Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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Well, we hear that text often enough
at funerals, don’t we?!
Especially that first part of it,
where Jesus assures the disciples
that he is going to prepare a place for them,
and that in God’s house there are many rooms.
Those are tremendously comforting words
when we have lost someone we love,
or even when we are faced with
the possibility of our own death.
It is good to know
that God is in control
even beyond the point of death.
But this passage is more than just
words about Christian dying …
It also has a lot to say
about Christian living.
About a life that is often characterized
by ambiguity and tension,
a life lived in between
the promises of Christ
and the fulfillment of those promises.
This passage helps us to deal with
the tough questions we raise to God,
and the fact that we aren’t always going to get
an answer we can use right away,
or an answer that immediately makes sense to us,
or an answer that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers!
Many people – most of us here, I would assume –
turn to religion, or faith, or God,
however you want to look at it,
for help with finding answers.
And that’s good,
because that’s where we need to turn,
but it’s not as simple
as some would have us think.
Remember the bumper stickers that informed us:
“Jesus is the answer”?
It always made me wonder,
what was the question.
Imagine a meeting of, let’s say,
the Manton Scholarship Committee –
they’ve been hard at work recently –
sitting around a table with lots of applications
from very interesting high school seniors,
and asking the Lord,
“Who should receive a scholarship this year?”
and the answer coming back,
“Jesus.”
Imagine a Christian citizen, a few days before the election,
praying, “God, I’m not wild about any of these candidates.
Who should I vote for?”
and God’s voice responding,
“Jesus.”
Jesus is not literally the answer
to most of the questions we raise
and the issues we face.
He’d better be a large part of
how we find the answers we need,
or we’re likely to be disappointed with the results.
But he himself is not the answer …
he is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.
But even that is ambiguous, isn’t it?
In our lesson from John’s gospel,
we find both Thomas and Philip
asking questions, digging deep,
trying to get a handle on what Jesus is telling them.
They seem to understand up to a point,
but they don’t see how to carry it over into real life.
Thomas, for example,
is puzzled by Jesus’ talk about “the way.”
Show us the way you are going, he asks.
I am the way, says Jesus.
Well, that’s true, but I think Thomas was looking
for something a little more like a road map:
follow these steps here, and you’ll be sure to get there.
There are faith traditions in the world
that do lay it out for you in a neatly-organized system.
Buddhism talks about an “eightfold path”
you must follow if you wish to achieve enlightenment.
Islam has five “pillars”
that are to guide the life of every believer:
creed, prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage.
And if you do all those things at the prescribed times,
you are considered a faithful Muslim,
and you can count on God’s favor.
Even Judaism, particularly at this point in history,
was understood quite clearly to give a long list of commandments
which, if you kept them,
were understood to keep you on God’s good side.
As opposed to those “tax collectors and sinners”
who had better watch out (!)
But as we see in Jesus’ conversation
with Thomas and Philip and the others,
our faith doesn’t give us the answers quite that specifically.
We as followers of Christ
are given a lot of responsibility
for our own faith journey.
A decision that is absolutely right and faithful for my life,
might be absolutely wrong for yours,
and vice versa.
Because even though we are all God’s children,
we are also all different individuals.
And our following of Christ, the Way,
will take us different ways at different times.
And this can be a hard way to live, sometimes,
because it is not always a simple matter to know
whether we’re doing the right thing,
living the right way.
And the more complex our world keeps on becoming,
the more confusing our decisions are,
the more possible options we have,
and the less sure we are
that we know what is the right thing to do.
That’s one reason I think fundamentalism
is more popular than many of us can believe,
and will always have followers.
There will always be people
either, who don’t trust their own ability
to make good decisions,
or, who have already made bad choices
and whose lives have become such a mess,
that they really want someone else
to take over and fix it for them.
And it seems there will always be
people willing to do that for them.
People who have all the right answers,
and are quite happy for you to make those your answers too,
and everyone who doesn’t agree
can quite literally go to hell.
Well, I’m quite certain,
and I think the Bible is also pretty clear as well,
that we don’t get to know it all …
at least, not until we ourselves
have reached God’s house with many rooms.
We are called upon to live our lives
the best way we know how,
realizing that we don’t have all the answers.
Much of the time
we have to live by faith, and not by sight.
That’s kind of what Jesus was saying to Philip.
Philip says, “Show us God,
Show us God,
and then we’ll believe you.”
Jesus says,
“You have seen me,
and that’s all you need.
If you believe in me,
you will be able to do
even greater works than I have done.”
Most of us are kind of like Philip …
we want to see it all,
we want to have all the details,
we want all the information
before we make a decision, especially an important one.
It doesn’t work that way.
Our faith tells us that Jesus has the answer,
even though we may not be able to see it clearly,
or even see it at all, sometimes.
That’s very frustrating for most of us,
as it was for Philip and Thomas,
but it’s also an important lesson.
We are God’s beloved children,
but we are not God.
We don’t have all the answers,
and we can’t.
But we do have Jesus Christ,
who is the way, the truth, and the life.
Granted that he is not always
as clearly marked a way as we might prefer …
Granted that his truth is sometimes hidden,
and hard to see in the midst of everything else …
Nevertheless, he is the one we must follow.
He is the one who has the answers,
even if we don’t yet know what they are.
He is the life that we must trust with our own lives,
even if we can’t always see where he’s leading us.
That is not easy to do;
we all stray at some time or another …
just like we talked about last week!
When we are walking by faith and not by sight,
we do stumble sometimes,
we do trip and fall occasionally,
we do wander off the path.
I think that’s why God gives us
the gift of each other …
because we do need to be cared for
and bandaged up
and set on the right path again.
We are important to one another.
But it is Christ who ultimately is
our way, truth, and life.
He alone knows what we need,
and how to lead us there.
We don’t have to have all the answers,
because he does.
And believe it or not,
that’s enough.
Amen.
© 2002 Julie Adkins (e-mail: Drjadkins@aol.com)