Poolesville Presbyterian Church
05.18.14; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: John 14:1-14
How do we understand ourselves? How do we articulate that understanding into the world?
Most of us have a picture of who we are in our minds, one that we knit together out of all of the different things we believe about ourselves. I am, we say, and then there’s a blank, and we fill in the blank.
I am a human being, you might say. I am left-handed, you might say, if you weren’t me. I am fabulously fashion-forward, you might say, if you also weren’t me. When we say we are something, we’re expressing--if we’re being accurate--something about the nature of who we are.
When we really talk about who we are, what that statement is not is a statement of what we believe about ourselves. Sure, it can speak to an aspiration or a hope. But if we talk about ourselves in terms of what we believe to be true, but that aren’t quite exactly totally real yet, then we’re not making a meaningful statement.
Like a year or so back, say, when I’d finally decided to follow through on something I’d believed about myself for years. “I am an aikido master,” I would think to myself. I was sure that in there somewhere, there were latent aikido skills that would require only the slightest attempt to reveal that I was almost supernaturally gifted in that particular martial art. It’s a peculiar martial art, aikido is. It’s almost completely nonviolent. It’s meditative, but not quite like tai chi. Like judo, it involves taking the energy of an opponent in a conflict and applying it to the task of having them lying unharmed on the ground.
As martial arts go, it’s a little mystic, sort of a Jedi thing. “This is not the standing position you were looking for. Move along.” But I never quite got around to it when I was younger and working, and then, well, kids came along. But still in my mind, there rested the certainty: “I am an aikido master.” As my boys grew up from tiny spuds to the towering largelings they have become, I pictured going with with them to some hidden lair of aikido masters, where we would together learn the ways of that mystic order.
In my mind, I’d played the whole thing out. “Join me, my son,” I would say, and then we’d go on a Father Son Jedi outing, preferably without all that Skywalker family drama. I talked it up, and the big guy was up for it.
When my oldest turned fourteen, he and I began that journey. We found a lair of aikido masters hidden away in a warehouse complex, and then began our training. “I am an aikido master,” I said to myself, radiant with mystic certainty. That lasted all of about five minutes. Thump thump, I went, as the instructors attempted to teach me to fall. Focus your energies and make yourself a circle, they would say, rolling across the mats as smoothly as if they were the aforementioned circle. “Just do that,” they’d say. Thump thump, I’d go. “No, that’s a square,” the instructor would say, and they’d inscribe another perfect circle on the mat. “Do that,” they’d say. Thump thump, I’d go. “I think that’s a triangle,” the instructor would say. “Are you alright,” the instructor would say.
I was not going to magically be an aikido master. It was not going to happen simply because I held it in my mind. And if we do not do the thing we say we believe, it does not matter whether we believe it about ourselves.
Which is, I think, one of the things we most easily forget when we say the words: “I am a Christian.”
Here, we tend to think of this in terms of certain things that we believe to be true. We are Christian because we hold to thus and such, or because we believe thus and such. The challenge, though, is that such a way of thinking is a great way to insure that we spend very little time actually being the human beings Jesus challenges us to be, and instead spend all of our time squabbling about things on the interwebs.
This passage comes to us at the beginning of the ending of John’s Gospel. At the end of chapter 13, John has given us the last supper--or rather, his version of it. Jesus has just washed the feet of his disciples, showing himself to be completely humble--as if he were their servant. It was his way of showing his love for them, and reminding them that their primary task was to be servants of one another. He notes to Peter that despite his protestations to the contrary, he’s going to betray him. Then he sends Judas off to begin the whole betrayal process, and that brings us to where our reading begins.
Jesus is confronted with the questions of his disciples, who are sensing that something big is about to happen. When Jesus starts saying that he’s going to prepare a place for them, they get a little fuddled. Oh, sure, he just said that they knew the way there, but in that pre-GPS era, things must have felt a little bit dicey.
It falls to Thomas to say, Lord, we just don’t know that place. How are we supposed to get there if we’re not even sure how to get there?
To that, John’s Jesus does not mince words: “I am the way.” He’s also the truth and the life, and in the face of Thomas and his struggles to come to terms with what that means, Jesus lays out a pretty straightforward measure for how you get there. Here, he is saying to Thomas. Look at me. See how I am. See how I teach, how I live, and how I relate to you. If you see that, and you know that, then you know the way. All you have to do is act on it.
This passage, though, tends to get spun other ways. We interpret these words of teaching welcome as meaning something very, very different. Here Jesus has just shown the way. He is in the presence of his disciples, showing them the depth of his love for them--which, if you read what the Beloved Disciple wrote, is the entire point of this whole story.
But instead of looking to what we know--deep in ourselves, with our minds and our hearts and our whole selves--about Jesus and letting that be our guide on the path, we look instead to other things. Our knowledge of the Way becomes not about our deeply wrought sense of who Jesus was, and drifts into abstractions. Do you believe exactly the right things about how to interpret the Bible? Do you hold to the correct set of theological datapoints? Do you affirm the infralapsarian position taught in the Canons of Dort?
Jesus does not mention the infralapsarian position taught in the Canons of Dort to Thomas, or to Philip, probably because he doesn’t want to make Thomas weep uncontrollably.
He says, look to me and how who I am shapes what I do. Hear my voice. See my actions. I spend time with those who our culture curses. I will not raise the sword in anger. I get down on my knees, and show with my hands and my care that I love you.
That, as we attempt to claim ourselves as Christians, is the key challenge we face. We may believe many things about ourselves. We are good people. We are right with God. Our understanding of the faith is the best possible way to be,
But if our actions do not tell the truth of that, if we are bitter and hateful, self-absorbed and anxious, unforgiving and unloving, then we know neither Jesus nor the Way. Our task, if we are to be disciples, is to change that in ourselves. We should work with the Spirit of God as it moves in us, so that those who see us will see, and so that they’ll know.
Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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