The 14th chapter of the Gospel according to John was just one of the many texts that I used to read with great trepidation. “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” These particular words led me to believe that my family and most of the people I loved, were doomed, because they didn’t believe in Jesus.
However, I don’t think that Jesus actually said those words.
The Gospel according to John wasn’t written until sometime near the end of the first century some 60 to 70 years after Jesus of Nazareth was executed by the Romans. The same Romans who at the end of the first century had destroyed the Temple and most of Jerusalem and sent the Jewish people packing. The Romans were persecuting the Jewish people and the followers of Jesus, who except for a few gentile converts were actually Jewish.
The orthodox mainline Jewish leaders had had enough of the followers of Jesus and did not welcome their newfangled approaches to scripture. So the powers-that-be retreated into a kind of rigid fundamentalism. The hostility between the two groups was bitter. As the battle raged on, the gospel according to John was born a product of religious dissent.
While the John story seems to have been set within the context of a debate over differences, that debate seems to have been between those who were Jewish followers of the Galilean (often called ‘revisionists’), and those who were Jewish followers of Jewish orthodoxy. They viewed matters differently. Perhaps profoundly so.
But it is also true that when the words ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’… have been used, they often make Jesus sound like a heavenly bouncer, keeping people away from God. Especially those without faith, those with not enough faith, and those who express their faith differently.
Religious authorities and groups of every age and creed have often exercised their religion in two ways:
– as a weapon against others, and
– by protecting God from others.
History seems full of such ‘weapon’ stories and events. The Crusades. The Inquisition. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ is just a more extreme form of this same motivation.
And the gospel stories are littered with ‘protecting’ stories. People who brought their children to Jesus but… Women who touched, ate with, pleaded with Jesus, but…
So what can we do with these words: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’?
Scholars tell us it is highly probable that Jesus never made this claim. The words were put into his mouth by the storyteller/mystic John. So to hear them, we need to hear them differently.
If these words can be read in terms of relationship with God rather than describing a content of dogma to be believed, these words can be an invitation to us to be on the journey which Jesus chartered. That Jesus, as sage, provides a way of passage from one place to another. Becoming and exploring and doubting, rather than condemning or belting us over the head.
Jesus is not the way in the sense of a moral guide or a model of leadership. He is the pathway into the depths of the God/self/neighbour relationship.
This is the way… into the mystery of our common existence. Jesus is the truth about that common existence. He uncovers what is hidden, and brings to light the last dimension of human existence.
Jesus is life because he is the way and truth by which God, self, and neighbour, break their isolation and flow into each other.
It is in this context that the words of Jesus, as suggested by John, come.
‘I am the way, the truth the life…’
In this person, we see a concern for the marginalised and the vulnerable (which included both the poor and the wealthy), and a rejection of the belief that high-ranking people of power are the favoured ones of God. The good news then in this statement is, perhaps it’s not about Jesus, but about God and us in the spirit of Jesus. We can trust in the God of compassion in which there’s a place for us, and we can know that the meaning of life is to share that compassion in the world – there’s a place for all!
All religious systems are human creations by which people in different times and different places seek to journey into that which is ultimately holy and wholly other. Until that simple lesson is heard, human beings will continue to destroy each other in the name of the “one true God.”
In his book, Many Mansions, Harvey Cox, points to Jesus as the way, but he cautions us to remember that to be a disciple of Jesus, means: “not to emulate or mimic Jesus but to follow his way to live in our era the same way Jesus lived in his era… To follow Jesus requires us not to choose 12 disciples or to turn water into wine but to take his life project—making the coming of God’s reign of Shalom real and immediate—our own.”
Jesus is the way the truth and the life, and those of us who believe this would do well to follow Jesus his way; with grace, mercy and love. Reaching out to those who follow different ways into the Divine Mystery which is the Love we call God, not to convert them to our way, but to learn from them and to share what we have learned, so that together we can evolve into a more perfect humanity. So that together in peace, we can really begin explore the wondrous marvels of the many dwelling places in the realm of our God.
Our world is changing at a rate unprecedented in human history. The black and white answers of the past must give way to the multicoloured realities of the present.
Let a rainbow of colour once more be a sign of Love’s promise to accompany us on our journey.
References
Felten, D. M. & J. Procter-Murphy. Living the Questions. The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity. New York: HarperOne, 2012
Spomg, John Shelby: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture – A Companion for Controversial Theology with Questions, Reflections, and Summaries. HarperCollins US 1998.