Richard Mallory
Dear Beloveds,
In the 14th chapter of John, Thomas pleads, “We don’t know where you are going.” To that fear of abandonment, Jesus reassures and says something that has been misunderstood and harmfully misinterpreted. esus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” For centuries these words have been lifted from the table where they were spoken and turned into a weapon—a boundary marker, a declaration of Christian superiority, a verdict on the eternal fate of Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and everyone who has not confessed the right name. That is not what is happening here.
Look at where we are. The night before the crucifixion. The last meal. The most intimate gathering in all of scripture. Whatever we call this moment, let us stop calling it a discourse. Discourses are delivered. What Jesus is doing here is something else entirely. He is opening himself, handing himself over—heart to heart, in the way people speak when time is short and what matters most must finally be said plainly.
Thomas has just spoken out of grief. We don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way? That is not a theological question. That is the sound of someone terrified of being left behind.
And Jesus answers with disclosure, not doctrine. I am the way. Not a road. Not a system. Not a religion. Not a set of requirements. The great Johannine ego eimi always moves in this direction—the grammar of intimacy, a person offering himself as the whole answer to the fear of abandonment. You will not be lost. You have me.
To read this verse as a verdict on other religions is to do a particular kind of violence—the violence of abstraction. It tears words from a human moment and makes them into policy. The question Jesus is answering is not what happens to Buddhists? The question is well we find our way to you when you are gone?
And the answer is Yes. Because the way is not a road. The way is him.
This verse belongs at the table. Leave it there. That is where it lives. That is where it breathes.
Your fellow traveler,
—Richard
