April 19, 2006
Rollins Chapel, Dartmouth College
Richard R. Crocker, Ph.D., College Chaplain
I hope that all of you had a blessed Easter Sunday and will continue to
celebrate a hopeful and blessed Easter season. Since our brother Paul is yet to
celebrate Easter, let us also wish him, and the millions of Orthodox
Christians, a blessed Holy Week.
Psalm 115, unlike the psalms we have thought about in chapel so far this
term, is not a splendid psalm. It probably is no one’s favorite. But it is
nonetheless a compelling and interesting – and in some ways typical – psalm
that both assumes and expounds the uniqueness of Israel’s God. It begins with
an implicit plea that God will do something – unspecified – for his people
Israel. And the tack it takes in making this argument is typical of many
psalms; it asks the question, what will other people, other nations, think and
say if God fails to act? Will the nations make fun of Israel and say, “Where is
your God?” So God is implored to act, not for the sake of God’s people, but for
the sake of God’s own glory and reputation. This is a familiar form of
argumentation used in the psalms.
But then the psalm goes on to contrast Israel’s God – the living God – with
those gods made by human hands and worshipped by their creators – gods who have
mouths but do not speak and ears but do not hear. In other words, the psalm
condemns Israel’s perpetual temptation toward idolatry.
Of the three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam –
Christianity is by far the more accommodating to images. I call your attention
to the windows in this chapel. They, by themselves, mark this as a Christian
building, for no Jewish temple or Islamic mosque would ever allow images to be
part of the sacred space. Within Christianity, Roman Catholics and Orthodox are
much more tolerant of images and statues and icons than Protestants are.
Although this building is relatively plain and protestant in appearance, the
windows mark the late nineteenth century protestant experiment with stained
glass artistry. And, as some of you know, the windows in this building have
been controversial. The main ones, on the front, were covered over forty years
ago because the images were thought by some people to be too Christian. The
process of uncovering and restoring them will begin this summer, so the
building will once again have panoply of windows depicting various figures of
Christian faith. There will be curtains to cover them when need be, for use by
persons of other faiths.
And there is the challenge. A few people, taking their cue from psalms like
this one, object not only to all images, but also to the idea of allowing
multi-faith use of this building, or other buildings built as places of
Christian worship. Here is a great divide. Some Christians (and sometimes Jews
and Muslims too) see adherence to their faith as demanding exclusivity.
Thus, I know that there are Christians who are genuinely pained when this
building is used for multi-faith purposes. But others of us, and I include
myself in this group, see our Christian faith as demanding that we provide
hospitality for people of other faiths – even in a building and an institution
that has deep Christian roots. For this, we are sometimes called infidels. And
those who demand exclusiveness and purity, are sometimes called fanatics.
Psalms like psalm 115 sometime contribute to these tensions. By upholding
and praising the God of Israel as the true God, while deriding those who
worship idols, it seems that the psalmist is playing a game called “My God is
better than your God”. It’s an old game. It is still being played. And the fact
that so many religious people play it is one reason so many students and
faculty at places like Dartmouth want nothing at all to do with religion.
But the other game is, I think, just as harmful. The other game is to say
“all gods are as good as all other gods – there is no difference. It’s all the
same.” While such a position would seem to alleviate conflict, it does not. It
merely pushes conflict beneath the surface. Because, you see, religions make
particular, important, and conflicting claims. They are not all the same,
although they all have certain points of contact. Judaism and Christianity and
Islam are different from each other, and of course they are different from
Hinduism and Buddhism and Scientology as well. We can not ignore those
differences and simply say they don’t matter.
So where does that leave us? Among the exclusionists, or among the
relativists? I think there is another position: inclusivists. All religions, at
their best, have strands – not always central strands, but strands nonetheless,
which tell their adherents to care for, respect, treat well, and even love
those who differ from them. From this psalm I would lift up one verse: “The
heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to human beings.” (v
16) Indeed God has. And even as contemporary events show us, unless we can
learn to respect and treat well those who differ from us, the whole earth is in
danger of self-destruction.
You see, the prohibition of idolatry that is so strong in Judaism and Islam
and Christianity should tell us that our power to describe God is very limited.
It should inculcate in us a spirit of humility, rather than arrogance. At least
that is what I believe.
When I enter a multi-faith building or participate in a multi-faith service,
I do not cease to be a Christian. I still believe that Jesus died was buried,
and rose again; I still believe that God’s love demands that we forgive our
enemies. I know that other religions do not believe all those things. So
how do I best bear witness to what I believe? Is it by telling other people
that they are wrong and refusing to have anything to do with them? Or is it by
acknowledging that my own faith has often been guilty of arrogance, and by
trying to atone for that arrogance by respecting the integrity of others?
copyright©2006
Richard R. Crocker
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