Matthew 23: 10, 11, 12; Acts 17: 22-28

The Christian and other faiths

Humility comes slowly in life and it comes in fits and starts.  Humility is not our natural instinct.  It does not work well in a survival of the fittest strategy. It is not easy to be humble when you consider yourself smarter than others. It is not easy to be humble when you consider yourself more powerful than others, it is not easy to be humble when you consider yourself better dressed, better looking or more refined than others.  When you consider yourself to have the best god or the best faith, humility is even harder to come by.  So when Jesus says in Matthew: the humble will be exalted and the arrogant brought low, we just pay lip service to it. We read right over it. But this is a question I raised for myself after I read that particular lectionary reading?  What if Jesus meant that even should have humility over against those who have different faith?  Could that be? 

In Acts 17 Paul goes to Athens and Paul who can be quite fierce, is very humble or at least his strategy is.  He has arrived at the very center of the polytheism of the Mediterranean.  The gods the people worshipped there had been taken over by the Romans, albeit with different names and still feature very much in European literature and in Western languages, even though no one worships those gods anymore.  Paul knows he has to find the language to speak about the One God.  So he finds an altar to an Unknown God, perhaps put there as an act of humility of the Greeks, or just in an attempt to cover their bases.  He uses that as an entry to his preaching of the truth of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the One God.   He does not put down the Greeks, he approaches them from the viewpoint of their tradition.

This is a Christian church and here profess God as coming in Christ as the hope of the world. To this we are committed. Without it we would become just a social club.  But I thought I would sum up what I referred to earlier already and that is what I have learned from other faiths and philosophies during my work and our travels overseas.  I think Christians fear doing this because we are afraid it might dilute the power and singularity of our faith message.  I think appreciating certain parts of other traditions can enrich the experience of our own faith. Of course we have no problem with the gods of the Greeks and Romans because we see them just as part of an ancient culture that no longer exists.  But this is true today, of the living religions. Most of religious life, including Christian religious life is culture.  Most of religious life is not about the essence of faith; it is sounds, and sights and smells and textures grown up around  a faith.  Most of it could be stripped away and the faith would still be there.  Now when we look at others religions it is sometimes had to separate the faith from the culture and maybe it is the only the believers of those cultures who can make that judgment.  But here goes: I have learned from Jews that they have a unique intimate spirituality that really treats God as a parent you can speak to and argue with and ask questions of.  I also learned that they have over the ages felt a special role in representing God on earth and that many of the great innovations in Western thought have come from the Jews.  I have learned from Muslims I have met that the majority are not fanatical or violent or even angry, that when they fast they can show enormous discipline and experience hardship for their faith and that they continue the emphasis on cleanliness and purity that we see in the Old Testament and also that faith is really a simple matter.  I have learned from Balinese Hindus that the beauty of the earth and the worship of God are closely related, that the divine is to be found everywhere and that the creation of art is an extension of spirituality.  From Buddhists, and especially Zen Buddhists, I have learned realism and the necessity to embrace completely the fullness of each moment of life and that life is fleeting and temporary.  From Mormons I have learned how well communities can take of their own and how living a “clean” life can be a worthy goal.   From Roman Catholics I have learned that you can stick a whole bunch of diverse people under one roof during one worship service and that they can all belong in spite of their theology because they are all “Catholic,” that just because you have a prolonged crisis of faith you don’t get rejected by the Church, for it is through the Church you are saved.  I have learned from Christian fundamentalists that we should revere the Bible and put ourselves under the authority of it and that we should assume to find God’s wisdom in all the text even if at first we do not find it. I have learned from African-American Christians that out of intense suffering can come great spiritual joy and liberation and that God is intimately involved with the sufferings of our lives and that God desires our liberation.  Friends, may we be so secure in our Christian faith that we can humbly hear the wisdom of others who also sincerely and peacefully seek God.  May God help us in that endeavor. Thanks be to God