I am: The Way, The Truth and The Life

John 14:1-14

1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”

5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” 

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

The other day while I was standing outside the church, I saw a young mother coming down the stairs with a pushchair and a toddler following behind. She got to the bollards outside when the toddler seemed to stop in the middle of the space outside. The toddler seemed bewildered by what was around them and their attention was drawn away from their mother.  In the course of less than five minutes, the toddler had decided it was better to crawl up the stone stops leading into the Trinity Center, or veer off and almost wander into the road.

But what I found the most striking was the mother’s reaction. She was protective of the child, unsurprisingly, but was allowing the child to be curious about what was around them. But as soon as the child headed for the stairs or the road, she swiftly came and picked the child up in her arms. 

You may ask why I am telling you this story. But I feel it quite profoundly shows our relationship with God and what it means to follow Jesus. In speaking to His disciples in the passage, He makes it clear that we encounter God when we encounter Jesus. When examining “I am the way, the truth and the life”, we may be asking what more we can do if we are already following Jesus as Christians. But I think verse 3 gives us a lot of insight into what we can do: “You also may be where I am”.

Jesus is inviting us not just to follow Him but to spend time with Him. It’s more than setting an example of being Christ-like but spending time with Him. He wouldn’t make a room in the Father’s house for us if He didn’t want us to stay. Jesus stating that there is a room for us in the Father’s house is more than staying over for a few nights or crashing on someone’s couch; it’s an open invitation to move in with God when the time is right. 

I’m sure for a number of you the idea of turning to your housemates or loved ones and saying “I’m moving in with Jesus” might raise a few eyebrows. Even the disciples struggle with the idea of this, as Thomas says “we do not know where you are going”. The answer to Thomas’ question is simply by following Jesus despite that.

For someone like myself, I struggle a lot with uncertainty. My disability means I don’t really deal well with grey areas when the world is full of them, so to not know the way makes me relate to Thomas here. But as I am aware of that, God is too. While there might not be any danger to climbing the stairs as the toddler did, God recognises that if He continued to let me wander further off the path that it would lead to more dangerous things.

As you dwell on Jesus’ invitation to spend time with Him, what might it look like? Not just to live by His example but to dwell in Him as He dwells in us. Are you prepared to follow Him wherever He may take you, even if the way is not always clear?

Joshua Faulkner