No other name – Easter IV, 7 May 2017

Once again the lectionary takes us to John’s Gospel, and we encounter this little surprise from Jesus:  I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved… [John 10:9]  He has just finished saying: …all who came before me were thieves and bandits…  If you turn over to chapter 14 you find the saying everyone knows, where Jesus says, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me [14:6].  Peter later testifies in Jerusalem:  There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given among mortals, by which we must be saved. [Acts 4:12]

…and of course it doesn’t fit at all well with our pluralistic liberal attitudes and needs in the 21^st century.  All the old questions arise – I recall confronting them 50 years ago:  What about people of other faiths?  What about people who never heard about Jesus?  What about conscientious atheists and agnostics?  More cogently, I would have thought:  What about many 21^st century sons and daughters and their offspring who have neither time nor space nor interest for church or Christian faith? 

From the outset the church has maintained what it calls the finality, the uniqueness, or the primacy of Jesus.  No other name…  Moreover, most of us have a question about being “saved” – saved from what?  And do I wish to be saved if better people than I are not, because they don’t believe in Jesus?   My irascible Scottish grandmother had issues with all this.  She said, You’re going to be surprised who you find in heaven… but I know some who won’t be there…  She had the situation under control.  I think it’s time to re-set the matter.  Jesus was not excluding anyone, even if those who reported his sayings may have tended to think otherwise.  It is clear from what we know about Jesus that no one is lost. 

Needing a better brain than I have to explore this issue, I turned again to Archbishop Rowan Williams, and to a lecture he gave quite recently entitled The Finality of Christ in a Pluralistic Society.  He reminds us that there are in fact no barriers around Jesus, no matter how some Christians try to erect them – what Jesus does and teaches is that God our Father’s love and grace is there unconditionally to every person, believer or not.  Dr Williams utterly disclaims all Christian imperialism, arrogance, bullying, proselytism, exclusivism, dogmatism, moralism.  The relationship we have with Jesus is marked by his marks – humility, reverence for mystery, willingness always to set ego aside.  Dr Williams describes movingly how we must approach people of other faiths than ours, and people of no religious faith – we approach them, he says, in the spirit of learning and understanding.  I have always come away humbler and more thoughtful, Dr Williams says. 

In our silence and solitude of prayer it is Jesus’s company we are keeping, not because we are some elect, or qualify in some way, but because we are present, as fully present as we can manage.  It is Jesus who leads us to be open and hospitable to all, of other faiths or none.  He shows us the art of living deeply and meaningfully in a secular world of much confusion and pain.  As we consent, he continues the task of conforming us to his likeness.