In Whom Can We Ultimately Trust?
By James W. Crawford
The 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 define itself resolutely with an airtight orthodoxy. Any deviation from the orthodox line is therefore suspect and rejected. And this Christian community, confessing a slain criminal and blasphemer as Messiah, certainly rates as subversive. It must be repudiated. And thus, this messianic community is kicked out of the synagogue.John 14:1-7 But this community faces another problem as well. A new generation of Christians tries to live out the implications of their faith with no immediate presence of Jesus. He has been crucified many decades before. Those who knew him, or knew someone who knew him, are now mostly gone. With the fierce hostility to Jesus as Messiah beating on them from every side, the faith of this group finds itself under siege; their hope foundering on rejection and hatred; their confidence in the promises of Christ at stake.
In the face of all this, the Apostle John is moved by the Holy Spirit to write his gospel under-girding the invincible promises of God. At the core of the promise John confesses a living presence as the Way, Truth and Life.
Personal experience. John asserts that through the event of Jesus of Nazareth we can see, know, and come to trust our Savior. We can be freed for creative and liberated life in
this world by the loving and gracious presence and the action of creative and redemptive love at the heart of the universe.John begins his affirmation with words from the Lord of confidence and encouragement. Remember? "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" (John 14:1,2).
What is this "troubled hearts" all about? It is the expression in Greek that indicates "shuddering". It describes a condition experienced by this community of believers. They live in terror of obliteration by religious and civic enemies, dreading abandonment by the love of God.
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!" Quoting Jesus, John speaks to 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 and Hope to bear with us when everything around us deserts us?
The gospel writer knows our fear. He 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.
God's presence. But John knows something else vitally important, and he banks on it. He knows that the Gospel itself is born amid such threatening circumstances. John remembers that the fear of ultimate abandonment and the terror of desertion by the source of Love itself became 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, and stupidity did the worst to the Best, God's trustworthy, gracious, and indomitable presence was accompanying Jesus through that abandonment. So, we live with every confidence that His presence accompanies us as well in our loneliness and 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 could care less, what does the Lord say? Your fears are shared. You are not alone. There is a place for you. A dwelling. A home. And in that home, there's a niche, a nook, a room for you, for me, for each of us, open to us by One who welcomes and embraces us and is our utterly reliable, dependable, trustworthy Father.
Ours now. 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 ser
vices. 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."The Way
In verse 4, Jesus says, "And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." Thomas replies, "Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?" It is a set-up. God 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 the jewel He presents: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me."But how do we understand it? How do we interpret this expression, "I am the Way?" What Jesus tells us here, friends, is that the Way of God in this world coincides with the road, the path, the Way He 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 that another's life might be healed.
The way of Godthe 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 that we call Christianity with all of our rites, cathedrals, preachers, and programs.
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. 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. "All the way to heaven is heaven," she said as she, donning Christ's way, assembled her houses of hospitality in New York's Bowery
The Truth
I am the way, the truth. The Truth? What is truth? It seems hard to come by these days. We are all aware, for instance, of the spin that our political leaders have become so expert in giving us. A lie, we are told, is not necessarily a lie. An affair does not always mean an affair. What is truth?Well, 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 Jesusour sermons, our creeds, our hymnsand all the methods we employ to describe this Christwhether studies about His parables, His teachings, His activities, His impactare 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, or 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 and 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 and truth as love.
The Life
Yes, Jesus Christ is life. If anything shines through the gospel, it is lifelife to the full, life abundant. Oh friends, life in Christ is not life as promised by Bud Lite, Nieman Marcus, nor Tiffany's. Not life the way BMW, Town and Country or Cosmopolitan would have it. Christ bears life not in the manner defined by the latest fashion, the hottest resort, the biggest income, or 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, and 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 sin sickness of our neighbors. 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. In a little book called The Changed Life, one of the 19th century's radiant evangelists, the Scotsman Henry Drummond, writes about this life in and of Christ. In the book Drummond describes the influence of living and working with Jesus on His followers. 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.In this troubled and threatening world, we know the way, the truth and the life are the very depths of Jesus. In faith and in hope, I assure you, we can put our trust in and serve this Christ, the loving heart of the living God. oFirst there steals over us the faintest possible resemblance 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!
Rev. James W. Crawford is Senior Pastor at Old South Church in Boston, 645 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02146.
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