Fifth Sunday of Easter

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John 14.1-14

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Shelton, WA

The Way

Have you ever wondered if maybe you’ve made a mistake? If maybe… just maybe… you might be wrong? Perhaps this whole “religion thing” really is just and opiate for the masses—designed to suppress the masses, to numb and nothing more.

Have you ever wondered, “What’s the point?” Here we are, in church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night, we read our Bibles and say our prayers, but stuff still happens… bad stuff… stuff that should never happen. The innocent are killed. Lives are destroyed. Families are torn apart. Whole countries… entire societies… wiped out.

Have you ever felt like running away… throwing your hands into the air and crying your eyes out? Because, you see, it seems like nothing ever changes. Our world is literally going to hell and nothing we do seems to be making any difference.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just been one of those really long weeks—too much stress and not enough sleep. Maybe it’s been too much evening news. You can’t even watch the local news without hearing about a murder, a rape, another attack. And then there’s Iraq, another bombing, more people killed, it goes on and on; there’s civil war in Africa, neighbor killing neighbor; there’s Afghanistan, there’s world hunger, the aids epidemic. There’s something terribly wrong with a system that spends million and millions of dollars to try and win a parties nomination while the per capita income in places like Haiti is a dollar a day.

I don’t know, maybe I’ve just been letting it get to me… letting it drag me down. But then again, I don’t know how you can not feel the pain. How can you say you’re alive and not feel the hurt and the loss and the suffering that’s going on all around in our world today?

And so as I sat down this past week to try and get things together for today, I have to admit it—I struggled. I struggled to find answers. Oh, there were lots of thought, lost of ideas, but they were mostly disconnected and inadequate. You see, I kept asking myself “so what?” (They say to do that in preaching class—answer the so what). Everything I thought to say just couldn’t measure up to the “So what?” All my puny little thoughts and “insights” seemed so trivial when held up against everything that’s so wrong with our world. I spent most of the week looking for an answer… any answer, anything to answer the so what.

The truth is, answers are hard to come by in this world. I mean real answers, not just pleasant little platitudes that are really nothing more than a pat on the back and a way to avoid the painful truth. What I’m talking about are answers that bring healing and hope. After all, that’s what real answers are supposed to do. They don’t just answer the question, they meet a need, they fill a void, they point to a light that shines even in the deepest darkness of person tragedy.

To say it is sin may be true, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t offer hope. And it certainly doesn’t heal. What kind of comfort is it to tell a mother who just lost her only child that we live in a fallen world? What kind of comfort is to tell a child who just watched their parents brutally murdered in a civil war that’s more about tribal identity than about political freedom or justice that sin is running amuck? What kind of healing does it bring to a drought ridden land where every day scores of innocent people—mostly women and children—die of starvation? It may be the right answer; it may even be the “religious” answer, but sometimes the answerswe give do little to make things right.

I suppose, really, the question “So what?” is more of a question that we ask of those answers that always seem to pop up—those answers that really never answer anything. It’s the kind of question that Job asked as he sat there on that ash-heap while his friends fed him a steady stream of those empty answers. Once he had his fill, Job turned to them and said, “How can you console me with your nonsense? Nothing is left of your answers but falsehood!” In other words: “So what?” “Your words seem heady, but they lack heart. They may be filled with logic, but they are void of compassion and empathy. And so your answers have answered nothing at all.”

Where do we go when the words of David become the cry of our heart? “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and everyday have sorrow in my heart?” My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

I imagine that on this, their final night together, the disciples were feeling some of these same things. They may not have realized all that was about to take place, they may not have recognized the end that waited for Jesus in just a few short hours, but no doubt they could sense something was in the air—something very ominous and foreboding was about to happen. And it had to set them on edge. I can imagine Jesus anticipated their “so what?” when he told them “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Trouble was on the way, but so was so was something else… something bigger… something that would overcome all the wrong, all the injustice, all the suffering in the world—the kingdom of God.

The thing about the kingdom, though, is it is both realized and anticipated. It is both here and yet to come. The kingdom of God is about both the arrival and the anticipation; it’s about the destination and the day by day decisions that bring the kingdom of God into our world. I think that’s what Jesus was talking about when he tells the disciples, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” The emphasis is on the way. The truth and the life are descriptive of the way. That’s what the word “and” means in this particular grammatical construction; it’s usedepexegetically: it explains the word before it. In other words: Jesus is the way to the heavenly realities of truth and life.

When I thought about that this week in light of my somewhat melancholy mood and all the “issues” facing out world; and as I thought about the feelings the disciples were experiencing, and all that they were about to face; when I thought about this whole upper room scene, all that had gone on before and all that was yet to happen, I began to see that when Jesus said he was the “way” he was giving an answer to the “so what?”.

You see, I began to see that the “way” Jesus was talking about had something to do with washing feet. It has something to do with wrapping a towel around our waist, bending down to the floor—getting on our knees—and taking on the role of a servant. It has something to do with letting the dirt of this world bring us to the place where we bend down before the other and wash their feet.

I began to think that the “way” Jesus was talking about had something to do with the story of the Rich Young Ruler. Jesus tells him to sell everything he had and give all his money to the poor and follow. I began to wonder if the way of Jesus wasn’t about giving—not just some, not just a portion—but everything to God… about becoming poor so that the other might find food and clothing. Paul says, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8.9).

I began to think that the “way” Jesus was talking about had something to do with our neighbor. It has something to do with how easy it is to turn our eyes away from injustice, to walk on the other side of the road like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan. It has something to do with the stranger in need, and what we do with that need. It has something to do with being broken in the presence of brokenness. It has something to do with recognizing the plight of the oppressed, and doing something about it.

I began to think that the “way” Jesus was talking about had something to do with “the least of these.” It had something to do with holding out a cup of cold water to those who thirst. It had something to do with coming along side the marginalized and the disenfranchised. But mostly, I think, it has to do with recognizing the face of Jesus in the other.

As I thought about it, I began to see that the “way” Jesus was talking about had something to do with the cross. It had something to do with loosing my life. It had something to do with being crucified with Christ. It had something to do with Jesus’ words: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want o save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

I started to see that the way Jesus was talking about was a way that bleeds with Jesus for others. It’s about being a servant to all. It’s about denying self in order to affirm the other. It was about bending down into the dirt of this world in order to wash the feet of the weary and worn, the broken and rejected, the least of these. The way of Jesus is about being Jesus to the world.

Father: we live in a world of brokenness, a world ravaged and raped by sin, a world where all hope seems to have vanished. Yet, Lord, it is in this world that you have called us to walk in the way of Jesus—a way of healing, restoration, and redemption… a way that bends down into the very filth we seek to escape in order to wash the wounds of the afflicted. To be honest, Lord, it is not the way we want to go; it is not the way we would choose. But if it is the way you callus to, then we will go—as long as you go with us… as long as you are at the center we will go. Amen.

John GrantPage 110/16/2018