I remember my first real job – I was 12, I think, and technically too young to be working as a regular employee, at least according to what the rules are now. But this was the deep South in the 1970s, and things were a bit fuzzier.
The local YWCA needed an assistant swim teacher – not really one of the main teachers, but someone to help out with the kids who were too afraid of the water to join in with the regular class. They didn’t want to pay an adult for that. I’d been taking lessons there for years and was pretty good at it, and somehow I found myself with a job teaching swimming. I would spend hours treading the heavily chlorinated water and helping shivering little kids learn to kick and blow bubbles.
But one of the things I remember most about it, other than the constantly wrinkled hands, was that strange feeling of suddenly losing the structure of being a student and having to take on new authority. My supervisor had given me some instruction – do this first, then work on that, etc. – and that was something that I needed. But I still basically was thrown into the deep end, so to speak, and the two things I needed most were an assurance of my identity as teacher – which I didn’t feel right away – and an assurance that I was already kind of doing it.
It’s a small example – I’ve had lots of bigger ones since then, and I’m sure you all have, too. But I wanted us to go into that kind of place where an old structure was falling away and we were having to live into a new identity, a new authority, that might feel a little scary.
I wanted to get us there because I think it’s the kind of space where the Gospel and the reading from 1 Peter are. And I really like that. The writers of both passages were trying to get disciples ready – whether Jesus’ first disciples or the ones of the next and future generations – to grow up a bit, to meet themselves in newer bigger territory where their relationship with Jesus had to be different than before, maybe a little more inside of us than outside of us. And what these passages give them are the two things that I needed as a newbie swim teacher: an assurance of what their identity was, and an assurance that it was already happening.
Jesus knew the situation they were going to be in once he was gone – this whole Gospel passage comes from just before Jesus’ betrayal and death – so that assurance is where he starts off in the first sentence – “do not let your hearts be troubled.” Don’t worry, he says, I’m already preparing a place for you in the hugeness of God’s love. And that’s not all – I will take you there myself. So, you’ve got a place, and you don’t have to worry about finding it.
Then Thomas says, “But we don’t know where all of that is, we haven’t been there yet, so how can we know the way to get there.” He’s clearly speaking out of very human anxiety, wanting to lower some of the risk factors.
So Jesus answers him: But you do know where all this good stuff is, Thomas. Don’t turn the issue on its head. You know me, so actually, you have been there. I’m not just a tour guide. I’m the journey itself. I am … the way.
The way. Sounds simple enough, and it’s often quoted in Christendom as if it is. But it’s actually very rich and complex in meaning. The Greek word there is ‘odos. It can mean the ‘way’ as a means to an end, but it also carries other connotations that our English word doesn’t, like the physical path that we journey along but also the act of journeying itself – almost like a verb, it captures something very active. And if you go even deeper, it can mean a whole way of being.
And I think this is the kind of wholistic thing Jesus is trying to get across. The disciples have been involved with Jesus, so they’ve already experienced something about the goal of all of this – both the journeying and the end of the journey. They’re asking a question that they actually already know the answer to. They may not know it intellectually, but they’ve experienced the answer. They’ve already gotten in touch with the kind of aliveness and arrival that’s what they’re going for in the first place.
Which explains the other two words Jesus uses with the “way”: “truth” and “life.” Not as separate things but all of a piece, and again, there, the words all point to a massive, sparkling vitality that goes way beyond words. Jesus is trying to get the idea across that following him has meant a certain kind of journey that’s involved giving up stuff the way he’s given up stuff. But that opened out new levels of awareness for all of them, which meant new levels of energy and vitality.
You know who I am, Jesus says, and you know what you’ve seen me do. (Here I’m interpolating a little bit, but it’s such a dense package, we need to open it up.) You’ve seen that following me means leaving behind a lot of human stuff, including probably some of the comfortable ways of defining the world. And you’ve seen me being compassionate with you in the process, and bringing you closer to your own loveliness and freedom from things that bind you. That is my way.
And, Jesus says, that way tells you a lot about who God is. So – you have seen God.
It’s at this point that Philip pipes up with the question, Well, this brings us a good point Jesus, which I’ve been meaning to mention. Can you just show us the Father? Just for two seconds? That would really be great, because we’ve given up a lot to be doing this, and we’re burned-out, and need to keep preaching it, and we really need the reassurance. It’ll reassure us about who God is, and that will reassure us about who we are.
Jesus sighs (I imagine). Philip, he says, you’ve been with me, you’ve worked with me. You’ve really logged in the time. You’ve done the tasks, you’ve done the projects. And yet … – you still don’t know me. You may be familiar with me. But familiarity isn’t the same thing as relationship. Your question is missing the mark.
Be in relationship, Jesus says to him – in other words, believe in me. Because I’ve already answered your questions with everything I am. With who I am and with what you’ve seen me do. You don’t have to get me to give you an answer from somewhere else, I am that answer.
Live into that. And you’ll do all the things you’ve seen me do, and more. Not because they are your projects and tasks – they’re not – but they’re the projects of God who is breathing in and out deep inside of you.
Belief isn’t a job; it’s a promise, and it’s not fulfilled by you but is already being fulfilled in you.
Now, come to think of it, that is reassuring. Because suddenly it looks like it’s not so much about our doing – and we’re all tired of doing, of having to have the perfect project, the perfect plan, the perfect program. We need to do all that, yes, and it’s a big part of my job here at the church. But the difference – sounds tiny, but really it’s huge – is that it’s not so much that we’re doing these things as allowing them to be done through us.
A tiny word change, but a huge shift. Because it comes around to the relationship thing, and all kinds of good stuff comes out of that. A task is a task, period. A relationship is living and breathing, and that lets things unfold through us.
Jesus’ love unfolds through us, which gives us healing and creativity. Jesus’ forgiveness unfolds through us, which sweeps the broken glass out of our hearts. And then we find ourselves on his journey, getting down on our knees and washing our disciples’ feet – in other words, taking care of the human needs of the people that we work with. It has us bearing good will for the enemy who just went out the door to arrange profitably for our end. It has us responding to hatred with something other than hate, and letting go, of malice and envy and insincerity, as the writer of 1 Peter says just before this. Letting of all that false stuff to free up the vigorous truth that’s inside of us.
The truest identity. And 1 Peter tells us what that is: You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, so that you can tell the world, or show the world, what’s happened in your life – so that that can happen through you.
And there’s our two swim-teacher assurances, right there. The assurance of our identity – not an identity we have by saying just the right things or by doing things one particular way – but an identity that we are given by simply being here. You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. You’re there. It’s done.
It’s done – and it’s still living and breathing. There’s the other assurance. That doing is already happening. It’s not another thing on the list. It’s happening in us, living and breathing in our lives.
And maybe that’s how we become the living stones that 1 Peter talks about – the very building blocks of God’s spiritual house. Look around you; the stones of these walls are beautiful, especially with all the restoration work of the past year. Look around you again; how much more beautiful is each person here, restored as a true dwelling-place of God. And in the passage from Peter, that meant not only means the pieces of a spiritual household, but also the stone on which sacrifice was made…
And that’s not easy, being a living stone. It means we can’t just stay the same, can’t just say, these are the way stones should look, and leave it at that. That’s the old ‘task’ thing, of thinking it’s all up to us to complete. But if this household is being done through us, it means we look at our lives together as a place where sacrifice and transformation happen. It’s not easy. And it never stops. But isn’t it amazing?! Because when I look around this room, I see a spiritual structure that is alive.
We’re growing up a bit, trusting the things inside of us more than the voices outside of us. We’re going for that sweetness of life that doesn’t come from what we’ve been able either to control or to consume. We’re willing to look around at everyone here, and not yet here, and know that a spiritual house that’s alive will change – and that it doesn’t leave a single stone behind.
Be reassured, be joyful – you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.