"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another ..."
The love which Christians show for one another has always been a compelling, even unanswerable argument for the truth of our faith. Jesus said: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." So well did the early Christians follow Jesus’ prescription that it was said of them: "See how they love each other." St. John Chrysostom, who was made Bishop of Constantinople in A.D. 398, remarked: "If we Christians lived as we should, non-believers would be more astonished at our lives than at miracles."
By the same token, the prejudice and intolerance exhibited by some Christians often calls into question the truth of our faith. When Gandhi was asked why he never became a Christian, he replied: "Because I have known too many Christians." The philosopher John Dewey, who so profoundly influenced the course of American public education, learned his Christianity at the hands of petty, small-minded people in his hometown. When he left his town, he left his religion behind as well.
It is easy to make the point that religious people can be unattractive and even quite dangerous, that at times they reflect more hostility than love. Through the centuries, for example, there have been Christian theologies which say it is better for a person to be dead than to live outside the Church. St. Augustine, the fifth century churchman to whom our civilization owes so much, was a great exponent of love. But he also advocated what he called "righteous persecution." He declared that people who had strayed from correct belief should be recalled lest they be condemned forever to the darkness. So he said of those outside the Church: "Compel them to come in." The power of the Roman state, which by that time was officially Christian, was used to coerce people into confessing the creeds.
Then, too, Thomas Aquinas advocated the killing of sinners. The great medieval theologian quoted Exodus 22:18 which says it is well to remove one member for the good of the whole body. He said: "If a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good." This was the dominant attitude of much of medieval Christendom.
Nor were our own Puritan ancestors renowned for loving people whose views were contrary to their own. They scourged the Baptists and drove them to Rhode Island which they called the "sewer" of New England. My own ancestor was forced to move with his congregation to New Hampshire because he opposed government-enforced religious observances in the Bay Colony; yet even he despised the Quakers. Someone said once he would rather face a platoon of United States Marines than face one Puritan who was convinced he was on a mission from God and could do no wrong. St. Paul wrote that even the justified remain sinners and so need to have a certain modesty about their beliefs. Strong conviction in itself is not admirable. It needs to be tempered with humility.
With this in mind, one can begin to appreciate why the Moral Majority arouses fear in many of our hearts - not because we are part of an immoral minority or unconcerned about what is happening in this country, but because over 1,500 years of history reveal what can happen when a group of people, convinced of its rightness to the point of self-righteousness, tries to use the power of the state to coerce other people into sharing its particular religious vision.
Herman Melville wrote:
... when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in time, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it is high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.
Today, with the rise of the religious right and with the rise of anti-Semitism in some parts of our land, it seems "high time" to argue the case for religious tolerance - tolerance which is grounded not in indifference but in the love of Christ.
What is confusing is that in Scripture we seem at first to have prescriptions both for loving our opponents and for practicing "righteous persecution." Alongside Jesus’ admonition for us to love even our enemies, we can put several other passages which seem to suggest a drastically different attitude. In his Pentecost sermon, for example, Peter says of Jesus: "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." According to the Gospel of John, Jesus claimed: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes unto the Father but by me." The risen Christ of Matthew’s Gospel declares: "All power in both heaven and earth has been given to me." Paul in his letter to Philippi says that all heavenly and earthly powers must bow the knee before Christ. These passages do seem to suggest that the road to salvation is narrow indeed. One can begin to see how St. Augustine could say of the unbeliever: Compel him to come into the Church.
How do we make sense of this apparent conflict? Let us be quick to affirm that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. But then let us go on to ask if we are entirely clear in what his way consists. Let us be quick to affirm that Christ now reigns over the universe, that he is, as Scripture puts it, seated at the right hand of God. But let us go on to ask if we know what it means to participate in his power and to bear his authority. For in answering these questions, we shall discover that we have in fact a prescription not for righteous persecution, but only for love.
Scripture reveals the pattern of Jesus’ life to be entirely consistent. Never did Jesus carry out his will through coercion or domination. He always used persuasion. He understood that loyalty cannot be coerced; it must be earned. He accomplished his work, not through the exercise of power or by brow-beating, but through his word and by his humble deeds of love. "The greatest among you must be your servant," he told his disciples. To make his point, he washed the feet of his disciples, a task undertaken ordinarily by only the most menial servants. That was Jesus’ way, and his deeds were his authority. It was in this way that he won people to his cause. Jesus loved people unconditionally. He did not insist that those whom he helped conform to his own theology. His behavior was gracious, not only to the inhabitants of the house of Israel, but to the Samaritan woman and to the Roman official. He knew that people would come to love and serve God only if first they were shown what God is like. "Let your light so shine ..." he said.
Now it is true to say that the way of Jesus is narrow; but it is the narrow path of unswerving, unstinting, unbounded compassion. It is the way of a love which, in Paul’s words, is "patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude, not insistent on its own way, not irritable or resentful." That is the way of Jesus, and if we in the Christian churches really believe that Jesus is the only way to God, if we want really to make his way our way, then we will spend less time scourging our theological opponents and more time looking for opportunities to serve a world which groans in travail. We will do this not because beliefs are unimportant, but we will do this because the first claim God makes on us is to love each other, not to get our theologies right.
Please do not misunderstand me here. I am not advocating the kind of attitude Chesterton had in mind when he wrote that tolerance is the virtue of a people who do not believe in anything. That is a passive kind of tolerance and is grounded in uncaring ignorance. It is reflected, for example, in the often heard statement that Christians should tolerate other religions because they are all the same anyway. This is true in part because all major religions do afiirm human dignity. In a world beset by dehumanizing forces, this is no small thing. But there are also some significant differences among faiths. Christians, for instance, believe that religion is not so much people seeking God as God seeking people. The Divine Shepherd seeks out the lost sheep. Salvation is only of the Lord. Buddhists, on the other hand, believe that religion is people reaching toward God and working their own way up the ladder of salvation, seeking Nirvana. These are not mere academic differences! Our understanding of God shapes our perception of who we are. How we understand human nature has implications for our styles of morality and politics. Christians are called to be tolerant of other religions and of Christians who hold to different doctrines - not because they are all the same anyway, but because the primary claim God makes on us is not to get our theologies right, but to love each other, unconditionally.
St. Paul understood this perfectly. No one was more argumentative than he. He seems to have enjoyed a good theological row. No one had more definite ideas about what theological formulations were true to God’s work in Christ, and what theology was misleading. His letter to Rome is a theological argument, the most precious in the Church’s possession, and one which sparked the great work of Augustine, Luther, Wesley, and Barth. in Romans Paul does not shirk from his case or pull any punches. But it is imperative to note the context in which he sets his case. He does not begin with argument. Where does he begin? He begins by expressing his love for the Christians gathered in Rome who are reading his words. "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you," he writes. "For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers." Only then does Paul begin to make his case. He sets it in the context of Christian love which is the essential, enduring bond among Christian people. Where that bond is established, people have nothing to fear from their disagreements.
So we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ and in the words of the gospel’s greatest exponent, a formula for a love which can "bear all things," even the presence about us of people with whom we vigorously disagree. God loves everyone, we are told, whether they love him or not. Because God loves them, so must we. "We love," John writes, "because God first loved us." There is no precedent in the Christian gospel for Augustine’s policy of "righteous persecution" or for any similar, subsequent policy or attitude. Love does not insist on its own way.
Often I am reminded that in this congregation we have very different theologies. We have different ideas about the mission of the Church, about the character of God, and the interpretation of Scripture. Now we can and must differ with each other as our consciences dictate. But I believe that in the way of Christ we find a unity which is larger than our disunities. The way of Christ is the way of love, and it is the power to bind all of us together. Doctrine is important, and I believe that some theological expressions are truer to the great insights of the gospel than are others. But I am also convinced that there is nothing to be gained by theological debate unless it is approached in the spirit of love, in the spirit of Jesus as he washed the feet of his disciples, or in the way of Paul in his letter to the Romans. For only when we love one another, do we become willing to put ourselves in another’s shoes. Only then, when we try to see the world as another sees it, do we risk having our own ideas changed. And changed and enlarged our ideas must surely be, for as the Pilgrim’s pastor, John Robinson, said: "It is too great arrogancy for any man to think that he has sounded the word of God to the bottom." Then, as our ideas change and enlarge, I believe we will discover a way to knit together the common threads of our competing theologies and so upbuild the Church.
Brethren, let us forever remember the words of Paul and take them as our rule: "Faith, hope, love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love." Let us remember that love itself, as revealed by God’s only son, is patient and kind, never arrogant or rude.
