Those of you who’ve been around L.A. long enough may have heard stories about one of our Methodist renegade pastors of yesteryear named Rev. Bob Shuler. Recently I came across a magazine article that recalled his colorful history. Shuler was a farm boy from somewhere back east who got religion and landed in downtown Los Angeles about 90 years ago where he became pastor of Trinity Methodist Church. Trinity became one of the great downtown churches with several thousand members; and Shuler, or “Fighting Bob” as he was known, built his congregation with a back-woodsy kind of charisma that focused on attacking sin wherever he (Shuler) could identify it. A lot of Los Angeles politicians were made and broken by his preaching. But sadly the mainstay of his sermon repertoire consisted of attacks on other religious groups: Presbyterians, Aimee Semple McPherson of the Foursquare Gospel. Catholics, and Jews. In his mind they were the devil incarnate; and needless to say, such preaching only exacerbated the already-strained religious relationships of the day.

We’ve come a long ways since then in our consideration and respect for other religious groups. I can remember Catholics being attacked from the pulpit in my childhood, whereas today that would be almost unthinkable. Even Islam in the aftermath of 9/11 generally has respect as one of the world’s great religions. Many of us are so appalled by religious divisiveness and conflict in other parts of the world that respect for other faiths has become a basic tenet of our mindset and outlook. To think otherwise is uncool! And as diversity grows in our society, we have greater opportunity to become more familiar with the spectrum of religions and often to know adherents of these religions personally.

So in today’s climate the question inevitably arises: what value might other religions have as paths to God for us? Beyond respect, can we expect they might have some valid revelation of God’s truth to offer us? In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is very clear that he is the bread of life—the living bread that came down from heaven. Yet Jesus also quotes the prophet Isaiah in saying, “They shall all be taught by God.” Does that mean that God teaches some people by channels other than Jesus? Is only the Christian brand name reliable—or does God provide other forms of bread besides “Christian” bread? Do all the world religions arrive at the same God at the top of the mountain, though their paths diverge on the way up—or not?

Many people today want very much to believe the brand name of one’s spiritual bread should not be an issue. If one path is as good as another, all kinds of potential conflicts between religions can be avoided and we can live harmoniously with our differences. But immediately that raises another issue: if the path we take doesn’t matter, then what’s special about our Christianity that calls for our commitment and allegiance to it? Why take Jesus seriously if other channels that come along may serve us just as well? We may continue to call ourselves Christian just because of past history and inertia; but I think the likely result will be a diminished seriousness about any religion—which I sense is precisely what is happening today among many people who go along with the “one religion is as good as another” way of thinking. If we are not claimed by some particular path to God, it’s likely no path will matter to us that much. We may operate as religious dilettantes but likely not as true believers.

But of course the even more compelling reason for holding to Christ is our faith that he is God’s authoritative revelation to humanity. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” we believe. To affirm that is to assert that for us, Christ is the definitive pathway by which we find our way to God and the yardstick by which we measure God’s truth. That’s what it means to take Jesus seriously. To be a Christian is to affirm that all claims to religious truth must be measured against the plumbline we have in Jesus. So for us who have come to faith in Christ, the brand name does matter. “Christian” bread may well not be the only kind of bread that nourishes us; but it will be the standard by which all other bread is evaluated.

But having said this, I also believe that an openness to learn from other faiths is part of what it means to be a Christian. In the 10th chapter of John as Jesus is speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd, he says: “I have other sheep not of this fold.” To me that suggests that people other than Christians also have some claim to be authentic God-followers. As one writer put it, we seem to be blessed with a “providential diversity of religions” in this world. By God’s grace, other religions may well have discerned something of God’s truth which we would do well to pay attention to.

This should be particularly evident in the case of Judaism. Christianity owes its whole foundation to the Jewish faith as it had evolved by the time of Jesus’ birth. The basic nature of our covenant relationship with God and so much of our concept of morality comes directly from our Jewish roots. Without Judaism, Christianity would not have been. Now it’s evident that the way God has worked through Judaism in the last 2000 years is not the way God has worked through Christianity. Yet because of the common roots we share, we should expect that Judaism as it has evolved would have something to teach us—about the meaning of Covenant, for example, as Jewish people have been sustained by their understanding of it through centuries of oppression. I wonder if they don’t also have something important to tell us about life as a precious gift from God, and about generosity in stewardship, and about taking seriously forgiveness and reconciliation with God and others.

We are only beginning to know something of the Islamic faith, because until recently it seemed to be in another world from ours. If there was a measure of grace in 9/11, it may have been in pushing us to understand better this faith of so many millions of the world’s people—and to discern what Islam truly teaches, as opposed to how certain terrorist groups have distorted it. One thing we are learning is that Islam has a very high concept of the holiness of God and a strong sense of how all of life should be ordered in keeping with God’s will. In a time when our culture tends toward such a casualness toward God, could it be that Islam might have a message that we need to hear?

Buddhism, which does not share the strong faith in one God that marks Judaism and Islam, may seem further out of the religious loop that we identify with. Eastern religion is different in how it thinks of salvation and in the way it thinks about life generally. So Buddhism is not caught up in the dualism of Western thinking that so often divides body and spirit into two separate categories that are often at odds with each other. Today we are becoming more aware of our hunger for more of a wholeness in our being and living; and it’s not just happenstance that many are turning to Buddhist forms of meditation in their quest for inner harmony and peace. Recently I had the privilege of being with a friend suffering from lung cancer in the last five days of his life. He was a Christian; but in his suffering from the cancer as his body warred with his spirit, he had turned to Buddhist meditation to find relief and peace, and it had made a difference. His spirit was at peace, and he was ready for whatever form of life would come next. I cannot help thinking that God may be trying to speak to us through Buddhism to make us aware of other dimensions of enlightenment that are for our well-being.

For me it is evident that if God truly is the Creator and Sustainer of all that is, no religion can have hold of the whole of God’s truth. It is a given that God transcends our understanding. We see through a glass darkly. And even though by faith we believe that our Christianity gives us the most complete insight into the truth God has in mind for us, we should not be surprised to find God working through other religions as well. Why would God miss such an opportunity? So my point here is that openness to other faiths ought to be far more than just a matter of respect for them and avoiding religious wars. I believe this is the path to our growth in the knowledge of God and God’s purpose for us. By taking at full value what our Christianity has to teach us, and then learning what other faiths can add to enrich the understanding we have in Christ, we may come to a fuller grasp of what God wants to reveal to us.

I see Jesus pointing the way here. Have you noticed how Jesus continually modeled a spirit of openness to others around him who were different? He always found value in associating with Gentiles and Samaritans and tax-collectors and the other outsiders in his faith community. Is not his example a word to us that God calls us to an openness to the differences we encounter to see what we might learn from them? Jesus never let go of his own faith in these interchanges; but we see his faith becoming more full-bodied and compassionate and vital as a result. And so may ours.

So the answer to the question in my sermon title is, yes, the brand name does matter. By faith we accept Jesus’ claim that he is the bread of life by which we are fed. But this same Jesus pushes us to look carefully at others whose approach to God may differ, to see if they too may have bread that will nourish us. Sometimes we will find ourselves disagreeing with our sisters and brothers of other faiths because we cannot square their beliefs with our Christian plumbline. But we will disagree in love, not in judgment or condemnation, because in Christ we recognize we are all brothers and sisters, children of a loving God who desires all of us to know the truth, and who works among us to reveal that truth to us.

© Larry Young, 2003. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.