Homecoming

First UMC Fort Dodge

April 20, 2008

Mark Haverland

John 14:1-14 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." 8 Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." 9 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'? 10 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. 11 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. 12 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. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

There is some old Clint Eastwood type movie in which the good guys are faced with confusion about which of the apparent enemy are really bad guys. “Which are the good guys and which are the bad?” someone asks. The hero deadpans, “Let’s kill them all and let God sort it out.”

Yogi Berra is reported to have taken his glove and erased the cross which a batter made on the plate, saying, “How about we just let God watch this time?”

We want so badly for God to be on our side. We want so badly to know that we have special knowledge of the way and the truth. We love it when we think that some people don’t know what we do about where the best restaurants are, where the best fishing spots are, and where God is. It’s not just knowledge we crave; it’s knowledge that others don’t have.

Nowhere does this urge to possess special knowledge have more destructive results than in religion. I’m always extremely uncomfortable when my fundamentalist friends start down the road to religious exclusivism, a road, by the way, which begins in our scripture reading this morning. Introduced a while back as a United Methodist Minister to a fundamentalist, I heard him say: “Well, I suppose God can bless a Methodist.” “I suppose…”?! I experienced similar haughty exclusivism during the week of September 11 when Mark Schwalenburger was happy to host the first prayer service at his church but wouldn’t come to either the E Free church or here. Imagine being so sure you know who God favors and so sure that you are among them that you don’t have to bother supporting the prayers of other faithful people! What I hate most of all about fundamentalists is the smug self-assurance that when the rapture comes, they will be lifted up and I will be left standing. They get this cockiness by distorting the passage from John’s Gospel where Jesus says, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What could Jesus have been thinking to say something that has caused so much human misery? The idea that only those who believe in Jesus are welcome in the Kingdom of God has spawned breathtaking horror over the centuries. I read a book on the crusades a while back, Warriors of God, by James Reston. I was appalled at the cruelty of the Christian warriors certain that God was on their side and that death was a ticket to heaven. Current Muslim terrorists have nothing on the 13^th century holy warriors of Christianity. They killed Muslims and Jews with a cruel savagery and an absolutely clear conscience because they were convinced that God did not hear the prayers of either Jews or Muslims. It made me ashamed of my heritage to learn what savages Christians have been. Similarly, much recent research has linked the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews during WWII, directly to the anti-Jewish sentiments of Christianity and especially the Gospel of John, which has such harsh words to say about the Jews “who killed Jesus.”

When the fruits are as bad as this, we just have to re-examine our presuppositions. Christianity is way too violent to deserve to be the way, the truth and the life for everyone. This is precisely what Pope John XXIII decided in the early sixties, eliminating from the teaching materials, music and liturgy of the Catholic church all the references to the Jews as killers of Christ. We in the Protestant churches need to be vigilant about this also. Luther’s anti-Jewishness is blatant and persistent in much of the reformation churches, surviving long enough to inhibit most Protestant churches in Germany from launching much of a defense of the Jews during the horror of Nazi Germany. Christians have behaved badly for most of our history because we took this passage and others from the Gospel of John too literally and too much to heart. We need to stop doing this.

I talked last week about our Methodist belief that parts of the Bible may actually be wrong. Well, this is one of them. Jesus is not the only way to the Father. Jesus is our way to the Father, to be sure. He’s a pretty good way, at that. But all people are children of God, even if they don’t know it, and even if they have a different name for God and celebrate God’s presence in their lives in different ways. This is not to say that all God’s children get it right. I think that the Muslims who are sending gullible believers to die as suicide bombers have stepped outside the pale of acceptable religious practice. They do themselves a great disservice, also, since world opinion will harden against a religion so cruel and heartless. This is a great pity since the Palestinian cause is deserving of serious weight in the Mid-East conflict.

All such cruelty to others has its origin in the belief that God favors only me. As Rowland Nethaway of the Waco Tribune-Herald put it in a recent editorial: “Refusal to accept religious differences opens the door to religious extremism, which leads to hatred, persecution, slaughter and wars. Even Christian insistence that it is the only way contributes to a world of intolerance. We just have to stop talking this way.

A few minutes ago we sang the hymn— ‘Come my Way, my Truth, my Life The words come from the 17^th century poet George Herbert who makes of this passage what we should make of it. He personalizes it. He makes it his own:

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:

Such a way as gives us breath,

such a truth as ends all strife,

such a life as killeth death.

It’s based on the scripture from the Gospel of John where Jesus says ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ but Herbert emphasizes that Jesus is our way, our truth, our life. He takes this passage into our hearts and makes it real for us. There is a great difference between thinking—‘Oh yes, Christ is the way, the truth and the life,’ and saying, 'my' Truth, ‘my’ Way, ‘my’ Life. There are many rooms in the mansion, Jesus tells us. Ours is just one.

I came across this story told by William Willimon, chaplain of Duke University, this past week.[i] It’s about a ministerial friend of his. This friend was in a denomination that was engaged in a bitter struggle within the denomination itself. One faction was convinced they were the guardians of the one and only truth. This group or movement felt they knew precisely what 'the way' was and some of his parishioners, who were members of this group, felt that he was in the way, of 'the way'!

A group who shared this narrow, dogmatic, and judgmental, and exclusive perspective had gained power in the congregation where Willimon's friend was the minister. They got together and said that he wasn't preaching biblical sermons. They forced the calling of a congregational meeting which caused such a bitter dispute that he was eventually forced out of the congregation. He sought other congregations to go to but they were too frightened of more conflict. Later the expelled minister said to Willimon,

'Do you know what is the most comforting verse in all of scripture for me?' He continued, ‘It is the verse where Jesus says, 'don't let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many rooms--many dwelling places." He went on, 'I know we usually save those verses to be read at funerals but I find them comforting right now. Why? Because I've just been a minister in a church whose God has got a very small house with only a few rooms and only one door. But thanks be to God, I know from the gospel of John, that God's house has many rooms. If it weren't so, I'm sure he would have told us.'

I’m not sure what Jesus meant with his talk of many rooms in the Father’s house. It could very well be that he meant that there’s a room for all of us: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and many others. I suggest we lighten up a bit on the passage which seems at first glance to exclude everyone but us Christians from God’s redemptive love.

Perhaps this passage from John’s Gospel is better read as confessional language[ii]—love language. When Jesus said he was the way, the truth, the life, he was not addressing an interfaith tribunal as the central figure of a dominant world religion. He was speaking to a small circle of his friends on the night before he died. We say things in a special way when we are in the throws of love.

Their feet were still wet from his washing them. One of them had his head on Jesus' breast, and another had just run from the room with a wild look in his eye. The fate of the Hindus was not on Jesus' mind at that moment. He was not focused on his superiority over the Buddha, Lao Tzu or Moses. He was swamped with love for his friends, whose hearts were troubled. He was giving them everything he could think of to help them survive without him, and he used the singular, exclusive language that people who love so often do. When John wrote it down later, he used that language too.

You are the only man in the world for me. You are the best mother anyone ever had. No one has ever loved a child the way I love you. This is not objective language intended to judge other men, other mothers, other loves. This is language spoken out of the depths of relationship, to affirm the truth that only love can grasp. If Jesus had said, "Friends, God is your only true home. I am one way among many. 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. He used love language instead. I am the only one for you. You have made the right choice. No one can lead you to God better than I can.

When we wrench that language loose from its moorings and use it to separate ourselves from our neighbors, we deform the good news of God in Christ. We turn the way of servanthood into a way of asserting our own dominance. We turn the truth of divine presence into a truth that is only available to those who will call it by the right name. We turn the life of transparent loyalty to God into a life of loyalty to our own lens. The danger, when we do this, is that our insistence on Christ may make us less than Christian.

Am I saying there is nothing special about Jesus, and that one religion is as good as another? I hope not. He is my Lord and Savior. 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 my imitation may be.

Because of him, I am able to say my prayers in a Hindu temple or a Muslim mosque. Because of him, I can learn from people who call God by other names. I think of my faith as a tall tree. Only because my roots are deep and wide in the Christian faith can I let my branches reach out and touch those of other faiths, taking from some of them the fruit nurtured by their roots deep in some other world religion. Because of Jesus, I bow my head before sacrificial love wherever I find it. Because of him, I know who my neighbors are. His way is openness to God. His truth is concern for the stranger. His life is one of love for all people. I embrace these truths wherever I find them. Others may find other ways, but His way is the only way for me because I don't know any other way to God.