The Way

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

April 20, 2008

Text: John 14: 1-14

In the Gospel of John, chapters 14-17 comprise a long good-bye. Jesus is preparing his inner circle of disciples for life without his flesh and blood presence. He has gathered them up for that last supper---the one in which he has washed their feet (the best sacrament of all?) and told them to do the same from then on. Having done the sacrament, he shares the word.

This is such a rich text, we need at least three hours sitting together around a table to discuss and pray through the meaning. This not being possible, I want to lift up for you what I consider to be the heart of this passage, in hopes that you will carry this conversation forward yourself and with your friends.

TROUBLED HEARTS

Troubled hearts is a subject we all know something about. This is especially true when it comes to grieving---especially grieving over the departure or death of one who has been blessed us. Who will we be and what will we do when he or she is no longer here? Identity is all tied up in relationships.

This was what Jesus knew about his most intimate friends, the disciples. They rebelled against the whole crucifixion prediction. They would surely be treated much the same way as he was. They would scatter before he died and only come back together reluctantly as they got their minds and hearts around the resurrection.

So Jesus tells them not to let- not to allow- their hearts to be troubled!

 He is going to the Father, and there will be plenty of room for them when they arrive. “Resting places,” is the way Raymond Brown translates it. (The Gospel of John) Jesus, who was in the beginning with God, will be returning to God. Jesus will prepare a place for the disciples, a place of everlasting community with him. Not only that, he himself will come again and take them home.

Jesus uses common language to point to eternal realities. Travelers in Palestine knew what it was like to need a place to rest and to find shelter, a place called home. It was life itself. So it will be for those who are Jesus’ disciples, in ways beyond our comprehension. When we are friends of Jesus, our friendship lasts forever, beyond this earthly existence. And being with Jesus and the friends of Jesus will be like a party more than a committee meeting.

I stop there myself. I do not criticize those who go on to speak of streets of gold, etc., so long as they acknowledge they are using our language to point to, not to describe, the indescribable.

There was a time in my life when I rebelled against all of the talk of heavenly habitations. I was convinced that we ought not to be thinking about the next world when there was so much work to be done in this one. I had seen too many Christians who cared not much about making the world more like heaven, so concerned they were  for “going” there themselves someday.  

Wiser by a few years, I have been taught by other faithful disciples that hope for eternal life actually can give courage precisely for the work of relieving needless human suffering here and now. It is  possible that believing that we work for things that outlast us---and that we cannot see the ending of----- that keeps us going in the struggles for peace and justice, for the new earth which God will bring to pass some day.
 
Homer Henderson, a pastor in California in the 1980s, writes that he remarked one day to Carlyle Marney that the old gospel hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” was just another security blanket. Marney replied, “That’s so, unless you like to be embraced.” (Word and Witness, May 17, 1987) That we can be sheltered under God’s care, embraced by God’s love, in this world and the next, comforts and encourages us. I like to think that the earliest disciples experienced both of these gifts as they followed Jesus from place to place.

THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE

How do we get to the “place” where Jesus is going? Phillip asks our question for us. Jesus replies, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

We are as skeptical as Pilate when he asked of Jesus, “What is truth?”(John 18:38) “For us, statements are true or false; people may have truth or not; but how can someone be truth…?”  Jesus as portrayed in John’s gospel account wants us to be sure that  “in Him the true, the genuine, the ultimate reality is present; or, in other words, that God is present, unveiled, undistorted, in his infinite depth, in his unapproachable mystery.” (Paul Tillich, “What is Truth?” in The New Being, page 69)

I can tell to you all day long that that Jesus is the way to God and you may or may not believe this to be true. For Jesus as the way to God is a truth experienced or lived in, more than an argument from reason and external evidence. The proof of the pudding is in the pudding, as the old saying goes.

The proof of Jesus being the way to God is revealed as we meet Jesus through scripture, music, sacraments and in a thousand other ways. We believe when we find ourselves being loved with a love which is “utterly universal and all-embracing,” pure and unbounded---a love which completes us---incarnated in the historical Jesus. (Schubert Ogden, The Reality of God, page 104)  In the words of the Shaker hymn, a love which “brings us round to the place we ought to be.” Then Jesus becomes for us the way to the only God there truly is, and we find a qualitatively different life.

Do we know that Jesus is the way?  Well, not like we know other things. For we live by faith, not by knowledge. We are sure that this is truly the revelation of God because we have experienced this to be so and we believe it is a gift, not only to us, but to all others whom God loves.

And so our challenge, our calling is to abide in Christ Jesus and to follow him in the way.

PLURALISM

But how can we say that Jesus is the only way to God--- especially since we live side by side with people of other faiths---or none at all--- who are good and loving, often more so  than we are?

More than ever, I believe we need to answer this question as best we can, guided by the “mind of Christ.” (First Corinthians 2:16)  This is a mindset deeply and resolutely fixed on God as revealed in Jesus, and yet merciful and hospitable to people who do not yet believe in this God.

As Christians, we must be honest about our identity and yet aware that we cannot know others as God does. We must proclaim Jesus as the way to God “to whoever is willing to listen, while leaving the faith and fate of those who have never heard the gospel to the God who is equal to the problem.” (John Sloyan, John: Interpretation Commentaries, pages 178-180)
 
To say it differently: “As to the fate of non-Christians, as well as those who lived before Christ, the only Christian thing to say is that that is in the hands of God; or, to put it [differently], God can deal with that.” (Robert Bellah, “At Home and Not at Home,” in Christian Century, April 19, 1995, pages 423-428)

As well, we must be honest to say that the Church has not exactly been a sterling witness to Jesus through the centuries. We cannot in good conscience make the claim that, unless Jesus reaches people through us, they cannot be reached. God is not bound to work only through our sanctioned channels.

We work for Jesus; Jesus does not work for us. We do not have an exclusive franchise on the Risen Crucified One. Yes, we believe that the only real God is revealed in this Jesus, a Jewish man who lived and taught and healed people and forgave sinners, was executed and was raised by God from death, and now lives with God. This is the scandal of particularity.  But God works wherever God chooses to bring others to himself through the same Word which became flesh and dwelt among us. (See Schubert Ogden in work cited)

FRUITS

We have our own work to do. We are a sign people; we point to Jesus Christ and invite whosoever will to come to God through him---by believing in him and following him in daily living and dying. We are called do this with all humility and yet with all boldness, but never with arrogance. The world will not be persuaded that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life by force or coercion or manipulation---or by our bragging about how right or transformed we are. Other sheep that are not yet in the fold will be persuaded more by our courage and our persistence in words and deeds of justice and mercy.  Salvation is God’s work and we are blessed to be simple witnesses whom God can use as God sees fit.
 
 I believe that this means that we do not need to be afraid of people of other religions. We may learn from them as well. We may find common ground to minister to the poor and to other suffering people. And we can work together with them not because we think that all religions are equally true. I am not even sure how we would go about making such a claim. (How many of us can claim that we have studied other religions in any depth at all?)

No, we stand our ground in our conviction, our faith, that “all we ever truly wanted or needed to know about God has been lived out in our own human history” in Jesus of Nazareth. Respectful dialogue with persons of other religions begins with honesty as well as openness to new truth.

Jesus tells us that, if we believe in him, we will do the works that he did. In fact, we will do greater works than he has done! And we will not be alone. We will be held together by the Holy Spirit as we ask for help. And when we ask in his name, Jesus says, he will do whatever you ask.

How about some explanation, Jesus!

To pray in the name of someone is to pray with the hopes and dreams of that one in mind. And it is the will of God that all people should hear of his love which is generous beyond measure. They will know we are followers of The Way through our love----our love for God, for each other, and a love which reaches out from here to the ends of the earth.

I ask myself how I know that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life for me. The only evidence that I can bring forward is the fact that I keep coming back to be taught by Jesus in the Bible. I am always beginning again to discover what it means to believe that he is the way, the truth and the life. I come back as someone parched looks for water, hungry and looking for food, lonely and looking for a friend, lost and looking for a savior, bewildered and looking for guidance, cynical and looking for hope. And I strive to remember that this God loves all other creatures and wants to bring all into his life-giving family.

Has Jesus become for you the way, the truth and the life? Have you come to the Father through him?

Do you believe that God has prepared a place for you, too, in his “home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens?” (Second Corinthians 5:7)
Will you participate in the way, truth and life that is Jesus?

 “Come sinners to the gospel feast. Let every one be Jesus’ guest. Ye need not one be left behind, for God has bid all humankind.”

Sources I recommend on this subject:
Schubert Ogden, Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many?, 1992.

Douglas John Hall, Why Christian? For Those on the Edge of Faith, 1998.

Huston Smith, The Way Things Are, 2003.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, 1989.

Leander E. Keck, The Church Confident: Christianity Can Repent, but It Must Not Whimper, 1993.