5/3/2026_Easter 5_Being Built Into Something
There are moments—quiet, unguarded ones—when a question slips in without my permission: Am I alone in this?
Not just physically alone, but existentially— alone in grief, alone in doubt, alone in trying to hold together a life, a calling, a faith that doesn’t always feel certain.
And I felt really aware of that as I read these texts this morning. Together they took me on this journey that began there, in that feeling of alone… and moved me a bit—
No, you are not actually alone. And, you are being built into something. And, the One who calls you makes a way—and sends you to live that truth in the world.
Our gospel is what’s often called the Farewell Discourse. Jesus is preparing his disciples for his final departure. And they are, understandably, unsettled. Everything they have built their lives around is about to change. Again.
As Jesus does, he says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
Jesus is leaving… again. Obviously… their hearts are troubled.
But Jesus isn't dismissing their fear. And he is not saying: “don’t feel afraid.” The Greek word here, tarassō, suggests agitation, like water being stirred up. Jesus is naming their immediate reality: your hearts are troubled, don’t let them stay there. And he offers not a solution, but a relationship.
“In God’s house there are many dwelling places.”
Most English translations call these dwelling places “rooms”—which for me—feels really real estate-y and closed off.
Yet monai, a derivative of meno—it doesn’t mean separate, distant residences. It means abiding places, spaces—physical, spiritual, or relational—where life is sustained, where you can remain, and where something meaningful continues to grow. Places of staying and relationship. Belonging.
Jesus is saying: there is space for you in the life of God.
And then: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”
Not a way, as in one option.
“I am the way.”
The early Christians were actually called followers of “the Way.” Not because they had perfect doctrine, but because they trusted this relational “way.” This embodied way. Walked with Christ, not achieved apart from him. Walked in community, for community, not in isolation.
You are not alone.
As I mentioned last Sunday, Peter is writing to communities scattered, marginalized, trying to figure out how to live faithfully without power, without stability, without clear belonging in the world around them.
And he uses this striking image: “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”
Living stones. A contradiction.
Yet, stones that are alive, dynamic, being shaped and placed in relation to one another.
So this is not a private spirituality. This is not “just me and God.” This is communal, structural, inter-dependent.
The verb here for—“be built”—is passive. This is something being done to you, not something you accomplish yourself.
You are being built into something.
And not just anything—a “spiritual house,” a dwelling place for God, and here οἶκος, is not a building, but again this dwelling/abiding place where life, growth, happens.
Peter calls Christ the “living stone,” rejected by humans but chosen by God. This echoes Psalm 118—the stone the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone.
What the world discards, God builds with.
Fractures, questions, experiences— these are not disqualifications. They may, in fact, be the very material God is using.
And then comes that sweeping declaration of identity—which does hold some cringe language that’s been taken over by Christian Nationalism: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”
In the Hebrew Scriptures, these titles belonged to Israel. Now, here, Peter is extending, and expanding them beyond a single race or nation… He is bringing this fragile, scattered community into these titles given to God’s own people. Showing them that it is God alone who is building something out of us.
I think the First Nations Version—an indigenous translation—offers a really beautiful way of hearing this: “But you who trust in Creator Sets Free (Jesus) are a chosen people. You are a family of chiefs who serve as holy people. You are a sacred nation, a people who belong to the Great Spirit alone. You are the ones who will show forth the beautiful ways of the one who called you out of darkness and brought you into [their] wondrous light. You are now the people of the Great Spirit, even though at one time you were not known in this way. In the past you had not known mercy, but now you have found it.”
This new identity is not a place of comfort—it’s a movement from suffering to knowing and then towards calling. Taking what is or what was fragile and letting it be built into something.
You are not alone. You are being built into something.
And John leads us forward… the work doesn’t stop just with ourselves but draws us back into the world, back into community. “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”
The One who calls you makes a way—and sends you.
These greater works—are the life of Christ (love, justice, mercy, grace, healing, reconciling, restoring) now multiplied in community. The Spirit animating many lives, many places, across time.
“I will do whatever you ask in my name”—in the ancient world meant in alignment with someone’s character, their will, their mission.
This is about participation, an invitation into the ongoing work of God—healing, reconciling, restoring.
Peter says the same thing in different language: “You are a priesthood—family of chiefs who serve as holy people—those who stand in the gap, who bear witness, who make visible the presence of God in the world.”
You are not alone, and you are not being formed for yourself alone— you are being built into a people sent for the sake of the world.
So in this country where racial injustice still shapes systems, where migrants are detained and denied dignity, where gun violence, poverty, unlawful legislation steals life daily, …this call of Christ is right in front of us.
To do “greater works” is to align our lives with love, justice, mercy, and grace— standing in that gap that refuses to let harm have the final word.
The One who calls you makes a way and sends you: to bear witness, to disrupt injustice, and to help build a community where healing, restoration, and dignity are not the exception, but the norm.
We are sent to embody a different kind of belonging in a world marked by division. Sent to proclaim—not always with words, but with our lives—that darkness does not get the final word. Sent to participate in the quiet, persistent work of love that looks, at times, very small—and yet is how God remakes this world.
May we know, in the quiet places of our lives, that we are not alone.May the stirring of our hearts be met with the steady presence of Christ beside us.May we trust that we are being shaped—gently, patiently—into something holy.May we know our questions and fractures are becoming part of what God is already building.And may we go from this place sent in love, to bear witness to this world being remade.May it be so. Amen.
A Blessing for the Building
May the God who meets you in the unguarded moments— in the questions you did not choose, in the ache of uncertainty, in the places where your heart feels stirred and unsettled— draw near to you with a presence that does not leave.
May you come to trust, slowly and deeply, that you are not alone— not in your grief, not in your becoming, not even in your doubt.
May Christ, the living stone, hold all that feels fragmented in you and gather it into something living— not wasted, not discarded, but shaped into a dwelling place of grace.
May you find yourself built into a people— held in community, woven together in ways you cannot always see, a place where God’s life takes root and grows.
And as you are held, may you also be sent— sent to embody love where there is division, justice where there is harm, mercy where there is suffering, and hope where the world has forgotten how to hope.
May your life bear witness, in ways both quiet and bold, that darkness does not have the final word. And may you walk in the Way—not alone— but with Christ, and with one another, as participants in the healing of the world.
Amen.
