NRS John 14:1
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going." 5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" 6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
8 Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. 12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

This is a picture of Muslim men in ritual prayer, known as Salah. Prayer is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and the Qu'ran commands that Muslims humble themselves before God five times a day in gratitude and worship.

This is a picture of a Buddhist monk meditating. Buddhists practice meditation as a way of preparing the mind to see truly and attain release from all suffering.

This is a picture of Hindus, many from India and Nepal, gathered on the banks of the Brahmaputra River. They believe those waters to be sacred and they go there to be cleansed of their sins.

This is a picture of Orthodox Jews at the Western Wall, the last stones still standing from the Jerusalem Temple destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago. They come to grieve the Temple's loss and to offer prayer as near as they can possibly get to the space once called the "Holy of Holies."

So here's the billion dollar question: What's God going to do with all these people? In round numbers, there are, in the world right now, something like 1.5 billion Muslims, 800 million Hindus, 400 million Buddhists, 14 million Jews. That doesn't include the roughly 1 billion people who practice various indigenous and traditional religions and another billion who don't claim any religion at all. As members of the world's 2 billion+ Christian community, we believe that God has a plan for us, but what's God's plan for the other two-thirds of the people with whom we share this planet?

In today's Gospel Jesus proclaims that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through him. Does that mean that only Christians go to heaven, and that everybody else is barking up the wrong tree? Does God even hear the prayers of people who do not invoke him in the name of Jesus?

[Feel free to say, "Good questions, Pastor!"]

You're darn tootin' they're good questions, and they're not just academic, either. In just our lifetimes America has become much, much more religiously diverse. Did you know there's a Hindu temple in Navasota? A Buddhist temple in Waller? It's not uncommon for a son or daughter, a grandson or granddaughter to come home with a future husband or wife who's Muslim, or Jewish, or very often, nothing at all. You might think, "Oh, that would never happen in my family," but it is happening in lots of families, maybe someday even yours. And that colors the way we think about God's plan for the world's 4.5 billion non-Christians. When the question comes to focus not just on Jews, Muslims, or Hindus in general, but rather, on our Jewish son-in-law, or our Muslim neighbor, or our Hindu business partner, things move quickly from the very abstract to the very personal.

The words of Jesus, "No one comes to the Father except through me," do not mean that only Christians have a relationship with God. There's not a human being alive with whom God does not have a relationship. Apart from the love, mercy, and sustaining grace of our Creator God, nothing would exist, including every child of earth. The question is: What kind of relationship, with what kind of God?

Notice that Jesus does not say "No one comes to God except through me," but instead, "No one comes to the Father except through me." If you're thinking, "What's the difference," that's because we often use God and Father as interchangeable terms, as though they mean the same thing. But that's not true in the Gospel of John. In John, Father, like Son, is a relational word, and both Father and Son stand for that unique relationship of Jesus to God and God to Jesus. That relationship is one-of-a-kind for the unqualified unity between the Son Jesus and his Father God, a relationship characterized by absolute trust, complete intimacy, and total transparency. That's what Jesus is getting at when later in today's Gospel he tells Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Now here's the kicker: Jesus proclaims that when in faith we confess him the Son and embrace him as Lord, we enter into the same relationship with the Father as he enjoys as the Son.

For last week's youth-led service, the kids had plastered to the front of our entrance area Jesus' words, "I am the door." Well, the door to what? The door to heaven? The door to the community of faith? Yes, but much more immediately, Jesus is the door through whom we enter now into a relationship with God as sons and daughters of the same heavenly Father Jesus knew, loved, and prayed to as "Abba," "Daddy." That relationship is, of course, eternal and such that not even death can touch it, but it begins now through Jesus. And this is salvation: To know God, body and soul, heart and mind, as Jesus knows the Father in the splendor of God's eternal kingdom. God's will for every beating heart and every living soul is to know him in the same way, truth, and life that Jesus embodied.

So let's go back to the some of the questions we started with.
" Does God turn a deaf ear to the prayers of people of who do not call on him in the name of Jesus? I certainly hope not. The Father God we know in Jesus would not, I think, tune out the cries and pleas of God's own creation.
" Do we Christians alone have a monopoly on religious truth? That, too, is, I think, pretty dubious. There's much we can learn from Muslim devotion, Buddhist compassion, Jewish righteousness, and Hindu reverence for life.
" Is God working in and with the world's other religions? God is working everywhere in everything, even among the people who call themselves pagans or atheists, so yes. God is, I think, working through the Dalai Lama's appeals for the people of Tibet, just as God is working in the Pope's supplications for the poor, weak, and vulnerable in our own society.
" So what's unique or special about Christianity? Jesus! [Duh!] Jesus is what makes Christianity what it is; not our moral superiority or our superior insight, but Jesus. And what we proclaim in Jesus is the door, the way, the truth that leads to a relationship with God that is simply unavailable except through Jesus.

Our Christian mission to the world is not to destroy the world's other religions or make everybody look, believe, act, and worship like we do. That crusader mentality has often done great harm to the cause of Christ. Rather, our calling is to invite others to step with us through the door that is Jesus into the same fellowship as the Son shares with the Father. Of course, that invitation is a lot more convincing when we ourselves have stepped through the door. In church we sometimes devote a lot of energy to praising the door, or polishing the door, or putting lights on the door, but then forget what the door is really for. We can't expect others to pay much attention when we call them to come to the Father through Jesus, if we don't call to them out of our own lived experience of knowing the Father in shared faith, corporate worship, and personal devotion to Jesu. It's out of such lived belief that we can say to our Muslim neighbor or to our atheist office mate what the disciple Philip once said to doubting Nathanael: "Come and see."

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.