We are not a salvation cult

John 14:1-14

1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 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? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. 12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me”.  This is among Jesus’ most famous, most emphatic claims, and most exclusive claims.   For some this a verse to highlight, to celebrate, to put on a banner and wave it around. But for others the claim causes that Jesus is the only way sounds like exactly the kind of chauvinism that Christianity would be better off without.  What might me do about that?  

The whole passage begins with a question Simon Peter raised toward the end of the previous chapter: “Lord where are you going?”  Jesus responds cryptically about going some place they can’t go yet but will later.  Simon Peter wonders why he can’t go now; he even swears that he would lay down his life for Jesus.  It’s a bit like he’s afraid of being abandoned.  So Jesus tells him, and all the disciples, “do not let your hearts be troubled”, and he promises that he’s going ahead of them to prepare place, the he will return take them, that, in fact, they already know the way.  

Thomas responds, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Thomas seems to assume that they must know the location of the destination in order to get there, as if they must plot their own course, find their own way.  But Jesus shifts the focus off the destination and onto the way you reach it, which is through him, or - in the language of the other Gospels - by following him.  The destination, is to be with the Father.  But the way to know the Father, he tells them, is to know him.  “If you know me, you will know the Father.”  

Now Philip takes a turn to demonstrate he doesn’t hear what Jesus is saying: “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.”  Jesus clearly gets a bit exasperated.  “Don’t you get it!  I have shown you the Father!  If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen him!  If it’s is too hard for you to believe then at least believe on the basis of the works I’ve done!  Goodness gracious!”  

In Jesus’ say there were many “mystery cults” which promised initiates secret knowledge that would assure salvation.  You might also be familiar with “gnosticism”, a blanket term for related ideologies emphasizing the divine impartation of special spiritual knowledge, gnosis, which would you free from from material bondage.  And, though gnosticism came to be regarded as a heresy - for good reason - it’s not hard to see how Christianity might be taken as a new flavor of gnosticism. And indeed there were many Christians who understood the faith in exactly these terms: Jesus as the messenger from heaven that lets us in on the secret, the one who imparts the special knowledge needed to get saved.   And if you don’t have that knowledge, if you haven’t heard, then you’re out of luck.  This is Christianity as salvation cult.  

Perhaps the main reason that Christians rejected gnosticism was because it denigrated the material and therefore denied the possibility of Jesus’ physical incarnation.  “Christian” gnostics took Jesus to be a “spiritual” entity who only appeared to have a body and only appeared to die on the cross.   It just seemed unimaginable, scandalous, that God would sully himself by actually becoming a human.  But in fact the incarnation is the very foundation of the Christian faith. 

It’s true, of course, that there is just one God.  It’s actually part of the definition: God is a category of One.  It’s often said that all religions - especially the three Abrahamic religions - all worship the same God.  There is a sense in which this in undeniably true: those made in the image of God seek their maker; our hearts are restless until the rest in him.  And it’s also true that the major religious traditions make very similar metaphysical arguments about the necessity of God’s existence.  At least in a philosophical sense, they each mean pretty much the same thing when they say “God”.   

But where religions differ - and differ more than many want to acknowledge - is on the question of God’s character, God’s relationship to the world, to us? - who is God and who are we? What does God want from us and intend for us?  What is the good?  Which story are we living in?   Various religions answers these kinds of questions quite differently, to such an extent that it sure seems like they’re imagining a very different God telling a very different story about who we are and where we’re going.   It’s sometimes said that various religions are just different ways up the same mountain, but they all have quite different accounts of just what “mountain” it is that we’re all supposedly climbing.  

And, in fact, even within Christianity, the same can be said: that though we all worship the same God it sure seems like we imagine God’s character so divergently that you wonder if we’re really worshipping the same God.  

When Jesus says he is the way to the Father, he’s not simply saying that there is well-known character called “the Father” to which everyone is reaching, as if people are trying different paths to the same destination but that Jesus is the only path that works.  Instead, Jesus effectively re-defines who we take the Father to be by claiming that he reveals the Father to us, that he and the Father are one, that he is the very image of the invisible God.  Philip wants to see the Father - to see the Father revealed - because he recognizes he’s got a fuzzy picture of who God is and would like it clarified.  And Jesus is standing right there saying, if you have seen me then you have seen the Father.  

When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me”, he is not saying that he’s like the bouncer at the door to God’s club, that everyone is knocking on that door and Jesus only lets in the people he knows.  Rather, he is saying that, if you don’t know him, then you don’t really know the Father either, so you don’t even know what you’re looking for, where you’re trying to go.   It’s a claim about who he is and thus a claim about the very nature of God.  If you don’t see me then you don’t have a clear picture of who God is.   “Believe in God, believe also in me.”  Which, it turns out, is a tautology.   

This is an essential truth always to hold before us: that when we imagine God, when we describe God’s character, when we wonder how God relates to us, what God desires for us - that we always think of Jesus.  Any other idea of God - including even those to be found in Scripture - are filtered through the lens of Jesus in the Gospels, for that is where we see him most clearly, and therefore see the Father, see God.  

Regrettably Christians are quite capable of talking about God in ways that bear little resemblance to Jesus, who can speak of the Father entirely disconnected from the Son.  Undoubtedly all of us have faulty pictures; we’re like Philip wishing to see God revealed even as it’s right before our eyes.  

I expect most of us are reluctant to declare that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father but through him, because it sounds fundamentally exclusionary, like we’re claiming special knowledge and access, that being a Christian is about belonging to and getting people to join our salvation cult, to say that only we know how to get where everyone is trying to go.  

But, in fact, we’re saying something much more fantastic than that: We’re saying that Jesus is God, that it’s only through the incarnate Son that we can really know the Father, that without Jesus you necessarily have very different conception of God.  This is an exclusive claim, but it’s exactly the sort of claim that any religion which takes itself seriously ought to make.   

And so we might dare to affirm: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me”, exactly because in following this way we have discovered something that rings true, that gives life - that everything worth finding is found in Jesus.