University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

EXCLUSIVE!

John 14:1-6

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Fifth Sunday of Easter   April 20, 2008

            Jesus had been speaking of his death. He was talking with his disciples about their role without him, about his absence, and he spoke of going to prepare a place for them. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and will take you to be with me, so that you also may be where I am.” Then he added, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” But Thomas didn’t quite understand – after the manner of the disciples – and so answered him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How are we supposed to know the way?” With tender words of reassurance, Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

“You do know the way,” he [says]. “I am the way,” and you know me. Trust yourself to know what you know. Trust what we have done here together. Keep doing it. Keep loving each other as I have loved you. You know God, because you know me. You know the way, because you know me. Trust yourselves, trust me, trust God.

This is love language, [says pastor Nanette Sawyer,] meant to reinforce the love relationship between Jesus and the disciples. Love language asserts devotion and commitment. “There is no one else in the world for me” or “you are the most beautiful woman in the world” or “you are my everything.” Whatever the words, they are meant as a sign of deep connection.

When … Thomas contradicts Jesus by saying, “We don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” Jesus answers, “I am the way.” Don’t be distracted, don’t be afraid—TRUST ME. Look at me and only me.[1]

            It is as moving and tender an exchange as found anywhere in Scripture.  So why do those words of Jesus make so many people squirm?  To be honest, they make me squirm sometimes when I read them at funerals.  They make me squirm because I know this intimate exchange between Jesus and his disciples is meant as table talk for the beloved community. It is not intended for outsiders, for those who don’t share our community’s assumptions, and those folks are always present at funerals. To outsiders, these tender words may sound more like a threat, more like a challenge. And there are some Christians who seem to like it that way. Some Christians have

turned these words into a weapon with which to bludgeon [their] opponents into theological submission. These words are used as a litmus test for Christian faith in myriad conversations and debates within the contemporary church. They are taken as a rallying cry of Christian triumphalism, proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that people of any other and all other faiths are condemned.[2]

I remember the story of Dr. Ralph Sockman, who was for some years the pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in New York City.  Returning home from a speaking engagement, he arrived on the train at Penn Station, hailed a taxicab, and said to the taxicab driver, “Take me to Christ Church, please.” As the taxicab driver was weaving his way through New York City, Dr. Sockman opened his briefcase and was looking through some papers. In a few moments, the taxi driver pulled up in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral.  Dr. Sockman was surprised. He said to the driver, “This isn't Christ Church!” To which the driver replied, “Listen, Buster. If He ain’t here, He ain't in town!”[3]

Unfortunately, that’s the same arrogance some Christians display in misusing this wonderful exchange between Jesus and Thomas. The American poet, historian and novelist Carl Sandburg was once asked by a journalist what he considered to be the ugliest word in the English language. Sandburg paused for a long time … Finally, he responded, “The ugliest word in the English language is... ‘exclusive.’”  As the heir of a gospel that has, from that first Easter Day, been expansive and welcoming and ever more inclusive, I believe misusing this text to exclude and to judge people of other faiths is ugly and offensive, and so I squirm when I read this passage anywhere other than here, in the community of faith where we share a common story.  More than that, I want to reclaim it for what it is, which is a central text of meaning for Christians like you and me.

Gail O’Day, arguably one of the finest scholars of the Fourth Gospel in our time, insists that

It is incumbent upon [us as readers of John’s Gospel] to engage in an act of theological imagination when interpreting this passage, to try to envision the theological claim the Fourth Evangelist might have been making in his context instead of assessing these words as if they were spoken directly to [our] context.

Jesus’ claim that “no one comes to the Father except through me” [she says,] is the joyous affirmation of a religious community that does, indeed, believe that God is available to them decisively in the incarnation…[Our text says,] it is indeed only through the incarnation that the identity of God as Father is revealed. John 14:6 is not a general metaphysical statement about “God;” Jesus does not say “no one comes to God except through me,” but “no one comes to the Father except through me,” and the specificity of that theological [language] needs to be taken seriously. [Our text] is the very concrete and specific affirmation of a faith community about the God who is known to them because of the incarnation…. “God” is not a generic deity here; God is the One whom the disciples come to recognize in the life and death of Jesus. When Jesus says “no one,” he means “none of you.”[4]

In these words, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” then, Jesus is defining God for his disciples – God as they have known God through him. Likewise, John is defining God for the members of his community.  This is the God we have come to know in Jesus Christ.  There is no desire or intention on John’s part to speak of other faiths; that’s not what this text is about. Jesus’ assertion that he is the solitary way to the Father is not an exclusive claim. It is, however, a particular claim, for it expresses

the particularities of [John’s] knowledge and experience of God, and membership in the faith community for which he writes… does indeed hinge on this claim… The particularism [here] does … establish boundaries; it says, “This is who we are. We are the people who believe in the God who has been revealed to us decisively in Jesus Christ.”[5]

            Where some Christians get into trouble is when they try to claim more from this text than it says, and when they try to use it to answer questions that were never under consideration when John wrote his Gospel. John was not interested in the relative merits of the world’s religions.

[His] Gospel is not concerned with the fate, for example, of Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists, nor with the superiority or inferiority of Judaism and Christianity as they are configured in the modern world. These verses are the confessional celebration of a particular faith community, convinced of the truth and life it has received in the incarnation….

When one brackets out the questions that contemporary Christians falsely import into these verses, there is nothing outrageous or offensive about the claims made here. Rather, at the center of Christianity is this affirmation of the decisive revelation of God in the incarnation. John 14:6 can thus be read as the core claim of Christian identity; what distinguishes Christians from people of other faiths is the conviction given expression in John 14:6. It is, indeed, through Jesus that Christians have access to their God[6] [whom we believe to be the one God of earth and heaven].

It is in this God that we know the one Jesus calls “Abba, Father.” Jesus is reminding his followers that they know him, and he is the Way, and is reassuring them that they need not be troubled, because they know the sovereign God in him. The emphasis is not on trying to figure out who will be “left behind” and who will be “taken up,” as rapture theorists like to argue, but on the fact that the rooms Jesus will prepare are “many,” and that there is no need to fear.[7]  Presbyterian theologian Cynthia Rigby notes that

The first line of the [our denomination's] Brief Statement of Faith is reminiscent of Jesus’ reassurances to [his] disciples. It reads, simply and profoundly: “In life and in death we belong to God.” Can you imagine what our lives would be like if we really lived into the truth of this statement? Perhaps we would be far less interested in arguing “for” or “against” alternative ways to God, and more concerned with bearing witness to the one who is the Way. If those of other faiths are included in the Kingdom of God, the Reformed conviction is that it will be through the mediating work of the one who is the only Way, the one who entered into the human condition and redeemed it. Should it surprise us if it turns out that the one who is the only way, truth, and life meets those we might exclude in ways that are beyond our comprehension?

But note [she says] that to be open to the possibility that those of other faiths will also be included in the Kingdom of God via the one who is the Way is not to take it upon ourselves to declare that we know that those of other faiths will be saved. To declare that everyone will make it in the end is to make the same theological error as to decide that only those who profess Christ in ways we understand will be present in the Kingdom: it is to forget the sovereignty of God, to lose our focus on Christ.[8]

            So let us read these words of Jesus as the wonderful affirmation of God’s availability to us. Let us focus on Christ. And as for the rest, well, I would argue that we would do well to leave that to God and to the working of God’s Spirit.

Back in the tenth century, when the church was still very young, more literal, more naïve, less learned and less sophisticated; back then, when they built those medieval sanctuaries, they would leave holes in the roof. It’s hard to imagine. “Holes in the roof! It was a terribly impractical thing to do, what with the rain and the pigeons and all the rest. But nonetheless, they left those holes in the roof, and they called them Holy Spirit holes. ‘The townfolk ridiculed them,’ a pastor friend noted, ‘but apparently those early Christians didn't mind the ridicule, because they kept doing it. They kept putting those holes in the roof because they wanted to allow every opportunity for the Spirit to descend upon them.’”[9]

You know, it might not be a bad idea.  At the least, such holes might help keep us open to possibilities we have yet to consider, even as they help us to remember what we do know with confidence from these loving words of Jesus. “You do know the way, because you know me,” he said. “Trust yourselves… trust me… trust God.”