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Sermon - The Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B - 20th April 2008
7, 8 and 10am - St Albans Epping
Readings: Acts 7: 55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 17-18; 1 Peter 2:11-25; John 14:1-14
It has been said that John 14:6-7 is the high point of the theology of the writer of John’s Gospel. These verses state in clear language the theological conviction that drives his writing, "No one comes to the Father except through me". These words express unshakable belief that the coming of Jesus, the Word made flesh, decisively altered the relationship between God and humanity. Jesus is the tangible presence of God in the world and that God the Father can be known only through that incarnate presence. Humanity's encounter with Jesus the Son makes possible a new experience of God as the Father.
Yet for some Christians the very clarity and decisiveness of these words have turned these words into a weapon with which to bludgeon one's opponents into theological submis sion. These words are used as a litmus test for Christian faith in myriad conversations and debates within the church. They are taken by some as the rallying cry of Christian triumphalism, proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that people of any and all other faiths are condemned. For others these words are seen as embarrassingly exclusionary and narrow-minded and they are pointed to as evidence of the problems inherent in asserting Christian faith claims in a pluralistic world.
How are we to interpret this central claim of the Fourth Gospel? Jesus' claim that "no one comes to the Father except through me" is the joyous affirmation of a religious community that does, indeed, believe that God is available to it decisively through belief in Jesus. This claim has been announced from the opening lines of the Gospel,
"No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known" (1:18).
In many ways, it is indeed only through the incarnation that the identity of God as Father is revealed. Jesus does not say "No one comes to God except through me," but "No one comes to the Father except through me," and the name needs to be taken seriously. John 14:6 is the very concrete and specific affirmation of the early Church about the God who is known to them because of the Jesus. The act of Jesus becoming a human changes everything, because through it humanity's relationships to God and God’s relationship to humanity are decisively altered. The incarnation has redefined God because it brings the tangible presence of God's love to the world. "God" is not a generic god here; God is the One whom the disciples come to recognize in the life and death of Jesus. When Jesus says "no one," he means "none of you”. Jesus defines God for his disciples; the writer of John’s Gospel defines God for the members of his faith community and us.
It is important to try to hear this joyous, world-changing affirmation in the first-century context of the writing of this Gospel. This is not, as is the case in the twentieth century, the sweeping claim of a major world religion, but it is the conviction of a religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world. It is the conviction of a religious group who had discovered that its understanding of the truth of God carries with it a great price. This conviction has led them into conflict with the Judaism that previously had been their sole religious home and so they have had to carve out a new religious home for themselves, a home grounded in the Word becoming flesh. In this reading it is possible to hear an element of defiance, a determination to hold to this experience and knowledge of God against all opposition and all pressure to believe otherwise. In these unambiguous words, the Gospel declares where it stands in the first-century intra Jewish debate about the character of God and the identity of God's people.
What is often labelled as excessively exclusionary would be described more accurately as the early Church’s knowledge and experience of God and membership in the faith community that hinges on this claim. This claim has distanced them from their prior religious home and thus it will shape their new one. These words establish boundaries; it says, "This is who we are. We are the people who believe in the God who has been revealed to us decisively in Jesus Christ". To be included in the circle of Jesus' "own," one must recognize Jesus for who he is, which means recognizing the revelation of God in him.
However, these words prove to be a problem when they are used to speak to questions that were never in the writers mind. To use these verses in a battle over the relative merits of the world's religions is to distort their intention. It is dangerous and destructive to cite them as the final arbiter in discussions of the relative merits of different religions' experiences and understanding of God. The Fourth Gospel is not concerned with the fate, of Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists, nor with the superiority or inferiority of Judaism and Christianity as they are configured in the modern world. These verses are the celebratory words of a particular faith community, convinced of the truth and life it has received through Jesus. The writer’s primary concern was the clarification and celebration of what it means to believe in Jesus. This theological vision expresses the distinctiveness of Christian identity and it is as people shaped by this distinctiveness that Christians can take their place in conversations about world religion.
When one excludes the questions that contemporary Christians falsely import into these verses, there is nothing outrageous or offensive about the claims made here. Rather, at the heart of Christianity is this affirmation of the decisive revelation of God in the Jesus the Christ. These verses can thus be read as the core claim of Christian identity; what distinguishes Christians from peoples of other faiths is the conviction that through Jesus that Christians have access to their God as Father.
On one occasion when Billy Graham spoke at Harvard University he spoke to the prestigious JFK Forum at the Kennedy School of Government. After his address, he turned to the audience for questions. All the Christian triumphalists had shown up for their man and their night at Harvard. One young believer stood up and asked Dr. Graham, "Since Jesus said 'I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man cometh to the Father but by me,' doesn't that mean people from other religions, Jews and the rest, are going to hell?" Dr Graham replied, "I'm sure glad that God is the judge of people's hearts and not me! And I trust God to decide those questions justly and mercifully." The student was disappointed and pressed further, "Well, what do you think God will decide?" Graham demurred, "Well, God doesn't really ask my advice on those matters." Another questioner started again, "Well, what about those who aren't even monotheists, like the Buddhists?" Graham, replied, "You know, I've been to some Buddhist countries, and so many of the people I met seem to live more like Jesus than too many Christians I've seen."
Those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Way the Truth and the Life, the Way to the Father and the Word should be the most loving, compassionate, forgiving, welcoming, peaceful, and hungry for justice people around just like Jesus. Unfortunately, it's not always exactly so. Those who do not belive in Jesus as the way to the Father need to see in us what we belive so that they will better see God.
Let us lift our game. Remember the Spirt is coming to assist us. We need all the help we can get.
This sermon prepared using The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol IX and http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=resources.sermon_prep&item=bl_061226_Wallis-ChristsDivinity&week=A_Easter_5