We Best Leave Jesus Off A Pedestal
The cloth covering the altar clearly declared her mission: “Works of Love Are Works of Peace.” As I work on this visit with you, I have been watching moments of the televised funeral for Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India., It’s difficult to refrain from making comparisons to Princess Diana’s funeral just one week earlier. But my thoughts are not of Diana and Mother Teresa but rather of Mother Teresa and “The Compassion that Knows No Religious Label.”
There are a few related facts to reflect on, as well:
Did you know India is 85 percent Hindu and 2 percent Christian? Did you also know that at her funeral Mother Teresa was publicly honored by a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim and a Protestant Christian as well as a cardinal from Rome representing the pope?
One person can make an incredible difference!
India is a country where religious preference is very important on many levels. But it means absolutely nothing when human suffering and destitution needs the simple, tangible touch of God’s compassion.
That is what Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Missionaries of Charity offer 24 hours a day. For nearly 50 years, she and they broke religious boundaries down and enabled the soul of God to touch the pain of humanity.
Those boundaries are tough not only in India. In our lives, too, they need to be broken down every day in a new way.
My column of a month ago seems to have sparked considerable reflection and conversation among many folks.
I expected some written response from people who seriously questioned my interpretation of John 14:5-6. They did respond, and with predictable frustration.
But what surprised me was how many made passionate responses thanking me for a more tolerant understanding of people whose religious stances are so very different from our own. If these people are at all representative of others who have been burned by an exclusive attitude toward other religions - even Christian churches other than our own - we who try to follow Jesus need to consider a huge attitude change.
What are we Christians afraid of when we keep other churches or other religions far from us?
Help me understand what is so heretical about dialogue with a Buddhist or Muslim or Jew about those ideas and life practices that mean so much to each of us. What do we have to fear in such conversations?
Are we afraid someone will try to convert us to his/her religion? I’m not afraid of that, but the attempt has been made before, and I found it insulting.
Are we afraid serious conversation means our own faith is weak? I certainly hope not!
Are we afraid affirming another person’s religious experience means diluting our own? What a sad thought.
Or do we believe that by dismissing another person’s religious experience we build up our own? I shudder to think anyone thinks that way, but I have no doubt that some do.
Mother Teresa engaged in a little redemptive redundancy during her ministry. She regularly reminded people that giving water to a dying street urchin was giving water to Jesus.
It mattered not at all whether that urchin was Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim or Christian. Jesus was present in that wasted, pathetic body.
That’s a hard lesson for many of us to mentally comprehend. It’s often even harder to practice looking into the face of someone we dislike, even hate, and see the face of Jesus.
If we can’t do that with people we know, how can we do that with people we don’t know? Maybe we can’t, until our hearts learn that Jesus is no respecter of religious labels or social class or economic level.
Many years ago I read a short article that made a profound impact on me. It was about Jesus on a pedestal.
The author’s point? When we keep Jesus on a pedestal, as we often do, we effectively do two things:
Make it difficult for ourselves to actually touch Jesus.
Make it equally difficult for Jesus to touch us.
I believe Jesus is the way God becomes most touchable to us human types. To my knowledge, no other world religion speaks of God being incarnated, made known in a real person.
Mother Teresa knew this in soul-ways most of us only hope for, so she was more able to see God in the person lying or standing in front of her.
She has been a living model for us in disregarding religious labels and positions, for she knew Jesus was not in those labels or positions. He was, and is, in the touchable human faces and spirits of all people.
It is likely that if we Christians cannot see that, we may have only seen a dim image of Jesus on a pedestal, and not Jesus himself.
xxxx
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Paul Graves The Spokesman-Review