Friday 5/13/2022
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14
This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube
Today’s Devotion is dedicated to one of the most well-known verses in John’s Gospel: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6).
For some time, I’ve been mulling over what Jesus means when he refers to himself as “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
There is one way home.
When Jesus describes himself as the “Way,” he presupposes that life is a journey with a goal. In this very passage Jesus reflects on that goal: “in my Father’s house, there are many mansions…I go to prepare a place for you.” Think of the many images we’ve been seeing lately in the exodus story. There’s a mountain where Moses and the elders see God and feast (Exodus 24). There’s a vision of God where Moses becomes transformed into glory (Exodus 34), in anticipation of things to come for us (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:16; Romans 8:18). And, of course, there’s the final end of this journey, when the people (well, the next generation) will go into the Promised Land.
Similarly, we’re not just wandering around down here on Planet Earth. Each of us is heading, as C. S. Lewis puts it, to one destination or the other, the “Beatific Vision” or the “Miserific Vision.” In the Beatific Vision we will be transformed into “everlasting splendors.” In the Miserific Vision we become “immortal horrors.” If we could see ourselves now as we are going to be, says Lewis, we would be tempted to fall down in worship or to flee in horror.
Jesus says that the Beatific Vision is a promise that is actually and truly open to us. He offers his hand to get us there. And he insists that his hand is the only way in. As early church leader Gregory of Nyssa says: “He who said, ‘I am the Way’ … shapes us anew into his own image”—which image, says Augustine of Hippo, is in “the quality of beauty.” Choose me, says Jesus. Choose beauty. Choose home.
There is one true story.
Our world right now is a baffling confusion of competing narratives, of charges and counter-charges of “fake news,” of who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys,” of who are the truth-tellers and who are the liars. If you are going to maintain any sanity at all, you have to find a point of reference. You have to find the one true story. When Jesus says “I am the Truth,” he means that you will find your way through the fog only in him.
The Pilgrim’s Regress, by C. S. Lewis, is a story—a parable, really—about a person in quest of the one true story. Lewis’s pilgrim can’t get out of his mind the notion of an island of delight. He sets out in quest of it. The pilgrim travels “north” through the barren climes of rationalism, and then “south” through the wanton swamps of romanticism. One false path says: “If you can gain enough knowledge, read enough books, make yourself smart enough, you can get there.” Another false path says: “If you can gain enough experiences: take enough cruises, drink enough bourbon, ingest enough drugs, spend enough money, bed enough partners, play enough notes, you can get there.”
What the pilgrim finally realizes is that he must allow “Mother Kirk” ( the Church) to carry him for a deep dive into cleansing, baptizing waters, and across the ocean that separates the mainland from the island he seeks. Mother Kirk knows the story, and you have to learn it from her.
I’m a pilgrim too, on my way to the island. That’s why I have to start the day going to that true story first. The news feed must wait until the Daily Office reconnects me to that one story that Mother Kirk tells, and that is written in Scriptures that have Jesus Christ at their center.
There is one good life.
It’s one thing to stay focused on the journey to the Father’s house and to dwell on, and in, the truth that keeps you above the fray of all the false stories. But in the end, you have to live your life down here in the trenches—and Jesus says he’s here for you. Right here in the nitty-gritty, he insists, “I am the Life.”
In the “Heroes” episode of the television series M*A*S*H, my favorite character, the show’s chaplain, Father Francis Mulcahy, comes into his own. Father Mulcahy sits at the deathbed of one of his life-heroes, a retired boxer named “Gentleman” Joe Cavanaugh. Francis explains to the dying boxer what it had been like to grow up as a scrawny inner-city kid with thick glasses who liked to read otherworldly philosophy. As a boy, Francis loved Plato’s vision of an “ideal plane” which helped him imagine a better life: “rambling fields and trees. Sort of like the suburbs, only in the sky.”
He explains that his big problem as a kid was that neighborhood bullies picked on him, and he couldn’t figure out how to respond. Then his father took him to see Gentleman Joe in a boxing match. Something magic happened that night: Gentleman Joe was punching his opponent at will, and the crowd was yelling, “Put him away!” Joe stopped and told the referee to stop the fight. The man had been hurt enough. Young Francis realized right then that “it was possible to keep one foot in the ideal world and the other foot in the real world. I thought you might like to know that,” he tells the dying Joe Cavanaugh, “And I just wanted to thank you.”
And so, even as he trained for the priesthood, Patrick Mulcahy took up boxing. Think of it this way: Father Mulcahy found a way to deal with “Life” without losing touch with the world of the “Way and the Truth.” That one foot in the real world lent power to his ministry: from rescuing orphans, to performing an orderly’s duties when the rest of the camp was sick, even to performing an emergency tracheotomy while under fire.
Just moments before Jesus talked to his disciples in John 14 about being the “Way” to the Father and about being the “Truth” in the face of falsity, he had shown what the “Life” looks like. In John 13, he had washed his disciples’ feet and had told them that this is what they are supposed to do for one another. Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, is fond of urging us to “Say Yes! to Jesus!”, and in doing so, to say Yes! to love.
Wherever the nitty-gritty of life has you right now, I pray you know the presence of Jesus in it. Whether you are lonely or claustrophobic, I pray you find him giving you the resources to live and love. Whether you are exhausted or bored or somehow under attack, may you find him as rest, as creative energy, and as protection.
I pray that you have the humility to take his hand as he leads the Way home.
I pray that you have the insight to take his story as your one True story.
I pray that you have the courage to make his Life of love your life.
Be blessed this day.
Reggie Kidd+
Image: Adaptation, Pixabay