WHOSE GOD DO WE REALLY BELIEVE IN?

At the base of Federal Hill near Baltimore's Inner Harbor sits a museum. Originally an industrial building, now restored to critical acclaim, its three stories are shaped like an ellipse. The central stair balustrade, it is said, is worth the price of admission. New architecture has extended the interior to six galleries, filled these days with folk art exploring a theme: "All Faiths Beautiful."

This one-of-a-kind exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum is about many faiths and no faith (Atheism). When it comes to the art one finds in this museum of vision, seeing really is believing. For me, it was an eye-feast. I could scarcely take in all those beautiful expressions of faith. Evidence of many faiths is everywhere, but there is also plenty of un-faith on view.

Perhaps the most striking display of faith/no-faith is revealed just past the reception area. As I entered the exhibit, there were postcards - down the hall, on the walls, up the stairs. These cards are sacramental signs of a fascinating new venture called PostSecret. Here's how it works: people mail a homemade postcard with a secret, hidden truth they are willing to reveal - anonymously written on their card. The cards are then posted on a website, in several books and now, at this exhibit. In the four years since this ongoing community art project began, people have mailed tens of thousands of postcards.

Marylander Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret and known as "the most trusted stranger in America," says, "I've been astonished by the creativity, the frailty and the heroism I see in ordinary people like you and me, living their everyday lives." As I stopped to read dozens of secrets about belief and unbelief, I found that some of them were almost too much to bear. Many were worth the price of admission. Here are a few "post secret" examples:

• "I know (God) exists because I still feel (God) in my veins."
• "Forgiving myself is proving to be nearly impossible."
• "My Bible is dusty."
• "While others pray at church, I bow my head and think about the TV programs I plan on watching."
• "I'm a Christian lesbian. Does God still love me?"
• "Where has my faith gone? Sometimes I'm afraid science is going to explain it all away."
• "I tried for so long to believe in their God."
• It's that last one that really hooked me. "I tried for so long to believe in their God." It sounds like the writer is saying, I wanted to believe in God. I really did. It's just that their God isn't the God I need. That's not the God I'm looking for.

Today's gospel account is the beginning of what is called Jesus' farewell discourse. Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples. This theme of goodbye in the midst of Easter's hello keeps popping up, like a spring flower poking its head above ground. Today, similar to our gospel accounts over the past several Sundays of Eastertide, Jesus knows there will be grief when he leaves. He will go to God. He will no longer be someone to go to, no longer someone with whom friends can walk and talk.

Jesus is making the most of these last moments with his disciples, trying once more to explain. Don't be troubled, he says. I'm preparing a place for you. Someday you will live with me in God's house. You remember. You know the way! No, we don't! says Philip. We're so lost. We've lost our faith. We've lost our way. Jesus, show us the way! It makes me wonder what "post secret" Philip might write.

Then Jesus utters the words that have become a catalyst for both inspiration and consternation, words that lead to faith and to unfaith. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." This metaphor has been called both "the high point of (Christian) theology" and "a weapon with which to bludgeon one's opponents into theological submission…a litmus test for Christian faith…the rallying cry of Christian triumphalism, proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that people of all other faiths are…condemned." For many it has become a view of Jesus that is "exclusionary and narrow-minded" (New Interpreter's Bible, 743).

What are we to think about this claim Jesus makes about himself? Here's what I think: Jesus is not talking about someone else's God. Jesus is talking about his God, his people, himself. Jesus is talking about my God and your God. The question is: whose God is that? Whose God do we really believe in?

Over the years, it is the God of the Jews in whom, more and more, I have come to believe. Over the years, Jesus, This Hebrew Lord, as he has been called, has become more and more my Way, my Truth, my Life. Yet Jesus was not the Way for the matriarchs and patriarchs of the Hebrew faith. And we wonder: are they "saved"? Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebekah; Jacob, Rachel and Leah; Moses, Aaron, their sister Miriam; Amos, Ruth - how can I say they are not in heaven with the saints? Who am I to judge? Who am I to say whom God loves?

Perhaps I would not feel such love for the Jewish Jesus and kinship with that faith tradition were it not for my wonderful Jewish friends. Alan the astrophysicist and novelist. Meir and Tara, the husband and wife rabbis. Tara is also an environmentalist who preaches with the passion of a Baptist. When I heard her sermon on the creation story in Genesis, when she told her story of hauling her family compost in her car with her to work each day, so that she could put it in the compost heap at Temple Israel, she challenged me - and I was changed. My Jewish friend taught me things about caring for God's creation - little things, done with great love; little things I still do for our earth to this day.

I believe the one thing all faiths have in common is this: they are all about love and compassion. Religious leaders, at our best, are about love and compassion, too. The compassion of rabbis. The love of imams. The love and compassion of pastors, priests and popes. The compassion of all beautiful faiths. The love of all God's beloved people, God's beautiful people.

Jelaluddin Rumi, born 800 years ago last year, was a love-filled Persian poet and a religious mystic, a member of an Islamic group called Sufis, often known as the "whirling dervishes." Today Rumi has become the number one best-selling poet in both Europe and the United States. The American Visionary Art Museum quotes Rumi more than any other source of religious wisdom.

This is the Rumi poem that greeted me as I began my museum tour:

All these religions.
All this singing.
One song.
The differences are just vanity.
The sun's light looks
a little different on this wall
than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one.
But it is still one light.

Rumi the Sufi was right. Tara the Rabbi is right. Through all the beautiful faiths of the world, God sings one song. God reveals one light. It is the song of love, the light of compassion. And Jesus, our loving, compassionate Jesus invites us to join in God's song. It is a song that reminds us that Jesus is still our Way, our Truth, our Life. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, remains the Love and the Light of our world. The question is: whose God do we really believe in?