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True ReligionSeptember 03, 2006 Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost He’s always upsetting somebody. He’s always pushing the boundaries, testing the waters, taking the taken for granted and turning it on its head. Nothing seems sacred to him, except of course that which is actually sacred. That’s why I love Jesus, and why after all these years I still find him so compelling. Once again, Jesus finds himself embroiled in controversy. In a very public way, he is confronted by those who fancy themselves more pure, more observant than he and his band of fisherman and country folk. Jesus had just finished feeding the crowd of at least five thousand. He crossed by boat to another shore, trying to find some rest and solitude. But, when he stepped out of the boat, another crowd was waiting for him. Scripture says he worked among them: healing, feeding, restoring. And then, when he finally sits down to eat a meal with his friends, a group of pious men approaches them, and says, “Your disciples didn’t wash their hands before they ate. Why don’t you follow the traditions of the elders, Rabbi?” They caught Jesus at the wrong time. He was tired, probably a little sick of being around people, and he just wanted to eat in peace. I imagine he was indignant with them, frustrated that, after all that he had been doing, these holier-than-thou types wanted to find a technicality on which to hang him. Picture his response. “Are you serious? Listen here, you hypocrites: all these people live among you in need of food and health care, some are homeless and alone, some are spiritually dead, and you want to talk to me about religious rules and regulations? How dare you! The prophets were right about you. You worship God with your lips, but in your hearts you are far from God. In vain do you worship, teaching human laws as if they were doctrines. Look around. See for yourself where God is, among his people in need. Stop using religion as a convenience to hide behind, and see yourselves for who you truly are.” You can imagine the impact this exchange must have had on his followers. In our Epistle lesson, we see that Jesus’ teaching lives on. James, one of Jesus’ disciples, writes almost a perfect summary of this event. He says, “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” I wish these two lessons had been present to me a few weeks ago, when I had lunch with a friend and former member of Christ Church. Now living in Europe, she has had something of a change of heart when it comes to religion. “I’m fascinated by it,” she told me, “but only as a phenomenon. I’m really interested in how religious belief is influencing the world today.” Then she asked me something that caught me slightly off guard. “Javier, why do you still believe in God? I mean, how can you still believe in God as a rational, intelligent, modern person? I’m not sure I ever did, but church served a useful purpose for a while in my life. But now, I just don’t see the use. I’m not sure how God really matters.” I laughed, in part trying to buy some time to formulate an answer. I expected a very different conversation. “Let’s catch up,” we'd said, as we scheduled the lunch; instead, I found myself defending religion in general, and my faith in particular. The truth is that I like those sorts of conversations. They’re real and often raw. And, quite honestly, it is rare that, as a clergyman, I get to really speak my mind and heart on such matters. People tend to hold so many expectations about what I believe or should believe, that rarely is what I actually believe on the table. In this instance, I decided I had nothing to lose. I was just going to say it, and I would let the chips fall where they may. I said something like this: I’m often embarrassed to be a religious person, not because I’m embarrassed of religion per se, but because what I see passing as religion today is more often than not something I fail to recognize. (By the way, I think that’s the experience Jesus had in the gospel lesson we read this morning. He couldn’t recognize the religion his detractors were forcing upon him, even though they shared the same tradition and worshiped the same God. And, as time went on, Jesus grew less willing to have his faith hijacked into being a system of belief or code of behavior.) So, I said to my friend that most expressions of Christianity that I see today are really something else, disguised as the faith of Jesus. Jesus didn’t have anything to day about the favored status of America, nor about the politics of abortion, gay marriage, or the estate tax; yet, if you listened to most public representatives, you would think that’s all Jesus worried about. I told her that Jesus was a lover. He was a lover of God and a lover of humanity. And, the reason I find him so compelling, the reason I believe that he reveals to us the heart and mind of God, is because somehow his way of loving broke through the coldness and smallness of my love, and, try as I may, I can’t shake that love. “Faith is not a cool, calm, or rational matter of belief. It is a thing of love, of being loved by God, and loving God in return.” [1] The Song of Solomon, which was read from earlier, is a story of such love. It is a poetic dialogue between two lovers who describe each other in lavish terms of praise, calling to each other, whispering sweet nothings, and planning their next rendezvous. It is a passionate eight chapters, full of gardens and sweet fragrances, of wine and food and irresistible tastes. What is also alarming about the Song of Solomon is the freedom that is present. There is no shame, no inhibition, no reservation between the lovers. They aren’t beset by guilt or duty; they are beset by love. And, that is ultimately what this poem is about. It’s not about unrestrained sexuality, it’s about unrestrained love. That is precisely what religious faith, and especially the faith of Jesus, is all about – unrestrained love. The Song of Solomon is the story of two people who love each other so much that they work tirelessly at removing the many obstacles that stand between them, in order that they might give themselves to each other fully and without reserve. They’ll do whatever it takes to be present and vulnerable to each other. This is why interpreters throughout the centuries have read this story as an allegory for the relationship between the human and the divine. The story is as much about friendship with God as it is about physical desire and passion. “Here is spirituality gone carnal, made flesh, embodied, heated, driven, obsessed, and exuberant. In short, here is just the sort of thing the church believed happened to us in Jesus.” [2] American philosopher John Caputo says this about religion: “In the religious sense of life we passionately love something that resists any Final Explanation, that refuses to be boiled down to some determinate form…[R]eligion kicks in, not necessarily when we sign on the dotted line of some confessional faith or other, but when we confess our love for something besides ourselves, when we bind ourselves over to something other, which means something other than ourselves, when we gather ourselves together and center ourselves on a transforming focus of our love. Something grander and larger than us comes along and bowls us over and dispossesses us. Something overpowers our powers, potencies, and possibilities, and exposes us to something impossible. Something makes a demand upon us and shakes us loose from the circle of self-love, drawing us out of ourselves and into the service of others and of something to come. The religious sense of life kicks in when I’m rigorously loyal, ‘religiously’ faithful to the service of something other than myself, more important than myself, to which I swear an oath which has me more than I have it.” [3] That, my friends, is what our faith is about. The absence of this passionate love in favor of a religion of rules obsessed with who is in and who should be kicked out is what shocked Jesus about his detractors. It’s what shocks many of us about the ways Jesus’ life and words are used to hurt and divide rather than to love and to welcome. We can’t let that continue to happen. Muslim interfaith activist Eboo Patel claims, “…religious people are changing our world. You can sit in a corner and whine about it, or you can be on the bus and figure out how we can all work together to build a world where people cooperate and live together in some sort of mutual loyalty.” [4] Jesus, I’m certain would be on that bus. Let’s go along for the ride. _____________________
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