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....

What If God is a God of small things? What if God's Eye Really IS on the Sparrow?

We live in a country that thinks big – REALLY BIG! We build big buildings; we idolize those with BIG salaries and Big important positions with big companies. The artists and performers we revere the most are those who sell the most paintings or records, who have the most people at their concerts or openings.

         It’s no big surprise that religion and spirituality in this country have become equally enamored with big-ness. It’s the big churches we pay attention to. It’s the pastors of big churches whom we invite to speak, whose books we read, whose opinions seem to matter most.

         But what I’m wondering tonight is this…What if…what if God isn’t as interested in big things as we tend to be? What if God is way more interested in little things than we are? What if…?

          Who’s up for a little Bible quiz??? When Jesus was asked what the kingdom of God was like, what did he choose to compare it to…? A mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds…a tiny bit of yeast hidden in dough. The God we worship may be extra large and has all the power in the world, but for some reason, decides to act in tiny little ways, in behind the scenes ways, in gradual ways.

   (Here Rokko played and sang Randy Newman's "Dayton, Ohio 1903)

         In case you don’t believe me, think about Christmas for a moment… The God of the universe decides to visit the planet and the people he created and how does God do it? Not with a bang but a whisper. A silent, holy night, a tiny baby, born in a po-dunk town, to a couple of nobodies, in a tiny stable. Nobody knew about it really; there was no fanfare to speak of. Most people didn’t notice it at all. And even once he was born, it took this out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, son-of-a-carpenter-boy 30 years to start showing or telling the world who he was. God may be BIG, but He tends to act in small, gradual, almost hidden ways.

         Remember Elijah in the cave – I Kings 19…? The discouraged prophet Elijah is looking for God, and a huge earthquake comes but God isn’t in the earthquake. Then a raging fire but God isn’t in the fire. Next, a hurricane-like wind blows, and yet, scripture tells us, God wasn’t in the hurricane. Finally in the silence, Elijah discerns God’s presence in a still small voice, what is sometimes translated as a gentle whisper.

I worry sometimes that we might be missing much of what God is saying and doing. And I think one of the reasons we miss so much of what God is up to is that we are so enthralled with the big that we fail to hear or see all that God is doing right here among us in subtle, tiny, gradual ways. Francois Fenelon once noted that “God hides his work, in the spiritual order as in the natural order, under an unnoticeable sequence of events.” Robert Mullholland puts it this way: “The hidden work of God is a nurturing that prepares us for what appears to be a quantum leap forward. But what we see as a quantum leap may actually be only the smallest part of what has been going on in a long, steady, process of grace, working far beyond our knowing and understanding.” (p22)

         In our over-enfatuation with the large and the big, not only might we miss the millions of amazing little things God is doing here and now, but we might even be misinterpreting the Bible. Let me give you an example. You know the story of the feeding of the 5000, right? True or false – the story says that Jesus took 5 loaves and 2 fish and magically turned them into a bunch more loaves and a bunch more fish and fed the people accordingly…?

         A dear friend of mine from seminary set me straight on this passage. He lived a very different life than most of us have. He’s Ethiopian and was one of the leaders of the church there in the 1970’s when the communists came in and took over the country in a bloody coup. One of the first things the communist regime did was gather all the leaders of the Ethiopian Orthodox church to give each bishop a choice – either renounce his faith or be imprisoned in a 7x7x7 concrete cube in the hot desert. My friend, Bishop Abuno Paulos chose imprisonment. He lived in a concrete cell with no windows in the baking desert for 7 years – 7 years! Each day, he was given one “meal” consisting of a small crust of bread and a dixie cup full of water. I asked him how he could have survived. I’ll never forget his answer…He said, “When the guard brought my meal each day, I thanked him for it. Then I said this prayer over the meal every single day…Dear gracious provider, please take this cup of water and this tiny crust of bread and make them enough, I pray. Multiply it inside me, so that it might nourish me adequately. Just make it enough.” He concluded this harrowing tale telling me, “I never hungered in the entire 7 years. I never thirsted. God multiplied it and made it enough.”

         It was Bishop Paulos who set me straight on the feeding of the 5000. The gospels never say or suggest that Jesus made more bread and more fish; it only says that Jesus prayed over it and that it was enough…more than enough. Bishop Paulos’s take on this tale is that Jesus prayed a prayer much like the one he used in the Ethiopian desert. He then explained, “People in that crowd probably saw how little food there was for so many and took tiny bits, so that everyone would have some. It was their spirit of sharing and being concerned for one another’s well being that made this simple feeding miraculous,” Bishop concluded.

         I’ve never looked at that parable the same way since, and now, my bet is that neither will you. We mustn’t take our fascination with size and bigness and project that onto the God of small things. How does that great old gospel hymn go, Melissa…”His eye is on the sparrow…” Sing it, girl…

  (His Eye is On the Sparrow… sung by Melissa Ludwa and Rokko Jans)

One of my favorite gospel stories is known as the Widow’s mite. It goes like this… And Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, ² and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. ³ So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; ⁴ for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God,^[a] but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”

         Over my years in ministry and working with people, I’ve heard and lived some incredible stories of what God has done with some equally tiny things. Let me share a few of them…

          Back in 1990 on Super Bowl Sunday, a seminary intern in a tiny Presbyterian church in Columbia, South Carolina uttered the following prayer. “Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl football game today, help us be mindful of those who are without a bowl of soup to eat.” Following the prayer, this seminary intern who delivered his simple prayer then asked the parishioners to give $1 each for the needy as they left the church that day. The people in that small church liked the prayer and the idea so much that they shared it with other area churches and together they raised $5,700 for local hunger centers and soup kitchens that first Souper Bowl Sunday in 1990. Since that first tiny Souper Bowl offering 25 years ago, this “Souper Bowl of Caring” offering has become a nation-wide effort  that has raised over $100 million dollars, including 8 million just this past February. That’s how the annual SouperBowl of Hunger offering began – 1 seminary student, 1 prayer, and $1. Talk about a mustard seed.

 This next mustard seed story is a little closer to home. In 1972, an informal meeting of 7 area men who were concerned about land and land use in the Little Traverse Bay region took place. That little, tiny conversation spawned what is now known as The Little Traverse Conservancy. In 43 years, this little idea has protected more than 40,000 acres across 5 northern Michigan counties. The LTC now has over 4,100 pledging members. In the last year alone, the educational arm of the conservancy had more than 5,500 students participate in one of their summer trips or programs. It all started with just a tiny little mustard seed-like meeting.

Here’s one more… Who do you think said this: “I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time. I can only feed one person at a time. Just one, one, one. You get closer to Christ by coming closer to each other. As Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me.” So you begin…I begin. I picked up one person; maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up 42,000. All my work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn’t put my drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you; same thing in your family; same thing in your church…So just begin…one, one, one.” Any guesses…? That was Mother Teresa who said that. Mother Teresa. Isn’t that incredible? Talk about mustard seed faith!

Friends, the God we worship is HUGE, and we must never forget that. But this same God works in and through the smallest of things – the little prayer, the note written on a napkin, the idea offered at a friend’s coffee table. God works in and through the tiniest of things, and He expects us to honor and work through the tiniest of things as well. We are to have His eyes, His way of seeing, His sense of potential. Do we, in this time and place, value the single cup of water offered in faith to the thirsty stranger?

What if God’s eye really IS on the sparrow?...What if the God of this universe really does honor and even prefer the small over the huge?

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of seeds, when it grows it becomes the largest of the garden plants and becomes a tree where birds come seeking shelter and shade.” What if he really meant it?  What if we grew to have faith in the mustard seed ways of God. What if we think and act out of that mustard seed faith, so that one day people will be telling our stories, the stories of the little, tiny things we did with our tiny and insignificant lives that turned into something huge and beautiful in God’s kingdom and in God’s time. What if…? What if…?

(Sing Inch by Inch – the Garden Song…

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For...

         So tonight, we are so excited to have my dear friends from Traverse City – the Nexus band – here with us. I’ve been working and playing with these folks on and off for 6-7 years I think!

        On these Tuesday night riverside gatherings, we’ve been considering some fun and provocative “What If” questions, rethinking matters of faith and of spiritual community together. To get us into tonight’s question, I want to begin with a couple stories…

         A middle-aged woman walked into her counselor’s office and said, “I should be happy with my life. I have a fine marriage, two wonderful kids, a good career. Yet I keep feeling that something is missing… Deep down I am restless. I want something more…” (Gerald May, “Entering the Emptiness,” Simpler Living, Compassionate Life, McKibben & Schut, p. 46)

A young boy opens the last of his Christmas gifts. There had been a huge pile of them just an hour ago, but all that remains is wrapping paper, empty boxes, and ribbons. The boy had received a lot of great gifts, everything he asked for. But there was an emptiness inside him that he couldn’t quite figure out.

There is a chronic restlessness in all of us, a longing, a hunger that we can’t even name, something that’s always just beyond our reach. Buddhists call this Dukka – the truth that there is a kind of suffering that is universal to all of us. Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones realized long ago that we “can’t get no satisfaction.” The Eagles told us, back in the early 70’s, that even though “some fine things have been laid upon our table,” we “only want the ones that we can’t get.” (Can anybody name THAT tune…?)

         So what if…what if there really is this “Dukka,” this innate and inescapable suffering, longing, wanting, discontent, this kind of insatiable hunger is simply a part of being human?

So here’s my what if question for tonight…What if... we’re not necessarily supposed to be “happy” or “content”? What if that chronic restlessness that we ALL feel, though very few of us are willing to admit it, is actually supposed to be there? What if that deep, inner longing, that part of us that just can’t get no satisfaction, is actually supposed to be there? What if…?

Nexus – plays “I Still Haven’t Found…

So let’s break this song down…The first verse focuses on the physical realm. The singer has climbed “the highest mountain,” run “through the fields,” and “scaled city walls,” but, “still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.” In the second verse, the singer turns to the sexual, kissing “honey lips,” experiencing “healing finger tips,” and “burning with desire,” but still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. It’s the third verse that, for my money, really makes this song worth listening to. Here Bono moves to the spiritual realm, speaking with “eternal angels,” holding “hands with the Devil.” He even goes on to make explicit reference to his Christian faith; Jesus breaking “the bonds” and loosing “the chains,” even carrying “the cross.” Bono emphasizes the fervency of his Christian faith, crying, “You know I believe it!”

So when I first heard this song, I was sure that after that 3^rd verse, this one about Jesus, they were going to sing a different chorus. You know, something like, “And I finally have found what I’m looking for.” But no! No! NO! In unprecedented fashion, Bono confesses – openly admits - that even with Christian faith, even with the assurance of Christ’s redeeming work, he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.

I don’t know about you, but that has been my experience following Jesus. Being his disciple has done a lot of great things for me, made my life meaningful and purposeful. But I’m still restless. I’m still searching. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…Have you? HAVE you?

 What if human fulfillment in this life – happiness, contentment, whatever you want to call it - with or without Christian faith - is a myth. What if having a hungry heart, an insatiable longing is a part of what makes us human? What if not being able to find what we’re looking for is a part of what unites us – ALL of us, regardless of our faith, religion, or lack therof?

As sociologist Gerald May writes,

“We make several great mistakes if we think life should or even

can be resolved to a point of complete serenity and fulfillment.

To believe this is to commit ourselves to a fantasy that does

not exist and that, if it were true, would kill our love and end

in stagnation, boredom, and death…Most importantly, the

myth of fulfillment makes us miss the most beautiful aspect of

our human souls: our emptiness, our incompleteness, our radical

yearning for love.” May concludes, “We were never meant to be completely fulfilled; we were meant to taste it, to long for it, to grow

toward it…But to miss our emptiness is, finally, to miss both our essential humanity and our hope.” (Gerald May, “Entering the Emptiness,” Simpler Living Compassionate Life, McKibben & Schut, p. 47)

        

So, what if God made us in such a way, connected us in such a way that until every human being has eaten, we’re all going to be hungry…?

What if God made us in such a way that until everybody has enough – a roof, a shelter, a home, we’re all going to be a little unsatisfied with where we live?

What if we are all so connected – not just those of us here tonight or people we know - but ALL of us – the ENTIRE HUMAN FAMILY – what if we are ALL intricately connected in some powerful, eternal, unfathomable way? If that were true, what sense would it make for any of us to be “happy” or “content” until ALL of us could be?

So how many of you here are parents…? Let me ask you parents this: if one of your children is sick, can you feel good?... If one of your children is sad, can you feel happy? If one of your kids has had his/her heart broken, can you feel content or satisfied?

We religious folk – and especially us Christians – are always talking about and singing about God being our Father, the earth being our mother. If that’s the case, then aren’t all people, all living things, all creatures our brothers and sisters?

Maybe this is what the Apostle Paul was trying to say in I Corinthians 12, when he compared the human family to a human body and wrote that, “when one part suffers all parts suffer with it.” (I Corinthians 12:26)

What if…what if happiness, fulfillment, and contentment escape us and will continue to escape us until all God’s children are taken care of. What if?

If we really are all brothers and sisters, if the ties that bind the entire creation together really are God-ordained, why should any of us expect to be happy when nearly two thirds of the world lives in extreme poverty? Should any of us expect to be fulfilled and content when American children under the age of 13 have more spending money – at $230 per year – than the 300 million poorest people in the world earn in a year? (Alan Durning, “How much is enough?”)

Frederich Buechner, who spoke at my graduation from Princeton Seminary, put it this way, “There can never really be peace and joy for any until there is peace and joy for all.” (Buechner, A Room Called Remember) So what if THAT is true? What if Buechner is right? What if your ultimate fulfillment and mine are not meant to arrive until God’s will is actually being done on earth as it is in heaven? What if we still haven’t found what we’re looking for because God still hasn’t found what She’s looking for? What if…?

(Here Nexus played “Walk On” by U2)

Our Buddhist brothers and sisters have this incredibly cool practice called Tonglen. I’d like for us to close our evening with it. It’s a particular kind of breathing and meditation exercise that helps us get at the unity that is at the core of the human family.

We begin by picturing a person or a group of people we know to be suffering – it might be people who have cancer undergoing chemotherapy… it might be people who have lost a loved one or people in the horrors of war and bloodshed.

Once we have pictured and centered our thoughts on this suffering individual or group, we breathe in deeply, seeking to breathe into ourselves some of their suffering and pain, seeking to reduce – if only in a miniscule way – their suffering and pain.

And then, on our out breaths, we seek to give them some of our strength, some of our nourishment or health or peace.

You can also practice Tonglen when you, yourself, are sick or scared or going through a loss. In your in breath, you take in the collective pain and suffering and sorrow of the many others who are going through what you are. And in your out breaths, you send out all the hope you can muster for all of them.

So I invite you to close your eyes with me for a few minutes, breath in and out and begin to picture an individual or group who is suffering…

Breathe in deeply and take into yourself a portion of that pain, that sadness, that suffering that is hurting your brother, your sister…

Breathe out in hope…in love…in longing for that person or group’s wellness, peace, restoration….Keep breathing