Today is World Communion
Sunday, a day designed for us to remember and celebrate the fact that all people all over the world are God’s
precious children. This first Sunday of October we are reminded that people in every country and every land are loved by God,
whether they are Christian or not and, therefore, they should be loved by us as well.
Last Sunday, you may remember, that I mentioned my late
father and his reluctance to accept the possibility of non-Christians attending
God’s heavenly party someday. I want to mention dad again, but this time in the
context of just how much the world has changed from his generation to mine.
In dad’s
generation - and in those generations previous to his here in America - it was
entirely possible – and actually quite likely – to live all of one’s life - 82
years in dad’s case - without ever speaking to or encountering a real living,
breathing Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. To dad, and to most folks of his
generation, people of other religions were “foreigners” in the truest sense of
that word. People of other religions and cultures weren’t people that my dad’s
generation ever had to deal with in any personal way. Muslims and Hindus were
people dad saw on Fox News or read about in distant National Geographic articles.
But my life and the lives of those in my generation have
been very different from that of my father. My older brother, for instance, had
a Muslim business partner for years, who became a dear and trusted friend. I
had Muslim and Hindu professors in both college and seminary. I taught students
in three different prep schools from every major religion. One of the prep
schools in which I served was over 70% Jewish. In another boarding school, I
had Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and Buddhist students living on the same dorm floor
with me, sitting side by side in my English classroom. People in my and my daughter’s
generations 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 and close friends from countries my father had
probably never even heard of.
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 now would be condemning our own friends, our
neighbors, our professors and our college roommates, 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.
It seems to me that we Christians have a good ways to go
in terms of offering respect to other religions and those who practice them.
One of the reasons we might not be as respectful as we could or should be is
that we don’t know very much about other faiths, do we? Many of us, like my
father, simply lack personal experience with other faiths and those who
practice them. And, of course, it doesn’t help that so many Christians continue
to make an exclusivist claim on religious truth….ie “Jesus is the only way.” My
own opinion is that the longer we in the Christian church cling to the claim of
Jesus being the only way, the sooner we will preside over our own extinction.
There just aren’t that many people around – particularly young people - who are
still willing to believe in, much less worship, a God who would condemn 2/3rds
of the people on this planet.
So it seems to me that World Communion Sunday 2015 is the
perfect opportunity to begin to explore and celebrate both what the other
religions of the world have to offer us and what they share in common with us.
In each of the next four Sundays, I’m going to introduce you to one of the
other major world religions to see what we might learn from them. Not only am I
hoping that you will come for this exciting series, but that you will invite
your younger, non-church going friends, who will probably be pretty excited to
learn that your little church is doing something like this.
But for the rest of our time this morning, I’d like to
point out just two of the most important things that all of the great religions share.
The first thing that is shared by all five of the great
religions of the world is a commitment to taking care of the weak and
vulnerable of society – the poor, the widow, the sick, the hungry, and the
outcast. We know, of course, that Jesus said that whatever we do to the least
of these – God’s children – we do also to him. Mother Teresa took this so
seriously, that she actually believed that when she picked up a starving child
from the streets of Calcutta, she was picking up the Lord himself.
Mahatma Gandhi sounded this exact same call in Hinduism.
Gandhi himself defined the essence of Hinduism as “to learn to see the Lord in
every creature, and then to act accordingly.” (rep) Hindus believe that they
have five daily duties, five actions that they must undertake each day to be
faithful. Two of them involve feeding those who are hungry and welcoming
strangers or visitors into their homes.
Many Christians are surprised to learn that Islam not
only advocates giving a portion of one’s income to the poor each and every week,
but the Koran actually requires it!
Faithful Muslims are required to give between 2.5 and 5% of their total income
to the poor, the hungry, and those in need of life’s basics.
In the Hebrew scriptures, not only do the prophets
constantly remind the Israelites of their responsibility to care for all of
society’s poor, they even go so far as to tell the people that God wants no
part of their songs and prayers in worship, unless they are accompanied by
concrete, consistent actions on behalf of the poor.
So there is a strong thread in all 5 faiths calling all of us to take care of the poor and
of all those who can’t take care of themselves. But there is an equally strong
thread in all of the major religions calling the faithful to pray. For our
brothers and sisters in the east, Buddhists and Hindus, the practice of prayer
is more of a silent meditation or reflective type of prayer. In the Eastern
faiths, prayer is more about getting quiet -both inside and out - so that one’s
inner voice might be heard. In other words, for them, prayer is much more about
listening for God than it is about expressing one’s self to God. (I’ll say a lot more about this in the next two weeks.)
Our Muslim brothers and sisters take prayer so seriously
that they do it five times a day for about 20 minutes a shot. These prayers
take place at specific times, thereby uniting all Muslims in these sacred
rituals. Those times are just before dawn, at noon, late in the afternoon as
work is ending, at sunset, and at bedtime. These times are intentionally spread
throughout the day so the faithful Muslim will be thinking about God all day
long. I mentioned earlier that my brother had a Muslim business partner for
many years. While my brother is a very faithful Christian, he was constantly
amazed and humbled by the consistency and devotion of his partner, who would
come to work each day with his brief case in one hand and his prayer rug in the
other. No matter what was going on in their work day, and no matter what
country or time zone they were in as they traveled, his friend would excuse
himself at noon and again at five to fulfill his prayer practice.
I’m sure that many of you – like me - were probably
raised in a Christian tradition that was, essentially, exclusivist, that is,
teaching us from very early in our lives that Jesus was “the only way,” that
our Christian religion was the only valid and legitimate one. I think today is
the perfect day to acknowledge what that must feel like and sound like to God’s
children in India, in China, in Israel, and throughout the Middle East.
Those of you who were here throughout
our recent kingdom of God series will remember a couple of the NT passages we
studied. 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, and what did
Jesus say…? Then we looked at that moment where Jesus talks about having sheep
that are ”Not of this fold…”
Today, I want to close with one more NT passages that exclusivist
Christians never seem to want to talk about. It’s in Luke 9:49-50. John, the disciple,
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.”
Jesus looked at the work these “others” were doing and
saw 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.”
There are deep commonalities in all the great faiths. World
Communion Sunday is the perfect time for ALL of us to stop focusing on our
differences and to start celebrating what all religious traditions share. 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, and much
bigger than Christianity has made him out to be. When we celebrate this
communion meal today, let’s picture ALL the people of the world, ALL the
religions of the world coming to this very table, a table of grace, not of
judgment; a table of acceptance not of rejection; a table that is NOT about
deserving to be here, but is, instead, about a God who has enough food to feed
Everybody. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment