years, we simply described it this way: “All roads lead to Somerville; however, they are all one-ways and rotaries, so no roads lead out of Somerville. You can get upset about it, or you could stay and have a beer and figure it out later.”4One of the few times a degree in medieval European history can aptly be used to describe the town in which the aforesaid degree was issued: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_roads_lead_to_Rome
“Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?”5John 14:5 NRSVUE
And just like that, we are brought back to the evening prior to Jesus’ crucifixion and death, and his last supper with the disciples, even in the midst of Easter resurrection. We always think we can out-positive grief, but it does sneak up on us, even as we sing alleluia and rock our pastel as best we can.
Why now? Why in this Easter season of the risen Jesus revealing himself on the way to Emmaus, as the Good Shepherd, as the one who revealed himself in breaking of the bread, why in this moment, during this season of joy, are we brought back to the fear and terrifying certainty of Jesus’ impending death on that Maundy Thursday evening? Why, today, do we get the disciples seeking out Jesus’ assurances and answers?
Maybe it’s because resurrection isn’t an immediate cure-all for feeling lost.
The disciples in today’s Gospel are asking some hard assurances of Jesus: How will we know where you are? Show us and we will be satisfied. These are questions we ask when we are unsure of our footing—Thomas and Philip are simply naming what the other disciples dare not show, a desire for certainty from Jesus.6Thomas and Philip have other notable highlights in the Gospels, even as the Gospel of John does appear to attempt to diminish their faithfulness. Thomas is the disciple (always Easter 2, cf.John 20) who asks to see the wounds from the risen Christ in the locked upper room on Easter evening; Philip is asked by Jesus how they should feed the crowd who had gathered around them—and Philip offers pragmatic advice as to the cost required, resulting in the miracle of the loaves and fishes (cf. John 6:5-7). A ten-point plan; maybe even a three point strategy; perhaps just a verbal description of signposts and street names, so they can haul out their map collection and do the math with their thumb knuckles.
But resurrection isn’t something to be known or accumulated or achieved. It cannot solve a problem, evade an issue or protect us from fear. Resurrection is not a GPS locator and it will not call us an Uber when we don’t know where we are.
Instead, resurrection, as Jesus tells his disciples today, the evening before his very death—he tells them that they are loved. He tells the disciples who will betray and abandon him that he will come and find them, not to threaten retribution for all the ways they failed him in those crucial last days, but to hold their hands when they are afraid and deeply unsure of their next steps. Jesus does not offer a plan of action, nor a series of notes about solace. He offers his disciples himself. His love. His forgiveness. Not that of someone distant from them, not the paeans of a God for whom the disciples are but numbers in a line—but the proximity of a love which comes and finds them hiding and holds their hands, and tells them that there is space for them, always.
We do fix in our minds that there is a destination for each of us—whether it be goals, or manifesting a vision of how our lives should have shaken out, or will evolve. There is a sense of urgency in how we either move towards the goals, or move away from them—as if we are playing a game of Chutes and Ladders, angling ourselves to spin the right number on the cardboard spinner to move us forward—even though, EVEN THOUGH, there is zero strategy possible in such a game, and therefore winning or losing (which means simply getting to the end a bit slower than another person) is entirely independent of planning, skill and reason.7At the 8am and 10am services on May 3rd when this sermon was preached, I said that one used ‘color cards’ to move forward. CLEARLY, that is what one does in Candyland, not Chutes and Ladders. I amended for the 5pm, and apologize to all the four year olds who were offended by my lack of knowledge. Interestingly, no adults corrected me on this point. Perhaps there is a need to play more lack-of-skill games at other ages!
We want a location to aim towards. Jesus instead tells us, his disciples, that he will take us to himself. He is the location. He is the place. He is the do-er of all undoing. Not stripping us of our plans by force, but in inviting us to experience the fullness of resurrection through disarming ourselves, emptying ourselves, allowing us to experience being lost not as proof of sin, but as entry point for a God who is our beginning and our ending. Resurrection isn’t only about new life: it is through which we name that death is not the worst thing to happen; it names that endings are all around us, and yet love continues, morphs, claims us even in our worst moments.
We want directions to get there ourselves. And instead, Jesus tells us that he will come and find us, and bring us to where he is. Whether we want Jesus to note where we are located at any given moment is another thing altogether; it reminds me of when we might have called our parents on a Saturday night, trying to hush down the background noises while we were on the phone, the noise indicating that we were at the place we were specifically told not to go.8Please don’t share this detail with my parents, thanks.
Jesus can be many things to us—friend, savior, shepherd. And today, he is the way. Not the destination. Not the goal. Not the solution, the miracle, the happily ever after, the cure, the acceptance letter, the dream job, the shiny Christmas card photo. He is that awkward bedspread paper map, worn at the seams from all the times it was messily and hurriedly spread open in the passenger seat of the car, turned this way and that way, so that we could find the ones we loved when we didn’t know how to get there.
Alleluia. May Christ be risen and unfolded for us all.
Amen.