Our Gospel reading this morning contains a saying of Jesus which I find inspiring, inviting, powerful, mystical, engaging--and deeply troublesome, all at the same time. In the story Jesus gives this saying in response to Thomas, when Thomas complains "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" And Jesus says "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Now what I find so inspiring and engaging about this saying is how it speaks of Jesus as the Way--it doesn't just talk about Jesus an important moral teacher, it doesn't just talk about Jesus as a significant historical figure, it doesn't just talk about Jesus as someone we can make belief-statements about or address our prayers to--but it speaks of Jesus as the Way, as the one who shows us, the one who shares with us a practical way of living, a path for making our way in the world, a way of living that helps us experience truth, a way of living that fills us with abundant life. I love this saying because it tells me that Jesus is not just an abstract figure "'way back then and 'way up there," but that Jesus represents a way of living that I can live, too.

But what I find troubling about this saying is the last part, the part about no one coming to the Father except through Jesus. And what troubles me about that is not necessarily what John depicts Jesus saying, not the saying itself; what troubles me is what some Christians in some times and places have made out of that saying, the interpretation that is sometimes offered that what this saying means is that Jesus is the only way to God, and that therefore everyone who does not profess faith in Jesus is left outside of God's love and God's care and God's salvation. And what troubles me even more is the way some Christians take the next step in interpretation, saying that, because those who do not profess faith in Jesus are outside God's salvation, therefore we are better than they are, therefore they are inferior to us, therefore they are our enemies, therefore we can do to them whatever we want. What troubles me about this saying is the way it can lead to a very narrow Christian exclusivism.

The biblical scholar Gail R. O'Day puts the problem like this: "These words are used as a litmus test for Christian faith in myriad conversations and debates within the contemporary church. They are taken by some as the rallying cry of Christian triumphalism, proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that people of any and all other faiths are condemned. They are seen by others as embarrassingly exclusionary and narrow-minded, and they are pointed to as evidence of the problems inherent in asserting Christian faith claims in a pluralistic world." (Gail R. O'Day, The Gospel of John, in The New Interpreter's Bible, vol. 9 [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995] 743)

The problem I have with Christian litmus tests is that, given what I know about God from Jesus, I simply cannot believe that God would condemn to eternal death everyone who does not profess faith in Jesus the same way I do. From my experiences with people of other faiths, I simply cannot believe that God has given them no way, no truth, no life, that they have nothing to share from which I might learn something real to help me grow in my relationship with God.

And this question of how Christians get along with people of other faiths in a pluralistic world is not just a sort of academic debating point or a research project for sociologists of religion. It's something we live with all the time, even us, even here in Luther-land Minnesota.

Right here at St George's, we are in the midst of one of the most interesting encounters between people of different faiths I think I've ever been part of: we are hosting in our building an Orthodox Jewish congregation, which is using several rooms in our Christian Education Building for their shul and their classrooms and their gathering spaces, while they grow their congregation to a size where they can build their own synagogue. In a lot of ways Darchei Noam keeps to its side of the building and we keep to ours; but we have had some very informative interconnections over the past two years. Rob Portnoe from Darchei Noam came to our GUSS to speak on the Feast of Tabernacles, which is one of the three great Jewish pilgrim festivals--and which is mentioned in our Gospel of John, but about which we Christians tend not to know very much. Not long ago Lee and I were invited to attend a bar mitzvah in their congregation--and although our services were very different, I could recognize psalms and prayers and passages that we do in fact have in common. Having Darchei Noam in the building, I've learned things about keeping kosher, and observing the Sabbath, and following the commandments I wouldn't have known otherwise--and those things have helped me understand Jesus' Jewish background better than I did before. But the people of Darchei Noam certainly don't profess faith in Jesus. And if Jesus is the only way to God, does that mean the people of Darchei Noam have no way? Since getting to know them, I find that hard to believe.

The other day I was talking with my daughter Maggie in Ghana, where she is doing a semester of study abroad, and she told me she has finally decided what she wants to go to graduate school for: she wants to get a degree in Islamic Studies. Last semester, before she left for Ghana, she wrote a paper on Sufi women mystics--and her professor thinks she ought to get that paper published, and that would really help her get a leg up on her graduate studies. Maggie says the quality of love for God she finds in these Sufi mystic poets is something very powerful. I know what she means: I've been deeply moved by the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz, and how they take the central Islamic notion of resignation to the will of God and express that as a deep and passionate and life-giving love. I've found my Christian idea of what it means to love God challenged and deepened by these Islamic mystics. But these poets certainly don't profess faith in Jesus. And if Jesus is the only way to God, does that mean the mystics have no way, that reading their poetry has no truth to offer me? For my daughter's experience, as well as my own, I find that hard to believe.

Nowadays I meet more and more people--in church as well as outside church--who say they are "spiritual, not religious," people who are seekers, people who are on a personal religious quest to find beliefs and lifeways that make sense to them. These may be people who are breaking out of a fundamentalist childhood, or people who encountered Buddhism in college and found something in it they'd never found elsewhere, or people who have a deep respect for Native American spirituality, or people who find a greening, life-giving force in wicca or neopaganism or Mother Earth religions--or they may be people who are taking little bits from all those sources to weave a tapestry that meets many deep needs, real needs in their souls. To be sure, some of the pluralist beliefs I've heard from people seem to me to be kind of half-baked, not thought all the way through. But some seekers have shared with me spiritual quests that seem profoundly genuine and deeply wise--and they've made me look at my own Christian belief and seek its deeper meanings, too. Many of the seekers I've met don't profess particular belief in Jesus. And if Jesus is the only way to God, does that mean the seekers have no way, that their questions have no life in them? From the conversations I've had, I find that hard to believe.

So what then do we do with the saying in our Gospel today? How can we come to know Jesus as the way and the truth and the life, and yet not get tripped up in overly-exclusive interpretations of "No one comes to the Father except through me"?

Well, one interpretation I've heard that seems to me very helpful is to point out that Jesus says "No one comes to the Father except through me"; he does not say "No one comes to God except through me." Jesus' way of experiencing God as Father is a very particular kind of spiritual experience. People may experience God in all kinds of ways: as the Cosmic Lawgiver, as the Righteous Judge, as the Mystical Source, as the All-powerful Supreme Being, as the Unity which embraces all the appearances of diversity, as the Mystery at the horizon of the world, as the Growing Power that animates all Nature. People may experience God in all kinds of ways, and each of those ways has its own value, its own integrity, its own part to play in the whole human quest. Jesus experienced God as Father, as the One who was simultaneously the personal source of his being, and the One who loved him and wanted him to grow up into his own mature love. It's that combination of creative power and personal love that marks the experience of God as Parent. That's how Jesus experienced God, and that's how Jesus invited others to come experience God with him, too. And it stands to reason that, if you want to experience God as Jesus experiences God, then the only way to do it is to follow Jesus' way, and to taste Jesus' truth, and to live Jesus' kind of life. It doesn't necessarily mean that those other ways of experiencing God are bad or wicked or evil, or that people who follow other faiths are somehow inferior to Christians--but it does mean that we can only know God as Jesus knows God, as Father, by following Jesus' Way.

And if we can interpret Jesus' saying in this more open way, then what I think it means for us, as twenty-first century Christians living in a pluralistic world, is that we can believe in Jesus, and follow Jesus, and proclaim Jesus, not as if we were in opposition to people who have other beliefs, but as having something to offer people of other beliefs, as having a distinctive way of experiencing God that we want to invite all sorts and conditions of folks to come and share with us. Knowing God as Father might complement and complete knowing God as Lawgiver or Judge or Life-force--just as knowing God as Lawgiver or Judge or Life-force might complement and deepen knowing God as Father. As Christians in a pluralistic world we don't have to feel either defensive or triumphalist, but we can be faithful and confident and full of joy as we share with others the Way to God that we have learned in Christ.

Jesus said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." May we follow that way, and proclaim that truth, and share that life, for the glory of God, and for our souls' health, and for the good of the world, now and always. Amen.