Sun, Jul 17, 2005 - Saviour of the World

Isaiah 44:6-8

Romans 8:12-25

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

One of the overarching themes of this summer’s Bible readings seems to be that of religious exclusivity - trying to determine who is in and who is out when it comes to God’s kingdom. Let me read you a few of the passages to give you a sense of what I mean. Last week, in Romans, we heard that "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." And from our Gospel we heard that - "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart."

From this week, from Isaiah, "Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god." And again from Matthew, "The field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fires, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Next week, the Gospel follows that up with, "the angels will come out and separate the vil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire." And by the time we’re in August, we hear from 1 Kings the story of God sending Elijah the prophet to arrange for all the Baal-worshippers to be killed, and in Romans it says, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?"

And finally, by mid-August, the Gospel - still Matthew - tells us that "every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted." Like I said, there’s a theme here of religious exclusivity, and it seems to be telling us that if you’re a Christian, if you believe in Christ and the God who sent him, then you have nothing to worry about. But if you don’t, well, you’re in trouble, to say the least.

Which is fine, because we’re all Christians here. We’re all baptized children of God who can trust in God’s promise that we will be with God. But what about those who aren’t? How are we to understand Christ’s claim to being the exclusive way to God and salvation within our current context? Now, this is not an idle theological question. In our context, living in the city we do and at the time we do, the question of whether or not people who are not self-professed Christians can be welcomed by God is of pressing importance. Obviously, I come at the whole thing from a very personal angle. Only one quarter of my extended family is Christian - the rest is Jewish and Buddhist, and many of my close friends aren’t Christian. But I know that many of you are in the same situation, with family members and friends who are Hindu or Muslim. Don’t you wonder, sometimes, what will happen to them when they die? This message of religious Christian exclusivity hits close to home - it even hits within our home, we might say. But even if it doesn’t, even if all our family and friends are Christian, this question of Christian exclusivity is still with us. After all, we live in a country, and a city, where the person who drives the bus is just as likely not to be Christian, nor are the doctors and dentists and nurses who care for us, or the police who protect us, or the people we work with, or just about anybody who helps us to get through our days.

So I have to ask? Is it really true that all these non-Christian people, even the ones we love, especially the ones we love, will have no place in God’s kingdom when the time comes? Is it true that they will be separated from us, burned like weeds, uprooted and slaughtered? Is it possible that we are saved while our friends and family are not? What about the mercy of God?

These questions are raised in an article by Mark Thomsen, from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago [Christ Crucified: Lutheran Missiological Themes for a Post-Christian Century, Currents in Theology and Mission, 30:2]. In Mark’s article, he says, "It is difficult to fathom why Christian and Lutheran theology have attempted to limit the breadth and cosmic scope of God’s suffering love embodied in Jesus crucified. Why would one limit the saving effects of this love to those who have the possibility of hearing a proclamation of Jesus? Is God’s life-giving embrace to be limited by the time and place of one’s birth?" In other words, Mark is pointing out that people have no choice about where and when they are born, and I might even add about the culture in which they are raised. That being the case, are they to be excluded from the life and love that God gives because they are not predisposed or conditioned to be receptive to the story of Christ? In fact, doesn’t requiring people to believe in Jesus Christ in order to saved - to put it simply - put a condition on a grace and love that we proclaim is unconditional?

You can see the problem we are in. Aside from the personal concerns about the people we love, we have the theological paradox that we proclaim a God who is unreservedly generous to those who don’t deserve it, who is full of unconditional grace and mercy towards those who would reject it. We say that God "so loves the world that He sent his only Son," and in the next breath say that "those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already." So how are we to resolve this tension?

Interestingly enough, this tension already exists in the Bible - the tension between believing that salvation only comes to those inside the fold of believers and believing that God shows favour and salvation to whomever God wills, regardless of what that person believes. One of the most important Old Testament examples of God doing the latter is when, after Israel has been invaded by Babylon and Assyria and sent into foreign lands, God uses Cyrus, the King of Persia - not a believer - to rescue Israel and bring them out of exile. The salvation of God’s chosen people comes at the hands of someone who was most likely Zoroastrian. Traditionally, Zoroastrians had no place among God’s chosen people, and yet here is God making one a saviour of Israel. There is an unresolved paradox here.

In the Gospels, in the Gospel of Matthew, even - a few chapters before today’s story - Jesus makes a point of telling his disciples that those who thought they were in will be out and those who thought they were out will find themselves in. "I tell you," he says, "many will come from east and west (meaning non-believers) and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." It’s true that he was talking to the Pharisees at the time, but the point he is making applies to us as well. We should not be quite so quick to assume that those who don’t profess to follow Jesus will find themselves shut out of the kingdom.

And then, of course, we have our parable for today, which clearly highlights that we humans aren’t meant to be doing that sort of separating out of people in the first place. We can’t really look at a person and say, "because you’re Christian, you’re in." We likewise can’t look at a person and say, "because you’re not a Christian, you’re out." Because, frankly, as the parable tells us, just as the harvesters couldn’t separate out the weeds and the wheat without damaging the good seed, we don’t have the knowledge or the skill to even do that kind of separating. That’s left for God and the angels to sort out at the end of time. That’s not our job.

Now, I have most likely not given you any satisfactory answer to the question of religious exclusivity. But that’s because I don’t have one. But neither does anybody else. Only God knows what will happen at the end of time. But that doesn’t mean that we are left wondering where we are, personally, in this whole thing. We are baptized Christians, and as such, God has made particular promises to us. As God’s own adopted children, we have the promise of salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ.

But in the meantime, when it comes to those around us who are not Christian, we can hold fast to the mercy of God shown in that same Jesus Christ. We can trust, as we proclaim, that the Lord is indeed "gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," and that, as the Bible tells us, that grace, mercy, and steadfast love is meant for the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.