The Way Is Made by Walking

5th Sunday of Easter, Year A - May 3, 2026

Rev Sarah Colvin

You can find this week's readings here:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me."

How many people succeed in doing this? No judgment here, and please know that I am particularly NOT judging your faith. To loosely quote a song, "if you succeed in doing this, tell me how."

At any one time, I suspect around half of us have troubled hearts. It may be that our marriage or relationship is rocky, or something is off with our kids, or we have financial woes or concerns, the insurance company is not covering a bill and we are having to fight, the price of gas is too high. Sometimes these heart troubles are all-consuming; sometimes they are more trivial and go in and out of our consciousness. And that other half of the congregation who currently don't have troubled hearts? Give them an hour, or a day, or a week, and their hearts too will be troubled.

And then, as my household experienced this week, we heard the news of a young adult child of colleagues who took his own life. And Lord, the agony of that burden is almost incomprehensible. We definitely never know what another person carries, even those sitting next to us today, but make no mistake, we all carry something, at least some of the time.

This Sunday is terribly inconvenient when it comes to readings; we can't just move to a different reading to move away from any unpleasantries and try to keep this light. This week's lectionary also gives us the stoning of Stephen, which is hard to spin into a feel-good light, at least in terms of how the culture explains it. Still, having one's faith firmly fixed on Christ despite what might be going awry is the definition of a martyr—or what the Greek word martyr means: a witness. This is witnessing to Christ that no matter what, even death, there is nothing that separates you from God, and that relationship is of primary importance.

There is no denying that life is hard. It has always been hard. Social media does not help with loneliness, but for all of history, some subsection of people have been awful to some other subsection, and at the same time also amazing to each other. There is "red in tooth and claw" that we see throughout nature, as Tennyson wrote, and as we see in ourselves. And yet, as we are instructed to remember the lilies and the birds, God provides—still God provides.

So instead of moving away, let's turn into our Gospel to get more from it. Driving on the way back from clergy conference this week, there was a religious commercial on my rock station, the point of which was that believing in Jesus Christ would provide you everlasting life. I'm not denying this, but the curtailed approach seems very transactional. We, of course, do not know if or how much God grades on a curve, as it were. For instance, if Hitler had a deathbed confession and repented, how would that land with God? I like to think that God's grace is huge, but we don't know exactly how this lands. Is believing in Jesus enough? Perhaps more to the point, what does it look like to believe in Jesus? I would argue that we do know there seems to be more to the Gospel than a simple assent to belief in Jesus Christ. The assent to believing is a necessary, important first step of the Gospel.

In our very Gospel Jesus goes on to say, "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." It is not just believing, but being on the journey with Jesus. Believing is not holding thoughts in your head; it is following Jesus as the way. We can see why the early followers of Jesus were called followers of the Way. (Which, by the by, is a very Old Testament / Hebrew Bible concept—walking in the paths of God; as usual, Jesus is not inventing a new religion but is deep in his Hebrew roots.)

So, maybe it is by design that we had the reading of the martyring of Stephen. As I have said before, following God in Christ on the way just might get you killed. We all have such different baggage and different paths; it is hard to know exactly how to follow Jesus, which is perhaps why the Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, "Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking." We are all carrying something, bearing something, but still we walk the Way.

"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." It is by our belief that we can do works. And it is by walking the road; there is truth, there is life, for it is because of Jesus that we are able to put our burdens down (some bigger, some smaller). It is by Jesus that our load is made light, full of truth and life. And with truth and life, joy comes. For in the process of walking, of following Jesus, our hearts are less burdened. We don't sweat the small stuff, because we recognize it is all small stuff. It is only the following of God in Christ which is the big thing, and is that which we walk toward every single day.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works than these.

It's hard to put our burdens down; in grief, it is almost impossible, but there is no other way to true life. The Way, the Truth and the Life, to which we are beckoned by God, is where we belong, for this is the only thing that matters, the only big thing.

I am the way, says Christ. So let us walk that way. Carrying big things and small things, trying to believe even when it is hard, trying to bear witness, making the way by walking. But knowing that Christ walked the way for us first. Thanks be to the Risen God in Christ. Alleluia, Alleluia!

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IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Angelico, fra, approximately 1400-1455. Stephen and the Dispute before Sanhedrin, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55294 [retrieved May 29, 2026]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angelico,_niccolina_02.jpg.