This week I heard a rabbi speak about his attempts to establish an interfaith dialogue with a mega-church pastor in his community, and it didn’t go well. He spoke of how he consistently reached out, making the lion’s share of the contacts and invitations to keep the conversation going. Eventually, he stopped working at it because he felt like he was wasting his time, and the evangelical minister noticed. The pastor called the rabbi and asked how he was and why he hadn’t heard from him. The rabbi said that the last time they were together, the pastor had told him that he was “incomplete.” “Why did that bother you?”, the pastor asked. His unwillingness to understand why the rabbi was upset answered the question.
It is an aspect of much of Christianity that troubles me the most, the idea that non-Christian religions are “incomplete” and therefore inferior. Different is not incomplete. Different is interesting and challenging and an invitation for me to learn. Just because I believe that Jesus is the incarnation of God does not mean that the way other faith traditions see God is not filled with truth and meaning. My experience of many people of different faiths is that they are far closer to the call of Jesus than many Christians are. They might not say that Jesus is Lord, but they live their devotion to God and humanity with greater integrity than the “name it and claim it” Christians who spend more time evangelizing than they do feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. You know what I think is incomplete? Saying you love God but not living like you love God’s people. That is a growing edge for a lot of Jesus’ people.
Something about my reading of Scripture tells me that Jesus would not find Christian arrogance and condescension to be in line with His teachings and expectations. Something tells me that the One whose birth Christians will celebrate in 9 days would not be satisfied with the self-centered congratulatory way in which too many Christians follow Him. Jesus told His followers that they would do greater things than He did, not that they could sit around and point fingers at those who are different while waiting for the end of the world. If you are not a follower of Jesus, you are not incomplete. If you love God and do good, you seem to be pretty great from where I sit. Don’t listen to the haters; they have a lot of growing up to do. Their understanding of Jesus is what is incomplete, but, luckily, we can all grow in our faith. Someday, we will know. Until then, keep on loving and doing what is right. I think God likes that.
Prayer – Holy God, none of has complete understanding of Your ways and needs. Give us all the power of Your Spirit so that we can grow every day in our faith and love and action. Amen.
Today’s art is “Love one another” by Eleatta Diver.