Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome back to Day 10 of our God Is series.
As we begin,
I just invite you to consciously bring yourself fully into this moment.
Allow yourself to take a nice deep breath in and just allow your body to come into this time of stillness.
Where your mind.
.
.
To become consciously mindful of this present moment here.
So allow your heart to settle in readiness to receive and hear the words that the Spirit might be speaking to you today.
As we consider what it means for us perhaps that God is the way.
So let's start today where we left off yesterday,
With Jesus.
Because when Jesus talks about himself,
It's kind of unusual,
And as a teacher he's probably a bit unusual as well at least.
For the time in which he lived.
Now,
When he was with the disciples,
Jesus didn't really give many definitive answers or talk much about things that they needed to understand before they can start.
He just says,
Follow me.
He says,
Come,
Walk,
Stay,
Abide,
Follow.
So rather than trying to give a whole bunch of information about reality,
Jesus seems more interested.
In showing us the way of being.
In reality.
So it's no surprise then that when Thomas asks where Jesus is going,
Jesus doesn't give Thomas a direction.
In John 14,
He says,
I am the way and the truth and the life.
Now I know some people read this passage and think they know what it means,
But I want you to sit with this today and to see more deeply what Jesus is saying here.
And the context in which both Thomas' question was asked and Jesus' response comes.
Because when Jesus says,
I am the way,
The truth,
And the life,
Jesus isn't saying that he knows the way,
And he doesn't say that he will show the way.
He's saying that he is.
The Why.
Now,
Most people think of Christianity,
Even Christians,
As primarily a set of beliefs.
And of course,
Christianity involves belief,
That's true.
What we believe has a bearing on how we live.
But the earliest followers of Jesus were called people of the way.
And I think that's just a beautiful name,
The way.
The Y is a name that suggests movement and participation,
Practice,
Relationship,
Transformation.
You don't believe your way along a path,
You walk it.
And as you do.
.
.
There are moments when you stumble and you get lost.
And you find your way again.
When you walk a path,
You walk with other people and discover things together along the way that you couldn't have understood from the starting point.
And this is what Jesus is inviting us into when he says,
Come with me,
When he says,
I am the way.
And this is where I find myself thinking a little bit.
About the Dai Dai Jing.
The ancient text of Chinese philosophy.
Now,
The word Dow.
Can be translated in many ways and some of those ways include the way and the path and I'm interested in that resonance.
Now I'm not suggesting that Christianity and Taoism are secretly saying exactly the same thing.
I'm not going to flatten traditions into one another like that.
I don't think that's fair.
But I think that there's something worth noticing when two very different traditions use the way as a way of speaking about reality.
The Tao Te Ching is,
Or the Tao itself,
Is the way and flow of nature,
Which means it's something to live in harmony with.
And similarly,
Jesus doesn't give us a theory about God.
He says,
Follow me.
And I think that's why we can't reduce Jesus to a system or a set of precepts,
Because he keeps turning theology back into life.
And what does the way of Jesus look like?
Well,
He says it looks like loving our enemies.
It looks like forgiveness.
It looks like service rather than dominating.
It looks like generosity.
It looks like truth.
It looks like compassion.
It looks like simplicity.
It looks like welcoming strangers.
It looks like losing your life in order to find it.
It looks like becoming a child.
It looks like taking up your cross.
It looks like washing feet.
It looks like refusing to answer violence with violence.
It looks like giving yourself away.
In other words,
The way looks like Jesus.
And if Jesus is the revelation of God,
Then maybe this tells us something about the nature of reality itself,
That the way is love.
But the way is also.
.
.
Not really efficient and this is I think where the whole thing becomes incredibly inconvenient because Jesus' way is definitely not efficient.
If someone hits you,
Turn the other cheek.
If someone asks you to go one mile,
Go two.
Love your enemies.
Forgive 70 times 7.
Give to those who can't repay you.
Welcome the outsider.
Wash the feet of the people who should be washing yours.
This is not an efficient way to run an empire,
And it's definitely not an efficient way to run a business,
But I don't think Jesus is interested in efficiency.
Jesus is interested in faithfulness to a way because the way is about who we become.
While we're walking.
And then after he says,
I am the way,
He says,
I am the truth,
Which is another strange thing to say.
Because we usually think about truth as information.
A fact,
A proposition,
Something we can write down,
But Jesus makes truth relational.
By saying,
I am the truth,
Jesus is really saying truth has a face.
Truth can be followed.
Truth can be lived.
Truth can be embodied.
And you can know a great deal about truth and still not live truthfully.
And then Jesus says,
The way is a life.
I am the life.
This takes us back to the things we've been talking about.
God is not a thing.
God is being.
God is mystery.
God is more.
God is present.
And now in Jesus,
We encounter a person who says,
I am the way,
I am the truth,
And I am the life.
And spirituality is learning to live in that way,
Here and now,
In this body,
This world.
These people and in this particular life.
So,
What if Jesus is less a map and more a path?
I mean,
Maps are useful,
We need them.
And this is why we have things like theology and doctrine and scripture and tradition.
But none of those things is the destination.
They simply point the way.
None of them are the way itself.
They can help us recognise where we are.
And guide us in that direction,
But eventually you have to walk,
Which is why Jesus says,
Follow me.
Which leads me to believe that understanding grows as we go along the way.
There's a kind of knowing,
You see,
That only comes from participation.
You can read a hundred books about swimming.
You can understand the physics of buoyancy.
You can learn about breathing techniques.
You can memorise the history of competitive swimming and still not know what it is to swim.
At some point,
You have to get in the water.
And discipleships like that.
If we're not careful,
We could spend our entire lives talking about Jesus and still be avoiding following Jesus.
We become experts in certain ways and spiritual disciplines and so on without becoming people of the way.
And that's why Jesus' invitation is simple,
But it's also intimidating.
Come.
Follow.
Walk.
Try.
Trip.
Fall.
Fail.
But get up.
Begin again.
Stay close.
Which leads us to the most important question.
If Jesus is the way,
Where is he taking us?
Where does this way lead?
Well,
I think maybe towards love.
Towards freedom,
Towards wholeness,
Towards communion,
Towards the kingdom of God,
Towards the discovery that the life of God is something that we're invited to participate in.
Like Jesus says elsewhere in John's gospel,
Abide in me as I abide in you.
And so the way eventually leads to a life of communion,
Connection and fully abiding in and with God.
God and participation in the life of God.
And so this is where our 10 days so far come together.
God's not a thing.
God is mystery.
God is more.
God is I am.
God is in all things.
God is closer than we think.
God is flesh.
God is Jesus.
And now God is the way,
A God who walks with us and a God who says,
Come walk with me.
We don't need the whole map.
We don't need to see the destination per se.
We just need enough light for the next step.
Faith then is hearing a voice saying,
Follow me and taking one more step.
And may grace,
Peace and love be with us and remain with us as we take this little step.
And then when we're ready,
The next one.
And then when we're ready,
The one after that.
Today and always.
Until tomorrow friends,
Grace and peace be with you.
Bye for now.
