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Proclaiming the
Gospel in a Pluralistic World
Pacific Southwest Conference on Christian World Mission
Asilomar, California - 29 July 1995
Rev. Robert Traer
As a Christian, I often feel under attack in
interfaith work. Those promoting spirituality frequently assert that Christian
institutions are oppressive and hierarchical. Those emphasizing the religious
experience of women and nature traditions that have been marginalized by
patriarchal religions, often see little hope for a more just and ecological form
of Christian faith. Those pursuing an inner journey of spiritual discipline may
well reject the Christian practice of praying to a transcendent God.
I am constantly reminded that Christian faith has
been used to sanction the killing of Jews, wars against Muslims, the conquest
and desecration of land, the exploitation of other cultures, and the oppression
of women. But my response is not to give the counter arguments on behalf of
Christian faith, although there are many. Instead, in humility I confess these
sins committed in the name of Christian faith, affirm my commitment to a life of
repentance, share my faith and hope in the power of forgiveness, and continue
the struggle.
I am a Christian, because I have known
forgiveness as a Christian. I embrace Christian faith, because I "live and
move and have my being" (Acts 17:28) in the Spirit of God that I know best
through the biblical witness. And so, I affirm the good news of the gospel, that
we may come to eternal life now, in this life, by loving God and our neighbors.
But how is such a gospel to be proclaimed in our
pluralistic world? What does the Christian community have to offer that other
religious communities do not? How is the church to compete in the religious
marketplace of our secular society?
 You
may feel these are the wrong questions. You may believe that all Christians need
to do - in order to live out their faith and share it with others - is to work
for justice. But there are two Great Commandments, not one. We are to love the
Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind, and our neighbor
as ourselves. (Mt. 22:37, Lk. 10:27) That's not only what the Bible tells us,
but it's good advice. For only by loving God, and by experiencing the love of
God, will we be enabled to love those who are (whether we like it or not) our
neighbors.
We can best love God as Christians.
We can best love God through the church. Therefore, if we are to continue in the
struggle for justice, we need to strengthen our Christian communities. Our
challenge isn't just to lobby the UN or other governing officials to do what is
right, although that is our responsibility. Our challenge is to live and
proclaim Christian faith as a spiritual and ethical way of life. And to meet
this challenge, those of us who are known for emphasizing ethics - and the
commitment of the church to work for justice - need to embrace a stronger
spiritual discipline.
Christian
Meditation
I was delighted to see times for meditation on
the schedule of the conference, but disappointed that the silent prayer this
morning was so brief. Meditation is often associated with a Hindu or Buddhist
teaching, but it can and should be incorporated into our spiritual practice. A
Catholic sister I know in England is an authorized teacher of Zen meditation,
and has been teaching meditation for over 30 years. The Church in the
Philippines embraced her work, but the Catholic Church in England does not
recognize it. She teaches meditation to prisoners and in the last several years
more than 3,000 in the United Kingdom have taken up this practice.
The Anglican prison chaplains won't help her at
all, however, perhaps because her meditation trainers are primarily not
Christians but yoga teachers. Yet it seems clear that she is offering a
spiritual discipline of real significance to many prisoners, who testify to its
benefits. Can we not incorporate such a practice into the life of the church?
When Sr. Elaine leads a meditation retreat in her own Zendo in Oxford, a cross
is present at the front along with candles and flowers. She both meditates and
prays each day, and goes to mass regularly. For her, it all fits together.
For over 25 years I have included a time of
meditation in my morning prayer. I begin with a few hatha yoga exercises, then
sit in the lotus position, before singing a refrain giving thanks for the day
and then a psalm. After reading from the New Testament, and singing an alleluia
or some other Christian chant, I meditate for about 20 minutes. I conclude my
morning discipline by saying the Lord's prayer, still seated in the lotus
position.
I emphasize the position, because the posture of
Christian faith has largely focused on bowing the
head, or kneeling and prostrating oneself in submission to God, who is
envisioned to be above and apart from us. Sitting in the lotus position is a
different experience of prayer. With your back and neck straight, your backside
and legs firmly on the ground, and your head up, you feel both relaxed and
centered. The direction of attention is not out and up, but in and down.
I am convinced by changes in my disposition over
the years, and an experience of being forgiven for suffering I caused in my
family, that prayer and meditation are part of my salvation. Thus they belong to
the good news that I have to share, as a Christian. They are part of a spiritual
discipline that I can recommend to everyone, as a way of letting go of pride and
self-hatred and of embracing, as an inner strength and miraculous gift, what in
the Christian tradition has been called the love or grace of God.
Meditation and prayer may easily be understood as
alternate ways of opening ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit. In our
time we may understand such "a movement" in terms of quantum physics.
We know that, at the quantum level of reality, the world is not material as such
but consists of waves of potentiality out of which particles (or that which is
"material") are created. These waves of potentiality are also the
foundation of our "consciousness," as the fields of quantum waves in
living cells aggregate and reinforce one another. We might say then that at the
quantum level, mysteriously and in many ways unpredictably, the
"Spirit" blows where it wills. (John 3:8) That Spirit is present in
us, in every part of our being, and if the fields of energy within us are
brought into harmony with that Spirit, then we will be "born again" as
a new person.
Meditation is a way of tuning ourselves to the
Spirit of God, that potential movement within us to bring forth a new creation,
not only in the world around us but in the quantum worlds within. In meditation
and prayer we may let go of the self that is resisting the grace of God, and
discover a new identify - even as Paul tells us, from his own experience, that
he found new life "in Christ."
Way of Life
Last month at an interfaith forum a Native
American speaker emphasized that his religious tradition was a "way of
life" and not just a matter of attending worship once a week. His criticism
of the church was unfair, of course, but effective none the less. Muslims also
assert that Islam is a complete way of life. Prayer five times a day, in Arabic,
provides a powerful experience of physical submission. As the emphasis in Islam
is on faith as practice, beliefs and creeds are less important than in most
churches. Moreover, Islam sets itself squarely against the secular world, and
offers an alternative way of life, which includes not only precepts for
individual behavior but also a vision of how government should enforce the laws
of God.
The Christian vision, especially in mainline
Protestant churches, often appears to be little more than the ethical
commandment to love one's neighbor. In our time this commandment is given a more
sophisticated form, such as the commitment to "justice, peace and the
integrity of creation" voiced by the World Council of Churches. To be sure
such a commitment is crucial to the mission of the church, but ethical
imperatives by themselves will not be able to compete with a religious vision
like Islam, which emphasizes spirituality as well as ethics.
 As
an alternative way of life, Islam sets itself over against secular society. One
of the reasons Islam resists the secular world is because, in modern pluralistic
societies, religion is reduced to merely a personal choice. In Islam, however,
the world of religion is presented as God's will. For Muslims, that which is
secular exists as an impurity within that which is sacred. Their commitment to
jihad is a commitment to ridding the world, which is sacred, of its secular
impurities.
If Muslims often sound like Old Testament
prophets, we should not be surprised, as we share this tradition of a powerful
and judging God with them, and with the Jews. We may also share with Muslims
certain commitments concerning justice in the world, even if we do not always
share their sense of a vengeful God or of the role of government in enforcing
the justice of such a God. We value freedom, particularly the freedom of the
individual, more than most Muslims do. We are more secular than most Muslims
are.
In some ways this is a conflict between a
medieval Muslim world and a modern (or postmodern) Christian world. Christian
fundamentalists would also have us return to a medieval mentality, and clearly
their vision is competitive with Islam (and many other religious alternatives)
at least in the short run. But for Christians who think critically, because
their faith is rooted in the prophetic tradition that culminates in the gospel
accounts of Jesus of Nazareth, there can be no way forward by going back. The
medieval world, with its literal view of the Bible and its emphasis on a
supernatural life after death, offers a false hope for us today.
Yet Christians who think critically and who are
at home in secular society will not be competitive in the religious marketplace,
until they embrace a spirituality that offers a more compelling sense of the
sacred in which to ground their ethical action. Christians need what the
Buddhists call "mindfulness" - a continuing awareness of the true
nature of things - or what we might describe as awareness of the sacramental
presence of the sacred in the midst of the secular. To use a quantum image
again, being "mindful" is being aware of the potentiality (and
mystery) of the wave, and resisting the notion that the particle coming from the
wave is all that is real.
I believe this is similar to what is meant by
"continuous prayer" in the Christian tradition. Perhaps you know the
story of the Russian pilgrim who spent years trying to understand the meaning of
the statement in Paul's letter to the church in Thessalonica to "pray
constantly." Saying the prayer - "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me
a sinner!" - over and over again changed his life. The prayer worked its
way into him, moving beneath the level of his consciousness, centering his mind
in God and on Christ.
Repeating or chanting a phrase from the Bible
over and over again is one way of entering into such a state of continuous
prayer. It tunes the mind and heart more than it communicates
"prayers" to God, but that is probably what prayer is supposed to be -
an orienting of ourselves to that which is the
source of our faith.
The monks of Taizé have reintroduced this kind
of prayer into the modern church in a powerful way. Singing Taizé chants over
and over again, and entering into that harmony as a physical as well as an
emotional and mental experience, is an example of bringing the sacred more fully
into realization in our lives. I know from my own experience, that these chants
resonate within, that they are not merely remembered but shape our unconscious
life.
To greet the day with such a chant, rather than
by listening to the news, is to create your world in a different way. And to
allow such a chant to work its way into your personality and character is to
come to know the sacred in a way that defines time and space with rhythms and
textures very different from the secular world. Such prayer helps to resist
despair and may even transform menial and mindless work into a spiritual
discipline.
Therefore, we need not return to the medieval
world of the Muslim or fundamentalist Christian in order to experience the world
as sacred. We can create such a world through spiritual practice, which orients
our life in trust and openness to God. And when we do, then our Christian faith
will be more than beliefs, ethical practice, and occasional worship added onto
our secular lives. Our Christian faith will then be a way of life.
Recovering the
Bible
This spring a Buddhist nun suggested in an
interfaith gathering that the Bible is burdened by mythological language unlike
her own Buddhist texts. One could quarrel with her characterization of Buddhist
texts, as they are often highly mythological, but certainly we have to agree
that the biblical narratives are shaped by mythological ideas. No educated
Christian can say that the Bible is simply history. Nor can we claim the Bible
is literally the word of God transcribed by those who were mere vehicles of its
transmission, as most Muslims believe about the Qur'an.
Fundamentalist Christians, of course, want it
both ways. They want to claim that the Bible is both historically accurate and
the infallible, revealed word of God. But we know that is not true. We know the
Bible expresses the faith of those who wrote it. Our challenge is to make sense
of the Bible, as a call to a way of life that is both spiritual and ethical. We
cannot support the work of justice, however, by just lifting out
"proof" texts from the Bible or by justifying our commitment with a
litany of the needs of the poor and the dire facts of the economic and
ecological crises of our time.
We need now to recover the Bible as a powerful
text that can ground the distinctive life of a Christian community committed to
compassion and justice. To do this, we need to read it spiritually as well as
critically and ethically. It is important to know about the Bible, but we must
also know the Bible. We must not only learn its stories and teachings, but we
must enter into its story and the world of faith it creates.
 A
critical reading of the Bible helps us see that the gospels, which were written
after most of the letters, are shaped by conflicts within the early church. For
instance, the early Gentile churches rejected the demand of Jewish Christians,
who were led by James (the brother of Jesus), that all Christians (including
Gentile converts) must keep the Jewish Law. Moreover, some of the synagogues
that had welcomed Jewish Christians (and Gentile sympathizers) began to expel
them, when Gentile Christians began to dominate the movement. For reasons such
as these, John's gospel vehemently attacks "the Jews," which it says
"had believed" in Jesus. (Jn. 8:31) This attack against Jews, which is
placed in the mouth of Jesus, is political polemic against the enemies of those
writing the gospel. It is not the word of God.
Ethically, John's gospel is a story of fellowship
among the followers of Jesus, who have sacrificed their personal interests for
the sake of the new community. Spiritually, the words that the author of the
gospel places in the mouth of Jesus have for centuries inspired Christians to
discover their own identity not only in relation to one another, but in unity
with God and the Spirit of God. The ethical and spiritual truth of the gospel of
John must be shared as the will of God, even as we declare that the vicious
attack of the gospel on "the Jews" is not God's will.
In the English translations of John's gospel the
word "faith" does not appear, but John's gospel is filled with the
verb for faith - which, in Greek, is a form of the noun but in English is
"believe." A careless reading of the gospel might lead to the
conclusion that we are saved by beliefs about Jesus. But "believing
in" Jesus means having faith in him or trusting in him. In the gospels we
discover that not only Jews but also non-Jews, such as a centurion and a
Canaanite women, have "faith" in him. As these non-Jews certainly did
not have the beliefs that we associate with faith, much less the beliefs that
the disciples thought necessary for faith, we see clearly that faith is not a
matter of belief.
By stressing faith the gospels confirm Paul's
experience and teaching to the Gentiles, that we are saved by faith through the
grace of God and not by keeping Jewish laws. Today we should add that we also
are not saved by having Christian beliefs. Although much is unclear about Jesus,
it is clear that he
called women and men to enter the kingdom of God by loving God and one another
in ways that were contrary to many of the traditional beliefs of his time. It is
also clear that Paul's experience of the risen Christ liberated him from an
understanding of God and religious practice that was limited to the Jewish
people.
In this sense, the Bible reveals that Jesus is
"the way, the truth, and the life", because he opens wide the door of
faith. Paul is shown that door and pushes it open even wider, in order to invite
Gentiles "as Gentiles" to enter. The faith to which the Bible
witnesses is to a God who commands love and justice, but who offers love and
forgiveness that enables love and justice. This is the truth of the gospel and
the word of the Lord. This is the good news of the gospel.
Our challenge is to interpret the Bible, as a
witness to the faith of the communities that preserved it, and to open ourselves
to entering into its world of faith. The Bible will either be a burden for our
understanding, or a source of spiritual discovery. We must not allow
fundamentalist Christians to continue to control the way the Bible is presented
within our communities. We must offer an alternative that is more compelling.
Witnessing to the
Gospel
When Gandhi was organizing a satyagraha campaign
to free India from British oppression, he urged his followers not to consider
sacrificing themselves in nonviolent confrontation until they had worked to
renew the physical, moral and spiritual life of their communities. He put them
to work in a constructive campaign of community self-help, because he knew that
the success of the political struggle would depend on the moral and spiritual
strength of the people.
We, too, must strengthen our faith communities,
if we would be successful in the struggle for justice. I have suggested that
meditation, prayer through chanting, and reading the Bible spiritually as well
as critically and ethically, will be central for the renewal of our churches. I
believe these practices will not only help churches witness to the good news of
gospel in the religious marketplace of today, but also will strengthen and
deepen the faith of our Christian communities.
We must come to see our faith as a way of life,
and then live it. We must embrace a spiritual and ethical practice that is
grounded in a biblical faith. We must seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly
with our God. If we do this, with joy in our hearts, then others will know what
it means to be Christian.
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