Sermons

The Particular and the Universal

The Rev. Rob McCann
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church

No one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father-John 6:56

If you will remember, I promised to vary my sermons to accommodate both the left-brain and the right-brain among us. This is not to suggest that we have a lot of half-brained individuals gathered.

My sermon this morning is a left-brain presentation on an inescapable subject facing all religions.

The opening quotation from today’s Gospel also ties well into the 14th chapter of John. There you will find a double-edge sword – which gives fodder to the fundamentalist and relief to the relativist, alike.

How do we reconcile the following visions which are set only three verses apart – yet for many a mile away!

The particular vision - + I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me– John 14: 6;

The universal vision + In my Father’s house there are many mansions – John 14: 3.

When you hear the phrase “many mansions”, it gives off the impression that many is less than all – and yet in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, many translates to all.

In the Eucharistic Prayer each Sunday we pray - “This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many”. Once again it means all.

Christianity, like every major religion, contains chapters and verses that have universal and particular leanings. It’s a sign of maturity after a long period of Church life to look around and say aloud – Can we hold in tension the universal and the particular at the same time?

Now, within the pluralistic society in which we live, it is an important question to deal with.

There are 1 billion Christians in the world and 1 billion Muslim in the world. Could the one be right and the other wrong? Or is there a new way of looking at this populated and religiously diverse picture?

Are we really willing to stay with that old chestnut that God is “on our side” – and does not exist for the other?

I very much like what retired Professor Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School said about this tension – “The particularist reminds us that without the radical focus of the original revelation, we would have no faith to share. The universalist reminds us that without the wider dream, the message is falsified and the scope of the original vision is diminished.”

Professor Marcus Borg was helpful to me in a telephone conversation I had with him when he said: “Listen to these two statements and hear the enormous difference in the messages:

WE HAVE FOUND OUR SALVATION THROUGH JESUS ---- & OUTSIDE OF JESUS THERE IS NO SALVATION.

Would it not be an enormous distortion if we were, in effect, to limit what God is able to do for the peoples of the world who have never heard of Jesus.

And to say – That God is not able to touch all ages and all times.

Would it not be an enormous distortion if we, who say that we have been called by grace, fail to appreciate the person of Jesus the Christ – to see him as the WAY, TRUTH & LIFE?”

The crisis in the current state of interfaith dialogue can be stated simply: for many, not meaning all, the universal and the particular seem incomprehensible together.

Faced with a world in which some form of encounter with other faiths can no longer be avoided, the older religious traditions are breaking into increasingly separatist wings.

+Those who glimpse the universal dimension advocate dialogue and mutuality; they search out what is common and that which unites. The temptation is to neglect that Jesus is the Way, Truth and Life. +Those who emphasize the particular often shun dialogue and excoriate their fellow believers who engage in it. The temptation is to neglect that in My Father’s house there are many mansions.

Without the wide vision of the universal that the interfaith conversation favors, particularism can deteriorate into fanaticism – or as some of us would say, a kind of “fascistic fundamentalism”. And, in our present over-armed world, zealotry can easily hasten the moment when everything ends with an apocalyptic bang. So we are left with a paradox.

Without the universal theme, no dialogue would ensue. But without the particular theme, the dialogue loses its source of energy.

As Harvey Cox said: “Without the cross or the Koran or the Bo Tree, the religions that were called into being by these sacred realities would atrophy, and along with them the inclusive visions they spawned would fade away too.”

The paradox of the great world faiths is that they create a dream of a communion and threaten that dream at the same time. What is our immediate response?

As Christians we must not neglect the wisdom and teachings of Jesus nor neglect seeing in other faiths an opportunity for deep conversation with our sisters and brothers.

For me the over-all gift is – hold sincerely to your faith; be open to the universal message in the other. It a grand start.

Sermons

The Particular and the Universal

The Rev. Rob McCann St. Matthew's Episcopal Church

The Rev. Rob McCann
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church