The Way (Without Barbarians) 5.10.20

The Way (Without Barbarians)

A Homily on John 14:1-14 and Psalm 31
by Griff Martin

For the Fifth Sunday of  Eastertide  (and the Ninth Sunday of Online Worship)

May 10, 2020

*This document comes from an oral manuscript. 

I put a picture up on Instagram last weekend of a tree that I am paying careful attention to these days. This particular tree sits just to the left of the front porch of my grandparents' ranch house and I refer to it as the Resurrection Tree.

Three years ago we almost cut the tree down. It looked awful, there was no new growth, the tree was ashy and withering in on itself and none of us could remember the tree ever really looking like it was thriving. So it was decided the tree would be bulldozed down. However, when we went to bulldoze it, we realized how much dirt was on top of the tree roots. As we had built a dirt road, we had piled debris on the roots, as we put in a garden we had piled more debris on the roots. So we decided to remove all that junk and see what happened.

The tree came back to life almost instantly, like within a week there was life, within a few months there were green leaves and new growth and now the tree is thriving and providing shade and life. 

I love to see it because it is a picture of resurrection.

It’s how I am trying to think of this particular quarantine season, these days of less, these days of space (for those of us privileged enough to be home and paid). What if we used these days, what if I used these days to get back to the roots? What if I removed all that was robbing me of life and got down to that which was giving and sustaining my life? 

I don’t know about you, but this week I have gotten so much communication about the new way we will live -- from New York Magazine to the Times to an email from Alamo Drafthouse, it has all been about the new way we will live, what happens as we re-open, what life looks like on the other side, what the new way forward is.

Everything is about finding a new way.

And right now I am less interested in finding a new way and more intrigued with going back to a truer way. The way as found in John 14:6: I am the way, the truth and the life.

Now I know some of you do what I do the minute you hear this passage… everything in you tightens up, the walls go up, your heart beat increases and you think back to all the horrible theology that you have heard with this text. This text has become a weapon in the hands of Christians and it has lead to violence and crusades. It has a dreadful history and has lead to a lot of so called “Christian” theology that is exclusionary and limiting, which are not theological virtues according to the way we at First do church. 

This Gospel verse reminds me of a poem by C.P. Cavafy, a poet in the late 1800s in Alexandria who after his death came to be viewed as one of the most important figures in twentieth century Greek poetry. One of my favorites of his poems is titled “Waiting for the Barbarians.” The opening lines: “What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?/ The barbarians are due here today.” The poem goes on to talk about how the entire city has shut down -- soldiers and warriors are at the borders and the city gates, the senate has shut down, the leaders are locked away in their palaces, no one is teaching or playing or entertaining, everything is so serious, life has stopped because the barbarians are due today. 

And then the poem ends with these lines: “Night has fallen and the barbarians have not come./ And some who have just returned from the border say/ there are no barbarians any longer./ And now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.”

The poem asks a very real question of humanity: what happens when there are no enemies, what happens when there are no outsiders? 

Now I can point to a whole host of reasons why Jesus’ statement here is not a grand proclamation of exclusion for anyone who does not believe in him. For starters, that exclusion for anyone who does not believe in him sounds nothing like Jesus; to continue, this occurs at an intimate moment with just Jesus and the disciples. If Jesus knew it took something like believing a certain formula to get eternal life, I feel certain that would have been repeated more than once and done so in a public setting like the Sermon on the Mount. To go further, the thing we usually say that you have to believe to get eternal life has not happened yet and Jesus is still using the present tense. Finally, we're in John's Gospel -- this saying is only found in John's gospel -- which means that if there is some formula here, then John is the only one who gives us this formula. And also in John's gospel, belief is never about thinking something; belief is always about doing something.

I think this verse has been taken completely out of context and has been weaponized, and Christianity as a whole is doing a lot of barbarians-guarding, when there are no barbarians, because that is easier than doing the work we are supposed to do. Because what the poem is trying to teach us is that if we spent our entire existence guarding against something that is no longer, and maybe never was, well, we are wasting our lives and not doing what we were actually supposed to be doing.

And I think that is why this text has so often been used as a promise of exclusion. It gives us something to stand on and we can then spend our days guarding against the barbarians instead of doing the work of Kingdom. 

And the work of Kingdom building -- you know, living the way Jesus lived -- is hard work that is all about surrender, peace, grace… it’s the work that James Finley beautifully describes like this: “Jesus is the lord of love and emptiness. He emptied himself in love in everything he did and said. He kept on emptying himself  in love no matter what, even to the point of emptying himself in love in his own death. His heart was pierced. Blood and water flowed out, so that there was no Jesus left in Jesus. And when there was nothing left of Jesus, then only love was left, which is the only thing that was really there all along.”

That is hard work; the work of love is the most difficult work any of us will ever do.

Much better to set up borders and statements of exclusion and inclusion that guard up our powers, our rights, that protect us. 

Except for the fact that that -- borders and statements of exclusion that guard up our powers and rights and that protect us -- that is the exact thing God became flesh in order to be victorious over. 

It’s time we reclaim this verse and reclaim it for Jesus. This verse is part of the farewell discourse; it’s John’s telling of Jesus’ goodbye speech and many claim that this is Jesus at his pastoral best. It’s a text the lectionary has brought us to four times this season, and I think it is actually the best text for our current situation -- the peace, faith, promise of Jesus. Trust me and read it this week.

The text begins with Jesus stating that he is about to leave and then he uses an image of a groom going to his house to prepare a place for his bride. This was custom back in those days -- houses were built with additions and add-ons in mind so that entire families lived in these big continuous homes. A father built his home in order that his sons could then add on for their families and their sons could do the same… and on and on and on.

So when Jesus begins this speech and uses that image, they get it. He is making a promise to them and to us: I am going to build a place in my Father for you. I think the best translation of that promise is this: I am going to prepare many, many places so that you all can forever abide in love. 

Which is a beautiful promise that we all need to hold, but it lacks practicality. 

So thank God for Thomas who just honestly says, “Well that is poetic and beautiful, but none of us have any clue what is really going on here… we don’t know the way to that place.”

“I am the way. I am the way, the truth, and the life… no one comes to love except by me.”

I am the way and no one gets to that place of love except by living the way that you all have observed me living the last 3 years. This is about Kingdom work, it’s about finishing what I began, it’s about completing the Kingdom of love, it’s about making every parable and promise that I have given you come true… this is about the work of love.

Jesus promises us that he is going to get busy creating many, many places for all of us to abide in love… and then he reminds us that while he is doing his work, we have some work to do, as well. 

The work of love. The work that James Finley describes as emptying ourselves in love in all we do, say, and think. 

So right now in the midst of all this talk about the new way, I want to think about this old way that we have never really grasped. Well, that is not fair; some of us grasped it... Saint Francis, Mother Teresa, Ghandi or the Little Sisters who run the Saint Joseph’s nursing home in Delaware where Covid-19 has taken over and these sisters are continuing their vows of charity and hospitality to those who live there. 

The problem is that each of those should not be an exception; that should be the way we are all living because that is way Jesus lived and that was his parting homework for us. 

Live like I have lived because I am the Way for all people… And somehow we took those words and we went to a place of guarding against the outsiders and we created an entire system of saints to celebrate those who actually live like Jesus fully, when they were just doing what he called all of us to do. Which is not to say Jesus is not celebrating them and welcoming them into an eternity of abiding love -- I think he is, I just think he is looking at the rest of us and wondering why we don’t grasp it yet.

Because when we started guarding, we forgot the work that we were supposed to do each day and we stopped growing.

Maybe right now as we are looking for a new way we can start by going back to the True Way. We can go back to the work of emptying ourselves in love, the work of open arms, the hard work of love, the true work of Jesus. 

With all this talk of getting back to normal, let’s be honest -- normal wasn’t working; just look around. So maybe we can use this reset and we can lift off all the debris that has accumulated around the roots and we can find ways to be the Way.

To do what Jesus made it so very simple and clear that is ours to do. 

I am going to create a place of abiding love; you are left to do the work of love. No more -- no less.

May that and that only be our new Way. Amen and Amen. 

*artwork: Sacred Heart of Jesus by Claudia Talavera