On the Way

Being a Dorset lad, cosseted in the countryside with wide open spaces without too many of the complexities of modern life, I found myself in recent years having to travel all over England in order both to explore and train for ministry in the Church. With this in mind it was about a week ago that I had a truly terrifying experience (for a naive country-lad that is!) in London at Waterloo train station. I was confronted, for the first time as an adult, with a vast array of flashing signboards where names of towns and cities shimmered before my eyes in a cacophony of seeming chaos. What if I misread the signs or could not find my train back home? I could be stranded in London, or worse, be on a train to a completely ‘foreign' part of the country! Yet the more I studied these unfamiliar signboards the more I began to understand how they worked and what was actually going on at the train platforms themselves.

In today's gospel reading, we get a real sense from Jesus that he is our prophetic signboard, our spiritual train and our heavenly destination all wrapped into one. We are on a journey with him - ‘on the way', as it were. Indeed our early Christian brothers and sisters, before the word ‘Christian' was first used in Antioch [Acts 11:26] referred to the faith as ‘The Way' [Acts 19:9, 23; 24:14, 22]. And in some ways it is a pity that this ancient name has fallen out of use, because it encapsulates the important notion of a pilgrim disciple people's sojourn through life.

Jesus tells his disciples not to allow their hearts to become troubled and that they should believe in God and also believe in him. He said this at a time when he was contemplating his passion and glory. His words, however, would make more sense to his disciples after that first Easter. Jesus then further explains that there is room enough in his Father's house for all of his followers and that he will prepare a place for each one of them so that they may be with him and his Father forever. These indeed are comforting words! Words not just for the disciples listening to him all the way back then, but also words spoken for us today - made obvious by the context of the whole passage itself. Thomas, in his infamous slow-to-cotton-on way, articulates what the rest of the disciples are thinking when Jesus tells them that they already know how to get to where he is going. “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” he says [John 14:5]. Jesus replies “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [John 14:6]

In this verse Jesus elaborates further on the theme of “the way” and directs his disciples' wayward speculation, confusion and incomprehension back towards himself. They have now discovered that Jesus is the way to the Father! And so here Jesus answers for them one of the fundamental questions concerning human religion, that being, ‘How can one draw near to God?' The answer was simple: God had already drawn close to humanity by becoming human. There is nothing more for people to do than to open their hearts and accept this reality in faith.

Jesus is the “way” to the Father precisely because he reveals the Father (this being the “truth”) and also expresses the “life” of the Father. There is more to what this “truth” and “life” are in themselves which leads Jesus to further explain, “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” [John 14:7] Again we can almost anticipate a pregnant pause and hear the cogs whirring in the disciples' heads. Eventually Phillip plucks up the courage and asks, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” [John 14:8] Jesus replies, “Have I been with you all this time, Phillip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen my Father.” [John 14:9]

We can perhaps imagine a moment of clarity forming in the minds of the disciples when they fuse this remark with the previous one when Jesus mysteriously says that he is “the way, the truth and the life” [John 14:6]. Could it be that this man with whom the disciples had spent nearly three years was, in himself, the place where God truly meets with man? Rather than God being found in a certain place or being found through religious works and the observances of religious laws, was it actually possible that he was to be located and to be found in this Jesus from Nazareth?

Another fundamental human desire is that of yearning to look upon God as he is. Moses desired this very thing when he asked God if he could see him, but God told Moses “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” [Exodus 33:20] But with Jesus' disciples things were to be different: God was one step ahead of the game. First came his written Word, in the form of the Old Testament, with which he set the stage to expose the enormous wound of sin that existed between man and God. Then, in the fullness of time, God came in Person full of grace and humbling himself to speak to us in words from his own lips [Hebrews 1:1-2]. And so this seemingly ordinary Jewish man was none other than God whose face was unveiled before human eyes. At last man saw God as the Compassionate One – One who was willing to touch the unclean and heal them; as God the Holy One – One who allowed himself to be touched by sinners who in turn forgave them; as God with Us – One deeply involved in the messiness of human affairs in order to make whole those who were broken by sin; and as God the Humble One – as One who allowed himself to be crucified by the very people he had created in order to reconcile them to God.

In our mind's-eye we may gaze in wonder at Jesus who is ‘flesh of our flesh' and is ‘one like us' who yet, at the same time, is perfectly one with God the Father. The enormous wound of sin between man and God was drawn together in the body of Jesus Christ and sutured eternally by the nailing of his hands and feet to the cross. Jesus Christ has become simultaneously both our journey and destination. Thanks to Jesus' passion and resurrection, have already arrived safely in the Father's arms: like prodigals we have already returned home [Ephesians 2:6]! And yet, in another sense, we are still on our way towards our final destination. St Stephen strengthens our hope when, in our New Testament reading, he looked towards the heavens and being filled with the Holy Spirit beheld a glorious vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Stephen saw our final destination, albeit a mere shadow of the future beatific vision, in which God graciously showed him the way of unveiled truth and eternal life that is God himself.

When gazing at those signboards at Waterloo station, it took me a while before my anxious mind calmed down enough that I could breathe a sigh of relief in the knowledge that platform seven hosted my train back home. Likewise may those of us, when we become anxious in our journeys through life, look towards the risen Lord Jesus and when we do this pray that we may clearly see him as our way, our truth and our life. Then the words of the hymn will ring true:-

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.