Many Dwelling Places with God

“Many Dwelling Places with God”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Seneca Falls, NY

²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?... ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:2,6)

In the novel by Chaim Potok, entitled The Book of Lights, a young rabbi from Brooklyn, on leave from his post in Korea during the Korean war, travels for the first time in Japan. One afternoon he stands with a Jewish friend before what is perhaps a Shinto shrine or perhaps a Buddhist shrine, the characters are not sure which. The author describes the scene as one in which the altar of the shrine is lit by the soft light of a tall lamp. Sunlight streams in the door. The two young men are watching with rapt attention a man standing before the altar, his hands pressed together before him, his eyes closed. He is rocking slightly. He seems to be engaged in what these two young Jewish men would call prayer. The rabbi turns to his companion and asks:

“Do you think our God is listening to him, John?”

“I don’t know, chappy. I never thought of it.”

“Neither did I until now. If He’s not listening, why not? If He is listening, then- well what are we all about, John?” (Chaim Potok, The Book of Lights: New York: Ballantine Books, 1981, pp.261-262)

This scene captures a religious dilemma that occurs in the life of almost any sincere religious person of whatever religious tradition at some point in their faith journey. Whether Christian or Jew or Muslim, a faithful person who lives in the religiously pluralistic world of this 21^st century must ask that question – do you think our God is listening to him? Or, in other words, do we worship the same God as this person? Does God love those who are not of my religious persuasion just as God loves me and my kin? Does God listen to their prayers too?

Anyone who has studied world history even cursorily knows that throughout the ages, humankind has found itself embroiled in conflicts of all kinds, from doctrinal arguments to all out war and persecution, on the basis of perceived differences in religious belief. In fact, it is this sad history of institutional religion’s propensity for either fomenting, or at least aggravating human conflict, that fuels much of the intensity among those who call themselves atheists. In the past couple of years, a number of books have been published by avowed atheists, most of which are polemical attacks on institutional religion, laying at the feet of religious institutions all the violence and war of human history. In our current day, the news media bombard us with various reports of the activities or threats posed by religious extremists of all stripes around the world. And of course our own Christian history is replete with occasions on which Christians have slaughtered other Christians over differences of opinion on matters theological.

Is our God listening to those we call “others?” For those who seek to find an answer to that question in the Bible, the verse we heard this morning from John’s gospel is quite often lifted up as proof positive that the answer to the question should be “no.” “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Those words of Jesus, uttered on the night before his crucifixion to his gathered disciples, have repeatedly been put forward as the final word on the place and validity of religions other than Christianity. Where interreligious relations is concerned John 14:6 is what some would call a “clobber passage.” It is a passage of the Bible most often used to beat others down and to lift Christians up to a place of superiority and supremacy vis-à-vis other world religions. Far too many Christians have taken that verse as proof positive that they will “be saved” or “go to heaven” while all those millions of people in the world who are not Christian will simply be out in the eternal cold and darkness.

There might have been a time in our nation’s history when we Christians could be comfortable with that triumphalistic approach to our religion, when the only religious diversity we had to contend with was the presence of Catholics in our neighborhood. But in our religiously pluralistic society, where Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and myriad other world religions are our neighbors and colleagues, we have to wrestle with passages like John 14:6 so as to find an interpretation that is consonant with the entire Biblical witness about the nature and character of God, and that enables us to live as hospitable world citizens in a religiously diverse universe. The temptation to use verses like John 14:6 as clubs with which to beat others into submission and to give ourselves a sense of security and superiority is strong and one to which Christians have too often permitted themselves to fall, forgetting when they do so that no one verse of the Bible “says it all” as far as our faith or any other is concerned. Jesus’ own life and ministry bears witness to an inclusive, loving God whose “house” contains many dwelling places, not just a room for Christians.

I spend a significant portion of my professional time engaged in interreligious dialogue, as the Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer for the Diocese of Rochester. As I encounter people of many world religious traditions I am constantly reminded that God is broader and wider than I could ever have imagined, and those people of other world religious traditions have things to teach me about God that enhance and enrich my own Christian experience of God. I find that I have to reconcile the seemingly exclusive claims of my Christian tradition with the reality that I experience of deep religious and spiritual truth and insight present in all the religions of the world, even those that are most unlike my own Christianity. Having attended worship in mosques, synagogues, Buddhist and Hindu temples, Sikh Gurdwaras and Jain temples, I have experienced such a strong sense of the holy and transcendant in those holy places that I have had to open my mind and heart to the truth of God as found and experienced in those disparate traditions, as surely as God is mediated in my own.

As is the case with much of our Bible, passages like John 14:6 have to be examined in light of the context in which they were written. John’s gospel was written at a time when the nascent Christian community was beginning to realize that it was not likely to remain as a branch of Judaism but was going to become something different and go a separate path. Tensions were high between those early Jewish Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters, and differences of opinion about the role and place of Gentiles in the faith community, as well as how and to what degree the Torah would continue to be the source of religious practice and teaching were extreme. The author of John’s gospel writes to this community in conflict presenting his understanding of who Jesus was for his disciples and why following him mattered to those who knew him. This gospel more than the synoptics, provides a window into the conflicted and insecure early community of faith as it tried to find its way amid the various forms of Judaism that were extant in first century Rome and in the face of the pagan religions of the Roman Empire. The author was directing nervous and edgy people back to something they knew and understood as spiritual truth in order to center and ground them in their own path.

The author of the gospel presents a scene in which the disciples are with Jesus on the last night of his life and are treated to a long and very confusing discourse by him in which he attempts to give them advice and comfort as he prepares to go to the cross. The scene presents confused and frightened disciples trying desperately to figure out what is about to happen to Jesus and then to them. When Jesus talks metaphorically – “in my father’s house there are many dwelling places – I go to prepare a place for you” Thomas responds very concretely – “Where are you going? How will we know the way?” Then Jesus responds “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He is offering words of comfort to his closest friends, trying to reassure them by suggesting that they follow the way they have learned with him. Notice that he is not talking doctrine or dogma. He is talking about a way of life, an orientation of heart and soul that he knows will enable them to maintain their connection with God. He directs them to focus on their relationship with him as the way to remain connected to God. His metaphor itself even allows for the existence of other ways, other paths, other truths – the “many dwelling places” of the Father’s house itself is an image of plurality and diversity. Yet for these particular people, Jesus is the Way.

I spent this past week in Chicago at the National Workshop on Christian Unity where I heard a sermon by a Methodist bishop who is Chinese and converted to Christianity from Buddhism in his teens. He told us how fervent he was in his new religion after his conversion, so much so that when his father died, he refused to participate in the family religious rituals and funeral for his father because they were Buddhist, and he believed that as a Christian he had to reject those practices and rituals. He said that as his faith matured he came to understand that Jesus never asked his disciples to reject another religious path in order to follow him. He simply asked them to follow him, to live out in the world his love commandment. The Christian Way to which Jesus invites us is not a matter of rejecting and denouncing other ways – it is rather embracing Jesus as the Way that we know to reach the heart of God. This bishop told us that years later he returned to China and went to the place of his father’s burial and performed Buddhist rituals for his father because he had come to understand that his faith in Jesus compelled him to honor his father in that authentic way and doing so did not undermine his Christian commitment. When Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me” he was offering words of assurance and comfort to his frightened friends, not pronouncing judgment on millions of people in the world who may be destined for those other dwelling places in his father’s house.

Is our God listening to him? According to Jesus the answer is yes. And “our God’ listens to us when we follow the way that we have learned as disciples of the Risen Christ. The good news is that “our God” is a god of “both/and” not “either/or” and has love and compassion enough for all of those in the many dwelling places in the house of God. Amen.