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August 16th worship services have been canceled due to the storm. Here is the sermon transcript for the day.

Sermon: “Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled”
Rev. Rushan Sinnaduray

Based on John 14:1-14

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

 

Welcome back, friends, to week four of our stewardship season. We are calling this journey There Our Hearts Will Be. We are looking deeply at how our practices, our priorities, and our resources reveal what truly claims our hearts. We are asking God to transform and renew us from the inside out. 

If you have ever driven in an unfamiliar neighborhood, you know the sinking feeling of a lost GPS signal. You are following the blue line on your phone. You feel confident. You know exactly when to turn. But then, you hit a dead zone. The signal drops. The map goes gray. The little robotic voice in your phone suddenly says, “Proceed to the route,” but it refuses to tell you where the route actually is. 

In that moment, your heart rate spikes. We hate that feeling. We hate not knowing the exact coordinates. We want the step-by-step itinerary. We want the guarantee that if we make a right turn at the next light, we will safely arrive at our destination. When the map disappears, we feel completely, utterly lost. 

And today, we are looking at a group of people who were staring at a blank map. 

The Trouble With Our Hearts 

We are dropping into the Gospel according to John, chapter 14. To really understand the weight of this moment, we have to look at the context. We have to understand the room they were sitting in. 

This is the night before Jesus is crucified. The disciples are gathered in the Upper Room. The shadows are getting long. The political tension in Jerusalem is suffocating. Just moments before this, Jesus washed their feet. He told them that one of them would betray him. He told Peter that Peter would deny him three times. And then, he told them he was leaving, and they could not follow him. 

The ground is shifting beneath their feet. The Roman Empire is closing in like a massive, unavoidable storm. 

Speaking of storms, we understand that feeling of impending dread intimately this week. Here in Hawai’i, our own hearts have been troubled as we have anxiously anticipated the arrival of Hurricane Lala. We’ve been tracking the spaghetti models, double-checking our emergency kits, and sitting in that heavy, uneasy waiting period—holding onto the hope that by this today, the worst of it will have safely passed us by. But over the last couple of days now, the uncertainty was palpable. The wind was picking up, and the map felt gray. 

The disciples were in their own kind of terrifying waiting room. Their leader, their friend, their GPS signal was leaving them. They were experiencing profound, disorienting trauma. 

Jesus looks at his terrified, panicked friends and says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” 

Okay, Jesus. That sounds simple enough. But our hearts are incredibly troubled by matters both personal and global. Rev. Jennifer Garrison points out in her commentary this week that we try absolutely everything to get untroubled. We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains, we go to the gym, we take our medication, and we doom-scroll on our phones. But none of it quenches the feeling that we are still distressed, dis-eased, and dismayed. By ourselves, we really do not know how to untrouble our own hearts. 

Thomas, bless his practical heart, speaks up for all of us. He essentially says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. We do not have the coordinates. How can we know the way?” 

A Tricky Verse 

Jesus answers Thomas with one of the most famous, and most misunderstood, lines in all of scripture. He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Let us be completely honest about this text. This is a tricky verse. For centuries, the church has taken this single sentence and completely misinterpreted it: 

• We have weaponized it: Using it as a rigid boundary marker to keep people out. 

• We have guarded it: Treating it like a VIP bouncer standing at the door of eternity, checking theological IDs. 

• We have tested it: Turning it into a harsh litmus test for salvation, deciding who is in the club and who gets cast out into the cold. 

• We have systematized it: Treating it like a multiple-choice exam, acting as if intellectual agreement with a specific set of doctrines is what saves you. 

• We have gated it: Using it to build a gated community of faith, ignoring the fact that Jesus spent his entire ministry tearing down gates and eating with the people on the outside. 

When we read it that way, we shrink God. We take the Creator of the cosmos and reduce the Divine to a narrow, exclusionary formula. 

But progressive theological exegesis shows us a vastly different picture. The Way is not an intellectual assent to a narrow set of doctrines. The Way is a lived, breathing awareness of God’s presence in every single aspect of life. 

The theologian, Marcus Borg, captured this perfectly when he noted, “Jesus did not come to start a new religion, but to teach a new way of being.” The Way is not an intellectual assent to a narrow set of doctrines. The Way is a lived, breathing awareness of God’s presence in every single aspect of life. 

This is about Christ consciousness. It is the profound understanding that the Divine is not confined to one body, one church, or one specific tradition. It is a reality available to every single being in all of creation. Christ’s invitation is to open our eyes and realize that the Way is not a closed door. It is a wide, gracious, spacious house with many rooms. 

Walking the Way is a lot like playing a great jazz standard with a live band. You cannot just lock your eyes on a rigid piece of sheet music and play it like a machine. You have to know the underlying chord progression so intimately that you can listen to the musicians around you, adapt to the rhythm of the room, and improvise in the moment. The Way is not a rigid map. It is a dynamic relationship. 

Holy Dissatisfaction 

Then Philip jumps into the conversation. He pleads with Jesus, “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” 

Philip just wants to be satisfied. He wants a quick fix. But Jesus looks at him with gentle incredulity. Because Jesus did not come to give us simple satisfaction. Jesus came to give us holy dissatisfaction. 

Jesus was intensely dissatisfied with systems that oppressed the poor, excluded the sick, and silenced the marginalized. He knocked over the tables of capitalistic injustice and pulled the children right into the center of the room. Who could stay satisfied with the state of the world when following a Messiah like that? 

As progressive thinker Nadia Bolz-Weber so bluntly puts it, “God’s grace is not about God’s lowered standards. It is about God’s presence with us in the mess.” Jesus is calling Philip, and all of us, into a state of Tikkun Olam. That is the beautiful Hebrew concept that literally means “to repair the world”. It is rooted in a holy dissatisfaction with our fractured world and a deep belief that human action is essential to fix it. 

The Promise of Greater Works 

This brings us to the absolute climax of the passage. Jesus looks at his friends and offers a staggering, beautiful promise. He says, “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.” 

Take a breath and let that sink in. Someone is going to do greater things than the Holiest One to ever walk this earth. And who is that someone? That someone is you. 

• When you actively listen to a neighbor in pain, you are doing a great work. 

• When you stand up and advocate for justice, you are doing a great work. 

• When you safely check on a neighbor after the hurricane passes, feed a family, or bring your tithe to this church, you are doing a great work. 

The treasure of God’s love was never meant to be stored away in a vault. It was meant to be multiplied in the world. 

This is the exact beating heart of our stewardship campaign. We are aligning our actions with our confession of Christ. We are letting our giving reflect our deepest, most profound values.  

We are called to repair what is ruined.  

We are called to mend what is mangled.  

We are called to heal what is hurting. 

So let us step away from the anxiety of the map. Let us stop demanding the exact coordinates. Let us trust the deep, abiding rhythm of the Spirit. Whether we are facing the storms of our personal lives or weathering the literal storms on our shores, let us place our hearts in God’s hands, trusting that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. 

Let’s do the greater works. Let’s repair the world. And let’s give until it feels good. For there our hearts will be.