Sermon: “The Promise Beyond Death” - May 3, 2026

The Fifth Sunday of Easter, John 14:1-14

The Rev'd Ezgi Saribay Perkins, The Rector 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

When someone dies, one of the first questions that comes to our mind is the question of that person’s eternal destiny. It is too painful to imagine that the person we loved no longer exists. So, we ask the question: now that they have passed from this mortal coil, where are they?

Friends and family often know that we are troubled by this question, too. Perhaps they are worrying about where this person is now, or perhaps they wonder where they themselves will go when they die. When offering condolences, we are often quick to say something like, “I am so sorry for your loss. She is in a better place.”

But are they in a better place? Is this something we say to calm the collective nerves of the grieving family, and our own? How do we know they are indeed in a better place?

Would our answer about their location change if the person was a “good Christian woman,” someone who tried to lead a faithful life and contributed to society, rather than someone who never darkened the doors of the church, or perhaps did not lead a recognizable Christian life at all? If the question I just asked troubles you, or makes you think I am being judgmental, consider this. Think about how comfortable you would be sitting in heaven, sipping sweet tea right next to Hitler or Mussolini.

Not all roads lead to the Father’s house. We cannot deny that there are consequences to leading a faithful versus an unfaithful life. Yet, despite what often troubles contemporary society about Jesus’ words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus is not primarily giving his disciples a chart of who gets into this better place and who does not.

He is pointing us to the fact that our hope rests in his identity, death, and resurrection, and that there truly is a better place to which he will bring all who trust him and follow him to the Father. Unlike us, he does not qualify every person’s when and how like a tax accountant counting deductions on the night of April 14.

Here is what I think is the core of this passage: Jesus comforts his disciples by promising to prepare a place for them with the Father, revealing that he is the only way to that place, and assuring them that they will continue his work through his power.

First, Jesus assures his followers that their future with the Father is secure because he is going to prepare a place for them.

Jesus begins this passage with a command of comfort: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Yet this is not sentimental comfort. The disciples have every reason to be troubled. Judas has gone out into the night. Peter has just been told that his courage will collapse before morning. Jesus has announced that he is going away, and the disciples cannot yet follow. As one commentary notes, “to call for faith in these circumstances is not to utter a platitude.” Jesus is not dismissing their fear. He is giving them something stronger than fear to hold: “Believe in God, believe also in me.” Their hearts can stand firm because the One who is leaving them is not abandoning them. He is going ahead of them.

That is why the image of the Father’s house matters so much. Jesus does not describe eternity as a vague spiritual atmosphere, nor as a reward toward which we climb by our own moral achievement. In so many religious systems, the human soul must ascend toward God through effort, discipline, merit, or spiritual technique. But the Christian claim is different: the Father connects us to eternity through a person. We do not get to God by mastering a method; we are brought to God by the Son. In the Old Testament, access to God’s presence was guarded and mediated. The curtain of the tabernacle barred entry into the Holy of Holies where God was, and only the high priest could enter, and only under appointed conditions. But now Jesus himself goes before us, not as another temporary priest, but as the Son who opens what sin and death had closed. Cyril says Christ “consecrated for us the means of access” and gave human flesh “a way of entrance into heaven.”

So when Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” the promise is not a place but a relationship. Gail O’Day puts it beautifully: “Jesus says, my return to God will make it possible for you to join in the relationship that the Father and I share.” The place he prepares is not simply somewhere we go; it is life with God, life in the Father’s presence, life gathered into the household of divine love. Our hope, then, is not grounded in the stability of our efforts, but in the faithfulness of Christ. Christian hope dares to say something deeper than “they are in a better place”: it says that there is a Father’s house, Christ has gone before us, and those who belong to him are not lost to death but gathered into his life.

Secondly, Jesus reveals that he himself is the only way to the Father, because he is the way, the truth, and the life.

Thomas, honest and bewildered as ever, says what everyone else is likely thinking: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” It is a fair question. Jesus has spoken of departure, of the Father’s house, of a place prepared for them, but the disciples are still thinking in terms of destination, direction, and location. They want a map, a route, and the address of eternity would be nice too. The Lord gives them something more demanding and more intimate: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” He does not merely show the way, as though he were one religious guide among many. He is the way, because in his own person he connects God and sinners. Jesus is the truth because everything God has promised, revealed, and desired for the salvation of the world becomes visible and trustworthy in him. He is the life because in him, human life is no longer reduced to survival, striving, or decay, but opened to the eternal communion for which we were made.

Here is where the offense and the beauty of the Christian claim come together. Jesus does not say, “I know a way,” or “I can teach you a truth,” or “I can improve your life.” He says that access to the Father is found in him. Philip’s later request, “Lord, show us the Father,” echoes the longing of Moses, who once asked to see God’s glory. Yet Moses was granted only a limited vision, while Philip stands before the incarnate Son, the Word made flesh, in whom the Father is truly and fully revealed. Jesus fulfills and surpasses every partial glimpse of God given before him. He is not merely another prophet pointing toward divine mystery; he is the Son in whom the Father has drawn near. And so Jesus answers Philip with a gentle but searching rebuke: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” Then he gives one of the highest Christological claims in the Gospel: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” In other words, the Father is not hidden behind Jesus, waiting to be discovered elsewhere. The Father is made known in Jesus, in his words, in his works, in his mercy, in his holiness, and finally in his self-giving love.

But that is not a license for Christian triumphalism. N. T. Wright warns us that if the Church proclaims Jesus’ uniqueness in a proud or self-serving spirit, it denies the truth it claims to defend. The One who says, “I am the way,” is the same Lord who washed feet, wept at Lazarus’s tomb, and gave his life as the shepherd for the sheep. His uniqueness is not the uniqueness of world domination, but of self-giving love.

What is our task in light of this? Our question is not whether we have mastered the path to God. The question is whether we trust the One in whom God has come to us. To know Jesus is to know the Father. To follow Jesus is to walk the way home.

Lastly, Jesus promises that those who believe in him will participate in his ongoing work, continuing his mission in the world through his power.

Jesus’ departure, as well as the departures of those we love, reminds us that we still have work in this world to do. With every death, we lose something, and our work in this world takes a new form. Perhaps this is hard to accept, but here we have a hope: “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus says, “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.” That sounds almost impossible. How could the disciples do greater works than the One who opened blind eyes, fed the hungry, washed feet, forgave sinners, and called Lazarus out of the tomb? Yet Jesus is not saying they will become more impressive than he is. He is saying that his work will not die when he dies. Because he goes to the Father, his life will continue through them.

The Fathers are careful to protect us from misunderstanding this promise. Augustine warns that the servant must not exalt himself above the Master, because even when believers do greater works, “it is all by his doing such works in or by them.” The work remains Christ’s work, even when it passes through human hands. Ambrose makes the same point when he says that believers may do similar works, but they do not share the same natural unity with Christ that Christ shares with the Father. In other words, the Church is not independent of Jesus. We are not a replacement for him. We are his instruments, his witnesses, his body in the world, sent to continue the mercy he began.

This means that the Christian life after loss is not simply the work of surviving. It is the work of allowing Christ’s life to take flesh in us in the places where we actually live. The greater works do not often begin in some imaginary heroic settings, but in kitchens, hospital rooms, parish halls, classrooms, office meetings, and family conversations. They happen when we make space for the person who feels forgotten, when we speak peace amid anxiety, when we refuse to let grief make us bitter, when we practice mercy without advertising it, and when we continue showing up for the people God has given us to love. These works may not look dramatic, but they are often the very places where the risen Christ is quietly making the Father known.

And this work is sustained by prayer. Augustine says that Christ is our Savior not only when he gives what we ask, but also when he withholds what would harm our salvation, like a physician refusing what would injure the patient. To ask in Jesus’ name, then, is not to decorate our desires with pretty Jesus language and wait for a yes! It is to decisively allow his character to reshape what we desire. We do this by modeling Christ. Christ went to the Father, but his work today continues through those who trust and model him.

When we stand at the edge of death, we may speak of peace, heaven, reunion, and “a better place,” because grief reaches for hope before it knows how to explain it. Yet in John 14, Jesus gives us more than a comforting phrase. He gives us a promise rooted in his own person. On the night before the cross, he tells us that his departure is not abandonment, but preparation; that the Father’s house is not a vague dream, but the true home for which we are made; and that the way to that home is not discovered by human striving, but opened by Christ. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Therefore, our hope for the dead, and our courage among the living, rest in Christ, who takes us to God. As my seminary professor instilled in me, and as I say at every death of a church member: the dead are in the hands of God through Christ, and there is no safer place to be. AMEN.