If someone runs into the church in distress and yells “where’s the pastor?” I say “I am the pastor.”

I am not making a claim to be the only pastor who ever existed. I don’t explain to them about the possible existence of other pastors. I try my best to meet their need.

That person is uninterested in the existence of other pastors. That isn’t what they’re asking. They are asking for the person, right here, right now, who can meet their need.

And taking my compassionate response out of context to imply that I said there are no other pastors who could meet other needs at other times for other people would just be silly at best, malicious at worst.

Likewise, in a time of great distress, when Thomas asks Jesus the way to the Father, Jesus says “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

He isn’t making a truth claim about other ways. He is meeting Thomas’s need in that moment.

Jesus says “I am the way” in a closed group of close disciples, right before his arrest. Not in a public sermon, not in a theological argument, not writing systematic theology.

If we take John 14:6 out of context as a claim to exclusive truth, we are being foolish at best, and malicious at worst.

Jesus is reassuring the believers, us, at our times of deep distress, that he will bring us to God.

And we twist Jesus’s words of comfort to us and use them to wound other children of God. We get it so very very wrong.