I will travel any road to find you

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

These words of Jesus in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John have been identified as “the high point of Johannine theology.” These words affirm that Jesus is the tangible presence of God in the world and that God the Father can be known only through the incarnate presence. Humanity’s encounter with Jesus the Son makes possible a new experience of God as the Father. Jesus does not say “No one comes to God except through me,” but “No one comes to the Father except through me,” and the specificity of that intentional wording needs to be taken seriously.

Just so, Professor Marcus Borg comments: “There is strong consensus that the form in which we have John came from the decade of the 90s. It tells us how Jesus was spoken of in a Christian community near the end of the first century. It does not tell us very much about how Jesus himself spoke.” The words are the very specific affirmation of a faith community about the God who is known to them because of the life of Jesus.

My own study Bible, The New Interpreter’s, says similarly: John 14:6 celebrates how Jesus reveals God for those in this particular faith community and is not a statement about the relative worth of the world’s religions. John is concerned with helping Christians recognize and name their God and the distinctiveness of their identity as a people of faith.

From my perspective, these words of Jesus, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” have perhaps more often than not been wielded as a sort of club upon those who are not of the Christian faith. The denomination through which I am ordained, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), wrestled with this. In 1987, 22 churches cosponsored a resolution asking the General Assembly to “reaffirm the historic faith of the entire Christian Church that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world, and that apart from him there is no salvation.”

The 22 churches who brought this resolution had as their stated goal: “to foster spiritual renewal . . . based on the conviction of the Bible being the authoritative and infallible Word of God.” Though nowhere in the Bible does the Bible say of itself that it is infallible, quote what scripture you will.

For two years, our Commission on Theology stewed upon it. In their 1989 report to the Assembly, they said (and this is a nutshell conclusion of a four-page report): “God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We cannot say on behalf of the world that Jesus is their savior. As Disciples of Christ, what we each can and do confess is that Jesus the Christ is our Savior.”

Spanish priest Juan Arias wrote, “I would like to share an honest profession of faith for my non-believing friends: I shall never believe in the God who makes Himself the monopoly of a church, a race, a culture or a caste; the God who does not save those who have not known Him but who have desired and searched for Him.”

Near the conclusion of William Paul Young’s The Shack, the main character asks of Jesus: “Does that mean that all roads lead to you?” “Not at all,” smiled Jesus. “Most roads don’t lead anywhere at all. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”