In the days when Jesus and his disciples discussed deep matters, there was no such thing as Christianity. Nor did the word become familiar after the crucifixion. In fact the word hardly entered the vocabulary of the believers so we have to conclude that they had better words for what they wanted to say. And one better word was ‘way’. The new faith was known as the way.
Apollos, for example (Acts 18.25) expounded the new way as he saw it until, thanks to Priscilla, he realised that his knowledge was imperfect. Priscilla and her husband helped him to a better understanding. Their talk was all about ‘the way’. In Ephesus Paul’s opponents took issue with him in the synagogue about the way with the result that he withdrew and conducted meetings in a public lecture hall. The government needed to know what was going on and we are told that Felix, the governor, had made it his business to be well informed about the new way.
The word ‘way’ still had its attractions in this country by the time of Shakespeare. One of his characters, Macbeth, spoke of life as the way to dusty death. It was a negation of purposeful fulfilling activity. It was a way to nothing, a vault of emptiness where good and bad losts their significance.
Not even the disciples could quite get their heads round this word. Thomas looked – and spoke – puzzled. Jesus said he was the way and offered access to the Father (John 14.6). How could a person be the way? And there lurked the bigger question: ‘How could any man speak of himself in these terms?’ This was not the claim of somebody unbalanced. He was speaking, as we can imagine, in an everyday manner with his preceding words showing considered acquaintance with flawed human nature.
So, as Christians, we follow a new way. Not everybody who used the expression could foresee the magnitude of its implications. Those who were set in their ways found it hard to re-think their outlook. We, too, find it hard. But if any man is in Christ there is a new creation, a new start, a new step on the way.
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