Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century

by Marcus J. Borg

One of the best exemplifications of the point I’m making right now about John 14:6 is contained in a sermon preached at Boston University School of Theology, a Methodist seminary, in the 1950s, as I recall this story. A Hindu professor was preaching. He was on the faculty, and the lectionary text for the day that his turn came up to preach in chapel was John 14:1–8. He read the text out loud: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to God but by me.’” Then he looked out at the gathered community and said, “This verse is absolutely true. Jesus is the only way, and that way is known in every religion in the world.” Which is to say, Jesus is the incarnation of the universal truth and universal path, not the incarnation of a unique and exclusive path unknown anywhere else.