The Fifth Sunday of Easter

"I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus says in his "farewell address" to his disciples on that night before he was to die.

This statement of Jesus, as reported by the evangelist John, has been the focal point of a lot of discussion, and also of a lot of argument, throughout the centuries. What exactly does it mean? Does it mean, as some contend, that only Christians are saved? Does it mean that if one does not say with his lips that Jesus is Lord, then God, our Father, has no use for him? Does it mean that if one does not affirm the creed of the Christian Church -- "I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God" -- that he is forever cast off from the God who created him, discarded by the God of love?

The problem with this line from Jesus, when not kept within the context in which Jesus spoke it, is that many who hear it do not hear good news, but bad news. Taken out of context, it sounds like some kind of spiritual stickup: "Your belief or your life! Either believe in Jesus or burn in hell."

Sadly, some Christians contend that that is exactly what Jesus means. It’s what you hear on many street corners, and it is what is heard in some churches, even, ironically, in some churches that insist they are "evangelical," proclaimers of good news.

Jesus does go on to say, in our Gospel reading today, "You believe in God. Believe also in me." And he also adds that "no one comes to the Father, except through me."

Well, what kind of news is that for us here in the middle of Easter? What kind of news is it, not just here in Colorado Springs in the Chapel of Our Saviour, but over there in the Middle East, where Israeli and Palestinian stand toe to toe with fangs bared, and in the Far East, where Muslim and Hindu face each other with nuclear clubs, and well, even here in the United States, and in Europe, where Christian and Muslim and Jew eye one another with increasing suspicion?

In a world such as ours, can these words of Jesus be heard as something other than spiritual blackmail or threat? How do we find Gospel, good news, not bad news, in these words of Jesus?

Well, as they say, context is everything. And context, together with recent scholarship and Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Gospel of John, may help us here.

It’s helpful to remember that in the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks Greek, not English. That’s part of the context. When Jesus says that he is the "way," he literally says that he is the ‘hodos." That’s the Greek word he uses. It’s a word which means "way," but as I read it it doesn’t mean "way" in the sense of a gate or a door, which can be a barrier as well as an entry, so much as it means "way" in the sense of a "road," or a "way of life."

"Hodos" is the word from which we get our English word "exodos," which was the road or way out of fear and slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land. And that’s the larger context, which may be what’s behind Peterson’s translation of this remark of Jesus. In the 14th chapter of John, Jesus and his disciples know that Jesus is about to die. Jesus is taking leave of his friends, and their hearts are troubled over the way things have turned out. They are distressed about the fact that Jesus, their friend and their hope, is going to die. They are locked up in fear, much the way their enslaved grandfathers and grandmothers were locked up in Egypt, locked up in bondage, fearful, with troubled minds and hearts.

So, many translations begin this 14th chapter with, "Let not your hearts be troubled," or "Set your troubled hearts at rest." But here’s the way Peterson begins it:

The reason I like Peterson’s fresh translation here is that it suggests a different tone of voice. Not a confrontational "I, Jesus, am the only gate into heaven," but an invitational "I am the road," in the sense that "Mine is the road to freedom in the face of bondage, the road to life in the face of death." Or in the sense of "I offer the way of peace, not the way of fear, a way available for anyone in the kind of miserable situation we find ourselves in. Trust me when I say that you and I can trust God in this kind of situation, just as our ancestors trusted God in their miserable situation."

And if we remember that when Jesus says he is the truth he also speaks Greek, then we’ll remember that he does not use the English word, "truth," but the Greek word, "aletheia," not forgetting. That’s what the Greek word for truth means -- not forgetting -- which is a meaning our English word does not convey. Truth, in the language Jesus uses in John, means not forgetting what is real and substantial, not forgetting what is basic, fundamental. And because of this, I can just imagine Jesus saying, "I am the road, also the truth," and then adding something like, "Now remember what is basic. Remember that the fundamental fact of existence is trust in God, staying with God’s plan, faith in God, which is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living."

This is how Peterson translates the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews, which you’ll probably remember as more like, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see."

Either way, in the context of his last night in his earthly body, what I think Jesus is getting at when he says that he is the way and the truth and the life is this: he is urging his disciples to remember to trust God. Remember what is basic, what is the truth -- that the fundamental fact of existence is trust in God, which is that firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. Trust in God as the road through this vale of tears, the road through the world of slavery and fear, the road into freedom and life. "It’s the road I trust to walk right now," Jesus says. "Even now as I give up my life in love, I trust that the way of trusting God is the road to life. I trust that God will not disappoint me, but will be with me even there ahead of me on the Cross, and even in the grave, and beyond."

Remember. "It’s the truth," he adds, "remember that such faith is the way real life has always been. It was by just such faith that our father Abraham, "when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going, any more than you, Thomas, say you don’t know where you’re going."

But Abraham knew the road. It was by his trust in God, by his faith, that he made his home in the promised land, like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as Isaac did, and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect is God." (Hebrews 11:8-10) That’s the way the children of God have always lived, Jesus is reminding his disciples as he walks his own road to death. "That’s how I’m called to live right now," he adds, "and what I am doing. It’s a faith you can have yourselves, just as Abraham had, just as I have. So remember, trust God. That way, God’s way, is the way, the truth, and the life. God’s is the road I’m taking, and you can take it, too."

Because context is everything, this is what I think is going on with Jesus and his disciples that night before Jesus’ death. He is not insisting that everyone has to recite the creed.

"Jesus did not arrive among us enunciating a set of propositions that we are to affirm," William Willimon reminds us. "There is no point at which Jesus says, ‘You need to believe four propositions about me: Number one, I was born of a virgin. Number two, Scripture in inerrant.... [Number three, I came down from heaven. Number four, I am seated at the right hand of the Father]’ Jesus doesn’t talk like that. Jesus never asks us to agree; he asks us to join up and follow. He did not ask for cognitive assent; he asked for a life of discipleship, involving the whole self, not just the mind."

Jesus, in other words, is not insisting that everyone has to believe in the proposition that he is the Second Person of the Trinity. What he is doing is commending to his disciples the same trust in God that he has, trust in God’s promise. He is commending trust in the promise of God to see him through his death into the promised land of Easter, just as God saw his enslaved grandparents through the wilderness on the road into the Promised Land of Canaan. He is commending faith in the trustworthiness of God as the road to life, which is the truth. "Remember it. It’s the road Abraham took, and it’s the road I am taking, and it’s the road you can take it too. It’s the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living."

Our English words, "belief" and "trust" and "faith," are all possible translations of the same Greek word, "pisteo." But "pisteo," the Greek word they all translate, does not point so much to the affirmation of an intellectual proposition -- "I believe that such and such is true" or "I believe that Jesus is Lord" -- as it points to actually trusting the truth. Belief, in the Bible, is actually having faith and confidence in the promise of God, a promise which, we remember, reaches back to Abraham, and beyond. And that’s where the power comes from when we change the word "believe" in the creed to the word "trust," which we did once before, and which we’re going to do again today. Feel the difference when we do it, the difference in tone of voice.

Pamela Eisenbaum offers an insight that supports my reading of John 14, an insight which helps us hear Jesus’ words as good news for all, not just for Christians. What justifies us? What sets us right with God? she asks. Is it faith in Jesus? Or is it the faith of Jesus?

Saint Paul speaks to this in his letter to the faithful in Rome when, in many of our English translations, he says that "righteousness from God" -- that which saves us -- "comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe." (Romans 3:21-22) That’s how the NIV has it. And the Revised English Bible translates Paul similarly -- that being put right with God is made effective "through faith in Christ for all who have such faith."

However, Eisenbaum says, much recent scholarship, including that of conservative scholars, argues that the Greek phrase that has traditionally been translated as "faith in Christ" -- pisteos Christou -- is more accurately translated as "faith of Christ." So that what Paul is saying, when he wrote his letter in Greek, is that one is put right with God, justified, saved, not by having faith in Jesus, but by having the same faith that Jesus had, namely, faith in God. That is, God justifies us when we display "a faith similar to the faith Christ displayed in going to his death" by giving up his own life in love, trusting in the promise of God to provide life under all circumstances, even under such circumstances as that. Even at the Cross, Jesus himself trusted in God, and that’s what will see us through as well.

In the book we’re reading for next month’s book discussion, Huston Smith says that one 19th-century scientist (Ernst Haeckel) said that if he could have just one question answered authoritatively, it would be: Is the universe friendly?

The answer to that question is the good news of the Bible, the good news of Jesus, the good news of faith, the good news of Easter: the universe is friendly. The promise of God is trustworthy now, just as it was for our father Abraham long ago, and just as it was for the Israelites in the wilderness, and just as it was for Jesus at Gethsemane and on the Cross. "We believe in God, who raised Jesus from the dead," Paul goes on to say (Romans 4:24), which is the same faith or trust that Jesus himself had as he approached his death, the same belief, the same trust, the same faith that Jesus commends to his disciples and to us.

"To be a disciple of Jesus," Harvey Cox offered, "means not to emulate him or mimic him, but to follow his "way," to live in our [day] the same way [Jesus] lived in his -- as a sign and servant of the reign of God. To follow Jesus requires us not to choose twelve disciples, or to turn water into wine, but to take his life[‘s purpose] -- making the coming of God’s reign of Shalom real and immediate -- as [the purpose of] our own [lives]."

Context is everything. And it is significant to note that Jesus’ persistent charge, the commission he comes back to time and again as he says goodbye to his disciples, is that they love one another as he has loved them. This commission is the context of Jesus’ farewell to his disciples: "A new commandment I give you," he says in chapter 13. "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." And, almost as if he’s afraid they might already have forgotten it, in chapter 15 he says it again: Remember, "my command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

And then, as if he is later himself recalling those final hours with Jesus before he died, and perhaps recalling his own account of them in his Gospel, as if he is reminding himself of the truth, the evangelist John tells us again in his great first letter: "This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another.... We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.... [And] this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence...."

Context is everything, John insists as he continues. "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."

Whoever loves knows God. That’s the context, the whole context. That’s the faith of Jesus, and the faith of his evangelist John. It’s the faith of Easter. It’s the faith that Jesus himself had, and the faith he calls us to, a faith available to all regardless of creed.

This is the good news of Easter: that God loved the world so much that he sent his own Son, that whoever trusts the Father the way Jesus did, laying down his life in love, knows both God and life. Whoever. Not whoever is right. Not whoever says. Not whoever affirms the creed. Not whoever is a Christian. But whoever. Whoever loves the way Jesus loved.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life because of the one he put his trust in, because God is love. And that’s the truth, and the life, and the road.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.