"Sorry Pastor Rick, but...."

Lectionary Scripture - Mark 13:1-8

          Sorry Pastor Rick, but I’m in a completely different place than you. Ever since 2004 when I read part way into your book, "A Purpose Driven Life", I’ve had to swear off the “purpose-driven” sauce. It’s due to particular comments in your book. Most of those comments revolved around one specific condition for joining the family of God. The condition? A person must accept Jesus Christ. Sorry brother, but my spiritual journey went beyond that a long time ago.  Now I’m sure that countless lives have been blessed by your book and for that I am grateful.  For me however, I set your book down and haven’t picked it back up. I simply haven’t the time for religious exclusion or theological segregation.

When I heard however that you spoke at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America in Washington, D.C. this past Fourth of July, I wanted to find out more. So I watched a brief video of your remarks (Rick Warren at the ISNA Conference - July 4th, 2009).  It touched me to hear you confess your love for your Muslim brothers and sisters and neighbors. It also touched me to hear you acknowledging globalization and how it’s drawing people from different faiths closer together. And I loved hearing you ask about how we can live and work together in greater harmony for the benefit of the common good. Lastly, you asked a really important question in that address. You asked about how we can deal with our deepest differences in order to achieve these things.

By that point Rick, you had me on the edge of my seat. I listened and hoped intently for some new insight you’d had, but then you said really disappointing stuff. You asked your Muslim brothers and sisters how we might pursue such things yet maintain “our separate traditions without compromise.” You lost me there brother and I bet you lost some of your Muslim participants at the convention. You lost me because I will not, and cannot, accept the family of God as a “Christians Only” club.

Friends, when I hear faith leaders professing love for others as Rick Warren did, I wonder why they haven’t taken the next and so obvious step in their faith journey. What’s that step? Well, it’s the step which says that everyone is part of God’s family, particularly if they hope, desire, pray for or seek after a just and peaceful world. The only people not part of the family of God are those who choose otherwise. No “ifs” and or “buts” about it as far as I’m concerned. If this world is to heal and become whole, folks who take a “Christians Only” view to the family of God truly need a “come to Jesus” moment.

Wonder what that moment’s about? Well, in the words of Catholic theologian Hans Kung, he writes in his book "Global Responsibility" that there can be no genuine world peace until there is peace among the world’s religions. So what that means for me is that as long as any persons of faith maintain a mindset of exclusionary criteria for being part of the family of God, then our world will never find its way to peace. In this day and age, such mindsets within the Christian faith serve only to increase society and culture’s dismissal of the Christian path, which in my opinion is too important a path to lose.

For those of us needing to maintain religious and theological segregation, I think that spending a day at Jesus’ side a couple of millennia ago might be a good thing. You probably know the day. The Apostle Mark reported about it (Mark 13:1-8). It’s the day Jesus and his disciples walked out of the Jerusalem Temple and he found them awestruck by the impressive buildings and sights surrounding them that heralded the religious system of their time.

Seeing his followers caught up in awe and possibly intimidated by what they saw, he confronts them and tells them, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” In time, what Jesus prophesied came true when the Temple as a symbol of religious empire was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. But that wouldn’t be all, Jesus said, for the end of time would also include wars and rumor of war, friends and family betraying one another, kingdoms and nations and empires rising up against each other, and even famines and earthquakes. Even then, Jesus said, these things will not be the end, but rather the “birth pangs” of what is about to come.

In my playbook, the birth pangs Jesus spoke of will be what herald the birth of a new enlightenment -- one that will be long and slow and painful in coming about. One realization of that enlightenment will be that no single group of individuals has the right of ascendancy over any other. Furthermore, humanity will finally commit itself to the ideal that war shall be no more and that any resource capable of benefitting the common good will be a resource that all have access to. In my opinion, it doesn’t require much imagination to identify what those blessings will be my friends, but let’s name a few just so we get the idea, e.g. 24/7 security throughout all the earth, housing, universal healthcare, living wage jobs, safe and healthful food, clothing, education, and the list goes on and on. In short, we’re talking no less than God’s Day of Peace for each and every living soul. Some of us like to call it the realization of God’s Peaceable Kingdom.

As we haven’t arrived yet to that time, it says to me that more empires will fall. For me, I think there’s one empire ideal in Christian thought which needs demolition for sure. It’s the notion that “only Jesus saves.” You might ask, “Well Brad, don’t you believe that Jesus saves people into the family of God?” Well of course I do and following Jesus has definitely worked for me. Jesus is my brother, my friend, my confidante, my guide. I don’t know what I would do without him. But I know far too many other people who are Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist and Hindu who devote themselves completely to what they experience as God. Not only that, but they are humble, peace-loving, caring, devout individuals who sacrifice regularly for the betterment of the common good and a healthier world. Will a loving God simply cast those persons aside or say, “Get Jesus, otherwise it’s hellfire and damnation for you!” I doubt it. So it’s here where my experience of God and Jesus differ greatly from those who want the family of God to be a “Christians Only” club.

For my Jesus tells me one simple truth: All are loved by God and all are within the family of God. Hopefully that means that even the vilest person who ever lived will have the possibility for redemption in God’s Peaceable Kingdom. They will have it because whatever contributed to bringing about their evil will have a chance to be healed, even as Jesus healed and cast out demons during his earthly walk. In the end, the only souls casting themselves into oblivion will be those who decide that such is what they want. Long and short of, I guess I side with Native American Nez Perce Chief Joseph who once said, “We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit home according to his deserts; if he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe and all my people believe the same.”

So what keeps great faith leaders like Rick Warren and others from taking the next step in their spiritual journey? I frankly don’t know. Perhaps they are worried that if they do their followers will abandon them. Well possibly that could happen. They have built their empires -- stone upon stone -- on the back of a principle that the family of God is an exclusive “Christians Only” club. So people wanting that kind of club huddle by the masses in their huge mega-churches, but time marches on and society and culture grow weary and dismissive of such things. There’s a fray developing at the edge however and a single thread could undo it all for them. It’s a thread with a voice that’s quite familiar to most of us today. It says, “I’m spiritual but not religious.”

Faith leaders and their churches rail away at that thread and voice, but it’s too late to cut the legs out from beneath it. And if faith leaders try to befriend it, they rightfully worry that their empires will begin to crumble stone by stone, particularly if that friendship leads to the logical next step in their faith journeys which is that all belong to the family of God. Maybe such leaders worry that they’ll be labeled heretics and one follower after another will head for the exits out of their mega-church empires because it won’t feel like their church anymore. Yes, maybe some of that will happen particularly for folks who like to gorge on the notion that God favors one faith tradition over another. I certainly know what it’s like to be part of such a club since I was raised in one. Thankfully, we moved on from that notion.

My guess however for those of us still struggling with the “one true church” or “one true faith” ideal is this: If we can take the next logical step in our faith journeys and let our minds acknowledge and our spirits confess a broader understanding of God’s love, there will still be plenty of folks willing to hang out with us. In fact, it will be a bigger and even more delightful family of God than we might have ever imagined. It probably means however that what we call – or think of as – church will change and change quite dramatically. I suspect that through the life course of our two youngest generations, we will get some pretty clear notions of what’s to come.

So my counsel for great guys like Rick Warren is this, “Keep a familiar hymn close to heart.” It’s the one with a couple of wonderful lines in it such as, “We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind,” and, “The Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word.” If we can grab hold of that, through and through, I’m sure it will make God’s day and Jesus will have one big bear hug waiting for us at the Pearly Gates. Heck, I’ll give you one right now. Have a great week my friends!