No one comes to the Father except through me

I moved away from Maidenhead when I was 18 months old, which was when I met up with Felicity who at the time was 2 and a half. Ah … I remember it well!!!!

Among the many stories I grew up with was one that seemed when I heard tell of it to be from a distant, far-off age and almost another age. Such are the tricks time plays on the very young! I now realise the story must still have been very vivid in the minds of my parents, for it had happened only five years before I was born.

After all, Maidenhead was just outside London, and very much en route. I wish now I had taken more notice of the stories my father told. But it must have been very exciting when my parents joined the crowds to see the Olympic Torch carried aloft on its way.

8,000 miles from Land’s End to the Olympic Stadium is quite some journey, taking in most towns and cities in the country. But when they announced the Olympic Torch would be stopping over night in Cheltenham and we had been designated one of the special centres, I have to say I felt just that touch of excitement.

I’m glad that only a couple of weeks ago I signed up for a meeting in Bristol by morethangold – an initiative to get churches to play their full part in the Olympic excitement that will sweep the country, not least as in one year’s time on 23rd May the torch arrives here in Cheltenham.

Usually I would wish someone staying overnight in Cheltenham a good night’s rest in the hope they would ‘go out like a light’ – maybe we can hope such a thing does not happen on this occasion!!

There’s something about the Olympic Games that makes it special. Tarnished and commercialised it may have become. But there has to be a buzz as sports men and women of all abilities gather from every part of the globe in a festival of sport.

The five interlocking rings in all the colours of the rainbow bringing the five continents of the world together as one in a festival of sport.

The Olympic Ideal.

But of course the nearer we get to the Olympics the more we will be reminded of all that calls the ideal into question, of the many fault lines and fractures that tear the world apart. There will be the cartoons of the broken rings.

However much we rise to the challenge and get involved in the Olympic excitement as churches, there’s one thing we cannot get away from. All too often we have been part of the problem and not part of the solution.

One set of those fault-lines and fractures undoubtedly has to do with ‘religion’.

In the very week of the Queen’s historic visit to Ireland, surely one of the great personal triumphs of her reign, comes news of an increase in sectarian, Catholic Protestant violence in Scotland.

But more significantly what do we make of what is going on in the Middle East. Excitement at moves to freedom right through the region. But an excitement tempered by foreboding at what is happening between the three great religions of the Middle East.

Since our pilgrimage to the Holy Land I have received regular prayer requests from Middle East Concern.

There was euphoria in Egypt at the overthrow of somenone who this week was described as the last of the Pharaohs. Wonderful to see Christians and Muslims side by side demonstrating for freedom. And then consternation at the news of the bombing of a church and of worshippers. And then hope at the news of Muslims standing with Christian believers in the face of the attacks on their churches.

The prayer requests that come from people caught up in what amounts to persecution are deeply disturbing.

Helping Christians Facing Persecution

Persecution takes many forms – from oppression and discrimination to denial of constitutional and internationally acknowledged freedoms. Essentially, persecution is the deliberate suppression of an idea or belief.

Christians in the Middle East North Africa region have been discriminated against, marginalised, detained, imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for their faith in Jesus Christ. Often theirs is a silent suffering – cut off from family and Christian fellowship and vulnerable to abuse by State security forces and extremist groups.

At MEC we believe that as Christians we are called to stand with those who are persecuted. Persecution is essentially unjust. Therefore, the Christian concerned for God’s justice will either face persecution him/herself, or be faced with having to respond to the injustice visited on someone else. Dealing with injustice is part of the calling of the Christian life. By their very relationship with God and the world, Christians will be faced with injustice.

The Middle East is not the only place, the faultlines between Islam and Christianity not the only fault-lines. It is not long since our CWM Inside Out carried that awful supplement chronicling the experiences of the Christian churches we are partnered with in North East India at the hands of Hindu fundamentalists.

Hatred is shown on the part of some Christians no less. One cannot help but fear that those underneath the bombing that we have been involved in in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya will interpret it as the bombing of the Christian west, not least when bombs had their Christian texts printed on them.

I believe that in this fractured world our attitudes count. Our attitudes matter. Because among our neighbours are Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and people of many, many different religions.

What attitude do we have towards other religions?

As it happens the plans we laid down for the themes for the summer take us today to a verse that in my view can be part of the problem and can equally be part of the solution.

‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus maps out a way for his followers to take that involves blessing those who persecute you, loving those you perceive to be your enemies.

Jesus was and remained always Jewish. We who are Christians need always to remember that. But there were fractures and fault lines as much in his day as in ours. There were all sorts of different ways of ‘being Jewish’. For Jesus the heart of his Jewishness lay in love for God and love for neighbour which he extended to love for enemies. IT was a Jewishness that entailed blessing those who persecuted.

There was one particularly difficult fault line between first cousins – with the Samaritans. When they would not receive his disciples, the more belligerent of them wanted Jesus to summon fire and brimstone to come and destroy the whole village. Jesus would have none of it, adamant that the Son of Man came not to destroy but to bring salvation and life. Whether it was the one leprosy sufferer among the ten, the woman at the well or the Good Samaritan – Jesus bridged that divide.

The really violent fault lines lay between Jewish people and the Roman state, a Roman way of life rooted in the religion of the Roman pantheon of gods and in the cult of the Roman emperor. Again, Jesus built bridges, accepting Gentile as well as Jew, declaring forgiveness from the cross such that the Roman Centurion who was steeped in a Roman religion that recognised the Emperor as Son of God, saw in Jesus truly the son of God. It was a fracture Jesus sought to heal and a fault line Jesus again sought to bridge.

So what attitude should we have?

In following the way of Christ there is an over-riding focus on Love, it seems to me.

There is also something unique about our Christian faith.

I want to be firm in my Christian faith in God and in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. It is a faith that I want to share with everyone.

But at the same time I want to have a respect for people of other religions, and indeed for people of no religion. I believe in sharing my faith with others the love I have for them can enable me to find common ground. And in all of those great religions there is common ground to be found.

This remarkable verse in John 14 goes to the heart of it for me in perhaps an unexpected way.

It captures the uniqueness of what my faith in Jesus Christ opens up for me about God.

But at the same time it shows me how I can honour and respect those of different faiths.

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.

I want to begin there. In the context of our relationships and our attitude to people of other faiths fear plays a big role. I say that with some certainty, because as I see what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East it is a feeling I have felt. In the covering letter he sent with his gospel John speaks of God as the God of love, of Christ as the one who embodies perfect love. And he speaks of perfect love driving out fear.

Believe in God, believe also in me.

Or ‘you believe in God’.

I find that an interesting starting point. Jesus is speaking to people who believe in God and he is inviting them now to believe in him also.

He then goes on to speak of his Father’s house and the way to his Father’s house, prompting a conversation on the way and the comment: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life …

No one comes to the Father except through me.

What Jesus opens up for those who already believe in God is the way into a relationship with that God that recognises God as Father in the most intimate of ways.

That for me is the key to getting a balance. On the one hand, I want in my relationships with people of other faiths to recognise in some way a shared sense of believing in God in some way, believing in the divine, in that Something Other.

I feel a fellow feeling with people of other faiths in that sense of having a religious dimension in our lives, a sense of God in some way.

That respect, that honouring enables me to seek to find common ground, maybe supremely in the golden rule shared by so many of the world’s great religions, Do to others as you would have others do to you.

But at the same time, I am a Christian. I am one of those who has followed The Way – I love the way the very first name for the church and those who followed Jesus in Acts is ‘the Way’. I sense truth in Jesus Christ. And I am convinced that in him is a newness of life that begins now in all its fullness and is not bounded by death.

I want to respect people of other faiths and say, ‘You believe in God’.

But I passionately believe that Jesus has opened up a way to follow, a truth that goes to the heart of life and indeed brings life in all its fullness, and so I want to share the story of Jesus with people of other faiths. Jesus is unique in bringing about a relationship with God as Father. And so with no disrespect to people of other faiths, I want to take my stand on the conviction that Jesus expressed so powerfully, that “no one comes to the Father except through me.”