It's good to be back in New York and in Rutgers Church after a brief but enjoyable time in Europe. I had originally planned to spend eight days in Paris, but on the advice of an artist friend in Princeton, I changed my itinerary to include two days in Amsterdam in order to see the tulip fields in bloom. I'm glad I did that. It was like seeing a patchwork quilt, with each brightly colored square measuring in acres instead of in inches. Spectacular!
On the high-speed train from Paris to Amsterdam, I read a review in the International Herald Tribune of a book I had bought and read just before leaving on the trip. The book is God Is Back. How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. It's an interesting analysis of religion's resurgence after being declared dead a few decades ago by continental intellectuals. But, to quote the book, "The very things that were supposed to destroy religion—democracy and markets, technology and reason—are continuing to make it stronger."
As I was speeding from Paris to Amsterdam at a hundred and sixty-five miles an hour, I read this fascinating comment by the reviewer [Hanna Rosin in the International Herald Tribune, April 27, 2009, page 10] on the resurgence of religion: "To anyone who lives outside Europe, the Harvard campus or Manhattan (all faith-free zones singled out by the authors), this conclusion [that religion is re-surging] is not exactly startling." So Harvard, Europe, and Manhattan are supposed to be faith-free zones.
I chuckled as I thought of how this Manhattan congregation is growing, of how the chapel at Harvard continues to draw students and faculty for its services, and how the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was filled to capacity at its 6:30 p.m. Sunday evening mass, which I attended. Also, The Café des Phares, directly across from the Bastille Opera, holds "philosophical conversations" attended by scores of people, including young people, interestingly enough on Sunday mornings at 11 a.m.
As for other parts of Europe, two or three doors down from the small Amsterdam hotel I stayed in, there was a book store—not a Barnes & Noble-type bookstore—but a small, family owned bookstore about the size of a living room. In the window, among all the books with Dutch titles, there was a book with its title in English: A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith, edited by Thomas Nagel [Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 2009]. It was an analysis of the late Harvard Professor John Rawls's writing on religion. I bought a copy from the mother and son who own the bookstore and had a fascinating conversation with them and another customer about John Rawls and his importance in American liberal politics.
I can't help concluding that God has a sense of humor and that the book reviewer in the Herald Tribune over-generalized in calling Europe, Harvard, and Manhattan "faith-free zones." Faith comes in different shapes and forms. I remember Albert Einstein's distain for atheism and his refusal to be labeled as such. In fact he is on record as saying, "I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know [God's] thoughts. The rest are details." [www.Einstein and Religion.com Short Comments on God]
During my time in this church we have listened to readings from the Bible in our worship services, and we have looked for connections between those readings and life as we live it in twenty-first century North America. Our two lectionary readings this morning present challenges as well as comfort to thoughtful listeners.
In the first reading, the leaders of the religious establishment were "annoyed" because two followers of Jesus, Peter and John, had helped a crippled man regain full use of his legs. They had invoked the name of the risen Christ, and by so doing, they had participated in a transformation of the man from a pathetic figure to a fully alive human being. Remember, this is something that happened two thousand years ago, and it is impossible to say in terms of modern science what really happened. But there was no doubt among the spectators that invoking the name of Jesus Christ had brought about the restoration of health and strength to a man they had known to be disabled.
The religious establishment of that time and place was unsettled by something that didn't fit into their understanding of how things worked. They didn't like change, and they certainly didn't like being confronted by the spiritual power of two rather simple, uneducated men. They used their civil authority to put Peter and John in prison overnight and to put them on trial the next morning. At the trial, in explaining what had happened, Peter simply stated his experience in becoming a man whose life was forever changed for the better by this person Jesus Christ.
In the intensity of his personal experience of the risen Christ, Peter made the statement that "There is salvation in no on else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." Those words have been used by Christians in various times and places to make claims of exclusivity. I remember using them when I was in high school and full of enthusiasm for the faith that was a significant part of my young life.
In 2004 after the Presbyterian General Assembly of that year adopted some measures in support of the Palestinian people, I had a phone call from the Westchester County chapter of the American Jewish Committee, asking me to meet with representatives from their group. The first couple of meetings were difficult, but after we all spoke honestly about what we were feeling as we met together, we made progress in understanding each other's position or positions on the complex issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One of the American Jewish Committee members and I developed a friendship that lasted beyond our formal meetings. I remember sitting in his car after he drove me to the train station. He switched off the ignition and turned to face me. He said, "I didn't expect to feel comfortable asking this question, but I do. The question is Do you believe Jews have to become Christians in order to be saved?"
Having come a long way since I was in high school, I said, "In a word, No."
He continued, quoting this morning's reading, "Then what do you do with the Bible verse that says there is no other name than the name of Jesus by which people can be saved?"
I said, "I take it seriously like I take all of the Bible seriously, but I take it in context. Peter was full of enthusiasm when he spoke those words, and maybe he went on as he grew older to reach the understanding that Paul reached, which was that God's covenant with Israel continued to be valid and didn't require acceptance of the new covenant inaugurated in Christ. After all, in Hebrew thinking, to do something in 'the name' of someone can mean to do something in the spirit of that person's life and way of being."
Rather than argue for a claim of exclusive truth about God, Christians can find comfort and freedom in Jesus' words from our second reading. In that reading, Jesus called himself both a shepherd or guide, and a gate or pathway leading to life in all its fullness, one of the signature phrases of my ministry. Jesus describes himself as opening up the possibility of green pastures, that is, spaciousness of being, the opposite of narrow, constricting religion narrowly defined. A major thrust of Jesus' ministry was the repudiation of religion as repressive rules and regulations and its reframing as dynamic relationship with God, other people, self, and life in general.
One of the tragedies of a certain kind of Christianity is its persistent obsession with reversing Jesus' repudiation of legalism and elevating that legalism to the supreme expression of the Christian faith. That kind of Christianity goes on to insist on being the only possessor of the key to salvation, usually understood as going to heaven rather than to hell.
Interestingly enough, Jesus is quoted in the second reading as saying, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I also must bring them." What did he mean by that? He probably meant at that time and place, that his mission was to more than Israel, to the Gentiles as well. In our time and place, I would understand it to mean there are other ways of understanding God, goodness, and ultimate truth. In making that statement I am not saying I believe all religions are of equal standing. My personal criteria for evaluating all religions are what they teach about justice and dignity for all people—women and men, gay and straight, and what kinds of means they advocate for achieving their ends or goals.
You and I know that one of the most serious challenges facing Barack Obama and all of us is the existence of a militant, fundamentalist form of Islam that poses a threat to the safety and security of non-Muslim people. As I consider that, I think about the history of the Christian faith over a period of almost two thousand years. There are some things to lament in that history—mostly things that grew out of a need to be right, a need to be the one true religion, and the decision to use force in the defense of perceived truth. But there is much to celebrate in the history of the Christian faith—mostly things that have grown out of a desire to improve the human condition, to further Jesus' ministry of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing, and to establish a just and peaceful human community.
My continuing hope and prayer for the Christian faith or the Christian religion, of which I am unapologetically a part, is that we will follow the example of the One whose name we take and not succumb to the temptation toward arrogance or superiority which can easily overtake us if we insist we have an exclusive claim to truth. And I continue to pray that rather than exclusivity, our aim and goal will be an inclusivity that opens wide the door to any and all who seek to know God as we have come to know God, and that passes no judgment on any who seek to find God by other ways than our ways, so long as there is common agreement on the pursuit of a just and peaceful human community. As Einstein said, "The rest are details."