All are Included

In another life, I taught a large introductory course at the University of Arizona called Oriental Humanities. It covered the art, literature, and religions of the Middle East and India. Because it had the dubious distinction of satisfying two categories of General Education requirements at the same time, it often attracted more than 300 students. I always announced my own religious affiliation at the outset. I told the students that I was a member of the Episcopal Church and a committed Christian. However, I also wanted them to know that I would try to teach about Islam and Hinduism from an insider’s perspective, i.e., as sympathetically as I could, as an outsider to both traditions. Invariably, at the end of the course, one or more of the comments in my student evaluations would read something like, “How can she, as a committed Christian, teach as if these other religions are also true?”

That’s a real question, and one that is still very much alive today in today’s religiously plural world. Often we fall on one side of the question or the other. On one side, like the students questioning my stance in the Oriental Humanities class, we assume that commitment to one faith means that there is nothing good in other faiths, and that we must reject those who hold those faiths. On the other hand, we might think that, in the interest of tolerance, we must deny our own beliefs and focus only on what we hold in common with other faiths. Neither stance is helpful. Despite all the current political rhetoric, the real challenge for us as people committed to Christ is how can we remain grounded in our own tradition while, at the same time, showing sympathy for others and respecting – perhaps even learning from – others’ unique traditions.

If the only Scripture reading you heard this morning was the lesson from 1 Kings, you might say that there is no challenge, that we must reject all other faith traditions. Elijah has been sent to Ahab’s kingdom. In an attempt to bring the people of Israel back into covenant with God, Elijah engages in a fierce competition with 450 priests who serve the pagan god Baal. As the priests of Baal dance up and down and wail their pleas, the people stand by watching mutely while nothing happens. Then Elijah, after having upped the ante by dousing the altar three times, calls upon God to consume the burnt offering. And, of course God does! Seeing this, the people finally find their voices as they fall on their faces and cry out, “The Lord indeed is God.” Israel had a long history of flirting with the religions of the other nations around it. So perhaps it is justifiable that Scripture would portray yet another story in which God, through Elijah, seeks to again call Israel back to the God of their ancestors. Rather than wholesale rejection of other faith communities, perhaps the contest for us in this story is between apathy and commitment to God. And perhaps the lesson for us should be that, unlike the people who stood by mutely, we are called to understand our faith as a serious and demanding commitment.

Our gospel story begins to suggest what mutual respect between people of different faith communities might look like. Here we see a Roman centurion, a member of the hated occupying forces in Israel, who has yet been a benefactor of the local synagogue. The centurion’s slave is mortally ill. Seeking help for the slave, the centurion is willing to approach the Jewish rabbi, whose fame as a healer has been spreading. However, the centurion respects the boundaries between himself as a gentile and Jesus as a Jew. Therefore the centurion does not approach Jesus directly, but sends emissaries. Nor does he force Jesus to enter his house, but rather sends the message that he understands that Jesus’ healing power will work at a distance, just as the centurion’s authority does. The Jewish elders are grateful for the centurion’s respect for the Jews and his gift of a synagogue, and they willingly approach Jesus on his behalf. And, of course, the centurion’s slave is healed.

More clues, though perhaps a little less obvious, are in this opening section of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia. If you think Paul is testy in this opening part, wait till we get to chapter 3! The issue here is that the majority of these new Galatian Christians are gentiles. They have not been circumcised, and they do not follow Jewish law. To many observant Jews, their way of life was extremely distasteful. After Paul had evangelized them, the so-called “Judaizers” visited them, i.e., evangelists who told the Galatians that they had to be circumcised and follow Jewish law in order to join the fellowship of Jesus’ followers. Paul is livid. For him, the gospel that he preached was an inclusive gospel, i.e., that fellowship in the Christian Way is open to all, that Christ died for all, and that God’s love extends to all. The “different gospel” that Paul rails against in this letter is one that makes the Christian way into an exclusive Jewish sect, one that “restricts, narrows, or limits the love of God to an exclusive few, i.e., those gentiles willing to live as Jews. “The ‘true gospel’ that Paul defends is one that expands the love of God in Christ to all people without exception…. Through the one particular man Jesus, the love of God embraces all the world.”1 Reiterating this argument, Paul says later in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus, that God is the father of all fatherhood, the father of the whole human family, even of the entire unseen world.

Political rhetoric aside, perhaps this isn’t so difficult for Americans to understand. Ethnic and cultural diversity is the very bedrock of our country. Even before the various waves of Europeans arrived here, there were diverse communities of Native Americans speaking mutually unintelligible languages and following very different ways of life. Once in this country, the various immigrant communities from Europe founded Roman Catholic parishes, Protestant churches of various denominations, Eastern Orthodox parishes, and Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Hasidic synagogues. In fact, now forty percent of all Jews in the world live in the United States. Some African slaves may originally have been Muslims. Muslims from the Middle East have been in this country since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Immigrants from Asia, especially after the end of the Asian Exclusion Act, have brought Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism to this country. Near Pittsburgh, you can see the Sri Venkateshwara temple, built in 1975. In my Oriental Humanities course, I used to show a film depicting how the temple was built, with the help of Hindu priests, according to precise Hindu specifications. The first Sikh gurdwara, i.e., Sikh temple, was built in Stockton, California in 1912.

We are, and have been, a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities in this country, as are most other countries now. That is why I cringe when I hear the rhetoric calling for contraction of immigration or restrictions on the rights of Muslims or any other community. Certainly, we want to guard against terrorists from abroad, even as we remember that we have our own strain of domestic terrorism. But thanks be to God, the diverse communities that have come here have flourished here, and all of us have benefited from their courage in leaving their ancestral homes to come here. A story earlier this month in the Columbus Dispatch detailed the miraculous recovery from lung and kidney failure of Scott Hamilton of Mt. Sterling, Ohio. He was fortunate to receive the first lung-kidney transplant ever at OSU hospital. The name of the leader of his surgical team: Ashraf El-Hinnawi. What do you think Dr. El-Hinnawi’s religion was?

So, as faithful followers of the one who reached out to all people, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, how indeed do we remain faithful to our own commitment while respecting those of others? The first step, so wonderfully exemplified by Jesus’ treatment of the centurion, is to see the goodness in the other, to accept that others are as worthy of respect and compassion as we ourselves are. Consider reading Brian McLaren’s insightful book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Or consider these few simple principles. Speak honestly about your own faith and allow others to do the same. Understand what contributions different faiths have made to the religious landscape. Be critical both about your own faith and those of others. Consider what you might learn from another tradition and what questions you have about your own tradition. Most especially, open your “hands, hearts, and minds to receive the gift of the other for who the other is, finding ways to serve one another and with one another.”

Egyptian Christian Safwat Marzouk reminds us that, “When people take both their own faith and the other person’s faith seriously, when they find healthy ways to both cross boundaries and maintain them, then they can turn their differences into a source of theological enrichment. They can join together to bring healing, well-being, and peace to our broken world.”2 Are you ready to join with others in the repair of the world? Are you ready to let the gospel be good news for all, even for those who journey to God on different paths?

1. Dan Clendenin, “No other Gospel, Journey with Jesus, May 29, 2016
2. “Living by the Word, Christian Century, May 10, 2016