Sermons
Battered But Unbowed
February 5, 2012
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Isaiah 40:21-32; Mark 1:29-39
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman
Download Audio
The question crops up in conversation all the time—why go to church? What’s the point of organized religion? Can’t I have my own private spiritual perspective and let it go at that? Aren’t all religions the same anyway and does it really make any difference?
If you pay attention to this line of thinking, follow its pattern, it leads to a more generalized disaffection with nearly all organized behavior—a growing lack of confidence in not just religion, but government, education, business.
In what I thought was an especially astute op-ed column in The Times this week, David Brooks nails this situation squarely. He relates that a few weeks ago, a 22-year-old man named Jefferson Bethke produced a video called “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus.” The video shows Bethke standing in a courtyard rhyming about the purity of the teachings of Jesus and the hypocrisy of the church. Jesus preaches healing, surrender and love, he argues, but religion is rigid, phony and stale. “Jesus came to abolish religion,” Bethke insists. “Religion puts you in bondage, but Jesus sets you free.”
Brooks reports that the video went viral. As of last Thursday it had acquired more than 18 million hits on YouTube. Evidently it spoke for many young people who feel close to God but not to the church. Brooks reasons that this represents the passionate voice of those who think their institutions lack integrity—not just the religious ones, but the political and corporate ones, too.
“Right away, many older theologians began critiquing Bethke’s statements.” For example, “one blogger pointed out that it is biblically inaccurate to say that Jesus hated religion. In fact, Jesus preached a religious doctrine, prescribed rituals and worshiped in a temple.” Brooks reports that “Bethke responded in a way that was humble, earnest and gracious, and that generally spoke well of his character. He also basically folded. “‘I wanted to say I really appreciate your article man,’ Bethke wrote in an online exchange. “It hit me hard. I’ll even be honest and say I agree 100 percent…I realized a lot of my views and treatments of the church were not Scripture-based; they were very experience based.’”
Brooks goes on to theorize that we currently suffer from an over-reliance upon an ascendant narcissism of the individual point of view. He writes, “If you go out there armed only with your own observations and sentiments, you will surely find yourself on very weak ground. You’ll lack the arguments, convictions and the coherent view of reality that you’ll need when challenged by a self-confident opposition. This is more or less what happened to Jefferson Bethke.”
Like I said, I’ve also observed this obsession with the individual point of view, as in, “I can have my own personal spiritual perspective. I don’t need ‘organized religion.’” True enough, some people have been betrayed by religious professionals, and there is a lot of bogus theologizing and pontificating out and about, but this does not mitigate the power found in the larger frame of reference.
One doesn’t have to be a slave to creaky religious forms and structures to recognize that we are the beneficiaries of an astonishing depth of collected wisdom gathered and refined over decades and centuries. It seems to me that to assume we individually and separately have the singular bead on the truth is a remarkably arrogant point of view and in fact a diminishment of our potential.
Consider the Bible for a moment. A vast library collected, edited and redacted over 1000 years; passed on generation after generation; argued, debated, re-interpreted; advancing God’s graceful, potent and life-affirming message that has captured the attention of billions of people, including Jefferson Bethke; but made possible only through “organized religion” in many permutations and formulations. One doesn’t have to be any sort of believer in its transcendence to stand in wonderment at this human—institutional—legacy. We could almost say the Bible is its own institution.
To simply dismiss institutional life, or organized and refined bodies of thought, as irrelevant, immaterial, even fundamentally corrupt in concept is to dismiss human history out of hand. Corruption abounds, of course. No argument there. But corruption abounds as easily, even more fundamentally I think, in individuals as it does in collectives. It’s useful to remember that whenever people choose to accomplish a good end they inevitably form structures of common concern to implement positive outcomes. At its best, the church is one of the towering examples of such accomplishment.
Just thinking of our small brand called Methodism which has figured prominently in American history as an engine for the development of hospitals, social work, public education and many colleges and universities. Methodists were early abolitionists, helped establish communal commitments to self-improvement, moral development and compassionate engagement with the world. It’s certainly not perfect; and it’s most definitely not the be-all and end-all of organized Christian expression. It has faults and corruptions like other churches, but also a resilient commitment to the things that matter most of all, calling friends and neighbors to love the way God loves.
I say this as simple observation, reporting what has been in the past and what is now in the present. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is part of a much wider, broader, deeper consortium of structures, movements, collectives and communities that, yes, have organized to advance a profound spiritual perspective energized by Jesus of Nazareth, who was himself energized by an older wisdom tradition. It’s a point of view and way of life in which I’ve immersed myself to clarify and amplify my own potential and to focus my priorities in a life bounded by time.
My disagreements with the organization—and I have a number of significant ones—do not diminish the power of this larger frame of reference. Instead, I wrestle and debate with the tradition. In the process, I am found and formed, not as in a plastic mold poured by robots, but as a resilient human man, open, yearning, questing after the most important things; discovering mentors and companions, loving friends who will support me and challenge me and allow me to flourish while together standing upon a very secure foundation. This has been my experience.
Today’s lesson from Isaiah will forever in my mind be tied to the days following 9/11. We read it here several times in short order back then as part of our worship, including the service of prayer at noon on the Thursday following the fateful Tuesday to which everyone in the nation had been called. Our sanctuary was filled to overflowing—standing room only. As the noon hour struck and we were about to begin I saw a sanitation truck screech to a halt through our glass doors; several men leapt off and ran into the overcrowded space just as I was about to begin at the stroke of 12—such was the power of our mere institutional presence on the corner of Park and 60th.
I knew that a very high percentage of attendees that day likely hadn’t darkened the door of a church for years, maybe ever. But I also understood that when the ground shakes you reach for the very best handhold available. In such moments our thinking shifts to a ground that touches bedrock, a foundation addressed by our tradition’s scriptures. They provide an ancient library of the recurring human discovery that God is. Behind all things lies a fundamental order. Friends who believed that were part of an organization that built this place.
That’s why people flocked to churches. They needed to remember something just on the edge of consciousness. And so the scriptures were opened and people found resonance with ancient poetry: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary…Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
Those gathered here had an instinct for understanding that these words were forged in the crucible of great human adversity and tragedy. For millennia people confronted with great crises had seen behind and beneath their experience a more fundamental order and others who then followed over the decades and centuries learned the wisdom of their forebears that God is.
I suppose that some number of those who made their way to churches on 9/11 might well be among a number now who wonder about the purpose of so-called “organized religion.” So it goes.
Institutions evolve of course. We’re now living in a time of great institutional upheaval in part instigated by the technological revolution and the subsequent shattering of old boundaries of knowledge, information, cultures, and epistemologies. We’re in for a very wild ride in the next decades, institutionally speaking.
In the meantime, I assert that there are powerful human, even divine, resources that put the ground beneath our feet and inflate our lungs with breath. These have been collected, organized, redacted and edited through a continuous flow of human spiritual energy that even today fills this space. Regardless of your current level of commitment, involvement, interest or understanding, your mere presence here within these walls locates you within this dynamic spiritual flow. And I say, thank God for that! And thank God for the church, battered but unbowed, corrupt but standing on the most solid foundation. Held tenderly in love for the sake of love. Just like you and me.
