Lost in the Woods

Sermon — May 3, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

Back in high school, when I ran cross-country and track, I’d often find myself lost with my friends somewhere in the Middlesex Fells. There were a few kids on the team who lived near the woods, and they could usually find their way around. Personally, I have a terrible sense of direction, and so it wasn’t that uncommon for me to get turned around, and come out half a mile further down South Border Road than I thought we’d gone, and to have to slowly wind my way back to the high school from Medford.

My friends and I often ended up on detours, as a result, but we were never really that lost. After all, all the trails were marked. As long as I kept looking for the next patch of paint on a rock or the next reflective marker up on a tree, I knew that eventually we’d end up… somewhere, even if it wasn’t exactly where I was expecting. And in the worst case, we could always turn around, and follow the trail all the way back to where we began.

I suspect Jesus’ disciples often felt a little lost as well, not least during the conversation we heard in today’s Gospel. In this story, Jesus is speaking with his disciples at the Last Supper and he says to them, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14:4) As usual, they have no idea what he’s talking about. So Thomas says to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” Now if they’d thought about it for a minute, they could probably have figured it out. Jesus is sitting there saying things like, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” He’s going there to prepare a place for them, he says, as he prepares for his death; later, he says, he’ll come and bring them to himself. Surely even the disciples could’ve guessed that his “Father’s house” is some kind of heavenly reality, not a big old place on Monument Square.

But that only makes Thomas’s question more urgent. Jesus is going to return to God, and he wants us to follow him. And even if we know, in theory, where Jesus has gone, people of faith in every time and place have continued to ask Thomas’s question, because it’s as good a question as ever. We, too, want to draw closer to God; but “how can we know the way?”

And Jesus answers, mysteriously enough: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (14:6) And this is kind of an odd thing to say. It’s not just that Jesus plans out the trail through the woods, and leaves the markers for us to follow. It’s as if Jesus himself is the path along which we travel toward God. And that sounds strange, but in fact, it’s what Jesus has been saying all along. He hasn’t only been teaching them about the way of love that leads toward God. He’s been telling them that even when he’s gone, they will encounter him along the way.

Just moments before the conversation we heard today, Jesus told his disciples that he was giving them a new commandment: that they love one another, just as he loved them; and then he knelt down on the ground to wash their feet, teaching and modeling a serving kind of love. But he’s also told them that when they give food to someone who’s hungry, or water to someone who thirsts; when they see strangers and welcome them, or people who needs clothes and they clothe them; when they visit people who are sick or in prison, that they are doing these things to him, for “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,” Jesus says, “you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:37-40)

The markers on the way of Jesus aren’t paint on a rock, and they aren’t a set of correct beliefs. The markers on the way of Jesus are acts of self-giving love. And Jesus isn’t only the trailblazer who teaches us how to follow that path. He tells us that he becomes present, in a unique way, in those for whom we care. And when we carry out those acts of love—when we feed someone who’s hungry, or give water to quench someone’s thirst; when we drop off clothes for the Clothes Closet or wake up at midnight with a sick child or visit a friend who’s been in prison—then we encounter Jesus face to face, and we once again find ourselves walking on the way that leads toward God.

This means that we are never really lost on our journey toward God. Because whenever we’re not sure which way to turn, we can always look for the next act of love we can perform, and that small act will put us back on the trail toward the spacious house of God, a place with “many dwelling places,” inhabited by people who’ve come there along very different road, but all following the same Way.

We have a baptism this morning, and the baptismal vows we’ll all make provide their own trail markers for the way of love. We make promises to continue in the breaking of the bread, and in prayer; to persevere in resisting evil, and to seek and serve Christ in all people. We promise to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to respect the dignity of every human being.

But when I ask you to make these vows—“Will you this? Will you that? Will you the other thing?”—we won’t answer “I will.” We’ll answer, “I will, with God’s help.” Because it turns out that the long road toward God that begins at baptism doesn’t rely on us, with our poor senses of direction, to find the way. It doesn’t assume that we’ll always see those trail markers and stick to the path along the way. God assumes that we’ll need help, that we are lost without it. And so Jesus doesn’t just give them the directions to his “Father’s house,” and then tell them he’ll meet them there. Jesus tells the disciples first, I’m going to go and get your room ready, and then, “I will come again and will take you for myself.”

It’s as if we’re somewhere in the woods, trying to find our way back to the road, when suddenly we see the captain of the team. (That’s Jesus!) He’s gone off ahead to scout out the path, and comes running back up the trail with incredible good news: “Hey! I found the way out.” Maps and signs and trail markers are great, but nothing beats having someone who knows the way come and lead you out.

So Jack’s baptism today marks an important beginning on his journey toward God. But Jack won’t remember this day, or the vows made on his behalf. That’s why he has parents and godparents, family and friends here. That’s why baptism isn’t a private service, but part of the whole church’s worship. None of us who have been baptized travel this way alone. We travel together. We listen to the stories and traditions of our faith, which remind us where people have found God in ages past. We rely on the people around us to share the markers that they see along the trail. We look for Jesus, who tells us that he will come and take us to himself, to lead us along the way to God. And even if we don’t know where we’re going, let alone the way there, we know where he has told us he’ll be found: in the simple acts of care in which we truly love our neighbors as ourselves.