Way, Truth, Life: A Sermon

I preached this sermono on Sunday, May 3, 2026 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is John 14:1-14, which includes the following: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'”

I am of two minds with this Gospel passage—I find it both comforting and troubling at the same time. Comforting because I think of all the times I have preached on it at the funerals of people I love, with that beautiful image of God’s house with many dwelling places, the doors flung open wide, welcoming us home after the long journey through this life. 

But then…there’s that line that so often sounds like a closed door, not an open one: no one comes to the Father except through me. This part lands hard on the ears, especially for those of us who have known rejection, or who have come from other church backgrounds where exclusivity was emphasized and sharp lines were drawn between the saved and the condemned. 

We supposedly proclaim a God of unconditional love for all creation, and yet this verse can read like Jesus is a bouncer at a nightclub, and some folks’ names just aren’t going to be on the list. 

But I confess that I struggle to imagine the Jesus I know, the Jesus I love, shaking his head and putting up the velvet rope to keep anyone out of God’s enduring celebration. Something just doesn’t sit well with my soul there.

And I suppose I could just shrug my shoulders and say “who knows, I guess God will figure it all out later on,” but that feels like an easy out of a very fundamental question. I think we can try a little harder than that. And in a complex and diverse and often judgmental world, I think we owe it to ourselves and our neighbors to try a little harder than that. So that’s what we’re going to do today. 

You know, last fall we welcomed a large group of our neighbors from the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati here to St. Anne and we broke bread with them and learned from one other and even invited them to observe a service of Holy Eucharist. I’ve mentioned before that it was one of the most powerful nights I’ve ever experienced in ministry—that the Spirit of God was truly alive and present in these walls. 

And it was not because of some secret agenda to show our neighbors the “right” way to live and believe. No, it was because it was communion in the truest and simplest sense—people coming together from different backgrounds, with integrity and humility, to share their stories, to speak of what they know to be true, and to be bound together by a love that is ultimately hard to quantify or categorize. 

And you know what, in that space without agendas, where everyone was a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit open to the things we do not understand…in that space I felt the love of Jesus more powerfully than ever. I felt like he was saying to us here, “see, now you’re starting to get it! Now you’re on your way! Loving me doesn’t mean fearing everyone else!”

So when it comes to passages like the one we have today, I wonder if maybe we can try on a new pair of glasses, as Mtr. Alane suggested last week. Maybe we as the Church have been reading this passage the wrong way for a very long time, assuming it was about who gets into the nightclub when instead it was trying to show us the vastness of the night sky.

It wouldn’t be surprising if that were so. We’ve been formed within the long, long shadow of history to think of faith in institutional terms: insiders and outsiders; winners and losers in some vast cultural and cosmic landscape. As if following Jesus were like joining one team pitted against all the others. 

But what if I told you—or reminded you, really—that this is not at all what Jesus wanted us to understand about God? What if I reminded you that Jesus’ whole mission was about making us aware of the boundlessness of God’s love and mercy, and of the truth that there is only one team—all of us, together, the whole creation—and that being Christian is fundamentally about recognizing this and living like this? How might that help us hear this passage (and maybe every passage) with new ears?

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

Let’s work through this carefully. Stick with me.

If we accept that Jesus is the human face of God—which is one of the foundational premises of our Christian life—then the first part of this statement (I am the way the truth and the life) is not that difficult to accept. 

Because Jesus does indeed show us what ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ are. He shows us in word, in action, and in his very being—in his “I AM”ness, if you will. And it is love. The way, the truth, and the life are a fully embodied love like his. A persistent, humble, purposeful love for God and for every one of our neighbors. We know this. We have seen the Lord, and we know this.

And if we know that love is what Jesus is all about, that love is his very being, then the second part of his statement follows from the first. No one comes to the Father except through me. 

‘The Father’ is, of course, Jesus’ name for this God who is love, and Jesus is the embodiment of this God who is love, so this second line could just as easily and faithfully be read: 

No one comes to this Love except through…love.

I hear that, and it feels like an open door. So let’s step out from behind the velvet ropes and stare up at the stars and hear that line one more time, anew: 

Love is the way and the truth and the life. And no one comes to this great Love except through love itself.

I don’t know about you, but that does sit well with my soul. That message is truly good news. And it tracks with the Jesus I know, the one who died and rose again for love’s sake. It tracks with the Jesus who never gave up on me even after all the times I have given up on him. It tracks with the Jesus who keeps giving himself to us, over and over again, in bread and wine and Spirit, embracing sinners and saints and everyone in between, with no exceptions. It tracks.

And it speaks somehow, too, into all that love I hold for people of every background and creed—our friends who have lost their faith and the ones who never found it; and for our Jewish siblings and our Hindu friends and our Islamic neighbors, and everyone else. Just like that night last fall, the very real love of Jesus should draw us closer to one other, not further apart.

Because although I don’t claim to understand exactly how or why, I know, God, I know that somehow there is room enough for all of us in this life and in this world…and even in the vast eternity beyond the stars, in that house of many dwelling places. Love makes room for everyone. And if I’m wrong, I’m wrong; but I’d rather be a fool for love than a sage for certainty. 

And so, I don’t know about you, but that foolish love is the thing I am going to believe in, and live by, and die trusting in, because, as best I can tell, that is what Jesus came to show us and to give us. 

I hope you’ll hold onto that, especially for those days when things feel heavy and faith feels narrow and you need to remember what this is all about. 

Though I warn you, it remains a passage both comforting and troubling. Because even if it’s all about love, God knows I am still figuring out how to love like Jesus does, day by day, and that’s not always easy. I just happen to believe that such a love is the one thing in this life worth figuring out. 

You might even say that it is the way, the truth, and the life. 

You might even say that this love is the only way. 

I tend to think that Jesus would agree.