Today’s gospel lesson comes from a section of Matthew where Jesus’ words and deeds have been “largely rejected”[1] by the people he has encountered. You and I know that the rejection of Jesus will continue and will grow all the way to Calvary. But in the middle of this story of rejection, Matthew’s Jesus has words of hope and comfort for those who persevere in faith.

In Matthew, when Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount, the longest and best known of the five sermons Matthew’s Jesus gives, the evangelist tells us that Jesus “went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.”[1]

“Call and Response” is the name given to a form of preaching, of rhetoric, that belongs to the African-American Christian community. Its dialogue engages the preacher and the congregation; they move each other along.[1] That’s one way also to understand John’s gospel. The Word made flesh is calling; men and women are responding. And God is looking for one response: belief in his Son Jesus Christ.

When I was rector of a parish with teenagers, I often found myself saying to one or more of them, “I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve read the book.” Well, right now, I’m reading a book because I saw an episode of the BBC television production of Hillary Mantel’s 2009 novel Wolf Hall.[1] I’ve had a copy of it for quite a while. It got such good reviews when it was published. Historical fiction. It’s based on the life of Thomas Cromwell, who would become the minister of Henry VIII who oversaw, among other things, the king’s divorce from Queen Katharine, his marriage to Anne Boleyn, and Anne’s beheading.

For the last Sunday of the Easter Season, the appointed gospel from John takes us back to the supper before the Passover. That night, Jesus knows that he is going away, and he knows that he’s going to return. He shares this news with those he will for the first time that very night call “friends.”[1] Jesus also knows that he is going to die, but he does not speak of it directly.

Humankind’s relationship with God comes from God. Humankind’s awareness of God’s relationship to humankind changes with Jesus Christ. When the Word became flesh, humans were revealed to be, like Jesus, children of God.

What we know as the tenth chapter of John stands between Jesus’ healing of the man born blind—chapter nine—and the raising of Lazarus from the dead—chapter eleven.

The disciples whom the Risen Jesus met on the road to Emmaus—perhaps a man and a woman[1]—know all about Jesus, but—and I’m not sure how to understand this—“their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”[2] Dr. Mark Davis translates the Greek here as, “their eyes were held from him so not to recognize him.”[3] (An echo of the Exodus where repeatedly Pharaoh’s heart is hardened so God can perform the miracle that he wants to perform?[4]) (By the way, the title Davis gives to his comments is, “Two Idiots and a Lord Walk into an Inn.”)

Two important words that accompany the different accounts of the resurrection are fear and joy. In Mark’s gospel there was only fear when the women left the tomb. In Matthew there was fear and great joy. In Luke fear and joy. And in John, fear and joy—for everyone except Thomas. John the evangelist narrates the story in a way that covers a lot of what we would call theology.

At the supper before the Passover, Jesus told his disciples, his friends, that he was going away and that in “a little while . . . you will see me.”[1] Yet nothing Jesus did or said prepared his friends for the reality of his death, and nothing Jesus did or said prepared his friends for the reality of his risen life. Peter and the unnamed disciple whom we know only as the disciple Jesus loved left Jesus’ grave when they found it open and seemingly empty except for some cloths. They did not understand what they had seen; so they left.

The historic gospel reading for this Eucharist is from the very beginning of John’s account of the supper before the Passover, what we call John chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. These five chapters are together the longest narrative by far in any of the gospels—and tonight we heard only the first fifteen verses of the account.

Jesus’ words about being the Shepherd of the sheep are found between two of the most powerful narratives in John’s gospel, the Healing of the Man Born Blind[1] and the Raising of Lazarus.[2] The man born blind asked nothing of Jesus; but Jesus healed him and sent him to wash. His healing will not be welcomed by his parents or his community. He doesn’t even know what Jesus looks like, but Jesus again seeks him out. Then Jesus explains to some Pharisees who are watching them that he is the Shepherd of the sheep. He says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”[3]

Fifth-century pope Leo the Great is credited with assigning Matthew’s passion narrative to the Sunday before Easter and John’s passion narrative to Good Friday.[1] In the seventh century Mark and Luke’s narratives were assigned to Tuesday and Wednesday of what we call Holy Week.[2]

The promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that their descendants would dwell in the land of Canaan[1], lived on after Jacob died in Egypt.[2] On Wednesday night gone, our reading from Genesis ended with Jacob’s son Joseph requiring a promise by that his body would be embalmed and would be carried into the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when God visited them and fulfilled the covenant.[3]

The man born blind did not ask Jesus for anything. He did not know who smeared dirt on him and sent him to wash. I can’t help but think that in the moment he was manhandled, it would have seemed to him to be just another one of the humiliations like those he had known all his life. Yet at the heart of this story, New Testament scholar Sandra Schneiders points out, is the unnamed man’s commitment to the law of God given to Moses, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”[1] The truth—lower case “t” for the sense of what is true, not false, and capital “T” for the one who is the “Way, the Truth, and the Life”[2]—sets him free in more ways than he could have imagined before he could see.

I pulled out the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament the other day to look up the entry for a word that I’ve been paying more attention to since last Easter. The gospel for Easter morning, of course, is John’s account of the resurrection—Mary Magdalene, Peter and the disciple we know only as “the disciple Jesus loved” at the tomb. Quite honestly, I was looking for something to help me with John—on which I think I have preached for 28 Easter mornings in a row—so I turned to Matthew. It’s the only other gospel where the risen Jesus himself speaks on the morning of the resurrection. And I got lucky.