Sermon: One Way?

Text: John 14:1-14

Date: April 20, 2008

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

            As far as I can recall, after 23 years of mostly preaching the lectionary—using the texts that are suggested on a three year cycle—I have never preached on this particular text.  That is to say, it has been on the preaching “menu” at least 7 times and I have said, “No, thank you,” and chosen another text.  I’ll tell you why—it’s because of that 6th verse: Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

            I have always felt about that verse as I would about someone like a beloved uncle saying something really embarrassing in front of my friends; something terribly old-fashioned or prejudiced or politically incorrect.  The kind of thing that your ears would turn red upon hearing, which would stop all other conversation, appalling the company sitting around the living room.  You’d want to take your friends into the kitchen and explain how your uncle’s really a great guy, and he just has these moments, and you’re really sorry. 

            That’s my emotional reaction to that verse.  It just flat-out embarrasses me.  I suppose it’s because it’s one of those verses some of the Christians tend to pick up and wield like a weapon.  This scene from the movie “Breaking Away” came to mind while I was ruminating on it.  In that film the hero is a teenager who loves bicycling and is a huge fan of the Italian national cycling team.  The young man trains constantly and learns a little Italian and fakes an Italian accent.  He is thrilled when he learns that the Italians are coming to ride in a local bike race, and he trains harder than ever.  When the big day comes, he rides like mad to catch up with the Italian team.  He pulls up alongside them and tries to chat with them in his few Italian phrases.  He just wants to be like them, to be welcomed by them, to ride alongside them.  They find it rather offensive that this American kid can ride as swiftly as they can.  They respond to his wagging-puppy overtures by putting a stick or something into his tire spokes so that he wrecks spectacularly in the ditch while they ride off laughing.

            I’ve heard too many mean-spirited uses of John 14:6.  It’s as if people of other faiths ride up alongside the Christian “team” humming along the highway, cheerfully wanting to ride alongside in the quest for Truth and Life, and Christians respond by trying to wreck their vehicle for finding Truth, sticking this “No one comes to the Father except by me” into their neighbor’s spokes and gleefully anticipating their wreck in the eternal ditch of Hell.  As in Wendy Cope’s tongue-in-cheek poem: “Jesus, Jesus!  Who is on Jesus’ side?/ Wear His colours, sing out His name with pride!  Supporters of His eleven/ Are sure to get to Heaven/ Up in the sky, while others fry,/ We’ll be winners who never died!”[1] 

            I’m guessing that although it is human nature to want to be in some sense “winners,” most of us in this room wouldn’t really want to perch in the sky and watch people who were not Christians like us “fry.”  We don’t really desire that every other religion wreck in the ditches of eternity.  And I’m guessing that most of us don’t believe that’s what is going to happen.  Am I right?  Something’s wrong with this picture of Jesus implying that those outside his circle of disciples are lost.

            So was it just an embarrassing gaffe?  Or has this remark been misunderstood?   I found the scholarship in the New Interpreter’s Bible helpful.  In the volume on John’s gospel, Gail O’Day reminds readers to interpret the troublesome verse against the backdrop of the late first-century world of the Johannine community rather than the 21st century world of the contemporary church.  This is not "the sweeping claim of a major world religion" but as "the conviction of a religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world." This text should be understood as a "joyous affirmation" of a particular faith community that believes that "God is available to them decisively in the incarnation," for it was "through the incarnation that the identity of God as Father" was revealed to them. The reader should note that Jesus does not say, "No one comes to God except through me," but rather "No one comes to the Father except through me." As the Prologue to the Gospel of John (1:1-18) makes clear, "the incarnation has redefined God for the Fourth Evangelist and those for whom he writes, because it brings the tangible presence of God’s love to the world. ‘God’ is not a generic deity here; God is the One whom the disciples come to recognize in the life and death of Jesus."   When Jesus said this to his disciples, he was talking to them particularly, as in, “None of you come to the Father except through me—knowing me, seeing me, seeing the loving Father through me.”  Thus, a passage that is often labeled as "excessively exclusionary would be described more accurately as particularism.”[2]

            So this is not necessarily addressed to the whole world.  It is addressed to a particular little minority community of the faithful who were anxious about being able to stay connected with Christ and with the loving God with whom they had experienced a connection through Jesus.  We might understand this better as a living-room conversation among friends than as a global broadcast.  And we can still joyously affirm its truth for us in our little minority community, out here in the wild, unchurched West—for us, Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.  Christ is our particular path to the Truth, and for what is revealed in Christ’s life and teachings we are profoundly grateful.

            Particularism does not necessarily have to lead to exclusivism as we consider the lively community of world religions.  Theologian Ronald L. Farmer has written about a variety of stances Christians might take toward other faiths, saying he can see three broad categories: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. According to the exclusivist perspective, there is salvation only for Christians. Conversion to the Christian faith is required of all people. Exclusivists engage in interfaith dialogue, if at all, with the goal of converting their dialogue partners.  You may be aware that there has been a little conversation in the media in recent days about a prayer in the old Roman Catholic Latin Mass that petitions God for a conversion of the Jews.  The current Pope (Benedict XVI) has softened the language a little but not excised it—a rather exclusive stance.

That doesn’t sit well with a great many people of faith, even among Christians.  Farmer points out that since at least the mid-Twentieth Century a widespread movement has existed among both Catholics and mainline Protestants toward inclusivism. According to this view, salvation is still Christian salvation, but it is available to all people whether they are Christian or not. Devout people of other faiths may be regarded as "anonymous Christians," for everyone is included within the universal scope of Christ’s saving work. Inclusivists engage in interfaith dialogue to build healthy relationships and possibly to help their dialogue partners see that their religions find fulfillment in Christianity.  Inclusivism is a bit friendlier.  I’m not sure it is entirely respectful, though, to think of non-Christians as “anonymous Christians.”  A person suggested to me once that I was really an anonymous Buddhist because some of the tenets of Process Theology sounded Buddhist to him.  I know he was trying to pay me a compliment, but it still didn’t set quite right.

More controversial, Farmer asserts, is the position known as pluralism. Pluralists view the various religions as valid spheres of salvation, each assuming a characteristically different form. Other religions are not secondary contexts of Christian redemption, but rather are independent pathways to salvation. This should not be understood to mean that all religions are the same—they are not—or that people will experience the various religions as equally salvific—they will not. Different religions appeal to different people because they have different spiritual needs. A Christian pluralist believes that, in the words of Marjorie Suchocki,  God "bends to our condition, shaping redemption according to the uniqueness of every particular human situation.”[3] 

The Dalai Lama said something along these lines when he was speaking on the “inter-spirituality” panel this past Tuesday.  He pointed out that the Buddha actually taught some philosophies that are contradictory to each other.  Why would the compassionate Buddha do such a thing?  Surely not to deliberately confuse his followers.  Rather, he did it out of compassion for his followers.  He knew that he had and would have followers of different dispositions, and one philosophy would not suit every person’s disposition or ability.  Suitable teachings were needed for many different persons even within the Buddhist circle.  His Holiness went on to suggest that the variety of spiritual traditions in the world are better to satisfy the needs of a variety of people.  I think one could conclude that the Dalai Lama is a pluralist. 

I think I am, too.  A pluralist, that is.  I really appreciated what the Muslim woman (Dr. Ingrid Mattson?) sitting on that same inter-spirituality panel said in answer to a question about why there are so many competing religious traditions.  She said that there is a verse in the Koran that says, in essence, that God could have made us all one religion.  But God made many religions so that we could “strive, as in a race, toward goodness.”  She suggested that interfaith dialogue is the Olympics of spirituality.  Gesturing toward all the religious luminaries on the stage with her, she said, “This is the true Olympics.”

Getting back to John’s gospel: In my view, it’s unfortunate that the Jesus who said so clearly in this same gospel of John that he did not come into the world to condemn the world has had this verse used to condemn so many.  The image of the Father’s house that he uses early in chapter 14 is a beautiful corrective to exclusivistic claims.  “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places.”  In God’s household there is room for many, many people.  Maybe God’s household is like the apartment houses that are built for each Olympics, where the athletes of the world come to live together.  Imagine that in God’s Olympics, those who have trained in various spiritual disciplines do not compete with each other, but ride together on the Way toward Truth.  We clumsily try to converse about our different philosophies and theologies like people of different nations who know only a few phrases in common.  But no one is out to wreck the others on the Quest.

“Jesus!  Jesus! Who is on Jesus’ side?  Wear His colours, sing his name out with pride!” We may be proud of our tradition and deeply grateful for it.  But among our companions of other faiths, in this race toward goodness, perhaps we may strive to arrive in a tie. 

[1] Cope, Wendy  first of “Strugnells’ Christian Songs”  Serious Concerns  London: Faber & Faber, 1992, p. 60

[2] Gail R. O’Day, The Gospel of John, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 9 [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995] 743

[3] http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2001-2002/2002-04-28.shtml