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A Sermon by Donel
McClellan
A Sermon by Donel
McClellan
One Way? A couple of weeks ago, one
of the religion columnists for the Bellingham Herald wrote an essay
entitled Have You Committed the Unforgivable Sin? The article was a
very clear statement of fundamentalist Christianity. Its conclusion was that
those who did not accept Jesus would be condemned to hell. I found the article
troublesome on several levels but I have to confess that, in some sense, it
probably represents the belief of the majority of Christians in the world
today. Neil Nicolay of this congregation replied with a strong letter of
disagreement. That prompted a couple more letters that said, in essence, like
it or not, this is God’s way. Believe in Jesus or spend eternity in torment. I suspect that
fundamentalist believers in the “one way” theology would quote our scripture
lesson from John to support their point. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Many
Christians would close their case with this one verse. Jesus said it. I
believe it. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Xiaoling Zhu, Area Executive
East Asia and the Pacific for our denomination’s World Ministries Board, was
with us here in Bellingham last Tuesday. Among other things, he told us that
there were about 60,000 protestant Christians in China in 1949 when all the
foreign missionaries were sent home. Today, without outside help, there are
20-30 million protestant Christians in China. Xiaoling pointed out that only
2-3,000 ministers to provide leadership in that vast church. The Chinese
church has little educated leadership. There are no libraries to provide
reference books. They have only the Bible as a guide and they read it
literally. Xiaoling hopes that over the years more trained clergy will be
available, more seminaries and theological libraries will be built, and more
books about the Bible will be published. In China there is little option to a
literal reading of the scriptures. A literal reading of the
Bible in the United States is not due to a lack of trained clergy or the
scarcity of interpretive materials. It is a result of a hundred-year old
battle with the scientific mind. Fundamentalism is an attempt to hold onto the
values of the 19th century as our culture careened into the 20th
century. Fundamentalism is a fortress against what its adherents see as a
cultural rejection of God. In order to protect faith from the world,
fundamentalists built a wall around faith and cemented it with their
particular reading of the scriptures. This morning I would like to
affirm what John tells us Jesus said. Namely, “I am the way, and the truth,
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And I want to
tell you why I believe that statement which holds such amazing hope for
Christians does not constitute bad news for non-Christians. First, because we are not
fundamentalists, we need a little context. Of the four Gospels, three never
portray Jesus saying anything like this. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus’
ministry is focused preaching good news, healing people and announcing that
God’s reign is beginning to break forth. In these Gospels Jesus never speaks
of himself as being one with God. Neither is Jesus particularly interested in
attracting a following. He heals people and tells them to run along and lead
righteous lives, not to drop everything and follow him. Jesus, like John the
Baptist, believes that God’s redemption is drawing near. People need to wake
up so they will be able to see the signs and participate in the new community
God is bringing about. The marks of this community will be compassion,
hospitality and justice. That is the story of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Why is John different? It is
because John is writing later, after a split in the church, to a different
audience. John writes near the end of the first century after Rome has
destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and wiped out any traces of the
revolutionary Jewish Zealot movement that sought to overturn the Roman
occupation. By this time, the church and the synagogue have separated and
there is considerable animosity between traditional Judaism and the followers
of this crucified prophet, Jesus. Where the first three Gospels were addressed
to the Jewish community, John is focused on the Greek world. John sees Christ
as the Logos, the logic, the structure, the Word present before creation,
which became flesh in Jesus. John’s Jesus is the Cosmic Christ. I suspect that what Jesus is
saying in John is not so much I am the way, the truth, the
life but something far more radical. Jesus’ claims are better rendered without
the articles. He says, I am way, I am truth, I am life.
Marcus Borg tells the story
of an interfaith worship service where an unfortunate oversight led to giving
the Buddhist reader very passage from John's gospel. After he read it the
Buddhist said, “This scripture is absolutely true —Jesus is the way—the only
way that one comes to know the divine.” Borg explains that what the
Buddhist meant by that, is that Jesus embodied the way, incarnated the way,
exampled the way and that is true of every path that leads one to the divine.
The way of that Jesus lived is the way of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and
every major path leading people to the sacred. He was not saying "believe in
Jesus". He was saying believe in the way that Jesus is.[1] Jesus said: “No one comes to
the Father except through me.” Taken literally that seems to be pretty clear
and exclusive statement. But let’s look at it a bit closer. First of all, the
word Jesus is using is better translated Daddy than Father. It is Abba,
the word Jewish babies first learn for their daddies. Abba is a unique and
distinctive concept of God in the scriptures. It is Jesus’ own contribution to
the world of religious belief. To understand our relationship to God as that
of a child to a loving parent we must look through Jesus’ eyes. To affirm this
understanding of our own relationship to God does not deny the belief of
anyone else. It is absolutely true to say that no one comes to a relationship
with God as Abba (Father) except through Jesus. Part of the problem for
thinking Christians today is that so many wonderful theological concepts have
been packaged in neat small boxes by others who defend their views as the
gospel truth. Often those packages are anything but gospel—good news. Take the
wonderful word salvation. Salvation has been captured by a group espousing
what Barbara Brown Taylor calls transactional theology. She says,
“According to this theology, if you believe the right things about Jesus, then
he will help you. If you don’t, then he won’t.”[2]
There are two problems this theology. First, it just doesn’t fit our
experience of the world. Second, it doesn’t fit the biblical picture of Jesus.
Yet this is the box into
which the rich images of salvation in the Bible are crammed. Do you remember
some of those wonderful visions? For Abraham, salvation was the continuation
of his family line, to prosper and bring blessing to the earth. Moses looked
at salvation as following God’s law which shaped a whole people to enjoy a
life of peace and good works. For the prophets, salvation looked like new
heavens and a new earth where everyone would gather on God’s Holy Mountain and
all people and all animals would live in peace and harmony. Have you noticed that these
images of salvation take place right here on earth with living people? For the
Hebrew Bible, salvation is not about people going to heaven but about heaven
descending to earth. A few centuries passed and
Israel was conquered by one foreign power after another, people realized that
unless God did something impressive, they were never going to see salvation.
So folks began to read the Hebrew scriptures again, and found there hints that
God might intervene in history by sending someone to bring about salvation.
The identity of that person, the messiah, took many forms in the expectant
minds of the people. Fast forward to John’s
Gospel. Jesus has moved from bringing the message of God’s coming realm to
becoming the message itself. In John’s Gospel, Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom is
projected into the future. A Lamb sits in the center of a heavenly city and
only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life are able to
enter. That made perfect sense to the Greek minds that read John. This rich and complex
understanding of salvation is compressed in the minds of most American
Christians into a formula of transactional theology. For many people,
salvation means getting into heaven through profession of faith in Jesus
Christ. Barbara Brown Taylor
comments: “The rich and complex reality of being saved by God has become
individualized, spiritualized, institutionalized and monopolized. In most
places it is difficult to find any remnant of the Hebrew hope for transformed
life on earth, or any sense that salvation might be experienced daily by those
who are not on a first-name basis with Jesus.”
[3] Salvation is bigger than the
fundamentalists imagine and probably richer than we can comprehend. Above all
it is a free gift of Grace from God and no human has authority to put a fence
around it. The United Church of Christ
has just launched a new identity campaign. The image for it is a bright red
poster with a large black comma on it. At the top it reads: “Never place a
period where God has placed a comma . . . Gracie Allen.” At the bottom of the
poster is the campaign theme: “God is still speaking.” To see the campaign, go
to
www.stillspeaking.com. “Never place a period where
God has placed a comma.” That is a pretty good description of how we try to
live out our faith in the world. We live with other people who believe
differently and we give them the benefit of the doubt because we try to “never
place a period where God has placed a comma.” This isn’t something new
with us as a church. In 1620, just before the Mayflower sailed with its load
of Pilgrims bound for a new land, their pastor, John Robinson preached a
sermon to the departing company. He said, “There will be yet more light to
break forth from God’s Holy Word.” In other words, “God is still speaking.” I have no doubt that God
spoke to John and through John to us. It is absolutely true and trustworthy
that Jesus is way and truth and life. It is absolutely true and trustworthy
that no one comes to understand God as Abba except through Jesus. And God is still speaking.
I know absolutely that in
Jesus there is salvation in all the richness of that term, but I would never
say that outside of Jesus there is no salvation. God is still speaking I know absolutely that God
loves this church and guides it through the Holy Spirit, but I would never
claim that God’s love and guidance are limited to the church and not known
outside of it. God is still speaking. Perhaps something like this
is what W.H. Auden had in mind when he fashioned the last verses of his
oratorio, For the Time Being, from this portion of the Gospel of John,[4] He is the Way. Follow Him through the
Land of Unlikeness; You will see rare beasts,
and have unique adventures. He is the Truth. Seek Him in the Kingdom
of Anxiety; You will come to a great
city that has expected your return for years. He is the Life. Love Him in the World of
the Flesh; And at your marriage all
its occasions shall dance for joy. Amen. Notes:
[1].
Email comment by Rev. Steven Michael Smith, Colona, IL United Methodist
Church from midrash@joinhands.com
[2].
Barbara Brown Taylor, Easter Preaching and the Lost Language of Salvation,
Journal For Preachers, Easter 2002, pp. 21-22. I am indebted to this
article for many of the ideas in this sermon.
[3].
Barbara Brown Taylor, p. 23
[4].
W.H. Auden, For The Time Being (closing chorus) |