John 14:1-14
Oh, the Gospel of John. Full of so much beauty, and so many memorable verses. “In the beginning was the Word...” “For God so loved the world....” “I am the good Shepherd...” and this, Jesus’ proclamation, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.” Even those who have not grown up in the church can recite this one––it’s been recited throughout history. But, as I asked last week, with another of John’s verses, what does it mean?
It seems pretty obvious on the surface. Jesus is the way––the only way––to God. And, as a corollary, it seems to say that the only way that God loves us is through Jesus, particularly when the Gospel says later that the Father is shown in the Son, and the Son reveals the Father. It fits with what we heard last Sunday, that Jesus is the gate, the only way to enter the sheepfold. It certainly supports centuries of the church saying that Christians are the only ones who are walking the way, the only ones who are entering the proper sheepfold, and therefore the only ones who are recipients of God’s salvation.
But there’s a problem with this surface-level interpretation, not the least of which is that we are no longer quite so comfortable with asserting our Christian superiority. The big problem is in the Gospel of John itself: when Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold,” and when Jesus says, in the passage we read today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.... In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” The problem is that when we look closely, the Gospel has a contradiction in it.
So what does this mean? How can Jesus say he is both the only way to God and that there are other sheep that do not belong to this fold? How can he say that belief in him is the only way to eternal life and say that there are actually many dwelling places that God has built?
So today is Mother’s Day. Before I had children, I had this idea that a mother is supposed to love all her children exactly the same. And, as I have siblings, as a child, I would be perplexed that my mother seemed to love us all in different ways. One of us would get a privilege, or a a punishment (they were called responsibilities), that the others didn’t. It was confusing, and a source of feelings of either superiority or inferiority, depending on the situation.
This is not to say that I doubted my mother’s love––I knew that she loved each of us equally, which is to say with all her heart. But what I didn’t understand, until I had to raise my own children, is that the way a mother loves each of her children depends on the child.
You see, each child has different needs for love. Some children need a snuggly, cuddly kind of love, with lots of reassurance and hugs. Other kids find being hugged to be too much, and they need more of a challenging kind of love, that encourages them to take risks and go out on their own. Some kids thrive under a quiet, soft love, while other kids need a loud, boisterous love. Some kids do well with gentle cautions, while others only learn what they need to know the hard way. Misreading what a child needs can mean that the love a mother shows is not felt by her child––quite the opposite. Love is not one size fits all. It is one of the challenges of motherhood to figure out what kind of love each child needs, and then to give that to them, and then, as the child grows and their needs change, to respond appropriately.
This is also true of us in our relationship with God and the love we need from God. Probably one of the worst assumptions anyone can make is that we all relate to God the same way, and that we all need the same things from God. We all need to be loved by God, but how we need that love to take shape is different for each of us. Some of us need God to comfort us, like a mother comforts her child when things are scary. Some of us need a challenging God, who encourages us to take risks on behalf of our neighbours, who pushes us to fight for justice. Some of us need God to be vulnerable with us, to love us by sharing our suffering, while others of us need God to be the mighty protector, taking control of our lives in times of crisis. I would even guess that most of us, throughout the course of our lives, have needed all of these things from God at various times. There is a reason Scripture describes God as both merciful and mighty, as both judging and forgiving, as both nurturing and awe-inspiring.
Like a good mother, like “the best mother in the whole world,” God loves each of us in exactly the way we need. When we need a protecting God, that is how God loves us. When we need a challenging God, that is how God loves us. God doesn’t always love us the way we want, mind you, but God always loves us the way we need. When we say that God is love, this is what we mean. The problem comes, though, when we believe that the way we need love is the way that everyone else should need it, too. The problem comes when we proclaim that our need is everyone else’s need, when we assume that God loves each of God’s children in exactly the same way.
And so we come back to the Gospel reading for today. When this Gospel was written, it was for a very specific group of God’s children, who had very specific needs for God’s love. The original audience of this Gospel was Christians who were gathered together, most probably in Ephesus, which is in modern-day Turkey, at least fifty years after Jesus’ death. It’s highly unlikely that any of them would have known Jesus personally, or that any of them would have experienced worshipping as Jews at the Temple in Jerusalem. The best guess of biblical scholars is that they were a community of non-Jewish Christians who were being told by those outside their community that they could not be loved or saved by God because they were not part of the covenant God made with Moses at Sinai. In other words, they were not Jews, and they would not be saved, because they did not have the love of God’s covenant through Torah.
And so Jesus’ message of love is to these non-Jewish Christians, to reassure them that they don’t need to be loved through Torah to be saved by the love of God. Jesus is telling them that they can rely on God’s love through Jesus. They don’t need to look elsewhere. Jesus is telling them that God loves them in a way that is particular to what they need, which is through Christ, who suffices as their way, and their truth, and their life.
But while this was Jesus’ message to this particular group of Christians, it doesn’t mean that this message is meant for all of God’s children everywhere. Again, a good mother doesn’t love each of her children the same way, or show that love in the same way. We, as Christians, need the love of God that we experience through Christ. But that is not necessarily the case for those who aren’t Christian. It’s certainly not the case for Jews, whom God continues to love through Torah. After the horror of the Holocaust, Christians finally realized that Christ is not the way, the truth, and the life for Jews. Quite the opposite. God does not show love to them the same God shows love to us. And perhaps this is true for people of other religions, or no religion, as well. The love we need is not the love they need, but they are God’s children, too. And so perhaps God shows love for them differently than God shows love for us.
So how can we say this? How do we know this is true? Well, there are those other verses in the Gospel of John––Jesus has other sheep, and God’s house has many dwellings. But other than that, we don’t know. I could be wrong. But I do know that a good mother loves her children the way each one needs, and God’s love for all of God’s children is deeper than even the best mother’s love. God loves us Christians through Christ. Nothing else will work for us. Christ is the way, the truth, and the life––for Christians. As for those who are not Christian, who need God’s love in a different way? Well, it’s not a child’s place to tell their mother how she should love her other children. We know that God is full of love for all of God’s Creation, and that God will not turn aside or abandon those who are not of Christ’s fold, just as God has not abandoned us. And so we say, Thanks be to God. Amen.
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