Disclaimer: I’m going to the edge in this one, only using the “voice” that challenges Jesus. Here’s a suggestion. Listen as I read this on the Substack link (or follow along as I read it.) Sometimes the spoken word carries more meaning than only what is in print. Let me know what you think.

Dear Jesus, you said this was ok, so here it is. Ask anything in your name, and you’ll do it. So here’s what I’m asking: explain this. “No one can come to the Father except through me.” You really mean this? Or did you mean this like it sounds? It comes across as callous, rough, like you really don’t care who gets left out. God is love, so the Bible says, but this doesn’t sound all that loving. Could you rephrase it and leave out words like “no one” or “except”? You’re pushing people away with that kind of thing, and if you do that, I have to ask myself if I want to be counted in the polls as one of yours.

Now, I’ll give this much to you; you start off on the right track. “Don’t be troubled. You trust God, now trust in me,” you say. I really need this right now. I need to know that you’ve got this, and even if I can’t see clearly into the future, I still can say it’s going to be ok. You even promise you’ve got a place for me to stay that you are getting ready, and you’ll come and take me there. A heavenly resort? Making my reservation now! That’s the god I need. Make my life secure and safe now and give me an eternity of good times from there. I can buy into that.

You even said in your Dad’s place there was lots of space, many rooms. That’d be great, too. It’s also nice how you refer to God as your Daddy, “Abba” in your original language. It’s your special word for him, a tenderness, intimacy in love as well as a playfulness. When you’ve been with someone for a long time, the way you say their name or what you call them says a lot. You and your Father are not just close, but closer than close. Like you say, “Just believe, I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” One knows the other like oneself. Or one is the other. Or something like that.

But while all that is nice and good, back to the question. Now, don’t blame me for asking. It’s clear your followers weren’t all on the same page as you either. Thomas was mystified by the way you said they should know where you were going and how to get there. Phillip also didn’t get it when you said they should know the Father and have seen him. These guys were your inner circle, and they couldn’t tell what you were talking about. It was wonderful that you had just washed their feet. But this holiday Passover meal wasn’t going according to code for them. I can relate. You don’t seem to even try to go along with our expectations either. You want us to think and grapple with what you say, until it turns us around in other directions. So here goes it.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” you say. Funny, you don’t give a blueprint of rules when you’re talking about getting to the Father. You start with “I am…” Are you saying then you want to get into us like you and your Father are one together? If that’s the “way”, it could mean a road or path to take, but also a practice, a period of learning, or maybe walking together on that path.

A path can take you someplace, but you won’t get where you’re going like being transported instantly. You’ve got to walk it. Who would do that except for the reason of going somewhere important, a destination that was intentional or would give meaning to the way? It’s got to have some significance, some truth to reach for, a revelation of God that provides some purpose. Purpose based in this kind of truth gives life meaning, and life is worth living when there’s meaning in it. So starting with you, that is, believing or trusting you, brings us closer in knowing you and your Father, not as one added to the other, but as in knowing you is to know God.

But please, what about others? What about the “no ones”? Even if I make this choice for myself, to accept you as way, truth and life, don’t you care about those who haven’t? You’d think the one whose birth was in a barn because there was “no room in the inn” would make a place for everyone in that big house your Father has. What chance do they have otherwise if you insist on “except through me”?

You’ve known how this was from your own time here. “But despite all the miraculous signs he had done, most of the people did not believe in him.” Things haven’t changed. Still, you keep putting the message out there. “Anyone who believes in me…” Believes you, trusts you, staking one’s life on you—that’s huge. “…will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.”

Do the same, like following you to a cross, or doing what it takes so others can come to the Father? Is that what this is about, as much about those who do believe as those who don’t? Is it on those who take you as the way, truth, and life to do as you have done, keep putting your message out there of forgiveness, mercy, grace, that is, your truth in what God wants and will do for anyone?

You promise anything asked for in your name you will do—because the work of the Son brings glory to the Father. It’s not a prayer that’s all about me; it’s all about you and your Father. It is a work, a message, a purpose blessed because it is asked in God’s will—thy will be done.

God’s will is through the way, truth and life provided by the Son, so all will know God and enter in those rooms you prepared for them.

In other words, you want “no one” left out.

John 14:1-14 

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