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Bible Study 4: No one comes to the Father except through me

Néstor O. Míguez (26 Septmber 2002) - Full text

You don't have a paper - it's my fault - I decided not to bring the 4th study complete from home. I tried to think some things that are coming out from the Assembly and to be sensitive to the developments of Assembly, so I could learn something and not only come here with a prepared discourse. So I have learned many things (not too any bad habits - Michael Thawley) I have learned that you can call your Moderator a baboon (I'll be practicing that at home - Nestor) (and the Assembly is always right, I have to say - Michael Thawley). Watching the girls dancing on Monday and yesterday, I have learnt to tremble my hands, one hand and then the other both at the same time - that might not be my ability but the consequences of age!

I must confess that in my motel room I also tried to move my legs and my hips as Cook Islanders but I will not give you a demonstration of how things came apart.

By the way I just received an e-mail from my baboon - from my Bishop - I am part of those Methodist that have the American heritage and we have Bishops but my Bishop, Nellie Rietie, who you can see a lady Bishop, by the name, by the way descendant of the Wales immigrants in Argentina, has sent the Assembly, through me, her greetings and her prayers being myself here I will share with you.

Part of the things I have been looking at, I wouldn't say are totally new to me because we have to deal with some of these same issues, perhaps in different ways, some are different. So some questions come up on how this different cultural traditions and identities can work together without denying one another. How can so different ways of coming to be human can be put together without meaning a denial of our own backgrounds and cultural identities. We have seen here the challenge of the presence of very ancient cultures and at the same time the technological challenges of bio-ethics or digital communications - how you put together such anciental cultural traditions and the challenges of today's world. How to balance a clear witness to the ethical and ecological questions of today in international affairs as you have been dealing with this morning and being fair to the different political trends within the church. How to relay these traditional rules that order the church life, and we need them, and at the same time be flexible to the needs of mission and to the dynamics of the witness in community. How to combine the celebration of the dioloxogical presence of this period with the social concerns for justice and equity. I have seen these things coming in different ways and fortunately enough it is not my task to address these issues but to have them at the back of my head as I go through the reading of the Bible and share with you this morning. When I do not write my studies it is better because then when I write them I use words that I do not know how to pronounce, I know how to write but not how to pronounce, now when I talk I use words I do not know how to write! And some inventions come to my mind now and then - excuse me for them.

The first thing that I want to share is that I get suspicious of these things with one way - this language of the only way, the only truth, the only life - those kind of things that we have been talking to, nevertheless I get the creeps when I hear them because we have a lot of experience of this one way, only way. We have been heard in my country that the only way to get out of the crisis (this is from 3 or 4 years ago) was the structural adjustment, free market, international affluence of capital, flexibility on our working loss, and we have followed that one way. Now in this morning's press the vice president of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) just said that Argentina has now way out - it has a crisis that hasn't been seen in any other place because we have followed that one way. We followed that one way and it is a way without an end so every time I hear that there is only one way, I am getting afraid. When we hear that there is only one truth we have a long experience of how that one truth has been supported by so many lies - political strategies, support the one truth, lying all the time. So when you hear one truth you ask yourself how many lies are there behind that one truth? How many dictatorships have been supported as the only true understanding from an ideological point of view and they were built upon lies and the concealment of oppression. The only one life is the justification of genocide in more than historical experience - let me only say that in the conquest of the Americas, Europe brought us civilisation because this was the way of life, to be civilised, that civilisation meant that more than 90 million American (they were not called American at the time) aboriginals more than 90 million at the time of the coming of Columbus, 50 years later there were less than 30 million - two-thirds have been killed in one way or another because civilisation was brought into what we now call the Americas. Those only way, truth, life, affirming that way, of self-assertions that deny the reality of other, other ways, other truths, other lives - they ignore the right of others to decide and to decide differently. But on a positive understanding, in Jesus we have learned another way of doing things. The way, the one way Jesus tells us, is an encounter with the other, as God comes to meet us in Jesus. The one truth is the quest for what sustains the witness in community, trust in the other. The one life is plenitude, grace and joy, the hope for the future. (I will not explain these as I have done so in the preceding days.) Way, Truth and Life are the affirmation of the other - the challenge to find meaning in love. Well, these other ways of saying this is the only truth, the only way are affirmation of the self. The Way, the Truth, the Life in Jesus is the affirmation of the other, of the one who comes to us as the other but also of the possibility of loving, because you can only love the other.

But before going to the Father, the Father comes to us. The phrase "no one comes to the Father, except through me" is possible because the Father, God, comes to us before that. And God has not only one way of coming, of reaching God's creation and creatures. It is very interesting that in Paul, at least of the Paul of Acts, he is considered God by some people in Laconia, and he resists the possibility of being considered a God but yet he does not discredit completely the religiosity or spirituality of those peoples. It is very interesting. "Friends, why are doing this, we are mortals, just like you and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to follow their own ways, yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good, giving you rains from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling you with food and your hearts with joy." This last expression is very significant even though they did not know God in the way that Israel or that Paul knew God, nevertheless God was filling their hearts with joy. It is very interesting in the lips of Paul, which is usually seen as a disclosivist understanding of God.

The Father comes to us and now I am going beyond the Gospel of John. God comes to us in the wisdom of creation, in the life giving, logos, and we have in Genesis, in John, in the 1st chapter of Romans also some words in descent. God comes to us in the liberating acts of old, in God's intervention and through the patriots and through the prophets. "I will descend" said God. So we talk of God coming to us in Jesus but if we look at the Old Testament we already find this God coming and descending to us. It is very interesting in the Tower of Babel incident that it has always been read as the punishment of God upon human pride. The word punish does not appear in the Biblical text. It says "I will be sent to see what these men are up to". And then he says "no body will stop them so I will allow for them to scatter on earth." The differences in languages and cultures and the expression "on earth" is not a punishment of God but the possibility that God gives to be beyond the one and only that the people who were trying to build the city and tower of Babel were trying to achieve. I have extensively studied this whole issue as Babel as not as a narrative of punishment but as a narrative of liberation. I do not have the opportunity here because of the extent of time to go through the whole text but it will be published in English if anyone is interested in the freshrift for Prima Niles retirement as General Secretary of the Council for World Mission, so if anyone is interested it will come there. God comes to us in the inclination in Jesus as the supreme expression of God's presence and love. God comes to us in the spirit as guide and revealer, as witness in power. God comes to us in the narratives and love of the witnessing community. God comes to us as the Son of Man in our needy human fellow. "The least". "What you do to one of the least of my brothers and sisters you do it unto me" and that is the word of the Son of Man. Is the Son of Man coming to meet us in those who are in need. So God does not have an exclusive way in coming to us and yet all of God's ways have one intention - the salvation and plenitude of human life. As the Father comes to us we are invited to recognise God's presence and come to God. Now it is possible to come to God because God came to us in many and different ways. Coming to God is living in God's wisdom which is the wisdom of the cross, is the wisdom dimension of our coming to God. There are several wisdoms - the Greek claim some kind of wisdom. The Jews claim another kind of wisdom and in a very prophetic sentence Paul says in 1 Cor. That the wisdom of the world powers is really complete ignorance because they were not able to recognise the Lord of glory and they crucified him so those who are in power in this world tend to ignore the wisdom of the cross and tend to crucify the Son of Man. But the real wisdom is the wisdom of the cross. At the end of the 2nd chapter in 1 Cor. Paul says that we have the mind of Jesus. We have the mind of Christ. What is it to have the mind of Christ? To look at the world from the cross. How does the world look from the place of the crucified of this world? Not in the place of power, not from the place of the judge that crucified Jesus but how does the world look when you are the crucified? We have the mind of Jesus. We have to look at the world from the place of the crucified in the hope of resurrection. That is to have the mind of Jesus. That is the wisdom that takes us to God. Coming to God through faith is to become God's justice and God's instrument for justice. The ethical dimension. Romans 6 this very important chapter in this sense because we always have read "we are justified" so justice is something we receive from God in order to be in right relationship with God. But in chapter 6 Paul goes on and he says "now that you are justified you are instruments, tools, for justice in God's hands." If you are justified but you do not become an instrument for justice in this world then you have only gone half the way of what God is calling us to do with God. Coming to God through faith is to become an instrument for justice. The ethical dimension is also present and an unavoidable dimension of coming to God. Coming to God is to enjoy endless love, a learning to live in endless love, the relational dimensionship. I just heard the debate. All I can say keep on loving each other, no matter how different we are. Nothing can change the relationship of love. If we lose the relationship of love, even with those who think differently from us, we are losing Christ. Coming to God is to enjoy endless love because God loves us when we were not so neat and pure and seamless and God still loves us in a way that no human love can equal. So coming to God is coming to enjoy endless love and learning to live in endless love. Coming to God is getting in touch with the source of life and the hope of creation is the ecogological dimension we've been talking about. I know cannot make a motion but I was about to make one that we should have good weather! (is there a seconder - Michael Thawley - I'm told by a Wellingtonian that this is good weather!) okay. I realise that, but I think that coming to God is getting in touch with what it means to be part of creation and that to deny being part of creation is to deny coming to God. Being part of creation is part of coming to God. Coming to God is receiving God's spirit and celebrating God's presence, the dioloxigical dimension that we should never avoid, the singing, the possibility of many ways in which we praise God. Then coming to the Father through Jesus is not an abstraction, is not simply putting together some ideas of what God could, should be but recognising God in man, in human beings, in the man Jesus, as the total humanity. We cannot come to God unless we look into the eyes of that man Jesus of Nazareth because that will tell us that it is in Him, as humanity that we need God.

Have time for a short story.

I was sharing service in one of the shanty towns on the outside of Buenos Aires a place of much violence. Small group of perhaps 20 to 25 people, most of them women and we were working on the dignity of creation and of human beings because we have the image of God in us. At the end one of the women, a middle ages woman, mother of four children, came to me crying and said "I have learned something. I will never again permit my husband to hit the image of God I have in me." Coming to God through Jesus is acknowledging the God that is present in human beings, in the other and in myself. But this does not mean to praise the human as God. All human works as divine but to recognise that there is no way to God without the present and concern of the human. Because the other temptation is to say humanity is God and then the achievements of human culture become divine. Human culture, however valuable they are human works and no one is divine BUT God's presence in human beings that is divine. Coming to God through Jesus is the possibility of revising our own biography as persons and peoples and produce our identity in the light of the Jesus narrative. Now I think this is very important in the sense that we have to look once and again at our own lives, revise our biography in order to understand what it means to live with Jesus and that God lives with us. Because it is not by building concepts but by being aware of how we live, the real facts that form our every day life that we come to realise how God is with us. The presence of God in our lives and in that sense our possibility of relating to that God that is with us in our lives. Is looking at our own live and saying "hey God is there" as Jacob at Peniel "God is here and I didn't know it." God has been with us even without our being aware of God's presence. I have many friends that have been in a country which is largely Catholic. Many have converted to evangelical churches and when we share we say "it's not that I now have gotten, before I didn't have, now I realise how God has always been with me without I knowing it. It is realising this continuous presence of God because God loves us and is with us even before we love God. This is the message that we have received once and again from the Bible. But then looking through our biography as persons and as people we learn how to treasure the memory of our ancestors as a heritage of humanity as Jesus did. Jesus did not deny the heritage of his ancestors. Once and again he speaks about it and he is called the son of David. He knows his culture. He knows where he comes from. He does not deny this, but then he is able to say "you heard what was said in ancient times, now I am saying something new." He did not deny yet he did not think that to stick to what work his ancestors dealings was the only possibility for life. So identity is also to be open to the dialogue with those who share with us the human adventure as Jesus did. Now this is the way to the Father to recognise the memories of my ancestors but to share the life I join in with other people.
I say go as we walk together through this world and also how to share our vision of a future of life abundant as Jesus did. So identity is not something that we have from the past, a kind of essence that we should stick to, identity in Christ is not an essence but a way of being in the world. Identity has been thought of as some kind of entity that abides in us some way or other. That is not so. Identity is a construction, is the product of our memories but also of our projects. Identity is what we expect to be, not only what we have been. Identity is not only our history but is also our walking towards the future. Identity in Christ is what unites us in Jesus and takes us to the Father. Identity in Christ is deprivation again the destructive forces of idolatry, and in this point I say Jesus is THE way in the sense that it prevents us to building other kinds of gods, the idols, destructive forces that become idols. New idolatry takes the place of God trying to dominate human life. Idolatry of the total market. As Jesus says "I am the Way" as I said before total market ideology says it is the only way. Its total. See, everything has to come under the market so who lives and who dies, who has the right to an education and who has not, who has the right to health and who has not, is decided by the market. The market is taking the place of God. Up to now, that I knew, those decisions were God's decisions but now the global market says we have to decide who has the right to eat some food and who does not and he who does not have some money in his hands does not have the right to food, or to health, or to education. When market becomes total market, all and every aspects of human life come under the market so there is no possibility of life outside the market. Now I thought that this was God's decision. So this is why I called the market an idol. It takes the place of God. Now there is only one God, and that is the God of Jesus who fed the hungry, who healed those who had no money, who taught in the plains to everyone who wanted to hear, there was no private hospital, no private school, no private restaurant in Jesus. That is the way to God. There is an informed market as an economic mechanism, I don't deny that but not to the global, total market taking the place of God as the only Way, as the only Truth, as the only Life. Idolatry of technology - technology is a good thing but it might become an idol, also deciding who has the right to live and who has the right to die. Technology is widening the gap between the rich and the poor, those who have access to technology are more human than those who do not have access to technology. Let me tell you, 80% of the world population do not know what internet is. Here you find it so easy to have - I have internet at home, but then I know that more than 70% of the other people of my country do not have internet and Argentina is the country which has more internet than the whole of Latin America. So technology can become a good tool but also an idol to which everything is surrender. The idolatry of might - do I need to say more bout this - I mean can we experience this every day? We don't care about law, about international organisations. We have the might, we have the right. It becomes an idol. Once again the possibility of deciding on the life and death of others because we have the weapons, we have the might, those are the idols of today. When we say we come to God through Jesus we are saying we are protected from these idols because we know the God of life, the God of sharing. Idolatries demand blindness, the denial of other ways, uniqueness, truth as seclusion, and sacrifices the way of pain and death. In my country, because it is the one I know, in less than six month (oh, I'm out of time) more than half of the population fell under the poverty line and the declaration of the IMF technician that came to see the situation said "Well, Argentina needs a lot more of pain and suffering in order to recover". Can you say that to people who have lost jobs and way of living, more than 50% of the population, can you say that when you have an income of more than a quarter of a million each year so you can tell the others "You have to sacrifice and you have to live in pain to pay my salary so that I can live in luxury" these are the idols of today. This is the denial of the ways of God. We go to God through Jesus, to this poor carpenter of Nazareth who was crucified by those who demanded pain and sacrifice. But we have the God that said "I want mercy, not sacrifice" that is coming to know the God of Jesus. Knowing God as the father of Jesus, through the life and presence, the vision and the witness, the death and resurrection of Christ, is knowing the God that demands justice, that empowers hope, that brings life. Knowing God through Jesus is knowing THE God whose love has decided not to be God without humankind. In Jesus we discover the God that becomes human, so we as humans can live our human condition in love, hope and faith, in joy and plenitude, in justice and confidence. No one comes to the Father, except through me. It is not a declaration of still another exclusion, but the announcement of the humility of God who comes to meet us so that we may live in freedom and love, in the freedom with which Jesus' truth that makes us free, in the love with which Jesus self-given makes us humans. Amen.

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