The Way
John 14:1-14
April 20, 2008 Pastor Kathie Rhyne
Congregational Church of Topsfield

I recently came across an article in the magazine, World Vision, in which Tony Campolo tells of taking an airplane from California to Philadelphia one stormy night. It was late, but when the man in the next seat learned that Campolo was a Christian, he wanted to talk. "I believe that going to heaven is like going to Philadelphia," the man said. "You can get there by airplane, by train, by bus, by automobile. There are many ways to get to Philadelphia." There are many ways to get to Philadelphia, Campolo writes: "As we started descending into Philadelphia, the place was fogged in. The wind was blowing, the rain was beating on the plane, and everyone looked nervous and tight. As we were circling in the fog, I turned to the theological expert on my right. "I'm certainly glad the pilot doesn't agree with your theology," I said.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"The people in the control booth are giving instructions to the pilot: 'Coming north by northwest, three degrees, you're on beam, you're on beam, don't deviate from beam.' I'm glad the pilot's not saying, "There are many ways into the airport. There are many approaches we can take." I'm glad he is saying, "There's only one way we can land this plane, and I'm going to stay with it." As we look at our scripture text this morning, it appears to be saying there's only one way to God, and that is through Jesus Christ.
Just out of curiosity, how many of you have heard this text used as proof that only Christians will go to heaven? It is a powerful text made even more compelling because Jesus speaks these words Himself. Well, I have a confession to make. When I was in seminary, I spent a lot of time reflecting on this scripture passage and its close cousin, John 3:16 which reads: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." I would like to share with you this morning my perspective on our passage for today, focusing particularly on verse 6, "Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." As we walk together this morning, trying to interpret these important words from Jesus, we need to know that we have plenty of company over the centuries of Christian history. There have many wise biblical scholars who have disagreed vehemently on the interpretation of this particular verse. In my preparation for today's sermon, I came across an argument proposed by Anne Robertson at a lecture in this area two weeks ago. Anne brought to me an inspirational moment of clarity for my ten year wrestling with this passage. She writes, "The fourteenth chapter of John is not exactly crystal clear. It's pretty mystical stuff, which is why we turn to it at mysterious times like funerals. What is clear in this chapter and in the surrounding ones is that Jesus, God and the disciples all have overlapping identities. In verse 20 we find, "On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." Jesus spends most of the chapter re-iterating what John said in his prologue about the Word becoming flesh. "Show us the Father," says Phillip. "Oy veh" says Jesus. "Have I been with you all this time, Phillip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, "Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?"
A couple of chapters earlier in 12:44-45 Jesus gets so frustrated at what people are beginning to mean by "believing in him" that he doesn't just speak, but he cries out, "Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me."
Jesus is not a new deity. He's the same God they have always known: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And He's there to proclaim that the God who walked with Adam in the cool of the evening is on earth walking with them still, and has now made a way to walk not simply WITH us but IN us, so that "I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." So, if believing in Jesus is simply another way of approaching belief in Yahweh, then the Jews are already included and the text is expanded.
Later in John, Chapter 17, as Jesus prays for his disciples, he extends that thinking to all who come later. Verse 20 reads: "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word." Now reference back to Chapter 12 where Jesus explains what it means to believe in Him-namely, that it means to believe in God. He goes on, "that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me."
Now all of that is hardly exclusive. In fact, it's such inclusive language that it led later Gnostics to identify all of us as being God. And, of course, the church didn't want to be quite that inclusive, so the Gnostics got condemned as heretics. Personally, I think most, if not all the "heretics" truly had a point."
Anne Robertson goes on to say, "Anyway, my fundamentalist, literalist brain sat with that mess for quite awhile. Believing in Jesus, according to Jesus Himself, didn't really have to do with Him at all. It was about believing in God. And for those who believed in God, there was some sort of mystical unity that put us all together…God, Jesus, us, them…everybody. If you knew God, you knew Jesus and vice versa, even if one or the other was traveling incognito. Those thoughts were confusing to me, but somehow it sat well.
It seemed right-because it had always seemed wrong that God would throw some people out just because they had some doctrine or other messed up. In saying the He was the "way" Jesus seemed to be throwing doctrines out the window. To paraphrase, "No, Thomas, there's not some specific belief or practice that is going to get you where I'm going. Faith is about a "who" not a "what," and that "who" is God, who happens to be embodied in me at the moment, but will soon be embodied in you, too. You will know the way because pretty soon you will be the way yourself. And I will be in the Father, and you in me, and I in you."
During my seminary course on the Gospels, I wrote a paper on a similar scripture text which is often posted on billboards around the country, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." Jesus speaks these memorable words as He is engaged in a powerful dialogue with Nicodemus who really is struggling as a partial believer. By never clearly showing that Nicodemus has achieved full belief, the Gospel's author utilizes Nicodemus as an example of partial believers who are unwilling to make the full commitment to Jesus Christ by publicly declaring their faith, consistently performing good deeds, and living "in the light". In John 3:16 -21, the author makes the consequences of this response to Jesus Christ abundantly clear: those who do not believe in the Son of God are condemned and will perish. In this passage, there is no ambiguity on what is required to be a Christian believer.
The need for this stark clarity clearly originated from the environment in which John's Gospel was composed. The confession of Jesus as the Messiah brought Christians into growing tension with the authorities of the Jewish community. As scripture readers, we learn of the Jewish Christian believers' rejection from the synagogues that had been their community (John 9:22) and their perspective that they were oppressed (John 15:18; 15:20b, 16:2b). This environment birthed the need for dualism which enabled the Christian community to create unity within the group, clarify boundaries between Christian believers and other groups within the community they lived, and set up a clear, alternative vision to existing societal norms.
We live in a similar environment today. Instead of a Jewish community pulling at us to not accept Jesus as the Son of God, we have here in the United States a combination of secular and pluralistic forces that pull us away from full belief and commitment. Science and technology call us to look for tangible explanations we can see, touch, and prove. Secular values push us toward more consumption versus less, individual needs versus community needs, and physical satiation versus spiritual growth. The continuing growth of other religions and belief systems puts pressure on us to modify our beliefs or to abandon them all together. My own stepdaughter, who was raised as a Christian, is now actively exploring the Muslim faith. Thirty years ago, she might never have been exposed to this religion in the U.S.
So we come back to this morning's scripture text and we continue to follow Anne Robertson's argument: "I am the way," says Jesus. Okay. So who is this Jesus? Well, he is the Word made flesh-God in human form. "Those who have seen me have seen the Father" he says. Incarnation. God in the flesh.
So, suppose you take out the pronoun and instead of saying "I am the way," say "God in the flesh is the way." Over and over again I have counseled with people who simply cannot accept the unconditional love of God because they have never experienced such unconditional love in the flesh. Those who have been abused in one way or another or for some other reason have gone through their lives without loving human contact have no bridge to understand the love of God. For some, their first experience of such love has been through their dog.
Suppose Jesus was saying that to get to know the love of the Father, you need God in the flesh…God with skin on…God embodied in human form so that we have some earthly way of understanding heavenly things. It made sense. Isn't that what is being said not in the Gospel of John but in the first letter of John chapter 4 verse 20, 'those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen."? "I in them and you in me, so that they may become completely one."
And if all of that is in any way true, then it is not just Jesus that is the way, but us as well. I remember as a child hearing my pastor say, "You may be the only Bible some people ever read." Today I would go a step farther and say, "You may be the only Jesus some people ever meet."
I take the concept of the Body of Christ quite literally, urged on by this section of John. If the only way for people to truly know the unconditional love and grace of God is to experience that unconditional love and grace in the flesh, that means we who profess to be Christ's body in the here and now have got a job to do. It's not about getting people to assent to a doctrine about Jesus. To believe in Jesus is simply to believe that the way that Jesus related to those around him represents the way God relates to us-to see in Jesus the life of God.
And that's not exclusive at all. Lots of people of all faiths and no faith at all see Jesus as the shining light he claimed to be and see his life and teachings as being full of grace and truth. Just about everyone I meet has issues with the church and religion. I have yet to meet anyone that does not have a deep and reverent respect for Jesus. I heard a comedian once say, "If there is a group called 'atheists for Jesus' I'd be in it!"
To me, when Jesus tells Thomas that He is the way to God, He means all of that. He means that the life He lived shows the way to God. A life that was so radically inclusive of sinners and heretics that it got Him killed by the establishment. And His statements about being one with the Father are not trying to establish a doctrine of the Trinity but are simply trying to remind people that God comes to us in the flesh. In Jesus most perfectly, but not only.
To all those who claim to follow the way He set forth is passed the obligation to live in that way themselves. To continue that radical and inclusive love, no matter who hates you for it. Because it's the only way to the Father. People walk around the earth in incredible pain or just in dull, lifeless existence because they have never experienced God in the flesh. They don't need someone to lay down the four spiritual laws for them. They don't need a detailed understanding of the creed. They don't need to study biblical commentaries.
They may come to be interested in and enriched by those things, but those things are not the Way. God in the flesh is the way. You-us-as the Body of Christ, are the Way. We may be the only Jesus that some people ever meet, and if we do not love them as He did…as he still longs to do through us….we have thrown up one more roadblock to their experience of God's love which is, I believe, salvation."
The way of Jesus needs to come first in our lives. And as we live "The Way", others around us will come to know Jesus and consequently, God, the Father, through us. We can't proclaim the words of Jesus but then do it in any old way we like. Jesus shows us "The Way" through the testimony of His life on this earth. I ask you today, what will be the testimony of your life on this earth? Will others come to know God through you and the witness of your daily life and actions? May it be so.