Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you..., that where I am you may be also," speaking about death because that is what was uppermost in his mind as it was uppermost in the minds of all of them that last time they had supper together and as I suspect it is uppermost in our minds too more often than we let on. He says he is not just going out like a light. He says he is going on. He says he is going ahead. He says we will go there too when our time comes. And who can resist giving our hearts to him as he says it?

"You know the way where I am going," he says, and then Thomas speaks out for every one of us in a voice that my guess is had all the irritation and frustration and sadness of the little girl's. "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way....

....."I am the way, and the truth, and the life," is how he answers. He does not say the church is the way. He does not say his teachings are the way, or what people for centuries have taught about him. He does not say religion is the way, not even the religion that bears his name. He says he himself is the way. And he says that the truth is not words, neither his words nor anyone else's words. It is the truth of being truly human as he was truly human and thus at the same time truly God's. And the life we are dazzled by in him, haunted by in him, nourished by in him is a life so full of aliveness and light that not even the darkness of death could prevail against it.

How do we go where he is? How do we who have a hard enough time just finding our way home in the night find the way that is his way, the way that is he? Who of us can say, and yet who of us doesn't search for the answer in our deepest places?

As for me, I think what we are to do is to keep on ringing and ringing and ringing, because that ringing - and the longing, the faith, the intuition that keeps us at it - is the music of the truth trying to come true even in us. I think that what we are to do is to try to draw near to him and to each other any way we can because that is the last thing he asked of us. "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12) is the way he said it.... By believing against all odds and loving against all odds, that is how we are to let Jesus show in the world and to transform the world.

Frederick Buechner

From "At the Last Supper" an article originally appearing in The Christian Century, April 4, 2006 p. 26-31. View full article here.

The Presiding Bishop's Easter Message is available HERE.