Progressive and Christian: Jesus As Our Window
Progressive and Christian: Jesus As Our Window
Douglas S. Long
Umstead Park United Church of Christ
October 7, 2007
 
Hey, how ‘bout this drought?! Have you driven over parts of Falls Lake lately? Looks pretty scary… and thankfully, everyone is beginning to cut back on their water usage.
Sheila Alderman sent me an email explaining that:      The weather is so dry in North Carolina that the Baptists have started baptizing by sprinkling; the Methodists have switched from sprinkling to  wet-wipes; the Presbyterians are handing out rain checks; and the Episcopalians are praying that the wine will turn back into water. 
 
We here at Umstead UCC are well equipped to celebrate the blending of Christian traditions on this Worldwide Communion Sunday. We’ve come from a pretty good representation of Christian traditions. Among us are Presbyterians, Methodists, former Catholics, Congregationalists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, a smattering of nobodies… I mean by that that they have no religious tradition in their past…
Who am I leaving out? We’ll, you’re all included, anyway.
All sorts of versions of Christianity… and yet, and here’s a more serious turn, people are beginning to reject the faith in record numbers.
Really!... You may have seen this last month in the N&O. Listen to this excerpt:
 
    More Openly Reject Religion (N&O, Sept. 16, 2007)
    BURGESS HILL, ENGLAND - Every morning on his walk to work, high school teacher Graham Wright recited a favorite    Anglican prayer and asked God for strength in the day ahead. Two years ago, he stopped.
Wright, 59, said he was overwhelmed by a feeling that religion had become a negative influence in his life and the world. Although he once considered becoming an Anglican vicar, he suddenly found that religion represented nothing he believed in, from Muslim extremists blowing themselves up in God's name to Christians condemning gays, contraception and stem cell research.   [According to the article]… Christian fundamentalist groups who want to halt certain science research, reverse rights for abortion, [oppress same sex couples] and teach creationism rather than evolution in schools are … angering people.
 
 
I believe that people like Graham Wright, featured in that article, are looking for a different way of following Jesus than they’ve been introduced to before. There is a growing movement as well, in this county and around the world, to not be silent with what we claim to be a more progressive way of understanding Christianity.
 
What do we mean by that… by progressive Christianity?
Hal Taussig, a professor of NT at Union Seminary in NY recently wrote a book on it (… “A New Spiritual Home: Progressive Christianity at the Grass Roots”)
Taussig claims to have identified over a thousand churches and Christian communities that are alternatives to conventional mainline religion. He says (on page 2, “A New Spiritual Home”)
“New voices celebrating a lively, open-minded, and open hearted Christianity are emerging at the grass roots across America. Comfortable with their own faith, they also know that they are not better than Jews or Muslims. …these new voices are just as interested in spirituality as they are justice. With much more confidence than Christians of the mid-twentieth century, this new momentum strongly affirms both intellectual and emotional expression of one’s faith. [They] advocate strongly for the causes of women, gays and lesbians, and the environment. Weary of materialist decadence, these voices proclaim a Christian practice that helps individuals resist the dominant American paradigm.”                  
 
That sounds like us!.. or at least what we wanna be!
And Hal Taussig agrees… because in chapter 6 of his book Taussig offers 16 profiles of progressive congregations across the country. The sixth profile… is Us!!
We’re in the book!      We’re part of the movement!
(I like this guy ‘Taussig!’)
 
Here’s the way another prominent voice in the movement sees it. Fred Plumer is the current President of The Center for Progressive Christianity. Says Fred:
There are spiritually hungry people all over the country who are looking for a safe place to discuss …religious and spiritual issues. … all too often, …when seekers walk into one of our mainline churches, all too often they hear a milk toast, muddled sermons that are filled with dead theology and an impotent Christology. They are looking for courageous [congregations] to open a discussion about a fresh new, rational way to approach their Christian faith…  They come looking for spiritual transformation and they leave feeling stagnant institution. They come because they are spiritually hungry and they leave thinking that no one rang the dinner bell.
 
I guess you could say that we’re attempting to ring the dinner bell   …because… in the month of October, as we are settling into our new space, we felt it would be good to revisit some primary aspects of progressive Christianity as a way of ‘re-articulating’ them ourselves (always helpful) and also to introduce inquisitive visitors to a slice of what we are attempting to stand for.
That being the case… today we are taking a quick look at    “Jesus As Our Window”
Next week we’ll approach      “Earth As Our Home”
on October      21        “All Are Welcome!”
and on Oct.      28       “Justice As the Social Expression of Love.”
 
So, now… Progressive and Christian: Jesus as Our Window.
 
I got into trouble early on, here at Umstead Park, then called North Raleigh United, even before we wrote the Covenant, when I preached a sermon about Christianity not being the only way to God. (Actually, I didn’t get in trouble for preaching it. I got into trouble when I posted it on the Internet.)
…and who did I get in trouble with?
Basically, fellow Christians who said that God was not bigger than their understanding of God.
 
…but, in fact, I said it so well in that sermon that I want to quote myself now, in context (considering I was definitely quoted out of context several times.).
(The full sermon is among the sermon archives on our web page if you’re curious.)
I offer a bit of paraphrase and summary:
 
… Since my teenage years, I have never been able to escape a profound connection, a deep spiritual relationship, with the man of Nazareth, Jesus.
As a child I was nurtured by the songs and scriptures of a loving fundamental perspective, but as a teenager I was introduced to the Jesus who confronted the status quo religion of his day. No longer meek and mild, this Jesus embraced the outcast and disenfranchised, a Jesus intimately tied to justice, a radical Jesus, Suffering Servant, who preached a God so loving and compassionate that all were embraced, affirmed, and freed… a Jesus that was so controversial and subversive to the power structures of his day that those in power arranged his crucifixion.  
 
It was not until I began to understand the man of Nazareth in these ways that faith rooted like a fire in my soul. It was this Jesus that freed me to follow God. Something deep within connected. Something about the God of this Jesus stirred within me an awakening that I have never been able to escape. I was liberated to love.
 
The Church has been both a help and hindrance in that liberation. The hindrance is this: In institutionalizing our faith, we make the mistake of thinking we can institutionalize God. In truth, the Church can occasionally speak the words of God but it can never truly completely contain God. God is far too much the Holy-Other for any human construction, whether a human institution or book of human words… God is far too 'Other' to fully contain him, her, them.
Even our language falters in this task.
… Which is exactly why, for me, the man of Nazareth is central.
Jesus captured the spirit of God as completely as the human spirit and body can… The Word became flesh, and this Living Word was too loving, too compassionate, too counter-cultural, too hot to handle. We killed the manifestation of God among us. Which wasn't the end of the story… God's affirmation of the life of Jesus is the on-going spirit and presence of the Christ.
Jesus the Christ lives!
 
Yes, I believe the Christ can be present with us now. I have felt that presence. I claim it as central in my life  ...and in no way this morning do I mean to detract from its importance. I am hopelessly in love with the radically hopeful God of Jesus and therefore with the Christ himself.
 
That being said, and to cut to the chase for our purposes this morning, do I believe that the Christ is the only path to God? … The short answer is this… No. I do not believe Jesus is the only path to God. To believe so would limit God's presence to a specific culture, in a specific slice of history. To believe so would be to assert that God can only work in one way… which is, conveniently, our way. (How good of God, to reveal God's self to us, and only us, of all peoples in time and space!)     Again, do not hear this as taking away from my understanding of Jesus as the Christ, God made manifest. Hear it instead as my understanding that God is truly greater than any of us can capture.
 
And I take heart in the teachings of Jesus on this score. Remember when the teacher of religion approached him and asked the question: What must I do to inherit life eternal? Or another way of translating the question: What must I do to live life as fully as it is possible to be lived?.. to live wholly?
Notice what wasn't given as part of the answer. Jesus did not say, when asked point blank about how to live life perfectly, wholly, completely… Jesus did NOT say, "You've got to confess my name as the only one and true Savior."  Jesus did not say "You must believe in me." Jesus did not tell the student of the law that the only way to find life was through him at all. He said (or agreed)… "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and your neighbor as yourself."
I'm simply pointing out that Jesus, when given a perfect opportunity to be exclusionary… wasn't.
 
I can assure you that there are plenty who would label this view as blasphemous... but I am not trying to win them over. I am simply and clearly proclaiming that the Jesus that I know embraces ALL who strive to love God and neighbor, all colors and cultures and creeds and kinds of us who come with humility and love and tolerance to the realm of the Holy.
 
Dare we limit God and claim that God cannot work in other ways?
I DO believe, as the good book says, "There is no God but God." It’s from the Koran, by the way, … chapter 3.
..and I DO believe, "God is truth and light is his shadow."  You remember perhaps, that Plato said that.
…and I agree with the Apostle Paul, that the unknown God in some cultures is the same God that we know through Jesus the Christ.
…and I also believe we have much to learn of God from those outside our culture and tradition.
 
Are we nothing short of arrogant to assume that our understanding of God is the only possible understanding? Does not such an attitude demean both God and the spiritual capabilities of the rest of humanity?
 
In Myanmar the past few weeks, we have seen courageous Buddhist monks standing with great threat of harm and in some cases great harm. They have stood for the common good, to lift up injustices, standing for others; they have stood peacefully in the presence of violence because they know no other stance will ultimately prevail.
 
Do you remember the Apostle Paul describing Jesus to the Church in Philippi?
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
 
Our own political leaders, backing present war efforts, posture as Crusaders for Christ…
… and then, there are the Buddhist monks in Myanmar.
 
Let me ask you this…. Who seems more Christ-like to you?
Who exemplifies more, embodies, seems to be more filled with the spirit of Jesus?
Jesus… who, … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, …humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross?
 
Is Christianity the only way to God?
In truth, it often is a stumbling block to God.
No wonder so many are turning away.
 
…But is Jesus central for me?            Yes.
Is Jesus the Christ?     Yes.
Is Jesus' spirit known by me today?   Yes.
Is Jesus the way to God?        Yes.
Is Jesus a perfect way to God?           Yes.
Is Jesus the only way to God? …
Ahh… to answer ‘yes’ here would be to limit God.
Is Jesus the only way to God?
…..No…. but…
BUT… Jesus IS my authentic path to God, a path that I will share with all who are searching.
 
So what does all this mean for us?
I hope that we will continue to be a congregation centered in the God of Jesus.
…which is the God of love and compassion, the God of liberation and justice,
…AND the God greater than any of us can know completely, individually or collectively.
 
This God continues to beckon us, and all persons in all places and times.
Thanks be to the Christ who draws us into this God's presence.
Amen.