John 14:1 -10
Today’s Gospel is consoling; we are
promised that Jesus will come back for us and take us to be with him.
We are promised a home in the Father’s house. We are told not to
be troubled. Jesus tells us to believe in God but also in him. But
then we get to some words that have caused a lot of division, a lot
of misunderstanding. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the
life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” These words
have inspired missionaries to travel all over the world bringing the
gospel to everyone they can; they have inspired martyrs who have died
for the true faith; they have lead to thousands of arguments between
denominations about who is more Christian, or indeed, what it means
to be Christian. And it leaves an elephant in the room: what about
all those good people who have never heard of Christ or indeed, have
heard of him but rejected the whole notion of God being incarnate.
The Church has always held that life
everlasting in the heart of the Trinity, what we call heaven, is not
out of reach for any human being. When I was being taught by the
nuns in St. Helena grade school, the implication was that for a
non-Catholic it would be a lot harder to get to heaven than those who
belonged to the true faith, namely, us. As a elderly deacon, I liked
the theory put forth by Karl Rahner, that you can’t get to heaven
except by being in relationship to Jesus, but there was such a thing
as an anonymous Christian, someone who might not overtly believe but
sought to live according to his conscience. But still, the
implication was that you were better off being an overt Christian
than an anonymous one, and as one Jewish rabbi remarked, “I don’t
need your Christ to have a share in the world to come.”
My grandfather Silas was born into a
Mormon family, but left home at 14. He had a fourth grade education,
and became a cowboy. He met my grandmother at a dance and it wasn’t
too long before they were married. In those days if you were a
Catholic and were marrying someone who wasn’t it was an informal
affair in the living room of the rectory -- no church wedding for
you! I don’t know what my grandfather believed; he didn’t really
go to any church. He took my grandmother to mass every Sunday and
sat in the car reading the newspaper while she attended mass. I
think that if anyone were to look at his life, they would see a good
man, who took care of his family; who had a drinking problem that he
mostly kept under control, and who didn’t have a great deal of
ambition. My grandmother also had a dear friend who had been raised
a Catholic but had married and later become a Jehovah’s Witness.
She was always happy to see me and would give me a back issue of The
Watchtower to read, along with cookies or cake. She wasn’t
extraordinary in any sense except her kindness. And the point is, I
knew a lot of people, some religious, some not, who were not Catholic
but seemed to live upright lives, had generous spirits, practiced
kindness, worked hard, and really were no different than the
Catholics I knew except they weren’t. And I still do. So what is
Jesus talking about? Or why did John emphasize this? We don’t hear
Jesus saying things like this in the other gospels.
And yet we Catholics believe that our
Church was founded by Jesus himself, that the Bible is the Word of
God, and that the Church is the vehicle which carries on the
apostolic tradition, and whose teachings on faith and morals have
divine authority. And Jesus, the scriptures and the church all teach
that the only way to the Father is through Jesus, the way, the truth
and the life. If the only way to get to the Father is through Jesus
and there are plenty of people around who don’t believe this, we
have three possibilities: many people despite living fairly
blameless lives will not see heaven; many of us who take advantage of
the sacraments and live lives that are less upright than some in the
previous group will see heaven; it’s all a matter of who God
chooses to be saved and to be condemned. Or, all can get to heaven
but the further away you are from the Catholic church, the harder it
is. But maybe the third alternative is the best. Jesus is the way;
he brought to our world a new way of living, a way that involves
self-giving love. He brought truth in that he revealed the nature of
God, that God is love, that God is Father, that God is approachable.
He is life, because through his life, death and resurrection in some
way he balanced out all the sins of all mankind, so that death, which
is the consequence of sin, no longer has power over human beings
unless they reject his gift.
So it isn’t that human beings are
excluded from salvation when they are not members of the Church --
God gives everyone what is needed for them to go to the Father. When
someone opens oneself to the love of the Father and communicates this
self-giving love to those around him or her, God has been at work
through the person -- every good thing, Paul tells us, comes from
God. When one chooses a life that is inwardly directed, that is
self-centered, that rejects the dynamic that Jesus showed us (I am in
the Father and the Father is in me, and we are in you) then God is
not involved; the person by his or her life has rejected union with
the Father.
But does this mean that we don’t
need the Church? By no means. The Church is Christ’s mystical
body; the Church is the vehicle for communicating what Jesus taught
to the world. And we Christians have to live out Jesus’ way,
Jesus’ truth, and show the world the life that he gives – and
when we don't, we've become useless servants, and are arguably worse
off than those non-Christians who so obviously are being touched by
the Holy Spirit, who blows where he wills.
