Unity vs. Uniformity

Feast of Pentecost, Year A
Text: Acts 2.1-21; 1 Cor 13.1-31; Jn 20.19-23

We heard this same reading from John’s gospel account at the beginning of the Easter season. You remember what happens next: Thomas, who was absent, comes back and doesn’t believe, but his unbelief turns to belief when Jesus shows him his wounds. That part of the story is left out today, directing our focus to the first part: the giving of the Holy Spirit.

I’ve noticed before that when Jesus gives the Spirit, he does so along with the authority to forgive or retain sins. In the context of the larger story, we see the disciples receive this authority—along with the Spirit—and then exercise it with Thomas: they forgive his “sin,” his separation from them and Jesus in his denial, for a whole week, which allows him to eventually come to belief. But today, without that part of the story to draw my attention, I’m noticing that there is another party in play here. I wonder if Jesus gives the disciples this authority not only for them to exercise with Thomas, but also with the Judeans, against whom their doors are locked out of fear. Will the disciples forgive the sins of the Judeans, or retain them?

The reading from Acts wrestles with the same question. Again, this is a story we’ve already read from this Easter season—twice. A few weeks ago, we got the remainder of Peter’s sermon in two parts. You may remember that the thrust of that sermon was to call his fellow Israelites—the Judeans who convicted and executed Jesus—to repentance, and to proclaim the good news to them. What’s more, the crowd receives that good news and repents. St. Luke goes on to recount that about three thousand people repented that day and joined the community of believers.

In both of these stories, I see God moving to bring people together. The Acts story portrays this message powerfully with the image of speaking in different languages. The Pentecost event brings all these Jews from across the known world together to hear a single message: the message of God’s deeds of power. If you’re very familiar with your bible, you might recognize this story as an echo of a much older story: the story of the tower of Babel. In that story, God’s deed of power was to scatter and confuse the citizens of Babel so that they would be unable to complete the large tower they were erecting to unite themselves.

In the old story, God creates disunity by separating out different languages; and in this story, God brings many languages together to create unity. One might wonder what one story has to do with the other, or why God would do one thing and then the opposite. To answer that question, it might help to know a bit of context.

The Babel story comes from the 11^th chapter of the book of Genesis. Genesis contains several stories that probably have been handed down through oral tradition for many generations before being written down around the 6^th century BCE. One of the reasons the stories were written down is that, in the 6^th century BCE, Judah was in exile in Babylon. “Babel” is a nice English onomatopoeia that sounds like gibberish, a nod to the confusion of languages from the story, but it is also the Hebrew word for Babylon—the empire that had conquered Judah, along with many other tiny nations, bringing them together under one government and one language.

I have to wonder, then, if the Babel story is a political satire, a story told indirectly against Judah’s oppressors. But more than that, I wonder if it is a story of resistance, a story of trust that God is greater than human attempts to rule the world and command its peoples. This makes me think that the scattering of people and the confusion of languages might be, in the Babel story, an act of liberation. If so, what does that make the Acts story?

Here’s another thing I notice: in the Babel story, God creates a diversity of languages and ethnicities. Although the Acts story reverses the confusion and scattering, it does not reverse God’s action of creating diversity. In the Babel story, people try to create unity through preventing diversity and fail; while in the Acts story, God succeeds in creating unity by embracing diversity, rather than eliminating it. I wonder if these two stories together challenge what we think of as unity; how God’s work is different from ours.

If we read the Babel story as a human attempt to create unity, I think it looks very familiar. Like the people in the story, we attempt to create unity by building. Rather than towers, we build institutions; things like nations, laws and moralities, religions, organizations and ideologies. Like the people in the story, we believe these things have the power to save us from poverty, war, crime, or other dangers that frighten us. But these institutions will always disappoint us because they don’t actually create unity. Instead, they create uniformity, which is not the same thing. Human institutions inherently see anyone or anything outside themselves as inferior, less than, worse; the end goal, like that of Babel, is to bring everyone and everything else inside, to make the “others” like us.

We have a name for that. We call that supremacy. White Supremacy holds that White, Anglo, European culture is superior, and others are inferior. Christian Supremacy believes that Christianity is the only way to God, and God’s only way of approaching us, and the only path to salvation is conversion. Ableism privileges able-bodied experience over the experience of folks with disabilities. Heteronormativity privileges straight, cis-gendered experience over queer experience. We privilege neurotypical experience over the experience of folks on the autism spectrum. What other kinds of supremacy can you identify in our world? In what ways do we determine what is “normal” and expect others to assimilate to it?

The Acts story shows us God working in a different way. I notice that the miracle isn’t that everyone in the crowd is suddenly able to understand Aramaic, but that the disciples are able to speak in different languages. God embraces and accepts and validates all the differences of the people gathered and invites them all into the good news that Jesus comes to bring; or as Peter quotes, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

St. Paul goes on to offer a way of understanding what God does differently from us. Instead of trying to make everyone the same—like all Jewish, or all Christian—Paul invites us to consider how our differences actually work together for God’s greater purpose, like the different parts of a body. Eyes and hands and feet and ears all need one another; without any of these, the body doesn’t work as it was intended.

Whereas our “Babelonian” perspective might try to get the “less honorable parts” to assimilate to the “more honorable,” Paul says that, in God’s way, we “clothe [those parts] with greater honor.” Instead of ignoring or trying to erase the perspectives of others, we lift them up, privilege them, celebrate them, in much the same way we protect most vigorously the parts of our body that we hide under the most layers of clothing.

Our way of creating unity is too often really about creating uniformity, about our worship of our own towers that we have built, our own supremacy. That’s what I hear in the Babel story. Uniformity may bring unity, but only at the cost of narrowing and limiting God’s good creation—and that narrows and limits our view of God. Uniformity fails to recognize the dignity of others in their different-ness, and it fails to see how the Spirit of God is active in those people.

I wonder if the good news in these stories is that the Fire of God comes to burn down those towers, to scatter and confuse us, so that we might find, as St. Paul says, a “still more excellent way:” We read today from 1 Corinthians chapter 12; what follows, of course, is chapter 13, the chapter you’ve heard read at every wedding you’ve ever been to: “Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not envious or arrogant or boastful or rude.” To love another is to love what makes them different from ourselves; to love the very things that make them hard to love. This is the love that God shows in these stories, and it is the love that God hopes we will find for one another.

I think this love is the challenge of these stories today. What does it look like to love people who are different from us—so different, even, that they may cause us harm? What does it look like to love those against whom we would otherwise lock our doors out of fear?

But more than this, the story of Pentecost challenges us more deeply. It challenges us not only to love those who are different from us, but to see God in them. If we really believe that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, if we really believe that God’s Spirit has been poured out on all flesh, then what does that mean for us? Can we hear God’s voice in the message of the televangelist? Can we see God at work in our Muslim neighbors? Can we proclaim repentance and offer forgiveness to the children of God who do terrible things to harm others? Can we invite others who are different from us into our communities, our congregations, our families, not only knowing that we will be changed by that experience, but expecting—even hoping—to be changed? Can we see God at work in the wind blowing us around, confusing us, scattering us? That’s the question I hear in these stories: do we really believe that the Spirit of God has been poured out on all flesh? And if so, can we see it?

Fiery Ordeals

Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A
Text: Acts 1.6-14; 1 Pet 4.12-14, 5.6-11; Jn 17.1-11

I want to share a story with you. This story is told by Jack Hitt, a contributor to an old episode of the NPR radio show “This American Life.” Hitt writes:

Well, it all began at Christmas two years ago when my daughter was four years old. And it was the first time that she had ever asked about what did this holiday mean. And so, I explained to her that this was celebrating the birth of Jesus. And she wanted to know more about that, and we went out and bought a kid’s Bible and had these readings at night. She loved them, wanted to know everything about Jesus.
So, we read a lot about his birth and about his teaching. And she would ask constantly what that phrase was, and I would explain to her that it was “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And we would talk about those old words and what that all meant.
And then one day we were driving past a big church, and out front was an enormous crucifix. She said, “Who is that?” And I guess I’d never really told that part of the story. So, I had to sort of say, “Yeah, well, that’s Jesus, and I forgot to tell you the ending. Yeah, well, he ran afoul of the Roman government. This message that he had was so radical and unnerving to the prevailing authorities at the time that they had to kill him. They came to the conclusion that he would have to die. That message was too troublesome.”
It was about a month later after that Christmas, we had gone through the whole story of what Christmas meant. And it was mid-January, and her preschool celebrates the same holidays as the local schools, so Martin Luther King Day was off. So I knocked off work that day, and I decided we’d play and I’d take her out to lunch.
And we were sitting in there, and right on the table where we happened to plop down was the art section of the local newspaper, and there, big-as-life, was a huge drawing by a 10-year-old kid in the local schools of Martin Luther King. And she said, “Who’s that?” And I said, “Well, as it happens, that’s Martin Luther King, and he’s why you’re not in school today. So, we’re celebrating his birthday. This is the day we celebrate his life.”
And she said, “So, who is he?” I said, “Well, he was a preacher.” And she looks up at me and goes, “for Jesus?” And I said, “Yeah, actually he was. But there was another thing that he was really famous for, which is that he had a message.”
And you’re trying to say this to a four-year-old. This is the first time they ever hear anything, so you’re just very careful about how you phrase everything. So, I said, well, yeah, he was a preacher and he had a message. And she said, “what was his message?” I said, “well, he said that you should treat everybody the same, no matter what they look like.”
She thought about that for a minute, and she said, “Well, that’s what Jesus said.” I said, “Yeah, I guess it is. I never thought of it that way, but yeah, that is sort of like ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’” And she thought for a minute and looked up at me and said, “did they kill him, too?”[i]

The episode of “This American Life” in which this story was featured is entitled “Kid Logic: Stories of kids using perfectly logical arguments and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions.” But this little girl didn’t come to the wrong conclusion, did she? She nailed it. People who really get the message that God has for us—the message of love and equality—and who share that message are killed for it.

St. John says that Jesus came for one reason and one reason only: to give the world eternal life by revealing God to it. He says it over and over and over again. Jesus came to be the Way, the Truth and the Life for the world, but the world didn’t want him.

It’s important here to point out what St. John means when he says “the world.” He isn’t talking about the planet, or everything that exists, or all people. He’s talking specifically about the world in the sense that we use when we say things like, “the world is going to hell” or “the way of the world works.” Because the English word “world” has so many different meanings, I find it easier to use the Greek word, kosmos. The kosmos is the power structure that humans create and inhabit within our world. It’s the overarching reality created by the interaction of governments, corporations, institutions, and systems that we have created to protect, sustain and advance human existence.

It is important to note that the kosmos is not evil. It is created for good reason, with good intent, but it is fallen. Any human system, no matter how good, seeks first to sustain and preserve itself. That is what institutions do. However, these systems end up seeking to do this even to the point sacrificing even their own stated ethics and morality. That means that every human system in the kosmos ends up disappointing us, sooner or later.

The reason Jesus—and King, and St. Stephen—died is because they threatened the stasis of one of the world’s systems—religion, government, social class, race, or what have you. That’s what Hitt had to try to explain to a 4-year-old: that the message of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is so radical and dangerous that, when you take it to its logical conclusion, it threatens and provokes a reaction from the kosmos. And that reaction, as the little girl understood, is violence.

This is at the heart of what the 1^st Letter of Peter has been talking about all throughout Easter. The author is writing to a group of Christians who are suffering hardship because they have believed the message of Jesus and have left behind the path of least resistance through the kosmos to try to life lives faithful to that message—to live according to the Way. They are experiencing persecution, perhaps, or maybe just isolation or discrimination from their families, their social circles, and their communities. Today, the author says, in essence: “Why are you surprised that life is hard for followers of the Way? That’s the way the world—the kosmos—works. Jesus suffered, and so shall you if you are faithful to him.” But he then goes on to say that, just as real as their suffering now is the “glory” to come when God Themself “will restore, support, strengthen and establish” them. For this reason, he urges, keep following the Way, no matter how hard the kosmos pushes back against you.

The reason for this persistence is not just for some personal reward, some “sordid gain,” as the letter-writer says elsewhere. The promised result of our faithfulness is not the reward of being scooped up to heaven while others burn in hell. It is that, like Christ, our faithfulness—even in the midst of suffering—is helping enact nothing less than the redemption of the kosmos.

As proof of this, we look to Jesus himself. His faithfulness did not fix the problems of the world. His life did not interrupt the Roman Empire or the Jewish temple economy one bit, beyond some minor hiccups. Most ancient historians have nothing to say about Jesus until his followers start grabbing their attention. It was his faithfulness to the Way that changed the world, even though the kosmos successfully killed him. Instead of being silenced, his message was amplified.

Even non-believers can appreciate Jesus and his story on some level because something about it rings true and right, like the way the world—the kosmos—ought to be. I wonder if that’s what St. John means when he writes, “the sheep follow [the shepherd] because they know his voice.” (Jn 10.4) That kind of power is dangerous, it threatens to destabilize our structures and reform or replace them, which is perhaps why the kosmos must react the way it did—in order to protect and maintain itself.

Just as Jesus’ faithfulness to the Way began changing the world for the better, so does our faithfulness. We may be too small, too insignificant, too weak to affect the change we would like to see by ourselves—or sometimes, even together—but by living faithfully, we are changing how the kosmos works, because we, too, are a part of the kosmos.

I find this to be tremendously good news, because it means that, even if we should fail, we can still be saved. Jesus failed—he died; and yet, the good news of Easter is that death is not the end. Likewise, even if we should fail and the world as we know it should end, the story is not over. God is still doing something, and we trust that that something can redeem whatever evil may occur, just as Jesus’ resurrection redeems his death. We don’t need to save the kosmos, because God is doing that—but God is doing that in and through us. We get to be a part of that, not by being superheroes, but by being exactly who we were created to be: human beings living according to the Way; living eternal life.

I notice that in Jesus’ prayer, when he prays for protection for his disciples, he isn’t referring to preventing harm or death, but to oneness: “that they may be one, as we are one.” I wonder if living in the awareness of the unity we have with all people and all creation might have the power to allay some of our fears. I wonder if recognizing our oneness with even our enemies might change our hearts and how we work for justice in the world. Even if they keep treating us as enemies, what might happen if we treated them like siblings? What might happen to us? What could happen to the world?

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[i] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/188/kid-logic-2001

The Emptiness that Hungers

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Text: Acts 17.22-31; 1 Pet 3.13-22; Jn 14.15-21

One of the earliest dreams I remember having was probably when I was about 3 or 4 years old. I remember that I had spent the night in my parents’ bed with them. I dreamed that I was standing outside of our house and watching my dad drive away in a red convertible. I ran after him, calling, because I knew in the dream that he was leaving us, leaving me.

Why I had this dream, I don’t know. He would never have left us, and I never worried that he might, and we certainly never owned a red convertible. For all I know, it could have been images playing along to a country song from their clock radio in the morning while I slept. What I do know is that the idea of losing him was so terrible, so devastating, that even now, 35 years later, just remembering that dream, I can still feel the echoes of that desolation in my chest. It isn’t just an emptiness, it’s an emptiness that hungers. It’s like a gaping chasm, a hole too great to ever be filled though the whole world should fall into it.

I can’t help but feel that hungry emptiness in St. John’s story. I can hear it in the disciples’ questions: when Thomas wonders, “How can we know the way?” or when Philip says, “Show us the Father,” or when the other Judas asks “How will you reveal yourself to us?” I can hear Jesus trying to stave it off as he says again and again and again, “I love you. I am with you. Even when I am gone, another will come. I will not leave you orphaned.”

That word “orphaned” is used very intentionally, I think. This is not just the story of a group of friends losing one of their own, this is the story of a community who are afraid of losing their connection to God. St. John says that the religious leaders have lost sight of God to the degree that, when God’s own Son, the Word made flesh, stands among them, their response is fear, hatred and violence. These people, on the other hand, have seen the Father in the Son, and now that Son is being taken away from them. They aren’t just losing their friend, they’re losing their Father, their Mother, their Parent.

I wonder if it is this sense of abandonment, this painful feeling of isolation, that drives us when we are at our worst. I know that in the times when I fail to love, I am often feeling the need to defend, protect or grasp at something that I am afraid is being taken from me—something like control, resources, time, or energy. It’s the times when I am feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for myself, for others, or the world around me and simply don’t feel up to the task.

As I think about the people we hate and fear most in this world—people like Hitler, or Putin, or Stalin—I wonder if they might be driven by those same things: the need for security, order, wealth, power, or even simply respect. I wonder if, somewhere inside, they are simply doing what they think they have to in order to survive, to secure whatever it is that they are afraid of losing.

On the other hand, I think back to last week’s story, to Stephen who, while having everything taken from him, wished only to give more. Everything that the world spends its time seeking, Stephen seems to have found, and it isn’t in the places or the ways that the world is looking. Stephen has no power, no control, no security, no justice, and yet it’s not that lack that defines him, but the presence, the abundance, the “with-ness” that determines his story.

Reading this story and thinking about Stephen’s experience, I get the impression that what Jesus is trying to impart to his disciples is the polar opposite of that hungry emptiness that I experienced in my dream so long ago. Instead of abandonment and orphaning, Jesus promises his friends a kind of togetherness that transcends time and space and even death itself. Though he will be leaving, another Advocate is coming, and through that Advocate, Jesus himself will be with them, with us. Instead of an experience of leaving, Jesus’ departure paradoxically endows them with an experience of coming home, of permanent dwelling and enduring presence. An experience of abiding.

When Paul walked the streets of Athens, he saw a city filled with idols and temples to different gods. Such a sight would have been proof to other Jews of the god-forsakenness of that Gentile capital. But Paul saw something different; instead of rampant idolatry, he saw the abiding presence of God, alive and active in a people who didn’t even know who this God was.

In our searching and groping we erect idols to many different gods, from money to power to race to national identity. We religious folks have our idols, too: idols to tradition or creed or doctrine. Even as we fall short of the God for which we are searching, the idols themselves are a testament to that which we seek, a sign of what we are searching for to fill the hungry emptiness.

As we look all around us for external things to fill the void, Paul and Jesus both want to assure us that the abiding presence we seek is closer than we think. “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you,” Jesus says. Did you hear that? The God whom we seek abides in us already. We need not fear the hungry emptiness that drives us to defend and protect and acquire and possess, because we abide in God, and God abides in us. Thomas Merton even observes that one cannot know God apart from knowing oneself, and one cannot know oneself apart from knowing God.

I am convinced that is what Jesus means when he says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Our English ears seem to want to hear that as an imperative: “I love Jesus; therefore I must keep his commandments,” but that’s not what he says. He’s stating a simple fact: those who love him keep his commandments. It’s like saying, “if the sky gets dark, it will rain.” And in John’s gospel, there is only one commandment Jesus ever gives us to keep: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

I wonder if we fail to keep this commandment because we fail to believe God’s love for us. It is so much easier to believe in our own faults and shortcomings than it is to believe in our inherent worth; to believe that what is wrong with us or the wrongs we have committed are what define us. Could that be what makes us unable to look past the faults and shortcomings of others? If we cannot believe in our own belovedness, how can we possibly believe in the belovedness of others? When we give our sins the power to define us (or others), they become our idols, joining the idols of others along the streets of Athens.

But our own inability to love does not negate the love God already lavishes upon us. That love alone—the love that creates us and animates us, the love in which we live and move and have our being—is the only thing that can show us the truth of who we are in God: that God creates us as expressions of God’s love. You are the love of God given flesh. Only the infinite love of God, infinitely pouring itself out upon us and for us, can wash away the stain of our own shame and guilt.

Even as we erect our pagan temples to gods that we hope will give us satisfaction and fulfillment, even as we worship at the altars that we pray will save us from the hungry emptiness, God abides in, with and under us. God chooses to make God’s home with us. To believe this of ourselves helps us to believe it of others, and to believe it of others helps us to believe it of ourselves. We abide in God and God abides in us when we abide in one another.

I think that is the mystery Jesus is trying to share with us, the mystery that allowed Stephen to respond as he did. The recognition that God abides in his murderers just as God abides in him helped him to love them, and that love revealed Jesus to him. I think that it was seeing this truth that showed him the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, and that revelation moved him to compassion beyond human imagination.

As I think about this story and what it might mean for us, I wonder what might be keeping us from recognizing the infinite love God is pouring out on us. I wonder what keeps us from seeing God abiding in ourselves, or in one another. As we consider what it might look like for us to love others who make themselves so hard to love, I wonder what we might learn from the example of Jesus, or of Stephen, or of the other faithful people throughout history who have followed their Way. As we continue to search and grope for a God hidden just beyond our sight and sense, I wonder where that God might be revealing Godself to us in things as ordinary as water, bread, or wine.

My friends, it is so easy to look out at the world and see where God is absent, to see the people and places and situations that are God-forsaken. It takes strength and determination and—above all—love to look at the world and see it saturated in God’s abiding presence. We cannot do it on our own; thankfully we have an Advocate, a helper provided to us by God’s own deep love to bring us to fuller life. I pray that She may help you to see the depth and power of God’s love for you; that She may show you that God abiding in you, and you in God; and that in God, we abide in one another—for this is what Love is.

The Way

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Text: Acts 7.55-60; 1 Pet 2.2-10; Jn 14.1-14

Pastor Rob Bell shares a story about an art display created by members of his church in Michigan. One member had a collage with quotes from Mohandas Ghandi. Another member, one of the viewers of the piece, had left a note: “Reality check – Ghandi’s in Hell.” “Really?” Bell wonders; “we can confirm this?”

How could that person be so sure Ghandi is in Hell? Well, it says it, right here, in black and white: “No one comes to the Father but by me.” It seems pretty clear: only Christians—people who believe in Jesus—get to be with God. Right? That’s what the Bible says—doesn’t it?

Of course, if you look again, if you read the words that are written on the page, it doesn’t say any of that. There’s nothing about Hell, nothing about Christianity or creeds, nothing about going to heaven to be with God. So why do we read it this way? Why was Bell’s community member so convinced that Ghandi is in Hell? Is that how you learned to read this verse? If so, where did you learn it? Who told you—a pastor? A parent? A Sunday School teacher?

That’s how I grew up understanding this verse. And the funniest thing? I don’t ever recall being taught that. I can’t remember a single person ever telling me that’s what it meant. I just picked it up somewhere, like a case of COVID. And that really makes me wonder how and why that message came to be in my head, or in any of our heads.

What I do know is that this is kind of the way people everywhere think about lots of things. If I am right, then you must be wrong. If this is good, then that must be bad. People are naturally xenophobic; we naturally fear what is foreign or different. What is familiar we know to be safe, but what is different could be dangerous. It may even be a survival mechanism hardwired into our brains by millions of years of evolution.

So, here’s what I’m wondering: what if that way of thinking and understanding the world is what influences how we read this biblical text, among others? What if our way of understanding God is really based more in our own preconceived notions about who God is than what the Bible—or any other scripture—says? If so, that’s actually the opposite of what Jesus says—that he is the way.

That word way in Greek can mean a way like a path or a road, and I wonder if that’s how we typically hear this: that Jesus is the path from A to B, from where we are to where God is. But the word can also mean a way of being, or a way of life. How might that change how we hear this verse? What if, instead of being the only path that gives us access to God, Jesus is saying that is way of life is the only way we can know who God is?

Let’s take a look at that first story from Acts. There are two ways of life for us to compare in that story: the way of the council, and the way of Stephen. Stephen is one of the first deacons, and he was so intelligent and eloquent that the folks from the synagogue with whom he was debating couldn’t win an argument with him honestly, so they lied about him. They said he was threatening their traditions and their temple to get him in trouble with the Jerusalem Council.

When he goes before the council, he gives an impassioned sermon about Jesus and their response is anger and violence. The story even says they “cover their ears” so they won’t hear what he has to say. Then, they stone him to death.

Stephen’s last words as he dies are “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” The religious authorities felt that their way of life was in danger from Stephen and responded with violence; but when Stephen’s actual life was in danger, his response is compassion for the people killing him. His last thought is not for himself, but for the welfare of his enemies. To me, that testifies to a man who has experienced abundant life. The Council seem like they are dying already, desperate to hang onto whatever shreds of survival they can, while Stephen—even as he dies—is more worried for them than he is for himself!

How ironic that, in trying to save themselves, they show how dead they already are! These are the religious authorities! And what is their religion doing for them? It seems to be killing them, rather than saving them. Could it be because their true religion—the way they live—doesn’t worship God at all, but something else, some other thing they call by God’s name? I wonder if that might still be true today for many of us religious people. I wonder if that might be why we can’t understand these words of Jesus’. Ghandi—of all people—was once quoted as saying, “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” I have to wonder what god have we found to worship, and how did we get ourselves there?

Stephen’s story, in addition to being a story of faithfulness, shows us something else. Remember Stephen’s last words; do they sound at all familiar to you? Do they remind you of someone else who died saying the same thing? It’s Jesus, of course! We look at this story, at Stephen, and we see Jesus, just as plainly as Stephen himself saw Jesus in his vision before he died. We can see Jesus there because Stephen is following the Way—the Way that is Jesus himself. And looking at Jesus shows us God.

I wonder if we have this all backward. I wonder if we take are taking our ideas of who God is and importing them into this story as we read it and asking the story to reassure us that we are correct. That’s the only way I can see how we could get from what Jesus says to some claim about the preeminence of Christianity among other religions. But to do that is backwards—instead of Jesus showing us God, we’re asking our gods to interpret Jesus. If we do that with this story, I wonder what other stories in scripture we might be doing that with.

Maybe that’s what Jesus is driving at here. Maybe that’s why he begins this section by saying, “Trust God, trust me.” Maybe he’s trying to remind his disciples—and us—that the truth of who God really is doesn’t depend on our ideas or beliefs or doctrines, but on who God shows Themself to be, and God shows Themself in Jesus.

If you’re looking for the real point of this story, I’d suggest looking past verse 6 to verse 9: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus is who he is because, as he says, the Father is in him, and he is in the Father. He says the Father abides in him, and works in him. Abide is the English translation of St. John’s favorite word, a word which he uses to describe the mystical way in which the Word of God becomes flesh and abides among us and in which that Word abides within us still.

If we read Jesus’ words about the path as a description of the only way for us to get to God, we’ve got the story backwards because before he says that, Jesus says that he goes to prepare ‘abiding places’—using that same word—for us with God. This is a story about God already abiding with us. All of St. John’s gospel is that story. God is already here, with us, among us, dwelling, enduring, remaining—abiding. When people miss this is when they respond with anger, fear and violence.

I have to wonder if in this story—a story which takes place the night of Jesus’ arrest, before his execution—Jesus is reminding his disciples that, no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter how much it looks like he is failing at what he came to do—God still abides. No matter how much it looks like the world is rejecting God, what is actually happening is God saving the world.

Another way to translate the Greek word “way,” apart from a road or a way of being, is the state of being on a journey. I have to wonder if that might not be the “way” Jesus is talking about. What if the Way he shows us is not the path to God, but how to recognize God at our side along the journey? What if he’s trying to open our eyes to God abiding with us on the path?

If so, I have to wonder if salvation is the destination we often treat it as—going to heaven when we die, for example—or if it is a process, a journey. Maybe God is less concerned with where we end up than how we get there. Maybe real salvation is that, no matter where we’re headed, by whatever path, God abides in us, and we in God.

What might that mean for us? What is the point of our worship and religion if we’re not trying to get somewhere or achieve something, but instead just trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other? What might it mean for our congregations, our denominations, our ideas of how we do Church if our goal is not to get to where God is calling us, but to instead look only to where God is calling us next? Might there be ways of faithfully following Christ that don’t involve worship with hymns and liturgy in big buildings with mortgages? What luggage should we be taking on this journey? What baggage should we be leaving behind?

The answers to those questions are above my pay grade—but they’re answers we’re called to seek. I wonder, though, which is more important—the finding, or the seeking?