The Way

About fifteen years ago I went backpacking in Yosemite National Park with some friends. I had traveled from Florida, where we were living at the time, to Los Angeles where one of my friends picked my up. Though it was 6 PM in the evening in LA my body was still on Florida time, so it felt to me as if it was 9 PM. My friend George and I drove something like seven hours to get to Yosemite.
We found our other friends waiting for us in a parking area atop Glacier Point. This overlook is stunning and provides you with an incredible view of Yosemite Valley. That night there was bright full moon and it bathed the entire valley with bluish light. Looking out from Glacier Point we could the incredible sheer rock walls that surround the valley and the numerous waterfalls thundering down into the valley below.
All of us climbed into the vans and went to sleep. We wanted to start our six day hike early the next morning. I didn’t sleep too well that night in the back of George’s van. I tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable. I was still tired out from my airline flight and the seven hour drive to the national park.
It seemed that I had just closed my eyes. It was time to get up. We drove another three hours to the other side of the park to begin our hike. I was dead tired and as we climbed a switchback trail to an altitude of nearly 12,000 feet I noticed I was having trouble breathing (so was George, of course, he was a smoker) and I just felt kind of strange; not just tired, mind you, but strange. What I didn’t realize was that I was in the first stages of altitude sickness.
When we got to the top of the switchback trail we were greeted by a boulder field. The park service had done its level best to mark a trail through this immense flied of rocks and boulders that had been deposited so many years before by the glaciers. Yet, the trail was hard to make out and before long the five of us were lost; only we didn’t know that we were lost because all five of us were suffering from altitude sickness.
Altitude sickness is a scary thing. Your ability to think and reason becomes imparted because the brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. The big mistake we had all made was beginning our hike without giving our bodies’ time to get used to the high altitude.
We stumbled around that boulder field not really knowing that we had lost our way. We thought we were on the right trail. We thought we knew where we were. It very slowly dawned on us that we had no clue as to where we were. About the same time we all came to the realization that we had altitude sickness. We made camp. Ate some cold trail mix and went to sleep. We slept for over twelve hours. When we awoke our bodies had adjusted to the altitude. We consulted our maps and compasses and found that we were seven miles away from where we thought we were.
We had lost our way.
The night before Jesus went to the cross Jesus said with his disciples and told them that he was going to be leaving them soon. He was going to go to prepare a place for them in His Father’s House. In that house Jesus said, there were many “dwelling places”; that is places where the disciples would live with Him through all of eternity. Not so much individual rooms, but a place of never ending life for them.
Jesus said to them, “and you know the way to the place where I am going”. It was Thomas who said to Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” It seems the Thomas was looking for some kind of a road map to find the place where Jesus was going. If he could get a map he would find his way to this marvelous place Jesus was speaking of. He did want to know the way to that place, just as my friends and I wanted to know the way through the boulder field in Yosemite.
If Thomas was looking for physical directions then he was undoubtedly disappointed because of what Jesus said to him next. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
I wonder how many of us have really thought at all about Jesus calling himself “the way”. There are reams of sermons on Jesus calling himself the good shepherd, the vine, the Son of Man, but, not too many, I’ll wager on Jesus calling himself “the way”. I don’t know this for a fact, but, I can’t remember hearing too much about this.
Actually, this notion of Jesus calling himself “the way” is rather Jewish. The rabbis of Jesus’ day said that when God in his goodness had given his people the law he had provided them with a safe way through life. The good rabbis likened the law to the dry way that God caused to open in the Red Sea when Moses led the children of Israel out of their slavery into the freedom of a new life. By walking on that dry way, neither moving too far to the right or too far to the left where the walls of water were, but by walking on the dry way the children of God found and had safety. To follow God’s way, the rabbis rightly taught was to have life in itself abundance.
If Jesus is calling himself the way it would seem to be the case that Jesus is saying to us, if we have ears to listen, walk in me and you will find your life. Now, that doesn’t mean that through the following of all kinds of rules and commandments we are going to find this life that Jesus wants to give to us. No, it means that falling into the arms of Christ, being embraced by He who is the Way, that we find the true life that we are seeking.
The problem is that all of us are sick with sin, just as I was sick because of the change of altitude. Because of that sickness we have, it’s easy to get distracted and in a sense lose the way, that is, our connection with Jesus. This happens to me when I’m not grounding myself in prayer, Bible reading and worship. When I am not doing those things I lose my way in life. I cease to be grounding myself in Jesus.
This time of Lent through which we are now moving is that time of the church year when we are to be connecting ourselves with He who is The Way. We do that through prayer, through acts of mercy, through Bible reading and through worship. When we are not doing those things we wander away from the safety of the Way through life who is Jesus Christ.
Let calls all of us to follow the way, not our ways, but God’s Way, Jesus Christ.