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Progressive Christianity 1: "The Only Way?"
Galatians 1:1-12
John 14:6
Rev. Heather Leslie Hammer
Lynnewood United Methodist Church
May 29, 2016
1. The experience of Jesus is essential to Christians, and it can lead to an awareness of the
Sacred and the Unity of all life.
2. Jesus is one of many ways to experience the Sacredness and Oneness of life, and we can also
draw from diverse sources of wisdom in our spiritual journey.
Who is Jesus, and is he the only way?
Today I begin a four-week exploration of Progressive Christian theology. There is a list of
eight tenets of Progressive Christianity in your bulletin, and today we will tackle the first
two. From my conversations with people here at Lynnewood, I would say we are a
progressive church. That doesn't mean politically progressive, though a number of you
here probably are that, and some are not. It means that we understand our faith in terms of
certain beliefs. And because part of being progressive is to be inclusive, we accept that not
everyone who comes to Lynnewood considers himself or herself theologically progressive.
To be progressive as a church means to be willing to live with diverse opinions, with
different expressions of faith, and with questions. Our vision statement is "Dare to
question, love, and serve."
One of the easiest ways of knowing whether you are a Progressive Christian is to say what
you're not. A Progressive Christian is not a member of the religious right. Leaders of rightwing Christianity, like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim Dobson, have led many to
believe there is only one true Christian point of view. They have influenced politics and the
press greatly in the last thirty years. Fundamentalist Christianity has been more successful
in making its voice known than Progressive Christianity.
Liberals and conservatives can be comfortable in a theological environment we might
describe as progressive, if they are open to conversation.
In our Wednesday bible study class, we have a diverse group who respect one another's
opinions and like to ask questions. When we talk about Jesus, someone might say, "Jesus is
my Lord and Savior, and that's a real comfort to me." Or another person might say, "I
believe that Jesus was a man who taught us how to love." Or someone might say, "We
understand Jesus through the Gospel writer, who wanted to make him powerful, so he had
Jesus perform miracles." This week one person said, "Jesus was both human and God."
Another said, "Jesus was different from anybody else." One said, "Jesus came to show how
we are to live." Another said, "He was a reform Jew." Someone always says, "What
happened before this passage?" And so we read it. "And what happened after it?" And we
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think about the context of the writing at the end of the first century, and we do a lot of
guessing. I wonder why John said it that way?
I wonder why John wrote that Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me." It's beautiful, isn't it? "The way…the truth, and
the life"—such an all-inclusive phrase! Jesus is everything! But then, "No one comes to the
Father except through me" (John 14:6). This is one of the most exclusive phrases in the
bible. It has been taken to mean that you have to be a Christian to know God and, therefore,
that Jews and Muslims cannot "come to the Father." This verse in the Gospel of John has
fueled proselytizing and forced conversions to Christianity over history. Even today, it
makes many Christians mistrust non-Christians.
A progressive Christian view on this verse of scripture is to say that for Christians, Jesus is
the way, the truth, and the life. For us, he is the path to God. But there are other paths.
Hindus experience many forms of God in their adoration of different deities. Buddhists
seek a path that leads to Nirvana and a oneness with all creation. Muslims pray to Allah,
and Jews worship Yahweh, the same God to whom Jesus prayed.
You will find United Methodists active in the interfaith community. The pastors in our
Circuit wrote a letter to the editor this year in support of our Muslim neighbors, and our lay
people attend interfaith chats and worship services where people of different faiths pray to
one God. You will not find conservative Christian communities engaged in interfaith dialog.
This is an important way Progressive Christians are different.
There certainly are those who would fault us for allowing different beliefs and not sticking
to a "pure" Christianity. But, really, there have always been differences of opinion in
theological conversations.
Take Paul, for instance. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul lashes out at those "who want to
pervert the gospel of Christ." He maintains that there is only one goods news; the others
are all false, and the people who preach them are "accursed" (v. 9).
We have an expression: We say, "It's the gospel truth!" We mean it's the truth, by golly!
Well, the word gospel, with a lower case g, means "good news." The term comes out of a
military tradition. When Rome won a battle, the victors came home with the "gospel"—an
account of victory, or good news. When the biblical writers used the same Greek word for
gospel, euaggelion, to mean good news in Christ, they were saying that Roman victory isn't
the good news, it's Jesus Christ that is the good news—! The empire of Rome is not the
answer to life with meaning; it's the kingdom of God!
So the people of Galatia, a Roman province, would have known the word euaggelion, good
news, and Paul's letter that he wrote to them around 55 C.E. might well have stirred up
controversy. Which gospel is true? (And I don't mean, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John—
those are Gospels with a capital G.) Paul says there is only one good news, the one that was
revealed to him by Jesus Christ, himself, in a vision on the Road to Damascus. Paul sounds
so adamant! He leaves no room for doubt. Perhaps this passage is about making clear that
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followers of Christ need not be circumcised as Jewish Christ-followers were. Paul is so sure
that Christ frees us from the Law by grace. And this is one of our traditional Christian
beliefs. Where does it come from? Paul says, from a revelation.
Now we looked at revelations a bit this year, and how they are personal and dream-like,
and that they can be interpreted in many ways. Today, as Progressive Christians, we can
look at the story of Paul's revelation of Jesus in several ways. Paul sees it as evidence for
one and only one version of good news. But in this community today, we can use different
means of understanding this text, different from simply taking Paul word for word.
If we use the Wesleyan quadrilateral, we will apply scripture, tradition, reason, and
experience to an understanding of who Jesus is and what, we as his followers, ought to
believe. So we start with scripture, and we find that Paul is rather exclusive. There is
nothing wishy-washy about his views here. Paul says that, "Jesus Christ…gave himself for
our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father"
(v. 3-4). This, Paul says, he received not from a human source, but from a revelation of
Jesus Christ. Now if we apply tradition, we note that Paul's doctrine of atonement has been
passed down through church history and yet interpreted in many ways. We have hymns
about it, and liturgy—that's all part of our tradition. Our reason may tell some of us that we
don't really believe in revelations; we are skeptical about what Paul really saw or heard on
that Road to Damascus. Or we might say, "It's fine for you to believe that's what Paul
experienced, but I can't believe it, at least not literally." Just like when you read that a
fundamentalist Mormon had a revelation to marry young girls—making multiple girls his
wives—you might not want to accept that revelation as "gospel truth." Do you see what I'm
saying? What is obvious and certain for one person may not be an absolute truth for
another, when we apply reason. And finally, in the Wesleyan quadrilateral, we apply
experience.
Who is Jesus in your life? What sense of presence do you experience as you receive the
bread and the cup? What does the light of Christ mean to you as it enters the sanctuary?
Which stories of Jesus do you hold close to your heart? What is your experience of the one
we call the Christ? Do you ever feel the light that blinded Paul at his conversion, when you
suddenly "see the light" and understand something about your life in a new way?
We believe that by being in a loving Christian community, we come to know God through
Christ. This means different things to different people. Children learn to say the prayer that
Jesus taught. One time a young boy was praying the Lord's Prayer aloud, and he said: "Our
Father, who does art in heaven, Harold is his name." What a nice thought: Harold, up there
in heaven with his water colors…painting an exquisite sunset, or a distant mountaintop.
Does it really matter what we call God?
The important thing is that we have an experience of God. As Christians, we find that the
person of Jesus helps us be in relationship with God. You know, you can read books about
ideas. You can study religion. But the most powerful life experiences are in relationship
with another person. When you pray with another person, when you share in a small
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group, or when you have a meal together, there is something about being face to face, in the
moment that is part of what it means to be human. When we read the stories of Jesus, we
identify with his humanness: how he touched people, how he wept, and how had to get
away from the crowds to pray to God.
Who is Jesus? A person so like God, that we say he was the incarnation of God, the
incarnation of love. Perhaps it's true, we can only know God through living a life of love. In
that sense, "No one comes to the Father, except through [Christ]." The mysterious concept
of Christ is a God-presence. We experience in our practice of prayer and praise, the human
intimacy that we call love. We believe that this love is broad and strong enough to have
many interpretations. It doesn't go away if we question it. We believe it is good news
because, in the stories of Jesus, we have the sense of a hand to hold, a shoulder to lean on,
and footprints in the sand to follow. When we have these human connections, it's good
news.