I was raised in a church that interpreted this verse to mean that unless you were a born-again Christian, you were going to Hell. Later in life, I began reading rather more progressive theologians, who tended to gloss over this verse, or even explain it away.

But the verse stands here in John chapter 14, a troubling stumbling block to many for whom the church has become a cold and distant father figure, an instrument of judgment and exclusion. Many people believe that the church proclaims a Jesus who says, in effect, "I am the way, therefore it's my way or the highway. I am the truth, and there ain't no other. I am the life, and if you don't stay on my good side, there'll be Hell to pay."

This is hardly good news, particularly when we gather to mourn the passing of a family member or friend. But there is another way to read this verse that neither explains it away nor uses it to build a barbed-wire fence dividing the "saved" from the "unsaved." Ironically, this other way relies on an even more literalist reading of the verse than the literalist interpretation most of us know all too well.

That literalist interpretation would rather the verse read, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to God except through me." But that's not what the verse says, is it? Rather, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Well, God and the Father are interchangeable terms, aren't they?

Yes and no. For while in Trinitarian theology, the Father is God, just as the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, in John's gospel, the word "Father" means something very specific about God, something that is very easy to forget in the face of death. In John, "Father" isn't just a synonym for God, but a way of naming something about God that we wouldn't know if we didn't know Jesus. "Father" is a relational term, meaning that to know God as "Father" entails knowing whom God is the Father of: Jesus, the Son. Through the Son, human beings have access to a new relationship with God, not as a distant father figure but as the most loving Father of all, who welcomes us into his house as his children by adoption, and who, through his Son, prepares a place for us, a place of intimacy where we may abide in God's presence forever.

Sarah Cockey Houck knew a little something about what it meant to abide in one place. Her childhood home was in Monkton. She married and reared her children, Thomas and Sandra, in Monkton. Monkton remained her home to her dying day. And now she has moved on to a new dwelling place, but the good news is that this dwelling place is nothing like the mythological heaven that sparkles like a fairytale in a child's imagination, but is very much like the sort of dwelling place Sarah knew all along. I'm not saying that Heaven looks a lot like Monkton, though to many of us, Monkton is a little slice of Heaven on earth, but that Sarah's eternal life with the Father through the Son began not two Thursdays ago when she died, but at her baptism.

While she was with us, Sarah began to know what it meant to abide in the Father's love for us through the Son, and now that she has gone from us, we pray that Sarah will continue to grow in the knowledge and love of God, as she abides now even more deeply than before in that eternal love which is the source of eternal life.

So, too, our eternal life with God begins when we start to abide with him on earth. For Christians, this abiding with God comes through following a particular way, knowing a particular truth, and sharing in a particular life.

It is in this baptismal context that we are to understand Jesus' statement that he is the way, the truth, and the life: as the One through whom we can gain an even greater intimacy with God as Father, an intimacy that we can't even imagine from where we abide right now.

Although we cannot imagine this greater intimacy with God the Father that awaits us, we can abide in it now, by re-committing ourselves to seeking Jesus along the way, knowing the truth that Jesus lived and died for, and living as Jesus lived, both in his earthly ministry and in the hope of sharing in his resurrection, just as Sarah now shares in it.

Jesus is the way, literally "road." He is the road that takes us on a journey beyond death into the Father's house.

Jesus is the truth. He is the One whose truth, far from burdening us or excluding us, sets us free to live as full human beings, without any fear of eternal death at all, for our eternal life begins at baptism.

Jesus is the life. His is the life that bridges this life and the life to come.

"Let not your hearts be troubled" for "if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also."

Sarah has now entered into a new dwelling place with God, which hymns and poems and homilies fail to do justice, but we can celebrate Sarah's abiding presence there today, even as we mourn her physical absence from us today and in the days to come.

"Let not your hearts be troubled." May Sarah's soul, and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.