John 14:1-14
Thomas Merton, reared without religious reference points, came to Christ while a student at Columbia, spent the remainder of his life as a follower of Jesus … specifically a Roman Catholic … and then a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky.
As a child, he shuttled between the United States and Europe … his mother died when he was a child; his father died a few years later … he was loved and nurtured by extended family and close friends … he was brilliant, undisciplined, and always searching … above all else, he was a writer … words poured out him like water out a bucket … though he tried to stop writing several times, he failed to stop the flow of words, and when he became a monk, his superior noted Merton’s skill and encouraged him to write … not for himself any longer, but now for Christ.
Merton at first shunned the world, but the world was already inside of him.
Even within the four walls of the monastery, the world lived and breathed in Merton’s mind and heart; he was a monk, but a monk with an eye on the world … after some years of writing specifically religious material, Merton turned his attention to the Cold War, Civil Rights and finally world religions.
An avid reader of Eastern religions – Hinduism and Buddhism and their variants … he discovered beneath the doctrinal differences a common experience of the divine.
It was this common experience that created a common ground … yet Merton was clear, we can never forgo the specifics of faith and doctrine …
Christians have Christ and the Bible
Hindus have the Upanishads …
The Jews have Moses and the Torah …
The Buddhist has the Bahadavita …
The Muslim, the Koran …
Experiments to meld it all together have always failed … there is too much richness in each tradition … too much beauty and goodness in the specifics … lump it all together, and it’s lost … what’s left is formless mass – a little of this and little of that, and none of it makes any sense … sort of like dumping into the soup all the spices and herbs in our cupboard.
When I first started cooking, I would put in everything … Donna had to tell me: “Only one or two flavors tonight … other flavors tomorrow night.”
The religions of the world … rich in the specifics … God in the details!
Merton was clear: the best dialogue between traditions is when people are totally grounded in their traditions … thoroughly knowledgeable, and deeply committed to the doctrines, ideas, images of their sacred writings and their experience of the Divine …
People who know their own tradition will talk reasonably with people of other traditions.
And we all discover a great mystery:
No one has to be wrong in order for someone to be right …
But the human spirit loves to have enemies …
Every tradition has its own brand of fundamentalism … Buddhists and Hindus clash … Muslims and Jews fight it out … and Christians, too often, have taken on the whole world …
But Thomas Merton discovered – beneath the specifics, something universal … the only way to the universal is through the specifics … and the only way to preserve the universal in all traditions is to preserve the specifics of every tradition.
When confronted with doctrinal differences, Merton was humble and real … in one of my favorite quotations, Merton said, “This is beyond me at the moment.”
I love it … “This beyond me at the moment.”
Isn’t that what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, now we see in a mirror dimly … now I know only in part… ?
This is beyond me at the moment.
Dear Christian friends, I have been a believer all of my life … some of my earliest memories are of God … I can’t say anymore than that … it’s beyond words … God was there.
I grew up in a family where the church was central … attended Christian high school and then Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan … and then Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan … preachers and churches, sermons and theology, discussion and debate … the Christian faith was my milieu – Christ was in the air I breathed … Scripture was in the water I drank.
Jesus is my LORD and my Savior … He gave His life that I might live … and I live for Him, as best I can … in bits and pieces … sometimes more so, sometimes hardly at all … but I live for Him, because He lives for me.
I’ll talk to anyone about Jesus … but I’ve learned to listen as well … when dialoguing with Muslims and Buddhists, to be gracious … appreciative … there is always much to learn about Christ by learning how others worship and live.
I have learned over the years, and I’m still learning, how to read the Bible carefully …
Our text today, John 14, says something grand, something good … but it has to be read carefully.
In the hands of a fundamentalist, this text can be read narrowly, exclusively … but let’s think of Jesus … let’s think of the Gospel of John … let’s think of the cross, the empty tomb … let’s think of God who loves the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son.
The text begins with simple encouragement: Do not let your hearts be troubled.
And then the follow up: Believe in God … believe also in me.
Jesus is the face of God … what we see in Jesus is a perfect representation of the life and love of God … God for us, God with us, God around us and God inside of us … God taking up our burdens, God resolving the issues. God doing the heavy lifting …
When Jesus speaks of my Father’s house and its many rooms, the imagery is that of space … lots of space, lots of elbow room … nothing small here … a place for everyone, and everyone in their place … a place where everyone can be comfortable … a place of safety and peace, appropriate to every human being, every religious expression, every culture, every faithful way of life, whatever it is: Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and who knows how many other variants in this remarkable world.
A gentleman died and was received into heaven … and St. Peter said, “Come with me, I’ll show you around.”
Coming to one part of heaven, St. Peter said, “Here are all the Roman Catholics … and over there, just across the way, all the Methodists … and then around the block, that’s where all the Presbyterians are …
And so they walked around heaven, and nearing one corner, St. Peter suddenly turned to the man, and said, “Shhh, we have to be very quiet here.”
“Why?” asked the man.
“Because this is where the Baptists are, and they think they’re the only ones here.”
When someone asks me, “How does this all work,” I respond as Merton: “This is beyond me at the moment.” I only see in mirror dimly … now I know only in part.
But this I know for sure … we’ll not be in heaven alone … no one will be left behind!
Let’s push on …
Jesus speaks of going on ahead to do the work for us; preparing a place for us … this is grace, pure unbounded grace … God getting the place ready for us; God doing the heavy-lifting …
Fr. Jim Fredericks at Rolf Muenker’s memorial service told a marvelous story … someone asked a priest, “What can we believe?” The priest said, “God has done the dishes, but it’s up to us to put them away.”
God has done something marvelous in Christ … and God has done it for the whole world … it’s done; it’s finished.
When Jesus was dying on the cross, when all was ready, he said, “It is finished!”
Finished for all the world … those who believe and those who don’t … those who know the name of Jesus, and those who never will … those who love greatly, and those who love only a little bit … those who see clearly, and those who live in a fog … for all the world He did it … pure unbounded grace.
Thomas asked, “How can we know the way?”
That’s just about the biggest question we can ask …
Jesus speaks of grace … “I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life” – for you Thomas, for everyone … for all the world …
What Jesus has done, He’s done for all … Jesus is too generous to restrict His grace only to those who know Him …
His grace flows from Calvary to every creature … His grace flows from that empty tomb to overcome the power of death with life … His grace fills every heart with hope, every prayer with a sense of the divine, every temple with God’s presence.
This is what God does!
Pure unbounded grace …
But there’s plenty left for us …
Lots of dishes to put away … like loving one another and building a safe world for our children and all the children of the world … plenty for us to do, like taking care of the planet, the polar bears and the whales … plenty for us to do, like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting the sick and those in prison … plenty for us to do, like building a peaceful world and ending war … plenty for us to do.
The most challenging piece of the passage: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This, too, is grace … Jesus makes it as easy as possible …
Jesus simplifies …
Like a bridge over the Mississippi …
Like a tunnel through the mountains …
Jesus simplifies … opens up a corridor … makes the journey ever so much easier.
But now let’s put on our thinking caps …
Jesus speaks of “The Father” – we come to the Father through the Son …
Please note: Jesus doesn’t say “god” – Jesus doesn’t say, No one comes to God except by me … He says, carefully and intentionally, No one comes to the Father except by me.
This is one of the specifics of our faith … one of the details …
What Jesus offers is unique … a relationship to God through the Hebrew stories, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob … it’s specific, it’s focused, it’s detailed.
It’s our joy and our delight to be disciples of Jesus, to know the Father through Him, to live the Jesus life … every day, I thank God for Jesus and the Bible, for the Cross and the Empty Tomb … for the resurrection and His abiding presence through the Holy Spirit.
Buddhist have unique things, too.
So do Hindus and Jews and Muslims.
We can only be what we are …
We have to be something …
But can we be something without needing others to be just like us?
Can we be faithful to Jesus without discrediting the faith of others?
Do others have to be wrong in order for us to be right?
When women and men of faith get together, we discover a common mystery, a common humanity, a common experience of the Divine, yet each experience unique to its own tradition … God is found in the details … God is a God of specifics and little things; sparrows and numbered hairs …
But no doctrine holds all of God … no specific can say it all …
This week, Donna and I stopped by a beautiful Hindu Temple on Malibu Canyon road … we took our shoes off and walked around from shrine to shrine – candles and oil lamps, incense and offerings … images of Hindu gods …
I watched a Hindu walk around with hands pressed prayerfully in front of him … gentle and good … unique and wonderfully specific … I sensed the Divine there.
We don’t have to stop being a Christian in order to build bridges of peace … to the contrary, we have to be Christians all the more … we have to know our Bible well … we have to know the essentials of our faith … and we have to know the Father through Christ … if we’re ever going to speak intelligibly to others, we have to thoroughly immersed in our own faith.
But we can and we must allow God to love others, too … to reveal grace and life in other cultures and traditions … it’s a humbling experience, and Christendom – with all of its pomp and power – doesn’t take kindly to humility … but humility is the heart and soul of love! As the Bible says: God gives grace to the humble!
When I lived in Tulsa, we lived across the street from a beautiful park – playgrounds and baseball diamonds, trees and picnic tables … merry-go-rounds and rocks to climb on.
When I took Josh or Rachel to the park, I’d walk across the street and we’d be in the park … other folks came to the park from other directions … other streets, other ways, but it was the same park, large enough for all of us … plenty of picnic tables and grills … plenty of space … just like our Father’s House … dwelling places for everyone.
It would have been foolish to walk around to the other side of the park when I could enter the park by simply walking across the street.
Christianity is my entrance to the park … Buddhism is another entrance, and so is Hinduism …
Go the park at the closest entrance … and give thanks that God has provided multiple entrances …
Yes, we’ll all get to into the park … heaven is mighty big place with lots of entrances … so, if everyone is going to make it, do we have work to do?
Are there dishes to be put away?
There is always a mission field … and it’s right next door … it’s a man selling his soul to make a buck … the woman obsessed with her looks … a young man doing drugs … a young lady dreaming of being a celebrity … the mission field is the world of commercialism and commodity, competition and vanity. It’s not the Hindu or the Muslim, it’s the man or woman who has nothing inside of them, nothing greater than there own desires and dreams … and the greatest mission field of all?
The Christian Church itself … our pews are filled with folks who trust little or nothing … who believe half-heartedly … who know neither Bible nor Christ … a bland mix of vague memories and poorly formed ideas – their soul a wasteland; their spirit impoverished and lonely.
I say to them: be Christian through and through … and if not Christian, then be Buddhist, or a Hindu … be something – get into the specifics; dig into the details … and do it with heart and mind, soul and strength …
God want us to make something of the sixty, or seventy, or eighty years we have … to know God, to give and receive love, to know the truth that liberates … to put our treasure in the right place, and plant our heart in the soil of faith.
God doesn’t want us to die in regret … God doesn’t want us to enter eternity and not want to be there …
At the end of the road, there is only God …
For those who love God and yearn for God – Buddhist, Hindu or Jew - it will be joy upon joy to be lifted up into the love of God, full and complete.
But for those who turned their backs to God, who bought the materialist version of life, who thought they could gods unto themselves; to be thrust into the presence of God at the end of the road, it’ll be hell for them.
To be in the presence of a love denied in this life will be painful beyond description in the next life.
To see firsthand the grace ignored, the mercy shunned, the opportunities missed, will be a gnashing-of-teeth moment, a great sorrow; the flame of regret will burn a long, long time … British theologian, Leslie Weatherhead, 1893-1976.
So be who we are; be Christian through and through … share Christ with everyone we can … give thanks for all the great religions of the world – we’re all in this together … to build a world of faith, hope and love.
Will God work it all out in the end?
Yes, indeed!
How will God do this? This is beyond me at the moment! Amen!
