Scripture: John 14:1-7, 15; 15:12
(1) "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
(2) In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have
told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (3) And if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be
also. (4) And you know the way to the place where I am going."
(5) Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we
know the way?" (6) Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the
life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (7) If you know me, you will know my
Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." (15) "If you love
me, you will keep my commandments. (15: 12) "This is my commandment, that you love
one another as I have loved you.
-- John 14: 1-5, 15; 15: 12
Today I am preaching from the same text that Barbara addressed last Sunday, the 14th
chapter of John's Gospel. Whereas Barbara discussed loss, grief and the hope of a home in
God's nearer presence after death, I want to veer down another path and deal with the
pesky theological problem of universalism and the question of whether God's tent is a big
one or a restrictive one.
How should Christians to relate to other faith traditions? Many fundamentalist,
evangelical Christians and traditional missionaries are driven by a belief that their
evangelistic efforts are about rescuing souls from damnation - "Go, therefore, and
make disciples of all nations" - because if the Gospel is not spread, souls will be
lost.
Other Christians believe that a loving God could not possibly erase large portions of
humanity from the reach of God's grace because they did not confess Christ as Lord and
Savior.
Still others, myself included, look at the horror of so many wars driven by
inter-religious tribalism and we believe that now, more than ever, there is a need for
interfaith understanding and cooperation. The siege of the Church of the Nativity, where
Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims are picked off by Israeli Jews with sniper fire,
is a burlesque commentary on the horror of inter-religious arrogance bizarrely acted out
on the site where some believe Jesus was born. What a horrible illustration of the need
for interfaith dialogue and understanding.
Some genuinely want to learn from other faith traditions and be changed by them. They,
myself included, believe that we can learn more about who God is, who Jesus is, and who we
are, in the encounter with Jews, Muslims, Hindus and adherents from traditions other than
Christianity.
Many of us don't know what to think about other faith traditions. Some think of
Christianity as a superior form of religion. Some think, when it all comes down to it
"we're all wanting to get to heaven" anyway, so it really doesn't matter what we
believe. Some believe orthodox Christianity is being diluted by post-modern relativists
within the church. Still others say "I know God most fully through Jesus
Christ," but are unwilling to go so far as to claim that Jesus is the only and
exclusive way to know God.
A large number of overtures are coming to this year's General Assembly seeking to
clarify who Jesus Christ is in relation to the encounter with other religions. Some
Presbyterians believe that other Presbyterians really don't believe that Jesus Christ is
the center of our life and faith, and so they want that clarified despite all the
reasonable, consistent and honest affirmations that others of us make all the time on a
consistent and regular basis.
Today's text, John 14:1-7, brings these issues to the forefront. John 14 is an
exceedingly familiar text. We hear it at most funeral services as a source of comfort when
dealing with grief. It soothes with the assuring promise that we have a home when all our
years have sped:
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my
Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you
that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also."
Many of have found peace in the promise that in the fullness of time, in a better time,
we will see those whom we love and who have left us too soon.
But at the conclusion of that sublime passage comes Thomas' question, "Lord, we do
not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" "I am the way,"
answers Jesus, "and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me."
Its that last phrase that sticks a little in my craw, as my mother used to say.
Sometimes when I read this text at memorial services and I know the crowd is interfaith,
or I don't know the crowd well, I pass over the passage. It sounds offensive, arrogant,
exclusive and difficult to reconcile with the Master who said, "Love one another as I
have loved you."
That one little phrase has been interpreted to give warrant to centuries of pogroms
against Jews, crusades against Muslims, and the attempt of this nation to erase Native
American peoples from the face of the earth.
However, when I consider the way of Christ, the truth of Christ, and the life of
Christ, I do devote my way, my truth, my life to following him, and I want to tell the
story of what he has done for my life to others. If there is a superiority in that, I
confess it. This is my story and I'm sticking to it.
It's the phrase, "No one comes to the Father except through me" that gets
caught in my throat.
What do we say in our encounter with other faiths? Is the Christian way the only way?
It seems that the first thing we should do is back up and extract ourselves from the
particularities of our text and tradition and ask, "What is the religious enterprise
at its most fundamental level?" Is it not to make sense of all of life and life's
experiences so as to bring order, meaning and purpose?
There seems to be something essential in homo sapiens to want to bring events in our
lives into some pattern of coherence, some tapestry of meaning, not only to understand
them, but so that we can give our deepest loyalty, commitment and our love to that
understanding.
The ancient Greeks and Romans sought to order their lives filled with wars, appetites
and intrigue by seeing in the gods and goddesses the very same passions and drives. Their
pantheon governed the rain, lust, battles, famine and the coming of spring.
The Hebrew people came to believe in a Being beyond all created things who brought
order from chaos and took a special interest in the political and social order of Hebrew
society, a chosen race.
Buddhists don't really believe in a God as such but follow the 12-fold path to
enlightenment that negates suffering and leads to a higher level of existence.
Islam recognizes Abraham and Jesus as prophets but places priority on the revelation to
Mohammed, who they revere as the greatest and last of the prophets.
Hindus worship an infinite number of gods.
Most Native American spirituality understands there is a great Spirit that unites all
things in harmony: humanity, the stars, moon, sun and the great earth.
All of us, in all of our amazing diversity of culture, language and place seek order
and meaning to understand what makes us tick, to discover to whom we belong, and to give
purpose and direction to our lives.
When John quotes Jesus as saying "I am the way, the truth, and the life," is
he saying that all these other ways of believing are inferior and wrong? Is he saying that
no one can come to God except through belief in Jesus Christ?
Within in every religion there are twin impulses. There is the impulse to be
distinctive, unique and exclusive. There is the impulse to be universal, to encompass and
to include.
Christianity was born as a faction within Judaism struggling to survive in the face of
a Roman imperial order that sought to erase it from existence. It wasn't until late in the
first century that followers of Jesus were even known as Christians. Before that they were
only known as the People of the Way within the religion of Judaism.
When Jesus asserts the uniqueness of his way, truth and life, he is trying to
differentiate and lay down boundaries. He is trying to declare that above and beyond all
the other options in his world, there is his way. It is distinctive, unique and singular,
the way of love, the way of the cross, the way of God bringing light and life even in and
precisely the deepest darkness. "Now follow me in this Way and you will know
transcendence." Sometimes we have to decide what we believe once and for all and then
act on it.
Each of the great faith traditions is unique and distinctive. We don't all
conceptualize God in the same way. Our scriptures are different. Our religious practices
are different. We even frame our questions about religious truth is different ways. The
question, "Who will be saved?" is a uniquely Christian question. Other
traditions don't even frame the question this way.
We don't all believe the same way when everything is reduced to the essentials. We
don't. It is a gross oversimplification of other faith traditions as well as our own, to
dismiss differences so easily. Heck, I only occasionally agree with other Presbyterians
and sometimes when I'm really rocking, I disagree with myself.
We cannot and should not dismiss our own distinctiveness, nor those of other
traditions. We need to find a way to honor those differences not only because we share the
same globe together and it's the only globe we have, but because we do follow Jesus, his
way, his truth and his life. The spirit and essence of the Gospel is not intolerance and
religious fanaticism, but humility, love, patience, and inclusion.
Furthermore, Jesus constantly tells stories of people outside his faith tradition
revealing more about who God is then those within orthodoxy. The Good Samaritan, the
Centurion soldier, the woman at the well are stories of people from outside of the fold,
expanding understandings of the breadth of God's love.
This is the other impulse within our tradition: to be expansive, encompassing, and
universalizing. We follow Jesus Christ and this is his way. He is the Son of God and the
Savior of the world. He died for our sake, an unimaginable and perfect act of love,
revealing that God is love. We are taken up in this love so that in our encounter with
Jews, we bring love; in our encounter with Buddhists, we bring love, in our encounter with
Muslims, we bring love.
This is our story. This is the uniqueness of our faith. It is also the belief that
gives us a humility to listen and to learn and to discover that other faith traditions can
teach us many, many things about who we are and who God is.
When Mahatma Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount and began to take it seriously, he
said, "Your own scriptures would revolutionize the whole of life: identifying with
the poor, loving one's enemies, absorbing insults and returning love." He said,
"If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount, I should not hesitate to say: 'Oh
Yes, I am a Christian.' But I can tell you in my humble opinion, much of what passes as
Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount." Does not Gandhi reveal to us,
the mind of Christ?
To interpret Jesus' saying, "No one comes to the Father except by me" as a
diatribe against all other religions, is to discard the bulk of his teachings. It is not
his way, his truth or his life. I do not know a Jesus who is a sticker for creeds
formulated in precise ways. He proclaims, "By your fruits you shall be known."
When he talk about the final judgment, he doesn't measure who is in and who is out by
orthodoxy, but by whether the naked have been clothed, the hungry fed, and the stranger
welcomed. That's what his way is about. That's his truth. That's his life. Maybe that's
what he meant when he said "No one comes to the Father except through him and his
path." It should place all of us on edge all of our seats, particularly those who
call him Lord but practice hate, exclusion and arrogance. But to those of us who follow
him with all of our hearts and minds and souls and strength there is no fear, only a big
tent of welcome and grace, a house of many mansions. Amen.
