From Vague to Visible

Easter 5A: John 14:1-14

 “Do you want to see God?” It was a rather surprising question, given the context. I mean, it’s one thing to ask that question here in a church, in worship. But the place where this question was asked was a college fraternity party. God at a frat party…? The meaning of the question became clear when the guy held out his hand, showing two small red pills. The student he was talking to, a future colleague of mine, didn't take him up on his offer. But the question caught his attention. Who wouldn't want to see God?

Of course we all know, as he did, that seeing God, encountering him, is more than a matter of taking a couple of pills. But, the question remains a live concern. I say this to you this morning knowing that this is a major reason for your coming to church: you want see God. You’re hoping, expecting, that, by being a part of all this, you will find God here. Trouble is, God is, by definition, invisible, infinite, and inaccessible.

In the Bible, seeing God is not a simple matter. In the Old Testament, it is a fearful thing to gaze upon the face of God. Jacob, when he wrestles with the angel by the river Jabbok (Gen 32-33), arises the next day and exclaims in amazement, "I have seen the face of God and have lived to tell about it.” Of course he says this about an encounter that happened at night, so it’s not clear how much he actually saw of God. Later Moses asks God for the privilege of seeing him. God obliges, allowing Moses to see only his backside, just a part of him, the lesser part, we presume. It seems that the full sight of God would be too much for Moses, that mere mortals are unable to stand it, are unable to take in all of God, and trying to do so will undo us, destroy us. God Almighty is holy, distant, and unapproachable.

John is certainly of that belief. “No one has ever seen God,” he says at the opening of his Gospel (1:18). He says it again two other times in the following chapters and once more in his epistle. It was a self-evident fact to John, as it is to us today. No one can see God. But, of course, that hasn’t stopped us from trying.

I remember the story of the little girl who was drawing a picture in school one day. The teacher leans over her and asks, "What are you drawing?” “God,” she replied. The teacher laughed and said, “No one knows what God looks like, dear.” The little girl answered, “They will when I’m done.”

It’s a cute story, trying to depict God with a box of Crayola’s. But it’s not all that different from what a lot of us do. I mean, tucked away in the back of our minds we all have some image that flashes forward when we hear the word "God”—a kindly grandfather figure in the sky, a brilliant winter sunset, an angry bearded old man riding on a cloud, ready to throw a lightning bolt at us when we misbehave. None of these images are God, not really. They are all symbolic representations, metaphoric pictures, none of which does justice to that grand reality we name as "God."

In fact, God’s people are expressly told not to do this, to make such pictures. The second of the Ten Commandments instructs us not to make any “graven images,” that is, not to take any representations, any artistic depictions, any metaphors or images as if it were a truthful representation of God. God is too holy, too high and lifted up for any merely human representation. Anything we come up with, that we create, fails to do God justice, and ends up taking us away from the real thing.

But there’s another reason why we aren’t to supposed to make idols. It’s that we already have the definitive, complete, full image of God—Jesus Christ. Jesus is God in the flesh, the “very image of the invisible God,” as Paul says in Colossians.

Now, that, we have to admit, is a pretty audacious claim: Jesus is God. It was scandalous for the Jews of Jesus’ day, as it is for us today, though for different reasons. For, while the Jews couldn’t imagine Jesus fitting into their picture of God, we can’t imagine God being pinned down to any picture at all.

I mean, for most people today “God” is vague, abstract and amorphous. Someone says they “believe in God” or don’t believe, and it’s assumed we all know what they are talking about. It’s as if God has become not a person with a clear nature or character but rather a conceptual category, a box into which we toss our highest thoughts, our noblest sentiments, our uncooked intimations of divinity, as well as images from popular media, like the Force from Star Wars. Our philosophers have only muddied the water further, reconceiving of God as an abstraction: “the Sacred,” the “Ground of Being,” our “Ultimate Concern.”

But that’s not at all what we Christians mean when we speak of God. We Christians don’t believe in a generic God. We believe in a very particular God. We believe in the God that is revealed in Jesus. When we see Jesus, how he lived in the world, when we hear Jesus, the words he spoke to his first followers, the words he speaks to us today, when we feel peace and joy in the presence of fellow believers, we have seen God.

Our God is not a generality, a vague pointing in an upward direction. Ours is not a God of abstraction, remote, detached, indifferent. We have a God who loved us so much that he refused to remain uninvolved and unknown. This God came among us, revealed himself to us. When Philip says to Jesus, "Show us the Father" (Jn 14:8), Jesus responded, “You’ve already seen him. You’ve seen me, so you’ve seen the Father." Jesus makes God visible, explicit, concrete.

Most people, though, still prefer to keep God vague and undefined. That way they are not accountable to a particular understanding of God, and at the same time can make “God” into whatever they want him to be. But believing in Jesus means we can’t do that. Believing in Jesus means that God is not whatever we make him to be, but rather is particular, specific. God is like Jesus. Not, Jesus is like God, Jesus conforms to what we already believe about God. But God is like Jesus, Jesus defines who God is to us.

If that wasn’t hard enough to swallow, Jesus goes and says something even more ‘problematic’: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In our inclusive, expansively open-minded culture, few opinions generate more hostility than that. Where do we get off saying Jesus is the only way, that Christianity is the only true religion? Hasn't that attitude done enough damage around the world? What about all the other religions—are all their adherents going to hell? Aren’t all religions basically the same, anyway?

Today, I suspect that I meet more people who believe, as an article of faith, that Jesus is not the one and only way, but only one way among many possible ways to God. Which is kind of funny, if you think about it— the same people who insist that we can’t know anything for certain about God, are the ones who are certain our understanding of God is wrong!

Trouble is, if Jesus is not the definitive revelation of God, then what is? If you take Jesus off the throne, you have to put someone or something in his place. If Jesus is not your way to God, then what way will you follow? American patriotism, liberal democracy, capitalism, socialism, self-sufficiency, sex, entertainment, power, security - the list of competing "gods" goes on forever.

There are innumerable ways besides the “way” of Jesus, attractive, well-advertised and well-lighted ways. And fact is, these ways are very useful. They work, sometimes magnificently, for getting what we want. Wars are fought and won, wealth is accumulated, elections are secured, victories posted. Of course, in the process, a lot of people are killed, a lot of people impoverished, a lot of marriages destroyed, a lot of children abandoned, a lot of congregations defrauded. But these ways, they work, they are expedient, and they attract many, many followers. When we Christians insist that Jesus is the way to God, we are saying that all those other ways are not.

Now, we are understandably uncomfortable with making exclusive claims. We don’t want to come across as arrogant or overbearing. And to be fair, we Christians have been guilty at times of using that verse from John as a weapon to beat non-Christians over the head. But to say that Jesus is the way to God doesn’t mean that we have to reject everything about other religions. But it does means that we refuse to keep God abstract, vague and unclear, so that we can remain perpetually uncommitted.

Some years ago, when a colleague of mine was the chaplain at a prestigious university, a sharp, bright student cornered him after a lecture. She was one of those modern, spiritually curious, but constitutionally skeptical types. She said, “I think I could believe in God—if only God would just show up. Why doesn’t God appear and settle this once and for all?” She expected my colleague to stumble around in the fog of mystery or mumble something about God being ineffable. Instead, he replied, “God did appear. His name was Jesus. We crucified him.”

Before Jesus, people could ostensibly claim that God is unknown and unknowable. But as soon as Jesus, God incarnate, got to talking, began moving about in the world, reaching out to the ostracized, healing the sick, rebuking the rich and the powerful, raising the dead, upsetting the authorities….well, many thought they could see God just a little too well! God got so close to us in Jesus that we got a good look at God and we didn't like what we saw! So we put him to death on a cross. 

And the crazy thing is, even there, even in his suffering and death, Jesus showed us who God is. Jesus was betrayed, abandoned, handed over, tried, insulted, beaten, and then crucified, nailed to a cross and hung there to die, all to show us God, to show us God's nature, his grace and mercy, to show just how much God loves us and how far God will go to convince us of his love for us that we might believe and, believing, have new life in his name.

What this means is that, when we Christians claim that Jesus is the way to God, we are being anything but arrogant and coercive. We are saying that the way to God is the way Jesus showed us, the way he lived—the way of humble service, the way of self-sacrificial love, the way of the cross.

The only way we can say that, though, to claim Jesus is the way, is to follow his way ourselves. This involves learning the way of Jesus, picking up his rhythms and ways of doing things. It involves conforming all our ways to Jesus’ way—the way we talk, the way we feel, the way we treat one another, the way we use our influence, the way we raise our children, the way we shop, the way we vote, the way we use our money and our time…bringing all our ways into the way of Jesus.

To be sure, it is so much easier—and more expedient—to keep "God" vague, indefinable, soft, and otherworldly. But when we believe this, we cut ourselves from the very path of salvation. For, Jesus’ way is not only our way to God, he is also God’s way to us. The way we come to God is the same way that God comes to us—in Jesus. God comes to us in Jesus speaking the words of salvation, healing our infirmities, promising the Holy Spirit, teaching us how to live in the kingdom of God. And in and through this same Jesus, we pray to and believe, hear and obey, love and praise God. Jesus is the way God comes to us, as much as he is the way we come to God.

This is why the way of Jesus is not instrumental, the means by which get what we want or get where we want to go. The way of Jesus is the way God reveals himself, makes himself real to us. God meets us on the way. As St Catherine of Sienna said: “All the way to heaven is heaven.” Jesus has shown us the way, he is the way to God, to salvation, to eternal life. For that we can say, Thanks be to God!