Treasuring the treasure: an interfaith journey

I want to begin (1) with a story, "Whose Treasures? Whose Voices?" written by Catherine Sepko, about growing up in Appalachia and then leaving as an older adult. "I was taught," she wrote after she had left Appalachia, "that I should rid myself of my Appalachian dialect and accent in order to succeed in the real world.... [In doing so] I apparently lost a part of my own cultural identity--an identity that I am not certain, as a young Appalachian, I even knew I had." (2) Sepko writes about her search and the joy of rediscovering her Appalachian identity. She refers to the poetry of Robert Morgan, a professor of English at Cornell University, who grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Zirconia, North Carolina:

The reader often finds in Morgan's poetry the image of water struggling
to burst into the light from the dark, bubbling to the surface from the
place where it had been forced to run underground. When the conditions
are right, it bubbles up, much like freshwater issued from a newly
cleaned artesian spring.... Having cleaned out a spring on my family's
property for numerous years, I knew the imagery. Suddenly, I wanted to
go home to drink anew from my own spring, now long since neglected, its
cool, refreshing water replaced by the modern tap water, which often
tasted artificial and chemically cleansed. Before I knew it, the water
of creative emotion was bubbling through me.

With this image in mind, I begin the conversation about my own journey by raising three preliminary questions: What is the treasure we claim, and is it authentic? Whose is it? To whose voices do we listen?

What is the treasure we claim, and is it authentic?

Sometimes on my interfaith journey, dialogue partners have asked whether the gospel we are sharing is indeed the gospel intended by Jesus. I have always wanted to answer Yes, of course it is!--but I have to acknowledge that it is a legitimate question. When St. Paul said we have this "treasure" in earthen vessels (2 Cor 4:7), what exactly did he mean? What was that treasure, and is it indeed the same treasure we now claim to possess?

In a fascinating article, "Christian Response to Religious Pluralism," (3) Lars Thunberg argues convincingly that from very early times Christians felt a need to legitimate the claims of Christianity in relation to both its Jewish background and its appearance as a distinct religion containing a revelation of truth relevant under all circumstances, so that the church as it moved forward and outward could feel confident that the gospel it was proclaiming was authentically consistent with the authorized past--that it had roots deeply embedded in the Hebrew tradition and scriptures and so was genuine.

There were many ways of doing this. One example is that of Eusebius, who, Thunberg claims, presents "a static view of Christianity.... His reading of history authenticates Christianity as basically age-old and unchangeable. This took on a doctrinal meaning in Christianity for a very long time." Orthodoxy was considered to be something static, while innovation was heresy.

Few of us, I presume, would any longer want to say that authentic Christianity is static and that all innovation is heresy, as though Christianity were a package neatly wrapped that just needs to be handed down. I think we have moved beyond that. But there is, I suspect, a genuine

desire to believe that the treasure we claim to have, the gospel we want to share, is legitimate and authentic, at least not totally other than the treasure of which Paul was speaking.

So I propose that we ponder this question as we think about our witness in the garden: What is the treasure we want to share, and how authentic is it, how biblical, how true to the Christ event? In our attempt to become "relevant," to "succeed in the real world," has the church compromised or even lost its identity? Has the gospel been hijacked to serve one or another particular ideology? Is there, anymore, what we used to call a "normative gospel"? If so, what is it, and is such a gospel still desirable? Have hybrids become the rule rather than the exception? Have divergence, diversity, and crossbreeding now become the norm--and rightly so?

In answering it is well to keep in mind Paul's warning that hawking or taming or tailoring the gospel has a long history (cf. Gal 1:6, 7). We need to keep in mind as well the warning of Jesus to his own religious leaders, to the hypocrites of his day: "you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves" (Matt 23:15). These are strong words but important admonitions as we think about what the gospel is for the times in which we live.

Whose treasure is it?

This question is frequently raised in dialogue with people of other faiths. Does God's gift of Jesus belong only to you who are Christians? I've been tempted to say no but then quickly add, yes, this is our gift, because we've laid claim to it, we defend it, we proclaim and protect it; Jesus is our life.