*Note from Rowland. Here's an approach as theologically liberal as one can get, within Western Christendom. I post it here for your information. Note that my broad theological stance does not coincide with Harry Cook's. *

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*May 6, 2007*

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*The Reason, the Point, the Beginning, the End, *

*the Why and the Wherefore*

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*By Harry T. Cook*

/*John 13: 31-35*/

"What's the point of having a church," a person was asking me, "if you don't have some set beliefs and insist that church members subscribe to them?" It reminded me of another all-too-frequent question - or challenge, really, to the effect that "The church can't just be a community of people who care about each other and the world. It has to stand up for belief in Jesus." Tell that to your Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist neighbor. I'm sure that'll get your conversation off on the right foot.

What is "belief in Jesus?" You can go to the creeds and catechisms or directly to the foot of the pulpits of the fundamentalist churches and learn that "belief in Jesus" means believing in a quite literal way that he was (or is) the only Son of God who died on the cross for the sins of those who believe he did.

The more and more common response to such a statement is, "So what's that got to do with anything?" The blood atonement is a relic of a not very nice time in our theological evolution, having been given a singular expression by St. Anselm more than a millennium ago. He called it "the satisfaction theory." Satisfaction for our sins. The goal was to make it into the heavenly realms at the end of earthly life.

The problem is that the observations of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein have pretty much wiped out the idea of "heaven," even though some high percentage of Americans polled say they continue to hold out for the possibility. All those fuzzy hopes proceed out of the same haze as beliefs in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny - or, for Charlie Brown, the Great Pumpkin. So what's the point of being religious in the Christian sense?

Here's an answer. The gospel writer John imagined Jesus talking to his close friends just hours before his execution as they sat together at the supper table, Judas having already slipped away to do his treachery. John tells us that Jesus said some things about glory and glorification that must have been as much a mystery to his friends then as they are to us now. Then John imagined Jesus telling his friends that he is going where they cannot come. Where was that? To the gallows? History is clear that many of Jesus' followers followed him to martyrdom. Or if not that, certainly to the grave, as will we each and all.

No matter. It's what John imagined next that is the thing we should not miss, Jesus saying: /A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another./ Tell that to Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria who has publicly said he abhors gay and lesbian human beings some of whom, whether he likes it or not, are his fellow disciples - though one is justified in wondering just who or what Akinola thinks he's following.

So it is not great Gothic cathedrals or vested choirs or stained glass windows or banks of candles or exquisite liturgies or even, for that matter, great preaching that constitute our reason for being. It is certainly not the grinding of ecclesiastical bureaucracies or synods or any outpourings of pious enthusiasms having to do with loving Jesus.

But it does have to do with love. The word in our English text at hand we are translating "love" is that strange sounding Greek word /??????/, meaning here: uncalculating, selfless, actuated concern for the other. The only believing involved here is belief that such concern as I have described is what is due to the other by virtue of his, her or their being human.

John didn't imagine Jesus saying, "A new commandment I give you that you try to convert the world, by force if necessary." The mandate was "to love one another." And it appears to have applied to that inner circle. But the mandate was not to love each other exclusively. Just to love each other. The idea was that those who made such selfless concern go from heart to hand, from emotion to action, is what would let people know who they were. Who were they? Or, more to the point, who are we? If we are not loving each other in that way and then widening the circle, taking others into it for the simple reason that they are human, then we cannot say we are Jesus' disciples. And in that case, we in this parish could not credibly publish our mission statement, which is: /St. Andrew's is a community . . . seeking to learn and live the ethic of Jesus./

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.