Scripture:
Having just celebrated the decision of 13 men and women to join this church, the Epistle for today seems particularly appropriate. The author of first Peter is addressing the faithful who are living in the midst of persecution. He tells them how their lives are different -- because they are baptized Christians. Let us open our hearts to what we might learn from the second chapter of the First Letter of Peter, verses 2- 10:

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation-- [3] if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
[4] Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and [5] like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. [6] For it stands in scripture:

"See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."

[7] To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,

"The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very head of the corner,"
[8] and "A stone that makes them stumble,
and a rock that makes them fall."

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.


[9] But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. [10] Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

After worship today, I will meet with our confirmation class, as they make their decision to join the church. There is a question which unfailingly comes up year after year in the confirmation process. It also comes up among adults who have been members of the church for decades. It is prompted by this reading from the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John: Is Jesus Christ the Only way . . . ? Hear now the good news:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. [2] 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? [3] 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. [4] And you know the way to the place where I am going." [5] Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" [6] Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. [7] If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."


[8] Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." [9] Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? [10] Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. [11] Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. [12] Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. [13] I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. [14] If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

Sermon:


There he goes again! Isn't it just like Jesus -- particularly as we meet him in the Gospel of John -- to combine -- in a single dialog -- one of the most assuring passages in all of scripture and one of the most disturbing?

Who among us has not been comforted by Jesus' assurance -- which we hear at almost every memorial service -- that he goes before us, to prepare a place for us in God's house? These words were addressed originally to his anxious disciples, as a way of preparing them for how they would live without him. In our own lives, whenever we must face hardship, or grief, or separation from what we love, we are comforted because we know that the one we call Son of God has "been there before." He is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, who is also the consummate host. He precedes us, into the parched desert of temptation, high atop the mountain of ambition, deep into the darkness of doubt and loneliness. And because he has gone there first, when our turn comes, we can move ahead with confidence, knowing that we are not alone.

But in this same passage, Jesus makes a different point. He tells the disciples that he is the way, the truth, and the life. And he asserts that "nobody comes to the Father but by me." From the point of view of his small band of hangers-on whom he was addressing for the last time, these are also intended to be words of assurance. Jesus wants them to remember that when the going gets tough, when their lives are threatened and it appears that all is lost, they can rest assured that the one on whom they have bet their lives is himself the guarantor of salvation. Knowing that his disciples would soon be faced with the same threats as he, Jesus wanted to provide them with every assurance possible.

Yet who among us has not--at some time--been troubled by this assertion? Does it trouble only liberals and academics who champion tolerance on behalf of the claims of other religions? If this were the only place in scripture where such a claim was made, we might set it aside as an aberration. But that's not so easy when you consider some of the other passages:

Last Sunday, we read in John 10:

"Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. . . . Whoever enters by me will be saved . . . ." (John 10: 7 9)

Such assertions are not limited to the Gospel of John. Hear these three from Luke and Matthew:

* Someone asked him, "Lord, will only a few be saved?" He said to them, [24] "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able." (Luke 13:23 24)


* "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. [14] For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)


* "but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven." (Matthew 10:33)

And finally, the disciples continued this theme in their own preaching. In the fourth chapter of the book of Acts, Peter and John are arrested for preaching the resurrection. The next day, before the rulers, Peter proclaims that:

* "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)

Over the centuries, these are the assertions which have bred triumphalism and invited totalitarianism in the service of the institutional church. Their claim that salvation lies exclusively with and through Jesus is, for many of us, unsettling.

I have known many thoughtful Christians who resolve this problem by segregating their Bible into three parts:

* first, they have their favorite passages;
* second, they have all the passages towards which they are neutral;
* and third, there are passages -- such as these -- which make no sense to them, and they simply give these passages no authority.

I would guess that there are many listening to me who have taken this approach, placing in the third category any number of the Bible's passages -- including the verses on divorce, or on the necessity of wives obeying their husbands.

In my own faith development, I have found this approach less and less satisfying. Because I am rather orthodox in my beliefs, I refuse to take scissors to the Bible, and cut out the passages which don't suit my understanding of how God or the world should work. When I meet an unintelligible passage, I search for alternative ways to comprehend it.

One of those alternatives is to contextualize the passage in question: what might Jesus have meant to his audience when he emphasized that he was the Way? Could it have meant something that made sense for them , which gets lost when the passage is quoted in a different setting?

As careful listeners who seek the truth, each of us asks this kind of question all the time -- not only in regards to the Bible, but in regards to people with whom we talk, particularly people who are racially or culturally different from us. We try to get into their world, on their terms. It's a bit like translating.

But for me, in relation to these troubling passages, I don't find the insights which come from such questions to be helpful. Something more than a translation is needed here.

What is needed is to take Jesus at his word, and to get the emphasis right. "I am the way." The person Jesus IS -- is the way. And what does that mean?

Let me answer that by speaking specifically to those dozen or so people who became our newest members a few moments ago -- and by addressing them, I hope that I will shed some light on these passages for everyone else as well. The way . . . the path . . . the truth . . . the life which you embraced today is an approach to life which is rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. Faithful Christians devote their entire lives to live into that way, that path, that truth, that life. Sometimes we are led by the heart. Sometimes we are lead by the head. But each time, we measure our progress by the extent to which our decisions, our actions, our way of being in the world are a reflection of the life He lived 2,000 years ago. Not that each of us needs to weald a hammer, or crawl up on a cross. But what each of us DOES need to do is to constantly seek to mold our life in a way that emulates his.

How would you describe the person of Jesus? What are the qualities of Jesus' life which we would do well to cultivate? Let me cite three.

Let's start with compassion. Compassion -- as Henri Nouwen reminded us two weeks ago -- compassion means "to suffer with." Jesus wept. Jesus walked, talked, slept, worked among the people. Their poverty was his poverty. Their problems were his problems. He attracted thousands who were in need of healing because they knew that he was accessible; that if they reached out, they could touch him. He was not removed or insulated from their troubles. Indeed he went out of his way to be with those in need.

Are you seeking for the way, the truth, the life? Be compassionate.

What about forgiving. Jesus forgave at every opportunity he was given. He forgave people he hardly knew. He begged God's forgiveness for those who planned and carried out his execution. He forgave the disciples who abandoned and betrayed him. Indeed, Jesus forgave the very people that most of us would write off as being beyond the scope of forgiveness.

Are you seeking for the way, the truth, the life? Be forgiving.

Finally, Jesus was inclusive. To us, this may be less obvious, but in HIS time, it attracted more attention than any of his other qualities. Jesus was committed to living a life in which the Kingdom would become transparent. That commitment compelled him to share his life with people whom society rejected. Do you ever wonder why almost all the healings Jesus undertakes are of people who have something rather unusual wrong with them? The run-of-the-mill broken leg or flu is passed over in favor of leprosy, insanity, hemorrhaging, blindness, disabilities, and in the case of Jairus' daughter and Martha's brother Lazarus, even death itself. What these people have in common is that their condition caused them to be disqualified by their society as outcasts; denied access to the common benefits of society; shut out from the social contract which constitutes civilization. These are the ones who are described by the Letter to the Hebrews as being "outside the gate." Because Jesus reached out to them, because he sat and ate with them, walked with them, hugged them, healed them -- Jesus became notorious. Because he included them in his life, and invited them to the table, Jesus unleashed a power that was seen as a threat to the status quo. It was the power of universal love: the power of being inclusive.

Are you seeking for the way, the truth, the life? Be inclusive.

And so in the end, we return to the beginning, and yet it is all different. We began with an investigation of a number of passages in which Jesus appears to promote an understanding of the Kingdom which is exclusive. We end up face to face with a paradox:

the narrow gate through which all who would bear his name must pass -- the claim which Christ makes which distinguishes him from others -- is that in his life and witness, we encounter a person who opened himself to the least of these among us; a person who persistently reached out to those who were different from himself, rejected by society, and invited them to come to the table, along with everyone else. What is promoted as the only way, is the way of being inclusive.

May we be that way for others.


Amen

Footnotes:
1. W. H. Auden, For the Time Being (New York, 1941)
2. George Herbert, The Temple Edited by C. A. Patrides. (London, 1974).