“ONLY ONE WAY?”
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A sermon preached Reading: John
14:1-6 |
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“No one comes to the Father but by the Son” (Jn
14:6)
In his sermon before
the conclave last week,
Pope Benedict XVI (as he was to become) spoke out strongly against relativism –
there is, he seemed to say, one truth only, only one
way.
You must follow the teaching
of the true Church and none other.
Having said that, he has
since talked about the importance of dialogue with other world faiths
- and today he talked about seeking Christian Unity -
so we must wait to see how things develop.
But meanwhile how do we respond to those
whose theologies are different from ours?
Is there only one true way, and are Jews, Moslems and Buddhists just plain
wrong??
On the face of it, that is exactly what our
text today (Jn 14:6) seems to imply -
“No one comes to the Father but by the
Son”
The Mediaeval Church,
certainly took this text at face value.
The 4th Lateran
Council of the Church (1215) declared
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus!
Over & above, Outside the Church there is no salvation.
And just to be clear, the
Council of Florence in 1442 stated:
“The
…Church firmly … proclaims that …
neither heathen nor Jew nor unbeliever nor schismatic
will have a share in eternal life,
but is rather condemned to the eternal fire
prepared for the devil and his angels
unless he joins [the true Church] before his death”
So how should we interpret Jn 14:6?
Does it mean – as the Mediaeval Church unanimously thought,
and some modern believers would still hold,
that those who accept Jesus will be saved,
and all other faiths will be damned?
I believe the simple answer is “No”
Any individual text should always be
interpreted and seen
against the backcloth of Scripture as a whole.
And so, before we risk building a whole
theology on one verse,
lets look at Scripture more broadly.
And if Scripture tells us anything about God,
it tells us this – that God is a God of grace and love.
Our Lord is one who
·
Is the Shepherd of many sheepfolds,
a Shepherd who says when 99 sheep are safely gathered in,
still will I not rest until the 100th sheep is safe
·
and from his cross says of those who have rejected and crucified him
“Father forgive them for they not what they do”
·
Or read Romans 11 which speaks of how God will not desert the Jews
even though they have crucified Jesus,
but will look to a day when all Jews and all Gentiles will be saved
I could fill a sermon with Scriptures on the
love of God for all his children –
The Kingdom of
Heaven does not have quotas for immigrants,
demanding that new arrivals score enough Australian style points
to prove they will be net contributors to the Heavenly economy.
Quite the reverse, the Kingdom of Heaven welcomes immigrants
in a way which seems quite foreign to most of our British politicians
(in case you had missed the analogy)….
The Kingdom of Heaven
welcomes those entering the Kingdom
not on the basis of what the Kingdom can gain from the people,
but rather what the people need from the Kingdom -
on the basis of need not value –
“Come sinners to the Gospel feast… not one shall be left behind…-
Let me be very personal here – let me give
you my testimony.
How and why do I stand here?
Is it because I am worthy and have an
unrivalled theological ability? -
Is it because I understand all the things of heaven?
- because I
scored well on Heaven’s Home Office Computer?
Of course not.
If I thought that was what it was all about, I wouldn’t be standing here at
all.
I stand here as a sinner whose only claim to
salvation
is God’s undeserved love and grace.
And as I come to the Lords
Table and look back on the worst bits of my life –
I feel like that 18th Century Captain of a slave ship
who was converted and looking back on his life wrote
“Amazing grace… that
saved a wretch like me…”
If God can love and accept me at my worst,
how can I believe that his love will not cover all?
In the words of Charles Wesley, speaking of God’s
love:
”Throughout the world its breadth is known,
Wide as infinity;
So wide it never passed by one,
Or it had passed by me.”
One of the papers this week
did a piece on all the Pope Benedicts –
a rum lot some of them were too.
Apparently one of them when elected said he wished to be known as Benedict XIV
–
the previous Pope Benedict had been Benedict XII,
but he was superstitious and didn’t want to be no 13.
They made him Benedict XIII anyway – and rightly so.
The thing about no 13 is
that Judas was the 13th person at the Last Supper –
superstition shuns identification with Judas.
But of course when we come to the Lords Table we are all No 13 –
we all come here as poor sinners –
whether we are Popes or the lowest of the low,
we all take the place assigned at the table for Judas –
we come as chief of sinners and yet know ourselves loved and accepted.
And if God accepts me,
how oh how can I say that he would deny 70, 80, 90 sheep in 100
because they were not Christians when they died?
I haven’t left enough time to talk in detail
about our text -
Briefly, how then do we interpret
“No one comes to the Father but by the Son”?
Maybe there are different ways to meet the
Son of God:
·
Explicitly as a Church as we affirm our faith in Jesus at the foot of
the cross
·
Anonymously as we meet the Lord in everyday life
(insomuch as you did it to one of these my brothers you did it for me”).
·
After we die we will meet the Son of God in Heaven above..
(for the Son of God we are told was manifested in Jesus of Nazareth
but existed from before time and reigns now in glory for ever).
When those of other faiths cross into the world to come,
they will see God & they will know him as
the God of life giving self giving sacrificial love.
In so seeing they will see the God we have known in Christ.
They will at last see clearly what they have dimly seen in
this life.
This is not to patronize the faithful of
other faiths
or fudge the issue by saying they were always Christians really –
But it is to say this:
We all see in a mirror dimly –
that is true for Christians as well as others.
Our mirror is called Christ –
our window on God,
and we can conceive of nothing brighter and clearer in this life.
But we and all people will live to see clearly in another
place.
And then we will all understand fully
what we were dimly striving for in our faith journeys –
And surely those who did not recognize Christ in this life
will say to us:
“Now we see why you talked of Jesus,
for as we now see God so we see Jesus too.”
No one comes to the father without also
knowing the Son.
If I am climbing a
hill I may have found an excellent path
with a good view of the summit, resting places on the way
and good directions and footholds.
I may see someone else on the other side of the mountain labouring upward.
I would be foolish and selfish not to shout out to them: there’s a good way
here.
But if they shout back
“its OK, I’ve come up from a different place,
and I find this path easier to follow and footholds
which look difficult to you are the sort I am used to”,
it would be unhelpful and maybe presumptuous of me
to rubbish the other path or prophesy doom for those who persist in it.
Perhaps he and I will only see fully how our paths compare
when we stand together on the summit.
And then will he see the strength of my path,
and perhaps I his??
These are complex issues –
maybe issues which we need to talk about more than we do –
and if some of my understandings you find difficult or even contentious,
well I will be well content if today I have helped us
as a Church community to start a conversation.
But in the meantime let us hold fast to three
things
as individuals and as a Church –and here I finish:
1.
Let us remember that God loves us all
whoever or whatever we are,
and let us never despair of the power of his love.
2.
Let us respect the beliefs and spiritual journeys of others,
but always be ready and positive to share our journey with them.
3.
As we look at the needy and marginalized in our world,
we need to say
“Every human being, whatever their race or creed, is one of God’s
children.
And if he loves them,
how could we do other than love them too?”