| This week's thinking bit... |
|
|
|
The Way to Heaven 5th Sunday in Easter : 24th April 2005 Acts 7.55-60 | 1 Peter 2.2-10 | John 14.1-14 The book of Acts tells us that before the early followers were known as Christians, they were called Followers of the Way - they were first called Christians in Antioch [Acts 11.25]. Maybe they were known as Followers of the Way because Jesus spoke of himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life. In this phrase Jesus took three important images of the Jewish religion and wrapped them up in one saying and made the tremendous claim that in him all three of these images found their full realization. The Way...
But one of the things about Christianity is that we’re not offered guidance, we are introduced to the Guide... There is a world of difference between giving a complex set of instructions to a tourist to get to the railway station, and taking the tourist there yourself... The Truth...
A person’s character is actually of no great influence over their ability to teach geography, or maths or French. But if somebody teaches moral truth, their character makes all the difference in the world. An adulterer who teaches the necessity of faithfulness; or a grasping person who teaches the value of generosity; an embittered person who teaches the beauty of love - all are bound to be ineffective. Moral truth cannot be conveyed by words alone; it must be conveyed by lifestyles, example and character. And Jesus claimed to be the embodiment of Truth. The Life...
So this phrase makes quite some claims! Then to cap it all Jesus says that he is the only way to God - which is a theme running through John’s gospel. This exclusive claim of Jesus has caused people many problems and people have understood it in various different ways down the ages. Christians have always claimed that there is something uniquely special and definitive about Jesus - that he is the most perfect revelation of God, the most full, complete and accurate understanding human beings have.
Maybe that statement about Jesus
being the access to God is best understood in terms of complete revelation.
Instead of being heard as “Unless you’re a Christian you can never know
anything about God”, we should hear it as “God has revealed himself most
perfectly
Or perhaps even that Jesus is the gate through which we meet God - just as Paul talked to the Athenians about the unknown god they worshipped, maybe we best understand this saying of Jesus as being inclusive, rather than exclusive...
Be that as it may, we know that in
Jesus we have one who offers us everything: meaning and purpose, knowledge
and understanding, salvation - rescue from ourselves; a guiding hand and the
assurance of God’s gracious favour: so our challenge is to walk in his Way,
to rejoice in his Truth and to live his risen Life.
Picture Credits on this page |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Way, was clearly the Way of
God: God had told Moses that he and the people were to walk in the ways of
the Lord, not turning aside to left or right (Deut 5.32-33); and the prophet
Isaiah had talked about how God would guide people “Your ears shall hear a
word behind you saying ‘This is the way, walk in it’” (Is 30.21); and there
would be a highway called the Way of Holiness, upon which no one would get
lost (Is 35.8). So the Jews knew a great deal about walking the Way of God.
When Jesus talked about himself as
the Truth the Jews would have known that truth was part of God’s nature.
Many people might have told us truth, but only one has embodied it.
When Jesus said I am the Life, the
Jews knew that the quest for life, for meaning, for fulfilment, is part of
the human urge... and for Jesus to say “I am the Life” is to say that
satisfaction and fulfilment and meaning are to be found in him.
in Jesus; to know God more fully, you need to know Jesus”.