Reading: John 14.1-14
I recall our first trip to Melbourne. My eldest brother was living in Oakleigh South at the time. We had headed down the Newell Highway. Our map guided us well through a series of blue-shield routes. Any road changes in the route were prominently marked with the name of the road on a large blue sign. After what seemed a comparatively short space of time we were heading down Warrigal Road towards a more detailed "mud map" to our final destination.
We were staying there for a couple of weeks, but the arrival was typical of the happy "going through" experience. Being guided by relatives was no trouble either. It was when we were more venturesome on our own that we had to be careful. It was possible to become totally disoriented. Without a borrowed copy of Melway, we could easily become totally lost.
The problem has never been as bad for our much less frequent visits to Sydney. We couldn't understand it. Normally, my family credits me with a fairly good direction sense. What was different? What was the matter? The reason was simply, I concluded, that subconsciously I depend on the Sun for my sense of direction!
Perhaps you have had another kind of experience. You have taken a short-cut and have made a turn out onto what you believe to be a familiar road. Yet the further you go, the feeling gets to be stronger - we're lost! Perhaps you have heard or used the saying, "We're lost, but we're making good progress!" And, if we keep on making such "good progress", we will be further and further away from where we are meant to be! It may be embarrassing, but we need to stop and take stock of where we are, where we have gone wrong and how we get to where we are meant to be heading!
John Smith, best known for his God's Squad work with bikies, wrote a book for the Bicentenary year under the title, Advance Australia Where? He was issuing a challenge to Australians to take stock of the direction of our national and community life.
Leading up to that same year, Alan Walker had called together a large group of significant Australian community leaders to look seriously at our national goals and strategies. Two booklets have been issued under the title, "A Vision for Australia". In the first of these, under the heading, "Whither Australia?", Alan Walker writes, "Many unique features mark our story. There is no other people on earth occupying a continental landmass owing allegiance to one government, with one official language. There has been no civil strife beyond small skirmishes such as the Eureka Stockade. War has never grounded its way across our countryside. There is no legacy of bitterness, arising from past memories, fouling the present or cursing the future.
"There is, however, something Australia does lack as a nation. It is a clear sense of national purpose and direction. We have great wealth yet hardly know what to do with it. Disunity is not far beneath the surface between country and city people, the business community and trade unions, the politically conservative and radical. We try to close our eyes to the suffering of the poor and the marginal people, especially the Aborigines, in our midst. Bridges are flimsy between Australia and our nearest neighbours in the Pacific and Asia. We are confused in foreign policy, not knowing how to face a nuclear age. Morally and spiritually we remain an undeveloped nation."
It has been encouraging this past week to note a small improvement in our jobless rate. But the picture is bleak for far too many families. This is the International Year of the Family. What is the health of family life in Australia? You understand what I am asking. Yet some interest groups in our society are trying to redefine the family to include every people grouping - married, de facto, gay, lesbian… I am asking what is the state of the relationship between husbands and wives, between parents and children? What is the state of the nuclear and the extended family?
Statistics disturb us with talk of increasing domestic violence - one in four legal wives, with the figures for de facto wives even worse. Great concern is also expressed about the fact and level of physical and sexual abuse of children. The figures do not speak well of the health of the traditional family and paint an even bleaker picture of the alternative family arrangements.
We recall that our overseas tourist ambassador received commendation for being somewhat irreverent and irreligious since this conveyed accurately the true character of Australia. We are, of course, multicultural and therefore obliged to accept everything, even if we end up believing nothing.
Things are moving quickly in our society, far more quickly than any of us could have realised. Even looking at the span of the past ten years, we are amazed at the rate at which traditional moral values have been eroded and the rate at which distrust and violence have increased. It certainly looks as though we are lost but making good progress! I don't believe the Republican debate has any relevance whatever - one way or the other - when we have blotted out the Sun and have no source of life direction beyond ourselves!
As individuals, as communities, as a nation, we desperately need to find the way. We do too much fiddling while Rome burns! To seek all wisdom and direction within ourselves is to remain divided and broken. We need direction and help beyond ourselves!
More specifically, we need to hear again the one who said, "I am the way, the truth and the life…" This is the one who also dared to call himself "the light of the world." Perhaps that is why I find my Sun-related direction-sense a helpful analogy - though I offer it with an apology to ex-Melburnians! We blot out the light of the world - and lose our way!
What is this Jesus claiming, that we should give attention to him? He is not claiming to be yet another guru to reveal the way to live. He says that he is the way. He is saying that the direction and meaning of life is not simply found in following some noble teachings but trusting his person and his actions, depending on who he is (the Son of God come to earth) and what he has come to do (in rescuing us from the guilt and power of evil within us).
Jesus is not simply claiming to be a sincere and truthful person. He says that he is the truth. That is an absolute claim. The meaning and value of your life and mine is bound up with God's truth in Jesus Christ - the standard by which we are judged for what we are, the will by which he provides for what he means us to be. This was set out so clearly for us when Jesus died on the cross. There we see what we are like - and God's desire and intention to forgive all who will put their trust in him.
Jesus truly lived - and died and was raised to life again! Yet his claim is not just that he was truly a person of history. He says that he is the life. Both then and now, he is the source of life! For every person present here this morning, Jesus Christ is the life!
As individuals and as a nation, it's time to reconnect! Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me."
Our present Australian Constitution begins with an affirmation of trust in Almighty God. For many years the acknowledgement of God has been part of the opening of the meetings of all levels of government. Bit by bit the references to God have been removed from our public life. We are multi-cultural, we say. We represent many religions - or no religion at all. But that is not the point. We have been shutting out the Sun! We have been making gods of ourselves! and we have lost our way!
It is understandable that we should try to be honest, that we should recognise the reality of what we have become, that we should turn from a shadow - but which way have we turned? to the darkness, or to the light?
We need to be honest and to recognise the reality that we have become - lost! - and not keep on making "good progress" towards greater degrees of lostness.
It's time to reconnect! We need to turn away from our lostness to the one known and trusted by so many of our forefathers, the one who said, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me." Come to him! Trust him as your Saviour and Lord! Start heading the right way with him!
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