Sermon: The Way of Love

Delivered at Slater United Methodist Church in Slater-Marietta, South Carolina on May 14, 2017, the Fifth Sunday of Easter

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The Way of Love

Audio Version

[Jesus said,] “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.  And you know the way to the place where I am going.”  Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.  Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.  I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

John 14:1-14 (NRSV)

Love is right here

Love is alive

Love is the way

The truth, the life

From “Love Never Fails” by Brandon Heath

In 2002, pop psychologist Philip McGraw, known to the world as Dr. Phil, became the host of his own television show.  Not long afterward, late-night talk show host David Letterman introduced a new segment on his show, titled “Dr. Phil's Words of Wisdom.”  Each of these segments featured a short clip from Dr. Phil's show played out of context for comedic effect.  One such segment that has stuck in my memory featured a clip in which Dr. Phil said, “Sometimes it's hard to see your own face without a mirror.”  On its own, such a quote might have us sarcastically thinking, “Really?  I had no idea I needed a mirror to see my own face.”  Dr. Phil might have actually made a valuable point by saying what he said – perhaps something about how we cannot always trust our perceptions of ourselves – but his point is lost to us if do not know the context.

When a person's words are quoted with no regard to the context in which the person said what she said, we might not fully understand what she was actually saying.  Bible verses are no exception.

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We are nearing the end of Eastertide, the season on the Church calendar when we remember the time Jesus spent with the Disciples after He was resurrected from the dead.  As we look ahead, we remember that it was only a matter of time before Jesus would leave the Disciples once again and return to His Father.  With that in mind, we return to a section of the Gospel of John known to some as the Farewell Discourse, in which we hear what Jesus says to the Disciples shortly before He is betrayed and arrested.

When one of the Disciples mysteriously walks out during dinner, Jesus makes a startling revelation to the other Disciples.  He says, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer.  You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’”¹  The disciple Peter asks Jesus where He is going, and Jesus replies that He is going to where they cannot yet follow but that they will join Him there someday.²  Jesus then says to them,
Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

The Disciples have probably heard words like these at some point in their lives.  In fact, it is likely that at least some of them have even said such words to someone.  They are the type of words that, in their culture, a young man might say to his beloved when she has accepted his marriage proposal.  At an engagement celebration, which took place after a marriage had already been arranged, the man offered the woman a glass of wine as a symbol of his marriage proposal.  If she drank the glass of wine, thereby accepting his proposal, he would tell her that his father's house has a lot of room and that he is going to prepare a place for her there.  The groom would then begin building an addition to his family's house, while his bride learned about caring for a household.  When the groom finished building a place where he and his bride could live together and start a family, he returned to his bride to take her home with him, and the marriage officially began.  The houses of large families had, to use Jesus' words, “many dwelling places.”³

Using betrothal language, Jesus is telling the Disciples that He will soon return to His Father to prepare a place for those who would join Him.  In the same way that a lover brought his beloved into his father's household, Jesus is bringing His followers into the family of God.⁴

Jesus, having told the Disciples that they will someday join Him, reassures them that they already know the way to where He is going.  The disciple Thomas then asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Jesus replies, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Scholar William Barclay suggests that, with this grand statement, “Jesus took three of the great basic conceptions of Judaism, and made the tremendous claim that in him all three found their full realization.”  Jesus embodied the way the people of Israel were called to follow, the truth they sought from God, and the abundant life they all desired.⁵

Sadly, we don't always treat Jesus' profound statement with the reverence it deserves.  It is often used out of context, with no regard to the conversation Jesus is having with the Disciples or even the question Jesus addresses with it.  Many Christians quote this saying in reference to people who follow other religions, as if to say, with an air of superiority, “We're in, and they're out.  Don't like it?  Too bad!”  Many quote this saying to communicate to the world that we Christians have all the answers and that anyone who wants to get on God's good side had better listen to us and do what we say.

While it true that there is exclusive language in Jesus' statement, Jesus does not say what He says in order to exclude people.  Consider the context.  Jesus and the Disciples are not engaging in a debate about which systems of faith and belief are valid.  The Disciples have just learned that their Teacher and Leader is leaving them, and naturally they are anxious about carrying on without Him.  They are concerned that they will not be able to go to where He is going without anyone to show them the way.  Jesus tells the Disciples that He is “the way, and the truth, and the life” and that nobody can go to the Father except through Him to reassure them that they already know the way to His Father.⁶  After all, they have been shadowing Jesus for the last three years, all the while learning all about the way, the truth, and the life He embodies.

Jesus says that He is “the way” to God.  The Greek word translated into English as “the way” is hodos, which could alternately be translated as “road,” “journey,” “course of conduct,” or “manner of thinking.”⁷  This word can be found numerous times throughout the Gospels.  For example, when some people approach Jesus with a question, suggesting that He teaches “the way of God in accordance with truth,” the word for “the way” is hodos.⁸  When Jesus says, in the Parable of the Sower, that some of the farmer's seeds “fell on the path,” the word for “the path” is also hodos.⁹  When we read that Mary and Joseph traveled “a day's journey” before realizing that they had left a twelve-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem, the word for “journey” is, again, hodos.¹⁰

Often Christianity is presented as something that primarily concerns things in our heads, specifically our doctrines and our beliefs.  The Way of which Jesus speaks is not merely a set of propositions to believe but a path to follow in life.  It involves not only what we believe about Jesus but also how we walk in light of what we believe.  When Jesus says, “Believe in me,” He is not calling us to simply believe certain things about Him but to believe in Him enough to actually follow in His footsteps.

When Jesus first reveals to the Disciples that He will soon leave them, He gives them some parting instructions.  He says,
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.¹¹
Earlier that evening, in the middle of dinner, Jesus left His seat at the table, removed His outer robe, tied a towel around himself, filled a basin with water, and washed the Disciples' feet, like a lowly servant.¹²  It is while this action is still fresh in the minds of the Disciples that Jesus says to them, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  The way Jesus embodied in His life is the way of humble, self-sacrificial love, and to follow the way He calls us to follow is to love as He loved.

Jesus says that it is by the way we love that people will know whether or not we really are His disciples: it is by our love that we show the world that we are following the Way.  As a certain song reminds us, “They'll know we are Christians by our love.”¹³  We Christians have the ultimate example of self-giving love, but, sadly we are not always known as exemplars in following this example.  Mohandas Gandhi, who lived and died fighting for equality in India through nonviolent activism, reportedly said,
I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus.  In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity...  The trouble is with you Christians.  You do not begin to live up to your own teachings.¹⁴
If we Christians, who have the audacity to bear the name of Christ, are called to reflect His love to the world, then we cannot simply ignore the world's critiques of us.

I will readily admit that not all paths lead to God.  In the Book of Proverbs, we read, “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.”¹⁵  The way of love is the only way to God.  As St. John writes in one of his epistles,
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love...  If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.¹⁶
Ultimately, what we claim to believe about Jesus matters very little.  If we are not striving to live lives of love as Jesus lived, then we are not following the Way.  In the unforgettable words of St. Paul,
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.¹⁷

Christ calls us to reflect His love to the world, but when we twist Jesus' words in order to place ourselves above others, we undermine our calling.  Instead of showing the world the love of Christ, we broadcast to the world things that have nothing to do with love.  Christ is the only way to God, but who are we to think that our way is the only way to Christ?¹⁸  Who are we to act as gatekeepers to the one who existed before all things and who, from the very beginning of time, has held all things together?¹⁹  Christ is bigger than all of us.

Jesus says to the Disciples, “If you know me, you will know my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  The disciple Philip then says, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  If there were, in Jesus' day and time, as many competing conceptions of God as there are in our day, then we cannot blame Philip from making his request.  Jesus replies,
Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
John begins his Gospel by telling us that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ.²⁰  Through His life, we see that our God is a God of love, peace, mercy, and grace.

We have a tendency to project our personalities, opinions, beliefs, and worldviews onto God.  As the French philosopher Voltaire once mused, “If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.”²¹  At the same time, what we believe about God shapes who we are and what we do.  For example, an angry person who projects his anger onto God and thus ends us worshiping an angry God will become more and more angry.  Likewise, a fearful person who makes God the object of her fear will become all the more fearful.  In this way, we get caught up in a feedback loop in which we reinforce our own attitudes and behaviors.²²  We can break out of this cycle by looking to the One who came into the world to show us what God is like.

Lest we think that Jesus is just someone else projecting His own personality onto God, He goes on to say,
The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.
In another Gospel, Jesus suggests that we can know who people really are by their fruits, in other words, by whatever they produce with their lives.²³  Jesus does not set himself above this standard, for not only has He talked the talk, He has also walked the walk.  He has walked the very path He calls us to follow.

It is commonly said that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human, a doctrine we do not fully understand.  In Him we see who God is, and in His example we see what humanity is meant to be as creatures who bear God's image – people who love and serve one another.  In this way, Jesus embodies – or perhaps one could say incarnates – “the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”  If the Disciples weren't already feeling overwhelmed about carrying on in Jesus' absence, they surely are now.  To the Disciples, whom Jesus calls “little children,” He will later say, “I will not leave you orphaned.”²⁴  He has no intention to leave the Disciples all alone to figure out what it means to follow Him.  They will be sent a Helper who will remind them of what Jesus has already taught them and who will continue to teach them as they strive to follow in His footsteps.²⁵

As Christians, we do not have all the answers, but we do have a path to follow, and, by following this path, we show the world that we serve a God of love.  It is a narrow path that not everyone in the world chooses to follow, but it is the path that leads to life.²⁶  In Terrence Malick's 2011 film The Tree of Life, the mother of the main character says,
The nuns taught us there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace.  You have to choose which one you’ll follow.  Grace doesn’t try to please itself, accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked, accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself, get others to please it too, likes to lord it over them, to have its own way.  It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it, when love is smiling through all things.  They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.²⁷

May God give us the strength to choose the path Christ has shown us.

Amen.


Notes:

1. John 13:31-33 (NRSV)
2. John 13:36
3. Rob Bell.  Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality.  2008, Zondervan.  pp. 169-171
4. Adam Hamilton.  John: The Gospel of Light and Life.  2015, Abingdon Press.  ch. 4
5. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John, Volume Two.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  pp. 183-185
6. Bo Sanders, Tripp Fuller, et al.  “The John 14:6 Challenge Edition!!!”  Homebrewed Christianity's Theology Nerd Throwdown, 11/14/2012.
7. Blue Letter Bible: hodos
8. Mark 12:14
9. Matthew 13:4
10. Luke 2:44
11. John 13:34-35 (NRSV)
12. John 13:3-5 (NRSV)
13. From the song of the same title by Peter Scholtes
14. Wikiquote: Mahatma Gandhi
15. Proverbs 14:12 (NRSV)
16. 1 John 4:7-8, 12 (NRSV)
17. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NRSV)
18. J.R.D. Kirk.  “The Stone Lives.”  Homebrewed Christianity's LectioCast, 05/08/2017.
19. Colossians 1:17
20. John 1:14
21. Wikiquote: Voltaire
22. Rob Bell.  Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  2011, HarperOne.  pp. 182-184
23. Matthew 7:15-20
24. John 14:18 (NRSV)
25. John 14:26
26. Matthew 7:13-14
27. IMDb: The Tree of Life (2011)

Jesus Washing Peter's Feet was painted by Ford Madox Brown in the 1850s.