Jesus' Way is God's Way--May 8, 2026

Jesus' Way is God's Way--May 8, 2026

Thomas said to [Jesus], “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works." (John 14:5-10)

Sometimes, learning about church history is embarrassing, and more often than not it is humbling.  When you think you have discovered some profound insight about the Mystery of God, frequently you find out that someone else not only said it already, perhaps centuries before you, but also that they said with more precision and elegance than you could muster. Other times, you shake your head in dismay at the tedious and picayune points of doctrine over which earlier generations fought--and often excommunicated each other, or even killed each other.

And then there are times when it becomes perfectly clear why those earlier generations of saints insisted on their theological positions and took the time to spell out precisely what they meant in the creeds and confessions they crafted.  This passage, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, reminds me of those times.  I say that because the early church truly struggled and wrestled with itself when it arrived at the conclusion that Jesus really and truly is the fullness of God in a human life.  The words of the ancient Creed, "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father," might at first seem like they are belaboring the point, but there is something crucial about their insistence that Jesus really is fully God. They were, of course, just following the implications of what Jesus says here in John's Gospel--"I am in the Father and the Father is in me," and "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." But they also understood that the Good News hangs on this claim: the Gospel loses its power if Jesus is simply another voice offering religious opinions or even a semi-divine heavenly Vice-President of Human Affairs.  If indeed, "whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father," then God really has that close to our humanity, and God really has entered into our fragile, humble, finite existence as one of us. I can understand why the theologians and pastors of the early church didn't want to get that question wrong.

The other implication of these words of Jesus from his last night with his disciples before the arrest in the garden is what they tell us, not so much about Jesus, but what they tell us about God.  If Jesus is right that "whoever has seen me has seen the Father," then Jesus truly is a glimpse of God's character.  Jesus shows us what God is like.  He is, you might say, what God looks like when projected onto the screen of history, or what it sounds like to hear God played in the key of humanity. In other words, what Jesus is, that's what God is.  The way Jesus loves--that's how God loves.  The table fellowship Jesus keeps with all the "wrong" people, the sinners, outcasts, rejects, and mess-ups--that's God's choice of dinner companions.  The way Jesus refuses to answer evil with evil; the way he lays down his life rather than zapping his enemies; the way he puts himself in the lowest place to serve rather than needing to put others down for the sake of his ego--that's all what God is really like. Mere hours before Jesus lets himself be arrested and stops the disciples trying to fight back with their weapons, Jesus has told those same disciples, "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." It's hard to avoid the implication that God's way of dealing with enemies is not to obliterate them but to die for them.

And again, a claim like that is so big, so grand, and so audacious that I can understand why the first few generations of Christians wanted to take the time to get their wording right and be clear about what they really believed. It really does change everything if the words of Jesus here in John 14 are taken seriously.  It means that there are no lengths God was not willing to go to for our sake, and it also means that we can no longer pretend that God is as selfish, violent, greedy, and apathetic as we can be.  If God's way of responding to a dominating empire, a bloodthirsty lynch-mob, and a closed-minded religious establishment is to go to a cross for us all, then we can't turn God into our mascot to zap the people we don't like, or pretend that God is in support of our own empire-like tendencies. Or, to get to the heart of things, if Jesus shows us what God is truly like, then we can't keep mentally remaking God in the likeness of our own greed, cruelty, selfishness, and indifference. And we can't keep using that idolatrous false image to justify those sins in ourselves.  We'll have to admit that God simply isn't interested in "making religion big" in some generic or abstract sense, no matter how pious that might sound; God is interested in making us more fully Christ-like.

So, here's the question for us today: are we willing to take Jesus seriously here?  Are we willing to follow the progression of his own words, as the wise and diligent minds of the early church did, to accept the implications of saying that if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father?  And can we dare to allow our understanding of God to be re-formed in the likeness of Jesus--the way he loves, the way he acts, the way he lays down his life?

If we do, it is likely to change everything.  And it is certain to change us.

Lord Jesus, help us to see the fullness of God in you, and to be remade ourselves in your likeness.