Is Jesus the Only Way?
The Vocabulary of Faith 6
Blogging Towards Sunday, February 8, 2009
John 14:1-6
Revelation 17:1-19:10
(or selections below)

The word for the week in my preaching series at the church I serve is "Only through Me" - "or "is Jesus the Only Way?" Tough. We want to be inclusive without being exclusive. And what is Jesus saying? I read John 14 and most often have heard people preach/talk about all those that won't be saved in some sort of long list or repetitive litany. Yet in the context of the passage Jesus isn't talking about other religions or faith traditions.

We’re often quick to judge others, or say that Jesus is the only way to knowing God, salvation, or inclusion in what God wants for the world and the chosen people of God. And maybe it means something more. Are we ourselves following that way, truth and life? I hear John 14:6 and I think of Jesus as being first and foremost relational, a truth we know and experience, a life we receive and mature in, a way of living that is more a journey to discover in community with other disciples than a moral certitude or theological knowledge to posses. What does it mean for you to follow Jesus? How does it shape your daily life, priorities, way you spend money, relationships, work, rest and spiritual life?

Are we following Jesus as Jesus commanded us to?

What does it mean that Jesus is the way, truth and life? Here’s some of the definitions (the gospel of John is first written in Greek) to help you go deeper in your experience of Jesus.

Όδος: WAY, public highway, street or road, journey, a way of life or conduct.

Άληθεια: TRUTH, truthfulness, dependability, uprightness, divine truth, reality.

Ζωή: LIFE in the physical sense, livelihood, means of sustenance life with God.

Revelation portrays a vision of faith and faithfulness from John in the 2^nd century of the Roman Empire, a time of great tribulation and persecution for followers of Jesus. The book is a challenging read. Many people disagree on what it means and how is it truth. Is it more like a newspaper or a poem? Is it fact? Is it a metaphorical vision? Is it historical prophecy? Babylon the enemy of the people of God, is most likely Rome, representing the Roman Empire and the wealth and ways of the world. John portrays Rome as a prostitute or whore, who gathers wealth and admirers through seduction. What he's warning is for those who follow Jesus as the way, truth and life to not forget who they're following, or called to follow, and not to be seduced by the voice on the corner, or in the office of power in our government, industry, medias, neighborhoods or families. I'm struck this week by all of the blow outs about the bail out. Executives getting huge pay offs when they're receiving bail out monies paid out by the people who were abused, or lost their money. Of course the irony of it all is that we're quick to point fingers, yet we all were seduced by our own Babylons and Romes: cheap things to buy, overbuying, mortgages that were just too good to be true, borrowing seemingly free and endless money, believing and acting as though the good times might not ever end.

In the church, at least a lot of people I know and have heard, are quick to speak up about the sins of others in terms of choosing Jesus as the WAY, yet mute in terms of noticing the log in their own eyes. Isn't that a deeper reflection of human nature, and the new way of living that I believe Jesus invites us to know as truth, not found in a book, but in a new way of life that comes first and foremost with the living God that Jesus points to.

">Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore who is seated on many waters, ²with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk.’ ³So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. ⁴The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; ⁵and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.’ ⁶And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.

When I saw her, I was greatly amazed. ⁷But the angel said to me, ‘Why are you so amazed? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her….⁹ ‘This calls for a mind that has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; also, they are seven kings,… ¹⁴they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.’

¹⁵ And he said to me, ‘The waters that you saw, where the whore is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages… ¹⁸The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.’

18 ¹After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor. ²He called out with a mighty voice,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling-place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.
³For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury.’

⁴Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues; ⁵for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. ⁶Render to her as she herself has rendered, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed. ⁷As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, so give her a like measure of torment and grief.Since in her heart she says, “I rule as a queen; I am no widow, and I will never see grief”, ⁸therefore her plagues will come in a single day— pestilence and mourning and famine—and she will be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’ ⁹ And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning;

My thanks go to Sharyl who talked with me about this, relating a sermon that Tony Campolo preached on this last week with the Presbytery of Philadelphia, which I'm freely plagurizing.