John 14:1-7

 April 9, 2006

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life

The roller coaster hesitates for a split second at the peak of its steep track after a long, slow climb. You know what's about to happen. There's no way to avoid it now. Terrified, you grip the handrail, palms sweating, heart racing, and brace yourself for the wild ride down. We've all experienced that sudden rush of fear.

What is fear? What causes it? And why do some people seem fearless, seeking out horror flicks, thrill rides, and extreme sports, whereas other people avoid things that trigger any fear reaction?

Fear is a normal human emotional reaction - it is a built-in survival mechanism with which we are all equipped. Even as babies, we possess the survival instincts necessary to respond when we sense danger. Fear is a reaction to danger that involves the mind and body. Fear serves a protective purpose - signaling us of danger and preparing us to deal with it.

A fear reaction happens whenever we sense danger or when we're confronted with something new or unknown that seems potentially dangerous. Fear can be brief - like the startled reaction you have if a balloon unexpectedly pops or if you are surprised by something you didn't expect. This is often over in seconds, as soon as the brain gets enough data to realize there's no danger. If the brain doesn't receive the "all clear" signal, fear can last longer and feel more intense.

Most people tend to avoid the things they feel afraid of. There are, of course, exceptions - some seek out the thrill of extreme sports, because the rush of fear is exciting. We all experience fear differently and with more or less intensity. During the roller-coaster ride you may tell yourself, "I'll never get on this thing again - that is, if I make it out alive!" Meanwhile, the friend sitting next to you may think, "This is awesome! As soon as it's over, I'm getting back on!"[1]

Our fears morph with age. As children there may be much to fear for so much is unfamiliar. The dark, loud noises, animals may cause terror in a little one, whereas a bully or pain may frighten an older child. Teenage fears are more social: embarrassment or rejection. As we age our fears do not diminish, but simply take on new characteristics. We may fear disease, death, or loneliness. Some fears are unfounded, often listed as phobias. A collection of phobias referenced in medical journals is found on phobialist.com -

Pelado-phobia: fear of bald people                              
Enthera-phobia: fear of mother-in-law
Para-skave-deka-tria-phobia: fear of Friday the 13th
Sesqui-pedalo-phobia- Fear of long words[2]

We face many fears in this world, both real and imagined, so it isn't surprising that the most frequent biblical command is "fear not." But a simple command is not enough to set our hearts at ease. Fear is not a switch we can turn off. For that reason Christ provides us with hope in the face of the unknown. That is what we have in John 14. READ John 14:1-7.

Having experienced the joys of the entry into Jerusalem days before, the disciples are painfully aware of the culminating events as the leaders seek Jesus’ life. Gathered in the upper room to celebrate the Passover, Jesus speaks plainly of his impending death. What is more, that death will be precipitated by the hands of one in that room. Just as their future appeared uncertain and fear was an understandable response, Jesus provided them with words of hope. So also in the face of an uncertain future, Christ provides us with hope. The hope which Christ provides is found in the place of hope achieved by the path to hope.

Christ Provides us with a place of hope                    1-3

When all around us is in flux, what gives us hope is knowing that at least in one spot, this is fixed, certain, unmoving. But we need not fear for Christ provides a place of hope that is secure.

A secure place

Our passage begins with a simple command. Simple, necessary, but impossible

“Let not your heart be troubled …” Their fear is real and present. The word troubled means to agitate, stir up. Like sitting in a dingy on a storm tossed lake, our hearts are tossed up and down like the waves. Calmness is the furthest from our mind. Fear, anxiety, distress are at the forefront of every thought. To this Jesus says there is a place that is secure.

Jesus’ command acknowledges what we all know – that storm-tossed hearts are a part of our life.

The topic at Passover was Jesus’ betrayal and departure. They were insecure. Peter in 13:36 reflects Jesus’ impending departure mentioned in v33. When he asks “where are you going?” he is really asking “what’s going to happen to us? Are we secure, safe?”

Peter imagines that his security is certain based on his own actions – he’ll die to secure his relationship with Jesus. Jesus tells him what will really happen, he’ll deny Christ three times.

How secure right then do you think Peter felt? In front of his friends, Jesus reveals Peter’s insecurity; he lives in fear of others. Peter’s heart had to be in turmoil at this point, to which Jesus utters these words, “stop letting your hearts get the better of you.”

With two simple commands he points them to the source of their security. Not in their promises of faithfulness, not their vows of obedience, but in the God who secures their future place: “believe in God, believe also in me,” Jesus says.

In the next verse as Jesus spells out their secure home in heaven, Peter’s heart, reeling from the insecurity of being told of his denial of Jesus, found security in knowing that no matter how he will fail in the coming hours– he is secure because of Christ’s work on his behalf.

An expansive place

Not only is the place Christ has for us secure, it is expansive. Using a picture of a family home, Christ sets aside our fears of the future by pointing to our final destination.

The word that many are used to hearing is “mansions” and have latched onto a palace picture. The word does not refer to the size of the domicile, but the inclusivity of it. The word mansions came into the English of the KJV because the Latin version used mansiones simply means lodging place, but in English that word came to mean an elaborate house.

But what does it mean that the Father’s house has many rooms?

When anxiety gets the best of us, when we feel that failure is all that is in store for us, it is easy to think that the future will work out well for some others, but not for me. God will gladly welcome the winners, the successful, and the good. But me? Not much of a chance on this end.

Heaven is not a Jr. High lunch table, where there is room only for the popular

But with these simple words Jesus reminds us that if there is room for Peter, there is room for me. My place in heaven is secure and plentiful. God will not hold back.

A prepared place

Heaven is what Christianity is all about. Without heaven it is all to no purpose. The covenant, the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is all about how God brings us to heaven. Heaven stands at the end of it all as that to which everything points, from which everything gets its meaning. All that we have now are just the first inklings of what will come.[3]

But why is it taking Him so long to prepare this place for us? After all, doesn’t the Father’s house already have many dwelling places? Is Jesus taking up carpentry again, in heaven, and busily building rooms for His followers?” It only took seven days to create the heavens and the earth, so why is it taking Him so long to make a place ready for us? Christ prepares a place for all those whom the Father has chosen, all whom the Son has purchased, all whom the Spirit draws. The triune God will lose not one.

At the deepest level of recognition, we understand and appreciate the image. For house and home mean everything to us. Even those of us who have bad memories of growing up in our house, we have a dream of home, a longing for home, and know instinctively what the Lord meant when he spoke of his Father's house and of our finding a place in it.

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

It is interesting and surely revealing that in a day like ours, when the life of the home has been so severely disturbed, when so many people have sad, painful, and fearful memories of their own father's houses, when homes have been broken in so many cases, a painter such as Thomas Kinkade has such success. He sells his prints by the thousands in 's malls. We might describe him as the artist of the home. So many of his paintings are idyllic scenes of warm cottages, as we long for it to be. He is a modern Norman Rockwell and is not at all ashamed to list the themes that animate his art - themes to which, of course, the artists of the modern school and high culture cluck with condescending disdain - home, family, faith, beauty, a simple way of life. Home comes first in his list![4] People love his work because it captures the hope of a place prepared for them.

We are given very little information here about this home, simply that it is his Father’s house and that there is enough room for all of us. Instead of telling us how the place is prepared for us, we are told how we are prepared for the place.

My security is found not in the wealth of my family, finances or friends. My security is found in a place that Christ promises is mine. It is mine not because of my power to obey or the strength of my resolve – but because of Christ alone.

Any time you hope in anything created by your own hands, your heart will be troubled. If even now you wrestle with fear, look deep into your heart and question what is the fear?

What will you ultimately lose in the end? What Christ has for us is far more expansive than our minds can conceive, secure enough that our sin will not negate his promise and prepared for us when our time comes. When we know that Christ provides us with a place, we can keep our heads when all about us are losing theirs.  

In the movie Gods and Generals much of the focus is upon Thomas Jackson and the simple confidence of his Christian faith. On July 21, 1861, at Battle of Manassas Jackson receives his famous nickname. In the early stages of the battle, things do not go well for the Confederates. In an attempt to rally the troops, someone yells to the men to look at Jackson "standing like a stone wall." General Jackson, with cannon fire exploding all around him, his left hand wounded by a musket ball, begins to rally his men. Stunningly brave, he paces back and forth on his horse across the front line, shouting orders to "charge" as the musket balls pierce the air.

At the end of the day, General Jackson and his captain return to the battlefield to survey the loss: 111 Confederates dead, 373 missing. Wearied and saddened, Jackson kneels beside a dead soldier with Captain James Smith. Captain Smith asks,

"General, how is it you can keep so serene, and stay so utterly insensible, with a storm of shells and bullets about your head?"

Jackson replies,

"Captain Smith, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself with that but to be always ready, whenever it may overtake me. [If this was] the way all men...lived, then all men would be equally brave."

We do not have cannon blasts nor musket balls whizzing past. But we do face questions of our future. Will my spouse remain faithful and if not, how will I survive the pain of betrayal? Is there a place I can go to find hope? What will I do if … when my health weakens and I have to hear that frightening word, “cancer”? Is there hope? How can I feel as safe in my bed as in the boardroom? Or on I-94? How can I be brave?

Christ provides us a place where all our fears are quieted, a place that is secure, expansive and being prepared for our arrival. But just knowing that it is there is not enough. How do we work that out in our lives? Thomas’ question is one that would be on our lips had he not asked it for us – we don’t know where so how can we know the way?

Once again Jesus’ answer comes in the form of an “I am” statement, pointing us to him as the answer to our problems. As one writer says, this is the culminating point of all of John’s theology; it is the apex of what it means to know Christ.

Christ provides us with a path to hope                      4-6a

A personal path

The first term is the key to the rest, as Jesus answers Thomas’ question not with a rebuke but a gentle reminder which we all need. The path to heaven is not a road traveled but a person trusted. He does not provide us with a map, but is our guide.

For all our attempts at self reformation, for all our resolutions to try harder and do better to make God more pleased with us, Jesus sets them all aside and gives us the source of real hope – while we can never bring ourselves to the Father, Christ will bring us before His Father, making the introduction, securing that place which he himself has prepared for us.

We fear because we look into the murky future and recognize that we don’t have the answers, because we know we are not in control. So if Christ guided us, we’d have a few more insights, but still would be paralyzed with fear as to exactly what our life should look like. To this Christ tells us that to be in Christ is to be in the way. That hope is found because the path is personal.

When Jerome Groopman diagnosed patients with serious diseases, the Harvard Medical School professor discovered that all of them were "looking for a sense of genuine hope and indeed, that hope was as important to them as anything he might prescribe as a physician."

After writing a book called The Anatomy of Hope, Groopman was asked for his definition. He replied: "Basically, I think hope is the ability to see a path to the future…. You are facing dire circumstances, and you need to know everything that's blocking or threatening you. And then you see a path, or a potential path, to get to where you want to be. Once you see that, there's a tremendous emotional uplift that occurs…."

The doctor confessed: "I think hope has been, is, and always will be the heart of medicine and healing. We could not live without hope." Even with all the medical technology available to us now, "we still come back to this profound human need to believe that there is a possibility to reach a future that is better than the one in the present."[5]

But that hope is not just an inner longing for something better. That path to hope is a person, it is found in a relationship with Christ.

A certain path

The next two terms explain the kind of way Jesus is. He is the certain path, he is the living path.

God alone is truth and life, and when our rebellion separated us from God, we plunged into ignorance and death. It follows that the way to the Father requires both revelation, because of our ignorance, and life, due to our death. Jesus' unity with the Father means he is not just a law-giver or a prophet who conveys God's truth, but, like God, he is the truth.[6]

The good news here is that we are called not to know what is true, but to know the one who is true.

The truth we are called to know are not a series of facts, the final exam we are called to prepare for is not reduced to multiple choice or a short essay. I’ve rarely met anyone who has a love of taking an exam. The common recurring dream of showing up in class only to be handed the final exam reveals the universal fear of failure.

In Christ fear is removed. For we are not examined on what we know that is true, but on the one who is true. It is his perfect knowledge that is ours.

A living path

Christ is not just a statement of fact, a summation of what is true. He is also alive and makes us alive in Him. He is the source and giver of life. In the face of his own death and in response to the fears of his disciples, Jesus addresses their fears in the face of suffering.

The famous passage from a Kempis' Imitation of Christ speaks to this:

"Follow me. I am the way and 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 indestructible way; the infallible truth, the never-ending life. I am the straightest way; the sovereign truth; life true, life-blessed, life uncreated."[7]

It will do us little good to know the destination if we don’t know the path. Fortunately for us Christ provides for us the place and the path. The place he prepares for us and the path is his own life. While fears of the future overwhelm us, wondering what tomorrow may bring, we are confident in our destination and the power of the one to get us there. Unfortunately, it often takes the pain of tragedy for us to realize that power of Jesus as the way, the truth and the life.

It is foolish, impossible to find hope elsewhere. Heaven is expansive but the path if very limited. No one comes to the Father but through Christ. A vague hope of universalism is destroyed by the specific love of Christ for us.

In a story following the Hurricane Katrina tragedy in 2005, Chicago Tribune reporter Lolly Bowean wrote about several churches that had been scattered by the storm. Reverend Michael Mille pastored one of those churches, White Dove Fellowship International Outreach Center, and preached to 300 people during the first service after the hurricane. His church normally had over 3,000 in attendance.

During an emotional sermon, Reverend Mille offered a unique, Christian perspective on the tragedy and how it had affected his congregation, saying: "We used to sing Jesus is all we need…now he's all we've got."[8]

So often it is that which we fear, losing everything, that brings us to that point – where we finally move from knowing that Jesus is all we need to accepting Jesus is all we’ve got … and that we don’t need anything else besides.

What is the roller coaster you are on today? What fears keep you awake at night as you hear the clang, clang, clang of the car breeching that giant hill? Maybe you are white knuckling it all the way down this morning, but unsure if or when the turn up will come. That Christ is our destination and he himself is the means to get us there, we can find rest for our hearts.