I used a video with the confirmation candidates on Wednesday. The clip was set at Blackpool and the presenter went up to people on the sea front asking them how they would respond if they heard someone call themselves ‘the truth’. Comments varied from stunned silence to ‘what planet are you from then’. When our gospel writer has Jesus claiming to be ‘the truth’ he was either telling the truth or completely deluded. There aren’t really many other options.

It shouldn’t surprise us then when the disciples stumble to know how to respond too. ‘What do you mean you are the truth?’ And if that isn’t hard enough, he also claims to be ‘The Way’ and ‘The Life’. No one, he says, can get close to God without going through him. He doesn’t claim to be ‘A Way’, one among many, but ‘THE Way’. He doesn’t claim to offer his particular perspective on truth, one to be chosen from a menu of other possibilities - all tailor made to fit our individual desires and lifestyles. He claims to be ‘THE Truth’ for all. FULL STOP. There doesn’t seem to be much room for manoeuvre here. You either accept this or you reject it. You are either counted one of Jesus’ number and obtain salvation or you reject him and face oblivion - after all there is no other way to the Father. This isn’t opinion, it is truth - it is how it is, or Jesus is deluded and the Christian faith peddles nothing more than a feel good factor.

To understand what is being said we need to wind back to the beginning of John’s Gospel. It starts with an incredible ancient hymn to Eternal Wisdom. This marries together Greek philosophy about the Logos, the rationality behind the universe, and the Hebrew wisdom literature. “In the beginning”, before everything else, God’s wisdom existed. If we can ascribe such human characteristics to God, well if we can use human attributes as a way of looking at God, then this is God’s purpose and thoughts, God’s plan and the very coherent structure that caused everything to come into being. It is more than just an idea or thought, it is that rational thought in action. This is what the beginning of John’s Gospel is talking about when it says

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” (John1:1-3)

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us… full of grace and truth.”

So, when later on in the passage that formed our gospel reading today (14:1-14), John has Jesus claim to be ‘the way, the truth and the life’, he is drawing on who he believes Jesus to be. It is this eternal Word, the wisdom of God that is ‘The Way, The Truth and The Life’. That rather expands the claim somewhat. Further when he says ‘I AM the way, the truth,and the life’ he uses the divine name revealed to Moses at the burning bush. When Moses asked who he was speaking to he is told ‘I AM who I AM’. So Jesus has gone off the scale in the blasphemy stakes. After he has said ‘I am’ about himself, if that is accepted, the rest follows.

The Christian claim is that this wisdom was and is present in Jesus and this is what makes him the way to salvation; this is what makes him our saviour and our hope. This is what burst from the grave and would not be held by death; could not be held by death.

The bit that many are uncomfortable about, in our so greater awareness of other cultures and faiths, is the phrase that follows when he says ‘no one comes to the Father except through me’. At first sight this is not particularly open and respecting of other faiths. The implication, even the explicit claim, is if you don’t accept Jesus, then you don’t get to the Father. If you accept who Jesus is then this automatically follows. He is either ‘God among us for everyone’, or he isn’t God among us and is a good teacher to inspire those attracted by his particular take on things.

I think there is another way of looking at this, one which is more open that we might at first think. It draws on who is saying ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. It is God saying I am the way to myself and no one can come to the Father unless God makes it possible. We see this possibility in Jesus, supremely in Jesus. He, though, has a habit of thinking and acting bigger than anyone at first thinks, so it is conceivable that this eternal word can move in ways we don’t recognise.

This is not a new thought. A Roman Catholic Theologian, called Karl Rahner, around the time of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, wrote about the unknown Christ of other religions. He’s probably out of favour now with the new Pope, but I think it was this kind of understanding that he was drawing on in his openness to others and willingness to extend a theological hand across the normal barriers of religious divides. If other religions have any access God then they do so through the eternal Word, through the Wisdom of God, the one who makes any contact possible in the first place - there is no other way of them doing so. Because they don’t acknowledge the name of Jesus, Karl Rahner called them ‘Anonymous Christians’.

Some have criticized this view as being supremist and patronising towards other faiths by saying that they are really Christians all along. We need to do justice to the real differences that there are, and we do not all have the same image of heaven or of God. The differences are real and they lead to different ways of being too. But if we really believe that in Jesus this eternal wisdom was and is at work, then it remains possible that this wisdom can work in ways we can’t see.

There is a hymn, which I am particularly fond of, that expresses this breadth of charity and openness - There’s a wideness in God’s mercy. It is by a 19th century Roman Catholic, Frederick Faber, and it includes the following lines:

But we make his love too narrow
by false limits of our own;
and we magnify his strictness
with a zeal he will not own…

For the love of God is broader
than the scope of human mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.

If Jesus is who we say he is - the Wisdom and Eternal Word of God - then he is the one through whom we have access to God, because this is God making himself accessible to us. It therefore follows that anyone who touches God must do so through him, or through what and who he is. When we couple this with the generosity of spirit that we see in the rest of the gospels we find ourselves being surprised by just how broad this becomes. So far from being the exclusive claim that causes some embarrassment it is possible to see this passage as the foundation of a more open, common ground for all. After all if we are talking about truth, then it is THE Truth and not just my truth or your truth. That means it is THE truth for all.

© Ian Black 2005

Home