Interfaith Evangelism.  Two words, which, when put together, can almost guarantee to send shivers down the spine and send normally calm people clawing to reach the exit.  In fact, I salute everyone brave enough to be here this morning. 

 

Evangelism has a bad reputation.  What’s worse, I fear that reputation is well deserved.  Nor is this a recent phenomenon. 

 

A hundred and one years ago, Ambrose Bierce published what he called “The Devil’s Dictionary,” where he poked fun at virtually everybody and everything.  He defined evangelist this way:

 

“EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.” 

 

Notice he did not say Christian evangelist, or for that matter, Jewish, Muslim, First Peoples, or Atheist evangelist.

 

Evangelists today, as we think of them, frequently seem to us to be much too eager to tell us why they know the answer and we don’t.  They know what God wants and we don’t.  They know who God is and we don’t.  But, heaven be praised, it is our lucky day, for they’re going to enlighten us with the truth.  The one and only truth.  By odd coincidence, their truth.

 

For me what makes evangelism potentially so toxic is something we’ve talked about now for the past three months: right belief.  If I’m evangelizing in this way, I’m no longer exchanging thoughts and ideas.  I’m telling you the truth and if you don’t believe it you’re at best spiritually misguided, quite possibly evil and most certainly damned.  So there!

 

And if that’s our definition of evangelism, then no wonder we shudder and draw back from it.  But I wonder, are we aware that the word evangelist comes from the Greek: meaning solely a bringer of good news.  It doesn’t mean demagogue.  It doesn’t mean self-righteous.  And it certainly doesn’t mean holier than thou.

 

So I’d like to try to take the word back from those who are demagogues, who are self-righteous, who are holier than thou.  I’d like to talk about taking some good news from within these walls to outside these walls.  That we don’t have to hate each other because our beliefs are different.  That we can respect our differences.  That not only need we not fear our differences, we can indeed be enriched by them.  I have been enriched by my fellow ministers here: by Debra, by Karen, by Jamal.  I have been enriched as well by members and friends of the Interfaith Community Church.  By Wendi, by Dan, by Linda, by Chris, by Sally Jo and I’ll stop naming names because so many here have shared who they are and where they are.  And I am the better for it.

 

Interfaith is such an incredible and powerful force, for gentleness, for respect, for growth, for peace.  If it’s a revolutionary idea… it’s a peaceful revolution.  We can live together.  We can treat each other with respect.  I can affirm who I am … without putting down who you are.

 

Earlier the choir sang, “Come, Come, Whoever You Are.”  It’s from a poem by the Islamic poet Rumi and is a hallmark of who we are at the Interfaith Community Church.  You are indeed welcome, whoever you are.  As a prelude the choir sang “Bring Many Names” by Brian Wren, a Christian hymn writer, who spoke to the differing ways we might name God, without trying to say that one is “right” and the others “wrong.”  This too is a hallmark of who we are.

 

And all that I am attempting to say when I urge Interfaith Evangelism is that we share with others this incredible gift that we here have here… the incredible gift, that I sometimes fear, we don’t fully appreciate, even amongst ourselves.

 

So how do we do it?  How do we share this gift of affirmation and of love, while truly respecting the person we talk to and the spiritual path that person may walk?  How do we speak openly and enthusiastically of our dynamic faith while truly respecting the faith of another?  How, to use the language of the First People’s value we seek to instill in ourselves this month, how do we approach evangelism as a moral, caring, person: a virtuous person?

 

To be virtuous in the essence of the word is to be righteous.  But, perhaps contrary to popular opinion, there is a difference, and I think a vast difference, between righteous and self-righteous.  For me, at its simplest, to be righteous, a person of virtue, is to attempt to lead a moral life.  To be self-righteous is to proclaim to the world that your way is the only way, the one true way.  Self-righteousness is at the heart of right belief.

 

So, as virtuous people, as people who would be righteous but not self-righteous, how can we approach Interfaith Evangelism?  I’d like to offer an analogy.

 

You meet a couple.  You invite them to your house for dinner.  Why?  Let’s pause and meditate on this a moment.  I’m serious.  Why would you invite a couple you’ve met  to your house to share a meal?  Let’s think about it … mentally…and come up with a list.

 

I wonder if convincing them that your house is better than their house came to mind?  Anybody?  I wonder if showing them how perfect your roof is, so that they will go home  and put an identical roof on their house came to mind?  Hands?  I wonder if showing them the perfection of how your house is organized and how they could learn from it came to mind?

 

Or did you perhaps like this couple and think that it might be nice to share a meal, to get to know them better and for them to get to know you better.   Maybe you’ll become friends.  Maybe not.  Maybe you have a lot in common.  Maybe not.  But you’ll have the joy of getting to know them, and them getting to know you … just a little bit better.  And particularly if they are new to the neighborhood…it’s a friendly thing to do, isn’t it?

 

This is our spiritual home.  I would encourage all of us to invite our neighbors.  Our friends.  People we know.  People we might like to know better.  NOT to lay on them that our house is better than theirs, or that our roof is perfect and they should imitate it.  But in the spirit of sharing, the spirit of friendship. 

 

It sounds easy, but I know it’s hard.  As you know I’m a Unitarian Universalist.  I’ve been the choir director at the UU church in Marysville for seven years.  We have here much in common with that congregation.  And I know that getting a UU to invite a friend to come and visit on a Sunday morning seems more painful than pulling teeth.  Heck, I can’t even get members of the choir to invite friends to come to a choir concert.  Why?  Because somehow, in some way it might be considered Evgs.

 

Evgs?

 

Evgs is what you get when you turn evangelism into a four letter word.

 

I don’t ask, I would never ask, that we go out into the world to convince others that they are wrong and we are right.  For one thing, I don’t believe it.  I have, as an example, a Unitarian Universalist friend who, when I told her of how I see Interfaith ministry, freely confessed she couldn’t go there.  And that’s ok.  It’s more than ok.  She’s on a path that is right for her, and it is a path centered on love and caring.

 

No, we should not go out into the world to convince others that they are wrong and we are right.  But we should, indeed I believe we have the obligation to go out beyond these four walls to evangelize… to spread some good news.  In a world of mistrust and hate and sectarian violence, there is another way.  It is not the only way, but it is a good way for us to learn to respect each other, to live with each other.

 

To remember that we are not all the same.  We’re not.  We’re different.  Each and every one of us is different.  And our beliefs are different too. 

 

But different does not mean wrong.  And different does not have to mean threatening.  And we, here, can form a covenant of caring that can and will transcend our differences.  And we have an obligation to spread that good news.

 

We have a world in hurt.  But it does not have to be that way.  We have a world where we continually divide ourselves behind high, thick, hateful walls, walls between our cultures, walls between what are called races and walls between our religious beliefs.  And it doesn’t have to be that way.

 

We cannot force the world to change.  But we can and should invite the world to change, and we can model one possible way it might change, and we can share that model with others.  But that, dear friends, means moving beyond these four walls.

 

It means inviting friends to our spiritual home.

 

It means speaking, with love and respect for the other, about what we have here.  It means spreading the word … and I would ask us to ponder: how intentional are we about spreading the news about what happens here? 

 

It means as well being intentional about welcoming new members … how intentional are we about welcoming new faces … how intentional are we about welcoming new faces when they walk in the door? 

 

And it means committing ourselves, committing to building upon what we have here. 

 

One of the truths about Interfaith Evangelism is that it will take work.  So, how deeply do we believe in Interfaith?  NOT how far will we go to push the rightness of what we believe into someone else’s face.  That’s the kind of evangelism we want to leave behind … may it rest in peace.  But are we willing to invite guests into our spiritual home?  Are we willing to share with intention what we have?  But again, what will we share?

 

One of the things needed to be a good evangelist is to be able  to articulate what Interfaith means.  I hope that in some small way this series of services has helped.

 

Next month will be the last in this series, “The Gift of Living Interfaith.”  The title will simply be, “Living Interfaith.”  I would invite you to invite friends.  I would invite you to share.

 

Let us pray.