124 Witherspoon Steet · Princeton, NJ 08542 · (609) 924-1666

Featured Sermon

How Many Roads to Heaven?

Rev. Muriel Burrows.

Barry J. Robinson, writes unapologetically and wonderfully a weekly set of comments and reflections based on the Revised Common Lectionary which he titles “Keeping the Faith In Babylon: A Pastoral Resource For Christians in Exile.”¹ Speaking about this text today Robinson says that if we have ever wanted a scripture to make us feel smug about being a Christian, today is our lucky day. If we have ever wanted a text with which to hit our unbelieving friends over the head, or that will help us make a few Muslims or Jews or Hindus feel bad, then we have hit the jackpot today.

Thomas said to him (Jesus), “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and you have seen him.”

There are over five billion people on this planet, and at least 85% of them are people who profess to belong to a religion. At least two billion of these “religionists” are Christian, nearly 1.2 billion are Muslim and just under one billion are Hindus. There are at least ten thousand distinct, identifiable religions in the world today.²

In the United States, after Christianity, Muslims are the largest single religious group and also the fasted growing.

Given such a mixed religious cauldron how do we find our way into faith? With so much of the world’s focus on issues of religion and faith in these times with the election of a new Pope, how does our faith co-exist with others in such a world? It seems that the words of Jesus in today’s gospel lesson are provocative, to say the least. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” No text, says Timothy Hart-Anderson, is more often quoted in defense of an exclusive Christianity than this one.³

Professor Gail O’ Day has noted that these few lines in John 14 have been issued as “a weapon with which to bludgeon one’s opponents into theological submission …, (that it has become) a litmus test for Christian faith …, a rallying cry for Christian triumphalism.” Many see these words of Jesus in John’s gospel as “proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that people of any and all other faith claims are condemned.” ⁴

I have to confess that there was a time when these words gave me great comfort - not because all others would be condemned because they were not Christian - rather I drew comfort from the belief that I had an exclusive relationship with Jesus and felt sorry for those who did not him or about him. As a new born-again Christian after a Billy Graham rally in my home-town in Durban, South Africa, I would spend sleepless nights worrying about the millions of people who would die and go to eternal damnation because they never knew Christ as Lord and Savior.

Some urgent questions for us in this day of incessant religious and political polarization in our country, how do we find our way into faith in such a mixed religious cauldron; can and does our faith co-exist with others in such a world; how are we to interpret these lines from John’s Gospel; do we just write off those who don’t share our religious convictions; or are they simply “anonymous Christians” as Karl Rahner concludes.

Before, the battle lines for the Kingdom of God was between Christians and everyone else, but in recent times the battle lines seem to be between fundamentalist Christians and everyone else.

Today, (May 24, 2005) James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Prison Fellowship’s Chuck Colson, and Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler are hosting what they call “Justice Sunday,” a telecast from a mega-church in Louisville, Kentucky, a city which just happen to be the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Their message is that those who don’t support President Bush’s judicial nominees are hostile to, and I quote, “people of faith.” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a staunch Presbyterian, is joining them by video to get political support for his effort to end the Senate practice known as the filibuster, which is designed to delay a vote on controversial issues in order to protect strong minorities from being overrun by majorities.

Dr. Frist’s appearance at this event endorses the Religious Right’s claim that the filibuster of a small number of very conservative judges is, and I quote, “a filibuster against people of faith.” In other words, anyone who does not support them politically, is not a true believer.

Christianity in the United States has come down to a tug-o’-war between Republicans and their religious supporters questioning the faith and religious integrity of their opponents - that is, anyone who does not march to the beat of their drum. We have reached the stage where the battle is not about loving the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our minds and with all our souls and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves

- but about asserting a theocracy in this country. Behind all this is a fundamental assumption that conservative Christians own religion in America, that, as Jim Wallis says, “values voters” in America belong to them, and they disrespect the faith and religion of those who disagree with their agenda. And whether you agree with me or not, I think there are very strong words for exclusive, elitist religious belief and behavior - and the words are idolatry and blasphemy.

When a faith or religion focuses its energy and time solely on certain moral behaviors while ignoring other moral issues such as the uplifting of the poor, the protection of the environment, the ethics of war, or the tragic number of abortions in America - we have to look at that religion - at that faith - and ask the hard questions - without attacking the sincerity of other people’s faith, or demanding that they or we should win because we are religious.

Ideological religion is alive and well and living among us and prophetic faith, the faith for which people are starving, is rapidly declining. It seems that the world still find ways to silence the prophets.

As I like to remind my Thursday afternoon Bible study class, we should always read the scriptures in their context. This very familiar passage was written around the close of the first century C.E. and was probably meant, I believe, to bring a note of comfort to a group of Christians struggling to maintain their identity.

The author, was attempting to give courage and hope to people who found themselves in the midst of a very nasty fight with their Jewish brethren in the synagogue. Their survival as a community of faith and their individual security and safety was in jeopardy. John was writing to people who were frightened, vulnerable and defensive.

John was a pastor and here he is being pastoral to his flock. He was attempting to comfort those of his congregation who were afraid - who needed assurance. But so often we read this text as “I am the way because your way is not! Jesus is the only way to God! It is our way or the highway, my friend!” This was not John’s nor Jesus’ intent.

What is not in dispute is the way Christians have used such a text to say things just like that. Not to comfort one another, but to make people who don’t believe in Jesus or don’t believe in Jesus the way they do feel on the outside. In fact, I heard the pastor of Coral Ridge church in Florida say that in his sermon on this text just yesterday. The words he spoke were like a sledgehammer and there wasn’t even a hint of the love of Christ in his words, his tone nor his demeanor.

Chapter fourteen begins what is known as Jesus’ Farewell Discourse - his last words to his followers before his crucifixion. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14: 1, 4). But bless his heart, our friend Thomas, who always wanted things to be made clear speaks up and says, “But we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

This is a very good question that Thomas asks. “How can we know the way? How are we supposed to know where you are going, Jesus?” These are great questions for us too as we struggle to “find the way” in a world of religious and faith options, because if people who had been with Jesus all along, who had watched his every move, heard his every word and still didn’t get it, then how much do we?

Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. That is what I am - not like your precious opinions of me. Not like your beliefs about me. Just me. I am the way!”

I find this gospel lesson comforting because it shows me that the way into wherever all of us need to be, the only way in, is a lot broader and wider, a lot more welcoming and expansive than any of us have ever imagined.

In the beginning was the Word,

And the Word was with God,

And the Word was God …

All things came into being through him …

What has come into being in him was life,

And the life was the light of all people. (John 1:1, 3 - 4).

There is room enough for everyone! “How can we know the way?” The response of Jesus is that he himself is the way, meaning that this faith of ours is not so much a religion as it is a relationship, a relationship with God in the person of Jesus. Far from excluding others, it invites them to enter this relationship, to come into the light of life, to know God’s love as we have known it.

It is important, even essential that we not think in terms of competing religious stories, but of faith traditions that somehow mysteriously and wonderfully compliment each other in ways that are beyond our conceiving or understanding. This text is a challenge to every theology and religious practice that tries to exclude and belittle and reserve “rooms” for itself alone, every lifestyle that presumes to think that only some have a right to what they need and that those who don’t are expendable.

Is it any wonder that we still have trouble seeing a world like the one Jesus showed us - seeing the way he was - and is - and the way we - all of us - still need to become? Is it any wonder we still need to say to Jesus, “Lord, show us the way you are - show us the truth you are - show us the life you are?” I will close with these words from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 3: 10: Praise be to God, “who by the power at work within us is able to do abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine. Amen.

1. Barry J. Robinson: “Keeping the Faith in Babylon: A Pastoral Resource For Christians in Exile,” Lion’s Head, Ontario, Canada. Contact at fernstone@fernstone.org

2. These statistics are from the World Christian Encyclopedia [Oxford University Press, 2001], and were quoted by Martin Marty in “The Numerology of Religion” in Context, Vol. 34, No. 9, May 1, 2002, pp. 1 - 2 and quoted from a text from Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, MN 2002.

3. ibid

4. Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IX [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995], p. 743.

© 2005 - 2007 Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church

Webdesign: brolloks.design