Text: John 14:1-14; 1 Peter 2:2-10
It was in 1915 that a young poet by the name of Robert Frost published his small book of poetry titled, North of Boston. It's a remarkable collection. You probably know his poem "Mending Wall" that begins, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." One of the other memorable poems in this collection is titled, "The Death of the Hired Man". The poem tells the story of Silas, the hired man, who comes back to the farm after having left during harvest time when he was needed. Mary, the wife meets him, and later says to her husband when he returns that Silas has come back. She says,
“He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and frightening, too—
You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognize him—
I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.
Wait till you see.”
“Where did you say he’d been?”
“He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.”
Mary and Warren continue talking about Silas, and the difficult life he has had, and how he couldn't quite be counted on when work was to be done. He would leave, and then come back wanting a handout, but offering to do some work for money, just to keep his self respect. Warren comments that the one thing Silas could do well was bundle hay. Give him credit for that. Mary then says,
Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.”
“Home,” he mocked gently.
“Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.”
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”
“I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”
That's strong isn't it? Home, the place where when you go there, they have to take you in.
It's something you somehow haven't to deserve." Robert Frost has captured so much emotion in these lines. Robert Frost tells us the story of Silas coming to his home to die where he knows Mary and Warren will accept him unconditionally—they will take him in no matter what his condition. And then Robert Frost enlarges the meaning beyond the home of Mary and Warren and says it is that universal place where they will take you in and offer you unconditional acceptance. I suppose that we could use church language and say home is the place of abundant grace given without reservation.
When I read the Madison Square web page that invites everyone who reads it to come home it is a remarkable statement of the meaning of “home.” I would guess that anyone reading it would be moved.
Home is where you put your foot on the porch
and before the other foot ever touches the landing
the door dances open.
and the first thing you see is a huge smile
and the first thing you feel is a huge hug
and the first thing you hear is your own name
spoken with excitement and elation and jubilation and so much love.
Home is where you don't have to be anybody but you.
You don't have to be good enough or smart enough
or strong or pretty enough or think only right thoughts
or believe only right beliefs or guard your heart\
or deny your mistakes or hide your wounds
or silence your needs or measure your hopes and dreams.
You don't even have to pretend to be somebody your are not.
So you can belong, because at home you belong already.
You are a child of God.
So we say to you, Come on in, Come as you are.
Come on in, child of God.
This is a warm and welcoming statement that draws us in. I feel welcome here. And I would trust that others are drawn here by this invitation.
So here is my question: what is the home into which we are welcome?
Once here, where are we?
What are the marks, and signs and words that identify the home?
The morning gospel reading is from the 14th chapter of John. You may already know that the Gospel of John is very different from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three are all telling the story of Jesus in very similar ways. Indeed, both Matthew and Luke pattern their story after Mark, and much of the content in these three is similar. But John is different. 90% of John's Gospel is unique to John. In chapter 14 we begin a long passage that goes through chapter 17 where Jesus is saying farewell to his disciples. In this morning reading you will hear Jesus say, “I am the Way, Truth and the Light.” Last week you heard Rueban preach on another verse where Jesus said, “I am the gate for the sheep.” In fact in John, Jesus uses this “I am...” language seven times.. I am the bread of life. I am the vine... I am the Resurrection and the Life.
So listen to Jesus speak intimately to his disciples as he tells them that he is going to prepare a home for them, and what it means for him to leave them, and how he addresses their anxiety and fears by telling them that even though he will leave them, they will know the way to live the abundant life with God.
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”?
The Word of the Lord.
I am going to prepare a place for you.
You know the way.
Lord, what is the way?
Thomas, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.
This is the powerful message of John's Gospel. He says it over and over again in many different stories. John wrote his Gospel after 90 AD. That is some 60 years after the death of Jesus, and the early church was going through great struggle. They were being persecuted by the Romans, and the Jews didn't want anything to do with them. They early followers of Jesus were dying or dead, and the young churches started by Paul were growing but were very much a minority. Many of those members of the church were slaves and former slaves, they were artisans and peasants, they were gentiles in Jewish territory and made up of the poor and marginalized.
And so John writes this story of the good news about who Jesus is in order to encourage and focus the early church.
Let me state his message succinctly; Jesus is the way home.
It is where you want to be—the heart's desire.
It is from this and similar passages that made it natural for The early Christians to be called “Followers of the Way.”
You want to live the abundant life? Jesus is the way.
You want to know God? Jesus is the way.
You want to be unburdened from your past? Jesus is the way
You want to live a God-filled life? Jesus is the way.
You want to be enlightened? Jesus is the way.
John tells us that it is the words of Thomas who speaks out of the anxiety and fear of the early church about being left alone with persecution, division, doubt, insecurity swirling around them that Jesus begins his farewell address with these magnificent words:
Do not be afraid. I am going to prepare a home for you with God.
And where I go, you will follow.
Thomas speaks, “Jesus, how can we follow, we don't know the way.
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Follow me.
If anyone wants to find home, this is the way home. Follow me.
Eugene Peterson encapsulates Jesus’ point in John 14 by saying, “Only when we do the Jesus truth in the Jesus way do we get the Jesus life.” More important is the “Jesus Way” of loving God and loving neighbor.
C.S. Lewis tells the story of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith in his famous "Narnia Chronicles." It is the story of children who discover the entrance into this new world of faith, and are finally introduced to Christ, who is in the form and figure of Aslan, the Lion--who, we are told, is certainly dangerous, but he is good. Listen to this first meeting between Aslan and the girl, Jill:
"Are you not thirsty?" said the lion.
"I'm dying of thirst," said Jill.
"Then drink," said the Lion.
"May I -- could I -- would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill.
The lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
"Will you promise not to -- do anything to me, if I do come? Said Jill.
"I make no promise," said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
"Do you eat girls? she said.
"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.
"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.
"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."
"There is no other stream," said the Lion.
No other stream? Is that true? Is that what we Christians believe--that for all the people of the earth, for all those who search for God, for all who thirst for God, there is only one stream--and it is called Christian faith; or even, "The Church"
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life," he said, and the whole history of the world might be different if he had stopped right there, but he didn't. "No one comes to the Father except through me," he went on to say, giving his followers all the warrant they would ever need to turn his way into the way of crusades, inquisitions, and holocausts.
It did not happen immediately. When Jesus first spoke these words the followers of the Way were still a small, persecuted band living on the edges of society. No one was telling them they were right to follow Jesus. On the contrary, people were lining up to tell them they were idolatrous, deluded, damned for following Jesus. Nothing could have sounded sweeter to their ears than Jesus' assurance that they were on the right track——the only track——to God. Their faith in that was what allowed them to go willingly to their own deaths, and even to forgive those who punished them. By imitating Christ, they embarked on the way, the truth, the life that would lead them home.
All that changed in the fourth century, when the persecuted band became the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire. All of a sudden, "No one comes to the Father except through me" was backed up by an army, an emperor and an increasingly powerful church, which was not at all bashful about using some of the same tactics it had picked up from its tormentors. Over the next fifteen hundred years, Jesus' sweet words of assurance around a last supper table became a banner under which countless Muslims, Jews and even Orthodox Christians were killed.
When people believe theirs is the only way, then they believe they must eliminate other options, and even do it in the name of the sacred. This is a problem no twenty-first century Christian can ignore, but it is such a difficult one that most of us do not know what to do about it. Shall we demote Christ, conceding that his truth is one among many——a way, a truth, a life——or shall we insist that his way is definitive and that all other ways are thereby lacking?
When Jesus said he was the way, the truth, the life, he was not addressing an interfaith tribunal as the central figure of a dominant world religion. He was speaking to a small circle of his friends on the night before he died. Jesus was not thinking about the Muslims, the Hindus, Buddha or Moses. He was loving his friends and telling them not to let their hearts be troubled. They would be okay--for the way of love he had shown them was the path to God.
We know that language, don't we? It is not objective truth, but intimate, subjective truth we state in that love language:
You are the best daddy in the world.
You are the best mother anyone ever had.
No one has ever loved a child the way I love you.
If we try to take these intimate statements of faith and love language into absolutes, it becomes silly are distorted. Can you measure which daughters daddy is the best in the world? The same is true of Jesus response to Thomas—that is faith and love language given for reassurance to anxious Christians trying to follow the Jesus Way in troubled times.
In 2003 the Presbyterian Church adopted a confessional statement title, Jesus, the Hope of the World” in which we said that we believe and proclaim that Jesus is the Way home: or in the common theological language, the way to salvation. But we were clear to say that this is not an exclusionary statement. At the beginning of our morning service, you can read the critical phrase in our statement. It reads.
Although we do not know the limits of God’’s grace and pray for the salvation of those who may never come to know Christ, for us the assurance of salvation is found only in confessing Christ and trusting Him alone. We are humbled in our witness to Christ by our realization that our understanding of him and his way is limited and distorted by our sin. Still the transforming power of Christ in our lives compels us to make Christ known to others."
Our confession as Presbyterians is that we stand on the reality we Trust that Jesus is the Way home. That is our witness. But in humility we realize that God may provide other ways for other people. We can only speak of what we know, nothing about what we don't know. For us, Jesus is the way home. We do not know the ways of God for others.
So, here I am, a guest in your home. You have invited me and others
to share your hospitality;
to be hugged and called by name,
to be accepted unconditionally,
to believe something, or nothing, or anything,
to make this my home along with the rest of you.
But might I share with you what answers I would give to my initial questions.
What is this home into which I have been welcomed?
It is the fellowship at Madison Square. Yes. But certainly it must be more.
It is the Madison Square Church. Yes, But certainly it must be more.
It is the Madison Square Presbyterian Church. Yes. That but more.
It is the Madison Square Presbyterian Church in the Protestant family. Yes, but more.
It is the particular home that Christ has prepared for all who seek the abundant life as a follower of Jesus.
O my, yes! Does it not bear the marks and signs and words and works that nurture us all in the Truth, Life and Way of Jesus Christ?
Is this not the home of Christ, and are we all not guests?
O my yes. I would think it must be so.
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