Journey's Weekly Homilies

Journey Catholic Community
September 14, 2003 -- Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Homily by Tom Kinzie

Numbers 21: 4b-9,
Philippians 2:6-11,
John 3:13-17


"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life."  Like many of you this is the first bible verse I remember hearing.  There was a bunch of children singing "Jesus loves the little children," and "Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells me so," and I remember standing with a few others in front of a group of teachers and vacation bible schoolers reciting by memory that famous verse.  Actually, I couldn't quite memorize it so I stood in between Louie Boni and Chris Shamberger so that I could say the verse "by heart" just a split second later after they did.  Well, it was deemed good enough and for the effort we each got little mirrors that had on one side the picture of Jesus and the other side a glass so that we could see ourselves.  I suppose there was something in that, that if we could see ourselves clearly we would see Jesus or when we see Jesus clearly we see ourselves truly.  I still struggle to hold on to that insight, amidst all the other things I see when I look at myself.

I have been enjoying Elaine Pagels new book, "Beyond Belief." She is particularly interested the Gospel of Thomas, one of those early writings that didn't make it into the New Testament, and which is simply a collection of sayings of Jesus. It was probably just one of many such collections that were circulated around in the early church. However, there are some important differences between the Gospel of Thomas and the gospels we know and, Dr. Pagels argues, especially in contrast with the Gospel of John.  Dr. Pagels is concerned with what those differences say about the development of the Christian doctrine in the early church regarding the saving uniqueness of Jesus and what these issues might mean for us now.

Back to this verse from John.  There is a shadow side to this verse that attached itself to Christianity, " . . .whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  This came to mean whoever does not believe in him shall perish, and further, that it is only through belief in him that the gift of life is offered.  In the history of the tradition Jesus, this
human one, this icon of God's love, became not just a sign of God's compassion but became the exclusive source of God's compassion.

We know the routine.  A man or woman wearing a big smile comes up to us and asks, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?"  Only too often the intent is clear: You better believe in Jesus Christ if you want to save yourself, if you want to be kept from the fires and torments of hell.  If you want to be on the side of right and everything that is culturally decent and true (and by the way, American as well, as if Jesus and not Jefferson had written the Declaration of Independence), you need to believe in Jesus.  He is the one and unique Son of God, who alone can save.

No, I do not want to trivialize this.  And I want to hold in tension these two possibilities: That Jesus is the path, for us, to God, and to the image of God in ourselves and that there are other paths as well.  The first is true because there is still so much power and grace in the symbol and person of Jesus. He has been and is so central and crucial to our lives.  He has been and continues to be the source and the face for so many of us of God's compassion.  He is still the reverse side of the mirror.  For many of us, it is indeed through him and in him and with him that we are able to experience the nearness of God's love.  And it is there, in that mirror of Jesus that we have begun to recognize ourselves for the loved and lovely people we are, for the way we are seen by God.

Yet, there is a shadow side to this that we all know too well.  I will tell just one story.  Many years ago, when I was still with the Church of the Brethren, there was a feature in the church newsmagazine about non-violence in the 20th century.  On the cover of that issue of was a picture of Mahatma Gandhi; after all, Gandhi was the prophet of non-violence in our time.  By the next month the editor had received hundreds of angry letters.  How dare there be of a picture of Gandhi on the church's magazine: Gandhi wasn't even
a Christian!

Here is one saying from the Gospel of Thomas that raises a different possibility.  "Jesus said, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.' " The question this raises, Pagels argues, is whether Christianity must affirm that this source of goodness, the source of coming closer to the divine, to the source of truth is through Jesus in a way that implies all other paths are false or delusional.

In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus seems to be saying, look inside yourself, look at what it is you want, what you need, what your dreams are.  There is where you must look.  Do not depend upon some authority figure, even if the authority figure is called divine.   From the early church there is also this desert saying, "An old monk was asked. 'What is necessary to do to be saved?'  He was making rope, and without looking up form the work, he replied, 'You are looking at it.' Or to paraphrase something Somerset Maugham said in a different context, there are three secrets to a happy, fulfilled, joyous, and compassionate life.  Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.  We have to find our own way (though there are maps that help).

And yet, there is this verse.  For God so loved the world.  I truly do believe that so much of the pain of our lives and of the world is our failure to believe, in deeply interiorized ways, that God loves this world and everything and everyone in this world deeply, steadfastly, without limit. Even ourselves.

For me, because of who I am and from where I come, because of the people who have in the past (and I include all those teachers who watched me as I faked a memorized verse and who denied me nothing for doing so) and because of those who now nurture me in the spiritual journey (all of you are included in that number), for all of these reasons, Jesus is still, for me, the Compelling One, the one who asks me to bask in the love of God.  I know that many of you would say the same.  More than saying it, your lives demonstrate it.  If when we say and live out this truth for us, that Jesus is the Holy One of God, we do so fully cognizant of our fragility, recognizing that often we don't come as close to that mirror image as we would like.   Jesus is still there, on the other side.

We are human after all.  We draw lines in the sand and make boundaries, when Jesus seemed to always want to do away with them.  We too easily guess who is in and who is out even as Jesus said with his whole life that the outs were the very ones he wanted in.  We cling to images like the Son of God thinking it means anything more than that everything born is holy.  Well, perhaps it does mean more than that.  But what that more is I can only feel, can only stammer a word here or there, as when I look at you and watch you looking at me, knowing there is still grace aplenty, grace together when we eat and drink, in this circle, in his presence, and in his name.