Sermon for Easter 5
John 14:1–14
Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”
Now, that’s a tall order…
Because, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the world lately, but it’s kind of a mess out there!
I mean… My gosh!
I doom-scroll through the news, and it starts to look like the things that win, in this world, are power and money. The people who get ahead are the ones who can dominate and accumulate, at all costs.
And, when I see that, part of me is tempted to wonder: What if they’re right? What if that really is how the world works? What if love is just a nice feeling, but not the truth about reality?
And that’s when Jesus says to us: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”
But what does that even mean?
Because “believing in Jesus” can mean different things to different people.
For some people, “believing in Jesus” means accepting the historical fact that, once upon a time, there was a guy named Jesus who lived in a land far away, and inspired a lot of people.
Most historians agree that much is probably true.
So whatever Jesus means by ‘belief,’ it has to be something more than that.
We church folks, on the other hand, often think that “believing in Jesus” means believing certain things about Jesus—agreeing with the traditional ideas that the Church talks about in the Nicene Creed: That Jesus is the Son of God, was born of a virgin, rose from the dead, and will come again in glory.
There’s nothing wrong with any of these. They are theological statements, which can be neither proved nor disproved by science. Traditional Christians call them “revealed truths,” which can only be accepted on the basis of faith.
But, here again, we encounter a problem:
There are plenty of Christians who say they believe all of that—and live in ways that look nothing like Jesus.
We have a word for that:
It’s hypocrisy.
So, here again, we see that “believing in Jesus” must mean something more than simply believing that Jesus existed and accepting certain theological beliefs about Jesus.
So, what then does it mean to “believe in Jesus?“
And if that question—what does it really mean to believe?—feels a little unclear, we’re actually in good company.
Because the disciples are just as confused as we are.
Jesus said, “You know the way to the place where I am going.”
And Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
But Jesus doesn’t give him a map. He gives Thomas himself.
He says, “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.”
That is a staggering claim.
Because Jesus is not just pointing to God—he’s revealing God.
If you want to know what God is like—look at Jesus.
If you want to know what really matters in this world—look at Jesus.
And what do we see, when we look at Jesus?
We see someone who chooses compassion over control. Someone who serves instead of dominating, who forgives instead of retaliating, who gives himself away rather than grasping for more.
We see a life defined by love.
And that brings us back to belief.
Belief, in the sense that Jesus means it, is more about alignment than agreement.
The Greek word for “believe” is pistis—it means trust or allegiance.
To believe in Jesus is not just to say, “I agree with these ideas about him.”
It’s to say, “I trust that the way he lived reveals what is actually real—and I’m going to live like that’s true.”
When we look at Jesus, we see what ultimately matters.
And that’s where this becomes both beautiful and difficult.
Because if love is ultimate, then a lot of what the world tells us starts to fall apart.
The world says: power is what matters.
Jesus says: love is what matters.
The world says: get all you can for yourself.
Jesus says: give yourself away.
The world says: win.
Jesus says: serve.
And the reason this is hard is because it doesn’t always look like Jesus is right.
It doesn’t always look like love wins.
So we live in this tension.
We feel the pull of one reality—the one we see on the news.
And we hear Jesus pointing to another—the one revealed in his life.
Believing in Jesus means choosing which of those realities we are going to trust.
It means saying, “Even though it might cost me, I trust that love is more valuable than money.”
That’s not just an idea. It’s a way of life.
Toward the end of the passage, 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.”
What does that mean: “Greater works?”
I don’t think he means more spectacular miracles.
I think he means more and more people living in alignment with the reality that he preached and lived—choosing love over power, compassion over control.
The works are “greater” because they spread out wider.
And I’ve seen glimpses of that.
St. Maximilian Kolbe was a Catholic priest who lived in Poland during World War 2.
When the Germans invaded, he had an opportunity to escape, but chose instead to remain behind. He hid Jews and other refugees fleeing persecution inside the friary.
When the Nazis arrested him, they offered him an opportunity to sign his name on a list that would have given him the same rights as a German citizen, but he refused and was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Finally, when the Nazis decided to execute ten prisoners in retaliation for one prisoner who had escaped, St. Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to take the place of another prisoner who had a wife and children. He died at Auschwitz in 1941 and was canonized as a saint in 1982.
St. Maximilian Kolbe was a man who believed in Jesus.
We know this, not because he was a priest who recited the Nicene Creed, but because of the way he lived his life.
That’s what Jesus is inviting us to do when he says, “Believe in me.”
Don’t just believe things about Jesus, but trust in Jesus himself.
Trust that the way Jesus lived reveals what actually matters.
And live like that’s true.
What would it look like, this week, for us to “believe in Jesus” in that sense?
Maybe it looks like a moment when we choose compassion over control.
When we choose the way of Jesus over the way that seems easiest.
When we choose to listen. To forgive. To act with kindness.
Not because it guarantees a certain outcome—
But because we trust that what Jesus showed us is what matters most.
Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”
In other words:
Don’t let your hearts be shaped by a false vision of reality.
Trust what you see in Jesus.
And live like that’s the world you actually inhabit.
Because it is.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 