• Home
• Services at Saint Peter’s
• Theology
  • What We Believe
  • The Pulpit
  • The Caversham Lectures
• News
  • News and Opinion
  • The Rock Archive
  • News Archive
  • Our Printed Heritage
  • Photo Gallery
• People
  • Friends of Saint Peter’s
  • External Links
• About
  • Music at Saint Peter’s
  • Saint Peter’s Character
  • Our History
  • Church Groups
  • Staff and Contacts
  • How to Get Here
• Login
  • Parishioners’ login
  • Vestry Members’ login
• Search Saint Peter’s

"Except Through Me"

One particular passage in the Gospels has a phrase in it which causes a great deal of unease to many Christians - and I believe rightly so. At John 14.6 we read: "No one comes to the Father but by me." And we are reminded of the uses to which this text has been put - most notably in the past where it has been the justification for the forcible imposition of Christianity on people who can only be described as its tragic victims.

Even today, in an age when we struggle to understand and respect peoples and cultures other than our own, such a quotation looks all too much like the justification for an insensitive spiritual imperialism which refuses to recognise the good in anything but itself, and which therefore downgrades and belittles the highest and most sacred aspirations of millions of people - both past and present.

There are, however, some considerations which I believe can help us here. The first is the Christian belief that in comparing one religion with another, we are not actually comparing like with like. Jesus, Mahomet and Zoroaster are commonly regarded as great religious teachers and founders - and so they are. However, the first of these three makes claims in John 14 which the other two would have regarded as both insane and blasphemous. He says he is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and that any one seeing him is actually seeing God.

Thus the other two are teachers about God while Jesus is God. Now that is an extraordinary claim, and to many (perhaps most) an offensive one - but it means that Jesus cannot be regarded as just one religious teacher among others. The Christian religion has always regarded him as not so much the one who teaches, but the lesson which is taught. To use a Zen phrase, Mahomet and Zoroaster are fingers pointing at the moon. Jesus is the moon.

So when Jesus says no one comes to the Father but by him, he is saying that there is no other God to come to but one who is prepared to be crucified for his creation, who is humble, truthful, loving, and totally accepting of everyone. If you want some other kind of God - and in our heart of hearts we all too often do - then you are out of luck. If you want to spend your eternity saying, "me first!", then you won’t be doing it with God. YOU will have to change - not him.

And finally, because God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the One through whom and for whom all things were made - and because he alone is the source and origin of all goodness - wherever we find truth, beauty, humility compassion, and so on - he is there. And we do find such qualities in people of other religions and even in people who have no religion at all. So unlike the pharisees we have to have the courage to recognise the presence of God where we would rather not find it.

None of this undermines the essential Christian belief that in Jesus God is revealed to us as in nothing and in nobody else. But that does not mean that he is not present in many other ways as well. In the nineteenth century, an aged Hindu holy man attended a Christian mission service in India at which the preacher spoke movingly of Christ. After the service the old man approached the preacher and said:

I have loved Him all my life - and now you have told me His Name.