Lord of all power and might, the
author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name;
increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in
us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.
“But take care and watch yourselves closely,
so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them
slip from your mind all the days of your life.” Moses says that to the Hebrew people
in his farewell speech. And it sounds awfully important, “never forget these
things.” But what things is he talking about?
If
you’ll think back to your studies of the Old Testament, recall that God first
appears to Abram and calls him to move to a new land. From that time forward,
through a name change to Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, and through
Moses, God is revealing what we might call true religion. In the Epistle from
James we find a discussion about living the true religion. And Jesus’
interaction with the Scribes and Pharisees centers on the intention of true religion.
So I pose the question- what is true religion?
In
most circles, those are fighting words.
Christianity has a history of fights over true religion. Whether the
debates are around the divinity of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, access
to Communion, or translations of the Bible, we Christians know how to have a
good fight. And it continues today. Would Jesus vote Obama or Romney? What
would Jesus say about abortion? Gun control? War? Universal healthcare? Tax
reform? The pundits like to talk about the importance of swing votes and how
candidates will fight over them. But no one fights harder than they do for
Jesus’ vote. We all want to be a stakeholder in the true religion.
It’s
a trap we all fall into. As a theologian, I know that it can be easy to fall
into the trap of thinking I have defined true religion. There are some things
that I know that I don’t know; but there are other topics where I’m convinced
that I have as close to a picture of true religion as anyone else. And that’s
not always a bad thing. As Louisa May Alcott once said “strong convictions
precede great actions.” Having convictions about true religion isn’t bad, so
long as we realize that our convictions can also be our darkest blinders to the
larger Truth. I’ve been blinded by my convictions, and I’m sure that I’m not
the only one here to have done so.
In
our reading from James, he uses a great phrase in the middle. He says “be quick
to listen.” Listen for the Holy Spirit, listen for the truth that others know,
listen for what you have missed, listen for grace, listen so that you might
love. But instead of coming to Church to reaffirm our own suspicions about what
true religion is, let’s be quick to listen to Jesus this morning.
As
we start, Jesus, rather forcefully, rips off the blinders from the Scribes and
Pharisees. In short, Jesus is saying “whatever you think of true religion,
you’re wrong.” And he says this because as Jesus is defining it, true religion
has nothing to do with what you think. Let’s start by considering the context
of this passage from chapter 7 of Mark.
So
it seems pretty simple to us today, you wash your hands to avoid contamination
and the spread of germs. We tell children all the time to “wash your hands
before you eat.” So Jesus seems to be a bit off when he says that washing your
hands before eating isn’t necessary. In the mind of a 1st century
citizen, germs didn’t spread through dirty hands. No one thought it was necessary
to wash your hands before grabbing a bite to eat. And here our translation
really fails us. The text says that they disciples were charged with eating
with “defiled” hands. But the word is literally translated as “common” or
“profane.” The issue here is intention.
Before
eating a ritual meal, your hands needed to be clean, not because of hygiene,
but because of the sacredness of the meal. So with this information, we can
understand this interaction as Jesus and his follower did at the time. It’s a
question about what following the law means.
It’s
worth pointing out that Mark notes that these Scribes and Pharisees came from
Jerusalem- these are the big dogs. This isn’t the sheriff deputy coming to look
in on them; it’s a special task force of the FBI. So Jesus knows he’s made the
big leagues because the big time Pharisees have come to question him, and he’s
ready for them. They come to him saying “who do you think you are? Do you think
you’re above the law? You should know that you must wash your hands before
eating a ritual meal. And yet your disciples don’t? What part of clean hands
don’t you understand?” And Jesus responds by questioning the intent of having
ritually clean hands when our hearts and minds are defiled. Jesus is talking
about intentions; he is speaking about true religion. Religion not about what
you think, but the religion of what you do.
It
should be pointed out that Jesus isn’t questioning the validity of the law, nor
is he weakening it. If anything, he’s making a stronger case for it. Jesus says
that it’s not enough to follow the letter of the law, anyone can do that. He is
upholding the importance of the spirit of the law, suggesting that the intent
of the law is more important than the law itself. As Moses notes in our first
reading, the law will make us a great and discerning people, the law keeps us
close in relationship to God; the law allows us to live in freedom. We should
hear this as a question to the heart of the law. Does the law hold us back from
building the Kingdom of God, or does it free us to do so?
Reinhold Niehbuhr once said that
“it is humanity’s capacity for justice that makes law possible and humanity’s
capacity for injustice that makes law necessary.” Jesus does not say that law
and ritual do not matter, but rather Jesus is calling us towards true religion-
a religion not of simply thinking that we’ve done what we should, but fully
doing it with our heart, mind, and body.
And
this is challenging work. As St. James suggests, we ought to look in the
mirror. What is it that you see? He suggests that those who claim to have true
religion without living it are like those who look in the mirror and forget
what they look like. That doesn’t make sense. If you look in the mirror, you
know what you look like afterwards. James is saying that it makes about as much
sense to hear the word but not do it. And in the same line of thinking as Moses
and Jesus, James is offering us a definition of true religion, and it’s a
definition of action, not of the mind.
James
says “if any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but
deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” Now those are harsh words,
but why spare a telling blow if the telling blow will tell? James and Jesus are
saying the same thing about true religion- faith without works doesn’t make
sense. We can’t say that we’re Christian and think that’s enough. I can’t say
that I was baptized and rest on those laurels. You can’t call yourself a person
of faith if you don’t live faithfully. Don’t say that you’re welcoming, or
loving, or forgiving, but be those things. As James exhorts us, be doers of the
word. I know that our worship setup makes it look like you are the audience,
but you’re not- you are the players. Christianity is not a spectator sport. Be
doers of the word.
What
is the word that we should do, you might ask? In the Christian lexicon, word
can mean, Bible or it can mean Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. In
either way, we can read “word” as the work of God. To do the word is to live
out the great commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,
and might; and to love your neighbor as yourself.” To do the word is to live
the prayer of St. Francis, being an instrument of peace. To do the word is to
love like Jesus did.
This
is true religion- doing the word instead of speaking about the word. Theology
and academia pales in the face of action. I’ve done a lot of thinking about
theology and death. But when my grandmother died earlier this year, being with
family helped more than that books I’ve read. Being a doer of love and a doer
of family was better than being a hearer of words on a page. True religion
isn’t about the Trinity or the doctrine of Original Sin. True religion is love,
mercy, grace, hospitality, outreach, compassion. Jesus never really talked much
about theological or academic sort of true religion because that’s not what
it’s about.
As
you might recall, the four gospels weren’t written for at least 35 years after
Jesus’ life on earth. So people wonder why it took so long to write this stuff
down. It’s because the followers of Jesus saw that true religion, as Jesus
defines it, is about being doers of the word. So their first priority was to
also be doers of the word. They didn’t have the time to stop and write down the
gospel, they were too busy living the Gospel.
So
I wonder if in our debates around true religion, what would happen if we
focused more on doing instead of thinking and debating? What if we considered our
intentions more and our arguments less? What if we emphasized what is important
to God instead of what is important to us? What if we fought less over how to
define true religion and united more in doing it? The fights of dogma in the
Church and politics in Washington are distracting us from doing true religion.
Perhaps we are being offered another way of doing the business of true
religion.
We
say that Church is about dressing in our “Sunday best,” this excludes the
homeless who haven’t had a shower in days. But what if we welcomed them with
hospitality?
We roll our
eyes and whisper “should children be allowed in worship?” when we hear a baby
cry. But what if we offered a helping hand instead?
We debate about
social welfare programs and how to pay for them. But what if we made sure that
no child went to bed hungry and no senior was left without the medicines they
need?
We forget about
people in prison, claiming that the world is safer without them. But what if we
loved all of our neighbors as ourselves?
We cover our
wallets when the word “stewardship” comes up. But what if we realized that it
all belongs to God?
We claim that
God is the most important thing in our lives. But what if we prayed daily as if
it were?
We say that we
want our children to have faith, as Moses urges us to do in Deuteronomy. But
what if we showed them what faithful living was like with daily family prayer
and Bible study? What if we were the example that we wanted our children to
follow?
We seek to
define what marriage is in the eyes of God. But what if we encouraged and
supported loving relationships between people of any sexual orientation?
We tell
immigrants that this is our land. But what if we recognized it was really God’s
land?
Conservatives
tell liberals that they’ve gone down the slippery slope. Liberals tell
conservatives that they’ve lost the big picture. But what if we agreed to serve
and respect the God in each other before worrying about our agendas? Or what if
we dropped our agendas altogether and discerned God’s agenda together?
True religion
doesn’t need us to defend it. True religion needs us to do it. It has often
been said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And I couldn’t
disagree more. The road to the Kingdom is paved with good intentions, the sort
of intentions that Jesus talks about. Instead, I would suggest that the road to
hell is paved with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is derived from the Greek word for an
actor, or one who pretends. We have enough people who masquerade around as the
definers and defenders of true religion, but we need more people doing true
religion. The vast majority of Americans self-identify as Christian, but when I
look at the news, at politics, as our inner cities, our schools, our prisons,
our television commercials, I don’t see much that looks Christian. We’ve got
lots of pretenders out there, lots of people who hear the word and talk about
it. But we need more doers.
Today is a
fitting day to be talking about doing more, as its Labor Day weekend. We all
need rest from our overly stressed lives, we do need more Sabbath, but that’s
another sermon for another day. For today, there is much labor left to do. So
I’ll leave you with two quick items for motivation in this seemingly endless
task of doing the true religion. The first is to keep Moses’ words with you- “for
what other people has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call?” God is with us, God is
working with us, God is the author and finisher of true religion. We are called
to simply lend a helping hand. And secondly, as we look in the mirror as St.
James mentions, know that the reflection you see is of the beloved child of God.
God loves you, always and no matter what.
Jesus turns our
expectations upside down when he encounters the Scribes and Pharisees and calls
us to explore our intentions. It’s become too easy and commonplace to get
distracted and drawn into fights over defining and owning true religion. But as
Moses, James, and Jesus illustrate today, true religion is the religion of being
doers; of taking care of the widow and the orphan; of loving kindness, doing
justice, and walking humbly with our God. True religion isn’t about what we
think, but it is about what we love. And our world needs a good bit more love, so let’s
get to work.
