Friday
of the
Fourth
Week of Easter
May 8th
READING: John 14:1-6
‘Do not let your hearts be
troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are
many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to
prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.
And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord,
we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to
him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.”
~~~
New Revised Standard Version
Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division
of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Forgive
me if I say it again, but when Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and
the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” it is good news, not
the rotten news that grandma is burning eternally. Jesus does not say
“Christianity is the way, and the truth, and the life.” The words “Christian”
and “Christianity” were still to be coined when Jesus was speaking (see Acts 11:26). In any case, to say so would contradict so much of what he says. What he
does say though is that there is a way (good news) to this place, state
of being, whatever we might call it, and he, Jesus, is It.
We
could wriggle around in this saying, explore the metaphor (“way”) a little too
much. There is a way. The witness of the New Testament is adamant that
Jesus is that way. That’s good news. The New Testament writers give rather
short shrift to those who persecute the followers of the Jesus way, even using
language of eternal punishment. They’re following a long and psychologically
plausible Hebrew tradition (see Psalm 139:19[1]).
That’s deeply human news. But many Hebrew scriptural insights, as well as those
of the New Testament writers, speak of the inescapable grace of God. God expels
the miscreant humans from Eden, but kneels to make their clothes first (Gen
3:21). God plants a boot on the human backside, but is that the end of God’s
love and grace?
This
is especially so given the psalmist’s great insight “though I descend to the
depths of hell, you are there also” (Psalm 139: 8b). Where is this place “outside”
of God’s reach, God’s grace, God’s eternity? Jesus, and John his apostle, stood
firmly in the tradition of the Hebrews, knowing that the wrath of God and the
grace of God are both inescapable. Jesus, who is all we need to see of God,
Jesus who is inseparable from God (even, paradoxically, when crying in
dereliction on the cross), is the Way. But whether Christians see all his dimensions is another matter.
The
embrace of God, as revealed in the embrace of Jesus, washes the feet of Judas and
Peter, of you and me, of all who are and will be and have been. “No one comes to the Father
except through me.” But this is good news: the one who is the Logos
(Word) of God will reverberate throughout eternity until whatever eternity is
is complete: “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I
am, there you may be also.” And yes, Grandma, too.
[1]
I part company adamantly from the compilers of the New
Zealand Prayer Book / He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa at this point: how
dare we presume that we are too noble to utter furious cries from the heart
when we are hated and persecuted? As I often say, if the Brown Shirts (Braunhemden or Sturmabteilung,
Hitler’s henchmen during his early days of power) come knocking on my door to
take my family away I would be more likely to recite the ugly verses of
scripture than the peaceful and calm utterances of thanksgiving. The prayers of
the people of God must reflect the whole of human experience.
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