Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 22, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So last Sunday standing here in this pulpit I had a lot of fun making fun of Christians who believe that only Christians are saved and that everyone else goes to hell forever. I really do believe that that way of understanding Christianity, common as it has been and in some circles still is, is, as I said last week, incompatible with a God of love and just doesn’t make any sense. So imagine my chagrin when I saw what was in the lectionary for today. John 14, including John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Those lines sure make it sound like I was wrong last week, don’t they. They make it sound like the people who say that only Christians are saved are right, doesn’t it? Jesus is the way, and the only way a person can come to God is through Jesus. Sure sounds like that’s what Jesus is saying, doesn’t it? I can assure you that most Christians over the course of most of Christian history have read those lines exactly that way, that is, as limiting salvation to Christians. They have taken “come to the Father” to mean be saved and “through me” as meaning through believing in Jesus. If that is the only way to understand these lines then maybe those Christian exclusivists, those Christians who say that only Christians are saved, are right after all. That’s not a very happy prospect, at least not for me; but if the lines “I am the way” and “No one comes to the Father except through me” mean what Christians have mostly thought they mean, I guess that’s how it is.

Fortunately, I don’t actually think that we have to understand Jesus’ words in that exclusivist way. It is of course always dangerous to base sweeping theological concepts on one particular biblical verse, or even on a few biblical verses that all seem to say the same thing. Beyond that, and more importantly for our purposes this morning, I am convinced that there is another way to understand these famous lines that the author of the Gospel of John puts into the mouth of Jesus. That other way is what I want to talk about this morning.

I learned this other way of understanding “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” in seminary, and I learned it from someone who isn’t Christian. I took a course on world religions, and that class was taught by an adjunct professor who is from India and who is Hindu not Christian. He told us this story. I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know that this story is true., to borrow a line from Marcus Borg. A Christian missionary was talking to a Hindu sage, a wise man learned in the Hindu faith and way of life. The missionary threw John 14:6 at him. “Look,” he said. “It says right here that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father, that is, to God, except through Jesus. What do you think about that?” The Hindu sage smiled gently and calmly replied: “O yes. I believe that absolutely.” The Christian missionary was nonplussed. He said: “How can you believe that and not be a Christian?” The sage replied: “Because to understand those verses you have to ask: What precisely is the way that Jesus is? It is the way of peace, of mercy, of compassion, of justice, and of prayer. And yes, that absolutely is the way.” My professor didn’t relate how the missionary responded to that interpretation of John’s verses. Knowing the zeal of most traditional Christian missionaries for Christian exclusivism I doubt that he was convinced.

What that wise Hindu sage did was to reinterpret the two key elements in our passage. Christians usually understand “I am the way, the truth, and the life” to refer only to the person of Jesus. He is, for them, in his person the way, the truth, and the life. The Hindu sage saw that John’s Jesus wasn’t talking so much about himself as a person but about the way, the truth, and the life that he had come to teach and to live. Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life isn’t about the personhood of Jesus in isolation from his life and his teachings. A way, a truth, and a life aren’t static things that simply inhere in a person and just sit there. They are dynamic things. They are actions. They are how we live and what truth we stand for as we live in the world. So when Jesus says “I am the way” he’s not talking about his personhood as much as he is talking about how he has lived in the world. When he says “I am the truth” he is talking about the truth that he taught and lived in the world. When he says “I am the life” he is talking about how he has modeled the life God desires all people to live. To understand these lines we look not at Jesus as a static person but as Jesus as the incarnation of God in how he lived and what he taught. That’s how our wise Hindu interpreted the first key element of our verses.

Here’s how he reinterpreted the second key element of those verses. Most Christians have understood the words that John gives to Jesus “No one comes to the Father except through me” as meaning that no one is saved except through believing in Jesus as the Christ, as the Son of God, and that being saved means that your soul goes to heaven when you die. Yet that can’t be how our Hindu sage understood those words, not if he remained a Hindu yet believed the words to be true. So he interpreted them differently.

“The Father” is the term the Gospel of John mostly uses for God. John means that no one comes to God except through Jesus. Now, coming to God doesn’t have to mean going to heaven when you die. Why can’t it mean living in right relationship with God in this life, before we die? Why can’t it mean finding peace with God in the here and now by living the way that Jesus showed and taught? The simple answer, of course, is that it can mean that and, indeed, I believe this is how our Hindu wise man understood those words. Coming to God through Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life means coming into intimate relationship with God in this life. It means being filled with the Spirit of God in this life. It may also mean our souls going to heaven when we die, but that doesn’t meant that going to heaven is the only meaning there is in these lines.

Think about your own experience. Perhaps not all of you have had an experience of coming to God through Jesus Christ in this life, but I have; and I’m sure at least some of you have too. In our passage Jesus says “if you know me, you will know my Father also.” The Hindu sage of my story may not have understood Jesus this way, but when we Christians behold Jesus we confess that we are seeing so much more than a human being. We confess that we are seeing nothing less than God become flesh, God the Son in human form. When we come to know Jesus, we come to know as much about God as our limited human minds and spirits are capable of knowing. Jesus is indeed our way to God. But encountering God in Jesus Christ is something that happens in this life whether it is something that also happens in another life or not. I know that when I pray in the name of Jesus, when I meet Jesus in the pages of scripture, when I symbolically connect with Jesus in the Eucharist I find my connection with God. I come to God. To use’s John’s perhaps unfortunate term I come to the Father. Here. Now. Now only after I die.

So is Jesus the way, the truth, and the life? Yes. About that I have no doubt. Does that mean that only Christians are saved? No, absolutely not. Does it mean that Jesus is only about getting us to heaven after we die? No, absolutely not. Jesus’ way of peace, justice, compassion, forgiveness, and prayer is the way for everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike. In Jesus we Christians encounter God on earth. We come to God while we live our earthly lives. In Jesus we encounter God’s peace, God’s grace, God’s forgiveness. We encounter God’s challenge. We encounter God’s call to build the Kingdom here on earth. In Jesus we encounter God’s unfailing presence and solidarity with us in everything we do, in everything that comes our way in life.

So let us follow the way, proclaim the truth, and live the life that we have from God in Jesus Christ. Let us not condemn those who are not Christian. Let us celebrate the way that so many of them too know and follow God’s way of peace, justice, compassion forgiveness, and prayer. Let us be disciples of Christ and his way, his truth, and his life in the world, bringing not a demand for conversion but an example of the way, the truth, and the life that we have received from Jesus Christ our Lord, following his way, proclaiming his truth, and living his life. Amen.