“The Way,” Jeff Wright, May 18, 2014
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https://heartoftherockies.org/wp-content/uploads/_file_mp3/469318-966481be.mp3“The Way”
A sermon preached at
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)
Fort Collins, Colorado
May 18, 2014
Jeff Wright
In this scripture passage lies what is in my judgment the most extraordinary story there is. The teller of the story is the person we call John, and the story simply is this:
Once upon a time, not in a fairy tale sense, but once upon God’s time, there was a man in the little country of Israel from the town of Nazareth named Jesus. Early in his adult life, those who knew him, or at least many of those who knew him, began to see he was more than the son of Mary, more than the son of Joseph, more than a mere carpenter. There was something about him that made them think “God.” His character, his words, his work, what he did, what he said, the way he behaved, made them believe that when they were in his presence they were in the presence of God.
Fred Craddock, The Cherry Log Sermons
Texts: Acts 7:54-60 & John 14:1-10
John records here what had to have been one of the most tender moments between Jesus and his disciples. It’s at the supper, on the eve of his crucifixion. Jesus speaks of his impending betrayal and death. “My soul is troubled,” Jesus tells them. “But don’t let your hearts be troubled.” An unrealistic expectation. Jesus has told his friends that he’s going away. They respond like children when their parents are leaving. “Where are you going? How long will you be gone? Who’ll take care of us?” Jesus speaks to assure them. “Trust God,” he says, “trust me. I’m going to prepare a place for you. I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you will be also.”
No wonder this passage is often read at funerals. Jesus assures us that we’re in his circle of concern, that there’s a place in God’s heart for our loved ones, for us too. “You know where I’m going,” Jesus tells his disciples. Thomas breaks the mood. He says, “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” To which Jesus responds, “I’m the way, Thomas. The way, the truth and the life. Me.”
Then Jesus goes on to say, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” I wish Jesus hadn’t said this. I believe it, that Jesus unlocks life’s deepest mysteries, that the experience of salvation – wholeness in this life and the next – comes through Jesus, by way of Jesus’ way in the world, Jesus’ truth, Jesus’ life.
But I wish that Jesus hadn’t said it this way or that John hadn’t included it in his Gospel. Because this one phrase – “no one comes to the Father except through me” – has been plucked up and quoted out of the context of John’s Gospel and twisted in its meaning to be used more than almost any other verse in the Bible to give people the impression that ours is the God of a tiny band of the pure and devoted, the doctrinally correct who win a place in God’s presence by believing and saying all the right things, and who in turn believe that they have been empowered to speak definitively on God’s behalf about the nature of God and the mystery of eternity – to the effect that life’s deepest blessings and heaven at the end are to be enjoyed by only a few. It’s such a misunderstanding, because of all four Gospels John’s presents Jesus’ life and love and purpose as the most inclusive and all-encompassing.
Take the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, recorded early on in John’s Gospel (3:1-21). Nicodemus is a member of the ruling party who comes to Jesus in the dark of night. Jesus explains that God isn’t mad at the world. Jesus tells Nicodemus that God loves the world. That God so loves the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him won’t parish but have life to the fullest. Then Jesus goes an enormous step further. He tells Nicodemus that God has sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. The world, Jesus says. Kosmos is the Greek word John uses here: the whole of the created order. I think John wanted to get this claim of exclusivity – God’s in it for just a few – and this “condemnation thing” – God’s ready to damn the rest to hell – I think John wanted to get this false understanding of God out of the way early in his Gospel. But it’s hard to shed this image of God. This is what so many have been told to expect: blessings for the few; judgment for the rest.
It’s so counter to the stories in John’s Gospel. You remember when the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus for his condemnation. He refused to condemn; instead, by way of forgiveness and grace Jesus set the woman free to walk a different way in her life. Later, when Jesus healed the man who had been blind from birth, you may recall that the community was convinced the man’s blindness was punishment for his parents’ sin. Jesus had to refute that. Still later, when Jesus was speaking to a crowd (12:44-50), he explained how he had come to bring light into a dark world, so that folks wouldn’t have to remain in the dark. He said, “I don’t judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.”
I don’t know how much more clearly Jesus could have put it. This is the essence of the Christian faith: God loves the world. God has forgiven the world. God opens up a new way of being in the world. We don’t have to go around comparing ourselves to others, judging them – they’re just as broken and loved as we are. We don’t have to go around beating ourselves up, feeling sorry for the life we have lived, bound by the choices we have made. We’re set free and put upon a new path, a new way, the way of Jesus.
“Listen,” Jesus says, “I’m not speaking for myself. I’m speaking for God.” It’s in the twelfth chapter. Jesus says, “Whoever sees me sees the One who has sent me.” It’s shocking when we think about it. Jesus was accused of blasphemy when he said it. He says it again here in the verses that follow immediately after the text we read this morning: “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on, you do know him and you have seen him.” Philip doesn’t get it. How could he? He takes up the conversation. “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Isn’t this what we all want? Just show us God and then we’ll know. Jesus says, in effect, you can read this for yourself, “Philip, have I been with you all this time, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’”
Wow. A lot of us have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how Jesus fits into our understanding of who God is – all the things that people have told us about who God is and how God operates, what we’ve read in the Bible, especially the Old Testament. But Jesus is telling his disciples, “Don’t try to fit me into your understanding of who God is. Fit God into your understanding, your experience of who I am.” The Apostle Paul got it. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul would write, “In [Jesus] was pleased to dwell the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9).” Quaker scholar Elton Trueblood put it like this: “The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.”
Then Jesus says this – which has everything to do with what it means for Jesus to have said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” he says. “The one who believes in me [meaning the one who puts his or her trust in me] will also do the works that I do (14:12).” I hope you’ll get out your Bible this week and read these verses in the 14th chapter; read them in the context of the entire conversation Jesus has with his disciples; in the context of the whole of John’s Gospel. Because when Jesus talks here about his being the only way through to God, he points to his words and his works: the things he’s said; the things he’s done; the way he’s lived his life.
…His having turned water into wine so that the wedding reception can go on. His having embraced the Samaritan woman at the well – an outsider, marginalized. His having fed 5,000 hungry seekers without checking their credentials. His stooping as the servant, at the outset of this conversation with his disciples, to wash their feet.
I think I’ve told you – you may already have known: one of the earliest names given to our faith is The Way. It’s in the Book of Acts. Christians were called followers of the Way. For example, when Paul was still “breathing threats and murder against the disciples,” he went to the high priest in Jerusalem and asked for letters of recommendation to the synagogues in Damascus so, as it’s written in Acts (9:2), he could track down those “who belonged to the Way.” Later (Acts 18:26), when Paul was converted, he met with Priscilla and Aquila who, we’re told, “explained the Way of God to him more accurately.” In Ephesus, Luke tells us in his history that a riot broke out concerning what Luke describes as “no little disturbance… concerning the Way.” It’s a beautiful description of faith: Christianity as the Way to God, the way of Jesus.
It paints such a different picture of the Creator of the Universe from the one so many people have in mind when they hear of a God who is exclusive and judgmental, when they meet some of Jesus’ followers who say – in a tone of voice that suggests it’s a threat not a promise, not a gift – “No one comes to the Father except through Jesus.”
Awhile back, in one of Garrison Keillor’s updates from Lake Wobegon (Prairie Home Companion, National Public Radio, 4/28/07), he told how the ushering team from the First Evangelical Lutheran Church had just returned from the national ushering competition held each year in Houston. The team came in First Runners-up. It was a tough competition. It seems that most of the ushering teams around the country had gone to a zone coverage in their churches. But on Sunday mornings the Lake Wobegon Lutherans still ran a 4-3-2 pattern. Keillor said that the team had the best time in the competition, but that on the way down to Houston they had eaten a lot of fatty foods. In turn, during competition – everybody heard it – one of the ushers caused the team to lose points on what the judges called “decorum.” That lost them the trophy.
The team has a name. They call themselves the Herdsmen. They may be called the Herdsmen, but Lutheran theology understands better than many others that when it comes to ushering, like faith, people can’t be herded. Keillor pointed to some of the rules of competition. Pushing people as you escort them to their seats on Sunday is a flagrant violation. Grabbing a guest by the arm to direct them gets a flag for holding.
We know better, too. People can’t be herded. They can only be led. That’s why we don’t resort to scolding, threats, sermonizing and long harangues – this one excluded, of course. We know that believing comes after belonging, after hanging around Jesus awhile. This is what John is telling us in his Gospel. Hang around Jesus and you’ll find yourself hanging around God. Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright puts it like this: “Start with Jesus and God will come running down the road to meet you, deeply attractive, deeply healing and deeply transforming in his embrace.”