As the
general election campaign gets underway we will of course hear the claims of
the various parties in their attempts to persuade us to vote for them. Having a
system of parties and manifestoes means at least that we know what we’re voting
for: whoever your particular candidate is in your constituency, you know that
their party is offering a package deal of policies and promises.
There
is however, perhaps, a risk with this system, that the party can be seen as
something demanding complete loyalty. You must sign up to the whole deal. Exclusivist
claims can be made: only this or that
party can protect the country, save the NHS, or whatever it may be; vote for
us, as all other parties are entirely bad and wrong.
Well,
as voters we need to use our intelligence, and I think we realise that the
reality is usually more complex than that. Absolute claims to truth and value
won’t really wash with mere human constructions such as political parties.
But
what about religion? When it comes to faith, we can encounter absolutist claims
as well. This or that is the “true religion”; all others are false. You can
only be saved by becoming a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Catholic, or a
Protestant.
Now
religion, unlike politics, does make claims to put us in touch with absolute
truth, because religion is about relating to God, and God is the source of all
truth. These then are serious claims. But how are we to weigh them?
Well,
as Christians, we listen to Jesus. In today’s gospel he says very famous words,
one of the great “I am” sayings of John’s Gospel: “I am the way, and the truth,
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Now
there is no mistaking that this is an absolute claim: “No one comes to the
Father except through me”. But we need to attend very carefully, both to what
Jesus says, and to what he does not say.
He
says, “I am the way, and the truth,
and the life”. This is about who Jesus is. He goes on to say to Philip that to
have seen him is to have seen the Father. Jesus is the one who makes the Father
known.
The
doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three Persons, runs all through John’s
Gospel. Indeed, it runs all through the New Testament, but in John it is
particularly clear and explicit. God in himself is entirely mysterious. We
cannot know God the Father, the origin and source, in himself, but we can know God
as he is revealed in his Son. As John says in the opening of his Gospel, “No
one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s
heart, who has made him known.”
God the
Son is the Word, the expression of the Father, who has existed from all
eternity but was united in time to our human nature in Jesus. “The Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us.” Throughout John’s Gospel we have to bear this
in mind: when Jesus speaks, it is the Word who speaks. Jesus is the revelation
of the unknown God, come among us as one of us. This is why Jesus says, “to
have seen me is to have seen the Father”.
And
this revelation is for all people. The prologue of John’s gospel says that the
Word of God is “the true light, which enlightens everyone”. Not some people,
but everyone. Jesus himself says, “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will
draw all people to myself”. He doesn’t say some, he says all.
Jesus never
said, “Christianity is the only way to the Father”. He did not say “only
Christians can be saved”. We should not claim something that Jesus did not
claim. We need to guard against our Christian faith becoming exclusivist and
narrow. And that can happen if our conception of Jesus is too small.
Jesus
is the way to the Father, because he is the revelation and living image of the
Father sent into the world. This is a universal revelation. The Letter to the
Hebrews says, “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s
very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.” The letter to the
Ephesians says, “he ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill
all things”.
Jesus
is God the Son, the revelation of the Father, the way to the Father, and as
such he has created all things and fills all things. Jesus is present in all
the universe, in every human community, in every human life. He is present to
everyone as the revelation of the Father and as the way to the Father.
Now
this presence of Jesus is explicitly and consciously realised in the Christian
Church. We are those who have come to conscious faith in Jesus of Nazareth as
the Son of God who has come into the world, the way to the Father for all. We
are transformed into his image and become the visible Body of Christ in the
world though the Sacraments that he gave to us.
But the
universal nature of Christ informs how the Church sees the world and other
faiths and communities. Jesus is not absent from the rest of the world. The
true light enlightens everyone. Today, especially since the Second Vatican
Council, the Church acknowledges the reality of saving grace in other faith
communities and among all people of good will. But the Church also asserts that
all who are saved, all who come to a knowledge of God, do so through Jesus, the
Word of God who fills all things – whether this is consciously realised or not.
This
does not mean that all are automatically saved. We must respond to the grace we
have received. The role of the Church in evangelism is not to bring Jesus into
places and communities from which he is absent, because he is already there
ahead of us. Our role, rather, is to awaken people to the God who is making
himself known to them in Jesus, in whatever way God finds to do that.
We live
in a world of many faiths, reflected in the microcosm that is London. This
should not make us anxious, narrow or exclusive. Jesus the Word has ascended to
fill all things and enlighten all people. We bear witness to him, not to
ourselves. We do not need to cast other people into outer darkness, still less
do we need to turn other people into copies of ourselves. The sects who hand
out leaflets on street corners seem to want to do that, but that really reveals
only their own insecurity and lack of faith in the God who is bigger than they
are.
A
mature, confident Christianity does not see the world as filled with darkness,
but as radiant with life and hope. Mature, confident evangelism is not
motivated by the fear of hell, but by the joy of bringing ourselves and others
into a closer relationship with Jesus, who fills all things and enlightens all
people. Because he, not we, is the way, the truth and the life, and everyone
who comes to the Father comes through him.
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