Jesus
said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.” John 14:6
We’ve all
been to enough of them to know that funerals can get pretty dicey. Sure, the deceased
is long past caring. But the survivors all have issues. And for clergy, they’re
a minefield.
Picture
this: I was a freshly-minted priest dropped in the lap of a parish up on the “Nawth
Shaw.” An elderly gentleman ─ a patriarch, of sorts in the community ─ had died.
A cradle Episcopalian. Hadn’t been to church in decades. The wife was a Unitarian.
It was going to be a big funeral. My very first, in fact, as a priest.
The widow
and I met ─ for the first time ─ to plan it all.
We picked
some hymns, a couple of lessons. No sweat. And then things took a nosedive. John
Chapter 14. The widow wanted a portion of John 14, often a Gospel of choice at
funerals.
She made
it quite clear: she gravitated to the part about “many dwelling places” ─ what
she knew in more familiar language as “many mansions.” A lot of mansions on the
Nawth Shaw!
Oh, she
loved “many dwelling places”! But she put her foot down at Jesus’ apparently non-negotiable
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me.” Well, that just … wouldn’t … do.
Believe
me when I tell you, she was formidable … and that she was really working my nerves.
Nonetheless, I ventured, “What’s your objection?”
“Well,
first of all,” she said, “I’m a Unitarian and we don’t believe that.”
“Yes,” I
parried, “but your husband was an Episcopalian. We believe that.”
“Yes,”
she countered, “but there will be many nonchristians at the funeral. We can’t offend
them!”
I was
about to ask, “And what do you propose I do with the altar cross”? But ─
uncharacteristically ─ I bit my tongue. In the end, I compromised … minimally. We
kept “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’” And then, full
stop.
So, that
was a dicey funeral. But it points to even dicier situations for us, especially
if we believe Jesus when he says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one ─ no one! ─ comes to the Father except through me.” Sounds pretty exclusive.
Not much wiggle-room for religious pluralism ─ wiggle-room for our Hindu,
Buddhist, Muslim, Wiccan, and other neighbors. And we live in an increasingly
pluralistic culture ─ both religion-wise and more and more so, non-religion-wise.
It’s like
a lot of rhetoric that’s flying around the cable- and blogosphere: If you’re
not against immigration reform … against wage equality … against abortion … if
you’re not against gun-control … against same-sex marriage … against public
school education … against “big gubmint” … if you’re not for displaying the Ten Commandments on public property, then, in
the words of former Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, you’re against “people
of faith.”
Read: If
you’re not an extremist, you’re not a “person of faith.” You’re not even a Christian.
Sounds not just exclusive … but excluding.
So,
here’s the question: Can you be a follower of Jesus Christ ─ a vocal, on-the-record,
spread-the-Good-News follower of Jesus Christ (whom you believe to be “the Way,
the Truth, and the Life”) ─ without being an extremist? Can you be a Christian
… without being a bigot?
Well, yes.
Because there’s reality: You have no choice.
That is,
you may believe Jesus to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And I hope you do.
You may
believe ─ and I hope you don’t ─ that
your non-Christian neighbors are going to rot in hell. But exclusivism ─ extremist
exclusivism ─ just doesn’t sell … among rational people, that is.
Meaning: When
it comes to spreading the Good News, the message “You’re going to rot in hell”?
It’s a nonstarter. Let that bomb drop in a conversation and good luck! That’s
just a reality.
And at
the end of the day, reality is all we’ve got.
So, can
you be a Christian without being a bigot? It all depends how you do it ─ being
a Christian, that is.
Read: The
answer is “yes” ─ you can be a Christian without being a bigot ─ only to the
extent that you take seriously another part of John 14. The part where Jesus
says, “[T]he one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in
fact, will do greater works than these.”
In other
words, you can believe all you want that Jesus is the one and only Way, the one
and only Truth, the one and only Life – and I do! – but when it comes to sharing the Good News,
it’s the doing that counts … the doing
that matches what Jesus did … and then doing Jesus one better: “doing greater
works” than even Jesus did!
So the bar
is pretty high: Jesus and beyond.
But what
does that look like? A bit like poker:
Jesus
feeds 5,000 hungry people. “Jesus, I see your 5,000, and I raise you another 1,000!”
Jesus
brings healing and healthcare to scores of the deaf, the lame, and the blind. “Jesus,
I see your healing bid, and I raise it to care for and promote healing among
even more sick people ─ the uninsured and the underinsured ─ and widening the
field of healing to include adults and children with HIV, people who can
benefit from stem cell research and other cutting-edge technology. I raise your
bid by being even more pro-science.”
It also
looks like this: Jesus consorts face-to-face with all sorts of seedy people, to
share with them the transforming power of God’s love. “Jesus, I see your hospitality
bid … and raise it to engage face-to-face even more and more of the unlovely
and the unlovable.”
Sounds wild!
à
Replacing extremist exclusivism … with poker ─ apostolic poker! But you have
Jesus’ word on it: Whatever Jesus did, we can do. And do Jesus even better.
And that’s the Jesus people encounter in us.
That’s the Way, the Truth, and the
Life people meet in us.
That’s
because, as the clichéd-but-no-less-true saying goes, “Our lives are the only
Gospel people may ever read.”
It’s what
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was getting at when he said, “The body of Christ takes up space
on the earth.”
Meaning: believe
what you will … say what you must … but we’re what people are exposed to long
before they know anything about Jesus. We take up the space right next to
people.
The point
is: The truth of Jesus isn’t an abstraction or a list of nice-to-know sorts of
things: “Came down from heaven … incarnate by the Holy Spirit … made man.”
And the truth
of Jesus is definitely not a slate of political wedge issues.
The truth
of Jesus ─ the body of Christ ─ takes up real, physical space. And we’re the
ones occupying that space.
That
means that we’re the only proof we have ─ and that others see ─ that Jesus is the
Way, the Truth, and the Life. It’s the Jesus we’ve discovered and continue to experience.
That’s
why when people ask me, “Why should I believe in Jesus?” I say, “Beats me! I
don’t have the foggiest notion of why
you should believe in Jesus. But ─ if
you’re interested ─ I’ll tell you why I do … and why Christians down through
the centuries have … and why today communities like our parish the world over
do.”
And that “why”
is: that Jesus ─ for me, for us ─ is the way
that leads from “me-first” to “we’re in this all together … from the first to especially
the least among us to everyone in-between.”
It’s that
for me ─ for us ─ Jesus is the truth
that God’s love isn’t a bumper-sticker that says, “God made Christians ─ God
made us ─ Number One!” (What a
barrier to sharing Good News!) … but that God’s love makes it possible for me ─
for us ─ even if no one else will ─ to tear down every barrier separating neighbor
from neighbor.
It’s that
for me ─ for us ─ Jesus is the life ─ the lived life! ─ that secures meaning, dignity,
and abundance for absolutely everybody.
Bottomline:
If you come across as a bigot, are you really sharing Good News?
If you
set about creating a mini-biosphere of exclusivity ─ treating some people as “in”
… and others as “out” (not just now, but for eternity, no less) … are you
really living Good News? Who’s going
to sign on to that? Except really insecure people (people afflicted with the narcissism
that comes from low self-esteem).
So, by all
means, tell your friends that if they’re not Christians … or Episcopalians … or
evangelicals … or charismatics … or pro-life … or anti-gay … whatever! ... they’re going to rot in hell.
By all
means, ignore the fact that what Jesus did
turned more lives around than by what he said.
By all
means, tell people that if they’re not a clone of the late Jerry Falwell, Mother
Teresa … or you or me! … they’re not people of faith. Tell them they’re not on
God’s A-List.
Sure, do all
that!
And my
hunch is: on the great Judgment Day you’ll be red-faced to discover just how
many dwelling-places … Oh, let’s go upscale. You’ll be red-faced to discover
how many mansions there are in God’s house!
Amen.
