August 22, 2021

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18 * Ps 34:15-22 * Eph 6:10-20 * John 6:56-69

Did you hear the one about how at our age, our train of thought often leaves the station, without us? Struck a chord with me anyways.

Let’s start with this Richard Rohr community prayer: O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of the world. … Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.

Interesting what Rohr says by offering prayers in ALL the holy names of God. This prayer has appeared every day for years in Rohr’s daily CAC emails, and yet he has not been burned at the stake, nor even, as a Catholic Franciscan priest, been silenced by Rome. At first glance it might look like Rohr is talking about other gods, or praying to, through or with other gods. But he’s not.

We were talking about such things at our Thursday Bible Study because both the gospel and the first reading seem to have messages of only using one name for one God – like Jesus or Lord. Or else we might be worshipping other gods whether we know it or not. Scary stuff. I’m with Rohr and many others who believe that there can be many names and paths to the same God. Sometimes it’s through other world religions, since God created all peoples and cultures. And sometimes it’s simply different languages, like saying Dieu in French, Dio in Italian or Allah in Arabic. These are not different gods, just God in different languages.

Idolatry is a big sin in the Bible, and it means the worship of other things as if they were God. In Col. 3:5 St. Paul compares greed to idolatry – in other words our desires for wealth, power, prestige, etc. can be the sin of idolatry. Greed is a huge contributor to our materialistic culture which causes so much damage to the earth. It’s definitely a sin, and yet we are so encouraged to cultivate desires for more and more stuff! That supposedly boosts the economy, while destroying the future for younger generations on earth. A reminder of Gandhi’s good saying that Earth provides enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.

Both our first reading and our gospel today include an emphasis on worshipping only one God, and that’s fine as far as it goes, so long as we can keep stepping back from the sins of the past, from Christianity’s great and terrible arrogance in its missionary phases – both abroad and in our own country with our First Nations indigenous people. Yes, the missionaries and churches and their members at the time all meant well. They all thought that they were bringing the only hope of salvation to these people, by teaching them about Jesus and baptizing them. No doubt a big part of their inspiration was the so-called Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus supposedly says to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Biblical scholars have long since recognized that this ‘great commission’ – words are not there in the story -- was likely added on by a later Christian community. It reflects what was appropriate for their context, but not what is appropriate for our context. Everything grows and changes, or else it dies.

Have any of you read Michael Ingham’s 1997 book called Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World? Ingham was bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster for almost twenty years from 1994 – 2013. He dedicates the book to his two daughters “with the prayer that they may one day live in a world of religious peace” and he begins by describing how he’d led a group of university students on a working visit to India in previous years. They were billeted separately in local homes in Bombay, and Ingham found himself in a household of 26 persons. His Hindu hosts treated him with respect and curiosity and asked this young clergyman to explain Christianity to them. He did that ‘night after night’ and they listened with respect and appreciation and questions. Ingham was feeling quite proud of himself, thinking that he was on the verge of converting these 26 Hindus into Christians. But instead, one night after many days of listening, he writes that: “My hostess pronounced herself satisfied with what she had learned, and asked if I were interested in understanding their beliefs, their family rituals, and spiritual life “(p.11). Well! In fact, this thought had not occurred to Michael Ingham – he assumed that he was there to teach and save them, but not to learn from them. Keep in mind this was over a quarter century ago, so we can cut him some slack. But the appropriate humility with which he tells this story makes it clear that he came to recognize the error of his ways, and to realize that we too should be wanting to learn and understand much more about other faith traditions. Hence the book study I’ve proposed on Jesus & Buddha: The Parallel Sayings. No one is asking us to give up having Jesus as our main point of access to God. But as Rabbi Heschel said: God is everywhere except in arrogance.

By expanding our views of different ways that the same God is seen by others, we grow in our appreciation for the many-splendored God who is so much more than we could have previously imagined. May our hearts and minds be opened, as our world longs for greater peace and harmony Amen.