The Way through Winter

John 14

It feels like winter right now - and not just because the temperature has plummeted in recent days. In C.S.Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles winter symbolises a place where Aslan is absent, a place ruled by fear. That may well sum up how it feels right now - as if God is far away, standing at a distance from the fears that chill us to the bone - fears of our own mortality, fears for our families, fears for our economic security, fears for our fellow human beings in an unjust and divided society. We are experiencing what the 16th century mystic John of the Cross described as the Dark Night of the Soul and what Peter Scazerro, in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, calls the Wall.

I guess I’ve hit the wall recently.

Sometimes just counting my blessings - and there are many - isn’t enough to get me around, or over, that wall. Reminding myself of all the good times, all the moments when God has felt so close - that is good - but it is not enough. But as Scazzero says, it’s ok - in fact it’s emotionally and spiritually healthy when winter hits, to admit that I don’t know what God is doing right now, that I’m confused, sad, anxious . . .

It’s also ok to get things out of perspective occasionally. The Psalmists often went from total despair to unfettered praise in the space of a few verses, as they talked, or wept, things out with God. It’s ok not to be on cloud nine all the time. I know nothing can separate me from God’s love, I know he has plans, perfect plans, for the world He made, I know my eternal security in Christ is safe by His grace - but it’s not always easy to find your way through a winter fog or to feel the warmth of a pallid sun.

I need to know beyond the knowing - to experience in my heart the closeness and compassion of God.

Jesus knew his friends were feeling equally lost, equally in the dark, on the evening of their last supper together. He had already told them he was going to die, which they couldn’t face. Now he tells them that he will be with them only a little while longer, and where he is going they cannot, at this time, follow. This is dark, troubling, scary stuff.

But then, so tenderly, Jesus says “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me . . . . you know the way to the place where I am going” (John 14:1,4).

“It’s going to be OK guys!”

Honest Thomas then asks what he thinks is an obvious question - “We don’t know where you’re going so how can we know the way?” - “Tell us what we have to do to go where you’re going, spell it out for us Jesus!" Jesus doesn’t give him a map, he simply says “I am the way, the truth and the life . . “

How frustrated must Thomas have been. There is a religious gene in all of us that wants to know the rules for pleasing God, the route to get to heaven - the six spiritual steps to get us through this pandemic - and Jesus says there are no rules, this is personal.

We are living through such depersonalising times - shut away from human contact, cut off from people we love, constrained and controlled by soulless stats and government guidelines - all very necessary maybe, but we weren’t made to be machines, we were made for personal interaction.

I don’t need a sermon on living a good Christian life, I need Jesus' presence to light my way through this darkness. He is the way through life’s walls, he doesn’t just speak truth, he IS truth. In a world where truth is increasingly marginalised by conspiracy theories and spin, there is such a thing as truth and it is found in the person of Jesus. Knowing about God is not enough, I need to know Him better.

I can pray for the sick, feed the hungry, care for my neighbour, binge watch Youtube church services — and yet not know Jesus. But one thing I have at the moment is time. Time to read again and again what he did, what he said, to hear his voice through the pages of Scripture, to sense his love, to ‘see’ him. Hopefully I'll do a better job than Philip, who had walked and talked and lived with and listened to Jesus for 3 years, and still says “Lord, show us the father and that will be enough" - so Jesus patiently spells it out to him again - "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”.

When Jesus says this there are two Greek words for ‘see’ - one means seeing with the eyes, the other means seeing with the mind - and Jesus uses the latter - in other words, “when you really get who I am Philip, you will understand who the Father is, because we are one”. I want to ‘see’ Jesus that way, one with a Father so consumed by love that "he was reconciling the world to himself in Christ" (2 Cor.5:19).

I used to see the following words in Psalm 139 as more of a threat than a comfort . . “if I make my bed in the depths, you are there . . .if I say 'surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me', even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you". But God is not the tyrannical Father of my childish fears, he IS love, and when I see Him as he is, in all that Jesus is and does and says, then that is all I need to drive away the darkness.

“God comes to us in Jesus speaking the words of salvation, healing our infirmities, promising the Holy Spirit, teaching us how to live in the Kingdom of God. It is in and through this same Jesus that we pray and believe, hear and obey, love and praise God. Jesus is the way God comes to us. Jesus is the way we come to God”

Eugene Peterson: The Jesus Way p.37

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