April 27, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Easter 6     Acts 17:22-31     John 14:15-21

Pluralism. It’s a word that is used rather carefully or diffidently in public Christian discourse today. Although it is widely recognized as valid honest and logical in our 21st century global society, religious pluralism is a complex issue. It asks that we recognize that our faith is not the exclusive source for truth or that we tolerate other faiths as being as real and true as our own.

At baseline, as Christians we are followers of the ‘way’ of Jesus Christ. Our spiritual inheritance rests in a triumphant monotheism that is defined by Jesus Christ dying on the cross. Our faith statements hold that he knowingly died for us – that we might be forgiven through his sacrificial and grisly death as a criminal. Furthermore, not only did Jesus die and appear again three days later but he did not leave us bereft, alone or without him. As we hear today in our gospel reading from John, he comes to us with another advocate, the Spirit of truth.

Our first reading from Acts is a famous passage where the redoubtable Paul arrives in Athens. As we hear he is most upset to see the numerous statues and idols that litter the city. He examines them and finds one dedicated to an ‘unknown God.’ Cleverly Paul engages the Athenians on the premise of revealing the nature of this ‘unknown God.’ Winningly he says – ‘O’ Athenians, I can see how religious and dedicated you are – but I will reveal to you the nature of this unknown God – the true and only God, one who does not reside in temples or objects but is the genesis, the creator and life giver of all things that were, that are, that ever will be. This is the God you long for.’ And Paul utters the fateful and famous line: for ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’

First century Athens was a charming, decadent city based on learning. It was the university city of the Roman world and as such contained the keenest minds of the time. It was, I quote, “a delightful a place to live in for religious persons of leisure and cultivation.” It was a curious and openly pluralist society based on freedom of worship, faith and the search for truth.

In the 2000 years since then Christianity conquered and has dominated the Western world. We have been savagely monotheistic and oceans of blood have been filled over time by those who would deny the supremacy and ultimate truth claims of the church. But in the 21st century it is difficult to maintain the exclusivity of this singular monotheism.

Yet, I believe our spiritual longing and groping, as Paul puts it, is based firmly within this understanding. It is our focus, our spiritual inheritance, our reality. Moreover, I also believe that it is important to cleave to, to reverence, to pray and sing out loud, to argue and hope, to lose oneself in, to delight in the God we love, the God who moves within and between us.

Living religion represents a unity of three elements which reside in a mix of the institutional, the intellectual and the mystical. [1]

We worship together here as church, an institution which provides the community we are called to be part of as Christians. This, at best, provides great and historic worship within the creativity of the new, guidance and support, good teaching or theology, food for thought, a haven at times perhaps, fun sometimes – all within the community of believers that we are willingly part of. If we are lucky church liturgy and music can also be a pathway to the mystical.

Second, the intellectual element is how we think and wrestle with theological concepts and problems in our post-enlightenment world individually and collectively. Most of the content of our sermons and study groups are contained within the intellectual as we try to come to grips with what it means to be Christian in our global and pluralist world. In his argument for the nature of the unknown God in our Acts reading today, Paul is using this analytical and intellectual component to try to convince the Athenians of the truth of his belief.

However, I believe that the third element, the mystical, is that which we grope for, that which we long for, that which we need to sustain our faith within the hurly-burly of life. It is the yearning for the mystical that will not let us go. It is why we are here. The mystical is about love, about the intuitive and emotional element that gives us the hope and the heart to love and to live well. The mystical is the ‘inarticulate speech of the heart’ directed towards God.

What enticed me into this pulpit was not the institutional or the intellectual but the mystical – that place that sometimes I arrive at where God is indeed the ‘ground of my being’ and I am infused with something extraordinary that transforms my daily worries and realities – something that transports me and invades my heart with love for all things. It bids me to embrace goodness, to speak for justice and truth, to try to love openly, and to use a Jack Spongism, to ‘love wastefully.’

It is not an easy road as I am sure you are all aware – we are not static things but living creatures ever in motion as we respond to our inward thoughts and our responses to our environment. Pain and struggle are the shadows of these liminal moments that we must embrace too. However, I believe this mystical longing is a human trait, an innate characteristic if you like.

This universal longing for the mystical, for God – for Love – for illumination, self-forgetfulness or oneness transcends religion, yet religion is the primary and outward expression of it. In our Christian tradition we have Saints galore who personify the mystical from Francis of Assisi to Meister Eckhart to Julian of Norwich, through to more recent times with people like Dorothy Day, Anthony De Mello, John O’Donohue. We have ecumenical communities like Taize that are entirely based on the mystical whose affecting refrains we sing here at St Matthews.

But – as the saying goes – we are not alone! Other traditions have their own sacred writings and ways of giving voice to the mystical in their tradition. The ‘mindfulness’ of Buddhism, the Tao or ‘the way’ of the Chinese mystic Lao Tzu, the Upanishads from India that are reputed to be the oldest mystical documents in the world, the Shema – the most important prayer of Judaism, the Sufi of Islam. These few examples of other traditions express the same ongoing longing for God that brings us here today.

As Jan Ruysbroeck, a fourteenth century Christian mystic wrote “God is there for everyone, with all the gifts divine. The angels are there for everyone.”

The complexity of pluralism lies in the intellectual mode. Pluralism can appear to relativise our faith, our God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. But in truth the mystical longings we all share transcend the institutional and the intellectual. I am personally fascinated by the sacred texts of other traditions and what they reveal about the nature of God and relationship. I am made richer by it also. I can genuinely love my Muslim neighbour knowing that she too desires and longs within the mystical dimension in her life just as I do – her path is merely different to mine and that is OK.

I am able to live my personal monotheistic faith in the Jesus of the gospels, in the Spirit of truth, in John’s God that is Love, and in Paul’s ‘ground of our being’ alongside the pluralism that is our world.

We are all searching and yearning. Just like Paul.

[1] Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. Fortress Press, 2001