Past Sermons |
24th April 2005 |
Throwing Down the Gauntlet
John 14:1-14
It is an old joke, but it is still true. Seems this man dies and is ushered into heaven, which appears to be an enormous house. St. Peter begins to escort the man down a long hallway past "many rooms."
"What's in that room?" the man asks, pointing to a very somber looking group of people chanting a Gregorian mass.
"That's the Roman Catholic room," says St. Peter. "Very high church."
"What's in that room?" asks the man, pointing to a group of bald-headed people meditating to the sound of an enormous gong.
"That's the Zen group," says St. Peter. "Very quiet. You would hardly know they were here."
"What's in that room?" the man asks, pointing to a group of folks sitting at a table overflowing with food, laughing and having a good ole time.
"Ah, they're the Presbyterians. They love to eat! Very lively!"
Then St. Peter stops the man just as they were about to round a corner. "Now, when we get to this next room," he says, "I would appreciate it if you would tiptoe past it. We mustn't make any sound."
"Why's that?" asks the man.
"Because in that room there's a bunch of Mormons and they think they're the only ones here."
Of course I could have just as easily used Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, or any number of other Christian groups.
If you've ever wanted a scripture text to make you feel smug about being a Christian, today is you're lucky day. If you've ever wanted a text with which to hit your unbelieving friends over the head, or that will help you make a few Muslims or Jews or Hindus feel bad, have I got one for you.
We just read it a moment ago. Remember? Jesus said to Thomas, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
In other words: "I am the way. Me. You want to get to heaven? You do it through me. Clear enough?!" Right?
Now, before any of you get a little testy with me, let me say right at the start - that this week's very familiar passage was probably originally meant to bring a note of comfort to a group of Christians struggling to maintain their identity around the close of the first century.
The author, the apostle John, or more likely a disciple of John by the time this was written (85-90 A.D.), was attempting to give courage and hope to people who found themselves in the midst of a very nasty fight with their Jewish neighbors.
Their survival as a community of faith and their individual security and safety were very much on the line. They needed something to hold fast to. They were new Christians. They needed to know that they were on the right path - they needed to be able to claim their faith and resist anything else.
You cannot read a book like the gospel of John without keeping such circumstances in mind. John was writing to people who were frightened, vulnerable and defensive.
It's a lot like people are at a funeral, when the world seems to close in around them. Somebody close to them has left, kind of like the way John pictures Jesus leaving his disciples one last time. People are grieving, having a hard time hearing much of anything that's being said.
Grief sometimes has a tendency to just shut off everything else. And so they wonder instead what's going to happen to them and the people who are close to them. It's a situation John's people knew well. Which Jesus' disciples understood. Which those of us who have lost loved ones most certainly understand.
And to all of us Jesus says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.... I go and prepare a place for you."
Having a faith to hold onto, having a faith that gives us hope, having a faith that gives us courage, having a faith that gives us comfort is important. And as members of Christ's body it is a comfort to know that the person you have bet your life on (namely Jesus) can be trusted. It is a source of deep relief to know that the people who have shared that faith with you will be taken care of in the end.
I think of my dad. He misses my mom like anything. 65 years they were together. Part of what gives him comfort is knowing that she is safe, free of any pain, in good hands, that that room that Jesus promised was being prepared for her - was ready when she came knocking … that she was not left abandoned.
Don't we all want to know that there will be room for us one day? That we will not be left on the outside? That we know the way in?
"I am that way," says Jesus, according to John. "I am the way to get there."
Now to give John the benefit of the doubt, I think we should first assume that his aim was pastoral, an attempt to comfort those friends of his who were afraid, who needed assurance. Period.
Whether or not he meant anything more, whether or not he meant those words as a kind of challenge, a gauntlet thrown down in the face of Jewish rivals when the fight turned bitter, is anybody's guess.
But, let me ask you, does this sound like who Jesus calls us to be? "We know the way and you all do not! My Jesus is the only way to God! It is our way or the highway, friend! Get on board or get out of the way!"
What troubles me is the way Christians have used such a text to say things just like that. Not to comfort one another, but to make people who don't believe in Jesus or don't believe in Jesus the way they do or don't read the Bible the way they do or don't talk about their faith the way they do - to make them feel like they are on the outside; that they are estranged from God. They use such a text, in other words, like a weapon.
And it results in the kind of 'Christianity,' in other words, which gives Jesus a bad name. "There is one way to heaven and that is our way!"
I'm glad Jesus said (or John implied that Jesus said), "I am the way, the truth and the life."
I'm glad he said it to people like Thomas and Philip and the rest of the disciples, people who said, "But we don't know the way... Show us the way." People who had been with him all along, who had watched his every move, heard every word and still didn't get it.
"Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?"
Right. Because this Jesus is not as easy to get as Christians have often thought, so often thinking that we can wrap him up in a theological opinion or a good three-point sermon - which other people better agree with if they know what's good for them.
Yes, we have been with him all this time and still don't get it, don't get the way he insists on - always moving on, moving out to people who are on the outside, who haven't found the way in yet, always leaving the ninety and nine in the fold and going out to endure all the indignities of the search just so that he can find the one that is lost.
"I am the way, the truth and the life."
"You want to know the way, the only way?" Jesus asks us. "A sower went out to sow and scattered good seed everywhere - every-where! One day the man found weeds growing in his wheat-field and said, 'Leave'm be! Dandelions make good wine!'
"A man had a son who stayed at home and kept all the rules and one who was a loser and got busted. Guess what?! He loved them both!
"I'm the good shepherd, the one who lays down his life for his sheep and who has sheep that aren't even part of this fold yet who belong to me too! That's the way I am. That's the truth I am. That's the life I am. Now do you get it?"
Yes, there is something comforting about this week's gospel. And it is that the way into wherever all of us need to be, the only way in, is a lot broader and wider, a lot more welcoming and expansive than any of us have ever imagined.
Isn't it ironic!? When the Son of God came to Earth, there was no room for him in the Bethlehem Inn, but when we get to heaven, we won't have to worry about "no vacancy" signs! They'll be room enough for everyone!
Jesus did throw down a gauntlet. It was and is a challenge to every theology and religious practice that tries to ex-clude and be-little and reserve "room" for itself alone; every life-style that presumes to think that only some have a right to what they need and that those who don't are expendable.
It is not much wonder that we still have trouble seeing a world like that, seeing the way he was and is and the way we all of us still need to become. And it is why we still need to say to him: "Lord, show us the way you are! Show us the way!"
Pastor Tom |
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