The Way of Jesus: A New Exegesis

 

The Way of Jesus: A New Exegesis (For Me At Least)

February 12, 2025

I have told this story before. I heard it in my world religions class in seminary. It goes like this: A Christian missionary in India was talking to a Hindu sage. The missionary quoted John 14:6, to the sage. That’s the verse in which John’s Jesus says “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The missionary asked Hindu man what he thought of it. The Hindu sage replied: “Oh yes. That is true. I believe that absolutely.” The missionary was nonplussed. The man he was talking to was not a Christian. As far as the missionary knew, the man had no intention of becoming one. So he asked the Hindu man how he could say that. The sage replied: “To understand what this verse means you have to understand what Jesus’ way is. It is the way of love, forgiveness, nonviolence, peace, justice, and mercy. And yes. That is the way.” I have long asserted that this Hindu sage understood this familiar verse from the Gospel of John better than most Christians have, and I still do.

One of the things people often say about scripture is that you can have known a passage for years. You can have read it dozens of times or more. You can have preached on it. You can have written books about it. Yet there is always more to learn from it. Last night I had what I think is an insight into John 14:6 that I haven’t had before. It begins with the observation that this story does not mention the second part of the verse: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” I have always dismissed that part of the verse as ancient Christian exclusivism that I want no part of. I suppose that’s because I have always understood it to mean that belief in Jesus is the only way to God. I, of course, am convinced that belief in Jesus (at least if understood properly, which it usually isn’t) is one way to God, but it is not the only way. The author of John very probably intended to express Christian exclusivism in this verse, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t legitimately take it to mean something else.

Last night I thought: What does the concept “Father” mean here, and what does “through me” mean? Here’s are the answers to those questions I came up with. “Father” is the Gospel of John’s most common term for God. John’s Jesus calls God Father again and again. And, of course, we cannot take the term literally. Rather, the word Father here is a symbol for whatever it is that we understand by the word God. God may be in some sense our father, but God isn’t anyone’s biological father (except maybe Jesus’ in traditional Christian imagery, though we can’t take the story of Jesus’ conception through the Holy Spirit literally either). The difficulty here is that the word “God” is also a symbol. It is not possible for us to say anything about God except by using symbol  and myth because God so utterly transcends our limited human language. The word God points to but does not contain or limit the spiritual dimension of reality. It points to a spiritual reality that both inheres in creation and utterly transcends creation at the same time.

God is our symbol for something that humans have sensed the presence and transcendence of for, as far as we know, as long as there have been humans. We know that an awareness of a transcendent spiritual reality is universal among humans because every human culture has or has had its system of symbols and myths through which it has spoken of and understood that reality. Christianity is one such way of speaking of and understanding that reality. So is Hinduism. Those two faith traditions are very different in their language for and their understanding of the spiritual, but they are both language for and an understanding of the immanent and utterly transcendent reality of spirit behind everything that is which Christians call God and Hindus speak of through images of many different gods and goddesses.

Thus, when Jesus speaks of coming to the Father, he doesn’t necessarily mean accepting the Christian understandings of God. Rather, he means accepting the reality of that for which the words Father and God are symbols. Followers of the Hindu faith tradition accept that reality every bid as much as Christians do, and the great difference between their words and understandings for it does not negate that truth. I think we can safely assume that the Hindu sage of this story already understood himself as having come to what we call Father though he didn’t use that symbol for it.

Then we must ask, what does it mean when Jesus says no one comes to the Father “except through me?” We start to answer that question by asking: Who is Jesus? Well, John’s Jesus tells us who he is right before he says “except through me.” He says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” It makes perfect sense, then, to say that “the way” that Jesus is indeed is the way to connect with and know ultimate spiritual reality. By the way that Jesus is we mean the way of love, forgiveness, nonviolence, peace, justice, and mercy. It is through those things, which Jesus tells us he is, that we connect with that spiritual reality. The Hindu sage of this story understood this truth far better than the story’s Christian missionary did. He understood it far better than most Christians do or ever have.

This exegesis of John 14:6 is new at least to me. It eliminates the Christian exclusivism that people, myself included, have typically read into the verse. I have written about John 14:6 before without understanding it this way. I wish I had understood it this way back then, but I’m not going to rewrite a book to put it in. I do, however, very much like this understanding of the verse. Christian exclusivism is a great curse that the Christian tradition has imposed on itself and tried to impose on the world. If Christianity  is to survive, which is by no means certain, we must overcome it. We must reject it. We must condemn it. This exegesis of John 14:6 helps us do that.