May 3, 2026, The Fifth Sunday of Easter

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

It’s a strange thing, really, that Jesus begins this passage with those words. Because everything about the moment is troubling. The disciples are not at peace—they are confused, unsettled, anxious. Jesus has been speaking about leaving them. The future they imagined—walking the roads with him, watching the kingdom unfold in visible, triumphant ways—has begun to slip through their fingers.

And so, Jesus speaks into that fear. Inviting them deeper—deeper into who he is, and deeper into who God has always been.

This is where the shift continues from last week.

Last week, we were moving from resurrection as event—those early, bewildering encounters with the risen Christ—toward resurrection as revelation. Not just what happened to Jesus, but who Jesus is. The Good Shepherd who knows his own. The one whose voice calls us by name. The one in whom we discover that belonging to God is not abstract, but deeply personal.

And today, that deepening continues.

Because now Jesus speaks not just as shepherd, but as the way.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

And it’s that phrase— “I am”—that should catch our attention.

Because it echoes something far older.

It takes us back to that moment in Exodus when Moses stands before the burning bush, confronted by a God who is both present and mysterious. Moses asks the question any of us would ask: Who are you? What is your name?

And God responds, “I am who I am.”

It is not a name in the usual sense. It is not something that can be pinned down or controlled. It is a promise of presence. A declaration of being. I will be who I will be. I am the One who is with you.

And when Jesus says, “I am the way… I am the truth… I am the life,” he is not simply offering metaphors. He is stepping into that same divine identity. He is saying: the God who spoke to Moses, the God who led Israel, the God whose presence could not be contained—that God is now encountered in me.

Which, if we are honest, can feel both reassuring and also uncomfortable.

Because it sounds exclusive.

“I am the way.” Not a way. The way.

In a world—and even in a church—that often wants to emphasize openness and inclusivity, those words can feel like a narrowing. Like a closing of doors rather than an opening.

But notice the context.

Jesus is not speaking to a crowd he is trying to sort into insiders and outsiders. He is speaking to disciples whose hearts are troubled. To people who are afraid of losing him. To a group of loved ones who don’t know where they are going.

Thomas says it plainly: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

And Jesus doesn’t respond with a map. He doesn’t give directions. He gives himself.

“I am the way.”

This is not exclusion. It is invitation.

It is not a boundary meant to keep people out. It is a promise meant to assure them that they are not lost.

Because the truth is, we spend a great deal of our lives trying to find “the way.”

The way through grief.
The way through uncertainty.
The way through a world that often feels fragmented and unstable.

We look for systems, for certainty, for clarity. We want something we can follow step by step. Perhaps even something we can control.

But Jesus does not offer a system.

He offers relationship.

“The way” is not a set of instructions. It is a person who walks with us. A companion who joins each of us along the way.

And that changes everything.

Because it means that faith is about trusting that we are held within the presence of the One who is. The One who says, “I am.”

And that brings us to another part of this passage that is easy to miss, but deeply important.

“Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places… I go to prepare a place for you.”

Again, this can be misunderstood if we hear it as distant or transactional—Jesus going off somewhere else to build something for later.

But in the light of everything else he says, it becomes clear: this is about belonging.

“Many dwelling places.”

Rest. Security. Abundance. Room enough for more.

This is what the “I am” of God has always pointed toward. A God whose very being creates space. Space for relationship. Space for life. Space for us.

And when Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you,” he is not describing absence. He is describing a deepening of presence.

Because the way he prepares that place is through the cross and the resurrection—through entering fully into the brokenness of the world, into our human nature, and transforming it from within.

The “place” he prepares is not just somewhere we go someday. It is a reality we are drawn into even now.

A life rooted in him. A life shaped by his love. A life that reflects the very being of God.

Which is why he can say something that, at first, sounds almost unbelievable:

“The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”

Greater works?

How could that possibly happen in and through me?

Not greater in power or spectacle, but greater in scope.

Because the presence of Christ, the “I am” of God revealed in Jesus, is no longer confined to one place, one body, or one moment in history.

It is carried out into the world through those who follow him. Through the disciples. Through generation after generation of followers.

Even now, through each of us.

Which means that the promise is not only that we will find the way in him.

It is that we will become part of the way for others.

We do not get to act as gatekeepers. We are not the ones who decide who is in and who is out.

We, like the disciples before us, are witnesses. We, like Christ, become fellow companions on the way.

People whose lives point toward the One who says, “I am.” People who embody—even imperfectly—the truth that God is not distant, not abstract, but present.

Present in love. Present in mercy. Present in the quiet, persistent work of healing and reconciliation.

And perhaps that is where the fear begins to loosen its grip. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Because the One who is the Way is also the One who is with us. The One who spoke from the burning bush. The One who led a people through the uncertainty of the wilderness. The One who, in Jesus, walked among us, suffered with us, and rose again.

“I am.”

Here.

Now.

With you.

And so, the invitation of this Gospel is not to narrow our vision, but to deepen it.

To see that what might sound like exclusion is, in fact, the most profound inclusion of all: that the fullness of God’s life is made known in a way we can encounter, trust, and follow.

That the way is not hidden.

The way has a face.

The way has a voice.

The way has called us by name.

And in that calling, we are given not just direction—but belonging, now and forever.