Common Ground

Augustana Chapel, Nov. 17, 2004

By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

Thank you for inviting me to speak this morning. I want to begin by telling you a true story told by Dr. WesleyAriarajah, a Methodist who worked at the World Council of Churches. When Dr. Ariarajah was very young, he pastored a Methodist church in Sri Lanka for a time. One day on the train from Jaffa to Colombo, which is an 8-hour ride, he found himself sitting next to an elderly Hindu man.

They talked for hours about a variety of subjects, and he found that the elderly Hindu man was very scholarly, wise, and deeply religious. They were having an interesting conversation about their own faith perspectives when several young persons came walking up to them. They were teenagers doing "train evangelism" which meant they would get into a train and ride to the next stop, giving their personal testimony to passengers on the way and handing out pamphlets. They would get off the train at the next stop and repeat the performance on the return journey.

One young man sat down with Dr. Ariarajah and the elderly Hindu man and offered to give his testimony. He told them about how he had been drinking, and leading a bad life of disobedience to his parents. Then he was introduced to Christ, and his life was transformed. He knew he was "saved" and now he was making the offer of salvation in Christ to these two learned, deeply devout religious men, not having any idea of their religion. The teenager was genuine and sincere. After the teenager left them, Dr. Ariarajah turned to his Hindu fellow-traveler and asked, "How did that come across to you?"

His Hindu friend was looking out of the train window, pondering, watching the trees, buildings, land, people, and cattle, all fleeting past. Finally the Hindu man said, "How old do you think this young man is?" "Well, perhaps sixteen or seventeen," Dr. Ariarajah answered. There was silence, and then the question, "Now that he has found salvation at the age of seventeen, what is he going to do with the rest of his life?"

The Hindu man asked this question because for the Hindu, salvation is a life-time pursuit. In his faith there is a strong sense of the soul’s alienation from God because of the sin of self-centeredness. God, however, out of love and grace, accompanies the soul through its life and its life-experiences and, if necessary, through many lives, in order to show the soul that it is utterly futile to center one’s life on oneself rather than God.

What did this teenager have to give this man? What was the nature of "salvation" the young man was offering to the seventy-or-eighty-some year old person who had been steeped in his scriptures, relied on God through the ups and downs of life, and could perhaps testify to many moments of awareness of standing in the presence of god? The Hindu man’s faith life was full of songs or psalms that express the sense of awe, delight and rapture over the unrelenting love and grace of God. His God, said Dr. Ariarajah, was a God like my own, one that will not "let go" but patiently accompanies the soul until it realizes where it actually belongs. For him, all the life-experiences that awaited the seventeen-year-old would teach him about life and its true goal, what is worth pursuing and what is not, what leads to "Life" and what does not. For the Hindu, the experience that the young man shared would be only a tiny beginning of the life-time process of turning and returning to god.

Dr. Ariarajah says, "To claim to have had salvation so expeditiously and so early is too much of a claim to make for a 17-year-old who has not met the vicissitudes of life. The Hindu would agree that a dramatic religious experience can help the teenager mend his ways. But to talk of this in terms of "sin" and "salvation", even when it was an attempt to turn one’s life to God, is to trivialize both concepts."[1] I would add, it also trivialized the Hindu man’s life-long relationship with God.

The older I get the more convinced I am that the Christian assumption that OUR way is the only way to God is unwise, and—dare I say—arrogant. I know the gospel writer suggests that Jesus taught something like this: I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh to the father but by me. But just what is Jesus’ Way? He never wrote down a set of correct beliefs. Jesus was far more interested in people’s behavior. He said, “If you want to be my disciples, follow me….feed my sheep….whenever you visit the sick or clothe the naked or feed the hungry it’s as though you did it unto me.”

The way of Jesus is summed up in his great double commandment. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus’ way is the way of compassion for all one’s neighbors, especially the most needy. Look sometime at who Jesus hangs out with—he hangs out with the sick, the poor, the powerless, the sinner and the despised.

Jesus’ Way means caring as much for all your neighbors as you do for yourself, whether that neighbor is American or Iraqi, Republican or Democrat, Christian or Moslem. Jesus’ Way demands that we treat them with the respect that we want for ourselves. And, oh my, if we did that, think how different the world could be. Jesus’ Way, if you look at Jesus’ example, is not a set of correct beliefs that we intellectually agree to. That’s way too easy. His Way is a way of being that involves a lifetime of commitment to loving God and those whom God loves, i.e. ALL God’s children.

And here is the amazing thing: this Way of love for God and neighbor is at the heart of Judaism; it is at the heart of Islam; it is at the heart of Christianity and I suspect it is at the heart of other enduring religions as well. For a couple of weeks every summer I study at a place called Chautauqua Institute, where Jewish, Moslem and Christian scholars gather to worship together and to understand each other’s religions better. Scholars gather because they have come to recognize each other’s remarkably similar core values. In fact we all share the Golden Rule in some form or another, as you see printed in your bulletins.

In the Christian tradition we read: In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets. (Gospel of Matthew) In the Jewish tradition, we have the Golden Rule in the form of a negative imperative: What is hateful to you, do not do to others. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. (The Talmud) And from Islam we have No one of you is a believer until they desire for their brother or sister that which they desire for themselves. (Hadith)

For too long religious leaders each have taught the superiority of his or her own religion to the exclusion of billions of other people of different faith traditions. God is not ours…we are God’s. It is time to treat each other with the respect that Jesus’ call to love our neighbor requires.

[1] S. Wesley Ariarajah, Not Without My Neighbor: Issues in Interfaith Relations, WCC Publications, Geneva, Switzerland: 1999, p. 128.