E-mail a friendRev. Peter Gomes
original airdate December 14, 2007
Rev. Peter Gomes has been hailed as one of America's most eloquent spokespersons for social justice and progressive religion. Ordained as a Baptist minister, he's served at Harvard University's Memorial Church since '70. He's also a best-selling author of such books as Sermons and, his latest, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. In '91, Gomes shook up the university and the church when he revealed that he was gay. He has since become an advocate for wider acceptance of homosexuality in U.S. society.
Rev. Peter Gomes
Tavis: The Reverend Peter Gomes, his long-time ministry and professor at Harvard's Memorial Church which this year is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary. He is also a best-selling author whose previous books include "The New York Times" bestseller, "The Good Book". His latest is called "The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?" Reverend Gomes, I'm delighted to have you here in Los Angeles for a change.
Rev. Peter Gomes: Very nice to be with you again. Thank you for having me.
Tavis: It's good to see you again. Now my momma is watching right now, so we'd better explain this title real fast before she starts calling on Jesus and speaking in tongues and rebuking you and me real fast (laughter).
Gomes: No, she has nothing to worry about. The scandal is that Jesus has always told us important things and we have not paid attention. So the scandal is our neglect of what Jesus has had to say. My whole mission here is to say, "Let's stop talking about Jesus and let's start talking about what Jesus talked about." That's the whole point.
Tavis: What is the distinction between talking about Jesus and talking about what Jesus talked about?
Gomes: When we talk about Jesus, we say, "Is He divine? Is He human? Was he born of a virgin? Did He do this that and the other?" When we start looking at what he actually talked about, "You're supposed to love one another. You are supposed to turn the other cheek", you're supposed to do all that stuff in the Beatitudes and that's what Jesus was talking about.
He never talked about himself. We spend most of our time talking about Him and too little time dealing with that He himself came to talk about. So I'm urging people to look at the content of Jesus' message and then we might see some difference in the world.
Tavis: I want to ask you why it is that you think we do that, how it is that we got to this place of talking about Him as opposed to what He said do.
Before I do that, though, one of the things in the book that most turned me on - I just loved it - was when you talked about these wristbands, these wristbands that everybody was wearing a few years ago and many people are still wearing them, "WWJD." I know some people watching right now probably have them on. "WWJD," What Would Jesus Do? You argue in the book that that ain't the question, what would Jesus do? The question is -
Gomes: What would Jesus have me do?
Tavis: There you go.
Gomes: I think there's a big difference. Jesus can walk on water; He can turn that same water into wine; He can do all sorts of things. That's not the issue. The issue is what can you do? What would Jesus want you to do with your talent, your time, your treasure, your opportunity? That's a much harder question and that's the one we should be asking.
Tavis: You're much smarter and much deeper than I am, but when I saw those wristbands, the very reason why I chose - personally, just Tavis, I'm a Christian - but the very reason why I chose not to wear one is because I said to myself, "Ain't nothing Jesus did that I could do. I couldn't walk on water. I couldn't turn no water into wine." Actually, what would Jesus do, I couldn't do anyway. The question's got to be about me. I couldn't do nothing He did.
Gomes: Jesus could do everything. He's the Son of God, second in the Trinity. Of course, He can. What about me? What about you? What about the average person in the pew in the church? Do we have talents that should be called upon? Do we have resources that we should exercise?
My great challenge has been that we should live our lives as fully and in the time that we have as Jesus lived His life. We shouldn't live Jesus' life. We should live our life. That's what I mean when I say it's not what would Jesus do. That's interesting and that's all there. It's what would He have me do? That's where you get down to cases.
Tavis: Now back to that earlier point I said I wanted to get to, the earlier question at least. How did we get to this place where we started to and have obviously become more comfortable talking about Jesus rather than what Jesus would have us do?
Gomes: You have it in the word "comfortable". It is comforting and comfortable to talk about Jesus, how He was born, what He did, where He lived and so on and so forth, what are His attributes and qualities. But if we look at what He said, we will find that what He said by and large disturbed and challenged the status quo wherever he was.
He was a man for the future. He was not prepared to either celebrate some romantic past or some quiescent moment. He was talking about things that had to change and he spoke to ordinary people and He disturbed them, which is why they ended up crucifying him. So we find it easier to talk about Jesus than to take seriously what He said.
We've domesticated Him, turned Him into a theological poodle, and that is the scandal, it seems to me. That's the terrible thing that we have done. Look at what He says, what He asks, what He requires, and then you'll see that He came as a disturber of the people and we should be so thrilled to be so disturbed.
Tavis: What does Peter Gomes, then, think about so many people, certainly many of these televangelists certainly not talking about what Jesus would have us do, not even talking about Jesus, but talking about this Prosperity Gospel? I was at the A.A.R., I told you, just a week or so ago, the American Academy of Religion, and heard James Cone, the brilliant theologian at Union, give a wonderful, wonderful talk on this.
I said that I can't wait now to hear what Gomes has to say about this Prosperity Gospel that so many of these televangelists, many of them now under investigation (laughter), have been preaching.
Gomes: Well, I've always worried about the Prosperity Gospel because it has caused people to invest in the very things that Jesus said would pass away. We are not investing in the things that last. We're investing in the things that seem to give immediate comfort, pleasure and satisfaction. Joe Blow has more than we have; the Gospel is that we want as much as Joe Blow has, let me have it, Lord. That's the Gospel.
That is not what Jesus said. That is not what Jesus taught. What Jesus taught and spent more time talking about was giving rather than getting. More time was spent talking about sharing rather than hoarding up. Trying to replicate in our culture the corrupt and the corrosive, mendacious culture of acquisition which is, by and large, the western way of doing things, is exactly the wrong direction in which to go. It is anti-Gospel.
Tavis: Let me ask what my mother might regard, for the moment at least, until you clean this up and get me out of this mess, as a scandalous question. That is whether or not the Good News is enough.
I ask that against the backdrop that we live in a world that is gripped by fear. We live in a world where people are asking all kinds of questions about whether or not, if there is a God, He or She could allow X, Y or Z to happen. Is the Good News enough?
Gomes: The Good News is all there is. It has to be enough. The Good News gives us hope. The Good News gives us stability in the face of all sorts of turmoil. It gives us serenity in the face of anxiety.
The Good News allows us not to be driven by our fears and anxieties, which is what we are as a culture at the moment, driven by our fears and our anxieties. The Good News says, "Look, God is in this for the long haul. God is interested in you and in me as we are. God wants us to become the people God meant us to be at creation."
The reason that all these atheist friends of ours are so upset is that there are still so many millions of people who still believe the Good News. Every time a church is filled on Sunday morning, these guys go out and write another book. "How can this be?", they say.
Well, the reason it can be is that there has not yet been developed by anybody a better way for satisfying the fundamental human need for being affirmed, accepted, recognized and giving us cause for hope for tomorrow. Nobody has yet been able to either do away with that need or come up with a substitute for the Gospel.
Tavis: As those who watch this program on a regular basis know, I often find myself in various conversations talking about that "L" word, love. It finds its way into any number of conversations because I believe still that love is the most powerful and transformative force in the world today. That's my own belief, so it seeps into these conversations from time to time.
You talk rather boldly in the text about love and, if there's anything that the Good News is about, if there's anything that Jesus is trying to get across to us, if there's anything that Jesus would have us do, to your earlier point, it is to love. I'm still trying to figure out, and I don't mean to be naïve in asking this question, why it is that that is the most difficult lesson there is to learn and why we don't better practice that?
Gomes: Love makes us vulnerable and, when you're fearful, you don't want to be vulnerable. Love says, "I'm going to accept you as you are and give you everything that I have." It doesn't say, "And you have to do the same thing for me." The worst thing that can happen to somebody who truly loves is to offer that love and have it rejected.
We all know what that was like. You have the girl on the date, you're ready, you kiss her and she won't kiss you back. That is total rejection. So we are prepared to protect ourselves against that rejection.
We find it hard to believe that God says, "I love you. I love you as you are" because you know who you are and you are not worth loving, from your own point of view. We all suffer from low self-esteem. I had a student who said, "It's all right to talk about loving my neighbor, but you don't know my neighbor. My neighbor is thoroughly unlovable, thoroughly unlovely. Why should I love that so and so?"
Tavis: (Laughter) Yeah.
Gomes: And God, who knows us better than my friend knows his own neighbor, loves us unconditionally. That is the Good News. That's the Gospel that is exciting. If God can love us, God knowing all there is about us, who are we not to love those whom God loves, which is everybody. That's the message. That's the Good News.
I sometimes think it should be more difficult. It should be more complicated. It should be more sophisticated. You must love seven times seventy people five days a week and every other Monday. There should be some kind of formula that makes it difficult. No. God says, "I love you as you are. You are my child. I created you."
Tavis: Do you think we get tripped up by the simplicity?
Gomes: I do, I do. I was brought up in the school that, if it didn't smell bad, hurt and taste bad, it wasn't good for you, sort of the Robitussin school of medical knowledge (laughter). I think that somehow we cannot believe it. We cannot accept that we are accepted. Until we accept that we are accepted by God, we cannot accept others.
We close the door because we don't really trust ourselves and we don't really trust God. Jesus comes to tell us this is a trustworthy relationship. "You can trust the Father. He has sent me. I love you. You should love me. You should love yourself. You should love one another."
Love your neighbor as yourself is the great commandment. If we could only understand it. We've heard it over and over and over again. There's no excuse for our not knowing this. If we could only take it into ourselves and act upon it with regard to others, it would be an extraordinarily different world than the one we're in right now.
Tavis: Let me close by asking why, as evidenced by the text, you remain hopeful that the Good News will ultimately prevail? Because I can sit here if I wanted to for the sake of argument, as you well know, and give you a long list of reasons, stack up the evidence against you and make it real difficult for you.
Gomes: Oh, I know those reasons. I know those arguments. I remember one of my favorite aphorisms from under-graduate days in college where G.K. Justin was famous for saying, "Christianity is not a religion that has been tried and found wanting. It is a religion that has been wanted and never really tried."
I would love to see the day when we would be prepared to try living out what we know to be our better nature, what we understand in our hearts to be our ideal image as created in God's image. I know we want to be better than we are. I know we want a world better than the one we have. I know we want to do better things than the things we seem trapped into doing. If we only had the courage to try that, it would be an amazing phenomenon.
I remain hopeful that there are enough people who will look at themselves in the mirror and say, "I do not want to be this person. I want to become somebody else. I want to be the person God meant me." As long as there are people who think that way, I remain hopeful. I remain hopeful because I'm that way. I look at myself and I say, "Gomes, I want to be what God meant me to be."
I've done some interesting things and they've been fun and sometimes even productive, but I believe my best days are ahead of me. I believe that God is not finished with me. Extraordinary things to happen, and I can't wait to find out what they're going to be. That's why religion will never die.
Tavis: One of the most brilliant religious scholars in all the world. Harvard has been blessed to have him for so many years. His name, of course, Peter J. Gomes. The new book by Dr. Gomes, "The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News." Peter Gomes, always a blessing to see you.
Gomes: Thank you for having me. My pleasure.
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