Questions from the Upper Room, Part 2
"Thomas' Question: Who is the Way?"
Christ is our destination and guide, not just our roadmap.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Text: John 13:36-15:5
Last week I commenced the sermon series with an illustration from Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe." In it, I spoke of how Crusoe saw footprints in the sand and was terrified to realize that there was somebody else on the island. In further stories of Robinson Crusoe, also written by Daniel Defoe (who many English scholars consider to be the first novelist in the true sense of the word) there is another very moving, telling and somewhat humorous phrase: "In trouble to be troubled, is to have your trouble doubled."
Now, I say that because I think that our text this morning reveals very much the double trouble that the disciples were experiencing during the events of the upper room. They were "double troubled" on a couple of points.
First, they were "double troubled" because Jesus was talking to them about His impending departure. It was very evident that the events of the upper room were spelling the end of His ministry and His eventual demise. On the other hand they were also equally troubled because they weren't sure what their own futures would bring - that having hitched their star to Jesus they were concerned that it might sink from the sky and they were unsure of their destiny, let alone the destiny of Jesus Himself. With that in mind we realize that they were troubled in their troubles, and therefore were "double troubled."
Our text this morning speaks of Thomas coming to Jesus and in his own inimitable style asking a question on behalf of the disciples - to clarify the situation and ease their hearts and minds. Thomas is a fascinating character. Whenever the names of the disciples are listed, he is always in the middle. He is not as well known as Peter, James, John or Andrew. He is not as infamous as Judas Iscariot. His name is somewhere in the middle of the pack and yet, in key moments of Jesus' life and ministry, Thomas appears. He appears early in the Gospel of John to give Jesus help and comfort. He speaks up for the disciples in the upper room in the last days when they are uncertain. Thomas is also the one who, once Jesus was raised from the dead, wanted evidence of the resurrection by placing his finger in the palm of Jesus' hands where the nails had been.
Thomas is a hardy character, a devout character, unfortunately he also seems to be a bit of a dull-witted character. In many ways, Thomas speaks for me and for all of us when we are uncertain, when we are unclear. Thomas asks the question that any thoughtful person would ask under the circumstances. And so, in the midst of his double trouble, he pipes up on behalf of all the disciples and says: "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?"
Thomas is very concerned that everything be abundantly clear. Jesus has clearly spelled out to the disciples in this valedictory address (because that's what it really is) from the upper room that He understands their agony, sorrow and dismay. In the immortal words that the King James Version of the Bible captures with such poetic clarity, Jesus says to the disciples:
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
In other words, Jesus is spelling out the destination for them. The destination is life. The destination is life now, it is life here, but especially it is the life that is to come. It is eternity. It is heaven. It is our eternal dwelling place.
Jesus revealed this to Thomas, but Thomas didn't completely grasp it. He didn't understand how the way to this destination is to be spelled out. But the destination itself is very important, and what Jesus was saying to them was critical in order that they understood what the upper room experience was all about. You see, the destination matters.
Many years ago, a good friend of mine was invited to be the best man at a wedding. He didn't know the groom very well - I suppose that tells you more about the groom than anything - he couldn't find anyone else to take on the role! So my friend reluctantly agreed. The bride and groom were so disorganized in their planning and preparation that they decided that because guests were coming from all over to Nova Scotia, they should have the rehearsal two hours before the wedding.
My friend agreed with this and everyone involved was given a specific invitation to the rehearsal. In the invitation everything was neatly mapped out: A road map was included of the town where the wedding was to take place, with very clear instructions about which highway and exit to take. My friend put his suitcase in the back seat of his car and headed off to the rehearsal as the reluctant best man.
The wedding was being held in a town famous in Nova Scotia, a place that many of you will have heard of - Mahone Bay. It is famous for its beautiful churches that line the river. Many publications by the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism have Mahone Bay as their fronts piece. It's that gorgeous. So my friend naturally assumed that all he had to do was get to Mahone Bay, figure out which one of these churches (which were all side-by-side) was having the wedding and he'd be fine. But when he got to Mahone Bay he was flummoxed. They had given out a road map to Mahone Bay but nowhere did they mention which of all those churches the wedding was to be held in!
My friend got there, knocked on all the church doors and found them all closed. He assumed that people just hadn't received the message and parked his car and sat in the lot opposite the churches waiting for someone to turn up. With half an hour to go before the wedding was due to begin, he panicked! He didn't know what to do.
So, what do you always do in a small town? You ask the gas station attendant what's going on. He drove to the local station and said: "Excuse me, I'm the best man of a wedding taking place here in town in a few minutes."
The attendant looked at his watch with incredulity and said: "I think you're going to be late."
My friend said: "You're right, but none of these churches are open."
The attendant looked at him quizzically and said: "The wedding isn't at any of those churches. It's in one on the other side of the highway. You'd better get there in a hurry!"
Off he went. He arrived a little disheveled, a little ill-prepared, but he was there. The wedding, as one can imagine, was a complete disaster. The problem was that in all their planning, the bride and groom had never bothered to provide the final destination. They had given the way, they'd given the map but they hadn't finished it and said where the way ended.
Jesus is telling the disciples first of all where the way ends: It is in eternity. "In my Father's house are many mansions... I go to prepare a place for you." This was what Jesus was saying. Thomas, therefore, asked the inevitable question: "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Jesus cleared this up for Thomas by simply saying those immortal words: "I am the way." You see, the way is important as well. The way is critical.
Very often throughout the Bible it is made abundantly clear that as human beings, by virtue of our own guidance systems, as it were, by virtue of our own will or compasses we cannot find the way ourselves. That as sinful human beings, as fallen creatures, whenever we try to map the way to the final destination by ourselves,we chart the wrong path. When we make up our own way we often find that we are in fact, wayward. As human beings who are often wayward, who often don't understand either the final destination or even know the right route, we get lost. No matter how religious we are, no matter how sincere or devout, on our own we do not know the way.
That is why very often, as people who, I think, instinctively desire to be religious, many human beings have a false sense of the direction in which they are going. We tend to sometimes make up our religion as we go. We sort out the way and then beatify it by making it religious. Often this is more pretense than anything else. Often it is just a veiled attempt to find the way by virtue of our own effort, piety or devotion.
We are very often like the accountant who was newly qualified and had just set himself up in business. He wants to impress any potential client with his ability and his success. While sitting in his brand-new office, he sees a potential client coming up the stairs. Thinking to impress this potential client, he picks up the phone and says: "Yes, George, I'm delighted that the audit information I gave you in New York City has managed to save your corporation three million dollars and that we have hooked up with Bob in Seattle and because of my wise tax advice he has been able to save five million dollars. I am overwhelmed at how successful we are in New York and Seattle right now."
The potential client knocks on the door and enters the office, and the accountant says to him: "Can I help you?"
The potential client says: "No, I don't think so. I'm from the phone company and I've come to hook up your phone."
My friends, so often we are just like that accountant in our relationships with God. Our religion is very often a pretense. That is why in Act Three of the Merchant of Venice there are these wonderful words: "There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue in his outward parts." In other words, very often our attempts to find the way by virtue of being religious are not the way at all. That is why Thomas understood that there were many people mapping out a way. The Stoics were mapping out a way. The Cynics were mapping out a way. The Orphics were mapping out a way. The Gnostics were mapping out a way. There were many different ways in the time of Thomas. He might understand the destination, a destination to which many aspire, but he looked at Jesus and said: "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" In other words, are you just another one of these movements?
You see my friends, very often when we try to put religion in place of the real way, we get lost. Daniel Defoe had a word of warning to religious people who want to erect their own temples in place of truth:
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 't will be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.
Often in our attempts at finding the way by virtue of being religious fall far short. They are, after all, our attempts.
In the Greek, in this passage from John, there is one word to describe the way - and it is a fascinating one: Hodos. Hodos is not only the way, it is the path, the source, the direction and in many ways it is the end. If you translate parts of the Old Testament into Greek from the original Hebrew, you'll find this word appearing in many different places, both within the Psalms and the Prophets. In Isaiah, Chapter 30, for example, the prophet says: "This is the way, walk in it."
In another passage in the Psalms, it says: "I have chosen the way of faithfulness, I set thy ordinance before me." You see, the understanding at the heart of even the Old Testament was that the real way was not our way but God's way. For the people of Israel who were wandering in the desert, the only way to the Promised Land was God's way. The only way out from Assyrian and Babylonian tyranny was God's way. The only way out of the terror of the arrow by night was God's way.
So, when Thomas, a Jew, comes to Jesus, he understands that it is not just one way amongst many ways - it must be God's way that is central. When he asks the question, he really needs an answer. He's really asking: "What is God's way?"
Jesus is clear He answers by saying: "I am the way." But not only "I am the way." He is really saying ultimately that the cross is the way.
If you look at this text carefully, Jesus is making it clear that only the Son leads to the Father and that is His purpose and ministry. But in no way, and I want to make this clear, in no way is there a sense of self-aggrandizement or pride in this passage. On the contrary, the way that Jesus is talking about in the upper room with the disciples is the way of self-giving suffering. It is the way of the cross.
It is not that Jesus is saying that those who follow Him in the future will be morally superior to the rest of the world. He is not saying that He is just a roadmap and that all people have to do is follow the route and they will get there. He is not saying to the disciples that in following Him they are going to be better somehow than everybody else. On the contrary.
One of the great misunderstandings that we often have is assuming that Jesus saying "I am the way" somehow that makes us religiously superior to anybody else trying to find their way to God. That is not the case. Jesus in no way is suggesting that. What He is saying - and this is incontrovertible - is that He is the way. And that being the way, He has taken the way of obedience. To lead all of humanity to the Father, He is willing to bear the suffering of the world.
The best way to describe this is something that happened to my family in 1976 when we visited the United States for its bicentennial. We were on our way from New Brunswick to the great shrines in Washington, D.C. on I-95, and knew that we would have to pass through Baltimore. The best route to take is the tunnel on the southeast side of the city. So we, being wet behind the ears, only having lived in North America a few months, decided that we were going to drive through the famous Baltimore tunnel. The only problem was that within a mile of having mapped out this very important route we saw a big sign that said: "Tunnel Closed."
After fumbling with our few maps we decided that we could find another route. We veered off I-95 and onto the beltway. On the beltway we got lost and ended up somewhere in the middle of Baltimore. Not knowing what to do, we did as my friend did in Nova Scotia, and went to a gas station. And my mother (in her typical English way) said: "Excuse me, my dear boy, would you mind telling us the way to get through this city?"
This poor guy in some slum in Baltimore looked at my mother with total incredulity and sympathy and said: "Well, you turn right here, ma'am, and then you turn left, ma'am, and then you turn right, ma'am, and then you take another left and you do a U-turn and bingo, you're on I-95."
My mother looked at my father, and my father looked at me - we didn't understand a word he said, and we wondered how we were ever going to get out of Baltimore. Finally this delightful guy, realizing our terrible situation, said: "Ma'am, would you like me to take you myself?" He got into his car and said: "Follow me." He drove about six blocks, signalled and we were on I-95, gloriously driving to Washington.
I think that was one of the kindest deeds that was ever visited upon our family. It is also the way of Christ. Jesus does not say to us: "Here's a map, follow it." He doesn't say: "I'm going to give you an example, get on and do it." Jesus says: "I am the way and I will take you where you want to go safely."
John Marsh, former New Testament professor and principal of Mansfield College at Oxford, in his superb commentary on John's Gospel had this to say - and it is so clear, it makes it all plain:
It is not the case that Jesus is away from the Father and must therefore tread the way to Him. He is the way Himself. It is not the case that there is a truth about the Father that Jesus must learn and then pass on. He is the truth Himself. It is the case that the Father has eternal life which He will give to the Son when the Son reaches His home so that the Son can then bestow life. He is the life Himself.
And the way in which this way has manifested itself is on a cross between two thieves. Jesus deals with this by carrying the burden of humanity on His shoulders. He deals with our inability to find our own way to eternal life, our inability to find our own path of life, by saying: "I am willing to go and do it for you." There will be others to come along and say that they have the way. There will be politicians and prime ministers, there will be presidents and popes and they will say that they have the way. But they are not the way of the cross.
And so whether it is a President Bush or a Saddam Hussein, or whether it is a Tony Blair or a Jacques Chirac makes no difference. Their ways of finding a destination are fine, but they are not the ultimate way for life here or eternally. Jesus is.
There is a beautiful poem about a vision, and I paraphrase: One day a man dreamt that he was walking along a beach with the Lord, and scenes from his whole life passed before him in the sky. As he watched, he saw that there were two sets of footprints in the sand. One set was his, the other, the footprints of the Lord. As he came to the end of his life, he looked back and saw that in some places there was only one set of footprints in the sand. He noticed that these were always the moments when he had the greatest trouble or trial, difficulty or sorrow. So he challenged the Lord. He said: "Lord, why is it that every time I was troubled, distressed or sorrowful, there is only one set of footprints in the sand? Why did you leave me during those difficult times?"
The Lord responded: "My dear child, I would never leave you or forsake you. When you faced distress and sorrow, difficulty and hardship, there was only one set of footprints, for during those times, I carried you."
The cross of Jesus Christ, my friends, is God carrying us. That is why He said to Thomas, with love, clarity and compassion: "Let not your hearts be troubled. I am the way. I am the way. I am the way." Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.