Known

John 14:6-7

July 11, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

So, it is good to be home and sleep in my own bed! This past week, I had the privilege and the joy of being part of the youth mission trip to Birmingham but the air mattress I slept on just wasn’t quite the same as my bed at home. Now, for the mission trip, I had a very specific job. I was the driver; that was my job. And as we were driving south, I couldn’t help but think how much easier it is to get to where we want to go now than it was when I was a kid, when I was one of the youth piled in a van headed out on a trip. Oh, the roads were fine back then, but to know which one you wanted to take, you needed one of these, a map, to figure out where you were going. The worst part of the maps was trying to figure out how to fold it after you were done! And the closest we got to directions were these TripTik things from AAA. When I asked about these on Facebook, I discovered a lot of you used these and some still do! My brother and I loved these; you could flip the pages and count how many you had to go until you got there. Well, it was enough to keep two boys occupied in the back seat for a few minutes anyway. Of course, getting to Birmingham—and anywhere else—is made easier now by the invention of GPS. Global Positioning Service. GPS has changed our lives—all of our lives, really. It was GPS that first caused Cathy, who is often lost, to invest in an iPhone because now the phone will tell you how to get where you want to go. Most of the time, it’s right. I did have an occasion soon after we moved to Terre Haute where GPS took me to a rural area and then told me to “get out and walk to your destination.” No kidding. But most of the time, GPS makes getting from here to there a breeze. We have become conditioned to letting computers show us the way.

It’s important to know “the way,” because being lost is no fun. In the verses we read this morning, Jesus uses that title, “the way,” to describe himself, which ought to lead us to ask: how is he “the way”? These verses are the jumping-off point for our new series, “Press Play: Get in the Mix.” You may have noticed that theme all around you this morning. That’s because Vacation Bible School is just a few weeks away (and yes, there is still time to register your kiddos). During the week of VBS we’re going to be turning up the volume on the message of God’s love, helping the kids who come begin to see themselves the way God sees them. We’re going to focus on confidence, which comes as a result of embracing the love Jesus offers us. So for these next few weeks here in worship, we’re going to turn up the volume on that message as well. We’re going to be looking at the same themes and Scriptures the kids will be learning at VBS, beginning with this incredible and sometimes polarizing claim made by Jesus. Let’s read this together, just so I can be sure you’re paying attention! Ready? “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6).

Now, maybe you don’t hear that as polarizing or revolutionary. Especially if you’ve grown up in the church, you’ve probably heard that so many times that maybe you don’t even pay attention to it anymore. It is what it is. But let’s try to hear it as those first disciples would have heard it. Let’s get the setting in mind: it’s the last night Jesus is spending with his disciples before his crucifixion (though they don’t yet know it’s the last night). Dinner is over, Judas has left to turn Jesus in, and Jesus has become very reflective. He knows he only has a short time to share what’s on his heart with these who have become his closest friends, and for the next several chapters in John, both in the Upper Room and on a walk through the Kidron Valley, that’s exactly what he does. I’ve said it before: when you know your time is short, you will share what is most important to you with those you love, and in this chapter Jesus is giving these friends of his a glimpse into his heart.

He’s talking about leaving as this chapter begins, and makes a reference to his Father’s house. Then he says after he leaves, he will come back and take his disciples to live where he’s living. By now, these men, who have been with him pretty much non-stop for the last three years, are confused. Leaving? Where could he be going? And why is he talking about his Father’s house? Isn’t Joseph dead? What could he mean? Then, he assures them they know the way to where he is going, and Thomas can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t know the way. He doesn’t have a map, and certainly doesn’t have GPS, and even if he did, Jesus hasn’t been at all clear about where he’s headed. They don’t know the destination, they can’t figure out the route, so Thomas says with exasperation, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (14:5). And that’s when Jesus clears everything right up by saying what we read just a moment ago: he is the way—and the truth—and the life. Yep, that clears it all up. Or maybe not.

One of the reasons this is unsettling to the disciples is that Jesus is changing the language of faith. “The Father’s house” has always referred to the Temple, not to some place far away and hidden. And the three words Jesus uses to describe himself—way, truth and life—are words that were used to describe the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (cf. Whitacre, John [IVPNTC], pg. 350). The Torah shows the way. The Torah is the truth. Obeying the Torah leads to life. When Jesus applies these words to himself, it’s as if he is replacing something that these good Jewish men held dear, sacred. And that’s the shocking part, because he is. He is doing just that. All of their lives, these disciples had understood that it was the Torah that showed you the way to God and it was the Torah that told you how to live. Now Jesus, in essence, is claiming that what the Torah once did, he is now doing. He is replacing the law. He is now the GPS—God’s Positioning Service. He is the TripTik that will show you how to get to the Father. In fact he says he is the only map you will need because “no one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6).

And that is where this verse has become offensive and polarizing throughout history, and certainly in today’s world. People ask, how can Jesus claim such exclusivity? How can he claim that he alone is the only way to God? Isn’t that arrogant? Isn’t that hurtful? Aren’t there many ways to God? I remember hearing Tony Campolo tell about being on an overnight cross-country flight and sitting next to a man who believed that there are many roads to God. When the man found out Campolo was a preacher, he proceeded to share his thoughts on the subject, to which Campolo said, “Profound,” and went to sleep. A few hours later, as they were beginning to approach Philadelphia, the plane was fogged in. The wind was blowing, rain was beating on the plane, and everyone was nervous. As the plane circled in the fog, Campolo turned to his seat mate. “I’m certainly glad the pilot doesn’t agree with your theology,” he said. “What do you mean?” the man asked. Campolo said, “The people in the control tower are giving instructions to the pilot: ‘Coming north by northwest, three degrees, you’re on beam, you’re on beam, don’t deviate from the beam.’ I’m glad the pilot’s not saying, ‘There are many ways into the airport. There are many approaches we can take.’ I’m glad he’s saying, ‘There’s only one way we can land this plane, and I’m going to stay with it’” (https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/66757/tony-campolo-tells-of-a-conversation-he-had-on-an-by-bruce-montgomery).

There are other places in the Gospels where Jesus says he is the truth or the life, but this is the only place where he claims to be “the way,” where he claims to be the exclusive path to the Father (cf. Card, John The Gospel of Wisdom, pg. 161). In other situations in life, we like exclusive claims. If we want to join a group or a club, we will make sure we meet the membership requirements (requirements which, by the way, let some in and keep some out). If we want to get to destinations, we will carefully follow the directions. These days, we submit to requirements to get into buildings or events, whether they be temperature checks or other actions. We may not like it, but we go through security screening at the airport because that’s the only way to get to the terminal. We do what we have to do to achieve what we want to achieve. And we don’t mind “exclusives” if we have it and others don’t. If you want me to buy a collectible, slap the word “exclusive” on it! I’m a sucker for exclusives! But when it comes to Jesus, we complain about his “exclusive” claim to be the only way to the Father. We want options. We want other routes. Friends, I think we should be glad we have a way at all. Do you think God had to give us even one way, let alone other options? Can we be thankful that he provided us a way when, on our own, we are clueless, we have no direction? It still sort of amazes me how people want other routes. Why not take the one you know rather than trying a different one that may or may not work? When we moved from Rensselaer to Portage, we had to make several trips north to take care of things, to meet with people and so on, and every time we went, the explorer in me tried a different route. Some of them worked and others…well, we got to see more of Porter County than we planned. After a few times of this, Cathy, who was going to be driving back and forth for work every day after we moved, finally said, “You know, if you keep taking a different route every time, I’m never going to learn how to get there.” Why do we demand other routes when there is already one we know that works?

Jesus is the way; that much we know. And because he is the way, because we have a way to God, we can be known. That is good news, isn’t it, that God knows you, that God wants to know you? In this increasingly online world, it’s becoming harder and harder to feel like anyone really knows us. We may have lots of “friends” on social media, but how many of them know our real lives? Most people tend to post a carefully edited world of good things online. We want people to think life is always good, positive, upbeat. And when someone dares to post a real hurt, they typically get platitudes in response: “Cheer up, God is good, don’t worry, be happy.” While not untrue, comments like that are not helpful to someone who is hurting. But let me let you in on a little secret: no one’s life is as good as they make it seem on social media. And the sad thing is: we might have hundreds, even thousands, of “friends” online, and not feel like there is anyone who really knows us. The pandemic of the past year has only accentuated that isolation, even among God’s people. I have a love-hate relationship with live streaming worship, to be honest. It’s important, and it’s something we will continue to do, but it’s meant for those who are sick or shut-in or living somewhere else, people who can’t make it to this place for worship. It’s not meant to be a substitute for being together, for community. The Bible knows nothing of solitary faith; faith is meant to be lived out in community, in the midst of people you learn to love and trust, in the midst of the body of Christ that knows you. One of the membership vows here at Mount Pleasant is “presence.” We promise that we will show up and entrust ourselves to this family. We become part of a community to be known, to push back the isolation of the world.

But there is someone else who knows us, someone who knows you—God the Father. “If you really know me,” Jesus says, “you will know my Father as well” (14:7). To be in a relationship with Jesus is to be known by the Father, the creator of the universe. That’s amazing! I mean, think about it. The God who made everything there is, the one who flung the stars into space and spoke everything into existence, the one who is far beyond what we can think or imagine, the one who called Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, that God came as a baby in a feeding trough in Bethlehem so that we could see him, touch him, listen to him, and in the smallest of ways begin to understand him. That God knows you. That God knows your name. That truth is found all throughout Scripture. One of my favorite passages says this: “This is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze” (Isaiah 43:1-2). That was written centuries before Jesus, and in the midst of all of that imagery, the water and the flames and such, here’s what I want you to hear: you are known. God knows your name.

In the beginning of the book of Revelation, Jesus sends letters to seven churches throughout Asia Minor in which he outlines where each church is strong and where they are weak. It reminds us, for one thing, that there is no perfect church; every church has good things going for it and places where they need to improve, ways they need to draw closer to Jesus. But every one of those letters begins with two words: “I know…” I know! I’m trying to imagine what it would have been like to be sitting in those gatherings, during a time when the Roman Empire was bearing down on the church, when persecution was rising and people were dying. What would it have been like to hear those words: “I know”? Jesus knows. Jesus knows me, he knows what I’m going through, and he has not forgotten about me. I am known by Jesus; I am known by the Father.

There in the Upper Room, with the disciples’ feet still damp from Jesus having washed their feet, in the midst of a conversation about Jesus leaving them, the disciples are focused on this friend of theirs, the one who has loved them from the beginning and whom they have grown to love over the last three years. They know him; he knows them. He has shown them what God the Father is like; just by watching him, they have found their faith confirmed and stretched. The events of the next couple of days will test that faith even more, but after that they will experience the glory of the resurrection on the first Easter. In that moment, they will find their confidence because they will know they are known by the one who has defeated even death itself. And when you truly, utterly know that you are known by him, to quote Jack Roberts, “it don’t matter” what anyone else says about you. That’s why our bottom line for today is this: “I can have confidence because I am known.”

The world around us does everything it can to steal that confidence. Distractions pull us away from what is important. Other things grab at us as if they are real priorities. We’re told in ways both subtle and overt that we’re not worth loving, and that if there is a God, he surely has more important things to attend to than you and me. Increasingly, people are devalued by the culture and so they go looking for something, anything, to affirm about themselves, even if it’s something sinful. We’re desperate to find something within ourselves to feel good about, and we hang out online in hopes that someone will know us. A study from the insurance company Cigna a couple of years ago found that most Americans feel lonely, left out and unknown (https://www.barna.com/research/friends-loneliness/). Last year, in the midst of the pandemic, people reported being more afraid of dying alone than of dying with the coronavirus. The world has told us a lie: that we are not known, not loved, not wanted.

The message of the Scriptures and of the Christian faith is a direct contradiction to that message, but even believers sometimes listen to that false messaging. That’s why it’s important to hide God’s word in our hearts (cf. Psalm 119:11), to know it so that we can call on it in moments when we feel the world’s message creeping in. During VBS this year, the participants are going to be asked to get one of those Scriptures into their memory and their hearts, and I want to encourage you to do the same. You’ve even got a three-week head start! The verse, which is posted around the sanctuary as well, is John 15:12, and it’s a perfect affirmation for reminding us who we are and whose we are when the world comes calling with its lies. The verse comes from that same final night that Jesus was with his disciples, and it’s about as clear a direction as they get from Jesus. Here’s the verse: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Let’s say that together: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Once more: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Take that verse (it’s printed on the sermon outlines this morning) and put it somewhere you will see it all the time. Repeat it to yourself often until it gets deep down inside, especially that last part: “as I have loved you.” That’s a reminder that the God of the universe knows you and loves you. The God we come to know in Jesus knows you and loves you, washes your feet and watches over you even as you sleep. He does not condemn you (cf. Romans 8:1). He is a shepherd (cf. Psalm 23:1) who binds your wounds, brings you healing and keeps you safe. He is the way, the truth and the life—the God of love who knows you (cf. Rasmus, Forty Days on Being a One, pgs. 47-48).

When I started started college at Ball State, it was really the first time I had been away from home for any extended length of time. I had lived in the same small town all my life, a town which had fewer people in it than my dorm now did. Campus was a bit overwhelming, let alone Muncie itself. I had also worshipped at the same church and been part of the same faith community all of my life; now I had to take my own initiative to connect somewhere, to worship somewhere. I didn’t have a car, so I decided to try out all the churches that were closest to campus, ones I could walk or bike to, a different one each week. It didn’t take too many weeks for me to notice that every church I visited was having communion the week I was there. That was strange to me, having grown up only having communion about four times a year. But as those initial weeks went by, I came to experience communion as God’s reminder that he was with me. In the bread and in the cup, God was whispering to me, “I see you. I am with you. I know you and I love you.” As we share in the bread and the cup today, I pray you hear him whispering that to you as well. He sees you. He is with you. He knows you and he loves you. Let’s come to the table.