What God Sees: Part 1
FROM THE RECTOR
Years ago, at a conference, I had the privilege of listening to Walter Kasper, Jonathan Sacks, and Rowan Williams each describe their reasons for remaining committed to the work of interfaith relations. Kasper was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. Sacks was the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. And Williams was the Archbishop of Canterbury. It sounds like the beginning of a mediocre joke, but the conference proved even better than advertised.
Each presenter shared those aspects of their religious tradition that led them to believe that seeking deeper relationships across religious boundaries was not only important but central to their understanding of faith. I confess that I do not remember much of what Cardinal Kasper said, but both Rabbi Sacks and Archbishop Williams offered perspectives that continue to inform how I read scripture and approach my relationship with other faith traditions.
For the foundation of his remarks, Rabbi Sacks turned to Genesis 9 and the covenant that God established after the floods receded and Noah and his family left the safety of the ark: “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth.”
As Rabbi Sacks understood it, this covenant, as the first covenant God makes in scripture, stands out because God makes it not only with Noah and his offspring but with every living creature on the earth. If the concept of covenant is central to our understanding of who God is and how God establishes a relationship with human beings, Sacks argued, the fact that God’s promise never to flood the whole earth again—an assurance of protection and an indication of belovedness—is the first promise God makes and that it is offered to all creatures must inform our relationships with all people regardless of their faith tradition. We, too, must see that all are loved and saved by God.
When Rowan Williams spoke, he leaned into the tension created by biblical texts like John 14:6: “Jesus said to Thomas, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” While acknowledging that many Christians use that particular verse and others like it to suggest that only Christians can be saved, rather than beginning by pulling that passage apart in order to shift or stretch our understanding of it, Williams began in a different place.
Using other passages of scripture, the archbishop noted the ways that the Judeo-Christian tradition is built upon a deep and unequivocal understanding of God’s faithfulness. God is always faithful. God always keeps God’s promises. Given that the promise to redeem, save, protect, and bless God’s people is offered repeatedly to the descendants of Abraham, it is unreasonable and unfaithful, Williams argued, to read a passage like John 14 and conclude that God has abandoned the Jewish people. We can conclude, therefore, that, because the Way of Jesus quickly became a mostly Gentile religion and lost its appeal to Jews, if we believe that Jesus is the only way people get to heaven, our understanding of how Jesus accomplishes that salvation must become more expansive. In other words, if Christians continue to claim that Jesus is the only way, we must find a way to think of Jesus as efficacious not only for those who call themselves Christians but for all of God’s people.
One thing that struck me about these two approaches was the fundamentally experiential nature of them. In this life, we experience God’s love and blessing being offered indiscriminately to all people. When a rainbow appears in the clouds and we celebrate God’s promise not to flood the whole earth, we share the fulfillment of that promise with all people regardless of their religious tradition. Because Christianity remains a predominantly Gentile religion and has not become a tradition with which the ethnic descendants of Abraham readily identify, we must recognize that God’s promise of salvation is being carried out in ways that transcend the Christian tradition. I wonder how we might embrace this pragmatic approach to theology in our own relationships with others.
In the Rector’s Bible Study, we are finishing a long and detailed look at Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Most of Paul’s letters offer the care, encouragement, and gentle correction we would expect from a loving pastor. Galatians, however, is sharp and urgent in its tone: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” As Paul understood it, the situation in that Christian community had taken a turn that threatened not only their understanding of the faith but also his own integrity as a follower of Jesus, and he reacted personally.
For Paul, the experience of God’s saving love mattered most. Just as he had experienced a transformative moment on the Damascus Road, he recognized that the Galatian Christians had experienced their own Spirit-filled moment of conversion. Because of their newfound faith in Jesus, those Gentile believers, who previously had not belonged to the God of Israel, were now children of God and spiritual descendants of Abraham.
Grounding his understanding of salvation in his own conversion experience, Paul stressed that Jesus had made it possible for God’s promise of love and blessing, originally given to Abraham, to extend to all people regardless of their ethnicity. Thus, when he learned that the Galatian Christians were being taught that only those who convert to Judaism could be saved, Paul was distraught—not because Paul rejected the Judaism of his ancestors but because he knew God’s love was even bigger than what he had experienced in his own faith tradition. Galatians shows us that Paul reached that conclusion about God’s salvation not only through a study of scripture but through his experience of God’s love in the world.
How do we experience God’s love—both in our own lives and in the lives of others, especially those who are different from us? Have we encountered God’s saving grace in ways that teach us not to claim it for ourselves but to share it freely with others and, perhaps more significantly, to recognize where it already exists? Next week, I will continue this exploration of God’s love for the world through the eyes of our experience by focusing on what Christians of other backgrounds can teach us about God.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner