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“What is the Way?”
Alice Fleming Townley
April 20, 2008
John 14: 1-14
“What is the Way?”
Late one Friday night in 1995, Mitch Albom, sports writer for the Detroit
Free Press, was flipping through television channels. He heard Ted Koppel’s
voice on “Nightline,” ask “Who is Morrie Schwartz?” Mitch Albom froze. Morrie
Schwartz had been his beloved professor at Brandeis University, one of the most
formative people in his life. Ted Koppel explained that Morrie Schwartz was
dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease, and that night’s feature was, “A professor’s
final course: his own death.” Finding out about Morrie, prompted Mitch to fly
to Boston to reconnect. Soon after, the union at the Detroit Free Press went on
strike and the paper shut down. Mitch became a student of his beloved professor
once again. Mitch traveled to Boston every Tuesday and from his dying, Morrie
would teach Mitch about living. Morrie talked about what seemed most important
to him now: matters of the heart, faith, and relationships. Out of this
experience, Mitch Albom wrote Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man,
and life’s greatest lesson. I found this copy in our church library.
The passage we read this morning is from Jesus’ farewell discourse. It was
common in the ancient Mediterranean world for people to give a farewell
testament, such as Morrie did. John wrote this gospel 40 or 50 years after
Jesus’ death and resurrection. He was pondering the words Jesus wanted the
Christian community to remember.
John remembered, “Jesus told us, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many
dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare
a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
“I go to prepare a place for you.” I remember when we were expecting our
first child how we prepared a room for him. We delighted in finding a crib and
assembling it, washing little clothes that many hearts had given us and laying
them in my childhood changing table and dresser, putting my grandfather’s old
lazy boy in the corner and covering it with a blanket. Some evenings I would
sit and rock the baby in my womb, and imagine holding him in my arms. Of
course, I had no idea six pounds would take over more then just one room.
Jesus says, “I go and prepare a dwelling place for you.” Can you hear the
expectation, the longing, the love?
Jesus continued, “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that
where I am, there you may be also.” We will dwell together. “The Father is in
me and I am in the Father. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” We
will all live together.
For centuries, Christians have pondered the intimacy between God, Jesus, and
the Holy Spirit. In the 4th century, the council in Nicea used the
word, “homo-ousius,” of the same essence. This morning we proclaimed in this
Nicene Creed, “We believe in one God . . .maker of heaven and earth, of all that
is, seen and unseen. . . We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ . . . eternally
begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God .
. . of one Being with the Father . . . We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.“ (UMH, p. 880)
God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is an on going flow of life, and love, and
prayer, on ongoing flow of strength, mercy, redemption. Jesus said before his
death, “I will go away, and come again, to take me with you.” We listen to
these words long after his death and resurrection return. If we listen close
enough, we hear Jesus’ invitation into the intimacy of the Trinity, in this life
and beyond. This is a holy beckoning into the flow of love between God, Jesus,
and the Holy Spirit. This is the place Jesus has prepared for us. --The place
where we are expected, and longed for.
Thomas said to Jesus, “How do we get there?” Jesus said to him, “I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.”
Does this mean Jesus is the only way? My heart has struggled with this
question, and I imagine yours has as well. People come to this University and
to East Lansing from all over the world. Mike and I have neighbors who are
Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim. If you come to the church during the week, you will
see the classrooms full of people learning English as a second language. Can we
say to them our faith is the only way?
Just as my husband and I prepared a place in our home for Jonathan, our first
baby, we, with the help of many, prepared a place for our second child, Grace,
with just as much love and expectancy. In the Nicene Creed we proclaim that God
is the maker of all. Would not God long to dwell with all of God’s children,
not just us? In God’s house there are many rooms? And would not God’s voice be
articulated in different people, experiences, and traditions depending on where
in the world we lived?
William Sloane Coffin said, “For us as Christians, God is defined by Jesus,
but not confined to Jesus.” And Kristen Sthendahl, NT scholar, former Dean of
Harvard Divinity School, and bishop of the Church of Sweden, said, “We as
Christians can sing our love songs to Jesus with wild abandon without needing to
demean other religions.” (p. 89, Marcus Borg, Heart of Christianity)
For a world who has seen thousands of years of wars based on religious
differences, perhaps the most healing testimony we can give is one of “loving,
at the very minimum honoring, our neighbor.” In so doing, I believe we
honor the Holy One who is longing for deeper intimacy with all Her
children.
Jesus says, “I am the Way.” “What is the way?” Jesus’ “way” is one of death
and resurrection. Jesus’ way invites us then into a daily dying and rising, an
ongoing transformation. We are called to let die what distracts us, separates
us from the Holy, and rise to being more fully alive in God. We are invited
to dwell more and more fully in the flow of the Trinity.
Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity, explains it this way. “We
are called again and again to come forth from our tombs. . . This process
is at the heart not only of Christianity, but of the other enduring religions of
the world. The image of following “the way” is common in Judaism, and “the way”
involves a new heart, a new self centered in God. One of the meanings of the
word “Islam” is “surrender”: to surrender one’s life to God by radically
centering in God. And Muhammad is reported to have said, “Die before you die.”
Die spiritually before you die physically, die metaphorically (and really)
before you die literally. At the heart of the Buddhist path is “letting go”—the
same internal path as dying to an old way of being and being born into a new.
According to the Tao to Ching, a foundational text for both Taoism and
Zen Buddhism, Lao Tzu said: “If you want to become full, let yourself be empty;
if you want to be reborn, let yourself die.”
“The process of personal spiritual transformation—what we as Christians call
being born again, dying and rising with Christ —is thus central to the world’s
religious. To relate this to John’s affirmation that Jesus is “the way”: the
way that Jesus incarnated is a universal way, not an exclusive way. Jesus is
the embodiment, the incarnation, of the path of transformation known in the
religious that have stood the test of time.” (p. 118-119, Marcus Borg, Heart
of Christianity)
Thus we can proclaim that Jesus is “the way” we know to life with God,
and follow whole heartedly. We can share the Way we have found with others in
our actions, and in our words. We can also listen, and hear the God story in
another’s heart.
On one of Mitch’s Tuesday visits, Morrie explained, “Once you learn how to
die, you learn how to live.” (p. 82, Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie)
If suddenly we knew we would die in six months, then what that we are doing
would become important to us? and what would not matter so much? Asking this
question, is the Way to life, life abundant. For me, when I remember I am
mortal, I worry less about material things like clothes and house cleaning, and
more about being fully present to those around me, and to God within me and
beyond me. What is lasting? In the words of Paul, “Faith, hope, and love, and
the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13) Morrie surrounded himself
with friends and family, and blessed them. Telling them over and over how much
he loved them. He reached out to people who were hurting. He reconciled
wrongs. He showed Mitch, who was totally absorbed in his rising career, another
way.
This is the “Way” Jesus takes us--into the ongoing flow of love, life and
redemption. This Easter season that we are in is my favorite part of the
Christian calendar. For in it, I ponder not only Jesus’ resurrection, but the
on-going work of God bringing new life from bulbs buried in the ground, and buds
swelling in the trees. I feel the warmth of the sunshine, and my spirit hears
again Jesus’ parting invitation. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Come let
the essence of the Trinity flow in you and through you. Dwell this way. Live
this way with me.”
Hear this poem by Joyce Rupp, in her book Fresh Bread, p. 54-55
I Have Been Entombed
I have been entombed
Within the ego and the self;
I have been dead
Within the walls of winter.
I have long lain aside
The hope that once I knew;
Many forgotten truths
Line the path of wilderness.
I have grown weary
With the waiting cocoon;
I have sensed with sorrow
The pain of transformation.
Yet, in the graceful stillness
Of this early April morning,
I am greeted in love
With inside eastering.
I stand before this moment
With silent, rising sun
And page-full of Scripture
And I proclaim: I am coming
forth!
I’ve left the linens of winter
Lying there behind me;
I’ve shook off the dust of dead
And I’m bounding forth in Spirit.
It is time to break loose.
It is time to come forth.
It is time to allow life
To wing its way into depths.
This is the season of my Savior,
The One whom God raised from the
dead.
This is the moment of
resurrection
And I know it is the right time.
For I am coming forth,
Coming forth from the tomb—
And just like my God risen,
I feel bonded with the world,
I feel all brokenness brought
unto one.
I’m on my way to bless bread
With each of my dear friends;
I’m on my way to offer presence
To all those I meet on the road;
I’m on my way to bring
resurrection
To all who need God’s healing
Life.
It is Easter
And I proclaim:
I’ve been raised from
the dead!
I am coming forth
from the tomb!
May our hearts feel the Holy Longing. May we follow the Way.
Alleluia and Amen.
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