“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”

I think it is easy to hear this statement a hundred times from Jesus without really perceiving what he is saying. These are three grand statements - Jesus says: I am the Way, I am the Truth and I am the Life. Yet, they are all pointing toward a singular and profound reality - Jesus is the method, the reality, and the goal. Jesus, the great “I Am”, who is one with the Father, is all in all and should be our everything. 

Before we get to that, let’s take these ideas one by one. Jesus says “I Am the Way”. This immediately brings to me a few different ideas or synonyms. Jesus is the route, he is the avenue, the path, the directions, the map, the entryway, the door, the gate, and more. What this all brings to mind is that Jesus is the way we get from where we are to . . . somewhere else. This brings with it a whole lot of important ideas like: we need to follow Jesus, we need to see where he leads, we need to ask for his will and way, we need to pass through Him, and we need to watch for where He is already moving. Jesus is the way and He is showing us the way, if only we stop to ask or watch for it. 

So, what is Jesus the way to? Well, Jesus tells us just prior. Jesus is sitting down with His followers at the Last Supper. He has already told us that He is going to be handed over the religious leaders, killed, and raised to new life. Now, He is trying to reassure them. He says, “It is good that I am leaving you”. We have to realize that. It is good that Jesus isn’t here, in the same way that it was good he was leaving back then. It is good that Jesus has gone ahead of us, why? Because He is going ahead of us to prepare a place for us. He has gone to the Father and now, together, they are working to create a special place for each of us and our Jesus-following community. That is a pretty wonderful idea. The Father and Son are creating a special place just for us. We aren’t just special and loved, but we have a special place in God’s re-creation - in this passage defined as the Father’s house, which also tells us something pretty wonderful. This place that is meant for us and we are meant for - is in close proximity and has continual access to the God and Father of all, because it’s His house. 

Jesus goes on, “If I am going to prepare a place for you, then I will come back and bring you to where I am”. Here we get another dimension to how Jesus is the way - He is the guide, the vehicle; He is the one that we need to hold onto and He brings us with him. There are some wonder images of Jesus being the vehicle or guide. There is one image with a great chasm between us and God, but the only thing that can bridge that gap is the cross. There is another where Jesus goes into death and there he is pulling up Adam and Eve into new life with each arm. There is the image of baptism as we are washed clean in His baptism and His blood, where we are marked with the cross like the doors of the Israelites were marked to save them from death at Passover. Jesus doesn’t just leave us signposts or a map, Jesus is the way, because He comes to us to show us the way, even to carry us to His Father’s house - leading us to that new creation - that new and wonderful Kingdom. It goes even further because Jesus wants to shape our hearts to know His way and live it so, part of the path to eternity is how in faith Jesus lives in us so that we might live like Him, so that we too might fit into His Kingdom, this new and beautiful home. 

Jesus is reminding us that our destination is of absolute importance, but so is the way we get there. Our goal is not just eternity with Jesus as heaven is recreated on earth, but our goal is eternity with Jesus starting now, so that we might already know heaven on earth - so that we might live in it on the way.

Here is where the disciples and too often us fall short. We can barely imagine what Jesus is offering. We want it on our terms, in the way we think is important. Like the disciple Philip we say, Jesus just show us the Father and we will be satisfied. We don’t realize who Jesus is. How God is present to us right now right here. How Jesus has been showing us the way and has been giving us the way the whole time. Jesus reminds us, as we have already experienced, as our hearts already know, as we feel, even if we ignore it sometimes - Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus says, “Have you been with me this whole time and you still don’t know me?” When you know me, you know my Father. I do His will, so you have seen His work. I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. It can be easy to miss what is right in front of us, who is with us, and what that means. It is easy to miss the truth. 

Here we begin to come face to face with Jesus being the truth. The truth is that Jesus is the image and fullness of God with us. This might seem like a very small sliver of truth - when Jesus calls Himself THE truth: the ultimate and pinnacle of truth. Yet, our difficulty is that we don’t realize how much this means. Jesus is the Truth because He is one with God, the Father of all, the creator of all, and the sustainer of all. Since creation is His creation then creation mirrors and manifests at least aspects of its creator. Since creation is upheld by God, that means that everything that sustains creation, that keeps it moving, alive, and full is given and done by God - its His wisdom, His arm, His love and more. His truth is truth because he is the truth and consistency of this world. He is the backbone of all fundamental science and so much more. It becomes essential to recognize Jesus as the truth because it is so easy to turn away from him, it is too easy to look at the brokenness, the absence, the lack, the seeming possibilities rather than looking at what is right in front of us. If Jesus tells us that He is giving us His bounty, that means that He is. Just because we aren’t sure if we have enough money, or that there will be enough time, or that we don’t have grandkids, or a house, or x, y and z does not mean that God hasn’t given us a greater bounty. Jesus needs to be our truth so that we don’t let anything else get in the way of what is true. 

This brings us to one of the most fundamental truths that we need to realize: Jesus is THE life! Again as the creator and sustainer one with God, This should be evident. As the one that is leading us to eternity in the Father’s house - He is new life too. Yet, it is still more. Jesus is all life - all true and full life. You and I only have our life, our being, and our place, because God has graciously given it to us (even science would say that the particular and special way the cosmos was ordered has led to the infinitesimal probability of you being born in this place at this time). Then add onto that the fact that death is at every turn. I know I was close to death a good hundred times in my life and thousands more if you include a wrong-placed step. Yet, even though I have screwed up thousands of times, made wrong decisions, acted out of anger or greed, I am still alive - this speaks to mercy and protection that goes beyond what is physical and obvious. It speaks to one upholding and protecting life - it speaks to Jesus. Yet, if we can go this far, we should begin to realize that the creator, guide, and sustainer of life has the fullness of life. Without Jesus, we might have something resembling life, because he comes to us, but we are always lacking something, we are always a little empty, if not a lot, because we don’t have life in us. We don’t have Jesus, our source, the one we are meant for. We are like a puzzle piece without the rest of the puzzle, the car engine without the spark, or the piano without strings.

A difficult question arises that we can finally address: what about the other ways, routes, or paths? Another way of asking this is, “Where do we want to go?” Jesus says I am “The” way, so he is implying that he is the particular and important path that we need to take, but what about all the others and where do they go? Well, it would be impossible for me to highlight every other path someone could take, and even if I did try, we could too easily get caught up in moral similarities or ideas that don’t actually get to the crux of why Jesus is THE way. So instead we can start at another place and think about Jesus as the only good path. We have already begun to see this but let me highlight it:

1st) If Jesus is one with the Father - then if we are not accepting or following Jesus, that means that we are rejecting or turning away from God - who are together the ones who created everything and who are creating this new home for us - so if we aren’t following or moving towards Jesus we aren’t going towards God or his Kingdom

2nd) If in our lives we can too easily let our brokenness, weakness, and evil get a hold over us as we let anger, pride, self-protection, or scarcity control us and our decisions - we need someone above us, but with us to come and change us from the inside out so that we wouldn’t just use our freedom and brokenness to destroy this new and beautiful home Jesus is creating for us. 

3rd) If we can so easily be convinced that there is not enough, that God isn’t present, that death is too great an enemy and so miss the God of life that is right in front of us, we need someone, Jesus to come to us who knows the way and knows the Father. 

4th) If Jesus is life, the source, the sustainer, and the way to eternal life - then all other directions ultimately lead us to death as they lead us further and further away from him. 

5th) and lastly, we need to become the way. Before Jesus’ followers were called Christians, they were often called “the way”. Jesus is the one who came so that we might be like him - God became human so that humans could be more like God. So that as we know Jesus we might know the Father. So that as we know God’s will in Jesus, we might live it and people might see Jesus in our actions and hear HIm in our word. Jesus is the ultimate way, but He makes us like Him so that we might help people meet Him too. 

Jesus says, “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. This becomes an essential reminder. We need to know the route we are taking, what vehicle can get us through, and where we want to go. We need to know what is right and true and good if we are ever going to live it or find it. We need to have true life, if we are ever going to be full. All of these things come from Jesus alone and thank God that He is offering the way, the truth, and the life to anyone that comes to Him. AMEN