Friends,
Have you been tracking our new study of Brian McLaren’s book, We Make the Road by Walking? If not, I think you might be missing out on a valuable opportunity for personal and spiritual growth. Brian McLaren has emerged as a significant voice for progressive Christianity and spirituality over the last few years. He has advocated for a practice of Christianity that draws strength and wisdom not only from traditional Christian sources but from other faith traditions, and in ways that respect the best insights of psychology and science. That is part of the reason why McLaren is often featured in Richard Rohr’s daily meditations from the Center for Action and Contemplation. In the book, We Make the Road by Walking, McLaren offers very manageable chapters for reading week by week over the course of a year. SueJeanne Koh has been offering a weekly opportunity for you to gather with others from St. Mark to reflect on each week’s reading and those conversations have been excellent. Thanks for everyone who has been part of those conversations. If you want to jump in or have questions, you can contact SueJeanne here.
McLaren’s approach to interreligious appreciation is related to something that I wanted to say about last weekend’s sermon. I was inviting you to marvel with me at the fact that Matthew – after grounding the story of Jesus’ birth so firmly within the Abrahamic tradition – suddenly introduces Magi, astrologers, from the east. In the end, they are the only ones in Matthew’s birth story who come to worship the Christ. That turn in Matthew’s story would have been hard to imagine for many of his readers in the Abrahamic tradition, where practicing arts like astrology was forbidden. I likened it to someone pointing out strong resonance between Buddhism and the Christian message. While I was not thinking about Brian McLaren at the moment, he is precisely the kind of thinker that invites us to appreciate the insights of those religions that many Christians would simply dismiss because they are not Christian.
What I want to emphasize is that Matthew did not have to reach outside of his tradition in order to see the wisdom and insight of the Magi’s eastern religion. That’s a key point for those of us who believe that our Christian faith can often resonate with other faith traditions – we do not have to step outside of our Christian faith to appreciate that resonance. We can appreciate it as faithful Christians.
At the same time, I’m not suggesting that all religions are the same. For me, that claim reduces the depth and particularity of religious movements. I also shy away from picking and choosing bits and piece of various religions, like an a la carte approach to truth. To do so would make me the final judge of truth and I question whether once can really understand religious thought as a dabbler and not as a disciple.
Matthew’s story invites us to see the Magi and their distinctive religious way of being as part of the story of the birth of the distinctively Jewish Christ. Matthew lets the Magi speak for themselves. He honors their religious quest. He notes that they escape Herod’s plot to find and kill the child by being warned in a dream – the same way that God will enable Joseph to rescue the child from Herod. And, in the end, the Magi go back to the east, go back to their religion, as those who have found the Christ and worshiped him. That seems to me to be a model of how to honor other religions and find spaces of resonance with them, without caricaturizing, absorbing, or proselytizing them into something that they are not. That seems promising to me in a time when almost every mode of thinking is cast into a binary “right or wrong’ mold.
Mark of St. Mark
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