April 20, 2008
(Fifth Sunday of Easter)
I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life
by
The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant
Acts 7:55-60 • Psalm 31:1-5,
15-16 • 1 Peter 2:2-10 •
John 14:1-14
(From
The Lectionary Page)
In the gospel passage from John that we just heard, we find Jesus trying to give hope to his disciples. Right before this, they had heard from Jesus of his immanent death and of the fear and confusion that would overcome them as a result. But here, Jesus is concerned to give them hope in spite of this: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” And this message of encouragement is also for us. But what exactly is it that we are being encouraged for, or to? The early Christian communities faced realities that we don’t necessarily share. The community that John wrote for faced persecution from Rome and expulsion from Judaism. Their lifelines had been severed, and this encouragement from Jesus was essential for them. Is it essential for us, and if so, in what ways?
Jesus goes on to tell us that he is going to prepare a “dwelling place” for us with the Father. While this could in fact mean many different things, biblical scholars generally point us to the Greek verb menein, which means “to abide,” or “to live.” One scholar that I’ve read takes this to imply relationship before a kind of place. “The relationship with God established through Christ,” he writes, “is a reality in the present and continues through and beyond death.” [Kysar, Robert. Preaching John (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002) p. 198] So this abiding with the Father is related to something in the future, but it is continuous with the present.
My wife used to work for an agency that cared for children who lived in abusive environments, or were drug exposed before birth. She used to tell me how attached that she and her colleagues would become to some of the children. She also told me how hard it often was to see the children responding positively to the therapy and care that they received, and yet to have to send them back into homes in which regression was almost certain. One little boy that she used to tell me about had a particularly heart-wrenching story. Jimmy was a little over a year old, and yet wasn’t even crawling yet. He didn’t even try to move. He laid still always, and had no visible affect at all – no smiling, no crying, nothing. Jimmy was severely drug-exposed before birth, and had moved from one foster home to another for his short life. He had no connections with anyone when he arrived, and seemed to hold no hope that this place would be any different. But within only a few months, Jimmy seemed to attach to Karen and some of the social workers that spent time with him. He began walking just a few weeks after he learned to crawl, and he began to share generously a smile that Karen said touched your heart instantly.
As it turned out, one of Karen’s colleagues adopted Jimmy and took him home with her. This certainly gave Jimmy a new place, and this new home was now part of Jimmy’s future, but the real hope for Jimmy began with his relationship with his new mother. She took him to where she was, and as a result, his life changed immediately. He would now live in hope that this relationship would last, and having this hope he could now see some things in his life that were worth striving towards. Jimmy’s new mother had shown him a new way of living.
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The life that Jesus lived tells us something about what God finds important in life. Jesus struggled courageously against the various other ways and truths that confronted him everywhere. He loved in a way that showed self-giving care for the other to be the highest good on earth. He taught us that power and control are not ours to hoard but in fact come from and belong to the Father. It is these things that are the Way and the Truth for us here and now. But Jesus’ struggles to live this Truth looked like failure to the rest of the world, and I think that this is precisely what Jesus is addressing today in John. He was crushed by the powers he opposed. And what the world measured to be meager attempts to change things, quite simply ended on the cross. But it is not the results of discipleship that determine its value.
Soren Kierkegaard once wrote that, “…truth exists for a particular individual only as he or she produces it in action.” I would suggest that it is this living of Truth that is being encouraged by Jesus of his disciples. Courage and hope would be absolute necessities for discipleship when this kind of living was known to produce results that could not be measured, and sometimes couldn’t even be seen at all. And it is here that we find ourselves to have much in common with the first hearers of John’s gospel. Our world proclaims individualism, entertainment, and caring for the self as the goods to strive towards. Everything else then becomes a casualty of these endeavors. The state of the world environment attests to this way of living. Our world would not proclaim out loud, but its actions suggest, that the measured results of one’s efforts determine their value. This is our world, and this is what it finds to be important. It couldn’t be farther from what Jesus finds to be important.
In another book, Kierkegaard wrote that, “if your ultimate and highest purpose is to have an easy and sociable life, then don’t have anything to do with Christ or his love. Flee from him, for he will do the very opposite. He will make your life difficult and do this precisely by making you stand alone before God.” And so it seems, that discipleship in the 21st century requires more courage than we sometimes imagine. To live according to God’s Way in this time and place, we have to say no to the powers whose interests are expanded and protected by wars in which people are expendable commodities. We have to say no economic practices that guard the well-being of some while subjecting the rest to poverty and violence. And we have to say no to capital growth when God’s creation is the casualty. Jesus shows us another way. “I the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” It can be a difficult and costly way. It can be a way that seems to make little or no difference. But it is our Way. This Way changes us, but the results are not in our power to measure – that is God’s work.
“What or whom do you seek?’ Jesus often asks, because he knows that what we seek often determines what we find.” [Jaime Clark-Soles] May we seek to follow Christ in his Way, not our own way, or the way that we are given by the world. May we seek Truth over comfort, and may we seek the Life that gives flesh to this Truth. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It may be difficult, Christ would say, but it is the only way to Life.
I want to finish with a prayer that is part of Psalm 119:
Oh Lord, Remember your word to your servants,
in which you have made us hope.
This is our comfort in our distress,
that your promise gives us life.
Like Father, Like Son
By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean
(The following story is told by the Reverend Michael Phillips, Rector, Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, NY, in Sermons That Work, Easter 5 Year A 1996.)
Sometime last year I stood in my living room, watching a neighbor of mine cut his lawn. It was a typically hot and sunny summer Saturday afternoon. My attention was drawn to him because I wondered why he wasn't inside watching the baseball game of the week. But there he was, outside, pushing the gas-powered mower back and forth in endless repetitions, the noise of his lawn mower joining with other mowers from other neighbors in what some people call the "Saturday symphony."
As I watched, a small drama unfolded. As my neighbor crisscrossed the lawn, suddenly the door to the house opened and his five-year old son emerged, followed by his wife. She put a small, plastic replica of a gas-powered mower on the grass so that the son could "help dad" cut the grass. Like father; like son.
She returned to the house, and I watched father and son pursue their separate courses, the son "mowing" over grass that the father had already cut. This charming scene continued for a minute or two, and of course, my heart was warmed by the whole thing.
Then something happened that surprised me, but also made a point with an exclamation. The son abruptly stopped mowing, abandoning the mower where it stood in the lawn. He disappeared into the house, and I thought he was through. He'd had enough, or it was too hot, or he realized he wasn't cutting grass anyway, or his five-year old attention span had reached its limit, ... but none of my guesses were correct.
After a minute or two, he re-emerged followed by his mother. She was carrying a plastic grocery bag, resourceful woman that she was. She crouched at the plastic mower and tied the bag to the back of the mower where the handles attach to the blade cover. I glanced over to the father again and knew immediately what was occurring. The father's mower included a grass-catching bag. The son could not truly be like his father - it wouldn't quite be right - unless he was like his father in every detail. If his father had a grass catcher, then he needed one too.
Jesus said, "Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father." And he emphatically explained in detail that point to Philip.
Five weeks ago today was Palm Sunday, when we recalled the crucifixion of Jesus and collectively wondered what kind of radical or revolutionary or extremist he must have been in order to get himself executed.
In today’s gospel we are reminded that Jesus is not a renegade. Instead, he stands precisely on the same ground with God the Father, the One True God, known through the centuries as the God who creates, who gives life, who seals covenant, who decrees law, who anoints rulers, and who speaks through prophets. This one, true, living God and Jesus are alike, in every detail. Jesus may have seemed radically different from the accepted order in his day, but what he taught and how lived was totally consistent with God’s ways.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Like the young son who wanted to mow the lawn exactly like dad, using the same tools as his father, let us also be eager to identically live as Jesus did using the same tools of righteousness, adopting the priorities of lifting up the lowly and setting free the captives, and mimicking such bold actions as confronting religious and civil arrogance, greed which hoards bread from the hungry, and refusing to return violence with violence. This identical life of Christ—the way, the truth, and the life—is what you and I as the baptized must be committed to.
Priest and Poet George Herbert based one of his mystical poems on this text, the way, the truth, and the life. The work is simply entitled: The Call. The third verse concludes: Come, my joy, my love, my heart; such a joy as none can move, such a love as none can part, such a heart as joys in love.
Such is our Call, as servants of the Lord Christ, and united as his mystical body the Church. The world is sifting through garbage looking for this life, the church must be tireless is living out this truth, and so long as even one person is looking for his or her way, we must not falter in our mission, nor take for granted that someone else will carry it out. Jesus: the way, the truth, and the life, is our way, our truth, and our life.
My friends in Christ: There are plenty of fears seeking to drain our energies, and hopelessness can be contagious. With all the poverty, disease, and killing, some say the sane thing is to quit trying to change anything. Hear the Words of the Risen Lord: "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe me."
With passion bursting through the logjam of fear, let the flood of faith, hope, and healing pour out the door of our hearts and our parish. In the Resurrection, in this holy Eastertide, we have been delivered from darkness, called into light. We are now God’s people, identical to Christ in every way. We must fulfill this call. Like the first believers, let us be guilty of turning the world upside down.
