I spent some time recently with a number of clergymen and clergywomen from various churches, the scribes and Pharisees of our day. It was a Bible study session and we happened to be discussing the very same passage from John which is the text for this sermon.

Do not misunderstand me. I do not consider myself superior in any way to the ministers I will tell you about. For all I know, they may have gifts and skills far beyond my own - I am utterly sincere in saying that. But I will let stand what I have called them: "the scribes and Pharisees of our day." My fellow ministers had three objections to this passage from John. First, they objected to Jesus using the words, "My Father." One pastor said it was not helpful to her to think of God as Father because her own father had been cold and distant from her as a child. She said she was closer to her mother and that therefore, she preferred to think of God as Mother.

The second objection concerned the picture of heaven Jesus painted. One pastor criticized the passage because he said he really doesn't know if he still believes in heaven. Finally, there was firm objection to Jesus' saying, "I am the way ... no one comes to God but by Me." Several ministers said, "There are other people with other beliefs in the world and some people don't believe in religion at all. Christianity is not an exclusive religion - we don't want to exclude anyone - and we might offend some people by thinking that Jesus is the only way."

I left the discussion that morning both angry and depressed.

I was angry with my colleagues because they are charged with responsibility for the spiritual nourishment and religious integrity of God's people. I was angry because, in my opinion, each of their three objections suffers the same basic error which is so prevalent in the church today. You can trace it back through various philosophies and modern feminism has taken it up with a vengeance - it is the error of excessive humanism or human self-centeredness, the error of spiritual egoism, if you will. It is the error of allowing our own experiences and our experiences with other people to circumscribe our faith and define our understanding of Almighty God ... Creator, Ruler and Judge of the world.

Let me explain what I mean. If someone says they are uncomfortable with the image of "God the Father" because they don't think God is male, there should be no argument about that. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God is male in the human sense. God is neither male nor female because God is God.

But why on earth should our experience with our own fathers define our understanding of God? If my father is a murderer, must I conclude that God is bloodthirsty? If my father and my mother gave me up for adoption or banished me from their house, does that mean that God would abandon me as well? Is God a loving God because my mother and father happen to be loving parents?

God is God! God's truth and steadfast love endure forever and we ought not re-make God in our own image. It is a sign of both arrogance and poverty of the modern mind that a person's relationship to God would be defined according to the fallible men and women who happen to be our parents.

And what of the minister who isn't sure there is a heaven? Isn't this another form of the same problem - a religion which begins and ends in worldly experience? The secular priests of the age, the scientists, have decreed that reality is just the material and physical; because they can't measure the spiritual in a lab, they have decided it doesn't really matter. (They call this "scientific objectivity," but in fact, this so-called "objective" view of life is arbitrary and subjective in the extreme.) Must our religious leaders join the secular priests in narrowing the world down to that small portion the scientist can see?

There was also, if you remember, the objection to Jesus' words, "I am the way." It was said that other people have other ways, so we ought not to offend them by believing that ours is the way to God. It was also pointed out that fundamentalists have misused Jesus' words by claiming to be the only Christians who know the one true way.

Yet once again, this is human-centeredness! If other people have other religions or no religion at all, should this make me hesitate to say that Jesus is the way to God? Do other people define what I believe? And if certain well-known fundamentalists are intolerant of others in the name of their so-called "true way," does that reflect badly on Jesus Christ - or on those certain well-known fundamentalists? Jesus' way is Jesus' way and Jesus will remain the way to God regardless of what you or I or anyone else may think or say or do.

I said before that I was both angry and depressed by this discussion of John's gospel and later, I tried to figure out the depression part of my feelings. Then it came to me. It wasn't the fact that I disagree with other clergy on questions like whether or not there is a heaven. I firmly believe Christians should be able to disagree without being disagreeable.

No, I felt depressed because the religion they discussed that day was an ordinary religion. It was a religion without a sky. There was nothing special about Christianity as a faith.

In the religion I heard that day, there was nothing special about God. God is not steadfast and eternally reliable, but fickle and fallible just as we are - because we derive our understanding of God from our experience of our fathers or mothers.

There is nothing special about Christian faith in the world, because we join the secular society in limiting the world to just the here and now. And in terms of Jesus: Christianity is supposed to be unique for believing that God became fully human, but in the religion I heard discussed that day, there isn't even anything special about Jesus Christ. Jesus is just one option for us, one teacher, one way among the many ways offered to the world.

In the name of being tolerant and liberal and inclusive, we are drowning our religion in the bland and tasteless waters of ordinariness and this ordinariness could be the death of the Christian church! It could dry up the church, because the waters of a bland and tasteless faith cannot quench the human thirst.

If our religion is ordinary - if there is nothing special about our God and nothing unique about our salvation in Jesus Christ - then there will be nothing special about the worship of God which draws us together each week. There would be no reason for me to work so hard preparing sermons for you. I could just share whatever happens to pop into my head each week.

There was a young minister who took that kind of casual attitude towards preaching the gospel; he boasted to a friend, "I can catch a trout and write a sermon, all before nine o'clock!" But his friend had heard him preach, so he said, "Maybe you can, but I would rather eat your trout than listen to your sermons."

Yes, I found that the Christianity those ministers were discussing was worldly and unsatisfying. But there is still one more thing to be said about the ordinariness of their religion. It occurred to me that if there is nothing special about God, nothing special about our faith and nothing special about Jesus Christ, then there is nothing special about us as Christians.

If the coming of Christ to the world is anything less than the most unique and important event of all time, then there is nothing unique or distinctive about people who believe in Him. The church may as well be a social club seeking friendship, a political party seeking votes or a corporation seeking profit. We might as well be any kind of secular enterprise which is built upon the foundation of worldly values and beliefs.

People who have merely an ordinary faith in an ordinary God become ordinary themselves and they lose something very important in life. They lose that sense of gratitude, triumph and power which Peter exclaims in our text: Once you were no people but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. You are a chosen race, a holy nation, God's own people that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of the darkness into His marvelous light.

Let me quickly say that Peter's words about a chosen race offer no comfort to racists. I'm sure we all understand that Peter was not speaking of skin color or nationality; in fact, he was writing to Jews and many races of Gentiles together, telling them they are now united as a new race - a new Israel - a new race of people chosen by God and led from darkness to light through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (You might think this is too obvious a point to bother with, but there are many Christians, from South Boston to South Africa, who are tragically confused about the gospel on the matter of race).

But having said that, let me return to the message of this sermon: you are a special people because you are a chosen people. And because you are chosen by God, you are also needed by God; for no one is chosen who is not needed by the One who does the choosing.

You choose a doctor or a babysitter because you need them for the services they can provide. Similarly, God has chosen you and needs you for the service you can provide. God needs you to bear witness to the Spirit of love, mercy, justice and peace which came to the world when the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. If you or I won't do this for God, who will?

In one sense, a chosen people is a collection of chosen persons - a collection of chosen individuals. We each are chosen by name and specifically called by God. There is no need for anyone to feel ordinary in this world and we need not have an ordinary faith, because ours is not an ordinary God.

"Once you were no people, but now you are God's people." These are life-giving and life-changing words: we are God's people. What does that mean for you and the rest of your life?

Why has God chosen you to be in His church and what special purpose does God have for you in the world? In some unique and specific way, each of us is called to carry God's light and shine it in the darkness; and together as a church, we are called to be a special community as well, a chosen race, God's own people. Amen

Pastoral Prayer

O Good and Gracious God, who has made each of us special by Your love for us in Jesus Christ, help us to be the special people You wish for us to be. Save us from a watered-down and worldly faith which narrows the mind and starves the soul. Keep our faith firm and whole, that we may believe in things beyond this world in order to be Your witnesses in this world. Open our hearts to Your special call to each of us and help us to be Your race of chosen people, useful servants in the cause of Your kingdom. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen