Followers In the Way
“I am the way, the truth and the life,” John 14:6
Way – Never forget that Jesus did not speak Greek. Our word, hodos, in the Greek text, is not what Jesus said. He spoke Aramaic. In order to understand why Jesus called himself “the way”, we must uproot our cultural images derived from the Greek world and plant ourselves in the Western Semitic images of the Hebrew world. If we don’t recognize that Jesus speaks to us from the historical perspective of the Hebrew literature, we will never understand his thought. We will miss the divine in his expressions. We will read and not perceive because we will hear only what the Western world tells us to hear.
The Hebrew word is derekh and for the Hebrew derekh is far more than a spatial stretch of road. That is why a Hebrew would say he was a follower in the way, not on the way. Derekh is the entire context of life, the physical, moral and behavioral nexus that surrounds who I am and determines my character and my goal. “The way” is not simply a set of moral guidelines for proper behavior. It is the homogenization of my ordained existence and my moral choices, blended so that one is not separable from the other, purposed so that I am both carried along by the stream and at the same time actively engaged in moving the flow. “The way” is both my orientation toward living and the resulting practice determined by my orientation. That is why I can be in the path of righteousness or in the path of death. For the Hebrew, life is not random, not even in a single, solitary step. Life is the conscious flow and the unconscious pull toward a clear but mysterious end, chosen by me and ordained by God.
When Jesus said, “I am the way”, he did not offer us an alternative moral code or a procedure for forgiveness. What he said is that his life in all its context demonstrates and describes God’s derekh, God’s context of thought and practice leading to the Father’s purposeful end. What he said is that he embodied all that man needs to be within the context of God’s intention. Wisdom, peace, serenity, fulfillment, understanding, fruitfulness, righteousness and well-being are attributes of the Way of God and they are all to be found in Jesus.
Today we have no appreciation of this claim. In the Jewish culture, it is a claim to be God for no one can offer himself as “the Way” except the Lord. We have converted Jesus’ word into an evangelical altar call, an invitation to recite some carefully crafted prayer as a gate pass to heaven. Nothing could be more sacrilegious. Jesus is not asking us to make him a convenient confession method. He is telling us that unless the context of all that we are and all that we do is saturated in Him, we do not know Him. Jesus is not the ceramic symbol stretched out on the cross. He is the God of a life covenant that brings us into the sphere of divine activity.
Does every cell of your body resonate the Christ? Does every thought speak His voice? Are you in the Way? Or are you just on the “Christian” path?
