It's not about being Good, Nice and Fair
Today’s gospel reading is a troubling one for many of
us. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. “ So far so
good … but here comes the kicker – “No one comes to the Father except through
me.” We’ve all heard that used to support an elitist view of Christianity,
where only Christians are ok and only Christians get to heaven. It’s been used
to impose a kind of martial law – you have to do whatever it takes to become and
stay a Christian, or else. Not surprising that many of us would like to cut it
out of the Bible. It’s like the reading last week about the sheep in the sheep
fold when several of you were concerned about the sheep who were not in the
fold.
We have heard these words
interpreted one way, but there are others. Jesus did not say, “no one comes to
God except by believing in my existence and by praying to me.” Jesus said “I am
the way, the truth and the life.” His
disciples were people who were living with him and listening to his teaching
and watching the way he lived his life. So they didn’t hear these words as believe
in my existence and pray to me – that would not have made sense to people who
saw him every day.
So I want to suggest that, when
he said it, Jesus was talking about his life and his personhood.
Once Jesus had been resurrected
and ascended, the disciples no longer had the same relationship to him. At that
point, they began to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit no longer in
Jesus but in themselves and in each other. So his personhood was, and still is,
primarily experienced through the personhood of the Holy Spirit who we know
blows like the wind and burns like divine fire but speaks in a still small
voice.
The Holy Spirit is not separate
from Jesus. They are both part of that complex and divine organism which we
call the Trinity. So when Jesus says “I am the way, the truth and the life” he
is also saying “The Holy Spirit is the way, the truth and the life.” In fact,
in those first two words, I AM, he is also claiming to be one with Yahweh the
God who told Moses that he was to be known as I AM THAT I AM. As he said specifically a few chapters
earlier, “I and my Father are one.” So of course we come to the Father through
Jesus because they are one. And we come to Jesus through the Holy Spirit
because they too are one.
We have
access to Jesus through the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. In my mind,
there is no reason to think that for this to happen people have to know the
name of Jesus or believe that Jesus existed. As the Presiding Bishop said a few
years ago, to
insist that Jesus is the only way to God is to limit God. “God is, at the very
least,” she said, “a mystery. God’s intention is for a restored relationship
with all humanity. My job is to proclaim the good news of Jesus, but I cannot
deny God is at work in other ways,”[1]
Our
particular calling is to dedicate ourselves to following Jesus as his disciples
and to proclaim the all encompassing love of God expressed in Jesus’ life,
death and resurrection. But others may access the Holy Spirit in different ways
and through different paths and in doing so encounter Jesus and his Abba. As
Christians, we relate to Jesus as “the way, the truth and the life” through the
person that he was and is who we can know directly through the activity of the
Holy Spirit present and working among us even at this very moment. And because God is one and undivided we are
also relating to the Creator, the Father, the Abba.
So
now let’s turn to Jesus’ life. The disciples of any great guru seek to imitate
the life, attitudes and values of their master. And we are no different. But we
need to understand who it is we are imitating. There’s a general feeling in
American society that Jesus was a good, nice and fair person and that that’s
what God wants us to be. Good, nice and fair.
But
that leaves out a lot. Why would a good, nice and fair person be hated by the
authorities and killed?
Last
week we heard that the early Christians “spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at
home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having
the goodwill of all the people.” It sounds like they were good, nice and fair
people and everyone liked them. But this week, something has changed quite
radically. Apparently the new movement was getting so big that the authorities,
the Sanhedrin, felt threatened and decided this needed to be controlled before
it all got out of hand. Even some of the temple priests were becoming followers
of the Way, as it was called.
But
others were angry that these people were suggesting that God could be
worshipped outside the temple and so they began to argue with Stephen and
brought him before the Sanhedrin on trumped up charges, just like Jesus before
him. Stephen, who was filled with the
Holy Spirit “so that his face was like the face of an angel” responded to their
accusations by recounting the history of God’s plan for salvation and then
declaring that they had betrayed and murdered God’s Righteous One. When they heard this “they were furious and
gnashed their teeth at him.” But Stephen didn’t take any defensive action. He
did not get fight them or try to get away. Instead he had a vision of the glory
of God and while he was being stoned to death prayed for his attackers.
Does
that remind you of anyone?
It’s
remarkably similar to Jesus, isn’t it? Stephen wasn’t just a good, nice and
fair person. He was someone whose connection with the Holy Spirit empowered him
to speak truth to power and when power turned on him, he did not respond to
violence with violence. He followed in the steps of Christ by taking a stand
against the ruling authorities and taking a stand against the violence of the
sin matrix.
Our
society is based in violence. It has been from the earliest days. Violence is
not just the visible ugly murder of a good, nice and fair man. Violence is
paying less than a living wage. Violence is benefitting from the profits of
companies who exploit the earth and exploit workers. Violence is buying clothes
made in sweatshops. Violence thinks there isn’t enough to go round and grabs
all it can get. Violence lives in our hearts and minds whenever we judge
another or ignore them or see them as less than the beloved children of God. It
is this violence which we call sin. It is endemic in our way of life and so I
call it the sin matrix.
But
Jesus refused to give in to it. He refused to return violence with violence. He
loved so deeply that he allowed himself to be falsely accused, betrayed by his
friends, treated with contempt and then murdered. And in his resurrection he
turned the whole thing upside down and demonstrated once and for all that the
way of God, the way of the Prince of Peace is more powerful than the way of
violence and hatred. In so doing he reconciled us to God whom we had imagined
as the most violent of all. And Stephen, the first martyr, followed his
example. He too refused to respond with violence to violence. And he was
murdered.
This
is not about being good, nice and fair. This is about being fearless in the
face of tyranny. This is about learning to love so much that we are willing and
able to sacrifice our own desires and our own selves for the reign of God.
That
is the Way, the truth and the life. That we love so deeply that we resist
violence in all its forms. That we love so deeply that we set one another free
by our forgiveness. That we love so deeply that we give ourselves to the Holy
Spirit to be transformed and to become part of the reign of God, that
alternative society which is based not on violence but on love.
Whatever
the cost.
posted by Caroline Hall at
6:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home