Catholic Stew

I receive a daily email message from the Society of St. John the Evangelist, a monastic community of the Episcopal Church. I generally find these messages -- excepts from sermons preached by the brothers -- quite helpful. But, occasionally one leaves me scratching my head, not quite certain. The snippet for 22 August 2013 reads:

God’s vision is expansive. God’s loving-kindness is expansive. The net is cast wide to catch fish of every kind. We come to celebrate God’s infinitely expansive catholicity, the wide-reaching embrace of his love. It’s a mystery! And, here we all are, in the midst of this most savory, this most delectable stew.

Well, yes. And no. I've been fishing enough to know that some fish are quite unsavory, some are quite dangerous, and some are poisonous. I began to wonder what the sermon from which this was excerpted was all about. If you would like to read it in its entirety, it may be found at Catholic Stew. Some aspects of this sermon should wave caution flags, I think.

There seems to be a shift away from thinking of church as having to do mainly with individual salvation and toward seeing the church as agent of global transformation. Transformation of the economy, transformation of political systems, transformation of the environment. Even evangelicals appear to be moving in this direction in their very recent engaging of ecological concerns. The church is embracing a global, comprehensive perspective, which is to say, a catholic perspective.

Well, yes. And no. The Gospel is certainly broader than individual salvation. It is true to say that "Jesus died for your sins," but it is not quite the Truth. The truth is that Jesus died for the sins and restoration of the cosmos: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." But, because that is the truth, it is therefore true that Jesus died for your sins. Take the whole and get the part for free. So while it is the truth that the church -- actually the Holy Spirit acting in and through the Church -- is an agent of global transformation, it is also true that such large scale endeavor begins with individuals being baptized into Christ, having their individual sins forgiven, and being indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit. There is danger in focusing too intently on either end of the spectrum: individual salvation to the exclusion of global/cosmic restoration or social activism to the exclusion of personal salvation. Perhaps this is what our brother meant in his sermon.

We see this impulse alive and well in the energy for ecumenical and interfaith relations. Although it’s hard to see how Christian truth claims can be reconciled with those of other world religions, there is, generally speaking, a curiosity about “the other”, a growing generosity of spirit toward those who understand God differently, a growing willingness to engage in conversation. A growing desire to collaborate in works of justice and compassion. A growing concern for the whole.

What does this mean, "a growing generosity of spirit toward those who understand God differently"? Is Islam, for example, a different understanding of God, or do Muslims worship a different God than do Christians? I do believe that many devout Muslims would be incensed if we insisted that Allah is simply another name for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- a different understanding of the same God, if you please. Quite to the contrary: a devout Muslim will insist vehemently that God is one, to the exclusion of Son and Spirit. Jesus is a prophet, yes, but he is not and was not God. Muslims understand that we do not understand God differently, but in fact worship different gods. William Willimon was correct when he said that a Christian has not said God until he has said Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Anything else is not merely a different understanding, but a different god. I do agree with our brother that "a growing generosity of spirit...a growing willingness to engage in coversation...[and] a growing desire to collaborate in works of justice and compassion" are important. But even this is problemmatic. Justice looks very different when comparing sh'ria law to Western democratic notions. And they both fail to bear much resemblance to the restorative justice -- the putting of things to right -- of the Gospel. Again, is this a different understanding of justice or a fundamentally different justice? If our concepts of justice and compassion are based upon the nature and person of the God we worship, then they will be as different as the gods we worship. "A growing concern for the whole" is important, but not at the expense of the part we believe to be most true.

Fish of every kind are being gathered in the church’s nets. And the parable reminds us that we don’t need to sort it out—angels will do that at the end of time. Our job is to be the bouillabaisse. And to realize and appreciate that the delightful complexity and subtlety of the stew depends on a wide variety of fish—fish like us, and fish not like us.

This sounds so darned nice on the face of it: keep 'em all, let God sort 'em out. So ... well, so non-judgmental. But, is it not, in reality, a failure to be discerning, a failure to say that while God accepts us all as we are, he leaves none of us in that sorry state? Is it not, in reality, a failure to proclaim the most basic message of the Gospel -- the message Jesus first proclaimed -- "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"? Somewhere, there is a need for repentance, for realizing and saying that not all fish are savory, that some are dangerous or even poisonous. In fact, we probably need to say that all of us fish are unsavory, dangerous, and poisonous and in desperate need of the grace of God to transform us into the likeness of Christ. I'm not sure I hear that message clearly in our brother's sermon.