York, John

English

Pepperdine Digital Commons

LeavenVolume 21Issue 4 Revelation Article 1012-1-2013Beyond Our Sectarian IdentityJohn Yorkjohn.york@lipscomb.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leavenThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Religion at Pepperdine Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Leaven byan authorized administrator of Pepperdine Digital Commons. For more information, please contact Kevin.Miller3@pepperdine.edu.Recommended CitationYork, John (2013) "Beyond Our Sectarian Identity," Leaven: Vol. 21: Iss. 4, Article 10.Available at: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol21/iss4/10I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me. John 14.6Im delighted to be with you for this occasion. My thoughts today are taken from a presentation I madethis past January at our preaching workshop. The theme of the workshop was Preaching andInterfaith Dialogue, and I was assigned the task of asking how to conceptualize such conversations inlight of the oft-quoted I AM statement of Jesus. The experience in many ways was more than I bargainedfor. I found myself not just exploring the apparently exclusivist claims of Jesus in John 14.6and thecompeting narratives and understandings of other religionsbut also many of the competing narrativeswithin myself. The really difficult part has been to name all of my own contributions to exclusivism and thegreat distance that exists between my understanding of Gospel and whatever it is that John the writer had inmind when he wrote this text.I said at the time that a better name for my lecture was Confessions of a Recovering But OftenObstinate Sectarian Exclusivist. For the longest time I believed that in the marketplace of religious ideas, myChristian understandings were right and the ultimate trump card over all elsethe springboard for all debateand occasionally some evangelism. Within the Christian stream itself, the views espoused by my tribe were thesuperior understandings. Even in graduate school at Emory, where it quickly became apparent that anyone stillbelieving in the resurrection was my sister or brother in Christ, I still loyally insisted that my tribe had moreright answers than other tribes. I stayed in Churches of Christ, I told myself, because every group has theirweaknesses and we still have more right answersor at least I could say that I know this familysdysfunctions (which was to say quietly, And they are not as bad as yours!).I choose to think that Im not alone in that arrogancethat most people who choose the church of theirchoice do so because it fits them. In our consumer culture of attractional church, the group we choose isdirectly related to what we personally believe is the best church, the right church with the right commitments,or at least the right set of practices for me (and my family) to be encouraged and affirmed. Identity throughdifferentiation has been the trademark of Protestant denominationalism for the last two hundred years inAmerica. Christian faith has been understood primarily as a set of beliefs to be argued with a concurrent set ofpractices to be observed. Until the last thirty-five years or so, people became Christian and joined a particularchurch group based either on generational family loyalty or on the basis of rational argument. Now we live inthe world of competing experiences where, instead of doctrine being debated, it is worship experiences thatare the attractional link. Orthopraxy has been tied to felt needs and social cohesionfinding a place to fit inand, in some sense, belong.Within the competing denominational tribes there has been a fairly explicit dualism. In one group (theliberals) great attention has been given to social justice and the moral compass has been centered on harm/care of the disadvantaged. On the other side (the conservatives), the primary focus has been on purityprimarily doctrinal purity, but also moral purity in specific circumstances with specific labels for those notBeyond our Sectarian IdentityJOHN YORK1York: Beyond Our Sectarian IdentityPublished by Pepperdine Digital Commons, 2013208  LEAVEN Fourth Quarter 2013conforming. This dualism has often become its own form of exclusivity. In this context, interfaith dialoguelooks like a debate between so-called mainline and evangelical affiliations.Alongside this view of faith and church has been a way of reading texts. For a variety of reasons, ourenlightened access to Scripture as an objective, easy-to-read, anyone-can-have-a-copy-and-read-it-for-himself-or-herself approach has produced an often helter-skelter privileging of some texts over others. Yes, awide variety of interpretive tools may be brought to the conversation, but how texts get weighted in relation toone another is one of the powerful forces of differentiation. We know this about almost any topic. If itssalvation, then Romans 10.9 and John 3.16 are pitted against Acts 2.38 or Romans 6.34. If its the role ofwomen, I Timothy 2 is held high over the head of I Corinthians 11 or Galatians 3.28or vice versa. And in thecase of my own tradition, for the longest time Acts and Pauls epistles were, in general, privileged over thefour Gospels. There was not room for, or interest in, interfaith dialogue when we were consumed withintramural debates about which texts win the day.Perhaps most dangerous of all in my world of sectarian exclusivism was a means of differentiating amonghuman beingscreating various hierarchies that assigned value to the other. Sometimes this was done along thelines of socio-economic difference (those rich people you know); sometimes education (I know what it feels like tobe completely discounted because Im an academic snob); often race and ethnicity; certainly gender; morerecently national citizenship; andmost obviously for our immediate discussionreligious loyalty. One gets thestrong feeling these days that to be Christian but undocumented is to be not quite human, even if Jesus is Lord.Again, very personally, I must confess my own blindness to the ways in which our modern, materialist/mechanistic understanding of life itself has turned every aspect of life into goods and services for consumption.It has become the unconscious understanding of what it means to be a successful human and a growingchurch. Consciously or not, we have tended to believe that if we build it, they will come1 is not aboutmythical baseball fields, but about church programs and buildings and success-filled promises.Now that you are either completely depressed, lost, or asleep, lets talk specifically about John 14.6. Theverse is one of the writers many uses of the divine ego eimithe divine I AM remembrance of Yahweh atthe burning bush in Exodus (3.14): I am, Jesus says, the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to theFather except by me.The problem, of course, is that contemporary citations of this text seldom spend time in the larger contextand, even when the context is mentioned, quoting this verse quickly moves to pronouncement. A literalistreading of this verse typically assumes some exclusivist understanding.In pure proof text form minus any effort at context, Acts 4.12 is often attached to John 14.6. There, Peteris quoted saying, There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we mustbe saved. Combined together, the resultant exclusivism seems obvious. But is it what the original writersintended, and should it be our own argumentative outlook today?Johns gospel account sets our eyes on the relationship of Father and Son from the opening prologue: Inthe beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was Godand the Word become fleshand tabernacled in our midst.2 Jesus is not showing us generic God, but Father. The context of the lastdiscourseand chapter 14 in particularrepeatedly announces the intimate relationship of Father and Son. Tosee one is to see the other (14.9); the Son and the Father are one (14.10). The home the Son is going toprepare is the house of the Father (14.2). They dwell together (v.3). Those who keep the commandmentsbecome home to the father and son (14.23). The coming of the Paraclete extends the promise of presence andlife, even in the physical absence of Jesus, because Father, Son, and Spirit are always empowering presence(14.1617). Yes, these words are spoken to the inner circle of disciples, but John obviously intends hisoverhearing audience to participate fully in these promises. This text is not talking about who gets in or getsleft out of Heaven when we die. It is about an invitation to intimate awareness and connection and relationshipas revealed in and through Jesus and the Paraclete.1. A variation of If you build it, he will come, the line made famous in the 1989 baseball movie, Field of Dreams.2. John 1.142Leaven, Vol. 21 [2013], Iss. 4, Art. 10http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol21/iss4/10REVELATION LEAVEN  209We could say the same thing, by the way, about the importance of context with Acts 4.12. In context, thequestion raised is by what power or in whose name was this paralyzed man saved (healed). The answer isthere is no power or name other than Jesus by which we must be saved. Yes, Luke is playing on the wordsaved in such a way that we should think beyond physical healingjust as he does with Jesus in the Gospelaccount. But we cannot miss the content of salvation in this particular context as primarily making aphysically disabled human being whole. To jump from that to the premise of full exclusion for all who do notparticipate in Christian initiation rites is a significant leap!Once we have at least attempted to live within the context of John 14.6 and/or Acts 4.12, there is still theNow what? What is it that followers of Christ should do, not do, or say? Here is where my own ability tostep out of the enlightenment/post-enlightenment world that I am completely enmeshed in becomes both nearlyimpossible and absolutely essential.Some of us lived through a time when salvation was defined by personal escape from hell and promisedentrance into heaven either when we die or at least at the last judgment. But for many, the loss of hell as amajor threat, combined with the loss of rabid sectarian exclusivism, seems like the death of evangelism.Witness the downright hostile reaction to Rob Bells book, Love Wins. If love wins, and God is going to inviteeveryone and everything into whatever heaven is in the end, then the urgency of mission seems lost. It does,however, make for pleasant interfaith dialogue because we dont have to debate anyone anymore.Somehow, I still believe more is at stake in John 14.6 than this. It has to do with moving beyond ourWestern, modern, enlightenedhowever we need to describe itrelegation of religion to my mind. In the caseof this I AM statement my job as evangelist is to convince you to think rightly about these words (I am theway, the truth, the life; no one comes to the Father except through me) and agree mentally with the assertionthat the brand of Christianity Im attaching to these words is accurate. Gospel is cognitively announced andreceived. Whatever it is that we are excluding others from when we quote these texts, faith is a privatizedcollection of doctrines held in the mind, occasionally coming together with those others who have decided tochoose the same collection as me, meeting together for worship that fits me once a week.But in the world and context of the Gospels, especially Johns account, as Gail ODay says, Jesus is bothaccess and embodiment of life with God.3 Belief in Johns account is much more than mental assent to a setof doctrinal propositions. This is not a doctrine to argue but an embodied relationship to be lived. Im remindedof the words mythically attributed to Francis of Assisi: Preach the gospel; when necessary use words.Weve become accustomed in the last few years to the language of incarnational living, to having anincarnational view of Christian life and faith. But we must also have a more organic view of life itself.Im convinced that the Gospel is first and foremost the healing of relationshipsthat the mystery ofatonement is not articulated well with judicial metaphors in our time because law and justice have becomeimpersonal, objectified realities unattached to relationships in our world. These atonement metaphors fit in theworld of covenant relationships and sacrifices, an organic world in which all of life was connected. In anorganic world blood is more than a term that drives a doctrine called substitutionary atonement. It is LIFE.In that fully connected world, Jesus comes as the embodiment of the fully relational life. He gives fullhumanitythe wholeness of relationship with other human beingsto people who have lost it or never had itin the first place. In overcoming death, he takes down the final barrier to relationshipsnot just among humanbeings or between human beings and deity, but all of creation.Because Jesus has shown us God as Father, because he embodies life with God, we come to the table ofhuman interaction as Paul suggests he himself was changed by his encounter with Christwhile he used tosee the world only with fleshly eyes, now in Christ everything is a new creation. How we see other humanbeings can never again be exclusive. This is not a new level on the hierarchy that leaves us above other humanbeings until they see it our way: it is organic, incarnational living that does for others what Jesus did. Thatmeans that texts like John 14.6 are not articulated as proof texts of superiority. They must be invitationallylived. It is that lived invitation, the embodiment of way, truth, and life that we bring to the world, especially inour conception of evangelism and church. Rather than a text that defends and even sanctifies sectarianism, weare invited with Jesus to become living testimony to Gods gracious gift of access, to what in the end (even in3York: Beyond Our Sectarian IdentityPublished by Pepperdine Digital Commons, 2013210  LEAVEN Fourth Quarter 2013fate-driven movies like Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) is all that really matters: relationships.Rather than being a proof text that stops interfaith dialogue or intra-faith conversation before it starts, Jesusinvites us into the shared life of all creation with himan inclusive invitation that opens us to embodied life inthe Spirit. That, my friends, is good news!JOHN YORK SERVES AS THE DIRECTOR OF THE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY PROGRAM AT LIPSCOMB UNIVERSITY INNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE (JOHN.YORK@LIPSCOMB.EDU).4Leaven, Vol. 21 [2013], Iss. 4, Art. 10http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol21/iss4/10

Beyond Our Sectarian Identity

https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2254&amp;context=leaven

Beyond Our Sectarian Identity

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Pepperdine Digital Commons