One Light, Many Beams

January 23, 2022 • 3rd Sunday after Epiphany
Scripture Reading: Matthew 15:21-28 (The Inclusive Bible)
Pastor Jeff Wells

[You can view the worship video recording at: Facebook.com/churchofthevillage/videos.]

Wow! For such a brief narrative, this story of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman is packed with nuance and meaning. Jesus often pronounced judgments on the behavior of different groups of people – mostly Sadducees and Pharisees. However, I know of no other passage in the New Testament in which Jesus expresses prejudice – and in such a seemingly cruel way – against an entire ethnic and religious group – in this case, calling them “dogs.” He showed himself to be human, fallible, and like all of us, sometimes less than saintly. I find it refreshing and comforting to know that Jesus didn’t always have his spiritual stuff together.

A similar passage in the Gospel of Mark refers to this woman as a Syro-Phoenician – meaning she was from the area along the Mediterranean coast, near Galilee. The author of the Gospel of Matthew chose to call her a “Canaanite” – to accentuate the animosity the woman and Jesus would normally have felt toward one another. The Canaanites were considered arch enemies of the Israelites and enemies of God because they worshiped idols. In several books of the Hebrew Scriptures, we hear that the Israelites drove the Canaanites off their land, slaughtered many, and later enslaved some of them. So, it’s really important to remember the centuries of hatred that existed between these peoples. We can think of many similar examples of long-standing hatred and conflict today. 

Several online comments I read about this passage asked, “Was Jesus racist?” That’s anachronistic, of course, because the socially-constructed concept of race as we know it was not solidified and institutionalized until the 1700s. However, there are strong parallels with prejudice based on ethnicity and religion. It is a similarly very limited way of looking at the world to imagine that God only operates through those who look or believe like us. 

Incidentally, in the 1700s, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was advocating for the abolition of slavery and practicing a broad ecumenism – learning and borrowing from many other Christian traditions. Also, Wesley called people to see the light of Christ in those who disagreed with them. That is a strong part of our heritage. 

The Canaanite woman in the story very likely felt prejudice against Jesus as well. But in her moment of desperation, along with her willingness to believe that Jesus might have some special ability to heal, she braved that wall of prejudice to appeal to him – and she persisted. She wouldn’t take “no” for an answer! Jesus himself was parroting an inherited prejudice, but clearly he was not invested in it, because when the woman stunned him with her retort about “crumbs from the table,” he seems to have awoken from his error and praised her faith. In this interreligious encounter, I believe Jesus learned a lesson, softened his attitude, grew in his understanding of his true mission.

This story is a very small example – one of several in the Bible – that shows people of differing religious backgrounds coming together and learning from one another. It’s hard to ignore the fact that the bulk of the Christian Bible is composed of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus was a Jew from birth to death. Beyond that, there are the many stories, practices, rituals, and beliefs that were borrowed and adapted by the Israelites and Jews from other ancient Near Eastern peoples. Yet, today most Christians believe that their “religion” or “faith” is and can continue to be completely independent of other religious traditions. Or, they think that any connection is merely historical – that there is nothing more to learn.

This was not always the case. In the first three centuries of the Jesus movement, Christians were a small minority and could not avoid interacting with, borrowing from, and mutually learning from other religious systems. However, when Christianity became the dominant and preferred religion of the Roman Empire, it became much easier for the dominant bodies of the Christian church to pose as completely self-sufficient and having no need of interreligious conversation or interaction.

Religious pluralist theology and practice arose only in the past 70 years. Up until quite recently, it focused on dialogue and mutual appreciation, with the goal of keeping the peace, but not really envisioning a necessary interdependence. Today, I invite us to imagine a very different vision of religious diversity. Our worship series is focused on light and hope in uncertain times. So, imagine God as a single light that gets reflected in a panoply of religious traditions. Within each of those traditions, there is a spectrum of particular expressions of the overall belief system. Now, imagine that there is no one belief system that holds all of the “truth” – no one tradition that can grasp the fullness of God or of the creating-evolving order. If that’s true, then we have to admit that we cannot properly grasp even our own religious perspective without the benefit of the wisdom of others. Then, contrary to the attitude of most religious practitioners, at least in the last few thousand years of human history, we would need to admit our deep need for mutual engagement with other religious systems.

As process thought and process theology teach us, all of reality is fundamentally relational. No people, religion, or species of life exists independent of all the others. We all exist in a network of mutuality. We ignore this truth at our peril. If we are to survive as a species and to sustain life on this planet, humans have to learn quickly to come together and work together for the common good. 

In spite of this, we continue to allow nation, race, ethnicity, and other dividing lines to keep us at each other’s throats. Religious belief has been one of those major barriers that separate us. While there have been examples of significant inter-religious dialogue and greater mutual understanding over the past 70 years, there have also been horrific religion-based conflicts and violence. We continue to witness this on a large scale in the ongoing war between Israelis and Palestinians and between Muslims, Hindus, and Christians in South Asia. And we mourn the frequency of hate crimes against Muslims and Jews, as with the four persons taken hostage this week in the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. To a large extent, followers of most religious systems continue to presume their own group holds “the Truth” and others are to be tolerated, at best.

Yet, Christian faith – and all faiths – grew out of and were shaped by religious diversity and interaction. Our Church of the Village friend, Dr. John Thatamanil, wrote a book titled, Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity, in which he seeks to undermine the idea that Christian faith has no need for other religious traditions. He writes, “Rather than imagine the divine as reluctantly permitting religious others to be, can we imagine, instead, a God who seeks to be known in, through, and by way of difference and multiplicity?... Religious neighbors must be hallowed because we need them to arrive at a deeper encounter with and understanding of divinity.” [1]

An exciting and relatively recent conception, promoted by John Thatamanil, Catherine Keller, and other theologians, is labeled “relational pluralism,” in which cross-fertilization through deep relationships is considered the norm. As Dr. Thatamanil writes, “Traditions that came to be what they are only in relation will only become what they are meant to be and fulfill their promise through relation.” [2]

This is not an abstract or distant issue for our congregation. Our community values our diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, economic condition, and more. We have long called our congregation “radically inclusive.” Moreover, since its founding, the Church of the Village has practiced, imperfectly, our core value that says, “We believe many roads lead to God and are respectful of a diversity of spiritual paths.” Beyond that, we seek to practice radical openness to and gratitude for the “religiously other.” This has enabled us to live out, on a small scale, welcoming as members persons who not only grew up in other traditions, but who continue to feel some allegiance to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. Dr. Thatamanil calls this “dual belonging.”

Still, I confess that I have not done enough and I believe that we, as a community, have not done enough to listen to the lived experience of our members who come from those traditions. Neither have we made a significant effort to reach out to, learn from, and be blessed by non-Christian faith communities. Yet, I know that this is possible, because our sibling congregation of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew has given us a shining example. They have deep ties to the B’nai Jeshurun congregation and also to the Muslim community in New York City. I hope we can find ways to follow the path they have established.

Neither are we completely free from religious prejudice. Personally, I don’t think of “dog” as a pejorative term. But who might I label an unapproachable or unacceptable outsider?  A January 6 insurrectionist?  Many conservative Christians? Leaders of the Wesley Covenant Association? – as if I have nothing to learn from them or them from me. 

Too often in the past, expressions of religious pluralism have been limited recognition of the right of other religious traditions to exist and, perhaps, appreciation that they have something of value to offer within their own spheres. Rarely, have religious pluralists confessed a need for each other or the sense of loss they would feel if all religious expressions other than their own suddenly disappeared.

God’s light is constantly illuminating our world. That light gets expressed in a multiplicity of ways and not only through what we might consider “religions.” We have the opportunity to illuminate one another’s belief systems and worldviews. I believe God calls us to walk in each other’s shoes and learn from each other. That is usually difficult, sometimes painful, work. We need to be willing to share the gifts we have discovered and open to receive the gifts our religious neighbors have to offer. I know there are some who will not respond to such an invitation or with whom it might be dangerous to try to have a dialogue. But let’s lean on the side of openness and invitation. 

We humans may yet make the dramatic changes necessary for the survival of our species and of life, in general, on the Earth. I pray that we will learn to respond to God’s lure in that direction. It is possible we may also learn to move more intentionally toward God’s vision for humanity. That will necessarily require a very deep relational pluralism – in religious and secular spheres. And, it should go without saying, the divine commonwealth will be one of abundant religious diversity. 

What a vision and a necessity for humanity is this dream that we might yet embrace one another, teach one another, learn from one another, and create a new world together. It may be our only hope. Truly, God needs all of us and we need each other, now more than ever.

(c) 2022 Jeffry Wells
All rights reserved.

[1] John J. Thatamanil, Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity (New York: Fordham University Press, Kindle Edition, 2020), p. 43.

[2] Ibid., p. 101.