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 14:4-6)

When I was five years old my mom and I were walking in Central Park in New York City as she was dreaming aloud about my future. I don’t remember this conversation, but it’s one my mom loves to recount.

She was telling me, in a way that probably felt subversive in the early 1970s, that I could be ANYTHING I wanted to be when I grew up. I could be a doctor, or lawyer, or professor. Any job that a man could do, I could do too.

When she finished describing all the options, she asked, “So, what do you think you want to be?” And I replied, “A daddy.”

She says she laughed out loud but was also frustrated that I had missed her point. In her mind, I was choosing an impossibility.

Once I became a priest, however, her story took on a new meaning. Her daughter achieved something that she never thought possible and still isn’t possible in her faith tradition. I had earned the title “Father.” In a weird way, as a pastor I became a “daddy” after all.

Now you may be wondering what on earth this has to do with this Sunday’s gospel which includes a well-known and debated theological statement, akin to John 3:16, “No one comes to the Father, except through me.” Is the all-inclusive and loving One excluding people on the night before he dies?

No, that just doesn’t fit. What does is invitation as revelation. Jesus was (is) revealing “the way” – the ongoing pattern of resurrection that is the heart of life in God, the truth Jesus is forever pointing towards for us to see and follow. That is the path, the narrow road that leads to life.

As pastors, many of us use this text for funerals. When I do, I take out this secondary and inflammatory clause and end the gospel at 6a – I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

It’s a pastoral decision. A funeral is the last place I want anyone to feel they are denied access to the eternally loving God, especially if church, our gospels or tradition, are new or have caused pain in the past. There is no time for a contextual exegesis. Someone has died. The gathered people are vulnerable in the liminal space of grief and loss.

Sacred text, specifically the words of Jesus, enter our ears and hit us in our gut. We resonate immediately with an intuitive and visceral recognition that either rings true, or not. Particularly when we are wrestling with a forever changed reality, like death brings. Which is where my childhood story connects with my preaching prompt for this Sunday.

Thomas is scared. Maybe you too have been on the threshold of death with someone you love. Maybe you in this time of tragic goodbyes have had to pastor from a distance, or bear witness to the suffering of someone who has. As a chaplain colleague of mine shared, people will suffer a “mortal wound” in this time of pandemic. An interior tear in their internal fabric of “the way things are supposed to be” that they will carry along with their loss.

In her book, “The Wisdom Jesus” Cynthia Bourgeault writes of a “direct knowingness” or “inner recognition” when we resonate with Reality or God with us. A built-in-by-our-Creator intuitive alignment with “the way” of Christ.

“For the earliest Christians,” she writes, “Jesus was not the Savior but the Life-giver…offering a path…to emphasize how Jesus is like us, how what he did in himself is something we are also called to do in ourselves.” (21)

I have no idea what I actually meant when my childhood-self told my mom I wanted to be a daddy, but I believe that some part of me knew deeply who and what I was called to be. Regardless of what seemed possible at the time, we both take this story to point to something beyond that moment. To hint at a new creation and new life and this is a gift for our faith.

There are things happening now that do not make sense. There are quandaries and dire circumstances that we cannot fix or solve. Futures we cannot map out. There are stories we are living that we see one way, now - and, will see in a new way, later. There are agonizing arguments over validating the validity of our rituals in virtual space as if they are happening apart and without the God in whom we live and move and have our being. Where two or three are gathered, however they are gathered, God is there.

We are all Thomas right now.  We are confused, scared, in awe, questioning, etc. and yet, we too, know the way!

The way is the pattern of Jesus’ life, the pattern of resurrection, the pattern of dying to gain new life. The pattern of surrender and putting on the mind of Christ. The way of those first disciples.

How can we acknowledge our troubled hearts and encourage our people to not be afraid? To see this pattern in their lives? To see the ways in which God is with us where we are, not abandoned in our closed church buildings – nor unavailable through the new ways of worship we are creating.

I hear Jesus, the pastoral leader and teacher, saying, Thomas, I know you are scared and confused and unsure. But it’s not about having answers or figuring it all out NOW.  It’s about your deep knowing. Tapping into and trusting the truth God knit within our hearts in the fabric of our being and walking towards that truth every day. God is love. God is good. Day by day.

When we remember and reflect on our unique stories we remember moments, that take on new meaning, affirm our divine interiority. They help us see the way, the pattern of resurrection in our lives. And where it led to new and unexpected life.

So, what story do you need to reflect on that connects you with your divine interiority, that place that aligns with the love and light of Christ? And how might you, pastoral leader that you are, share a story that connects to the hearts of your listeners at that deep level of perennial wisdom and truth? We do know the way. Jesus, and so many others, show us every day. So, point to that, preach that, with your being and your words.