If in my name you ask

Fifth Sunday of Easter May 3, 2026

Texts for this sermon: Acts 7:55-60 and John 14:1-14

It’s a really good thing to memorize scripture. But what’s really fun is to quote it. It’s satisfying to let a text roll off our tongue in a conversation and not have to look

it up. 

And we have some favorites: The Lord’s Prayer of course and John 3:16

Today’s text includes some verses many have in their repertoire:

John 14:1  Do not let your hearts be troubled. 
Believe in God believe also in me. 

John 14:2 In my Father’s house are many dwelling
places. If it were not so I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.

John 14:6, a special favorite
I am the way, the truth the life, 
no comes to the Father except through me

John 14:14 If in my name you ask for anything, 
I will do it. 

Alas though, many Christians think these significant texts stand on their own. 
They are often used to salt conversations in a way that counters their true meaning. And they can lead us astray in our own understanding. 

They seem clear enough, certainly. We’re not to be troubled because Jesus is going to heaven, and in heaven, Jesus is going to make rooms for each and every one of us who believe.

Jesus is the one and only way anybody is able to know God, or as many say
invoking the name of Jesus is the only way anybody can be saved and go to heaven.

Whatever I pray using Jesus’ name will be answered.

But there’s work to do here. We’ve a responsibility to take the time and effort to figure out what Jesus is telling his disciples, telling us; to understand how these statements fit into the whole of the message Jesus is giving them, is giving us. And considering that he’s speaking of these things on the eve of his crucifixion—the eve of the darkest hours he and they have ever known—we should certainly be interested in what he thinks is so important for his disciples, for us, to understand.

We start first with 
Do not let your hearts be troubled.

The Do not here is an imperative. It should have an exclamation point after it. 
It is a command. Donot be troubled. 

Does Jesus mean don’t be discouraged? depressed? blue? No. Jesus means don’t let your heart quake, or be agitated or be deeply unsettled in the face of evil and death. Do not conclude that evil and death are prevailing. Rather stand firm. Hold to a different reality! Believe in God, believe in me, Jesus says. Believe that God is in charge and trustworthy. Holding to this reality can help us stand firm and not be over-whelmed or swept away by threatening currents. Believe I am who I say I am, Jesus says and 

So while this verse can be used to realign us when we get worried about some-thing, it is so much more. It’s one that speaks to our uncertain days right now.

It looks like evil and death are overshadowing us. It feels like this shadow will prevail over our lives now and threaten our wellbeing going forward. Does it not?
But Do NOT be troubled. Don’t let this specter define your perspective; don’t let it steal your energy, rob you of joy. Trust God. Trust what Jesus revealed about God. Can you see why Jesus told them this, knowing what they were going to witness and endure in the hours to come? So he begins with this charge to them.

Then, Jesus says

In my Father’s house are many dwellingplaces. If it were not so I would have 
told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

For so many, and for so long, folks have assumed Jesus is talking about heaven and rooms in heaven. But he isn’t. Note he says “Father’s house” not Heaven. And what would Father’s house mean to those disciples? those who know the story of the Tabernacle and the Temple? of God descending on those places of worship in a holy cloud. They would have in their minds God’s numerous declarations that God dwells with them. How does John begin his gospel? 

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us

Jesus is talking about residency within—a residency defined by intimacy, mutuality, reciprocity. He is not talking about a location. What he is going to endure and do will bring forth a deeper, personal indwelling of God’s presence within us.

So, do not think evil and death will have the last word. He’s telling them. Trust God. Trust me. Know that the relationship you’ve seen that I have with the Father, and which you will soon comprehend to the fullest on the other side of what’s going to happen now, is the same relationship I’m preparing for you.

I will come, draw you to myself, indwell you and you in me.

Now we come to 

I am the way, the truth the life, no comes to the Father except through me

When Thomas protests that they don’t know which direction Jesus is going, how can they know the way?  Jesus isn’t talking Hwy 26, heading west. He’s talking about the essence of his identity. It is so important that we understand this. 
When he says I am, he is using the same words God spoke from the burning bush when Moses asked who was speaking to him. I AM that I AM. Jesus is saying that he is I AM that I AM. 

Because our gospels refer to Jesus as Son, we think of him as a separate entity or individual from God the Father but they are one and the same. Jesus is God Incarnate, yes? Immanuel, God-with-us, yes? So when Jesus says he is the way, the truth the life, he is saying God is the way, the truth, the life. He is speaking of a Way of being that’s in unity with God. Jesus has shown them this Way. He’s telling them they can be this Way too. And this Way is what is True; and this Way leads to Life. Unity with God as a way of being is the true reality, and true Life. 

Jesus is NOT saying that only by saying his name can one know God or be saved or go to heaven. He’s saying that anyone—anyone—who seeks unity with God like a child to a parent, with devoted dependence if you will, will be emanating the Way. Jesus has himself lived in devoted dependence with the Father

It is the Father living in me that is doing his work. John 14:10

It might help to visualize what Jesus is saying this way: God is found at the vortex of the way, the truth and the life.  

Now Jesus starts talking about the ways in which trust in him empowers the community of believers. Just as Jesus has done the Father’s work: making the Father known so they now will make the Father known

Their work will be greater: not greater in the sense of more dramatic, but greater in the sense of more comprehensive—more expansive. They will be able to reveal the whole story: not just the God of divided sea and Mt Sinai. But God in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension.

As the radio announcer John Harvey use to say: And now you know the Rest of the Story. They will proclaim the Rest of the Story; the Whole Story; the post resurrection story.

This brings us now, to verses 13 & 14

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 for anything, I will do it.  

This sounds like a blank check, does it not?  Here, here’s my signature, write in whatever you want. You shall have it.

Alas, no. I say “alas” because who of us wouldn’t rather like a blank check. And
this one sounds so unlimited, and seems to confer so much power upon the one who prays. But we know from experience that this isn’t what’s meant here, but neither do we often consider what is meant here.

I believe what is meant here is that if one has entered heart and soul into the command and truth of what Jesus has just said: don’t be cowed by evil and death
but trust God; trust the truth I reveal about God. Trust that by entering the way of relationship I have shown you and have made possible for you, You will be able to live as I have lived, in unity with God the Father. And if you are in unity with God the Father, you will know what to ask in my name; what to ask that is in keeping with my identity.

And asking rightly, asking in the truth and life that emanates from this way of being, will be answered to the Glory of God

We have only to look at Stephen to know what that kind of unity and that kind of prayer looks like. I’m not talking about dying as Stephen did, but consider what we know of him: a man of faith who trusted God, was filled with the Holy Spirit and who lived boldly in the community in service promoting equity and justice. Living in devoted dependence upon God, who when arrested, was not troubled and testified to the elders of the Sanhedrin, unfolding the epic of God’s work through the ages, concluding with the work of the Righteous One whom those elders had rejected.

Stephen, making God known as Jesus had made God known and now, praying a prayer in keeping with the way of the Father as revealed in the Son.

Lord, do not hold this sin against them.

Sound familiar? Father, forgive them for they know not what they do?

And answered it was.

For we know that in that crowd was Saul, later to be known as Paul, the great apostle.

It’s prayers of this kind, arising from our living in the Way as revealed by Jesus the Christ lifting an appeal in keeping with that Way that unleash wonders.

Why do I make us plow through this passage this way? First, to remind us that we are not to quake with troubled hearts in the face of what appears to be an upending that threatens our wellbeing and puts our imagined future at risk.

Second, that as people who seek to live in the way of Jesus, in devoted dependence upon God, we are empowered to live and to pray in a way that opens the way for God’s glory to be revealed.  We do not claim this as we should. And I don’t mean to say that we are to be demanding. No. Rather we are invited into a Life and a Life of prayer that is so committed to God’s way, that we seek first and foremost what it is God wants.

We can begin simply by asking God to guide us in our prayer, to teach us what it is we should pray. But let us remember, the precursor to this kind of prayer life is
a whole-hearted in-love-ness with God; an unreserved dependence upon God.
And in this whole-hearted commitment and yielded-ness, the Holy Spirit will inspire and guide our prayer. We will find prayer welling up in us we didn’t know was in us. Prayer is not a blank check. It is a gift, a grace by which we, in union with Christ, make God known for the sake of the world.

Folks, we stand on the cusp of a changed world; a world that is going to need to see the glory of God. May we not be lax in doing right by the God, right by the world God loves.

For God so loved the world, that God gave. . .

Linda Quanstrom, Pastor

Cornelius UMC

Cornelius OR