For seven weeks now, we have gathered along this beautiful river to focus on a different “What If…” question, and I’ve saved the biggest, best, and the most controversial “What if “question for tonight…Are you ready…?

            What if Jesus ISN’T the “only way”? What if there is more than one road to God? What if…? What if one can be deeply devoted to Jesus and NOT dismiss, disregard, or disrespect other faith paths? Are you willing to entertain that question with me? I hope so. I’ve always wanted to do this but never had the right setting. This isn’t the kind of question you can seriously and openly entertain in a Christian church, but I honestly believe that it begs asking. I’m equally sure that millions and maybe even hundreds of millions of Christians are asking this question – if only in fearful silence, or in the secret depths of their own hearts.

            Many of us were probably raised in a Christian tradition that was, essentially, exclusivist, putting forth and worshipping a Jesus who was “the only way.” I know that I was. In previous generations here in America, such a position was probably pretty easy to maintain. My father, for example, lived 82 years without ever speaking to or encountering a real living, breathing Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. To him and most folks of his generation, people of other religions were “foreigners” in the truest sense of that word - strange, distant, remote, and, because of all that, scary.

            But my life has been very different from that of my father. I had Muslim and Hindu professors in both college and seminary. I taught students in three different prep schools from every major religion and from countries my father probably never had even heard of. My brother had a Muslim business partner for years. People in my and my daughter’s generation have Facebook friends and regular skype chats with people half way around the globe. If Eloise grows up to attend a school like University of Michigan, she’ll have Jains and Sikhs on her dorm floor. She’ll have sorority sisters who are Buddhist and Muslim.

            Friends, the world has shrunk. It truly is a global village we live in, and most people who are under 55 don’t see or experience the world anything like my father and his generation did. It was one thing to say that Jesus was the only way in 1950’s, 60’s, or 70’s America. It is an entirely different matter to make that claim in 2015. For in taking such an exclusivist approach, Christians today would be condemning our own friends, our neighbors, our professors and suite mates, and that is something that fewer and fewer people are willing to do.

            And maybe – just maybe - that has a little something to do with the fact  - the FACT – that the average age now in Christian churches in this country, across denominational lines, is almost 70 years old, the very age one would have to be to have lived that much of life without regular, first-hand exposure to people – real, wonderful, thoughtful people – of other religions.

            I happen to believe that the biggest single reason for the decline in Christian church affiliation in America is that so many Christians continue to make an exclusivist claim on religious truth….ie “Jesus is the only way,” and the longer the Christian church clings to that claim, the sooner it will preside over its own extinction. There just aren’t that many people around still willing to believe in, much less worship, a God who would condemn 2/3rds of the people on this planet.

(Play Kenny Loggins' “Conviction of the Heart” here)

            So can one follow and serve Jesus whole-heartedly without believing that he is the only way? Many – perhaps even most – Christians think not. And this majority of Christian exclusivists point readily to passages like John 14, in which Jesus supposedly says things like “I am the way, the truth, and the light; no one comes to the Father but by me.” Or Paul’s famous claim in Romans 10:9 that “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that he raised from the dead, you will be saved.” But I’ve never been particularly comfortable with Paul speaking for Jesus. In fact, I’ve never been comfortable with Paul speaking for Paul, but that's another matter. And pretty much all of the exclusivist claims placed in Jesus’ mouth are found in what scholars universally believe to be the last gospel written, the least accurate gospel, and the one with the most clear cut and polemical agenda. John’s gospel is the one that is filled with all that language of “children of light,” “children of darkness.” Ill-informed Christians reading John’s gospel today, automatically assume that the writer is talking about followers of Jesus as children of light and everybody else as children of darkness. These ill-informed Christians then use these labels and verses to try and convince everybody whose NOT a Christian that they had better become one or else. But the truth is John is talking about other Christians when he talks about children of darkness, basically any Christians who don’t see, understand, and follow Jesus the exact same way he and his John community does.

            So again, for emphasis' sake, the Gospel of John was written more than two generations after Jesus was gone. It was not written by eye-witnesses, and perhaps, most importantly of all, it was written by an exclusivist community of Christians that was trying desperately to assert itself and its own narrow views as superior to the half dozen other emerging Christian communities - including one that was led by Jesus' own brother James - that had sprung up in the generations following the deaths of Jesus and his disciples.

            Folks, I’ve dedicated a huge portion of my life to studying the scriptures in their original languages, and I have no problem imagining Jesus hanging out with the Buddha, Muhammad, the Dalai Lama, and Gandhi, sharing stories, respectfully discussing one another’s teachings, and finding and celebrating their abundance of common ground.

            How does that Zac Brown song, go Kenny…?

            (Play Zac Brown's “Remedy” here)

          Those of you who were here earlier this summer may remember a couple of the NT passages I spoke about. Remember the one about the weeds growing alongside the wheat? And the disciples asked Jesus if they should get out and pull up the weeds to get rid of them. What did Jesus say…? "Let them both grow together until the harvest..."

           Then we looked at that moment where Jesus talks about himself as the true, good shepherd, the one who the sheep know and recognize and trust? And later in that discourse he says, “And I have sheep that are”…remember the phrase…”Not of this fold…Sheep of another fold.” Jesus has other sheep than "us," whoever us happens to be.

            If we’re all brothers and sisters…if we’re really all one big human family, then we need a God who is big enough, we need a religion that’s big enough to embrace ALL God’s children – not just the ones who are like us…not just the ones who believe what we believe or practice what we practice.

            The Jesus I’ve come to know and believe in is mighty big, much bigger than my limited brain, much bigger than my theological system or framework, much bigger than Christianity has made him out to be. 

            The Jesus I know has instructed me not to judge, lest I too be judged. 

            The Jesus I know has cautioned me to remember that God’s ways are not like my ways…

           The Jesus I know is constantly reminding me that prostitutes and tax collectors will enter the kingdom of God before I will.

           The Jesus I know has warned me that unless I become like a little child, humble, dependent, and open, I will never see God.

            The Jesus I’ve come to know hung around with and enjoyed people who were incredibly different from him. He befriended people of different faiths and different perspectives, and the only people – the ONLY people - he ever condemned were those religious folks who thought they had a monopoly on truth.

            The Jesus I’ve come to know never once asked anybody – not even his own followers - to bow down to a particular list of beliefs or doctrines. He simply invited people to come and see, to follow him, to hang out with him and to take part in his actions of grace, mercy, and compassion. Had Buddha or Gandhi or Muhammad been there, they’d have been asking their followers to do the very same things. And Jesus would have welcomed them with open arms to his table of grace. In fact, I’m confident that Jesus would have told his followers to listen to those other great teachers and celebrate the similarity to his own teachings.

            I want to close with one of those wonderful NT passages that Christians never seem to want to talk about. You can find it in Luke 9:49-50. The context is this; some of the disciples have been arguing amongst themselves about which of them would be the greatest in God’s kingdom. Jesus, as you remember, puts a child in their midst and says, “If you want to be great, become like one of these.” Then right after this moment, good old John – the one who has the gall to call himself in the Gospel that bears his name “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (apparently, Jesus didn't love the other 11!) - John comes running like a tattle tale to Jesus saying, “Master! We saw some men casting out demons! We told them to stop because they were not with us or one of us.” Jesus replies. "Don’t interfere with their work; if they’re not against us they are for us.”

            John’s exclusivist attitude may reflect how some of us think from time to time, but please notice such an exclusivist attitude bears NO resemblance to how Jesus thinks. Jesus looks at the work these “others” are doing and sees the compassion in their healing, the kindness in their concern for those who are suffering, and says, “Don’t stop them nor interfere with them. Their work resembles our work. They are not against us, so they are for us.”

            Brothers and sisters, I have chosen to follow Jesus. I have chosen to try and live as his disciple. But in that choice, I do not put myself above those who follow the Buddha, nor those who follow Krishna, nor those who follow Muhammad, nor anyone else. There are great and deep commonalities in all the great faiths. Teaching world religions at the college level for the last several years has taught me that. In the end, Jesus promises that if we are to be judged, it will not be based on our beliefs. Our judgment will be based on our actions, and particularly how we respond to the human needs around us. When we see the hungry, do we feed them? When we are made aware of the thirsty, do we give them drink? When people are naked do we clothe them? In these deepest of truths, all the great religious paths of the world agree.

            Jesus was not an exclusivist. He called everyone his brother and sister, and more importantly he treated everyone as his brother and sister. As his followers, how can we not do the same?

(Play “Friend of the Poor” here)

....May the convesation continue....