In Whom Can We Ultimately Trust?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

May 5, 1996

John 14:1-7

John's little Jesus-Messiah-Jewish community fears for its very existence. With the Romans destroying Jerusalem, and threatening to massacre Jews as well, Judaism needs to draw a tight circle around itself. It must define itself resolutely with an airtight orthodoxy. Therefore, any deviation from the orthodox line is suspect and rejected. And this Christian community, confessing a slain criminal and blasphemer as messiah, certainly rates as subversive. It must be repudiated and barred from the synagogue. And thus, John's messianic community is kicked out of the synagogue.

But John's community faces another problem, as well. A third generation of Christians tries to live out the implications of their faith with no immediate presence of Jesus. He has been crucified some seventy years before. Those who knew him, or knew someone who knew him, are now gone. And thus, with the fierce hostility to Jesus as Messiah beating on them from every side, and no Jesus around, the faith of John's community finds itself under siege; their hope foundering on rejection and hatred; their confidence in the promises of Christ at stake, their trust in the future of God nearly shattered.

So, in face of all this resistance and threat, this hostility and rejection, John writes his Gospel undergirding the invincible promises of the God whom he calls consistently "Father." At the core of the promise John confesses a living presence as Way, Truth and Life. John asserts for you and for me that through the event of Jesus of Nazareth we can see, know, come to trust, be embraced by and freed for creative and liberated life in this world by the loving and gracious presence and action of creative and redemptive love at the heart of the universe.

I

John begins his affirmation for us with words of confidence and encouragement. Remember? "Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. In my father's house there are many dwelling places, many rooms. . . if it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?"

What is John talking about? What is this about "troubled hearts?" Well, the expression in Greek indicates "shuddering." It points to outright terror. It describes a condition John himself experiences with his fearful and nearly shattered friends. They live in terror of obliteration by religious and civic enemies, dreading abandonment by the love of God. They live on the brink of believing the world is finally a chaotic and bloody mess.

You see, for his own friends, as well for us, John tries to provide assurance for those among us who cry, "Hello! Hello! Anybody out there? Anybody care? Help! I'm going under!" John speaks for those of us whose faith undergoes erosion and disintegration. He confronts the questions we ask in our worst moments. Can we continue to trust Love to bear with us when everything around us deserts us? Can Hope sustain us while our world falls apart? The Gospel knows our fear. It knows the paralyzing numbness, the anxiety lodging in our chests, the panic in our gut when the rug is pulled out, trust is betrayed, commitments turn to dust, promises collapse.

But John knows something else vitally important, and he banks on it. He knows the Gospel itself is born amid such threatening circumstances. John knows the fear of ultimate abandonment, the terror of desertion by the source of Love itself becomes vivid in Jesus at the Cross. There, at the Cross, we see abandonment. There, we see a hostile world doing its worst to the best we know. But that is not all. Right there, at the cross, lies the reason we call the story of Jesus "Good News." In faith we confess that while hatred, resistance, deception, stupidity did the worst it could do to the best we know, we testify to a trustworthy, gracious, indomitable presence accompanying Jesus through that terror of abandonment; we live with every confidence that God's presence accompanies us through threats frightening us in face of loneliness, menace, despair.

Got it? When all hell breaks loose in your life, when it looks like you are going under, when you are panicked about yourself, when the doors look closed on your future and no one--no one--could care less, what does the Gospel say? Your fears are shared. You are not alone. There is a place for you. A dwelling. A home. And in that home--how can we say it?--a niche, a nook, a room for you, for me, for each of us, open to us by One who welcomes and embraces us as would an utterly reliable, dependable, trustworthy father.

I promise you, this room belongs to you right now. How you feel today does not tell the whole truth about the promise and presence of the One who abides beneath, above and alongside you. There is a room for you.

And yes, to be sure, a room awaits us or those whom we love as we pass into that realm of life we cannot describe. That is why we read this passage at memorial and funeral services. That transcendent of English poets, John Donne, captures the essence of Christ's eternal promise in his stunning prayer:

 "Bring us, O God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitations of your glory and dominion world without end."

"Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid."

Then, after alluding to a Way we reach the Father's gracious home, John shows Thomas misunderstanding that Way or even the destination. "Lord," Thomas says. "We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

John composes here a dramatic literary trick. It is a set-up. John designs a simple misunderstanding so he can devise a Gospel jewel. Here is the set-up: " Thomas, you ask about the way I go?" And here is John's jewel: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me."

As we have previously indicated in our excursions into this marvelous Gospel, these words of Jesus, "I am the way, the truth and the life," are probably the consequence of years of reflection on the meaning of Jesus as the Christ. This is John's conclusion after meditating on the redeeming and transforming presence of the living Christ for some seven decades.

II

But how do we understand it? How do we interpret this expression, "I am the Way?" What John tells us here, friends, is that the Way of God in this world coincides with the road, the path, the Way Jesus takes. The heart of God reveals itself through love that looks and acts like the love Jesus bears. It is a way that risks, that dares, that reaches out; it takes a chance another's life might be healed. The way of God--the way of Christ--is not some esoteric theological mind game, not a religious attitude, not a membership slot in the church's data base; it is not sectarian dogma nor pious speculation. The way of Christ is not a therapy, not a new age philosophy, not a detailed discipline. It is not the religion among the religions of the world we call Christianity with all of our rites, cathedrals, preachers, programs. Hardly. The way of Christ lies in risky, compassionate pursuit of human community where we men and women live in grace, service and mutuality with one another. We know that pursuit can be rugged. We know, as we look out on this world of ours, it can encounter iron-willed resistance, murderous hostility perhaps leading, even as it did for Jesus, to death. And yet, here lies the miracle, while surrendering to Christ's way we discover through all the challenges, difficulties and resistance, just what Dorothy Day discovered as, donning Christ's way, she assembled her houses of hospitality in New York's City's bowery: "all the way to heaven," she said, "is heaven."

Taking the plunge for God's sake, risking ourselves and our Church through works of grace and justice, bears the Christ to our world; it reveals the loving Way of God's heart to our world.

III

And the truth. The Truth? My soul, what is truth? It seems hard to come by. We are all aware, for instance, of this current political campaign pounding in on us. The President has a special prosecutor searching for some fraud or perjury in an Arkansas land deal. Where is the truth? Robert Dole repudiates sectors of his record to win or mollify delegates as his nomination gets closer. Where is the truth? And just this week, an Oregon Congressman informed the electorate he had not fought in the Korean war as advertised, nor had he been Phi Beta Kappa at his local community college as claimed, and he refuses to come clean on his wedding date because it may have felonious implications for the benefits his wife received as the widow of a deceased marine. What is truth?

Well, as John offers it, in Jesus Christ we encounter truth. We confront the congruence of word and deed. In Jesus Christ we confront One whose saying, whose doing, whose source, whose destiny, cohere. In Jesus Christ, we discover perfect integrity. All the modes we use to talk about this Jesus--our sermons, our creeds, our hymns--all the methods we employ to describe the Christ--whether stories about Jesus, his teachings, his activities, his impact--none of this is final and ultimate truth. Each mode can only tell us about Jesus as the Christ. Each points beyond itself to a living presence we can not finally capture in words, in pictures, in analogies, in parables, in music. In Christ we encounter a life as one commentator writes, "never losing the communion with the divine ground of all life, . . . never losing the union of love with all beings." That is Truth. And it is available to us in like manner. When we see and experience truth united with love, yes, when we ourselves are grasped by both truth and love, then we know integrity, coherence; then we, in a world of propaganda, self deception, image, and spin doctors, we ourselves become the message. We bear it, we radiate it, we live it, we share in Christ's truth. We become, even as Christ, truth as person, truth as love.

 IV

And yes, Jesus Christ is life. If anything shines through the Gospel, it is life: life to the full, life abundant. Oh friends, life in Christ is not life as promised by Bud Lite, nor Nieman Marcus, nor Tiffany's. Not life the way BMW, nor Town and Country, nor Gentleman's Quarterly nor Cosmopolitan would have it. Christ bears life not in the manner defined by the latest fashion, the hottest resort, the biggest income, the top job. That life cannot last. It dies. The life Christ opens to us is life lived in the sure and certain trust that no matter what befall, the tenacious Love of God abides within, beneath, above, around us. You see, finally, it is life lived out as way, the way we receive and exercise the dangerous love of God to heal the terrible wounds of our neighborhood, city and world.

 It is life lived out as truth: the congruence of what we do, who we are and whom we worship, uniting in how we serve.

It is life, lived out as Christ. Life lived out as Christ. In a little book called The Changed Life, one of the l9th century's radiant evangelists, the Scotsman Henry Drummond, writes about this life in and of Christ. In the book Drummond describes the influence on the disciples of living and working with Jesus. I am going to transcribe this just a little so we may understand the impact upon ourselves of living with Christ. My transcription goes like this:

"A few raw, unspiritual, uninspiring men and women are admitted to the inner circle of Christ's friendship. The change begins at once. Day by day we feel ourselves grow. First there steals over us the faintest possible adumbrance of Christ's character, and occasionally, very occasionally, we do a thing, or say a thing that we could not have done or said had we not been living in that radiant presence. Slowly the spell of his life deepens. Reach after reach of our nature is overtaken, thawed, subjugated, sanctified. Our manners soften, our words become more generous, our conduct more unselfish. As swallows who have found a summer, as frozen buds the spring, our starved humanity bursts into a fuller life. We do not know how it is, but we are different persons. One day, we find ourselves like our master, going about and doing good. To us it is unaccountable, but we cannot do otherwise. We were not told to do it, it came to us to do it. But the people who watch us suspect well how to account for it: They whisper, 'They have been with Jesus.' Already even, the mark and seal of his character is upon us. 'They have been with Jesus.' Unparalleled phenomenon, that we pathetic and self centered types should finally remind others of Christ! Stupendous victory and mystery of regeneration that mortals like us could suggest to the world, God!"

Way. Truth. Life. In this troubled and threatening world, we know here the very depths of the living Christ. In faith and in hope, I assure you, we may trust in and serve this Christ, the loving heart of the living God.