Fifth Sunday of Easter
Psalm 31
John 14:1-4
1 Peter 2:4-5, 9-10
When life becomes painful, frightening, or shame-filled, we do not need to pretend we are fine. The gospel speaks tenderness to troubled hearts and reminds us that there is refuge, room, mercy, and belonging in God.
Things don’t always go the way we plan.
Sometimes we lose a job. Or don’t get the promotion we were counting on. And whatever happened, it’s already painful. But then sometimes, on top of that pain, we wonder: was I the reason this happened? Was this my fault?
And we feel ashamed. We heap bad feelings on top of an already hard situation. And that makes everything so much worse.
These scriptures are asking us to see a bigger picture.
Our readings today do not come from a world where everything is calm and easy.
Stephen is killed by a mob. The psalmist cries out for refuge. The community in First Peter knows rejection. And in John’s gospel, Jesus is speaking to disciples whose hearts are troubled.
Today’s readings are not asking us to pretend. They are asking what holds us when life gets hard.
Jesus begins with words many of us know well: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”
He is not saying, if you had more faith, you would not feel this way. He knows their hearts are troubled. He knows things are about to get very hard.
When Jesus says, do not let your hearts be troubled, I hear tenderness. I hear him saying: do not let fear be the only voice you listen to. Do not let trouble tell you who you are.
Because trouble does that sometimes.
When life gets hard, when things fall apart, when we are misunderstood or rejected, it is very easy to turn inward and wonder, what is wrong with me?
A troubled heart is not a failed heart. A troubled heart may simply be a heart that has lived, loved, hoped, and carried more than it should have had to carry.
We see troubled hearts all around us.
We see them when someone is targeted by a scam, frightened, pressured, tricked, and then left feeling foolish afterward. We live in a time when people use love itself as a weapon against the vulnerable. Calling seniors, pretending to be a grandchild in trouble. Stirring up fear. Isolating people in the moment.
And one of the cruelest parts of that kind of harm is the shame it leaves behind.
Being targeted is not the same as being wrong. The shame belongs to the cruelty. Not to the person who was harmed.
We see troubled hearts at the grocery store, when the same bag costs more than it used to. At the kitchen table, when someone on a fixed income looks at the bills and wonders how far things can stretch. These are not always dramatic troubles. Sometimes they are ordinary, daily, hidden troubles.
And the gospel does not come to us saying: you should be stronger. You should be ashamed. If you were faithful enough, you would not be afraid.
Jesus speaks to troubled hearts with tenderness.
And then he gives us this image: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”
Many dwelling places. There is room.
Not a cramped space where only the flawless may enter. Room. Welcome. Dwelling. Belonging.
There is room in God for frightened disciples. There is room for confusion. There is room for grief. There is room for people who do not have everything figured out.
The psalm gives us language for trust when life is hard.
“In you, O God, I seek refuge. Be a rock of refuge for me. My times are in your hand.”
This is not shallow comfort. The psalmist is not pretending everything is fine. This is a prayer from inside trouble. It says: yes, there is fear. Yes, there are things I cannot control. And still, I place myself in larger hands.
My times are in your hand. That is a line we can lean on.
In Acts, Stephen is surrounded by violence. It is not an easy story. He is killed by a crowd. And the point is not that suffering is good, or that people should accept abuse.
The point is that violence does not get the final claim over Stephen’s spirit. Even there, even in that terrible moment, he is held by something larger than the crowd’s hatred. He does not become what is being done to him. He does not let cruelty define the truth of who he is.
And perhaps there is something important in this for us. When people are cruel, when people shame us or treat us as disposable, it can be very tempting to believe their version of the story.
But Stephen’s witness says: no. The crowd is not the whole truth. Their cruelty is not the whole truth. God’s love is deeper.
You are not less loved because life has been hard. You are not less valuable because someone failed to see your worth. You are not outside the mercy of God because you have known fear, rejection, or pain.
First Peter gives us this beautiful image: “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”
Living stones. Gathered together into something holy, something sheltering, something that can hold life.
And then: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.”
One of the deepest wounds in human life is the fear that we do not belong. That we are too much, or not enough. That if people really knew us, they would turn away.
But First Peter speaks a different word: you are being gathered. You are being built. You are not rubble. You are part of a people held together by mercy.
We see that kind of building happening right here.
In the people who volunteer year after year. In those who prepare and serve community meals. In those preparing for the quilt show, stitch by stitch. In those who set tables, make coffee, welcome strangers, and make sure there is room for guests.
And we see it in the hope of the community meal initiative being imagined with the CAB next door, a practical, embodied way of saying: there is room here. There is food here. There is dignity here. You do not have to carry hunger or worry alone.
That is not just charity. That is living-stone work. That is what happens when people allow themselves to be built together into something more merciful than any one of us could be alone.
So hear again the words of Jesus:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
Not because life is easy. Not because there is nothing to fear. Not because we are supposed to be untouched by pain.
But because we are not abandoned. There is refuge. There is room. There is mercy.
Trouble is not the deepest truth. God’s love is the deepest truth. And the call of the church is to become a living sign of that, a place where a troubled heart can come through the door and not be judged or hurried or overlooked. A place where someone carrying shame can hear: you are loved, you are valuable, and you are not alone.
Stone by living stone.
Amen.
Grounded reflection for the week ahead
Faith does not remain abstract. Mercy becomes bread, welcome, listening, advocacy, and community. The church is called not only to speak comfort to troubled hearts, but to become a place where that comfort takes shape in meals, in dignity, in practical care, in making room for those who are too often pushed aside.
This is living-stone work: allowing God to build us into a people whose life together says, in practical and visible ways, there is room here, and you are not alone.