Embracing Progressive Christianity - Other Faiths

Transcription of the sermon given by Rev. Shawn Coons on January 29, 2023

Week three of embracing progressive Christianity. And we've talked about what is progressive Christianity, how does it differ from maybe some other traditions of Christianity? We've used different kind of metaphors. One word that I want to emphasize today is that progressive Christianity really embraces and acknowledges is “limits,” that we are limited as people in our understanding of God. We are limited in our ability to understand God, and that God's revelation to us, how God is known and the ways God communicates with us and has communicated with God's people is also limited. It's not an open book where every secret of the universe, every secret about who God is and how God operates in the world is out there if we can just find it. We acknowledge there are limits to our understanding and our information we have about God.

If you remember First Corinthians chapter 13, mostly what we remember for the passage is love is patient, love is kind, the beautiful imagery of Paul's chapter on love. But he also says in there, "For now we see in a mirror dimly. Now I only know in part," acknowledging that that limitation we have of our ability to fully know God. The way we've expressed that about embracing progressive Christianity is to use the metaphor of windows where there are certain windows and you can only see so much out of a window, right? And some windows are clear, and some windows are big, and some are distorted, but each view through a window has its limits.

This is important to remember as we go into today's topic. When we as Christians talk about other faiths, especially as progressive Christians, we need to remember this idea of limits and we need to talk about limits. This is kind of our approach to other faiths. It's kind of, well, we know what we know, and we can be confident in that. But we also don't know what we don't know, and we need to acknowledge and have that in front of us as well. This is a very Presbyterian idea to say, "Well, there are certain things we know, and let's be confident in what we know. There are certain things we don't know, and let's hold that loosely and say, okay, there's mystery out there. There's more than we can know. There's new light to be shined."

In 2002, the Presbyterian church put out a study paper about salvation, about other faiths. And it's long. It's a good read, but it's long. It was called Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to read one paragraph for you that kind of talks about this we know what we know, we don't know what we don't know, and we hold them together.

"Jesus Christ is the only savior and Lord and all people ever are called to place their faith, hope and love in him. No one is saved by virtue of inherent goodness or admirable living. For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. No one is saved apart from God's gracious redemption in Jesus Christ. That's what we know. Yet we do not presume to limit the sovereign freedom of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Thus, we neither restrict the grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ, nor assume that all people are saved regardless of faith. Grace, love and communion belong to God and are not ours to determine."

So what do we as Christians know? We know that Jesus is Lord and Savior. We know that we are saved by grace alone. We heard Kathy read that from Ephesians a moment ago. Grace is a gift from God, not something we earn, not something we work for. It is a gift. It is completely on God's part. Not through works, not through right belief, not through anything of our own doing. All right, so what don't we know? We don't know the extent or how God's grace is given. If it is a gift from God, God can give that grace to anyone regardless of anything that they do or anything that they are. We don't know how the saving acts of Jesus work with people who aren't Christians.

Thus, we neither restrict the grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ, nor assume that all people are saved regardless of faith. Grace, love and communion belong to God and are not ours to determine. I want us to pause here for a moment and notice something. Often, usually, when we as Christians start to talk about other faiths and how do we view other faiths, the conversation quickly goes, as I've led it today, into a question. Who is saved and who is not saved? And I'm not sure that's a great thing that we so quickly go to this idea of salvation, and we go this quickly idea of who's saved, who's not saved when we talk about Christianity, when we talk about other faiths. That being said, we need to address it because that's naturally kind of where we go. So we're going to talk about that this morning.

But first, we're going to read our morning scripture. And this is going to be from Matthew, chapter 15, starting with verse 21. And we're looking at this scripture this morning because Jesus is interacting here with someone of another faith. We have a Canaanite woman. The Canaanites, were a specific people, but at this point in the history of Israel, Canaanite also kind of generally refers to people who lived there but weren't Jewish. So kind of by definition, Canaanite is someone of another faith than Jesus.

Matthew, chapter 15, starting with verse 21. "Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And just then, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, 'Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon.' But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, 'Send her away for she keeps shouting after us.' He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.' But she came and knelt before him saying, 'Lord, help me.' And he answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' She said, 'Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.' And then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly." This is the Word of the Lord God.

There's a lot that happens in this passage. And there's a lot we could talk about, especially as it relates to progressive Christianity. But let's first, let's be clear at what happens here. This Canaanite woman, this non-Jewish woman, has a sick daughter. And as any good mother would do, she wants desperately for her daughter to be healed. She wants her daughter to be helped. And I'm guessing at this point, she's tried many ways and probably failed. And so she makes a scene. She makes a ruckus. She shouts to get Jesus' attention. And Jesus ignores her, just doesn't even acknowledge her. The disciples are annoyed by her. Jesus isn't taking care of this. So the disciples go to Jesus and say, "Hey, can we get rid of her? Can you get rid of her? She's loud, she's annoying, she's causing a scene."

And then Jesus says to the disciples, "I'm only here for the Jewish people. I'm only here for the lost sheep of the House of Israel, not for this Canaanite woman." We don't want to hear that as Christians. That's not our image of Jesus. So he says this not to the woman, says it to his disciples. But nevertheless, she persists. And Jesus, after she goes to him and says, "Lord, help me," she makes him acknowledge her, Jesus then says no, and he calls her a dog, basically. Some people say is a racial slur of the time. It's not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dog, the children being the lost children of Israel. She still persists. She verbally spars with him using that metaphor, not protesting the name he's called her. She says, "Yeah, but even the dogs, they eat the crumbs from the master's table." And then Jesus says, "Great is your faith." And he heals her daughter, just like that.

This is a problematic passage for many people. If you really read it and you really kind of dig into it and understand what's going on, Jesus is not acting very Christlike in this point. We see Jesus making mistakes. We see Jesus making bad mistakes. We see Jesus maybe even learning and being corrected by this woman, this non-Jewish woman. For many Christians, if you understand the passage this way, and I don't see another way to understand it, that's hard to reconcile with a certain image of Jesus. There's this image of Jesus, well, Jesus is fully God. Jesus is fully divine. Jesus didn't make mistakes. Jesus didn't commit sins. Jesus never learned. He was fully God, and God doesn't do any of those things.

But as progressive Christians, we remember Jesus was also fully human. And as human beings, we have limits. We have gaps in our knowledge. We make mistakes, big ones, and we need to learn throughout our lives. So if Jesus is fully human, wouldn't he embrace and be part of those as well? Now, we could go more into that, but let's notice how Jesus interacted with this woman because that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about other faiths. How did Jesus interact with this woman of another faith? Well, at first, he does it poorly, I would say. But then he comes around, right? And he praises her for her faith. Notice what he doesn't do, though. Notice what he doesn't do. There's no talk of being saved. There's no talk of salvation. There is no talk of repentance. There is no talk of conversion.

Jesus seems not to be concerned that she's not Jewish. Jesus doesn't seem to care much that she's of a different faith other than that's not he's here for. He doesn't try to say, "Let me quote you some scripture. Let me tell you about the God of Judaism. Let's see if we can get you away from your Canaanite beliefs." He's not concerned that she's not Jewish. That doesn't stop him from healing her daughter, and then he lets her go on her way with her beliefs intact and unchallenged. I would go on to say in the whole of scripture, certainly in Jesus' ministry, but even in the whole of scripture, there's very little emphasis on converting people of other faiths to Judaism or then Christianity. The harshest judgment in scripture, the talk of hell, the talk of punishment, are all directed at people who are already following God, already following Jesus. Not people of other faiths.

But somewhere in Christian history, somewhere especially in Western Christian history, we developed this notion that God wants us to go out and find people of other faiths and save them, convert them. Say, "Your beliefs are wrong. Our beliefs are right. You need to believe what we need to believe, or horrible things are going to happen to you." But that's not the message of scripture.

There are scriptures that suggest this. Let's not deny that or downplay that. The Great Commission in Matthew, "Go out into all the world baptizing in my name." Yes, that has that sense. But in the whole of scripture, the harshest words, the harshest punishments, are for those who are already following God and don't live up to it. So what about being saved? Let's get back to that. We've talked around it, we've talked about it. Our typical understanding of salvation, the kind of Western Christianity, especially American Western Christianity, is being saved means at some point in your life, you've invited Jesus to be your Lord and Savior. Maybe you've said a prayer at that point, and at that moment you are saved, and your status goes from the not saved column to the saved column. And now you have a ticket to heaven and you won't go to hell.

There are scriptures that support that. But the trick is there's a lot of different scriptures on salvation. There are a lot of different windows on salvation, and they each provide a little bit different view. I can't go into it in its entirety. I did this for a sermon a couple years ago. But I have here this page of probably 15 or so different scriptures, and I've got salvation divided up into categories. Sometimes scripture says, we're saved through repentance. Zacchaeus, if you remember him, the wee little man, he repented. 2 Corinthians 7, "Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation."

At other parts, faith is the qualifier for being saved. In Romans, in Thessalonians, in Luke, in John, "Everyone who believes in him may not perish." "Sir, what must I do to be saved?" in Acts. They answer, "Believe in the Lord Jesus." So it's that faith, it's that belief in some parts of scripture. Then there is you're saved by works. We know James, first and foremost. "What good is it, my brothers, if you say you have faith, but do not have works? Can faith save you?" Well, according to the earlier scriptures, yes, but now it seems to be more emphasized on works. And then we have our scripture from this morning that says, it's grace. It's not your belief because that's something you do. It's not your works. That's something you do. It's grace. It's purely a gift from God.

Then we have a few other scriptures. One scripture, 1 Timothy says, "Women will be saved through childbearing provided they continue in their faith and love and holiness." So there's a combination of childbirth saving you and faith. And then sometimes you're saved by being baptized. And then there's a few random verses. "How hard it will be, Jesus says, for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God." So if you want to enter the kingdom of God, you can't be a wealthy person. So maybe salvation is dependent on how much money you have. Matthew, chapter 18, "Unless you become like children of God, you won't enter the kingdom of heaven." So maybe entering heaven has to do with how childlike we are.

All of these provide a window onto how God works in the world. All these provide a window into this thing we call salvation. And so if we try and wrap this word salvation with one little simple definition, it just doesn't honor all of scripture. So we hold all these intention and we say, "Well, we know what we know, and there's a lot of things maybe we don't know." And so we cling to that loosely as well. So how do we proceed not being able to kind of discern exactly what salvation is, exactly who was saved, exactly who is not saved? We know what we know. We don't know what we don't know. And here's how I've illustrated this. And I know I've told this story here before and I'm going to tell it again. Eventually if I stay here long enough, you're going to be able to tell it on my behalf.

When I met Carrie, her parents, Richard and Nancy, were living in Ashland, Kentucky. Ashland, Kentucky is where Ohio and West Virginia and Kentucky meet. It's in kind of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. And it's very curvy, mountainous. There's very few straight roads there. It's a smaller town. And we got married there. And so I needed to know how to get from Carrie's parents' house to the church where Carrie's dad was the pastor, and we were getting married. And I knew about one way to get there. And it was go down here, take a right, wind around here, maybe go past the hospital. It was confusing. But eventually I learned it. And every now and then, Carrie would say, "You know there's a faster way? You know there's a better way?" And I would say, "I'm sure there is, but I don't know it. This is the way I know, so this is the way I'm going to go."

I want to say that is our attitude we should have about our faith. As a Christian, I know that way to God. That is the way that I know, and I'm going to practice it. And if someone wants to ask me, what do you think about spirituality? What do you think about faith? I'm going to tell them the way that I know. But in the same breath, I'm going to say, "You know what? There may be other ways. And heck, there may even be better ways. But I don't know those ways. I'm not going to limit them and say they don't exist. But those are the ways I know. So let me tell you about the way that I do know." So that's what I want to leave you with this morning. Don't be afraid to share about the path that you know, the path that you walk. But respectfully remember that God is God, and God's grace is expansive, and there may be other paths that we don't know of as well.