(By Jody)
John 14:1-14
I was reflecting this week that while Western Christianity has moved away from the door-to-door or street corner model of evangelism – collaring people to tell them about Jesus – charities and NGOs are comfortably occupying this space. (And power, broadband, and insurance companies.)
I’ve only twice had Jehovah’s Witnesses come to the door in 14 years on our street, but too many times to count I have had every good cause under the sun come knocking – to draw me into conversation, tell me about the great work they do, and ask if I could spare the price of a coffee a week, more-or-less, to support them.
IHC called recently, sending me into a spin. I’d like to support them, but I can’t just add another financial obligation without some planning. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders: Is this cause more worthy than others I currently support? Should I quit something else to support them? Should I reduce giving to other causes across the board to put them into the mix? Should I add them in and trust the money works out?
The unabashed confidence of these NGOs. To knock on doors, collar people in the street, call cell phones just before dinner, with complete conviction in their irresistibly good and important cause (and / or their commission). While they certainly realise people struggle with the moral complexities of where to give, and not give, when faced with so much need and so many options, it is not their job to figure out how it all fits together: they need to secure enough money to keep up their good work.
When Christians were sure that anyone who hadn’t prayed the sinners prayer in the name of Jesus was going to burn in hell for all eternity, it was a powerful motivator to get in people’s faces, convert them by means fair or foul, catch them and haul them into heaven. But many of us don’t hold that conviction.
Today, the final sermon I have planned for this series, I wanted to cover some issues around being a follower of Jesus in a multi-faith context. This is the topic I am least qualified to comment on, yet it’s the one I most wanted to do, for my own sake at least.
Barna Group is a private, non-partisan (not politically biased), for-profit organization in California, which has been conducting and analysing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984.
A recent survey, of Christians in the States, found that 95%-97% of all generational groups believe that their faith means being a witness about Jesus. But 47% of millennials, born 1981-1996 and aged 23 to 38 now, agreed “at least somewhat that it is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith” (only 20% of baby boomers and elders said it was at least somewhat wrong, 27% of Gen Xers... the younger generation wasn’t surveyed.)
To me this flags an awareness of the complexity of belonging to an ecosystem of multiple faiths and points of view, of balancing personal convictions with respect for others, of knowing you don’t know what you don’t know and doing to others as you wish others would do unto you. The conclusion of the Barna Group president, David Kinnaman, is that this study highlights a need for Christians to bolster their confidence in the belief that “evangelizing others is good and worthy of our time, energy and investment.”
If we think eternal heaven and hell are at stake, we’d be selfish not to.
This brings me to the Scripture reading. We often read the first few verses at funerals, and it is beautiful and comforting to do so. However, narrowing “the way” to the Father as a route to heaven smothers a broader understanding of what Jesus is saying and the magnitude of what he is inviting his followers into.
Because he is indeed talking to his followers, not to those who don’t know him or are on a different path. This is an intimate setting; teacher and disciples. Those addressed have already defined themselves as followers. Just before the reading, Jesus has enacted for them, by washing their dirty hardened feet, how completely overturning the Kingdom of God is: servant-hood not status, margins not powerhouses, and then he’s told them that they can’t follow him where he is going yet. This is not heaven, but the cross: betrayal, suffering, and death. This is where the overturning kingdom of God is taking him.
What a blow for a follower, to be told they can’t follow. They need words of comfort and assurance.
The promise of the “Father’s house” isn’t a place where those who’ve bet their lives on Jesus spend eternity being rewarded. It’s an assurance of God’s presence, of intimacy with God, and that “the way”, however difficult and demanding it can be, is not a dead end. The lonely path Jesus must take, the betrayal, the suffering, the death, will not hang him or them out to dry but open up an incredible and transforming understanding of God. One in which vulnerability and courage, seeds and nesting birds, are life, and empire and lording-over are death.
What will look like failure and ending is the access point to the God Jesus knows, the God we know through Jesus.
This is what Jesus lives and teaches and embodies. It isn’t arrogant or dismissive of others, but it is particular understanding of being human and living a divinely referenced life, and it is “the way” for those who follow him.
“No one comes to the Father except through me.” Remember he is talking to his followers. This is their path. There is not more that he is withholding from them; special secrets for better disciples to unlock or be let into. He has exposed all to them – or will have after his suffering and death and resurrection. This is “the way” he offers. There is not another, more comfortable and less demanding, way to intimacy with Jesus’ Heavenly Father.
Multi-faith contexts are not a new issue. The bible knows them very well.
But Judaism, and later the offshoot Christianity, were minority faiths. The stories of land conquests and military victories in the Hebrew Scriptures, and bold witness and conversions in the New Testament, are not from a position of might and power, but from vulnerable margins.
In a context where Christianity has had so much unquestioned privilege until relatively recently, we have to be thoughtful about applying lessons learned in the margins and under oppression. I realise the ground has shifted again, and Christianity does not have the central place it once did, but it is the religion that came to colonise NZ not so very many generations ago. We have a history, and we must be mindful of it.
So is it ok to have convictions, or to speak of them?!
I think yes. Commitment to a path, and to travelling that path with integrity and authenticity, is important. We could not do faith greater justice by trying to follow all paths, or synthesise all paths. The best thing we can do is to choose a path, or find we’re on one, walk it with faithfulness.
Barbara Brown Taylor concludes in her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the faith of others:
That was the day I decided to make peace with my own religious language, for at least two reasons. In the first place, no one can speak all the religious languages in the world, and there is no spiritual Esperanto. None of us can speak “language”. We have to speak alanguage before we can learn anyone else’s, and the carefulness with which we speak our own can make us better listeners. In the second place, my religious language is quite excellent at speaking of what it means to be authentically human. (Holy Envy, 193)
But if we are not trying to recruit bodies to our God’s side, nor usher souls into heaven, nor synthesise to remove points of religious difference, what are we trying to do? Is being good humans all it boils down to? Is there any solid faith ground on which to stand, is there any place to bear witness to the way we know in Jesus?
Yes. Live your understanding of “the way” Jesus has revealed, let it shape the reign of God within you, and love your neighbour. Loving your neighbour may at some point involve explaining and advocating for your faith – but that will depend on your neighbour, and what showing love to them requires of you. If you have already perfected loving your neighbours, I can't offer any advice on the next steps, because I have plenty of work to keep me busy just with this command.
Lynne found in her PhD research on “Why are unchurched people becoming Christians today?” that people ascribed attributes like loving, patient, accepting, and forgiving to God, and part of the appeal of Christianity was to develop those attributes in themselves. (Also “powerful” but people weren’t seeking that – which shows they were paying attention to the way of Jesus!)
This rings true for me, because it is not pure form ideas about God that keep me on this Christ-path, it is how what I know of God informs my life as a creature on God’s earth, makes me curious about and blessed by breathtaking difference, and motivates me to keep stretching myself and making more room for God to be God among us.
John 14:1-14
I was reflecting this week that while Western Christianity has moved away from the door-to-door or street corner model of evangelism – collaring people to tell them about Jesus – charities and NGOs are comfortably occupying this space. (And power, broadband, and insurance companies.)
I’ve only twice had Jehovah’s Witnesses come to the door in 14 years on our street, but too many times to count I have had every good cause under the sun come knocking – to draw me into conversation, tell me about the great work they do, and ask if I could spare the price of a coffee a week, more-or-less, to support them.
IHC called recently, sending me into a spin. I’d like to support them, but I can’t just add another financial obligation without some planning. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders: Is this cause more worthy than others I currently support? Should I quit something else to support them? Should I reduce giving to other causes across the board to put them into the mix? Should I add them in and trust the money works out?
The unabashed confidence of these NGOs. To knock on doors, collar people in the street, call cell phones just before dinner, with complete conviction in their irresistibly good and important cause (and / or their commission). While they certainly realise people struggle with the moral complexities of where to give, and not give, when faced with so much need and so many options, it is not their job to figure out how it all fits together: they need to secure enough money to keep up their good work.
When Christians were sure that anyone who hadn’t prayed the sinners prayer in the name of Jesus was going to burn in hell for all eternity, it was a powerful motivator to get in people’s faces, convert them by means fair or foul, catch them and haul them into heaven. But many of us don’t hold that conviction.
Today, the final sermon I have planned for this series, I wanted to cover some issues around being a follower of Jesus in a multi-faith context. This is the topic I am least qualified to comment on, yet it’s the one I most wanted to do, for my own sake at least.
Barna Group is a private, non-partisan (not politically biased), for-profit organization in California, which has been conducting and analysing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984.
A recent survey, of Christians in the States, found that 95%-97% of all generational groups believe that their faith means being a witness about Jesus. But 47% of millennials, born 1981-1996 and aged 23 to 38 now, agreed “at least somewhat that it is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith” (only 20% of baby boomers and elders said it was at least somewhat wrong, 27% of Gen Xers... the younger generation wasn’t surveyed.)
To me this flags an awareness of the complexity of belonging to an ecosystem of multiple faiths and points of view, of balancing personal convictions with respect for others, of knowing you don’t know what you don’t know and doing to others as you wish others would do unto you. The conclusion of the Barna Group president, David Kinnaman, is that this study highlights a need for Christians to bolster their confidence in the belief that “evangelizing others is good and worthy of our time, energy and investment.”
If we think eternal heaven and hell are at stake, we’d be selfish not to.
This brings me to the Scripture reading. We often read the first few verses at funerals, and it is beautiful and comforting to do so. However, narrowing “the way” to the Father as a route to heaven smothers a broader understanding of what Jesus is saying and the magnitude of what he is inviting his followers into.
Because he is indeed talking to his followers, not to those who don’t know him or are on a different path. This is an intimate setting; teacher and disciples. Those addressed have already defined themselves as followers. Just before the reading, Jesus has enacted for them, by washing their dirty hardened feet, how completely overturning the Kingdom of God is: servant-hood not status, margins not powerhouses, and then he’s told them that they can’t follow him where he is going yet. This is not heaven, but the cross: betrayal, suffering, and death. This is where the overturning kingdom of God is taking him.
What a blow for a follower, to be told they can’t follow. They need words of comfort and assurance.
The promise of the “Father’s house” isn’t a place where those who’ve bet their lives on Jesus spend eternity being rewarded. It’s an assurance of God’s presence, of intimacy with God, and that “the way”, however difficult and demanding it can be, is not a dead end. The lonely path Jesus must take, the betrayal, the suffering, the death, will not hang him or them out to dry but open up an incredible and transforming understanding of God. One in which vulnerability and courage, seeds and nesting birds, are life, and empire and lording-over are death.
What will look like failure and ending is the access point to the God Jesus knows, the God we know through Jesus.
This is what Jesus lives and teaches and embodies. It isn’t arrogant or dismissive of others, but it is particular understanding of being human and living a divinely referenced life, and it is “the way” for those who follow him.
“No one comes to the Father except through me.” Remember he is talking to his followers. This is their path. There is not more that he is withholding from them; special secrets for better disciples to unlock or be let into. He has exposed all to them – or will have after his suffering and death and resurrection. This is “the way” he offers. There is not another, more comfortable and less demanding, way to intimacy with Jesus’ Heavenly Father.
Multi-faith contexts are not a new issue. The bible knows them very well.
But Judaism, and later the offshoot Christianity, were minority faiths. The stories of land conquests and military victories in the Hebrew Scriptures, and bold witness and conversions in the New Testament, are not from a position of might and power, but from vulnerable margins.
In a context where Christianity has had so much unquestioned privilege until relatively recently, we have to be thoughtful about applying lessons learned in the margins and under oppression. I realise the ground has shifted again, and Christianity does not have the central place it once did, but it is the religion that came to colonise NZ not so very many generations ago. We have a history, and we must be mindful of it.
So is it ok to have convictions, or to speak of them?!
I think yes. Commitment to a path, and to travelling that path with integrity and authenticity, is important. We could not do faith greater justice by trying to follow all paths, or synthesise all paths. The best thing we can do is to choose a path, or find we’re on one, walk it with faithfulness.
Barbara Brown Taylor concludes in her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the faith of others:
That was the day I decided to make peace with my own religious language, for at least two reasons. In the first place, no one can speak all the religious languages in the world, and there is no spiritual Esperanto. None of us can speak “language”. We have to speak alanguage before we can learn anyone else’s, and the carefulness with which we speak our own can make us better listeners. In the second place, my religious language is quite excellent at speaking of what it means to be authentically human. (Holy Envy, 193)
But if we are not trying to recruit bodies to our God’s side, nor usher souls into heaven, nor synthesise to remove points of religious difference, what are we trying to do? Is being good humans all it boils down to? Is there any solid faith ground on which to stand, is there any place to bear witness to the way we know in Jesus?
Yes. Live your understanding of “the way” Jesus has revealed, let it shape the reign of God within you, and love your neighbour. Loving your neighbour may at some point involve explaining and advocating for your faith – but that will depend on your neighbour, and what showing love to them requires of you. If you have already perfected loving your neighbours, I can't offer any advice on the next steps, because I have plenty of work to keep me busy just with this command.
Lynne found in her PhD research on “Why are unchurched people becoming Christians today?” that people ascribed attributes like loving, patient, accepting, and forgiving to God, and part of the appeal of Christianity was to develop those attributes in themselves. (Also “powerful” but people weren’t seeking that – which shows they were paying attention to the way of Jesus!)
This rings true for me, because it is not pure form ideas about God that keep me on this Christ-path, it is how what I know of God informs my life as a creature on God’s earth, makes me curious about and blessed by breathtaking difference, and motivates me to keep stretching myself and making more room for God to be God among us.
