Religion of Love
Beth Henricks
Ephesians 4:1-6
The Illustrated World’s Religions by Huston Smith
Rumi’s Big Red Book – edited by Coleman Barks
Interfaith Dialogue class at Earlham School of Religion – Professor Grace Ji-Sun Kim
I am filling in for Bob this morning as his family are in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute. Sam has been accepted to this prestigious art school and they are there for a briefing and tour. We send our prayers to them today for safe travels.
I know that Bob has started a series on the idea of peace and talked about shalom and its true meaning for us last week. I have been thinking about the idea of shalom when it comes to our faith and the faith of the other major world religions. The matter of faith and belief is a significant one as we are all searching for the answers to questions such as our meaning on this earth, how should we live, what happens to us when we die and what do our rituals and practices mean for our relationship to God? Could there be anything more important to each of us? Does our faith define our very existence? And what do we really know about the major religions (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism) of the world? Do we believe that our way to God is the one right and true way and that others are lost? How do I interact with people that believe completely differently than I do? So many questions. If we look at our world history, religion has impacted every facet of our civilization. Culture, community, wars, relationships – the list goes on and on.
I spent the last two weeks in Richmond Indiana attending a two-week intensive class on Interfaith Dialogue working towards my Masters in Divinity. We went through a glorious book by Huston Smith called The Illustrated World’s Religions: A Guide to our Wisdom Traditions that I would encourage folks to read. It’s a wonderful summary of the major religions complete with pictures of art representing these traditions. In this course it was important to start with our own Christian faith before we explored other religions and I spent time reflecting on what I believe.
As our professor Grace Ji-Sun Kim outlined for us, there are six different approaches to religions and these approaches also connect to James Fowler’s six stages of faith. I am sharing these stages and approaches because I think it is helpful to examine our own beliefs and consider where we are on our spiritual journey as we think about other religious traditions.
1. Exclusivists – believe in their faith as the only way to God. A belief in Jesus as God’s son and savior and lord is the one way to the Father. All others will be lost and will not go to heaven after they die. There is a view of being on the inside with everyone else on the outside.
2. Inclusivists - believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of human history, its liberator and perfect unsurpassable expression of what it means to be human. Jesus is the explicit way of God and present to all human reality. Other revelations cannot offer equally what Christ offers and will ultimately be judged by Christ. Christianity is the summit and completion of all other religions and redemption is available to everyone if they respond positively to the light they are given. At this stage we believe, Christianity is the only way, but it is available to others as they respond to the light given them.
3. Pluralists – believe the God of Jesus is known in history, seeks the well-being of the oppressed and is faithful to those who work for God’s reign on earth. Jesus is truth but not the sole truth as God’s universal saving agent. Jesus is the son of God and a universal savior. There is a recognition that God may have enriched other cultures and people with revelations whose beauty and power stand alongside that given in Jesus and need not threaten the vitality of Christianity and can deepen one’s Christian commitment.
4. Developmentalists – We are all on a journey in preparing for the acceptance of Christ. All faiths find fulfillment in the gospel of Jesus and Christ is the highest member in an ascending series.
5. Transcendentary approach – grace and judgement of God is present and active throughout creation. Believers of other faiths have access to God’s transcendental grace although they know nothing of being Christian – this is an idea of anonymous Christians.
6. Dialogical – Christians and people of other faiths take their commitments with utmost seriousness and enter into an open dialogue with each other. The finality of Christ is not something Christians possess but a promise given.
Fowlers six stages of faith start with the idea where we accept the God from our parents and community and then move to accepting the stories of our faith understood in a literal way. We move to a phase where we adopt an all-encompassing belief system where authority is placed in an individual or a group that represent one’s beliefs. It is hard to see outside the box. The fourth stage is where we start understanding other boxes and start seeing outside of one’s own box. This is a time of examining beliefs and one can become disillusioned with their faith. The prior stages believe the person in this stage is back sliding, but they are actually moving forward. The fifth stage is a realization of the limits of logic and acceptance of the paradoxes in life. There is an embrace of mystery and a return to the sacred stories and symbols without being stuck in a theological box. The final stage is a universalizing of faith and living a life to the fullest in service of others without any worries or doubts. People at this level have a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human. They cherish life but also do not hold on to life too tightly. They put their faith in action, challenging the status quo and working to create justice in the world.
Where I am in my journey can influence how I view other faith traditions. As I looked at Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity the past two weeks, time and again many similarities emerged. While Hinduism and Islam have many names for god, there is still one ultimate and supreme being. Just like Christianity has different names for God – the trinity identifies God as Jesus and Holy spirit. Just like Judaism has many names for Yahweh. Even Buddhism is seeking nirvana which is a complete emptying of ourselves into the eternal nothingness (a transcendent God?).
All these religious traditions are focused on our behaviors and how we treat each other, treat the poor, the oppressed and creation.
All of these religious traditions have sacred texts, rituals and practices that provide guidance to seeking a deeper relationship with Spirit, emptying ourselves of ego and seeking a spiritual path for this life.
If we look at history, all of these religions (except Buddhism) have been used to kill others, start wars, oppress and seek power. It does not appear that any one of these religions is more violent than the other. These religions have also impacted our world in very positive ways.
Don’t all of these great religious traditions want us to become more alive – to wake up? To wake up to the mystery, to the Presence of Spirit to how to live in this world with kindness, grace and charity. And to see the beauty in ourselves and in each other.
I am a big fan of the teacher, mystic and Muslim poet Rumi. Coleman Barks who translated many of Rumi’s writings and published Rumi’s Big Red Book says this “Rumi’s message can be stated in many ways. It is the core of the core of every religion. It is the longing in a human being to live in unlimited freedom and joy, to move inside beauty, that most profound need of the human soul to flow with the namelessness that animates, luxuriates, burns and transpires through form, enlivening what is as stream, mist, torrent, saliva, blood, ocean, cloud, coffee, wine, butterfly, tiger, hummingbird, energy and delight.” (pg 8)
So why do we become fearful of other faith traditions? Could it be that we don’t understand the tradition and their texts and rituals? That we don’t have personal relationships with others that believe differently? That we don’t listen because we are talking so much about our faith and how it’s the better path to God? That we don’t see the Divine, the Spirit in every person regardless of their faith tradition? Have we taken the time to learn about these religions?
We had a wonderful visit to the Hindu temple this past week. Our guide shared great wisdom with us - that the truth is but one but the wise may call it by many names. Could it be there is only one religion and it’s the religion of love?
Several years ago, I went to an interfaith conference and the teacher shared a lovely story to help us think differently about our faith traditions. Humans are living in the valley of the land – different valleys based on our location and culture. All of us are trying to get to the sunrise – we can’t see it because the mountains are blocking our view, but we know it is there at the top of the mountain. We travel different mountain sides to walk upward towards the sun. If we reach the top of the mountain, we see that there are many other mountains reaching up to the sun and there are many people on these different mountains, but we see the sunrise, we see the Light together from our different mountain tops.
Friends, in these troubled times in our country and in our world, we need interfaith dialogue, connection, understanding and shalom. We need to collectively come together and care for the earth. We need to build seeds of devotion to help our neighbors. We need to embrace the best teachings of our Hindu tradition, of Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and Yahweh. We need to seek the one true religion of love.
Before we enter our time of waiting worship, I would like to read a poem from Rumi – God is in the Stew
Is there a human mouth that does not give out soul sound? Is there love, a drawing together of any kind, that is not sacred?
Every natural dog sniffs God in the stew
The lion’s paw trembles like the rose petal.
He senses the ultimate spear coming.
In the shepherd’s majesty wolves and lambs tease each other.
Look inside your mind. Do you hear the crowd gathering?
Help coming, every second.
Still you cover your eyes with mud.
Wash the horned owl. Wash your face.
Anyone who steps into an orchard walks inside the orchard keeper.
Millions of love- tents bloom on the plain.
A star in your chest says, None of this is outside you.
Close your lips and let the maker of mouths talk, the one who says things.
We enter this time of communion with God with an open heart and mind. As you listen to God’s whispers, we ask that if God is speaking to you directly that you hold and cherish this in your heart. But if God is giving you a message for us to hear please be faithful and stand and a microphone will be brought to you.
As a personal reflection I want to thank everyone for the love and support I have felt in this time of suddenly losing my beloved brother Keith last Sunday. I have been thinking about him all week and my mind has been flooded with so many wonderful memories. But I also remember a time several years ago when we had a major conflict. He had hurt me deeply and I felt wounded from the incident. It was weeks and weeks before I could talk with him. I felt I was standing on the right side of this incident and wondered if I could get over this. But God worked on my heart and I realized that my relationship with him was too important to allow this to destroy us. We slowly came back into communion and I am so thankful for his presence and his connection to my upbringing, my parents and my childhood. I am praying if there is someone here today that needs to reach out to someone they will listen to God’s call of reunion.