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“Which Way is THE Way?”
July 30, 2006
Colossians 1:3-6 and John 14:1-10
Rev. Tonya ArnesenA teacher was walking among the desks of her Kindergarteners, hard at work on an art project. "What are you drawing" she asked one little girl. "Oh, I'm drawing God," the child replied. "You know, no one knows what God really looks like" the teacher confided. Without looking up, the girl replied: "Well, they will in a minute!"
Every religion, I suppose, shares a bit of this spirit. Each of them says to a skeptical world, "We know what God looks like. This is God's Way…”
Some of us wonder, however, if all these religious people aren't a bit like the three blind men who each were asked to describe an elephant. One approached the beast and grabbed its trunk, exclaiming confidently, "An elephant is long and tubular and capable of great contortions of shape." The second blind man had his encounter with the elephant and, after placing his hands on the animal's side, said, "No, no, an elephant is very broad and leathery and hardly capable of bending at all." To which the third man, having grasped the pachyderm's tail, remarked with disgust, "You're both wrong. An elephant is quite thin and smooth and has a wiry brush on the end."
Surely no one knows everything there is to know about God. At most, each religion only glimpses a bit of The Eternal One. And unfortunately, each is too proud of the part it knows, and too blind to the parts that others may know better. Perhaps if every world religion would just wise up and humble down regarding the limits of their perception of God, there'd be a whole lot more peace in this world.
That said, as Christians we must grapple with Jesus’ words: “no one comes to the Father except through the son.” Here we have this luminous man who loves and serves and teaches in a manner that is so sane and attractive, even atheists and people of other religions have admired and discussed him for 2000 years. But then Jesus goes and makes an outlandish claim that no other founder of a world religion has ever made. He claims he is not simply "a" child of God; he’s the Son of God in a unique sense. Jesus says he is the eternal Word, come to earth in human flesh and “. . . anyone who has seen me has seen the Father… I am the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me."
Isn’t there something about that claim that is off-putting to us? Aren’t we tempted to try to tone it down with interpretations? We say, “Oh Jesus is just telling us that he’ll show us a really good way to get nearer to God; he’ll give us some important principles to live by; some life-enhancing tips.” But Jesus says, “NO. I am the Road, the Reality, and the Re-creative Power of life itself—and not a single soul gets close to all of God except through me.”
Now that claim may present us with a problem. You see, we live in a world where “tolerance” has become our most vigorously protected cultural value. To be sure, part of the church’s mission to the world is to humbly and graciously accept one another as we have been graciously accepted by God; to denounce bigotry and prejudice in every form – and actively promote an ecumenical partnership with other faith traditions.
However, I am convinced that one reason the Church continues to lose status, people, credibility and prophetic impact in the world, is that we have bought into the prevailing western cultural assumption that the Christian faith is just one among many equally valid paths to God. We are so bent on being politically correct,” so fearful of sounding intolerant, proud or narrow-minded, that we “water down” the gospel and either downplay or try to explain away Jesus’ audacious claim.
In doing so, not only are be being untrue to God’s Holy Word, we are relinquishing the most powerful, transformative truth that the Christian faith has to offer the world! Friends, when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. . .” he said what he meant – and meant what he said! He wasn’t suggesting, "I've got a really good handle on the elephant, I can draw you a great picture." Jesus was saying, “I AM the elephant! Climb on me – because I’m the only one who can take you over the mountain.”
This morning, if you don’t remember anything else I say, I hope you’ll remember this: the arms of God open very wide, but they are attached to Jesus. I realize it may be hard for us to understand just HOW wide open God’s arms truly are. We’ve seen the narrow-minded God of the Church Lady and Ned Flanders, bent on criticizing and condemning people. We’ve seen the manipulative God of the televangelist – who is only out for our money, or whatever else He can get from us. We’ve seen the vengeful God of the terrorist, who demands that we kill and destroy all who disagree with our interpretation of scripture. And we begin to imagine that God is interested only in the narrowest bandwidth of people. But God’s Word reminds us that God’s gracious love is stunningly INCLUSIVE in its scope.
Colossians tells us that through Christ, “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the cross.” I Timothy 2:3-4 reads: "God our Savior wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." 2 Peter 3:9 declares: "The Lord is… patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." Or hear the words of Jesus in perhaps the most famous Christian text of all time, John 3:16-17, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."
Friends, God reaches out to human beings with wide open arms! As the old hymn goes, "There is a wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of the sea.” God uses every possible avenue to communicate His good intentions for humanity: God sends his messengers to the ends of the earth to bear witness to his goodness and love. He shines some of the light of his law through even primitive or pagan religions. God uses His Creation and human conscience to reveal his existence, his character, and his moral desires to humanity. As Romans 1:20 describes, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
However, just as God's salvation is stunningly INCLUSIVE in its scope, so salvation is EXCLUSIVE in its source. Yes, the arms of God are wide open, but those arms attach to one specific person – Jesus Christ. As Acts 4:12 reads: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved." I know it is hard for some of us to accept the idea that Christ as the only way to salvation, but it begins to make more sense for me, when I remember these three key concepts:
FIRST, nobody is entitled to salvation. God did not have to make us. God does not have to sustain us. And God doesn't have to save us. All of it is God’s grace. Sometimes we hear people say, "Oh, well, God would have to let so-and-so into heaven. They were such a good person.”
Friends, when it comes to righteousness, we grade on a curve (measuring ourselves against each other), but God grades on a cross. God grades us against the standard of Jesus – the one and only person in all of history who lived a perfectly obedient, holy life. So none of us are worthy, none of us are good enough to earn God’s grace. As we're reminded by the Apostle Paul, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" and "the wages of sin is death." Nobody is entitled to God’s saving grace.
SECONDLY, God’s Word reminds us that we cannot save ourselves, no matter how sincere we are, how many frequent worshipper miles or moral merit-badges we earn. We are saved only by the work of Christ on the Cross. Jesus pays the debt from the only bank account big enough not to be bankrupted by the price of sin. Ephesians 2:8-9 declares, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast."
As we consider Jesus’ claim to be the Way, the Truth and the Life, we might also remember this: when we understand how hopeless the human condition is, we’ll want to give thanks for hope – no matter how it comes. I know the exclusive claims of Jesus are bothersome to some. We wonder why God didn't come up with a more general or different methodology for delivering human beings from bondage to sin and death. But I suggest that instead of asking, “Why did God choose to save us only through Jesus?” We ought to be shouting, “Thank you God, for saving us!”
Imagine you’re on the Titanic and the ship is going down. Are you going to nit-pick that the lifeboat is blue and not yellow? Or imagine you're running from a great forest fire, and discover that the way to safety is blocked by a great chasm. Are you going to stand around and complain that the only bridge is made of wood, and not steel? Instead of quibbling about HOW God has chosen to save us, shouldn’t we just be thankful that God HAS chosen to save us? Nobody is entitled to salvation and we cannot save ourselves.
THIRD, people are accountable to God for what they know – not for what they don’t know. Perhaps like me, you find it disturbing to imagine that God would condemn someone who never even heard about Christ. After all, you cannot confess Jesus as Lord if you’ve never even heard his name! Here again, we look to what we know about God through Jesus: Jesus reveals that God’s character is neither capricious nor cruel, that God is gracious and merciful and to all His children. God’s primary concern is not with how many people He can turn away, but with how many He can save!
And consider this: Hebrews 11 gives us a list of Old Testament saints who were put right with God "by faith" even though they lived before the time of Jesus (thus could not have confessed him as Lord.) Therefore, I imagine it is possible for someone of genuinely humble and contrite faith to recognize their sin before a holy God, throw themselves upon God’s mercy, and be saved. This doesn't negate the biblical message that "there is no other name by which someone can be saved." It simply reminds me that God honors those who honor God – even if they have never heard of Jesus Christ.
Finally, as we reflect on Jesus’ claim, “no one comes to the Father except through me,” I want to remind us of this key concept: while all religious paths may lead to God, only Jesus is the way to a saving relationship with God the Father. Some paths lead to a critical, condemning God. Some paths lead to a manipulative God. Some lead to a vengeful, punishing God. Some paths lead to a remote, disinterested God. Christ Jesus is the only way to the God of grace and mercy; the God whose eternal love and goodness is unchanging; Our Heavenly Father who is intimately concerned with every aspect of his children’s lives.
I am convinced that it is only by walking with Jesus that we see the Truth of who God is, the goodness of the Way God intends us to live, and the Life that is available to all who love him – abundant life here and now, and eternal life when this earthly journey is over. Through Jesus, God comes into focus and we can say, "Ah yes! This is what God looks like."
Rev. Tonya M. Arnesen
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