Sermon text: John 14:6
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
We live in a religious pluralistic day. When I was taking classes for the paralegal certification out at ICC, one day to my surprise, my instructor — a Roman Catholic man who had been both a lawyer and a police officer — looked over and made a comment to me in front of the class about how what life is really fundamentally about is doing good, because all religions lead to God. It’s just a question of how you conduct yourself on the way. He looked at me and said, “Is that right, preacher?” And I said, “No, that’s wrong, professor.” And then I proclaimed the gospel, to the cheers of some of the younger students in the class. Caught him by surprise. He didn’t know how to answer it. He was simply repeating the spirit of the age.
Religious pluralism is the belief that there is a plurality of religions and that just about any religion will work. It’s just a question of whether it works for you. No one religion, it maintains, has a corner on the truth. All religions are equally valid. What really matters is that you be a good person, and you climb the mountain, and that’s how pluralism is defined. So whatever religion you choose, it’s your choice. And that’s fine for you, but maybe not for your neighbor. Your religion is just one option among many equally valid choices, because, it is said, all roads lead up the hill to the heavenly realm. Going along with this idea, then, is this: You can’t tell me that my religion is wrong. You cannot say that one religion is right and all the rest are wrong. You can say no such thing about exclusive truths and make a claim for yourself or any other religion. That would be intolerant. And that’s the worst thing you can be in a pluralistic society: intolerant.
So this religious pluralism raises questions about Christianity. Is Jesus just one option among many, or is he instead the only way to God the Father, the only way to eternal salvation? To put it more briefly: is Jesus just one option, or the only way to the heavenly realm? There’s a book that’s out. It’s titled Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 12 False Christs. The book catalogs the many incorrect versions that popular culture says about God and about Jesus. But what the book seeks to do is to examine the claims of the modern religious person up against what the Bible actually says and teaches regarding Jesus Christ, the Son of God. One of the false Christs that are popular in our culture is that of Jesus as just one option among many. The author tells the story of a young man named Tamar that he met in a coffee shop, who held this pluralistic worldview. Tamar had been brought up in a Christian household, a traditional Christian household. Nevertheless, he held the beliefs of religious pluralism. He is quoted as saying, “You know, I have this gut feeling that all religions of the world lead to the same place. Your religion is one of those avenues and ways to the — pearly gates, or whatever you want to call it. And what about Jesus? Jesus, he said, is for sure the real thing, just like all the other spiritual gurus. The way that I see it,” he said, “all those dudes like Jesus, Muhammad, and Confucius are super spiritual guides who have their own spin on human experience and the way to the afterlife. Jesus is just one option among the very many we can select.” Close quote. And so Tamar has to construct a Jesus in his mind that goes along with what he thinks, even if it’s not what we meet in the Bible, and even if it is a violation of the first commandment. Tamar would say people forget that Jesus is all about tolerance and not hate. After all, that’s what he’s taught. So yes, he says, “I subscribe to the non-hater Jesus who accepts everyone as they are.” For Tamar to make an exclusive claim about the truth of his particular religion — if you criticize it, you’re being intolerant, and it qualifies as hate speech.
That’s religious pluralism in a nutshell. Any religion, including Christianity, the Jesus religion, any religion is just one option among many. You can’t say that there’s only one way. This viewpoint is very common in our culture today. It’s political correctness applied to religious doctrine. And you may have family, friends, and acquaintances who think this way, because this is the way of thinking in the 21st century. But how does it square up with the real Jesus that we meet in the Bible? Is this the kind of religious pluralism that Tamar imagines Jesus taught? Is it what the real Jesus taught, or did he teach something else, something different? Well, in the gospel lesson this morning, we get an answer without horns, clear, straight to the point. Jesus in 14:6 says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.” And the article “the” is explicit in the text. That sounds pretty exclusive to me. Sounds like Jesus is verging on the edge of being offensive. Surely he didn’t mean that. The modern thinker would say he must have meant: I am a way, one of the many ways that leads to God. I am a truth, one facet of the multifaceted variety of religious truths that contribute toward our knowledge. Or I am a life, one possible lifestyle to choose. If that works for you, so be it. That must have been what Jesus means, according to the modern thought.
“No one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s an awfully narrow-minded thing to say. To think that Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the only way to God the Father for the forgiveness of sins and to the heavenly mansions. That’s not very Jesus-like, according to people these days. Well, Jesus can and did say such things. And John 14:6 is not the only place where Jesus makes this sort of exclusive religious claim about truth and about himself. Elsewhere you’ll find the same kind of talk. For example, in John 5:23-24, Jesus says that the Father has given all judgment to the Son, and that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father: that whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Or in Matthew 28, the risen, resurrected Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given unto me.” Those are pretty exclusive claims for what Jesus does and who Jesus is and what we are to believe about him.
Likewise, the whole rest of the New Testament speaks in the same way. First John, the apostle writes, “No one who denies the Son has the Father.” And again, “Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” These kinds of statements exclude all those religions that deny that Jesus is the one and only Son of God. And those religions are multitudes. They may pay some lip service to Jesus, but they would deny that Jesus is in fact, in flesh and blood, the very Son of God come in the flesh. The only way to know the heavenly Father and the only way to have eternal life is belief in Christ Jesus alone. That is precisely what Christianity teaches. So the modern view and the biblical view cannot both be true.
The book of Acts: the apostle Peter was arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin because he had been preaching and teaching in the name of Jesus, whom the very same Sanhedrin had had crucified under Pontius Pilate. But Peter would not let their intimidation stop him from preaching. In Acts 4:12, he tells them straight out about who Jesus is and what he’s done: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” No other name. You can’t get any more exclusive than that. Only one name that brings salvation, namely Jesus Christ.
Christianity cannot be reconciled, for example, with Islam. They cannot both be true. The Muslims will say there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. But the Christian must say there is no God called Allah; he is a made-up false god, an idol who does not line up with the God of the Bible, the one true God who made heaven and earth and who in the flesh sent his only-begotten Son in the child of Bethlehem. There is no God called Allah, and Muhammad is a false prophet. The two cannot be reconciled. It’s impossible. You cannot reconcile two very different religions with exclusive and yet contradictory truth claims. It would be a good thing if the adherents could coexist and live with each other on the same planet without killing each other. But they cannot coexist in the sense of both being true. So Christianity, which is all about the real Jesus, is very exclusive in its claims: thus an exclusive kind of religion. It admits no other way to God and salvation. There is no other way other than Jesus. And he says so in our gospel text this morning.
But here’s the thing: Christianity is totally exclusive in one sense, but at the same time totally inclusive in another. It is for everybody. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to be the one and only Savior. But he is the one and only Savior for all people. That’s God’s will. That’s God’s plan. That’s God who created all people in all times, in all places, in all races. The one God has sent us the one true Savior to be the solution for our one common problem, which infects all of humankind, and that problem is sin and death, the consequence of sin. Jesus is the Savior from sin, and thus from death, for all peoples. In 1 Timothy 2:3-4, we read that God our Savior desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. This passage captures both the exclusive and the inclusive of the Christian religion, of God’s plan. There is only one mediator, not many mediators: one God, and between God and men, one mediator. And the one mediator is Christ Jesus. He’s the only go-between who can bridge — and did in fact bridge — the gap between man and God. The gap was there because of our sin. It’s a universal problem affecting and infecting all of mankind, every single individual. One common sin infects us all. All men sin. All men die. All of us — you and me, and the man in Saudi Arabia, and the woman in Southeast Asia, and the child in South America — all of us alike have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are under the judgment of death, unless delivered by the Savior Jesus Christ. For God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. All people. Christ gave himself as a ransom for all people. For all. All are included in the redemption Christ won for us on the cross. Jesus gave himself as the sacrifice for all sins in all times and in all places. His holy blood covers us all. No one is left out from the call of the gospel. God wants all men everywhere to come to faith in his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the Savior of all people.
So the gospel is both exclusive and totally inclusive at the same time. It is totally exclusive in that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, and the only life. There are no other options. Contrary to religious pluralism, Jesus is not merely one option among many. He is the only option. And the gospel of Christ is also totally inclusive. He died for all, all people everywhere, including you and including me. The same Jesus now lives and reigns forever. And the good news of Christ goes out to the whole world and calls all men everywhere to faith and life in Jesus Christ alone. The good news of Christ, the real Jesus, has come to you in your word and sacrament ministry in this little building here. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, he comes to save you with his inclusive gospel, his call to repentance, and his divine gift of faith.
Thus we say and pray to our Lord: You are the way, the truth, the life. Grant us that way to know, that truth to keep, and life to win, whose joys eternal flow. Your sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.