Another cartoon that is not on the back of my sermon transcript shows an automobile balancing precariously over the edge of a cliff, with an embarrassed husband at the wheel and his disgusted wife sitting next to him. Meekly, he says to his wife, “Honey, there’s got to be a lesson here somewhere.”
There’s a lesson there all right: The only way to end up at the right destination is to choose the right road. If you’ve ever made a wrong turn in a strange place and found yourself lost, then you know how important that lesson is.
Life is a journey. Homer’s ancient epic “The Odyssey” follows Ulysses in a life-long journey (or at least 10 years of it) for about 300 miles from Troy to his home in Ithaca. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is an account of Christian’s journey from the City of Destruction to the heavenly city. Most of the Old and New Testaments follow people who journey from Eden, Babel, Ur, Egypt or Bethlehem to other times and places. God clearly tells us to choose the right path, but the world says there are “many ways to God” and any path you sincerely follow will eventually take you there. Not!
The internet contains both God’s singular path of righteousness and the worldly variety of rabbit trails. Some of us use Mapquest or Googlemaps to show us how to go somewhere. But it might not be the way, the truth or the life we’re supposed to take. These electronic maps sometimes get the right and left turns mixed up or they’re not updated with information about construction sites like the year long construction blockage on McDonough Street leading to this church from the south side of town or like the I-85 congestion as we came into Atlanta yesterday morning that turned a 10 minute final drive into a 2 hour long stop and start contest.
Maps on paper or on the Internet might give an unsuspecting person completely wrong directions, because the people giving you the directions haven’t really been where you are going. That’s why Annemarie and I called our daughter Erika and her friend’s home, where Erica’s baby shower was being held so as to get the truthful directions to our destination in Doraville and so that we wouldn’t end up balancing precariously over the edge of a cliff or encounter any further extreme delays.
Even though we had driven that direction hundreds of times and even though I was born and raised very near to where we were traveling – we might as well have been in a foreign country, because we discovered that our thinking about our way was not truthful and could have even cost our lives.
Jesus says that He is not only the way, but He is also the truth and the life. Drawing from our experience yesterday – it didn’t matter if we supposedly knew the way and “a truth” about that way on earlier trips. And there were literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of other drivers we witnessed yesterday who were also stuck in traffic going the wrong way with “false truths” directing them. They were needlessly using up their lives wastefully for the wrong purposes.
If you wanted to find the way to heaven, where would you look? Well, we have the Bible, don't we? The Bible gives us that same information that has the potential of helping us to know the way to heaven. We have other books too. We have libraries full of books that would help us to know how to get to heaven. We even have pastors and teachers who will help us to know how to get to heaven. These things are great, but if we want to find the way to heaven, we need to talk to someone who has been there AND who will always keep us current about the right way. Your walk with Jesus can be the real-time truth that leads to the abundant eternal life that only God can provide!
In today’s scripture Jesus tells us that He was going back to heaven to be with His Father. He tells us that one day we will go to be with Him. But Thomas, said, "We don't even know where you are going, how can we know the way?" Jesus answered, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except by me." If we want to find the way to heaven, we need to look to Jesus, because He is the way -- the only way!
Phillip chimed in and asked Jesus to show them the Father so that they might believe. Jesus gave us another important insight that proved that He gives us God’s way, truth and life. Jesus IS GOD. That’s right. Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Him and they are one and the same.
The great mystic Thomas a Kempis wrote “The Imitation of Christ” 600 years ago. It’s a wonderful imaginary conversation with Jesus Christ in which our Lord says, “Follow Me. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Without the Way, there is no going. Without the Truth, there is no knowing. Without the Life, there is no living. I am the Way, which you must follow, the Truth which you must believe, the Life for which you must hope. I am the inviolable Way, the infallible Truth, the unending Life. I am the Way that is straight, the supreme Truth, the Life that is true, the blessed, the uncreated Life. If you abide in My Way you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free, and you shall attain life everlasting.”
“If you wish to enter into life, keep My commandments. If you will know the truth, believe in Me. If you will be perfect, sell all. If you will be My disciple, deny yourself. If you will possess the blessed life, despise this present life. If you will be exalted in heaven, humble yourself on earth. If you wish to reign with Me, carry the Cross with Me. For only the servants of the Cross find the life of blessedness and of true light” (Chapter 56).
Dear Jesus, as we search for the way to heaven, help us to know that You are the way -- the only way! We ask all these things in Your Name, for You are in our Heavenly Father and the Father is in You, Amen.
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