Finding My Way

Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?

Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. -- John 14:5-6

Thomas is my favorite disciple.  Peter and John are great.  We love Paul, the one born out of time.  All of them deserve admiration, but Thomas just resonates with me.  He's this hard-headed, practical guy.  When Jesus told the disciples in John 11 that they were going back into the environs of Jerusalem, where the religious leaders were threatening to kill the Lord, Thomas responded:  So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him (John 11:16).  He has no faith.  I've been there. We're all going to die.  Shoot, man, let's just go die with Him and get it over with.

Thomas had happened to be out when Jesus appeared to the others on one occasion after His resurrection.  These are his best friends in the world, and he says, "You boys have lost it. I understand the stress and everything, but He's dead!  I'll believe it when I can put my fingers in the nail holes in His hands and put my hand into the wound in His side."  Yet when he does see the risen Christ, he falls to his knees crying, "My Lord and My God!"

How can you not love a person like that?

In this passage, as Jesus is speaking with His disciples immediately before His crucifixion, He tells them that He is going to leave them, but they know the way to where He is going.  Thomas is incredulous.  How can we know the way when we don't even know where You are headed?

Jesus replies that He is going to the Father, and that the only way to the Father is through Him.  They know Him, thus they know the way.  The destination and the road to that destination are one.  If we get on the right road, we cannot help getting to the right destination.

I am not capable of fully comprehending God.  The good thing is that I don't have to.  I don't have to become a monk or a hermit.  I appreciate that there are those called to the life of an anchorite.  I appreciate the theologians and the philosophers and all who delve deeply into the nature of existence and of the Divine.  Thank God for them.  But my lack of understanding, the limitations of my intellect, and my calling to a more mundane vocation will not prevent me, in the end, from reaching the heavenly goal.  For I know the Way.

Armored Division

His armor-bearer responded, “Do what is in your heart.  You choose.  I am right here with you whatever you decide.” -- 1 Samuel 14:7 (HCSB)

People like Jonathan’s armor-bearer show up in Scripture and in history and sometimes in our everyday lives.  It’s like Mary saying, “Let it be to me according to your word,” or Thomas saying with resignation, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  I am greatly humbled by the Virgin’s willingness to bring the Anointed One to us.  I am moved by the willingness of individuals to move forward in the face of what they believe to be certain death.  On June 6, we were reminded that, seventy years ago, tens of thousands of such men scrambled out of landing craft onto the beaches of Normandy.

The armor-bearer was the man who watched the warrior’s back, who sought to keep him from being struck down by a flying arrow or flung javelin.  It wasn’t a particularly safe occupation, and, while he might not have been swinging the sword, an armor-bearer was certainly in the midst of the battle.  In the case of Jonathan’s armor-bearer, it would not have been unrealistic to think that he was following the prince on a suicide mission.  Jonathan proposed going up and challenging the Philistine garrison.  That the Bible records the two of them slaying twenty men on an area of about a half-acre indicates the odds were at least 10 to 1. 

I have heard that, in some of the more upscale congregations, there is a position of “armor-bearer” for the pastor.  I suppose it sounds more biblical and less eeewww-inducing than “body-man” or “butt-boy”.   By the way, having lived an unsophisticated life, the first time I heard “butt-boy” was when an evangelist friend said in regard to pastor who had acted duplicitously toward him, “What does he think I am?  His butt-boy?”  I had to ask for clarification. Personally, I don't want to have anything to do with a body-man unless it's one of my friends who is helping me bury the bodies.  Like the FBI agent who says to Swagger in "Shooter", "I'll get his legs." 

There is no friend like the friend who won't run away and leave you hanging when things get tight.  If you don't have a friend like that, you can still be that kind.  

 

As Christians we do need to bear armor for one another.  The church would be stronger, congregations more cohesive, and pastors and leaders a lot less apt to fall into sin and abuse their offices if we covered our brothers and sisters.  We do not need an official position to shout a warning, to defend, to challenge, or to pray for someone. 

Most of all I wish that I could be as willing as that armor-bearer to say to the Lord, “You choose.  I’m right here with You.” 

It is God’s will for man to have free will, to experience liberty.  It is man’s joy to surrender that liberated will freely to God, to follow Him in whatever He decides.   

We might think God doesn’t need an armor-bearer, but there is a familiar passage that suggests otherwise:  Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. When you think about it, that was the armor-bearer’s job, to stand firm, keeping the king was covered and holding the ground he had taken.  Jonathan was knocking the enemy down and his armor-bearer was making sure they did not get up again.  Christ has won the victory, but a lot of the enemy’s enterprises could use a right good coup de grâce. 

But of God

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. – John 1:12-13

I have a lot I should be doing today; I am having trouble getting my effort rolling forward.  I don’t really have anything to say, but I read this verse last night, and it was like taking a deep breath of cool, clean air after eight hours in a smoke-filled, overheated room.  Maybe it will do the same thing for someone else.

To think that we have a right to become children of God probably causes different reactions.  Some might think, well, of course, we are all God’s children.  Others might shrug it off as ridiculous fantasy.  Our beloved and mystically inclined brother John should not be lightly dismissed.   

While I am probably more in tune personally with the resolute canniness of Thomas (So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” -- Eeyore would be proud), John seems to surpass his fellow Evangelists in conveying a child-like wonder, an almost stunned amazement in the presence of Christ.  He reminds me of the priests as they first carried the Ark into the Temple, when ... the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

To be a child of God, a child of the King, really -- doesn’t it seem that every other ambition would look pretty weak in comparison?  I have stood in humble little churches among humble little, cast-off people as they sang:  Oh, yes, oh, yes!  I’m a child of the King / His royal blood now flows in my veins / And I, who was wretched, thank God, now can sing / Oh, yes, oh, yes!  I’m a child of the King. 

There is a cynical part of my mind, maybe worse than cynical, that responds to a scene like that and thinks that humans are always best at deceiving themselves.  To look around at the dust and the squalor and contrast that with the words those people say can make a person laugh scornfully, weep in pity, or turn one’s face up and join in. 

The birth of a child of God does not come about because of DNA.  The right is not limited to a family or a tribe or a race.  It is not determined by earthly parents or the circumstances of a person’s natural origin.  God looks down and says -- I believe -- to all, “You can be My child.”  Some do not seem to hear, some hear and turn away, some are dragged away, but some turn their eyes away from the world and look upon their Father’s face.