A Clobber Passage

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
April 19, 2008; 5th Sunday of Easter, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 14:1-14) -- Jesus said, "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. And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."

Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it."
___________________________________________________

There are a handful of passages in the scriptures that are sometimes called "clobber passages." I got clobbered last week with a verse from today's gospel. "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." That was quoted in a letter I received last week from an earnest Christian taking issue with one of my newspaper columns where I spoke gratefully about what I had learned from non-Christians. He called me a "universalist." That was not a complement.

Maybe you know the story of Bishop Carlton Pearson of the New Dimensions Church in Tulsa. When he began to doubt that God would send non-Christians to an eternal, punishing hell and began to preach about universal reconciliation in what he called the Gospel of Inclusion, the bishops of his denomination condemned his teaching as heresy and ousted Bishop Pearson as a heretic.

According to David Barrett's "World Christian Encyclopedia" there are nineteen major world religious groupings and 10,000 distinct religions world wide. Christianity itself is divided into 34,000 separate groups, denominations and para-churches, nearly five thousand in the U.S. alone. Which one is right? How do you know the only way and truth and life, the only way to the Father?

The Holy Father Pope Benedict addressed this in the year 2000 in his declaration "Dominus Iesus," letting us know that "churches such as the Church of England, where the apostolic succession of bishops from the time of St. Peter is disputed by Rome, and churches without bishops, are not considered 'proper' churches." Only the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches are "churches in the proper sense." Bless his heart.

The Pope would get a harsh hearing from the Church of Christ down the street where they are sure that their church is the only true one. Then again, I remember having many conversations with my anxious church treasurer in one of my previous congregations. Her son-in-law pressured her tirelessly to convert to his Mormon congregation so that she would be able to see her grand-children in the after-life. He didn't want her left behind.

I also remember a conversation I had with a Baptist pastor who was certain that I am a heretic and that everyone who listens to me is likely to be lead down the path to eternal damnation with me. He spoke out of earnest concern and compassion. He truly believes that you and I are in mortal and eternal danger. He allowed as to how he was worried about his uncle also, who as a youth felt attacked by aggressive Christianity and forsake all religion. I asked the pastor, "You love your uncle, don't you?" "Yes, of course." "Well, now. What if you were in charge? If you were God, would you condemn your uncle whom you love to eternal hell, damnation and torment?" He thought briefly, and spoke his heart's truth. "No. I wouldn't." "Then," I asked, "why would you worship a god who is not as good as you are?" There was a moment when it seemed like he blinked. But it would be too costly for him to believe in such a generous God. He knows he would be treated like Bishop Carlton Pearson if he were to do so.

What are we to say about this word: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." I tried to address that earlier this year in a newspaper column titled "Transcending Religious Monopolies." That's the column the letter I received last week took issue with. My argument there was that as Trinitarians, Christians understand that wherever God is revealed, it is the activity of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God whom we know as Jesus doing the revealing, and it is the activity of God the Holy Spirit energizing the revelation. From before time and forever, God's Word is active and real in every time and every place. So, wherever there is any truth or goodness or beauty, it is the activity of the Holy Trinity, by whatever name. I'm not going to re-hash that column, you can find that on our web site under "Other Links" where we store all of my articles from the Northwest Arkansas Times.

I think our friend Marcus Borg has offered a helpful way to look at these things. Borg says that there are three ways to see the multiplication of religions. There is the absolutist understanding of religion which affirms that one's own religion is the only true religion. There is the reductionist view which reduces all religions to mere human inventions constructed to fill in our ignorance and to serve some strong psychological and social needs for security and meaning. Borg offers a third, his preferred view, the sacramental understanding of religion: religions as sacraments of the sacred.

Sacraments, you recall, are outward and visible things which mediate the sacred. Bread and wine are finite things, made by human hands; they mediate for us the presence of Christ and become a sacramental participation in his divine life. Religions, then, are human creations, finite things. But they connect us with God and with infinite things. Religions are "created in response to the sacred." Each religion embodies a response to the experience of the sacred in the particular cultures within which each religion came into being. Geography makes a difference. If Jerry Falwell had been born in Saudi Arabia is there any doubt that he would have become a powerful Islamic Imam?

Religions tend to differ from one another most in their beliefs. They tend to be most similar to one another in their core, in the heart of their experience of "the real" and "the more" – the experience of the numinous and mysterious. When we talk about our experience of God and how we nurture that experience in our prayer and practice, different religions tend to talk much the same language. When we emphasize our beliefs, we tend to separate.

I think we can allow a great tolerance for beliefs. Human beings do the best we can to put words and theology around our experience of the ultimate. What works for you might not work for me. We can agree to disagree.

But I like to make a distinction between beliefs and actions. I will defend the right of someone to a belief that I think is wrong or stupid, but I believe we must be vigilant toward religious actions when they harm others. When the cult that calls itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints abuses young girls in the name of their religion, the rest of us must say "No!" Believe what makes sense to you, but do not harm others. Admittedly that can be a fine line.

I embrace Jesus Christ as the way and the truth and the life. I believe that the revelation of his life makes God transparent and leads us into the depths of meaning and relationship. I look at Jesus as the human face of God. And when I look at Jesus, I see one who was generous toward those of a different faith from his own. I see him embracing and lauding Samaritans who were despised as heretics by his fellow Jews. I see him reaching out in compassion to those who were called sinners and unclean. I see him offering the same compassion and the same miracles of healing and feeding to Gentile and Jew alike. I see the incarnation of a spirit of love and compassion that is universally present in humanity. So wherever I see love and compassion, I see the manifestation of the same energy, the same Spirit that animated Jesus. We are all part of that whole.

The way Jesus talked about all of this was in family terms. He called us all brothers and sisters. He said he was in the Father and the Father in him. And he said we are in him and he is in us. He embraced all humanity as his family. That is the way and the truth and the life. The way to the Father is the path Jesus showed us, the way of compassion and love, an embracing vision that sees all humanity as our own flesh and blood. Jesus wrapped his arms of love around every bit of humanity, including our evil and our death, and gave that to God the Father on the cross. So in one sense, no one comes to the Father except through him. Which means everyone comes to the Father, because Jesus has embraced all humanity as his own family and has taken all our goodness as well as all of our evil and cruelty into his being and given it to God.

That is the kind of love that overcomes death. It overcomes sin and alienation and evil. And with God's help, it will overcome the cruelty that we commit toward one another in the name of religion. It is significant that Jesus was condemned as a blasphemer. Even the blasphemers come to the Father through such love. God has embraced us all, and Jesus is our story of that embrace. That story is big enough to make room for every sacramental experience of God and everything that threatens to divide us. Instead of being a clobber passage, to say that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus can be an embracing passage: saying that in Jesus, God has embraced the whole of humanity, in all its goodness and in all of its evil. Nothing is outside his embrace.

So we can live as generously and as expansively toward the other, the outcast, and the blasphemer as Jesus did. We can love God and neighbor and self, as he taught us. We can embrace the family of humanity as one family, with many diverse sacraments of the presence of God, who comes to us in so many wonderful ways. Bishop Pearson is right. The essence of Jesus is a gospel of inclusion. And everyone's uncle is included.