I John 5:1-5
A few years ago a book that was making
the rounds was Life of Pi by Yann
Martel. You might remember it as a strange
but compelling tale of a young boy from India who survives a shipwreck only to
find himself on a raft with a collection of animals from his father’s zoo. But before Pi and his family board the
ill-fated vessel, the boy had an encounter with the complexities of religious
thought. Being Indian, Pi’s family was Hindu, although his father, a zoologist,
pretty much considered religion a waste of time. Pi begins to explore the world
of theology on his own. As a Hindu he considered life to be very important. The
purpose of his journey was to discover “truth” and avoid the untruths that kept
him from being united with The Ultimate Reality. Pi understood to accomplish
this he would have to live many lives, learning from the experiences of each
former life as he struggled to find the correct path to truth.
Along
the path he met a Catholic priest. Pi had never encountered a Christian before
although he had heard rumors about this strange group that had no problem
eating beef. Pi’s encounters with the priest were difficult because the focus
of what the priest believed was based on one story. Hindus loved stories and
had a different story for every situation in life. Many of the stories revolved
around animals and their human-like traits. But the story the priest told was about
a man who was God’s son. The priest told the boy that God sent his son to die
for the sins of the world. Because of The One, the many were saved and ushered
into heaven. In Christianity the sacrifice of the Son allowed sinful humanity
to encounter the Ultimate Reality at the end of their first life. After hearing
the story many times, the Hindu boy decided he would also become a Christian.
Not
long after Pi became a Christian, he wandered into a Mosque. He was quite nervous
because he had never heard anything good about Muslims. As he stood at the
doorway, a man greeted him and invited Pi to enter the building. He was a Sufi,
a Muslim mystic. The Cleric asked Pi if he would like to pray. Intrigued, Pi asked to whom they would be
praying. The Cleric responded, “We will pray to Allah. Let us pray that God
will love us. We believe if you take two steps toward God, God will run toward
you.” For the next few weeks Pi visited the Mosque regularly, learning how to
pray regularly each day. Eventually, the prayers of the Sufi became Pi’s
prayers and the Hindu boy with a personal relationship with Jesus became a
Muslim.
Each
week Pi would pray in the Mosque, worship in the church and observe all the
wonders of life he embraced as a Hindu.
All was going well until the Priest, the Cleric, and a Hindu Guru discovered
the boy was practicing all three religions. In a darkly comical scene the three
leaders of their faith communities argued over the religious affiliation of Pi.
Finally they decided to take the child to the parents and have the
non-religious father choose his son’s spiritual pedigree. Speaking for the
group the Guru began, “Mr. Patel, Pi’s piety is admirable. In these troubled
times it is so good to see a boy so keen on God. We all agree on that. But he
can’t be Hindu, Muslim, and Christian. He must choose one religion and claim it
as his own.”
Pi’s
mother looked her son and asked, “How do you feel about the question?”
Pi
thought and then responded, “Gandhi said all religions are true. I just want to love God.” (stop)
The
complexities of one’s religious faith never used to be a problem. I was born in
Georgia in 1950. No one in my hometown ever gave religious diversity a second
thought. We were all born Christian and we never doubted we would all die
Christian. But when I was nine my family moved to Hampton, Virginia. Our
favorite restaurant was a Jewish Delicatessen called Danny’s.
Danny
Green made the best pastrami and swiss on rye I had ever tasted. That was my
first encounter with Judaism. Looking back, if I had been born on the lower
east side of New York City instead of a cotton mill village in Georgia, there
is a good chance I would have read Harry Golden’s newspaper, gone to the YMCA
anytime Elie Wiesel lectured, and feasted on kosher beef and bagels. I would
have probably worshipped in a synagogue on Saturday.
If
my birth had taken place outside Tehran, the chances of my becoming a Presbyterian
minister would have been slim and none. Hopefully I would have had the good
fortune of living in a town with a Sufi priest, but I probably would have been raised
a Shiite. Likewise the chance of a being Christian would be quite improbable if
my home was along the Ganges River. While
I have always been a great admirer of Gandhi, my love for pastrami might have
made being a Hindu quite difficult.
Our
understanding of the world since 1950 has radically changed. Islam is the
fastest growing religion in the world. Hindu and Buddhist temples are commonplace
in any major US city. Christianity is making rapid inroads in East Africa and
places along the Pacific Rim. Everyone
is competing for the soul of Pi, and often our methods are somewhat
questionable. We hear of radical Islamists recruiting youth to become part of
their jihads. We have witnessed Christian churches using stories of hell and
damnation to frighten children into committing their lives to Jesus. Is it any wonder that while more
folks are claiming to believe in God, the same folks are separating themselves
from religious organizations? What happened to the concept of love being the
foundation of any Godly movement?
The
writer of First John set out to write a letter explaining the rationale of the
Christian Church. His message seems almost simplistic. He begins with an
affirmation, “We love because God first loved us”. He follows with a
proclamation, “Because Christ laid down his life for you, we ought to lay down
our lives for each other.” Let’s make something very clear. The writer of this
letter did not live in a time without difficulties. The letter was written in a
dangerous era in which being a Christian was often punishable by death. Today,
we have no idea what those folks suffered in order that we might freely
worship. We cannot comprehend the hardships they endured. But what might be even
harder to appreciate is that the foundation of our faith began with the command
to love your enemy.
What
happen to that ideal? I suppose it could be argued that the love motif was
never really part of actual practice of our major religions. The concept of
loving one’s neighbors and enemies is admirable but generally understood as
impossible. Perhaps that is why we live in an age in which affirmations of faith
have become so tied to the complexities of geo-political struggles. It is hard
to separate one’s allegiance to God from one’s loyalty to a particular tribe. Likewise,
it becomes almost impossible to love someone who might be different from you.
A
week or so ago a number of us had the honor of hearing Josh Ralston, professor
of Theology at Union Seminary, speak on relationships between Christians, Jews,
and Muslims. He told the story of a Christian Church that had held
uninterrupted Sabbath services for nearly 1600 years in the city of Mosul in
northern Iraq. Last month the church was closed by ISIS. The Muslim clerics in
the city protested the closing and declared the ISIS persecution of Christians
to be an act of heresy. Ralston told us story after story of communities of
differing faiths that had lived peacefully together for centuries now being
torn apart by, “missionary minded zealots from each faith determined to force
the international community into a Holy War.”
How do we stop this from happening? I believe
we must cling to the writer of John’s bizarre idea that we convert folks
through love. He consistently said that if we love God, we obey God’s commandments.
Those commandments are based on our relationships toward those folks around us.
I have studied other faiths including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhist, as well as the
faith systems of the Aztec, Maya, Incas and our own Native Americans. If we
ignore the radical fringes of each of these religions, what is consistently
revealed and revered in each is the concept that loving God is best
demonstrated through loving one’s neighbor. If harmony and trust is discovered
through embracing God’s love, aren’t
we compelled to reject any religious thought that justifies violence as a God
given mandate?
Does
this mean, like Pi, I should become Hindu, Moslem, and Christian to fully
comprehend God? I don’t believe that is necessary. The wonder and beauty of
each religion is expressed most fully in the radically different ways God has
been revealed. I give thanks each day that God’s love has been made known to me
through the incarnation and revelation of Jesus Christ. Each day I rejoice in
my understanding that through the grace of God my sin has been both exposed and
forgiven. But as I have grown older, and hopefully a little more tolerant, I am
no longer blind to the joyous truth that God chooses to be revealed in
multifaceted ways to folks whose life experiences are dissimilar to mine.
Too
often our conversations with or about Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists
always begins with our differences. What if we began with what each of us holds
to be absolutely and completely true? Every religion confirms God loves us and
commands us to love each other.
Sometimes I think the great religions of this world are so busy trying
to sell our uniqueness’s that each has forgotten this universally held truth.
To some of you this must sound terribly naïve.
To a few it might even verge on the heretical. Your concerns are understood and
appreciated. Yet, it seems if we claim God, and if we claim that God is love,
we cannot allow headlines and fringe religious elements to keep us from
striving toward God’s peaceable kingdom. Violence breeds discontent. Violence demands
a violent response. Members of ISIS, as well as supporters of groups such as the
American Freedom Defense Initiative would like nothing better than turning the
Middle East into Armageddon. Both groups take obscure writings from their
otherwise Holy Books and turn them into godly crusades. Innocent people die and
survivors become outraged, reacting in a way that will only breed violence.
And
the God of all of creation weeps.
Let
us return to Yann Martell’s parable. The majority of the book is about a boy
and a tiger surviving on a raft in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean. Just the
idea of a tiger and a boy occupying equal space in the middle of the ocean is a
stretch for the average imagination, but we read on, wondering how this
pilgrimage will end. Pi regularly prays to God in many of God’s humanly
perceived manifestations. Midway through the ordeal a revelation is discovered.
Allow me to share from the book.
I practiced religious rituals that
I adapted to the circumstances: a mass without a priest, darshans without a
monk, prayers to Allah not knowing where Mecca was. They brought me comfort,
that is certain, but it was so hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting
go, a deep trust, a free act of love, but sometimes it is so hard to love.
Sometimes my heart was sinking fast with anger, desolation, and weariness. I
was afraid I would sink to the bottom of the Pacific.
When this would happen I would
touch my turban and scream, “This is God’s hat.” I would touch my shirt, “This
is God’s shirt.” I would look at the tiger, “This is God’s cat.” “This is God’s
ark; this is God’s ocean; this is God’s sky.”
But God’s hat was always
unraveling. God’s shirt was falling apart. God’s cat was a constant danger.
God’s ark felt like a jail.
Despair is a heavy blackness that
lets no light in or out. It is hell beyond expression. But eventually the blackness would stir and
go away and all that remained was God, a shining point in the light of my
heart. And I would go on loving.
From
the beginning of time, there has been God or Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu, a
shining point in the midst of times of darkness and despair. This God, this
Voice, this Word, calls God’s people to have patience. This Voice calls God’s
people to a radical trust in the One beyond us and the ones among us. This Word
calls God’s people to love our friends and enemies. This God, this Voice, this
Word, calls God’s people to remember the darkness will always pass away. Amen
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