The Life of God

 One of our favorite pastimes is to explore the mountain back country in our Jeep, especially around our place in central Colorado near Buena Vista.  Last August, Marcia and I, along with my brother decided to drive down to Salida, but I suggested we go via the back country.  I got out my back country maps, charted a route and we took off.  Of course, we could have gone the conventional way down the main highway and been there in about 40 minutes, but what fun would that be?  To make a long story short, a trip that would have taken only about 40 minutes by conventional highway literally took all day as I managed to get our Jeep hopelessly stuck in a mud hole somewhere in the back country miles from anywhere. 

 A line in Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Less Traveled,” was echoing in my head that day.  The traveler in Frost’s poem was considering two roads that diverged in the woods, and he chose the one less traveled.  As the traveler was about to embark on the road less traveled he reflects, “I doubted if I should ever come back.”  For awhile that day I had the same thought.

 Fortunately we had a faint intermittent cell signal, and I was able to eventually contact a friend whose son is a volunteer fire fighter and part of the Chaffee County rescue squad, and much later that afternoon he came and pulled us out. 

 In our gospel this morning we hear Jesus identified as “the way, the truth and the life.”   I want to primarily focus on one word – the “way.”  The “way” in Greek, the language of John, means “road.”  So we have Jesus the road – Jesus the way.  Let’s play with that metaphor for a few moments and see where it leads us, takes us – what journey it sets us upon.  I will use road and way interchangeably. 

 Jesus often spoke of two ways.  In Matthew 7 we hear Jesus say, “Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  In these verses we hear Jesus talking about a narrow way and a broad way, and he indicates that the inauthentic way is the broad way and the authentic way is the narrow way. 

 Another example is found In Mark 10 about the rich young man who came to Jesus and asked him what he had to do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus asked him if he knew the commandments, and the young man assured him he did, and not only knew them but had kept them, honored them and revered them.  Jesus then said he only lacked one thing - that being to sell everything he had, give the proceeds to the poor and come and follow him.  

 We often make the crucial mistake of thinking of the broad way as the way of evil; the way of stealing, or corruption or immorality or some such thing.  But that is not what Jesus meant by the broad way.   Jesus presented the rich young man with a way, a way that was evidently too narrow as far as the young man was concerned, for it says that the man’s “face turned profoundly sad and he left for he was very wealthy.”  This rich young man was not an evil person.  He was not bad, corrupt or anything like it.  The story affirms that he followed and revered God’s law.  The point is that the young man could not follow the narrow road that Jesus put before him, and he chose to remain on the broader road – which was – and this is so important, the broader road of cultural convention.    What Jesus offered the rich young man was the narrow road of the life of God as Jesus embodied it.  The young man chose to stay on the broad road of cultural convention.  His life was inseparably intertwined with cultural convention.  Cultural convention had laid claim to his life. 

 So what is the road of cultural convention?   Simply put the road of cultural convention is the way of appearance, achievement and affluence – the three A’s we could call them.[i]  As we grow up we internalize the conventions (values) of our culture, and the big three for us are appearance, achievement and affluence.  These are the things we look to and place our deepest trust in for fulfillment and purpose.   We learn to value what our culture values.  We pursue what our culture tells us to pursue and these are things we are taught and told to value.  The rich young man had invested himself in cultural convention:  Appearance: I am sure he looked really good, and he  hoped Jesus would think so too;  Achievement:  He had worked his tail off trying to follow the commandments and perhaps thought it had earned him a ticket in the front row of God’s big bash;   Affluence: The text tells us he was loaded.  He had it all, but he evidently wasn’t satisfied.  There was something missing; something that caused him to seek out Jesus looking for something more; something more than what cultural convention was able to provide for him.

 Like the rich young man we too invest ourselves in the broader road of the cultural conventions of appearance, achievement and affluence.  What are the questions and issues that occupy our consciousness?  Do I have enough? Am I good enough, popular enough, cool enough, and secure enough?  Am I attractive enough, rich enough, smart enough, strong enough, and clever enough?  These are the questions that motivate us to be the people we are   But also like the rich young man we can find ourselves lacking, unsatisfied and not at peace inside our skins and longing for something more.    

 “I am the way… no one comes to the Father except through me. “  Many Christians have interpreted and used this verse very narrowly and exclusively insisting that what it means is that unless a person makes a confession of Jesus that conforms to a certain formula, a specific set of concepts and beliefs, they are eternally condemned.  These words have been used in an exclusive way to pronounce judgment upon others by those who claim to have full and complete knowledge of who is in and who is out in the Kingdom of God

 But I do not think that is what this is about at all, nor are these words to be used in such an exclusive, narrow and aggressive way.  This passage from John is not about correct beliefs and right doctrines.   I believe this passage functions much more like an invitation into a way of life; a summons into a way of life – the life of God that Jesus embodies in his life - which when we examine it is inclusive. 

 When we climbed in our Jeep that day last August and chose to travel the way we did, I knew that there were far more potential risks on that narrow road than on the conventional road.  I knew it was more likely for things to happen that could make us uncomfortable and even put us in jeopardy.  I knew that it was going to be a whole different kind of experience than if we would have traveled the conventional highway: more austere; more vulnerable; totally unconventional.  This is just not the road you take if you're looking for a safe, comfortable drive to Salida from Buena Vista!   And you know what?   We never made it to our destination.  We never arrived in Salida, but it didn’t matter.  One of the things you eventually realize if you explore the back country long enough is that it has less to do with arriving at a destination and more to do with the very nature of the journey!   After calling for help, I walked seven miles back to a fork in the road to meet our friend so he knew which way to go.  It was a long walk.  My legs got sunburned.  Just six months out of major back surgery my back was getting sore.  I wondered if he would be able to pull us out without getting stuck himself.  But you know what?  I don’t regret taking that narrow road in the least, because it offered a unique set of circumstances and opportunities to be alive in a way that the broader road could offer.

 A little later in the passage Jesus said to Philip, “...the one who believes in me will do the works that I do…”  This passage is not about making legalistically correct statements of beliefs and doctrines.  This is an invitation into the life of God that Jesus embodied in his life.  It’s a life of grace that we were first drawn into in our baptism.  Jesus said very few "find" this road.  Well, yah!!!!  The point is and the good news is that the "road" finds us - we  who are hopelessly stuck in the glitter of cultural convention.  It’s a life we are summoned into and called to embody every day.  That’s what it is to live out of our baptism.  It begins with grace lavished upon us; ends with grace lavished upon us; and grace characterizes it every step of the way as we lavish grace upon others - the grace that we have received.

“I am the way (road).”  It is an invitation into the life of God.  What does the life of God look like? 

• The life of God looks like Jesus, an inclusive life who sat down with five thousand strangers -- prostitutes and Pharisees, Greeks and Jews, peasants and priests -- to share a meal handed from hand to hand, with no opportunities to check the purity of the kitchen where the bread was baked; the cleanness of the countless pairs of hands that served the food; the purity of the souls about to consume it.

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• The life of God looks like Jesus, (and Stephen our first lesson) who was reviled, persecuted, tortured, and executed, and yet spoke words of forgiveness to his tormentors.   

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• The life of God looks like Jesus, who taught us that the kingdom of God would be ushered in not with the political and military muscle of kings and generals, but quietly raised from mustard seeds of touching the unclean, feeding the hungry, healing those bound by disease, inviting the outcast, reconciling enemies.  

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• The life of God is traveling the road less traveled of showing mercy in a world characterized by superhighways of mercilessness. It is to live unconventionally in a world obsessed with living by convention.

 The panoramic view from the road of the life of God is spectacular for it dreams of a future that looks much more like the end of poverty and injustice rather than the frightening scenarios portrayed in the popular Left Behind Series.

The final verse of Frost’s poem might be appropriate as conclusion:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.