Do you know where you’re going to?

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Fifth Sunday of Easter + Sunday, May 3, 2026

It’s a long goodbye. If you have a Bible with Jesus’ words in red, he speaks for four chapters about his going away. In John’s gospel it is called Jesus’ “farewell discourse.” The disciples are heartbroken and anxious. Their future uncertain.

Jesus tells them that they know the way to the place he is going. Befuddled Thomas says what everyone is thinking. Lord, we have no idea where you are going. How can we possibly know the way?

A friend of mine retired from ministry a year ago. The gospel for her last Sunday was several verses ahead of ours today. She got a loud chuckle when she quoted Jesus: where I am going, you cannot come. She was looking forward to gardening and traveling!

Often when I am working on a sermon, songs come to mind. Sometimes songs from my teen-age years when I was listening to the radio. What came me to this week is this Diana Ross song:

Do you know where you're going to?
Do you like the things that life is showing you?
Where are you going to?
Do you know?

Do you know where you will go after you die? For some, Christianity is about making sure you are going to go to the right place. Up or down. Good or bad. Heaven or hell. In fact, many know today’s gospel from its wide use at funerals. Jesus goes to prepare a place for us in the afterlife. And Jesus is the only way to get there. He is the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father, except through him. A verse used by some Christians to declare with certainty who will be saved for the heavenly mansions and who will not.

Jesus says do not let your hearts be troubled. And let me say that this interpretation is deeply troubling for me and many others. It is spouted out of context and rather than providing comfort, as Jesus does in these chapters, it creates fear and division. And it gives the faith we love a bad name in the eyes of many.

There are plenty of reasons to be troubled these days. It is hard to imagine how we get out of the mess we are in. It is challenging to see how things could turn around. We live in troubling times. In other words we are in trouble. Now the song that comes to me is from The Music Man. It has nothing to do with anything in this sermon, other than for a moment of levity. I can’t resist quoting it:

Trouble, oh we got trouble,

Right here in River City!

With a capital "T"

That rhymes with "P"

And that stands for Pool. 

When you are troubled, how can you know the way? Do you know where you’re going to?

If today’s gospel isn’t about salvation or the afterlife, or getting to heaven, what exactly do we make of it?

Thomas asks Jesus for a roadmap. We would love to ask Jesus for the final destination that we could then put in GPS. Give us a blueprint. Give us a strategic plan. Give us a map. Give us the path forward. Give us twelve steps to our church’s future. And Philip asks for proof. Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied. Let us know we will be okay. Let us know we will not be left alone. Please God, let us know where we are going.

The disciples are about to enter a liminal time of letting go of the past while yet not knowing the future. This in-between reality is scary but also Spirit-filled.

The spiritual writer Henri Nouwen spent time with a pair of German trapeze artist brothers. One of the brothers talked about the time you are in the air with words that sound eerily spiritual to me. “The secret” he said, “is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me to safety . . . A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.”

When the disciples want to know the way, Jesus assures them: you already know the Way we have been traveling. You already know the Truth we have been learning together. You already know the Life we have been living in community. I will not leave you. In fact, I go away that the Spirit may come. It is about intimacy and community. You abide in me. I abide in you.

One author described Jesus going way this way. It is like a tablet dissolving in water. The tablet is gone but its presence pervades the water entirely.

Where are we going? What is the final destination? We get peeks and guesses as we journey in faith. Certainly God is the final destination, both throughout our lives and at the end. To say that there are many dwelling places is to say that God is roomy, to quote one author. There is room for your troubled hearts, your doubts and fears, your questions and concerns. I go to prepare a place for you. You have a place—a home in the heart of God. A home at this table. A home in this community.

I wish I could you a roadmap to where you are going. I wish I knew for sure where I am going. Yet what we get is life. Life that is messy, evolving, and confusing. And life that is full, rich, and grace-filled.

Other words came to this past week. I close with words of spiritual writer Thomas Merton in a well-known prayer.

I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself
and the fact that I think I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you . . .
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though.
I may seem to be lost in and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear for you are always with me
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen.