Sunday Sermon - Katelyn Printz (May 3, 2026)

[00:00:01] Speaker A: The Holy Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ according to John. Glory to you, Lord. Christ Jesus told his disciples, do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me. 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. 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. And you know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. Philip said to him, lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied. 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? 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. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. But if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. 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, I will do whatever you ask in My name so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in My name you ask me for anything, I will do it. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord. Children ages 3 through 10 are invited to go with Katie for a time of Bible study, prayer, and music. [00:03:12] Speaker B: And we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Please be seated. Good morning. For those of you who do not know me, I am a seminarian at Virginia Theological Seminary, and I have had the privilege to spend this academic year learning from all of you and you here at Saint Columbus. But before coming to seminary, I worked as a kindergarten teacher. So when I looked at the lectionary readings for today, I was immediately reminded of an ongoing game on our playground. My class called it Playing Family, which really meant taking over the outdoor playhouse and developing a shopping and preparation system for mulch, soup, mud, coffee and toxic berry salad. The playhouse served as home base for all of their adventures, and they sorted their imaginative familial ties and developed their intricate play world from within its walls. And it's no surprise that home is the center of their play world because it combines two of our most fundamental needs as humans safety and security and belonging and relationship. And while I'm sure most of us have not prepared mulch soup or toxic berry salad recently, I am confident that the need for safety and belonging remains central to the way in which we order our world and our relationships, no matter how old we are. But safety and belonging to are not always easy things to find in a world of chaos, brokenness, and pain. Like Hilary mentioned last week in our reflection on Psalm 23, anxiety and fear are a part of the human experience at every turn. And yet at the same time we have these beautiful promises that feel almost luxurious when read alongside the complexities and realities of life. When sitting with the psalm this week, the last line kept jumping off the page at me and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. There is something deeply comforting about having a space to inhabit where one feels physically safe and relationally secure. And even at the time of the psalmist, we as humans are using language like house, home, and dwelling to capture that sense of groundedness and peace. It's no surprise, then, that Jesus attempts to mitigate the anxiety and fear or the troubled hearts the disciples are feeling in our Gospel reading today by assuring them he is going to prepare a place for them and that in God's house there are many dwelling places. The lectionary has us jumping around in John's Gospel a little bit, so we lose some of the context which might help us understand what their hearts were troubled about. Our passage for today follows right after Jesus has washed their feet, described his coming betrayal, and warned them, where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward. These are all pieces of the story that we encountered during Holy Week. And while the disciples may not fully know what Jesus means, the tone of the conversation is ominous enough to prompt Thomas to ask, lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? But in my mind's eye, Thomas has a sneaking suspicion. [00:08:13] Speaker A: Already [00:08:15] Speaker B: he knows in his heart of hearts the valley of the shadow of death is where Jesus might be headed. And no amount of promising I will come again, or I will take you to myself makes the experience of losing his teacher and dearest friend in the present moment any easier. I suspect that might also be why both Psalm 23 and this passage from John 14 are options for readings in our prayer book for the burial rite. They encompass this longing for security and belonging while centering future hope and still acknowledging the reality that we do not always get to experience those things in the present moment. So what does all of this have to do with the idea of home? I think Thomas is trying to make sense of that as well. Where is God's house? How will Jesus get there? But the rest of us will not be able to come until later? How will we know how to find God's house without Jesus with us? And what Thomas will eventually come to realize as he and the rest of the disciples journey with Jesus towards the cross, is that home isn't always a place. And the capacity to dwell in the Lord's house forever is not tied to a geographical location or to specific familial relationships. But this new understanding requires the death of some things, too. The death of their ideas, of what they had hoped the future was going to look like, the death of what they imagined God's kingdom would be like, and the death of where they thought the boundary lines around family and belonging were drawn. And this is gracious news for those of us who have complicated feelings about home. For some of us, the idea of home is ripe with pain. And what should have been a safe and welcoming place was not, maybe even the last place in the world we wanted to be. For some, is it a place of rejection. For others, a sense of constant displacement? Last week during Rite 13, the parents of the youth promised together, we will not turn away from you. And my eyes filled with tears because those are beautiful and loving words, and words that I wish I was able to hear from my own parents. When I left the evangelical tradition because of my convictions around sexuality and my choice to pursue ordination, those were decisions that they felt stretched us too far to be able to stay in connection with each other. And that was, and still is, a point of deep grief. But as the acuteness of that loss has softened, I have realized, like Thomas, that some of my expectations about home and family needed to be buried and commended to God. I can both acknowledge the pain of this loss and rejoice in the fact that dwelling in the house of the Lord forever means there are a lot of rooms in God's house. And while at this present moment ties to my family of origin feel strained, there are people God placed in my life, in my sending parish back home in Tennessee, in my friends and professors at vts, and in relationships with my lay support team here in this parish, which all offer love, security and belonging, creating a beautiful network of the church as the household of God. In my life. When we are at our best, Christian community offers a new lens through which to see and create security and belonging, a way of building and participating in God's house here on earth that invites us to see all persons with dignity and wholeness. God's kingdom is one of security, safety, belonging and relationship, where no one is cast out and no one is turned away because there is plenty of room and the invitation is to dwell forever. The joy of the Christian life is that we know this to be true for all eternity and a reality to be engaged in the present moment. In the way we treat each other each week as we prepare to take the Eucharist together, we are reminded, no matter where you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome at God's table. It is a celebration that we belong to God and to each other. And the boundary lines we are tempted to draw around family and belonging are erased forever in God's kingdom because God's table goes on infinitely across all time, culture, generation, class, sexuality, or any other metric we might use to divide ourselves. And when, like Thomas, we wonder, how will we know the way? The psalmist assures us that God guides us along the right pathway. God is with us even in the valley of the shadow of death, and God's mercy and goodness have already chased us all the way down in order to bring us home. Amen.