Help for the Directionally Impaired
Help for the Directionally Impaired by Rev. L. John Gable
March 17, 2019
The Tab staff meets together every Tuesday morning beginning with devotions at 9:00 am, and this past Tuesday was my day to lead. In recent weeks I have had Jesus’ “I AM” statements on my mind, so I listed all seven of them (I am the bread of life, the light of the world, the gate for the sheep, the Good Shepherd, and so on) and asked the staff to reflect upon them for a moment, then to choose the one with which they most closely identify; the one that seems to “speak” to them; and then explain why?
It was an interesting time of reflection and sharing, and perhaps an exercise I will invite you to do for yourself, because clearly we did not all choose the same passage. Some identified with Jesus being the “bread of life” and others the “light of the world”; still others the “good shepherd”, each for a variety of different reasons.
I found that I gravitated to His saying, “I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life”, and my reason for doing so is very plain to me, and perhaps to anyone who knows me well: I am directionally impaired. I will confess that I am utterly dependent on my GPS and am only half-joking when I say I still check the map when going from home to church, and even at that I’m not very good at reading maps. I can’t tell you the number of times I have thought I knew where I was going, when in fact, I was heading in exactly the opposite direction and only getting us more and more lost. So, I love it that Jesus says that He is “the Way” because I get so easily disoriented; and curiously, what I know to be true of myself directionally, I know also to be true of myself, spiritually; and in this I know I am not alone. There are many who confess to feeling cut off or distant from God, living lives of distraction or emptiness, meaninglessness or despair; many who would love to find their way back in to a right and meaningful relationship with God, but simply do not know how to do so.
So, when Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”, He is offering us something we desperately need, a way out of the life we are currently living into a new way of life in a right relationship with God and a restored relationship with others. Friends, this is very Good News, help to the directionally impaired, when Jesus says, “I am the Way…follow Me!”
But what exactly is it He offering? Let’s put this saying in to its proper context. As we read this lesson from John’s Gospel we understand that Jesus has just shared the Passover feast with His disciples and admittedly things are a bit tense in their little clan. While sitting at the table Jesus announces that one of those sitting with Him would betray Him (Judas); and then that Peter would soon deny Him, which of course Peter denies. He then announces that He would be going away from them, to be with the Father, in order to prepare a place for them, and that one day He would return again for them. All of this was surely very troubling for them to hear, so His words were intended to give them great comfort, but they were also admittedly rather confusing. What did He mean when He says, “Where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later?” So we are grateful that Thomas, one of the twelve, raises his hand and asks, “Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?”
Do any of us know the way to God on our own? I dare say we do not. If we tried to guess the way we’d likely make up a list of “dos and don’ts” that we think would be pleasing to God, but like the first disciples we must honestly confess that we do not know the way to God, and even if we did, we’d also have to admit that we likely couldn’t even live up to our own self-imposed standards. There is a fundamental brokenness, lostness, disorientation, an inability on our part, call it sin, that renders us spiritually directionally impaired. So, we are grateful that Thomas asks our question, “How can we know the way?” We are grateful because it prompts Jesus’ great response, “You do know the way because I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life.” Jesus is not reminding them that they have a “Road Map to Heaven” somewhere tucked in their pockets, or a list of rules and regulations sure to please God that they have somehow forgotten about. No, Jesus is saying, “You do know the way to God because you know Me!…I am the Way.”
What a wonderful, gracious and helpful gift He is giving us! For one who has the propensity for getting lost these words come as great comfort and relief. I confess that “I am lost” and He announces “I am the Way” and I say, “Praise God!” Now admittedly, if I thought I knew the way to God on my own; if I thought I had somehow devised my own plan, then perhaps I might take some offense at Jesus’ words; but since I know that I don’t know the way to God on my own, this offer sounds downright wonderful to me.
What Jesus is offering to us is this: first, He is offering us Himself. He is the WAY. Not a set of rules and regulations, but He Himself. “Do as I do, live as I live. Follow Me.” Long before Christians were ever called “Christians” we were called simply “followers of the Way”. Christianity is not just a way of thinking or believing or talking; it is a way of walking, of following our Guide who is Jesus. He is the path, the route along which we are called to travel, living in loving relationships with God and one another. Jesus was unique in that He didn’t tell His would-be disciples to sit down and learn from Him as did the other rabbis. No, He invited them to get up and “follow” Him, and He invites us to do the same still today. Perhaps the life of faith is best described as a journey. The end of the journey is God and the WAY of the journey is Jesus.
Second, He says He is the TRUTH. What we see in Jesus is the full self-revelation of God. In our lesson this morning He says, “If you know Me you will know My Father also.” That is a remarkable claim, but this is what we believe about Him when we call Him Savior and Lord. We believe He is telling us the Truth. I have said this just recently, if we want to know what God is like all we need do is look at Jesus. If we want to know what God’s truth is all we need do is listen to Jesus’ teachings. In a world of falsehood and deception, we believe Jesus is trustworthy because He is the Truth.
And finally, He says He is the LIFE. He, and He alone, offers us the kind of life God desires for each and every one of us, the kind of life we desire for ourselves; a life over-flowing with love and gratitude and generosity; a life filled with meaning and purpose and hope; a life both abundant and eternal. So, for those who are disoriented by despair or meaninglessness or hopelessness or emptiness; for those who feel themselves unknown and unloved by God, these are wonderful words of promise. Jesus offers us the only true life we will ever find, a life found in God.
But the question comes, “Why do we, or even why should we, believe Jesus when He says these things?” Surely others have made similar claims, but we have chosen not to follow them. What is it about Jesus that makes us believe Him?
Again, we can be grateful that one of the disciples, this time Philip, asks our question for us. In response to Jesus saying, “If you know Me, You will know the Father also” (Again, a radical claim for Him to be making to be sure), Philip asks, “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied”, to which Jesus replies, “Have I been with you all this time and you still do not know Me? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.” Another rather audacious claim, so why do we believe Him? Jesus gives us two good reasons for doing so.
First, He says, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own; but the Father who dwells in Me does His works.” Jesus is claiming that He has a unique relationship with God; He says, “I and the Father are one”. Jesus speaks with a God-given authority, so some among us are able to say, “Yes, I believe that simply because He said it.” For some of us faith comes very easily; “Jesus said it, I believe it, end of discussion.” But for others of us, faith does not come quite so easily; we need more proof, so Jesus gives us another reason to believe Him when He goes on to say, “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.” We don’t have to believe just His words, we can also believe Him because of His actions, because of the work He has done. Already by this point in the Gospels the disciples have seen Him turn water in to wine, walk on water, heal the blind and deaf and lame, and raise His friend Lazarus from the dead; all of this was surely evidence enough for them to believe Him, and that without their even knowing all that we know, the events still to come of the cross and resurrection and His securing our way of salvation. As we consider His life and ministry we are given confirmation that Jesus is who He says He is, or as the cowboy in the old Western movie put it, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it” and Jesus has done it, and He continues to do it still. He continues to touch and change and heal and save!
What Jesus is saying is “I am the WAY” because I am speaking and doing the TRUTH of God and am offering you the kind of full and abundant LIFE that only God can give, and that is very Good News.
So, the question comes to us, do we believe Him? Do we believe He is speaking the TRUTH about Himself? This is the Lordship question. If, for whatever reason, we believe He is not speaking the truth then we have no option but to reject Him. We can’t even say He is a wise man or a good teacher if we think Him to be mistaken about the primary subject of His teaching, Himself. If we reject His core teaching as being faulty, then we must also reject Him as being nothing more than a fraud or a fool.
However, if we can accept the premise that Jesus is speaking a whole TRUTH about Himself, then suddenly we have to take His other teachings at face value as well. If He is the TRUTH, as He claims to be, then He is also the source of LIFE, and if He is both of these, the TRUTH and the LIFE, then it only makes sense that He is also the WAY into a right relationship with God.
In the 15th century Thomas a’Kempis, the author of the classic The Imitation of Christ recast Jesus’ words in this way. “Come, follow Me. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Without the Way there is no going; without the Truth there is no knowing; without the Life there is no living. I am the Way which you must follow; the Truth in which you must believe, the Life for which you must hope… If you remain in My Way you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free, and you shall lay hold of eternal Life.”
I’ll close with a story I know I have told before, but one which I think illustrates what Jesus has done for us very well. The story is told of the missionary whose Jeep broke down on the way to a remote village in the jungles of Africa. The missionary and his native driver began to hike along the narrow road carved through the jungle. As the day wore on the road narrowed to only a foot path until at last it was strangled all together by the dark jungle. The native guide began to hack through the dense brush with a machete as the missionary nervously followed behind. After several torturous hours the missionary could restrain himself no longer and cried out, “Are you sure this is the way to the village?” The native stopped abruptly and turned around, his lungs heaving and his body glistening with sweat; then said in a calm, clear voice, “Listen to me. There is no way. I am the way. Follow me.”
Friends, may we hear and heed and share with still others this gracious invitation which Jesus gives to us that He is the WAY to God because He is the TRUTH of God and the only sure source of our LIFE in God; to which we can say, “Thanks be to God.” Amen.