The Reach
of God’s Mercy
1 Peter
3:18-21, John 14:5-7 and Acts 4:12
One of the striking things about
visiting Jerusalem is the tremendous amount of irony that is a part of that
city. One of the most stark ironies of
Jerusalem is that this most Jewish of cities is visually symbolized by a Muslim
temple. When we think about the
pictures of Jerusalem that we have in our minds, the Dome of the Rock, that
large golden dome on the Temple Mount, is the center piece of Jerusalem. That’s a Muslim temple for this Jewish
city. One cannot help in visiting
Jerusalem to see all the Jewishness, the Western Wall, also called the Wailing
Wall, the Tomb of David, the burial place of Absalom, everywhere one looks
Judaism is found, but yet when one looks up to the top of the Temple Mount, the
most prominent visual site is Muslim.
But not only is the dome of the Rock the most prominent visual, as one
looks deeper into Jerusalem, one sees the Christian faith in this Jewish city
as well.
When I entered Jerusalem as part
of a travel group we entered from the top of the Mount of Olives and walked
down the Mount of Olives, down the same path that Jesus would have taken during
the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday. At
the bottom of the Mount of Olives is the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus would
have been looking up at the Temple Mount, praying “Lord, take this cup from me,
but not my will, your will be done.”
As we walked around the city we saw the Via Dolorosa, the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher, the Garden Tomb, and it was impossible to keep from thinking:
“This is where Christ lived; this is the birthplace of our faith.” And yet it is sacred to other faiths as
well. So what are we to do with the fact
that we live in a world where we are painfully cognoscente of other faiths, of
other religions, not just Christianity and Judaism and Islam, but Buddhism and
Hinduism and Animism, not to mention the western faiths of Agnosticism and
Atheism? What are we to do with the fact that Christianity is not the only
religion around the world?
*****
The Apostles’ Creed speaks to the
issue of other faiths. It does so with
that strange phrase in the middle of the Creed, which says “Jesus descended
into Hell.” This phrase is the
culmination of what has been said about Jesus to this point, Jesus suffered
under Pontius Pilate was crucified, dead, buried, he descended into Hell. But
with the descent it is also an introduction to what comes next, he was
resurrected, ascended, sits at the right hand of God the Father and from thence
he shall judge the quick and the dead.
What does it mean to say he descended into Hell? Some denominations
struggle with this notion that Jesus descended into Hell, so they take it out
of the Creed. There are some churches
where this phrase will not be in the Creed, and I think that is just
silly. I mean, oh please, no church, no
Christian church, has a problem with the Apostle Paul saying, “That on the
Cross, Jesus became sin that we might become the righteousness of God” (2
Corinthians 5:21). Now think about this,
its OK to say Jesus became sin, oh, but we don't want him in Hell, that’s a
little too intense; I’m sorry, that Jesus become sin is intense enough. What the Creed is saying, and the reason
this is important, is that it’s saying Jesus went all the way. Jesus didn’t go really, really super far,
but then go. “Oh wait, I can’t go to Hell! What? You want me to go where? Oh
no, I can’t to do that?” No, the Creed
is saying there is no place that is outside the reach of God’s saving work on
the cross. There is no place that God
would not go to bring salvation to his creation; he would even descend into
Hell.
Now what happens in Hell? What
did Jesus do on Holy Saturday? Well, we hear about that in 1 Peter 3:18-21.
Indeed, the only verse that tells us Jesus descended into Hell is in 1 Peter; 1
Peter is where the Creed comes up with this notion. And it says that Jesus went
into Hell to preach to the spirits in prison from the days of Noah. Now this assertion begs the question: what’s
up with that, why Noah, why the days of Noah?
Think about it. During the days
of Moses we have what? Anyone? The Law and the Law gives the opportunity to
know atonement, to know how to get right with God, to know the forgiveness of
sin. Moses gives us the Law. Christ,
too, gives us the means of atonement, only it is atonement in himself; Christ
is the means for the forgiveness of sin. What about the days of Noah? There was no Christ yet, there was no law
yet; in the days of Noah there was no means of atonement, no instrument of God’s
saving grace, no forgiveness of sins.
And so what the Creed is saying, and what Peter is saying, is that when
Jesus descended into death, he took it all the way, there was no place that he
would not go to save God’s people. Put positively: God would go any place in
order to show forth his saving grace.
He even went into Hell to offer the opportunity for others to have
atonement, the forgiveness of sins.
That’s why it’s important that Peter tells us that Jesus went in the
days of Noah. God is fair and God is just, and God will give people and
opportunity.
The word that God is fair and
just and will give people an opportunity conforms with other words we hear in
the New Testament.
The verses quoted above present a
clear and unambiguous message regarding God’s love and mercy: God’s love is
inclusive, embracing all creation.
Therefore, we are justified (in a non-theological sense of the word) in
proclaiming that God is fair and God is just, and God will give people and
opportunity. Yet I hope, also, that it is clear a problem that confronts us,
for there are other verses in the New Testament which seem to be saying
something else, which seem to be restrictive or even exclusive.
How do we balance these two,
seemingly contradictory streams of New Testament thought? On one end of the theological spectrum,
there is what I shall call the “Via Exclusiva,” the Exclusivist Way. Basically the exclusivist way says the scripture says what it
means and means what it says. When it
says no other name under heaven by which we are saved, it means no other name. When it says no one gets to the Father
except through me, it means no one.
It’s the message of the bumper sticker: “Know Jesus, know Life. No Jesus, No Life.” The exclusivist way. Now if we were to ask
someone who holds this theological perspective, “Well, what about the 4 billion
people who are not Christians? There are 6 billion people on earth and only 2
billion are Christians, the largest religion in the world, yet there are still
a lot of non-Christians living today.
What about the 2.4 billion people who are a part of what the missionaries
call “unreached people groups,” people who have not heard of Jesus? What are we to say about them? No Jesus, No Life? So what is the Church’s mission according to this end of the
theological spectrum? The church’s mission is evangelism; the church’s mission
is to send out missionaries around the world, including into the United States,
because 4 billion people are in danger of the fires of Hell, and if we can
knock that down to 3.5 billion, that would be good.
On the other end of the
theological spectrum are those I shall call the “Via Inclusiva,” the
Inclusivist Way. These folks argue that the New Testament was written as a
Jewish debate between those who accepted Jesus as Messiah and those who
rejected Jesus as Messiah. The primary
issue addressed by the New Testament authors, therefore, is whether or not
Jesus should be accepted as Messiah and the consequences of such an
acceptance. According to this argument,
the New Testament authors had no concept of other religions around the world, no
understanding of Buddhism or Hinduism or Taoism, and so they really don't
address the question of other faiths at all. Yet the argument is made that the
trajectory of the New Testament is toward a radical inclusivity, and,
therefore, we ought to respect other religions, enter into religious dialogue
with them. When we do enter into such dialogue, we allegedly discover that
pretty much all religions are the same, all many paths but to one God. So what is the church’s mission? According to this perspective, the church’s
mission is to perform works of compassion: “Let’s build bridges in our faith
because there are a lot of problems in the world. There is AIDS, world hunger,
war. Let’s be about compassion, both ourselves and with other religions.”
*****
It is my contention that there is
a balance, a place of faithfulness, between the Via Exclusiva and the Via
Inclusiva, and it is our challenge as Christians to find that place of
faithfulness. I would like to suggest an alternative, a Via Media, a Middle
Way.
The Middle Way honors the
Lordship of Jesus. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the full expression of God revealed
to us, in him is the fullness of the Godhead, and so we are called to be
evangelistic. We are called to be
evangelistic because we know that if we accept Jesus as Savior and Lord we will
be saved; we will go to heaven. We know
that; we trust that. We might not know
one way or another about other people’s salvation, but we know we have an assurance of salvation if we
accept Jesus who is the fullness of God revealed. Our mission-calling is evangelistic. Salvation is not only about the hope of heaven, though, for it
also is true that to accept Jesus is to be in a relationship with Jesus and,
therefore, to live out who we were created to be. Our acceptance and consequent relationship with Jesus is not
inspired by some crass wish fulfillment that says Christianity gives us better
goodies than other religions; rather, the acceptance of Jesus as Lord is
motivated by the conviction that Christianity is true and more faithful to the
human experience.
We accept the Lordship of Jesus,
and yet this Middle Way also recognizes the validity of other experiences. The
Lordship of Jesus does not cancel out our ability to embrace truth wherever it
may be found. Truth can be found in
science; embrace it. Truth can be found in art; embrace it. Truth also can be found in other
religions. Where truth is found on
other religions, embrace it. For
instance, Buddhism has a notion of “letting go.” As Christians we would say “Let go and let God.” Well, Buddhism
doesn’t believe in a God so you really cannot let go and let God, but the
notion of letting go is something the Buddhist can teach us Christians who are
Western and kind of anal and uptight. When you find truth, embrace it. But that does not mean that all religions
are the same. As I said Buddhism
doesn’t believe in a God, and we believe in a personal God. There is an understanding in Islam that God
is merciful. Most Islamic prayers will
talk about God as merciful, but their understanding of the mercy of God is very
different from our understanding of the mercy of God. Bhuddism, Islam and Christianity are different faiths and let us
not white wash their differences. So
what does this mean for those who seek to walk the Middle Way? It means that we accept the Lordship of
Christ, we are open to truth wherever it may be found, and we have good hope
that, because Jesus went into Hell, the one God revealed in Jesus, who is fair
and just, is always looking for a possibility of finding atonement for these
people of other faiths. Now the question becomes: “If we are open to the notion
that God is looking for a possibility to find atonement for people of other
faiths, what do we do with the verses that say, ‘I am the way the truth and the
life and no one comes to the father except through me,’ and ‘No other name is
there under heaven by which we are saved”?
What are we to make of these verses?
A distinction can be made between
subjective experience and objective reality. Now let me give you an example of what I
mean by these terms because they sound hopelessly abstract. I am my children’s father, that is an
objective reality. I am their Dad. Now
as a subjective experience they may chose either to accept me as their father
or reject me. My children may want to
reject the notion that I am their father because I am “Dufus Dad,” or as they
say in France, “Dufois Dadet.” My
children may say, “Oh, my dad is a hopeless dufus. I don't want to accept him
as my father.” But their subjective experience does not change the objective
reality. There is no other name under
heaven by which they were conceived, except mine. I am the father, I am the dad, I am the sperm donor and there is
no way other than through me that they enter the birth canal. That is the objective reality and they
subjectively can accept and embrace or deny and reject this objective reality,
but if they reject it their life on this earth is diminished. If they embrace
me as their father, there life is enhanced.
Not because I am a great father but because I am their father, and we
need to know our dads. There is a
difference between subjective experience and objective reality.
We may think of the analogy of
gravity. If I am in space, no matter what my subjective belief about gravity
is, I am going to float. If I am 40,000
feet in the air, I don't care what I believe about gravity because I am going
to drop like a rock. My belief does not
change the objective reality. Simone
Weil was a French philosopher writing in the 1940’s. She talked about spiritual
gravity and spiritual grace. When Weil
talked about gravity she didn’t mean the physical principle, but she chose that
word because of its metaphorical power to describe the spiritual realm, a kind
of spiritual physics if you will. Weil
said gravity is the notion of human interaction with one another; remember
she’s writing in the 1940’s. Weil said
that human interactions have a particular gravity to them: our competition will
ultimately lead to anger, our anger will lead to hate, hate will lead to
revenge, revenge will lead back to hate and then the gravity will spiral down
until we have World War II. Weil argued
that the only hope of humankind is to have God’s intervention, what we know as
grace. Grace is the anti-gravity that
lifts us up. Grace is the work of God
which creates in us the possibility of new things. Grace creates the
possibility that the hate-revenge-hate cycle might be reversed and our self
imposed exiled and our self created destruction might find a way back to the
original design of our creation:
love-forgiveness-love.
Now the question becomes isn’t
this just a trumped up universalism? I would argue that it is not. The Middle Way is not saying, “Hey,
everyone’s good don't worry about it.”
Simone Weil was writing in the 1940’s, she understood the notion of
evil; she was bitterly aware of Hitler.
Weil was French, in the 1940’s, and therefore open to the possibility
that God would destroy even his own creation as he destroyed it in the
flood. Yet Weil was open also to the
notion that just as God destroyed his own creation in the flood, so Jesus went
to those people to give them a chance.
Missionaries talk about the “hidden Christ” in other faiths. The fullness of Christ is revealed in the
Christian faith. Christ is hidden in
other faiths. And God is at work
throughout the world seeking to claim “those whom he calls to himself.”
*****
During seminary I was taking a
class on the history of religions with Dr. Charles Ryerson. The first
assignment was to write a paper on the religions and spirituality of Indonesia
in which we were to describe them, analyze them and in the final part of the
paper tell what we think about the religions of Indonesia. Give an
opinion. Now Dr. Ryerson had told us at
the very beginning of the semester that he valued personal, creative thought.
“I don’t want to hear what I say,” he told us, “I don’t want to hear what you
think I want you to say. I want to hear your own opinion. Ladies and Gentlemen
you are in theological seminary I know that you played to professors, I am not
one of them, you need to learn to think for yourself, because sooner or later
you will be inflicted upon the church and you will need to think for yourself,
so you might as well begin now thinking for yourself. If you do that I will
reward you and if you don't I will punish you with the grade I give.”
We got our papers back, and I got
an ‘A’. Even more, Dr. Ryerson said,
“Mr. Munroe, I would like you to read your paper to the class,” So I am reading
my paper, and I can see the look on my fellow students’ eyes, “He got an ‘A’
for that? That’s not an ’A’ paper!” It
was decent, but it really wasn’t an ‘A’ paper until the very end. At the very end Dr. Ryerson wanted to know
our opinions, so I gave him my opinion.
“I don't care about the people of Indonesia,” I wrote. “I don't care
about their religions. I don't care about their spirituality. I do not know
anyone from Indonesia. I probably never
will know anyone from Indonesia.
Indonesia, its religions, people and spirituality probably will have
nothing to do whatsoever with my entire ministry.” Now the look of, “He got an ’A’ for that,” had changed to, “Oh my
goodness, I can’t believe he said that.”
I went to sit down and Dr. Ryerson said, “Mr. Munroe, before you sit
down I would like to make one point. Those people for whom you so eloquently do
not care, are the same people for whom Christ died. (Pause) Now you may be seated.”
As I returned to my seat, my fellow students were no doubt thinking, “He
got an ’A’ but he had to pay for it with public humiliation.” I have never forgotten Dr. Ryerson’s wise,
kind, and life giving words.
What are we to make of people of other faiths? “Those are the people for whom Christ died.” So we have a responsibility to evangelize them because we know that the assurance of salvation, the true and everlasting hope, is found in Jesus. “Those are the people for whom Christ died.” So we should have a good hope for them, a hope that God’s love and mercy is for them also, and even if we cannot speak to them personally God’s Spirit yet can draw them. “Those are the people for whom Christ died” and maybe, just maybe, according to the love and mercy of God they are the people with whom we will spend eternity.
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