The Way

 

John 14:1-14

 God does not want our hearts to be troubled.  We are to believe in God’s love and grace, so that we trust God’s intention and promise that we be with God forever.  Collectively, WE are not to be troubled, for there are MANY rooms with God.

 Jesus was confident that we know the way.  Thomas did not know.  Jesus made it clear.  Jesus IS the Way, the Truth and the Life.  Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and gives the world salvation.  Jesus is the Way of Faithfulness to God through the living of agaph, which Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us, as we have witness in the Gospels.  Jesus is the Truth that LOVE transforms the world, even under empire, so that all of God’s children may have Shalom.  Jesus IS the Father to us.  Jesus reveals the Kingdom values that God has commanded from the beginning and that Rabbi Jesus fulfilled through the living of agaph with God and Neighbor.

 Jesus is the Way.  Though Philip did not understand, John’s Jesus points out how we are to believe in Him, if not for His Words, then for His actions.  agaph, after all, is committed ACTION on behalf of the other, even stranger and enemy, and especially the most vulnerable among us.  We are called to ACTION in transforming the world in love by living those Kingdom values in this part of God’s Kingdom, here and now.  That is faithfulness to the Father, as witnessed by the Son.

 Jesus also promised that we would do the works that He did and even greater ones.  Jesus taught us how to resist empire, how to take back power from empire and how to live in God’s Kingdom even under empire.  Jesus taught us how to transform individual lives, communities and the world through the living of agaph.  Jesus called His disciples to be apostles and put that love out in the world, and they did so.  The accounts in the book of ACTS bear testimony to their changing the world through radical love in radical inclusion, generosity, availability, advocacy and service.  They did incredible things while living in the movement of agaph that Jesus founded.  It was not until 312CE that empire subsumed the movement and made it an institution of empire.  Before that, the movement of agaph transformed lives, communities, the faith practices and much of the world.

 That can happen again.  It must happen again.  We who claim the name of Jesus must walk in His Way, for He IS the Way, the Truth and the Life.  His Grace through the redemptive act on the Cross has brought all people to the Father, given us access, for that is His Way.  When we understand that Jesus’ Way is the way to be faithful to God and Neighbor in love, we will know the Truth and lives, even life itself, will be changed for all of God’s children.  It will not happen through the church until the church makes Jesus’ Way its Way.  When the church stops making it all about serving itself as institution instead of the movement of love to transform the world, making it all about personal salvation instead of Shalom for the whole world, and making it all about prosperity, power and status – the values of empire – THEN the church will be instrumental in fulfilling the mission that Jesus has given her.  When we live in Jesus’ Way of agaph in the world, we will be faithful to God and we will know beloved community in the world.

 Jesus is the Way to repair the world.  Jesus’ agaph is the Truth that can save the world.  Jesus is the Life of all people, here and now in God’s Kingdom and for eternity with God.  No one else has or could do that.  We cannot know faithfulness to the Father but through the living of Jesus’ Way of agaph.