We are continuing our message series, “Half-Truths,” common ideas in our culture which are kind of true, but not completely. Half-truths can lead us to the wrong destination if we are not careful.
On the Ascension we looked at the half-truth that says that there are many ways to God. While it is true that there are many ways to experience God, but ultimately Jesus is the ONLY way to God. This does not necessarily mean people who do not believe in Jesus are damned, rather it means that Jesus is our only way home to God and everyone who will be in heaven will be there through the work of Jesus Christ.
Last Sunday, Deacon Dan and Deacon Jim did a good job looking at the half-truth that you do not need the Church to have a relationship with God and be a good person. While our faith must have a personal dimension, it cannot be an entirely private affair. We need the Church as a place in which we can serve others and discover our spiritual gifts. We need the Church to be encouraged and supported by other people’s faith. And we need the Church because it is a visible sign of God’s vision to draw all people and all nations to Himself.
Today we are going to explore the half-truth that all religions are the same, deep down. My friends Wayne and Diane expressed this half-truth when they got married; Wayne was a Catholic, and Diane was a Methodist, so they both agreed to become Episcopalians, which they through was somewhere “in the middle,” since all religions are basically the same.
It is true that all religions struggle with and attempt to answer the same questions: where did we come from? Where are we going? What is the meaning of life? Does God exist, and if He does, what is He like? A common definition of what religion is is that it is a set of beliefs that attempt to explain what life is all about, who we are, and what are the most important things for us to do.
However, not all religions are the same because they answer these questions in very different ways. One of the biggest problems with this half-truth is that it does not allow us to engage in real dialogue with others who have different beliefs. It is OK to disagree with others. Relationships do not depend on agreeing on everything, but if we gloss over the differences then real conversation and dialogue will not take place. This leads to a lack of authenticity, which then causes distrust to set in.
Another problem with saying that all religions are the same is that it makes us think that there are no real answers to those really deep questions. So then we stop pondering them, and we start to look for meaning in other things, things that are finite and can never really satisfy our deepest desires.
The full truth is that while all religions wrestle with the same questions, they do not come to the same answers. Yet, there is only one answer to the deep questions. The most basic question that religions ask are about God.
Some religions say that you cannot know anything about God. While they accept that God exists, they say that we cannot have any relationship with God.
Then there are those that say there is no supernatural reality, that there is no God, only the natural world and human based ethics. This isn’t just atheism, but includes Unitarianism, Confucianism, and secular humanism.
Some religions say that there are many gods. Others say that there is only one God; like Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, but they can have very different conceptions about what that means. Judaism and Christianity says that God can be known in a personal way, whereas Islam says that is impossible.
There is no way I can discuss all the “big questions” in one homily, so let me just focus on how does our Catholic faith answer the question, “who is God?” Simply we believe that there is one God and three divine persons; at the very heart of our belief is that God is a community of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All three divine persons are eternal, with distinct personalities, but only one nature. This is what we call the Mystery of the Trinity. A mystery is a truth that we cannot fully comprehend or understand, and the Trinity is the most complicated teaching of our faith.
Like St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, I find the best analogy for understanding the Trinity is the human family; but keep in mind, like all analogies, it is going to be an imperfect example. In the human family, as God intended it to be, there is a husband, who loves his wife completely, giving all that he is (and not just what he has) as a selfless gift of love to his wife. The wife accepts all that her husband gives her, rejecting none of it, and in equal act of selfless, self-giving love gives all that she is to her husband, who accepts all of her, rejecting nothing. As the case may be, often this mutual self-giving love of the husband and wife results in the conception of a child, the fruit of their love.
The Trinity can be discussed in a similar way. God the Father gives Himself totally in love to God the Son. God the Son accepts all from God the Father, and gives Himself totally in love to God the Father. This mutual exchange of divine love “conceives” the Holy Spirit, the love by which God loves Himself. This mutual giving and receiving of love has no beginning and no end. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each center on the other and adore each other and serve each other. In glorifying and serving each other, there is infinite joy.
This makes love the highest purpose. If God were not a Trinity, then love would not be the highest value because it would not be the nature of God. For God to love, He must have an object to love. If God exists but is only one person and not three, there was a time when God was not love because God did not have anyone to love. Love can only exist in a relationship.
Because God is Trinity, because His essence is a community of mutually self-giving love, when we encounter self-centeredness in others it drives us crazy; and we drive others crazy by our self-centeredness. We were made in the image and likeness of God, so we are suppose to live as a community of mutually self-giving love with each other. Sadly, as we know, we messed that up. Our first parents chose to be self-centered rather than loving God, and we have been making the same mistake ever since.
God could have left us in that fallen, messed up state, but out of love He chose to save us. He sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to show us what it means to truly love God and love others. Jesus showed us that by going to the Cross. Jesus did not want to leave us alone after His ascension, so He sent the Holy Spirit into the world to guide us and strengthen us in times of trial.
To really enter into this reality, we must live it. So here is my question for each of us this week: what do you need to do to stop being self-centered and love God and love others? Each of us probably already had an answer as soon as I finished the question. What do we do to make our lives just about us? Tomorrow, just tomorrow to start, would we be willing to put that self-centered thing aside? Maybe we are the one who always has to have the remote; give it up for one day, and let someone else control the TV. Maybe we could volunteer to cook dinner, or to do the dishes, without being asked. Whatever it might be, just for tomorrow, let us work on our self-centeredness and be other centered so we can enter into the love of the Trinity.