John 14:1-14
John 14:6, a pretty well-known line of Scripture. “Jesus said… ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’
I think most people have one of two typical reactions to this passage, two quite different reactions. (1) Some people encounter this passage with a sense of struggle. They would label it one of Jesus’ “difficult” sayings. Really, Jesus, no one comes to the Father except through you? No one can come to God without some specific affirmation of faith? No one? Not the unbaptized child? Not the person who has never heard the Gospel? Not my child or my sibling who is such a very good person, but not an active Christian? No one? Alternatively, many people find in this passage a reassuring promise from Jesus, a bedrock statement about salvation. And my hunch is, which ever of these reactions you have, it’s very hard to acknowledge any legitimacy for the other perspective…
Rachel Held Evans just this week:
Now, John 14 has become a go-to text for discussions around salvation, exclusivism, and religious pluralism, which are worthy discussion to have, but that tend to pull verse six out of its context. I won’t say much about that today, except to mention that it’s worth keeping in mind that these words were spoken in an intimate setting among Jesus’ closest disciples, so we should be careful of interpreting them as applicable only to those who believe differently than we do.
The fourteenth chapter of John is part of Jesus’ long farewell discourse. It goes on for chapters and occurs on in John’s Gospel. It’s very difficult to know how much of what Jesus says in this discourse comes directly from Jesus’ own words and how much of it reflects the emerging theology of the early Christian community?
So what do we do with John 14:6? Is it a litmus test, meant to divide those who are in versus those who are out? Or is it a reassuring promise of what Jesus offers us? I want to offer you another view of this passage. Another interpretation. Another glorious window into and through these words of Scripture.
The interpretation comes from George Herbert. If you don’t know who he is, you should. We remember him in our calendar of saints on February 27. He was an English poet and priest who lived from 1593-1633. Lesser Feasts and Fasts says this:
George Herbert is famous for his poems and his prose work, A Priest in the Temple: or The Country Parson. He is portrayed by his biographer Izaak Walton as a model of the saintly parish priest. Herbert described his poems as “a picture of the any spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could submit mine to the will of Jesus my Master in whose service I have found perfect freedom.
For another perspective, not biased by our Anglican heritage, I want to share a bit of the biography of Herbert published online by The Poetry Foundation:
Nestled somewhere within the Age of Shakespeare and the Age of Milton is George Herbert. There is no Age of Herbert: he did not consciously fashion an expansive literary career for himself, and his characteristic gestures, insofar as these can be gleaned from his poems and other writings, tend to be careful self-scrutiny rather than rhetorical pronouncement; local involvement rather than broad social engagement; and complex, ever-qualified lyric contemplation rather than epic or dramatic mythmaking. This is the stuff of humility and integrity, not celebrity. But even if Herbert does not appear to be one of the larger-than-life cultural monuments of seventeenth-century England—a position that virtually requires the qualities of irrepressible ambition and boldness, if not self-regarding arrogance, that he attempted to flee—he is in some ways a pivotal figure: enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional lyricist of this or any other time.
Herbert wrote a poem that starts from John 14:6. It is titled “The Call,” and that’s important to note. The Call.
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life;
Such a Way as gives us breath,
Such a Truth as ends all strife,
Such a Life as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength;
Such a Light as shows a Feast,
Such a Feast as mends in length,
Such a Strength as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart;
Such a Joy as none can move,
Such a Love as none can part,
Such a Heart as joys in love.
Come my way, says Jesus. My way offers breath, restoration. Come my way into a truth that does not build barriers or generate division. My truth ends all strife. Come into a life that is even stronger than death.
As the Hymnal Companion points out, the second stanza is “in many ways the least accessible.” It may refer to Jesus’ words about letting our light shine. Shine upon the Eucharist. And “unlike meals of human preparation, the Lords’ Supper does not cloy or surfeit but improves and heals in duration…. The closing line of this stanza shows a profound capacity to perceive the connection of divine strength with both creativity and hospitality.” Such a strength as makes his guest.
Then come my Joy, my Love, my Heart. Jesus’ joy and love in us and for us that cannot be separated from us. No one can move or part Jesus’ love from us.
I’m left with two reflections on Herbert’s poem. First is how the poem itself witnesses to the power of ongoing and creative interpretation of Scripture. What George Herbert has done with John 14:6 is something each of us, with our own particular gifts and talents and in our own time and circumstances, can do with Scripture. It is a glorious example of the interpretation of Scripture.
And second, Herbert reminds us that the most fundamental meaning of John 14:6 is invitation. Regardless of whether these verses strike you as a troubling litmus test or a reassuring promise, more profoundly than either of those things, these verses are an invitation, a “Call”. A glorious invitation into life in Christ.
