Who is your GPS?

I got married young. Very young. And one of the key ways God showed his grace in protecting our marriage was allowing the invention of GPS navigation. Hallelujah and praise the Lord for GPS navigation. In our early years of marriage we were still using the paper directory — which is character building, sure, but frankly relationship destroying. Now we just trust the thing in our hand to show us the way. Wouldn't life be easier if it all worked like that? If we had a GPS we could talk to and say: Direct my steps. Tell me what to choose. Get me to the destination I want. I want to be healthy and happy, fulfilled and safe. Choose your destination, get given the route. But life isn't like that. We find our own way. Take wrong turns. Hit roads that close off in front of us. We end up on unfamiliar streets, not sure which direction to turn — let alone where we're going. You think you're going one way, but suddenly the road drops off a cliff and you have to find a different path.

The disciples knew the feeling

The disciples gathered around Jesus in the upper room knew exactly that feeling. They had been following Jesus down the Judean roads for three years. They had walked into wild places. Encounters with spiritual marvels. Healings. Hazards. Clashes with the authorities. They watched him overturn tables in the temple. They walked in procession into Jerusalem as crowds waved branches and proclaimed him king. They stood at a graveside and saw him call out a dead friend. They didn't always know where Jesus was leading them, but they knew they wanted to follow him. He'd show them the way. But that night around the Passover meal, the road ahead suddenly looked very uncertain. Jesus had just washed their feet — which was strange enough — and then started talking about being betrayed. Judas had got up and left. Peter had been told he would deny even knowing Jesus before morning. And now Jesus said he was going somewhere they couldn't follow. Their GPS was about to disappear. So Jesus speaks to them — words that have been read at countless funerals ever since:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? I'm not deserting you, Jesus says. I'm going for you. To prepare a place. So that you can be where I am.

A place in the Father's household

What is this place Jesus is preparing? Our minds jump quickly to a Hollywood version of heaven — Jesus building us each our own resort villa. But the disciples wouldn't have thought that way. They would have heard the language of being given a residence in the family — the honour of being part of the Father's own household. Even more than that, Jesus often spoke of the temple as his Father's house — the place where God and humanity meet. I go to become the temple. I go so that you and God can be restored to each other. This is huge. Because the whole storyline of the Bible is about what we lost when humanity rejected God in the garden — and how God is putting it back. Jesus, God in the flesh, is about to die and rise into new humanity, and then take that restored humanity back into the presence of God for the first time since the fall. When Jesus says he goes to prepare a place, he's not just digging a swimming pool in paradise. He's making a way for humanity to return to the presence of the Father. Thomas chimes in honestly: We don't know where you're going. So we don't know the way. And Jesus answers with one of the most stunning lines in the Bible:

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Not a method. A person.

You don't need a GPS, paper map or checklist. You need to know me. That's the heart of it. Coming to the Father comes through knowing Jesus. Through being with him. That's the way to a restored relationship with God. That's the way into the Father's household. Christianity is unique among the world's faiths and worldviews. It isn't a philosophy — a way of thinking about the world that brings peace. It isn't a moral code where your standing depends on whether your good deeds outweigh your bad. It isn't a set of rituals you perform to keep yourself right with God. It is Christ-ianity. A response to Jesus Christ. To a person. You don't find your own way, determine your own truth, or earn your own life. You come with Jesus, and he brings you to be with him.

The exclusive claim that troubles us

Now, Jesus said all this to comfort his disciples. But these days the same words can do the opposite — they unsettle us. Really? The only way? Some hear it and call it arrogant. Even Christians wrestle with the questions: What about people who never get to hear about Jesus? What about those we love who reject him? There's a real paradox here. Christianity sits in a strange space — it is wildly inclusive, and founded on one exclusive claim. Many faiths are tied to a nation, ethnicity or language. Christianity has spread into every people group on earth — not just through migration, but as authentic local expressions of faith. Christianity is the most international, most diverse faith in the world. Anyone is welcome. And yet — I am the way. But notice: the life Jesus offers isn't limited to the good people who have ticked the boxes. It's open to deniers and abandoners like Peter. To outsiders Jesus dined with. To the criminal hanging next to him on a cross who heard today you will be with me in paradise. No one is so far gone that Jesus can't reach them. His arms are open to anyone. Whether he is the only way depends on whether he was telling the truth. And his claim to truth depends pretty strongly on his defeat of death. If he really defeated death, if what he says is true, then I trust him when he says he is the way. That still leaves me with questions I'm not given clear answers to. I don't know exactly how God's love and justice deal with people who never had the chance to respond. I don't know how it works for those who don't have the capacity to understand. But if I want to know the kind of God I'm trusting with this, I look at Jesus. I see the one who loves more than I do, and cares more than I possibly could.

So who is your GPS?

We trust our phones to get us to the next street. We trust experts to tell us what to eat, how to invest, where to live. But who's your GPS through life itself? Where are you looking for the way forward — your own wisdom, other people's opinions, the latest podcast? Jesus offers something different. Not a system. Not a set of instructions. A person to know and trust. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. If your road has dropped away, if you don't know which way to turn, hear his offer again. He doesn't just point to the way. He is the way.

This post is adapted from a sermon preached by Murray Colville at St Hilda's Anglican Church Katoomba on John 14:1-14, as part of our Come and See series through John's Gospel. Visit us at www.katoomba.church.