Sermon by Father Alistair So-Schoos
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In today’s Gospel according to Saint John the Evangelist, our Lord speaks with unmistakable clarity: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” These are not poetic sentiments, nor are they general religious ideas meant to inspire. They are precise and demanding claims about who Christ is, and therefore about how we are to understand the whole of the Christian life.
Our Lord does not say that he will show us a way, as one teacher among many. He says that he is the way. He does not merely speak truth; he is the truth. He does not simply offer life; he is the life. And he concludes, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” In other words, the entire movement of salvation—from God to us and from us to God—is located in the person of Jesus Christ.
This is the heart of the Church’s teaching, and it is a point strongly emphasized within the tradition renewed by the Oxford Movement. The great Anglican divines such as John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey insisted that Christianity cannot be reduced to moral instruction or private religious feeling. It is, fundamentally, the extension of the Incarnation through time.
That is to say: the same Christ who took flesh of the Virgin Mary continues to make himself known and present in his Body, the Church. The Incarnation is not an isolated event of the past; it is the pattern of how God continues to act. The invisible grace of God is made known through visible, tangible means.
This is why the sacraments are not secondary or optional. They are the ordinary means by which Christ gives himself to his people.
When we gather at the altar for the Holy Eucharist, we are not simply remembering a past event. We are brought into the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. We receive his Body and Blood. We are united to him and, in him, to one another. The Eucharist is the Church’s participation in the life of Christ—his self-offering, his obedience, his risen life.
And so when Christ says, “I am the way,” we must understand that this way is not abstract. It is a concrete participation in his life, given to us sacramentally.
Saint Peter makes this clear in today’s epistle. You are “living stones,” he says, “being built into a spiritual house.” This is not merely an image of encouragement; it is a statement about the nature of the Church. The Church is not a collection of individuals who happen to share beliefs. It is a structure—ordered, visible, sacramental—built upon Christ as the cornerstone.
Each of you, by baptism, has been incorporated into that structure. Each of you has a place within it. And together, you are formed into a dwelling place for God.
That brings us to this particular moment in the life of Good Shepherd.
You have called a new priest-in-charge. Congratulations! That is an important and significant development, but it must be understood properly within the theology of the Church.
The priest is not simply a leader in the secular sense. The priest’s role is to serve as a visible sign of Christ’s own ministry—especially in preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments. In the Eucharist, in absolution, in blessing, the priest acts in persona Christi, so that Christ’s own action is made present among his people.
At the same time, the priest does not stand apart from the Body. The priest serves within the Body, for the sake of the Body. As Saint Peter reminds us, the whole Church shares in Christ’s priesthood: “a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” The ordained ministry exists to build up and order that common life, not to replace it.
So this is not simply a transition in leadership. It is an opportunity for renewal in the shared life of grace.
And that renewal depends not on strategy or preference, but on fidelity to what has been given.
It depends, first, on your commitment to the worship of God. The Church is most fully itself when it gathers around the altar. The regular, reverent celebration of the Eucharist is not one activity among many; it is the center from which everything else flows.
It depends, second, on your attentiveness to Holy Scripture. In the Gospel, Christ speaks so that his disciples may know the Father. That same voice continues to speak in the Scriptures, read and proclaimed within the Church. To neglect that Word is to lose our orientation; to attend to it is to be formed in truth.
It depends, third, on the ordering of your life together in charity. The grace we receive in the sacraments must be reflected in the way we live with one another. Patience, forgiveness, humility, and mutual care—these are not optional virtues. They are the necessary signs that we are, in fact, living as members of Christ’s Body.
The witness of Saint Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles places all of this in its proper perspective. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, bears witness to Christ even to the point of death. His vision of the risen Lord sustains him, and his final words echo those of Christ himself: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
This is what it means to belong to Christ—to be so united to him that his life becomes visible in ours, even under pressure, even in suffering.
That is the end toward which all our worship, all our doctrine, all our common life is directed: union with Christ.
And that union is not something we create. It is something we receive—again and again—in the life of the Church.
So as you move forward in this new season, the question is not simply what you will do or what direction you will take. The deeper question is whether you will remain rooted in Christ, who is already given to you.
Will you come faithfully to the altar?
Will you receive the sacraments with reverence and expectation?
Will you shape your life together according to the charity that flows from Christ’s own self-giving?
If you do, then the way will not be uncertain—because Christ himself will be your way.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”
That is not only the Church’s teaching. It is the foundation of your life together, now and always.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2026