CELEBRATING:
SERMONS
15 - Feb 2009
A sermon delivered by Rev. Gordon How
Feb. 15, 2009 "Is Jesus the Only Way To God?"
Today's premise is that changing circumstances require
new understandings. We in the United Church believe
that our faith calls us to live the Gospel - contemporarily
- to live today in this world. Today's thoughts would
most likely not have been preached fifteen years ago
in a United Church and won't likely be preached in many
Christian churches in 2009. However, if these thoughts
had been offered and acted upon in the past few centuries,
then history would have been much more peaceful and
much more just.
In a mailing from the national office of the UCC that
was sent to all churches, there was included an advertisement
for the Multi-faith calendar for 2009 which lists all
the important Holy Days of the world's major faiths.
It was preceded by yet another promo for a study document
titled "That We May Know Each Other" - a study
about the relationship between Christianity and Islam.
Those mailings illustrate that we live in new times.
So what I want to address this morning is the matter
of how to encounter other major faiths when our Bible
quotes Jesus as saying "I am the ONLY way to God
." For me, this is one of the most difficult texts
in the Bible. It challenges us greatly in these times
and in our society - where God has placed us to live
and move and have our being in a multi-faith context
- and which includes for us, people of the faith, witnessing
in word and in deed to the Good News of that same Jesus
Christ.
If you have worshipped at as many memorial services
as I have, then you are used to hearing this morning's
scripture lesson from John's gospel. It is read at many
Memorial Services because it speaks to us in the midst
of grief and the difficult time of dealing with the
death of a loved one. It is one of the all-time great
passages of consolation, in which Jesus assures those
who love him that they will all be together again some
heavenly day.
In these words, Jesus is doing his best to give comfort
and assurance. "Don't let your hearts be troubled,"
he says. He knows full well that people are sad, broken
and distraught in grief - and he is reaching out to
them in consolation. Jesus was about to die and he was
getting them ready for his death. He was consoling them
in advance. So he told them that he was going on ahead
to prepare a place for them. He assumes they know how
to get to heaven, but alas, they didn't know. And it
is only doubting Thomas who has the moxie to speak his
doubts. "Lord, we do not know where you are going
how can we know the way?" he asks.
For Jesus, this is a wonderful "teaching moment"
- one of his last such opportunities - in which someone's
baffled, heartbreaking question gives him a chance to
say who he is. Before this moment arises, Jesus had
already told them who he was by saying:
" "I am the bread of life,"
" "I am the light of the world,"
" "I am the good shepherd."
"
But in answering Thomas, Jesus adds three final pieces
to the puzzle of who he is. This time, he tells his
disciples "I am the way, I am the truth and I am
the life." He tells his disciples they don't need
a map to follow where he is going, they only need Him!
Jesus said that he is the way, the route, the road,
the path. He is the door, the gate, the key, the access.
All you really need is Jesus.
What's more, the truth and life Jesus embodied was not
available in the abstract, as if reciting a creed a
million times would bring salvation. No, no. The truth
he embodied was only available in relationship - as
in the love relationship of God for Jesus; as in the
love relationship of Jesus for his friends; as in our
relationship of love for one another in Christ. It is
within those relationships that Christians find their
way home. Outside of those relationships, there is no
compass, no map, no light in the darkness that is good
enough.
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life,"
he said. But he didn't stop there, he went on - he said
more - and as a result of what else he said, we have
had a huge problem down through the centuries. He didn't
stop with "I am the way, the truth and the life.."
- he went on and he said: "No one comes to the
Father except through me," His claim was "No
one relates to God except through Jesus!"
Now, the way his followers took that claim - gave them
all the permission and warrant they would need to turn
his way into the way of crusades, inquisitions, holy
wars and holocausts. Sadly, they took it to be permission
to go and conquer non-Christians - violently. Because
of this, Christians have far too much blood on their
hands. Notice, it did not happen immediately. When Jesus
first spoke those words - and even sixty years later,
when John first wrote them down - the followers of the
"Way of Jesus" were still a small, persecuted
band living on the edges of society. Evil and death
circled over their heads like a cloud of impatient vultures.
It seemed only a matter of time before they became extinct.
No one was telling them they were right to follow Jesus.
On the contrary, people were lining up to tell them
they were deluded, damned for following Jesus. So -
nothing could have sounded sweeter to their ears than
Jesus' assurance that they were on the right track-
and the only track to God. So strong was their belief
in this - that it allowed them to accept their own deaths;
and even to forgive those who punished them. By imitating
Christ, they embarked on the way, the truth, the life
that would lead them home.
However, in the fourth century, when the persecuted
band eventually became the official religion of the
Holy Roman Empire, it all changed. All of a sudden,
"No one comes to the Father except through Jesus"
was backed up by an army, an emperor and an increasingly
powerful church, which was not at all bashful about
using some of the same tactics it had picked up from
its tormentors. Over the next fifteen hundred years,
Jesus' sweet words of assurance, around a Last Supper
table, became a banner under which countless Muslims,
Jews and even Orthodox Christians were killed. It was
assumed that when there is only one way, all other ways
must be cut off - for God's sake, for their own sake,
for the sake of those they might lead astray. Recent
clashes in Serbian republics and central Africa have
their root in this conviction.
As long as this conviction survives, there will be
no end to enmity and to retaliation. This is a problem
no twenty-first century Christian can ignore, but it
is such a difficult one that most of us do not know
what to do about it. Shall we demote Christ, conceding
that his truth is one way among many - a way, a truth,
a life - or shall we still insist that his way is the
only way?
I'm a Christian. In the recent few weeks, a Muslim
mechanic serviced my van. I ate food prepared by Buddhist
hands. A Jew did my root canal, a B'hai called about
a painting she'd done for me, a Native Canadian made
a sculpture at the Vancouver Airport where I rendezvoused
with a traveler who is an atheist.
I'm not sure that we mainline Protestant types know
how to live in such a world. After all, our major project,
well into the last century, was to make the world Christian,
to evangelize the globe so uniformly that we would never
encounter anyone who was unable to confess: "Jesus
Christ is the Son of God." Pictures of Indian Residential
Schools come to mind. But haven't we all noticed? Christians,
certainly church-going ones, are increasingly feeling
like a minority in the very culture we thought we were
making Christian. Increasingly, people are asking, "How
are we to live as Christians in communities which are
multi-faith?" What do you say to the person who
sits next to you at work and is Muslim? Should you say
anything? Or to the Hindu pediatrician who tends your
sick grandson at 3 AM in Children's Hospital.... what
about her? Is she going to hell because she doesn't
believe John 14?
Wherever we live, there is the increasing likelihood
that our neighbors may worship Vishnu or Allah, instead
of Jesus Christ. The stories that give meaning to their
lives may well come from the Qur'an instead of by Saint
Paul's Letters. As long as these neighbors remain the
minority, many of us will not feel compelled to think
through our relationship with them. The burden will
remain on them - to learn how to live in a culture that
regards their religion as strange, and - in many cases
- to learn how to defend themselves against the tiresome
missionaries who are always trying to save their souls.
Meanwhile, they are our neighbors - these people who
do not believe in Jesus - whom Jesus has given us to
love - so that we cannot escape the nettlesome question
of truth. Things would be so much easier if it were
about a truth. Instead, Jesus said it was the truth,
the way, and the life, without whom no one comes to
the Father. If you don't "have Jesus, then you
won't live with God"! That's what it claims! Would
anyone here like to sit down with any high school class
here in Vancouver and unpack that one for the students?
Perhaps, the easiest way to deal with it is to dismiss
John's gospel altogether. After all, it is the last
of the four gospels, the least historical, and the only
one in which Jesus walks around proclaiming who he is.
But even if you delete John, you cannot delete the church
that grew up on him. What are you going to do about
the Nicene Creed? "We believe in one Lord, Jesus
Christ, the only Son of God...?" All of this is
a major problem in a multi-faith world, isn't it!
Well, it was very difficult for me to deal with until
I read a message by a Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor at Duke
University. She helped me in this quandary by reminding
me exactly when and where it was that Jesus spoke as
recorded in John 14. When Jesus said he was "the
way, the truth, the life" he was not addressing
a modern day interfaith tribunal, as the central figure
of a dominant world religion. Rather, he was speaking
to a small circle of his friends on the night before
he died. Their feet were still wet from him washing
them. One of them felt so close to Jesus, he was leaning
up against him. It was a small, intimate, threatened,
emotional, community, bound together in faith, on the
very edge of a shattering experience. He spoke to them,
therefore, in a language of love -out of the depth of
his relationship with them - and these followers of
Jesus were still trying to figure out who they were.
The fate of the Hindus was not on Jesus' mind at that
moment. He was not focused on his superiority over the
Buddha or Moses. Rather, his heart was breaking for
his disciples and he was swamped with love for his friends,
for their hearts were breaking, too. In that small,
intimate, community, bound together in faith, Jesus
was giving them everything he could think of to help
them survive without him. He used the singular, exclusive
language that people who love so often use. When John
wrote it down later, he used that language too.
It was the language of love, just like when we say:
" You are the only man in the world for me.
" You are the best mother anyone ever had.
" No one has ever loved a grandchild the way I
love you.
This is not objective language - intended to judge
other men, other mothers, other grandchildren. This
is language spoken out of the depths of relationship.
This is language to affirm the truth which only love
can express and grasp.
If Jesus had said, "Friends, God is your home.
I am but one way, among many, to find God. Now you must
decide for yourselves which way is best," they
might all have died of anxiety on the spot. But he did
not say that. Instead, he used the language of love.
He said:
" I am the only one for you.
" You have made the right choice.
" No one can lead you to God, the way I can.
Sadly, through the ages the church has wrenched that
language loose from its moorings, from its original
use, and used it instead to separate itself from neighbors;
it has deformed the good news of God in Christ. It has
turned the way of servant-hood into a way to assert
dominance. When that has happened we have turned the
life of loyalty to God into a life of loyalty to our
own lens. The danger, when we do this, is that our insistence
on Christ (sometimes to the point of violence!) may
make us less than Christ-like.
Am I saying there is nothing special about Jesus, and
that one religion is as good as another? No, I don't
intend to be saying that. For me, he is The Way. He
is my truth, my life, my way to God. I believe that
his life, death and resurrection changed the relationship
between God and the world forever, and I am fully committed
to following him however poor is my imitation. Because
of him, I am able to say my prayers in a Hindu temple
or Jewish synagogue. Because of him, I can learn from
people who call God by other names. Because of him,
I bow my head before sacrificial love wherever I find
it. Because of him, I know who my neighbors are. This
way of openness to God, this way of relationship with
other people, is the only way for me. I don't know any
other way to God.
Ask me about God's opinion of other ways and I will
refer you to God. Yes, there are some ways that bear
no resemblance to Christ's way, and those ways beg to
be opposed - but opposed as Christ himself would oppose
them - by offering himself to them, by showing them
how God acts.
And if you ask, "how can you hold such apparent
contradictions"? I answer: "Because I am a
Christian, that is why; and this faith of ours is full
of contradictions. We believe in one God, who is three.
We believe Jesus was fully human, but also and fully
divine. We believe giving up of self gives us life!
We believe all kinds of things that don't rationally
go together. So add one more. We believe Jesus is the
only way, AND that his way teaches us to live in peace
with other ways."
If this does not satisfy you, then I hope you will
continue to struggle until you arrive at something that
does, because Jesus died in the hope of ending all divisions.
He came back to life with the promise of a world in
which all would be made one. How God will manage that
remains to be seen.
But three things seem sure:
" we are part of the plan
" it is a plan that God intends for God's world
- and
" we've learned about this plan through God's love.
+ + + + + +
Sermon Resources:
John 14:1-6; E.M. Nichols; F.C. Grant, The Gospels,
1957;
Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor, Duke University Chapel
05.02.99.
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Shaughnessy Heights United Church
congregation is a Christian faith community respecting
each other in our diversity and reaching out to all
who seek God’s love.
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West 33rd Avenue,
Vancouver, BC V6M 1A7
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Tel:
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