The Rev’d Deacon Alexander Griffin, Assistant Curate

A few weeks ago, at coffee with some members of our 8:00 congregation, our conversation turned to the question of how it is that so many people call themselves Christ-followers while cheering for––or even participating in––violence against people who are different from them? How can so many Christians claim that we are called to bomb our neighbors instead of loving them? This problem isn’t new, and it’s not unique to one group of people. It is an ongoing problem among the people of God, and it comes down to a set of questions: Who is God? What does God want from us? Who belongs to God? 

But before I attempt a response to these questions, I want to tell you a story.

I lived in Ohio for six years. The highways of Ohio are filled with massive Christian billboards. When I lived there, I would regularly drive past messages like, “If you die tonight, Heaven, or Hell?” and “Real Christians OBEY JESUS” with images of fire lingering in the background as a threat. At the bottom of each billboard was a phone number that claimed to have all the answers, 855-FOR-TRUTH. Once, on a particularly boring seven-hour drive to see my parents in Maryland, I decided to call the number on the sign. I had just driven past a nasty accident on the side of the road, and I figured the person who answered the For Truth Hotline™  would be willing to pray with me for the victims of the accident. To my dismay, instead of praying for the recovery and wellbeing of the people involved, this man on the other end of the phone prayed that their funerals would scare their friends and families into repentance. 

By the time I hung up, I was heartbroken. I could not believe what I had heard. But through this moment, I began to learn that we cannot truly love our neighbors so long as we believe that we are saved by being right.

In the middle of this morning’s Gospel passage is a line that is often taken out of context and weaponized against people who believe differently: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” When I first became a Christian, I was taught that salvation came from having the right answers. Faith was a formula of correct beliefs, and if you had the wrong ones, you would go to hell. But the Rev’d Dr. Amy Richter offers a different perspective. She says “Do not imagine Jesus the Way as constructed of paving stones that can be pried up and used as projectiles against our neighbors. We aren’t earning a way to God by our faith or our practice or how strongly we believe in Jesus. We aren’t succeeding in something that people of other faiths are failing at…”[1] Instead, Jesus is the way because when “we are weak, Jesus is strong.”[2]

Now, we are an open and inclusive Cathedral. We’re not exactly the type to run around with “Hell is real” signs, and I know I’m preaching to the choir when I say that our faith in Jesus does not make us better than people of other religions. But the angry Christian billboards that litter Ohio’s highways reveal a broader tendency in human nature that I think we share in, too: we want answers to our questions, and we love to be right. 

In today’s Gospel, Thomas and Philip also want answers. “Wait, Jesus, where are you going?” “How can we see the Father?” Like Thomas and Philip, we want a map of where to go; we want a formula of who God is. But Jesus doesn’t give Thomas––or us––answers or maps or formulas. He gives us himself. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father… I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

You see, when we go looking for answers to our questions about God, we don’t find answers, we find Jesus. We cannot know God through our ideas, however good or bad they may be. Instead, we know God through the person of Jesus. Jesus the Way, the Truth, and the Life is not a formula of correct beliefs so we can go to heaven; Jesus is the answer because he shows us who God is and what God is like.

Dr. James Cone, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century, the founder of Black Liberation Theology, writes about his answer to being asked for evidence of his faith. “Let me tell you a story about a man called Jesus who was born in a stable in Bethlehem and raised in an obscure village called Nazareth … he went throughout the region of Galilee preaching … the new creation where the hungry are fed, the sick healed, and the oppressed liberated. [This] is the restoration of humanity to its wholeness. …Jesus was killed because of his threat to the order of injustice. But he was resurrected… making good God’s promise to bring freedom to all who are weak and helpless.” [3]

How would it change the world if people answered the question of who God is, not with a list of facts, figures, and beliefs, but with the story of Jesus? How would it change the billboard-makers? How would it change us? Can we all learn to love our neighbors more than we love being right? Cone thinks so. He says that “when I understand truth as story, I am more likely to be open to other people’s truth stories. 

[And] as I listen to other stories, I am invited to move out of the subjectivity of my own story into another realm of thinking and acting.”[4] That realm of thinking allows us to see who God really is. 

This morning’s Gospel begins right after Jesus has finished washing his disciples’ feet and predicting his death. As we hear about Jesus revealing the Father, let these words of Jesus ring in our ears:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Who is God? God is a love that gets on the floor to wash our feet, a love that dies in solidarity with our suffering and sin, a love that cannot be held from the grave but that rises again and brings us home to God.

What does God want from us? Well, God is not looking for a perfect system of beliefs, with answers to every question. God wants us, our stories, wrapped up in the Great Story of God’s love for the world.

Who belongs to God? Not just us, not just the people who we think are right, not just Christians, but all people. We have seen the Father, and the Father is a love who is stronger than anything we can do or fail to do; stronger than anything our enemies can do or fail to do; stronger even than death.

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” May we believe in our loving God, today and every day. Amen.

[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/rock-solid-when-everything-feels-up-in-the-air-easter-5-a-may-10-2020/

[2] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/rock-solid-when-everything-feels-up-in-the-air-easter-5-a-may-10-2020/

[3]  James Cone, God of the Oppressed (Orbis, 1997), p. 97

[4] James Cone, God of the Oppressed (Orbis, 1997), p. 97