“There is power in the blood,” says the old hymn.  And this is how I want to start a series on religious pluralism, beginning today with how Christians view their faith differently.  I hope this will help us to think theologically on how we come to understand our own faith here in this community.

            Let’s begin with an exclusive idea of salvation—one that has made a stunning resurgence in this country, yet was not the way our mainline churches understood who Jesus was to us during at least the lifetimes of most people in this room. 

            The references to Jesus’ blood are all through our Christian imagery.  On Communion Sunday, we struggle with what language to use when talking about the body and blood of Christ. At my previous church, our worship leader chose a banner for the wall from a catalogue.  She looked at a tiny picture of a cute little lamb sitting next to a chalice.  Something was connecting the two, but she couldn’t make it out.  When the banner arrived, it was 4’ by 10’ and there was a lamb with a wound in its neck, which was gushing blood into the chalice.  Of course—the blood of the lamb, sent to save the sins of humankind, made real in the sacrament of Communion. 

            “For God so loved the world, that he sent his only son, so that all who believe in him might not perish, but have eternal life.”  The words of John reflect a real Christian belief.

            Yet, folks were not comfortable with it.  No one wanted to be rude, but word got back from members of the choir, whose seats faced the banner, that it was “a little disturbing,” and there was relief when the image of blood-spouting sheep was replaced with a new bloodless banner.  Why didn’t the image fit in?  Why were we uncomfortable?

            Here are two ways that Christians look at Jesus Christ.

            First, the “instrumental.”  Jesus alone is the instrument of God’s salvation.  To play on a word, the focus is Christ-ological.  Jesus is the only way.  The language of the Gospel of John speaks to that belief.  Therefore, Christians must come in contact with Jesus through professing faith in him, and (symbolically) must be washed clean of sins through his blood.  The sacrament then means that we are symbolically partaking of his blood and his body in order to become a part of the realm of God.  This view makes Jesus a kind of talisman; his person and his divinity, not his words and deeds, are what we reach out to touch for salvation.  Our goal, then, must be to Christianize the whole world so that more souls can be saved.  If we believe in Jesus as an instrument of salvation, then evangelizing is a compelling and necessary endeavor.

            The second way of looking at Jesus is called “revelatory.”  In this view, Jesus reveals how God has been at work at all times and in all places.  The focus is theo-logical.  Therefore, the goal is to be of assistance to God in order to help establish the realm of God.  The sacrament of Communion is not focused on the physical body of Christ, but on the strengthening of the body of Christ called the community; the church.  Take away the images of blood; they do not fit in to what we consider to be our primary focus on who Jesus is to us.  No bleeding lamb-banners in here, please.

            The first view invites people into a select group—those who can call themselves “saved” through the instrument of Jesus Christ, specifically through the power of the blood of Christ which was shed for your sins.  The second view pushes its adherents out into the world to do good works, to emulate Jesus, and to see him in the faces of the oppressed everywhere.  So, here is my first question—do you find yourself in one group or the other, or even somewhere in between?

            Are both of these views Christian? 

            Yes.  They are viewpoints of Christian communities who practice their Christianity based on viewpoints which are culled from scripture, and which have meaning for them.

            A discussion of religious pluralism, then, would have to start with Christianity.  And, Christians around the world disagree on what is really “Christian.”

            Let’s muddy the waters even more.  Syncretism has occurred in our faith.  Syncretism is the union of different elements that don’t necessarily meld together, which then change the original meaning of a faith. 

            Salvation was not a part of our faith history until a very decisive event.  Before the 6^th century B.C., your life was simply your life—if God was pleased to bestow favor upon you, you were rewarded.  If not, then God wanted it that way.  All things came from God.  There was no idea of good and evil existing as separate, warring entities on a celestial plane.  There was no reward-heaven or punishment-hell.  You can read this in the Bible.

            There was a three layer cake.  The top layer was God, sitting in the clouds looking down at his creation.  He was very involved.  After all, the world was flat, made up of about three hundred square miles, and was comprised of several million people.  (World population estimates show that the entire round world was made up of about seventy-five million people at this time.)  But this God of the ancient Middle East could be very active, especially with a chosen people whose numbers were even smaller.

            His chosen people resided on the middle layer of the cake—the world.  Beneath it, and supported by pillars, was the underworld, or Sheol.  When you died, you died.  A papery, one-dimensional shade of your former self, actually called a “shade,” wafted down to Sheol.  It wasn’t hell—it was simply where you went to rest when you died.

            Listen to these words from Isaiah, words that were a comeuppance to someone who actually thought he could rise above God’s heaven:

“Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come, it rouses the shades to greet

 you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations.  All of them will speak and say to you: 'You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!'  Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, the sound of your harps; maggots are the bed beneath you, and worms are your covering.”

Not what I would call a real welcome, but you can hear in our own scriptures that

the idea of the heaven and hell we know of was developed much later.

Jerusalem would fall to Babylon.  They would be slaves for several generations. 

They would be rescued and returned to their homes when Cyrus the Great captured Babylon.  Cyrus was a Persian, and their religion was called Zoroastrianism.  In this religion, good and evil were separate, battling each other on a celestial plane.  God fought on the side of good.

            Returning to Jerusalem, the Jews saw wisdom in this viewpoint of the world.  After all, how could their God have allowed his only temple and their city to be destroyed, and how could such evil overtake them?  Was it the will of God, or was evil at work in the world separate from and in direct conflict with God? 

            This is called dualism, and our theology was forever changed, twenty-five hundred years ago.  God was in the heavens—naturally the forces of good were with him.  Heaven was a place of goodness, and Sheol became hell, the place of all evil. Therefore, where do the shades go now, and who decides?¹  Christians would answer this in a theology of salvation. 

            John gave us one that we all know—a high Christological view, one where God gave his only son, so that all who believe in him might have eternal life.

            Paul gave us one in Romans which has had an interesting interpretation.  What he is saying that Adam stained us all with his sin, and that Jesus is the “second Adam,” who came to release us all from that sin.

            “Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s

act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.  For just as by the one

man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience

the many will be made righteous.” 

            So how did Adam stain us all with sin?  We were all there at the time!  The ancients did not understand biology as we do, nor did they view destiny in the same way.

            Here is a snapshot.  We are all predetermined from Adam to the present, and right along down to the last person on earth.  And, we are all fully formed beings waiting to be born and, if we are men, we are holding all future generations in our seed.  It is men who have the great responsibility to provide an environment that protects and nurtures their wives and future generations.  A woman’s role in procreation is to provide the nurturing womb for a man’s pre-destined child.  A man’s role is to make sure that the precious seed is only used for completing procreation.  Any other sexual activity is evil, because you are killing your future generations.

            As a sidebar—we no longer believe this, but our attitudes about sex continue to be colored by the residual of this understanding of how our destiny is formed.  Herein may lie some religious attitudes about birth control or homosexuality.  And, as feminist theologian Mary Daly said: “If God is a man, then man is God.”  

Isn’t it amazing how a deep-seated understanding, even when we no longer believe it, can live on in our traditions?  With regard to our faith tradition, we were all present physically, inside Adam when he took the fruit.  We were a part of him. Therefore, the old saying, “through Adam’s fall, so sinned we all,” has real meaning. 

Take a look at your program cover.  Under the cross is a skull.  Sometimes you will see depictions with an entire skeleton.  This is Adam.  Jesus was buried at Golgotha, which is Aramaic for “skull,” because the hill was shaped like a skull, and according to tradition, this is also the place where Adam was buried. 

It was also claimed that the wood from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden had been preserved by Adam and all the patriarchs after him, in order to be fashioned into Jesus’ cross, for Jesus was declared the second or reincarnated Adam designed to correct the fault of the first one.

“There is power in the blood,” we sang earlier.  The power is this; that Jesus’ blood fell from the cross and purified the bones of Adam, releasing us from sin. 

So, what about a more inclusive understanding of salvation?  The Universalists in the 19^th century took Paul’s words, “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” to mean that all, not some, would be saved.  This was the first real inclusive understanding of salvation in this country. 

More than a hundred years later, Karl Rahner (and other Catholic theologians) would change the church with Vatican II.  Now there was the “the anonymous Christian,” that is, the person who leads a Christian life, yet is denied the knowledge of Christ, may also be saved. 

Or, can a repentant Christian named Adolph Hitler go to heaven, while a Hindu named Mahatma Gandhi is consigned to hell?

In Romans, Paul says that Adam’s trespass led to condemnation for all, and that Jesus’ act of righteousness led to the salvation of all.  Not some, but all. 

There are three ways of looking at salvation.  The exclusive, such as we hear in John—only those who believe in Jesus will be saved.  The inclusive, such as we hear in the Universalist’s understanding of Paul—that Jesus came to save us all, and not just some.  And the pluralist view, which says that all faiths provide wisdom and spiritual grounding to their adherents, and that each faith is a pathway up the mountain.

In the next couple of weeks, I want to explore how we can be religious pluralists and also be uniquely Christian.  Who do we say we are?

            I want to explore the Jewish-Christian relationship from the viewpoint of Suzannah Heschel, daughter of the famous Rabbi Abraham Heschel and an author in her own right.  I also want to talk about how we don’t just strive to maintain our integrity while sharing our place in an increasingly pluralistic world.  Our integrity may be strengthened by our contact with people who will want us to be able to share why we maintain our faith and what our faith does for us in bringing us closer to the realm of God.  We may learn something new—the recognition that our neighbor might also come close to that realm him or herself, even when addressing our God by a different name.

            There is light yet to be shed.  But, the light that comes through the stained glass windows in churches all across the world reflects the light of God shining in a multiplicity of colors and patterns, assisting the faith-seeker to find the truth they are looking for.

But when we see light that comes through stained glass windows, we have to remember that the window is not the light.  The light is the light—coming through our windows.  We don’t own the light because of where it filters down from.  The truth that comes to us from our tradition is not the tradition.  It is simply truth.

May the truth pierce our hearts through the light that is here.  But may the same light of God, called by other names by other people, pierce those hearts as well in mosques and temples, or wherever people gather to praise and to understand the One who is called by many names.

AMEN.

Sermon Notes

1.  Additional note: Dualism also does something else—it creates a stronger sense of an “us” and 

     a “them,” where “good” was in us, and “evil” was in them.

Scripture for Sunday, September 17, 2006

Who Do We Say We Are—Part One

Isaiah 14:9-20

            Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations.  All of them will speak and say to you: "You too have become as weak as we!  You have become like us!"  Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, and the sound of your harps; maggots are the bed beneath you, and worms are your covering.  How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!  You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High."  But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.  Those who see you will stare at you, and ponder over you: "Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who would not let his prisoners go home?"  All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb; but you are cast out, away from your grave, like loathsome carrion, clothed with the dead, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the Pit, like a corpse trampled underfoot.  You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, you have killed your people. May the descendants of evildoers nevermore be named!

Romans 5:12-21         Adam and Christ

              Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned--sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law.  Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass.  For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.  And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.  If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.  For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.  But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

John 3:16-18

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.