Easter 5A
I love maps. A friend of mine has a collection of old maps: maps of Civil War
strategies, the N.Y. city subway system, of old airline flight patterns. I can spend
hours looking at maps of places where I know I will never go. I even save
highway maps from old vacations. They are all marked up showing routes where
I travelled. There is security in a map.
Yet if we look at an old map we know how quickly reality can change,
geographical and political boundaries, concepts of how the earth is formed, and
in truth, I can get lost no matter how many Rand Mc Nally maps are before me.
When Jesus talks of the Way he means more than the changing truth of any map.
In our Gospel this morning the disciples are looking for the kind of false security
that is afforded in a good map. Jesus is telling them that he is going away to
prepare a place for them and that they can't follow him now. But at some time
they will follow. And immediately the disciples respond with questions..."How
can we know the way?...Show us....Show us the map." They interpret the sayings
of Jesus as literal rather than as words of relationship. Jesus says "I am the way,
the truth, and the life." He is offering a style of living, a way of inner
transformation, a way of relating to the world. He is not offering a fool proof
map complete with mileage data.
What Jesus is talking about is closer to George Macdonald's fairy tale The
Princess and the Goblin. A young princess is sent away from her father's
kingdom, away from the world, to a castle of safety. She begins to explore her
new home and encounters an old woman spinning thread in the tower. The
woman introduces herself as the princess's great-grandmother. She tells the
princess that she has awaited her for years. In time, the great-grandmother gives
the princess a ring to which she attaches an invisible thread. This thread, the
great-grandmother tells the princess, will guide her through the challenges she
meets in life. The child is disappointed in her gift because she cannot see the
thread or the ball that it comes from, which remains with the great-grandmother.
Only as the child grows older does she realize the power that is given her. She is
1
tied to life, to a center point that guides her. The great-grandmother's thread is
the God within who gives meaning to her journey. How is this invisible thread of
God's life captured in your own story?
This is the question that John is grappling with in this morning's gospel. He is
writing for a community who has experienced the death of Jesus and is facing
opposition with different factions within the Jewish community. John is trying to
decipher how Christ is resurrected in his own time. What is the thread that links
Jesus with the fledgling church? There must have been tremendous anxiety
trying to create the early community. Where had Jesus gone? How did they hear
him now, at this time? John has Jesus saying "Do not let your hearts be
troubled." The old maps no longer give the right directions but there is a new
way.
John is trying to express something important about a relationship with Jesus.
It is expressed in words we hear as geography but John is using them to mean
relationship. For example, in this morning's gospel the noun translated "dwelling
place" is derived from a verb meaning "to abide" or to be in relationship with
someone. Jesus is saying that "My return to God makes it possible for you to
share in the relationship that I have with God." Jesus is welcoming his friends
into the house of God by saying "where I am, there you may be also."
The central phrase in today's reading, "the way", can also be understood as a
place. Thomas interprets "the way" and "where I am going" as synonyms,
pointing to Jesus' destination. Yet "the way" is not to be understood as a set
route; the Greek word literally means "access." It is a feminine word that refers
to the Wisdom tradition in scripture. The Way of Wisdom is a way of growing
consciousness. To "know the way" is to know Jesus himself.
Look at your own life. There are probably few of us here who can see their life
as a direct map to Jesus. At times Jesus was probably not recognizable or
appeared to us in totally different forms at various parts of our journey. And it
can be hard to see the Christ as the great-grandmother thread within us. It is
hard to trust our path. Even Jesus in his earthly life was on a road, a way, to
2
inner knowledge, a way of knowing who he was and what he was about.
So how do we know the Way? If you were given crayons, paint, paper and
brush, could you paint the Way your own life has taken? Where would be the
points of inner experience and how would you visualize them? Would your way
be linear, or a step forward and a step backward as in a dance, or perhaps a
circle?
A playful and ancient method of visually depicting the Way is the form named
the labyrinth. The labyrinth is being rediscovered as a way of seeing God's life in
us, the great-grandmother thread. It is an ancient symbol that has been known
to the human race for over 4000 years. In the Christian tradition the symbol was
used during medieval times to depict the Christian life. The labyrinth functions
like a spiral, creating a vortex in its center. The path into the center of the
labyrinth winds in a clockwise pattern, and the path back unwinds
counterclockwise. The path is not straight but it is also not a maze, formed to
confuse or catch us. It is a large spiral circle, a symbol for the God within, the Holy
in creation.
Often in the past Christianity has disregarded the need for each Christian to
enter the way as a seeker. Uniformity through proclamations of belief, maps or
catechisms were given, but the experience of the one on the Way was not at the
center. Faith was mapped out in conceptual terms, not in moments of
relationship. Even today our churches are fighting over which way is the true
way. Yet in John’s Gospel knowledge and love grow together. It is God's
presence in us, our presence in God that is eternal life. To know God is not a
question of clearer and clearer vision but rather walking, sinking ever deeper into
God's unknown.
Teilhard de Chardin, theologian and scientist, experienced this at the front in
World War I. He looked at the earth and saw all that was growing and flowering
as an immense host to be consecrated; all the suffering and death of war was
seen as the wine, prepared for Eucharist. In the pain of war, Teilhard saw that
communion, God's thread, was still present. Teilhard saw that all matter was
3
part of the Christ, part of the Way.
Whether it is walking a labyrinth or seeing Christ in the midst of war, the way is
not a tamed path. Jesus makes the way into God's presence concrete. But it is
not automatic. The entrance to the labyrinth is open but we must go in. And our
anxiety may walk with us too. But once we reach the center of the labyrinth we
then need to leave. The center point is brought into the world of the ordinary.
And there it is that Jesus says we do the works that he can do, works of healing
and compassion. Walking the Way is one of commitment, of entering into the
life of the Risen Christ.
Daniel Berrigan wrote a poem called "Some."
Some stood up once and sat down.
Some walked a mile and walked away.
Some stood up twice then sat down.
I've had it they said.
Some walked two miles then walked away.
It's too much they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken in for fools.
They were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked.
They walked the earth.
They walked the waters.
They walked the air.
Why do you stand? they were asked, and
Why do you walk?
Because of the children, they said, and
Because of the heart, and
Because of the bread.
Because the Way
Is the heart's beat
4
And the children born
And the risen bread.
There is no one map to live our Christian life but there is a path, a way, a walk
that is one of discovery. A way to find the God in ourselves. Jesus talks of the
Gospel as a way to life, a path that brings us to the center of our beings. And at
that center we will find the great grandmother of compassion tenderly holding us
by a gentle thread; the Christ saying, "See- I knew you would find Me. I am with
you always.”
5