How you get there

• Acts 7:55-60
• 1 Peter 2:2-10
• John 14:1-14
• Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

 “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

This is one of those gospel verses that seems to give Christians an exclusive privilege, like, I don’t know, the right to issue religious ultimatums.  It’s a passage often read at funeral services, to give hope to the grieving, so it’s strange when you hear, as I did not long ago, a preacher use it to harangue a crowd of mourners, warning them against being insufficiently convinced of the exclusive privilege of the Christian, and thus disqualified from joining their departed loved one in heaven.  And when you do hear something like that, it makes you wonder--what did the author of the Gospel had in mind? 

I took the opportunity this week to really dig into this scripture, more than I have before, and so I packed a little more Bible interpretation into my sermon today than usual—I hope you won’t mind.  I’m not going to cite verse numbers, but if you want to keep your lectionary insert handy, and refer to the gospel lesson once in a while as I’m preaching, I won’t be offended.  And I’m going to go back a little bit into the 13^th Chapter of John, so if you’re so inclined and want to pull one of those black bibles out of the pew rack, go head.  

Because the most important thing I think we can do with a scripture like this is to put it into context.  In the story of the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks these words after supper on the night before the day of preparation for the Passover, after he had washed his disciples’ feet, after his betrayer had left the table and gone out into the night, after he had predicted that Peter would deny him three times.  And Thomas, that tactless disciple, asks him a question about how and where to follow him, now that he was about to die.  

And our reading today begins with Jesus telling his disciples that it’s going to be okay—“do not let your hearts be troubled.”  It’s going to be okay because his death will not mean the end of their relationship.  And it will not mean that the knowledge of God that they have received through him will be lost.  In fact, that relationship, and that knowledge, are about to shift into a higher gear.  Because Jesus is going away, but he is going to the one he calls “my Father”, to be in an even more intimate and equal relationship with God.   

And this will change the way that the disciples relate to Jesus, but it also will be a change toward greater equality and intimacy.  He has already shown them this change, that very evening, by getting down on his knees and washing their feet.  And when he finished inaugurating their new relationship of intimacy and equality with him, he told them that this was now how they were to relate to each other: “Where I am going” he said “you cannot come.  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you should love one another.”

I don’t think we can over-emphasize the importance of the connection between this commandment and the scripture we are talking about today.  Before Jesus promised to go and prepare a place for us in the house of his Father; before he promised to come back for us, he told us that we cannot come where he is going.  Because we still have work to do.  We have a commandment to obey.  That’s why when Philip follows up on Thomas’ question by saying, “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied,” Jesus gets a little testy: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?”  Because “No one comes to the Father except through me,” is not permission for us to be satisfied.  It is a reminder that we have seen all we need to see, in order to believe in Jesus and get to work.  We already know all we need to know, to keep his commandment, and love as he loves—that is how you come to the Father.

But don’t take my word for it; look at the Gospel, where Jesus goes on to talk about works.  “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but The Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.”  It is the works of Jesus, even more than his words, that show us the Father in the Son.  And the greatest of his works is the one he is about to do as he speaks these words, which is the work of the cross.  

It is on the cross that Jesus manifests most clearly and unmistakably the love of the Father, love so great that he gave his only Son to an uncomprehending world, to the end that all who believe in him should have eternal life.  The way that leads to the Father is the way of the cross.  The truth that Jesus is, is the truth that Pilate scorned when he said, “What is truth?”  Eternal life is the life of the Good Shepherd, laid down for his sheep.  It is this kind of love that Jesus commands us to have for one another.  No one comes to the Father any other way. 

So now that we’ve seen the context of this saying, we understand.  Jesus has not given us an exclusive privilege, but an all-embracing responsibility.  Because it is our love that shows the way, the truth, and the life to those whom the Father loves in the world today: so that they might see his glory; so that they might believe that we were sent, as the Father sent the Son, and believing, have eternal life in his name.  Now for many in the world today these are just words, empty of any meaning.  But works—works they might just believe. 

“Very truly, I tell you,” says Jesus, “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”  And we say to ourselves, “What?--You’ve got to be kidding!  Me…you…do the works of Jesus?  Do greater works than Jesus?  Greater than changing water into wine?  Greater than giving sight to a man born blind?  Greater than raising Lazarus from the dead?  Greater than dying on the cross?” 

I guess it all depends on what Jesus meant by greatness.  Is it the power to work miracles, or command armies? Is it charisma, or fame?  Or is Jesus talking about greatness of faith, greatness of hope, greatness of love?  Maybe we can do works greater than his because he, after all, was Jesus, and you and I are just you and me.  Jesus was the only-begotten Son, who shared his Father’s glory before the world was made; all we share are some old stories in an old book, and some bread and wine and water.  Jesus knew everything that was in the hearts of men and women.   All we know is that the rent is due on the first of the month, and that some people are just hard to love.  All that the Father has he gave to the Son.  All we got is our own modest gifts, precariously balanced against our deficits.    That, and the faith that Jesus is in the Father and will give us whatever we ask so that we can do our works. 

They may not be spectacular: raising an autistic child, or tending to a failing parent; planting a garden in waste ground, or organizing a rally for justice; surviving an addiction, perhaps, or a bereavement, and helping a neighbor to do the same; helping resettle a family of refugees from war.  Often they are works we didn’t choose, and we feel like Jesus at the wedding in Cana, when he said to his mother, “Woman, my hour is not is come.”  But it precisely because we do them out of love, in obedience to Christ, with no power but the strength that comes from God, in just the right measure at just the right time to get us a little further along the way—just because of this, these works manifest the very highest truth.  They are signs of the glory of Christ, and they point the way to the Father.

    

How we know

• Acts 2:14a,36-41
• 1 Peter 1:17-23
• Luke 24:13-35
• Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17

Last week I had lunch with the pastor of a church in town whom I suppose one might describe as a conservative evangelical.  Our conversation was cordial and wide-ranging, and when it was all over I was left with two overall impressions.  The first was that this man was supremely confident in the purpose of the church as a missionary enterprise.  He gave no sign of inhibitions or defensiveness about reaching out to people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And I found myself admiring him for that, even a little bit envious.  But he also seemed to equate the mission of the gospel, somewhat simplistically, with converting people to the Christian religion as he understands and practices it.  And so my second impression was one of rigidity, of a conviction that is tied to the need to be right, to be certain, and to compel others to be certain, of absolute and invariable truths. 

The resurrection of Jesus might seem to be one such truth.  Either you believe it happened as an objective fact, the thinking goes, or you do not, and therein lies the line of demarcation between being a Christian and being something else.   But in the stories of the resurrection in the Gospels themselves, proving the certain factuality of the event is not the most important thing.  They are stories, by and large, about subjective experiences that Jesus’ disciples had of encountering him after his death.  A common characteristic of these encounters is their ambiguity; often they hinge on the question of whether it really is Jesus, and how the disciples will know that it is.

You could say that the essential message of these stories is that the life and work of Jesus goes on.  The physical and mental healing of the afflicted, the renewal of Israel’s faith and hope, the restoration of covenant community that he accomplished through his words and actions--these works are still underway, where Jesus is remembered and learned from and loved.  When we say “Christ is risen!” we are bearing witness that the same life-giving power of God, which was manifest long ago in Jesus of Nazareth, is still known, still active in the human world on human terms in those who carry on his name, his story, his Spirit.

But couldn’t we say the same about any particularly wise, noble, courageous, faithful, and loving person?  We might imagine, on our very best days that something like this could even be said about us after we’re gone.  We can hope to be remembered, and that in the memory of others we would live on.  And if we have lived our lives well, perhaps the memory of us will give some hope, encouragement, and inspiration to the next generation, or even the one after that. 

We can certainly think about the resurrection of Jesus in this way.  Under the influence of modernity, this is more and more how we do think of it.  But it is hard to imagine the Christian movement exploding into the world the way that it did if this were all that the resurrection really means.  And the historic confession of the Christian faith says that it is not.   We say that the God of Israel, the creator of heaven and earth, was involved in the life of Jesus in a unique and particular way.  God chose Jesus’ time and place for a decisive intervention in the sacred history of his people.  And with the Spirit of God guiding him, Jesus gave that sacred story new power with his life, and broke it open with his death, so it could become the sacred story of the whole world.  It became the story of the transformation of all humankind into the holy people of God, a transformation coming about through the risen life of Jesus.   

But if Jesus had died at a ripe old age from eating a poisonous mushroom, as is said of the Buddha, his resurrection might have been a stupendous miracle, but it would not have made him Messiah and Lord.  It is not incidental to the exaltation of Jesus, or to the transformation it initiated in the world, that the body that rose alive from the empty tomb had been put to death in a gruesome public spectacle.  It had been tortured and killed as an act of terror meant to crush any idea of resistance to the power of the state.  It was the resurrection of a victim, murdered in a miscarriage of justice, in which the religious leaders of the people of God were deeply complicit.

The gospel proclamation of the resurrection of the crucified puts a particular stamp on the mission of the church.  Or at least it ought to.  But when you’re talking about God’s decisive breakthrough into history, and about uniting the entire human race in a single spiritual destiny, it is easy to slide into religious imperialism.  It is easy to think that we Christians, or we, the true Christians, are now in charge of the world’s transformation, which is something we effect, by converting people to our religion, convincing them that we and only we can possibly be right. 

But to say that Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the great victor over the powers of evil and death and the final judge of the world, is only half the truth.  Because his is the victory, through the power of God, of a victim; the victim of those who were certain they were right.   And the zealous attempt to remake the world on the basis of half a truth is why, when you look at the record of what has been accomplished so far, you see tremendous achievements in humanizing society: hospitals, schools, and orphanages, music and art of transcendent beauty, profound expressions of philosophical truth, movements of social reform and emancipation; and also so much conquest and murder, so much enslavement and oppression, so much rape of human beings and the natural world, done in the name of Christ.

This morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, describes faith in Jesus’ resurrection, not as a moment of decision, when we grasp the truth of a doctrine and make it our own, but as a journey we make together in the company of a stranger.   It is a conversation that begins not with an announcement but with a question: “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”  The disciples have no answer, but just stand still, looking sad.  So we might say the resurrection faith is a conversation Christ begins with us when we are stuck, at a standstill, when our hopes for God’s redemption and our faith in God’s promises are disappointed.   The stranger then calls the disciples’ attention from their own disheartening and confusing circumstances back to their sacred story.  Not to pick out texts as proofs of Christian doctrine, but so they see the whole panorama of Moses and the prophets from the vantage point of a God who is with his people in their suffering.

He shows them a God who speaks liberation to the oppressed, comfort to the afflicted, consolation to the bereaved, who speaks out on behalf of widows and orphans, exiles and slaves, and the alien in your midst.  And though the disciples still don’t understand why, their hearts begin to burn with longing for the living presence of this God.  So when they come to their destination, they press the stranger to stay with them a little longer, “for evening is at hand and the day is past.”  He accepts their kindness (or is it their need?—maybe a little of both); he comes in and sits down with them as their honored guest.  And when he breaks bread and blesses it and gives it to them, they know. 

Their minds go back to a hundred other meals at the end of a day of hard walking, to rude peasant cottages and tax collectors’ villas, where Jesus was the guest who became the host; how he blessed and broke the bread, and together they feasted, a company of strangers from all walks of life, the not-quite-right and the not-all-there and the too-much-too-fast and the too-cool-for-school.  They remembered how those meals seemed to go on and on, and nobody worried about the time, or whether the wine would run out, but their hearts were light and their laughter was easy, and for those few precious hours they were one people, brothers and sisters in the family of God. 

The disciples in the house in Emmaus came out of their reverie, and saw that Jesus was gone.  But they knew he was alive; and they knew that what they’d seen was not a memory of the past but a vision of the future.  And they knew what they were supposed to do.