 back
John’s Gospel, Our Gospel
WAY, TRUTH, LIFE
John 14:1-14
Sunday a.m. 23 September, 2007
John Baigent
The story is told of a man who was up in a balloon in a fog. He managed to get the balloon down to where he could see a man walking along the road. He shouted out, “Where am I?” The man looked up and grinned. “Don’t you know, mister? You’re up in a balloon!”
Someone said that the answer was in the best tradition of the Civil Service: accurate but useless!
If we ask the same question – “Where am I?” - and answer in the same way: “In South Ruislip, sitting in a church…….” It’s accurate, but not particularly helpful.
Let’s try a different kind of answer. “Where am I?” “I’m on a journey – a journey through life – from birth to death, from cradle to grave, from conception to dissolution. I’m x years along the road, but I don’t know how much further I have to go (my pension provider or my life insurer would like to know!).”
That raises another question. One of the peanuts cartoons depicted Charlie Brown and Linus looking at a little sapling, a tree that had just been planted. Charlie says, “It’s a lovely little tree, isn’t it?” And Linus says, “Yes, it is!” Charlie Brown goes on, “Pity we won’t be around to see it when it’s fully grown!” “Why?” says Linus, “Where are we going?”
That’s a question we should all be asking. “Where am I going?” It’s the question that Thomas asked Jesus: “Where are you going?”
Jesus and his disciples are sitting in a first floor room in Jerusalem, celebrating the Jewish Passover. But it’s more significant than that: Jesus is having his last supper with his friends before he faces arrest, trial and crucifixion. He is using the occasion to give them his final words of explanation and encouragement, of challenge and comfort: he is preparing them to face the future without him.
So he talks about his journey: “Where I am going, you cannot come.” (13:33) Peter says, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replies, “Where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.” (13:36)
Jesus then explains that he is going to his “Father’s house” (2), i.e. heaven; to be with his Father (12) i.e. God.
The implication of this is that Jesus is on a journey. It started not at his birth but before that in heaven (‘The Word was with God in the beginning’); he is the Son of God who was with his Father in heaven and at a certain point in time ‘came down’ to be born as a human being (1:14), to live a human life as a Jew in 1 st century Palestine.
Now he is at the point (aged 30 plus) when he is facing death by crucifixion; but he knows that death will not be the end for him: he will be raised from the dead and will return in glory to his Father (after being ‘lifted up’ on the cross, he will be ‘lifted up’ to heaven).
Then Jesus begins to talk about their journey. They have been with him for the last three years, developing a deepening relationship with him, and love for him. When he talks about leaving them, they are naturally concerned, upset. But he tells them not to be troubled: just trust him and trust God. By going to heaven in advance he will be preparing places for all of them, and one day he will return and take them to be with him in heaven (for ever).
This is the point at which Thomas objects that they don’t know where he is going, so how can they know the way? The answer that Jesus gave is one of his most famous sayings (after 3:16): “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (14:6) In other words, they do already know the way to the Father (and his house) because they know Jesus, and he is the way!
Now we need to examine this statement in more detail. We may be very familiar with it (and happy with it) and yet not understand all it implies. We may, on the other hand, find it challenging our preconceived ideas, clashing with our desire to be tolerant of other religions, and so really difficult to accept.
COMING TO THE FATHER
(a) What it means
Coming to know God (as Father), having a personal, intimate relationship with him (not just knowing about him). This is what we were made for: and we are restless until we discover God and enter into this relationship. We may try all kinds of substitutes, but they never satisfy, they never fill the God-shaped hole in our lives.
At the end of life’s journey, coming/going to live with God in his home (heaven).
(c.f. coming home at the end of a long journey: where you belong. Cf. Robert Frost: ‘home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ But N.B. some children go home and are refused entry! You’re no longer my son…!)
But something else is implied here:
If we need to ‘come’ to the Father, it means that we are not there to begin with: we begin our lives away from God, cut off from him, not in relationship to him. Why? Because we are sinners, members of a race that has rebelled against God, people who go our own selfish ways and do not wish to obey and serve God.
So it is our sin, our self-centredness, our independence, that keeps us away from God, it is the obstacle to relationship with God and residence with God. If we die still cut off from God, our sins not forgiven, we will not end up in the Father’s house, but rather in a condition which John’s Gospel calls ‘perishing’ (i.e. eternal death, hell).
So before we can come to God, we need to be reconciled to him; and that means we need to have our sins forgiven. And before we can live in the Father’s house for ever, we need to receive the gift of eternal life.
(b) How can it happen?
Jesus says, ‘through me’: I am the way to God, I am the truth about God, I am the life of God.
Jesus’ journey back to the Father’s house takes him via the cross? Why? So that he can deal with the problem of our sins – the obstacle that prevents our relationship with God. John the Baptist realised early on that Jesus had been sent by God to be ‘the Lamb of God who takes way the sin of the world’ (1:29): the God-given sacrifice to pay the price of all our sins and make reconciliation, relationship and residence with God possible.
Jesus is the Way to God because he has removed the barrier of sin.
For a relationship to develop you need to meet someone, get to know about them, spend time with them. In reply to Philip’s request ‘Show us the Father…’ Jesus explains that in meeting him they have actually met God: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’ He is the perfect revelation of the nature and character of God. That’s because he is the Son of God (the Word who was God) send by his Father. He doesn’t merely tell people about God, he shows them what God is really like.
Jesus is the Way to God because he is the whole truth about God: we need look nowhere else.
We are spiritually dead until we receive eternal life from God through Jesus (3:16). He is the one who gives the water of life (4:14), the bread of life (6:35); who gives his flesh and blood for the life of the world (6:51).
This eternal life is not simply spiritual life (our spirits going on living for ever), but it will involve our bodies. In other words, resurrection. Just as Jesus was raised to a new level of bodily existence after his death, so those who belong to him will also be raised: when he returns on the last day (5:24-26, 28-29). Jesus said: ‘I am the resurrection and the life….’ In other words, he is the Way to God because through him we can receive eternal life and be raised to live in God’s new world.
ONLY THROUGH JESUS?
This is the bit that sticks in people’s throats: the idea that Jesus is the only way to God. It sounds so intolerant, so arrogant, so exclusive, so fundamentalist. What about all the other religions? Aren’t they also valid ways to God (for those who follow them)? Don’t all religions say basically the same thing, anyhow?
These questions need to be honestly faced (by Christians and others); and they need fuller answers than I can give now. But let me make a few brief points.
- The idea that all religions are really the same sounds nice and democratic, but even a superficial study of the main world religions will show you that it just isn’t true. There are some points of similarity, of course, but much more difference and disagreement.
- Some religions are tolerant of other religions (they can absorb elements from various sources), but many religions are just as exclusive as Christianity. Try telling a Muslim that there is no fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity!
- If you say they are all valid ways to God – different paths up the mountain that all eventually lead to God – you ignore the fact that each religion has a different picture of God. In other words, they don’t all lead to the same God. Which one is the true God?
- If you say each picture is incomplete (like blind men feeling an elephant – each trying to describe a different part), then you are really saying that God is ultimately unknowable, that no religion gives us the complete truth about God: we are all groping in the dark, guessing. There is no certainty.
- Christians are not saying (or shouldn’t be saying) that there is no truth whatever in other religions. Clearly some of the things they teach are the same as Christianity teaches (because there is some partial knowledge of God and his laws are available to all people [Rom. 1:19-20; 2:14-15]. But the non-Christian religions are a mixture of truth and falsehood. Why go for the incomplete and unreliable, when you can have the complete and reliable revelation of God in Jesus?
That brings us back to the uniqueness of Jesus.
- Jesus is the only one of the founders of the religions of the world who can claim, “Whoever has seen me has seen God”. Only he is the complete and perfect revelation of God because only he is God in human form (the Son of God on earth). (‘The best photo that God ever had took’ – child).
So Jesus is the only way to God. He is not simply someone who teaches about God, who points the way to God (like a signpost), or who sets an example of how to get to God: he is the Way to God. Come to him and you find God – because he is God.
- Jesus is the only one who has provided the answer to human sin and wrongdoing. As the children’s hymn puts it: There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in.’ (Actually not only no one else good enough, but no one else could fully represent both God and mankind and be the mediator, representative and substitute). No other religion offers the total forgiveness and acceptance that Jesus provides (in all others you have to help yourself – salvation depends on what you do, it is not a gift from God.
- Jesus is the only one of the founders of the world’s religions that has come back from the dead (all the rest are still dead and buried). This is the final proof of the uniqueness of Jesus, of the effectiveness of his sacrificial death, and the guarantee that those who trust him and come to God his way will not be defeated by death but share in his resurrection life in the Father’s house.
CONCLUSION
Once upon a time, a king was dying. He called his court jester and said to him, “I’m going on a journey.” “Have you made preparations for this journey?” inquired the jester. Sadly the king shook his head, “No!” “Then you’re a greater fool than I am, Sire!” were the jester’s words.
We are all on the journey of life. How near we are to our final destination, none of us knows (some clearly nearer than others!). The important thing is to know where you are going: that you are going to the Father’s house to be with Jesus, because you have allowed him to bring you into a relationship with the Father (one of his family) and by his Holy Spirit he is accompanying and leading you through life to your final destination. In the words of the old song: ‘I know where I’m going, and I know who’s going with me.’
Do you?
|
