to know the way

5th Sunday of Easter

            Renee is about to go on another one of her business trips.  Whenever she has to be away from home, her family becomes anxious.  “How will we make our meals?” they ask, even though they have managed before.  “What’s going to happen to my dirty clothes?”  “Who’s going to do the grocery shopping?”  “What if there is an emergency?  Who’s going to pick me up from school?”  They have been through all of this before.  They know what role Grandma is going to play in their care while Dad is at work.  They know how to do things for themselves; they’re not helpless.  Even so, every time Renee packs her bags to go on a business trip, she can see the anxiety in her family rising.  Every time, she has to sit them down to reassure them.

            Well, humans need reassurance when a loved one is leaving.  Jesus understands that in our gospel reading for today.  He is about to leave his disciples; that’s what worries them.  He’s about to die on a cross; no doubt that notion frightens them.  They will have Jesus in the flesh no more.  So Jesus reassures them.  He tells them about his Father’s house in which there are many dwelling places.  He tells them that he will come again and take them to himself.  I remember as I reached the age where I could be left alone.  As my mother would leave the house, she would reassure me that she would be back at a certain time.  Even now, as my wife Bev leaves the house for an obligation, she reassures me that she’ll return at a certain time.  Jesus tells his disciples that he will return and take them to himself, to his Father’s house in which there are many dwelling places, but he doesn’t say when.  But he does say that they know the way to this place.  “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus reassures them.  “Believe in God, believe also in me.”  And after telling them about the place to which he is going and from which he will return for them, he adds, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”  Not to worry.  They know the way.

            How do you suppose the disciples feel right now?  What is it that is going through their minds as Jesus tells them about his Father’s house in which there are many dwelling places?  I wonder if they picture such a place, perhaps as a beautiful mansion where the disciples dwell with Jesus and the Father.  As Jesus describes this place, do you get a mental image of it?  In your mind, what does such a place look like?  Is it a peaceful place?  Is such a place bustling with excitement and energy?  Is there constant worship?  Are hymns and anthems constantly sung to God in this place?  In your imagination, do you see your loved ones there?  Our imaginations are all we have to try to discern what the disciples must be going through.

            Of course, we also have their questions and ours.  It starts with Thomas.  “Lord,” he says, “we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Yes, and where is this place, we’d like to know.  Where is the place where the Father has his house in which there are many dwelling places?  If we went out into space far enough, would we find it there somewhere?  Jesus says we know the way, but we truly don’t know much about this destination he talks about.  It’s a place, but we don’t know where.  It’s a destination, but we haven’t the slightest idea where it is or how we find the way there.  Thomas isn’t the only one.  We don’t know where Jesus is going, so how can we possibly know the way?

            Wait!  Let’s take a second look at what Jesus is saying.  Jesus speaks of a “dwelling place,” mone in the Greek.  That noun is related to the verb meno, “abide” or “dwell,” prompting Gail R. O’Day to inform her readers that meno is used in the Gospel of John “to describe the mutuality and reciprocity of the relationship of God and Jesus.”  She adds, “The use of this noun here . . . points to the inclusion of others in this relationship, this ‘house.’”  So what is she saying that the Greek words are implying?  That the place where Jesus is going isn’t so much a destination as a relationship.  This “residence” is the mutual dwelling of Jesus with the Father.  So Ms. O’Day suggests, “the disciples are welcome in the Father’s house.”  That is to say, the “place” or “residence” where Jesus is going is a mutual dwelling with him and the Father, a relationship in which the disciples may also participate.  In other words, the place where Jesus is going isn’t so much a location as it is a dwelling or abiding in a relationship with the Father.  Jesus tells his disciples that they know that place.  They know that dwelling or abiding with God in a relationship.  They already have had that abiding.  So indeed they know the way.  So do we.

            Now we see!  If the place to which Jesus is going is an abiding or dwelling with the Father, then we have had that all along.  In our relationship with Jesus, we have been dwelling with the Father.  Jesus has been our way to that relationship all this time.  What was it Jesus said about his relationship with the Father?  He said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”  Then he said, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”  The place where Jesus is going is to dwell with the Father in a relationship with him.  Jesus isn’t speaking so much about a destination to which he is going, a location we would know about.  He’s reassuring us that he is going to be abiding in the Father, just as he has while he was here, just as he allowes us to do through him.  We do know the way to a relationship with the Father.  Jesus is the way.

            Why does Jesus claim to be the way?  Because in Jesus Christ we have God’s self-revelation.  Jesus is the Word made flesh.  He is the incarnation of God.  As Gail R. O’Day puts it, “To recognize Jesus as the truth is to affirm that as the Word made flesh, Jesus makes the truth of God available to the world.”  It is also to affirm “that Jesus’ life and ministry are the ultimate witness to God’s truth.”  Jesus adds, “No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also.”  Jesus, directing his words to his disciples, says to them in effect, “None of you can know God the way you do, except through me.  If you know me, you know my Father.”  It’s the same for us.  We do not know God the way we do, except through God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the incarnation of God.  We know the nature of God as God is revealed in Jesus Christ.  We have no clearer way of knowing God.  We have no better way of knowing God’s disposition toward us than in Jesus Christ.  Granted, readers of the Old Testament can point to the passages in Isaiah about the suffering servant there.  But it was Jesus Christ who actually embodied that servanthood, and it was because Jesus gave his life for us that we know God’s disposition is that God is for us, not against us.  It is because of Jesus’ servanthood that we understand God’s nature to be self-giving, suffering love.  Sometimes in a crisis I’m asked questions about God’s nature.  “What kind of a God would allow a baby to die?”  “Why does God allow me to suffer like this?”  “Am I being punished by God?”  I always point to the cross as the foundation for my theology of the nature of God.  The cross is God’s great expression of love.  The cross is where we most profoundly and clearly see the love of God revealed in and through Jesus Christ.  That’s why for us Jesus is the way to the Father.  He is the revelation of God.  For those who have God’s self-revelation in the Word made flesh, there is no other way.  Jesus is the way.  This is the way we have come to the Father.  None of us comes to the Father except through Jesus.  Because we know him as the incarnation of God, the revealer of God’s truth, he is the only way to the Father.

            That raises questions pressing Presbyterians today concerning the truth of other religions in the world.  Didn’t the risen Lord command his disciples to “make disciples of all nations”?  He did.  And if the way we know God is through God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, don’t we want others to know God this way?  Yes we do.  That’s why the church proclaims the gospel throughout the world.  But what about people of other religious traditions, traditions that don’t know Jesus as the way to God?  Are these people outside of God’s grace?  That is what concerns Presbyterians and other Christians.  Shirley Guthrie, writing in the February 11, 2002 edition of The Presbyterian Outlook, offers some guidance.  “If we believe,” he says, “in a risen and living Christ who has been and is at work in the world outside our Christian circle, we will know that we do not have to ‘take’ Christ to people of other religious traditions; we go to meet him in our encounters with them.”  While I believe with Guthrie that we can meet the risen Lord in other faith traditions, and, with Guthrie, believe we should have that kind of openness, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we definitely cannot, in our mutual discussion, share what we believe about the way to God.  We can.  Still, in our openness to how God may be working in and through other faith communities, we can, as Guthrie says, “expect and gladly welcome evidence that the grace and truth we have come to know in [Christ] has reached into their lives too.”  Let’s be clear:  It is our obligation as Jesus’ disciples continually to point to him as the way we know God, the only way to God for us, for it is in Jesus Christ that we have come to know God.  That being said, we must, at the same time, be open to the possibility that God’s grace, the same grace we know in Christ, may indeed be available to people within other faith communities.  We must not put limits to our understanding of God’s abundant grace.  After all, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.