ermon. April 20, 2008
Fifth Sunday of Easter Rev. Barbara Abbott
John 14:1-14 St. John’s, Huntingdon Valley
I grew up in a household with an evangelical Mother (one who would say “The Bible says it, I believe it, end of argument”) and an agnostic (borderline atheist) Father. The Sunday dinner table could be pitched battle between the forces of good and evil – or belief vs. reason – depending on your point of view. Mother would generally have the last word, sighing regretfully and informing Dad that he was going to hell unless he changed considerably. My brother and I – thoroughly churched as children, dropped out in adolescence. The war in Vietnam was worsening, hard-won civil rights victories seemed to be losing ground and the local church didn’t want anything to do with the world. Now Mother despaired of our souls, and kept a close eye on us, hoping for signs of spiritual improvement, of which there were none for a very long time.
My grandmother also lived with us. She took no part in the debate, but instead quietly lived out her faith, reading her Bible and commentaries, maintaining quite a correspondence and praying morning and night in her room. Oh – and showering us with love –which was mutual - those were her central functions in the household. She prayed, I later figured out, for us, as well as for people she knew and some she didn’t – prisoners, people in institutions, people in foreign lands. We learned about these when letters began to pour in after her death. She had cared for quite a flock, it seems.
I tell you this because today’s reading from the Gospel of John has the effect on me of returning me to the Sunday dinner table of my childhood. The writer has Jesus declare: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” It’s a short step from this exclusive claim to the Johanine epistle where people are separated according to the litmus test of believing in Jesus into “children of God” and “children of the Devil” – the saved and the damned. What about those who faithfully follow Judaism, Islam and Buddhism? I instinctively recoil. I hear my Father’s furious arguments on colonization, religious wars and all manner of oppression justified by religion. We’re familiar with the destruction that can come of taking words out of context. This scripture can be weaponized. It’s only a small step from this text to “the Axis of Evil” and “the Evil Empire” of recent American political discourse. If Christianity comes down to damning other people of faith, I don’t want any part of it.
Well, one of the gifts of maturity for me has been to learn that when I have strong negative feelings about something, I probably need to hang in there and figure out what is happening. So, I found myself laboring over the commentaries and histories that attempt to reconstruct the historical and religious context in which these words were written.
What was happening in this early community of Jesus-followers, to whom John writes, that resulted in these exclusionary statements? And other declarations – like calling those who believe sinless and those who don’t “children of the devil?” We know that John’s community fractured into two groups – those who believed in the high understanding of Christ as divine (as when Jesus says: “whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Jn. 14:9) – and those who didn’t believe in the incarnation – those who thought that God’s son hadn’t come in the flesh as a human being. To make things worse, these latter ones seem to have claimed communion with God for themselves, but they had sharply different ethical practices from those who believed in the divinity of Jesus.
To make matters worse, they couldn’t have this theological fight off in a vacuum – early followers of Jesus were being thrown out of the temple if they believed Jesus to be the Christ. Jews, you remember, believed first and foremost in one God. A lot of blood had been shed establishing monotheism. It represented a huge leap in human understanding. Well, the early Christian claim that Jesus was God incensed the Jews as it seemed that these Jesus-followers were creating a second God.
The writer of John’s Gospel takes pains to show that Judaism is over. His view was that Jesus replaced every revelation God had made to Israel. In scene after scene set during important temple festivals, Jesus makes his ‘I am” statements. Think about that – the writer’s claim was that when Jesus stepped out of the temple, God left with him. So when the temple was finally destroyed in 70 A.D. - John’s community sees Jesus completely replacing the temple.
If you remained faithful to temple worship – many Jews did even after the temple fell – you would feel judged and rejected by the Jesus-followers. Further, there are no gentile converts in John’s community – it is closed on itself – clinging together in opposition to the world. You can feel that in the bold images that fill this gospel – there is no grey area – faith is expressed in black and white – good vs. evil, life against death. It’s a small step to the book of Revelation – attributed to John of Patmos – a book of cosmic dualism informed by fear where Christianity is victorious because its is militant and it defeats the world in an apocalyptic battle. You can imagine how appealing this book is to people who feel alienated and powerless.
The writer of John’s Gospel and the other Johanine texts engages in a life and death struggle to hold the community together. The situation is critical as persecution of Christians is rampant – your beliefs could cost you your life. Forget subtlety – the writer needed the most salient argument possible – God or the Devil! - Not unlike my Mother at the dinner table!
So where does this leave us – remember we’re Anglican – we have that three-legged stool of reason, tradition and scripture. We do not believe uncritically, and we temper reason with acknowledgment of those who have believed before us. Today’s reading from the Gospel of John begins with one of the most beloved passages of scripture –“Do not let your hearts be troubled…I go to prepare a place for you…where I am there you may be also” - this is one of the texts by which Christians (maybe you and I) literally come to their final rest, so frequently families chose it for their loved one’s funeral. At times of loss when everything seems to be slipping away, the words can seem like a thread between our hearts and God.
What do we do with ”I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me[?]” I believe Jesus does open a path to God – and it’s the tradition that I will follow, the practice of faith that I find most fits who I am. The gospel of John closes off other ways to God – for the community of Jesus-followers. That doesn’t mean other paths to God no longer exist – but this is the one that most perfectly fits John’s flock.
So, members of St. John’s, Huntingdon Valley – when your vestry
voted for this parish to be counted among the Center for Progressive Christianity
churches a few years ago – you signed on to a set of statements.
The first two are these:
“We have found an approach to God (a way) through the life and teachings
of Jesus. We acknowledge the faithfulness of other people who have other
names for the way (to God’s realm.)” This inclusive, tolerant
statement sets us apart from many Christians. Yet, it is thoroughly Anglican,
resting on reason, tradition, and scripture.
Note - Ray Brown, foremost among New Testament and particularly Johanine
scholarship, writes:
“The author of these [Johanine] Epistles…never dreamed that
his encouragement to his readers against adversaries would be read in
isolation from his community’s tradition which made his remarks
intelligible.” (The Epistles of John. p. xi)