The Truth of the Way to Life?

April 20, 2008
John 14: 1-14, I Peter 2: 1-10
sermon by Torin Eikler
Eastertide 5

In her book, The Misunderstood Jew, Amy-Jill Levine shares her vision of arriving at the Pearly gates. After getting in, a man behind her, holding his read-letter Bible objects to her being allowed in. Peter summons Jesus, and the man quotes from John’s gospel: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Jesus replies: "John does have me saying this." And then, he goes on to remind the gentleman of some particularly telling imagery about sheep and goats from Matthew 25. “I,” says Jesus, “get to choose who gets in, not you.”

AJ is an Orthodox Jew and a New Testament scholar. So, I suppose she may be able to come to this text with a little more humor and light-heartedness than many of us. The truth is … most of us have a conflicted relationship with this verse, living as we do in a thoroughly pluralistic world. On the one hand, we sense that this is the clearest, strongest confession of faith in the divine atoning nature of Jesus Christ to be found in the gospel of John (and perhaps in the whole of the New Testament). Jesus is indeed, as we believe and profess, the way and the truth and the life. On the other hand, many of us struggle to come to terms with the seemingly absolute judgment we sense in the claim that no one comes to the father except through Christ.

What about all those who lived and died before Jesus came to walk among us? What about the non-Christian we know or have heard of whose lives exemplify the teachings and model the example of Christ so much better than our own? At the risk of sounding cliché, what about people like Ghandi or the Dali Lama or others who have struggled toward justice through loving, compassionate means? Are they all consigned to the dry, withering of Hades or the burning lake of fire? Every time I read this passage, a part of me cringes because I am loathe to pass such a sentence on others who live good and worthy lives, yet I cannot get away from the voice of judgment that I hear in the text.

And it’s not just in the text. That voice has been standing in pulpits and mission stations, walking the floors of congresses and parliaments, and charging forward in battle for centuries; shouting threats, imprecations, and condemnation at the world. It still sounds in the teachings and doctrine of many (if not most) Christian denominations today. And, it echoes in our country’s domestic and foreign policy despite all claims that we support liberty, democracy, and freedom of religion.

It’s not hard to understand where this claim comes from even if it is hard for some of us to stomach. It’s right there in the text and not just in the text, in the read letters – in the words of Jesus himself. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” There is no question that Jesus is speaking of the God of Israel here. He was, after all, Jewish himself, and as far as I know, there are no biblical examples of Jesus referring to God by any other name. Taken together with images of scattered chaff, fruitless branches thrown in the fire, and tasteless salt thrown in with the manure, it all seems to add up. Those who do not follow Jesus will be cast aside and perhaps – as stated in the Core Beliefs, Disciplines, and Practices of the West Marva District – “confined to hell, which will ultimately be cast into the lake of fire forever.”


It seems so straightforward and still I struggle, as so many others do, to accept that reading. It doesn’t have the feel of the love and compassion that seems to pervade the gospel – to direct the mission, guide the ministry, and overflow through the relationships of Christ. Where is the endless love and mercy of God – a force so strong that it provoked the incarnation in order that we could come to the Father and find true life? What about those other verses: “I have other sheep not of this fold” (John 10:16), “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40), “You judge by human standards; I judge no one” (John 8:15), and “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved?”

For some, these verses read in the light of the love shown by Christ are enough to throw out this verse and its implications completely. More often, I think, people moderate the flavor of its absoluteness. They claim that there truly is only one God and that all religions (at least those that enshrine the values of self-giving love and have moral systems more or less in line with ours) actually worship that same God. If that’s true, they say, then it would be better to understand Jesus’ words as referring only to his followers. So, Jesus is the way and the truth and the life for Christians and no Christian can come to the Father except through him. Others may find other paths to God through their own faith traditions.

Rabbi Sandy Sasso has written a children’s book called “In God’s Name” that shares this view in a fashion. (It seems that I keep turning to Jewish colleagues for wisdom this week!) Anyway, in this story, the people were caught up in a long-standing argument about the nature of God. Each of them gave God a name based on his or her own experience. So, the farmer calls God “Creator of Life,” the sculptor calls God “My Rock,” the father of a young child calls God “Father,” the lonely child calls God “Friend,” and so on.

Each time a new name was shared, everyone else began to argue, saying “Well, my name is better than your name. And my name is best, and your name is wrong." This went on for some time and the argument became bitter and divisive. Until… one day all the people had gathered at the edge of a lake that was as calm as a mirror. Each person who had a name for God looked at the others who had a different name. Then, they looked into God's mirror and saw their own faces and the faces of all the others. And they called out all their names for God - Source of Life, Creator of Light, Shepherd, Maker of Peace, My Rock, Healer, Redeemer, Ancient One, Comforter, Mother, Father, and Friend - all at the same time. At that moment, the people knew that all the names for God were good and no name was better than another. Then all at once, their voices came together and they called God One. Everyone listened, most of all God.

In some sense, I am more comfortable with this view. It fits with the ideas of personal freedom that I have grown up appreciating in our culture. And, it sits well with Christ’s teaching that we should not judge one another. And yet, there is something troubling in this too.

I believe that Jesus was the most truthful, complete revelation of God that humanity has ever known (at least since we stopped walking with God in the garden). I believe that the way Jesus lived and ministered – the way of living in the Realm of God – is the way that God wants us to follow. I believe that the new life to which we are invited and cajoled is the new life that Christ alone offers to humanity. So, how can there be other ways to the Father? … The part of me that wants to have all the loose ends tied up with a nice neat answer – that part of me struggles with the way this approach sort of leaves it all up in the air just as much as that other part chaffs at eternal and unequivocal condemnation.

And, perhaps that dualism is part of the problem. For me and for all of us who have been raised in Western cultures it is very easy to see things in absolutes. We also tend to focus on external facts and “scientific” answers. So, to our ears, it sounds like Jesus is talking about a marker – an absolute truth that we can use to judge people and divide them into two different groups. If this is the case, then we must either accept it or reject it. Either Jesus is the only litmus test for salvation and damnation – or – there is no real test at all. Even if we struggle to find some middle ground, we are still seeing two absolute poles and trying to put ourselves in a comfortable spot in between. Those from other cultural backgrounds do not necessarily come to the same conclusions.

Dr. A. B. Masilamini, a Baptist theologian of Indian descent, noted this difference in an address to a Missions conference at McMaster University in Canada. He said:

“One of the difficulties western Christians have with interpreting this scripture is that you hear words spoken to eastern ears with western sensibilities. Jesus said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.’ Your western ears hear Jesus saying that he is the only way to God, but that is not what he says. He is an eastern mind speaking to eastern minds. They hear the emphasis being on the Father (Abba). What Jesus is saying [as heard by eastern ears] is that he is the only way to come to know God in a personal relationship similar to that of a child to [his or her] “daddy.”

Dr. Masilamini went on to suggest that Christianity is the only religion that offers this particular view of God. Others that use the image of a father God are talking more about a position of power – God as the head of the household. Only Christianity understands our relationship with God as the intimate relationship of a daddy to child.

That is a new perspective for me. It is intriguing to think of Jesus coming as a human child so that humanity could come to know God as a loving and playful parent – be that a mommy or a daddy. And it fits with the Gail O’Day’s idea that the “I am” statements talk about how we know Jesus and God in our relationship with them as Carrie shared last week. Is it the answer? Is it the “right” interpretation of Jesus’ words? I don’t know. I’m not sure any of us can know the “right” answer since we only have a limited amount of understanding.

What I think we can say is that these words hold an important truth for us. Whether they are absolute or not, they tell us who and what Jesus is. He is the way and the truth and the life.

If I have lost you somewhere along the way in this sermon, that’s okay. But, hear the truth of these words. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, and that shapes who we are as Christians in every aspect of our being.

Our knowledge and image of God is molded by the teachings of Jesus as we come to understand them together in this community. The passion and compassion we feel for life is transformed by the living, loving water that Christ pours into our hearts, souls, and spirits. Our lives are shaped by the call to follow the way modeled by Jesus Christ as he walked and worked in the world.

As we embrace that truth – as it becomes more than just a statement faith for us – we begin to embody the way, the truth, and the life ourselves. Little by little we are shaped into the royal priesthood spoken of in First Peter. And, we become the father’s children – God’s own people chosen to follow lives of love in faithful obedience and to “proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into [a] marvelous light.”


There is a lot of wisdom and understanding that can come from our conversations as we struggle together with difficult passages of scripture. Yet, we need to hold our convictions and each other lightly in the process because we do not have all the pieces of the puzzle. And, we must not let our disagreements, our frustrations, or our fascination with those challenging passages get in the way of growing in faith and love and following the life to which we have been called.

Sisters and brothers, let us strive to become the children of God, to embody more and more fully the way, the truth, and the life offered to all by Jesus, and to share the hope and joy we have found through the gracious promise fulfilled for us in the Christ who we follow.