"Spiritual but not religious?" Let's be the kind of "religious" Jesus was

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016 (4th Sunday After the Epiphany, Year C), at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, Fremont, CA (where I was filling in as a supply priest). Audio (but no video) posted below on Vimeo.

(1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30)

Our Gospel passage from Luke today describes Jesus’s return to his hometown of Nazareth after beginning his ministry in other parts of Galilee. The homecoming does not end well: while the people are initially impressed with his preaching, the story ends with them running him out of town and trying to throw him off a cliff! Jesus observes, in a now oft-quoted statement: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

But it’s not just in his hometown that Jesus is rejected; he offends lots of people and almost gets attacked in several different stories throughout the Gospels, and of course, ultimately ends up crucified. It was not just his childhood friends and neighbors who found Jesus’s teachings hard to accept or threatening, it was many, many people – and most of them highly religious people.

In reading commentaries on today’s Gospel text, I came across an article titled, “Why Religious People Reject Christ.” Why Religious People Reject Christ. The author points to the fact that today, as in the time of Jesus, “most opposition [to the work of God] comes from the religious crowd, not from those outside.”[1] It’s always the people who are the most passionate about and devoted to their faith who are the most threatened by any criticism of it, even when that criticism is well-deserved.

“Religious people” don’t fare too well in the Gospel texts. It’s the religious leaders and the highly devout who reject Jesus, and ultimately come to call for his execution. Most of the prophets throughout the Hebrew Bible are rejected and scorned by “religious people” as well. Prophets come to remind the faithful of what it truly means to follow God, but they are met with resistance from those who think they already have it all figured out. In today’s particular example, the people of Nazareth are so offended by Jesus reminding them – with stories from their own scriptures, by the way – that God can and does work outside of the people of Israel that they almost kill him. They are so sure that they alone are deserving of God’s favor that the very idea that God would neglect lepers and widows in need in Israel while blessing and healing people who would normally be considered enemies of Israel – a leper who is a commander of the Syrian army and a widow who is a Canaanite, one of the people the Israelites had been commanded to drive out of the land so they could possess it – sends them into a rage. How dare God show mercy on anyone other than us? And how dare you suggest that somehow that has something to do with the fulfillment of God’s purpose?

This kind of thinking is alive and well today, as we all know. There’s a modern “parable” that says that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. So he takes his case to God in protest: ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner,’ he says. ‘What are you complaining about?’ God responds. ‘They won’t let me in either.’[2]

It’s likely because of those kinds of “religious people” that an increasing number of Americans are rejecting organized religion – the latest surveys show that up to 20% of the population now does not claim any particular religious affiliation. [3] When asked, many of them will tell you they are “spiritual but not religious.” Perhaps you’ve heard that line before; perhaps you’ve even said it yourself at some point. Because being “religious” has gotten a bad rep because the “religious” people are the ones who are so often uptight about things, the ones who draw lines around who’s in and who’s out, the ones who manage to take the fun out of everything.

People who say they are “spiritual but not religious” often point out the hypocrisy within organized religion and the ways in which it is used to control or exploit people. They take issue with any group of people thinking that God chooses or prefers them over others, and point out that when people think they have all the answers, not only do they shut out God, but they shut out other people, in the most extreme cases leading to dehumanization and violence.

This critique of religion is really nothing new – in an interesting twist, these modern religiously unaffiliated people are echoing the words of the biblical prophets!

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says to the “religious people” of his day. “For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” (Matthew 23:13-15)

Before Jesus, John the Baptist called out any within the Jewish faith who might have felt that their lineage as “sons and daughters of Abraham” entitled them to a kind of “free pass” at the last judgment, who might have thought that they were worthy just by virtue of the fact that they were part of God’s “chosen people.” He says to them (you might remember this from a few Sundays ago during Advent):

“Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” (Luke 3:8-9)

John calls them to “bear fruits worthy of repentance,” to live an authentic life of faith that bears visible fruit in their actions. Being a son or daughter of Abraham means nothing, John says, if your life does not bear witness to God’s justice and love.

Reaching back into the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Amos brought this word of God to the people: “Because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain… you… afflict the righteous, … take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate… I hate… I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them” (Amos 5:11a, 12b, 21-22a).

Prophets always remind religious people that the correct observance of rituals means nothing if their hearts are not in the right place. You can say all your prayers and go to services every week, but if you do that while people are suffering from injustice and hunger all around you and do nothing to help, you’ve entirely missed the point. And that’s pretty much what the “spiritual but not religious” people are saying as well.

What’s frustrating to me is when people reject religion entirely when they encounter religious hypocrisy and abuses of power, when they see all the things that are wrong with “religious people.” Because what they’re rejecting isn’t actually an authentic representation of religion. It’s a twisted version, filtered through the lens of sinful humanity. The prophets rejected that kind of religion, too, and yet they were all deeply “religious!”

There’s a common misperception among many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, that Jesus’s message carried with it a rejection of “religion.” They see in Jesus’s critiques of Jewish ritual practice and his scathing rebukes of the religious leaders of his day a rejection of religion altogether. I've heard folks say, "Christianity isn't a religion -- it's a relationship." But Jesus didn’t reject religion; Jesus was a devout Jew. He followed all the rituals and traditions of his faith. As we read in last week’s Gospel, “he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom” (Luke 4:16). He knew the scriptures of his tradition well enough to quote them from memory on a regular basis. He observed the Passover. He did all the things that a “good Jewish boy” of his day would have done. He just didn’t let the observance of those rituals blind him to the meaning behind why they were set up in the first place.

Jesus didn’t reject religion, he rejected a certain kind of religiosity, one that puts ritual observance above love of neighbor, one that puts the letter of the law above the spirit of the law. He rejected the kind of religiosity that would allow someone to die on the Sabbath because it is forbidden to do “work” on the Sabbath and healing them would be considered “work.” He rejected the kind of religiosity that makes people think God owes them something, instead of acknowledging that everything is a gift from God, the kind of religiosity that talks about “birthrights” instead of gifts, about righteousness instead of grace. He rejected the same kind of religiosity that “spiritual but not religious” people reject today.

What Jesus and the prophets came to remind us is that that kind of religiosity is not really being “religious,” it’s being self-righteous. It’s not worshipping God, it’s worshipping self. And it’s condemned in all the major world religions.

“This is the fast that I choose,” God says to the people through the prophet Isaiah; this is what he tells them it means to be “religious”:

“to loose the bonds of injustice…

to let the oppressed go free…

to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house” (Isaiah 58:6-7).

I get the critique of the “spiritual but not religious” folks. I do. It’s easy to want to walk away when you encounter hypocrisy and corruption in any institution. But let’s not let that define what it means to be “religious.” Instead of rejecting religion, let’s be the kind of religious Jesus was. The kind of religious that comes to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” – that passage from Isaiah that Jesus quoted in the synagogue in his hometown and said he came to fulfill (Isaiah 61:1-2, quoted in Luke 4). Let's be the kind of religious that reminds us that God can and does work through Canaanites and Syrians as well as Israelites. The kind of religious that acknowledges that “we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9), that only God knows the full truth. The kind of religious that cultivates humility, not pride, and remembers Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians, that “if I do not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).

Perhaps if we were all that kind of “religious,” people would be drawn to religion instead of repelled by it. Religion could be a part of the solution instead of part of the problem. In our collect for today, we pray for God to “hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace” – but we have to play a part in making peace as well. Perhaps God might respond to our prayer with a prayer of his own, that might go something like this:

“O finite and limited human beings, you are indebted to me for all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of my prophets, so that in your time I may use you to bring peace.” Amen.

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[1] Steven J. Cole, “Why Religious People Reject Christ.” From the series “Luke,” on Bible.org. Published 6 June 2013 https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-16-why-religious-people-reject-christ-luke-414-30 Accessed Jan 28 2016.

[2] Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel.

[3] As cited by the 2014 Pew Research Forum survey of religion in American life. Article on the results of that story here: "America's Changing Religious Landscape," published May 12, 2015. http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ Accessed Jan 28 2016.

Lent, corporate repentence, and gun violence

Sermon delivered Ash Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 103, 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21).

“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” This is what we asked of God in our opening collect a few moments ago. As we enter the season of Lent, the season of penitence and fasting, self-examination and renewal, we hear again that biblical refrain that we’ve heard recently from John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul: God calls us not only to right ritual, but to right intention and right action. Our hearts must be in the right place as we come to worship God, and our actions must reflect the faith we say we have.

This message was not new with John the Baptist and Paul: they were echoing the ancient call of the Hebrew prophets, like the passage from Isaiah that we hear today. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God says through Isaiah to the people who observe the right rituals, but “who serve [their] own interest[s] on [their] fast day and oppress all [their] workers” (Isaiah 58:4, 3). And Jesus repeats this theme in the Sermon on the Mount, warning his disciples against doing religious acts for the wrong reasons. Fasting or prayer or almsgiving should be done out of a sincere faith and desire to please God and to grow closer to God, not out of a desire for approval or recognition from one’s peers. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in other to be seen by them,” Jesus says, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:1).

The issue here is one of intention and motivation. Those who practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them will have no reward from God not because they have performed religious actions publicly, but because the act of “going public” with their faith has caused their intentions to go astray: they are motivated by a desire to please other people rather than a desire to please God. Their hearts are not in the right place. Their actions become all about them instead of all about God.

The people Isaiah addresses are caught in this sin of self-absorption: they observe the fasts because they want to win favor with God, but they ignore God’s commands to care for the poor and to deal justly with others because of their desires for power or money. Both their business practices and their religious practices are entirely self-centered. Their only concern is securing a place for themselves, both on earth and in heaven.

Fasting is intended to be an act of personal sacrifice, a way of emptying ourselves in order to open ourselves more fully to God. This meaning is negated if the person fasting continues to behave in a manner incongruent with the commandment of God to love our neighbors as ourselves. A real sacrifice of self, God says through the prophet Isaiah, is to give of yourself in service to others, to share your bread with the hungry, to clothe the naked, to work for justice and free the oppressed. Not only must there be right intentions, but right actions must flow from them. We must show, as John the Baptist would put it, “fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8).

The season of Lent invites us to take a step back from our regular routines and examine our own intentions and actions. Am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Am I giving of myself in the fast that God chooses, a fast that leads not to self-absorption, but self-giving? Has my worship become empty and rote, devoid of heart-filled sincerity? Am I at peace with the ways I am practicing my faith and living it out in my life?

But the self-examination of Lent invites us to go even further, looking beyond our individual lives. The discipline of Lent is a corporate as well as an individual one. We could ask the same questions of our life together as a church: not just am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance, but are we, as St. Paul’s, as the Diocese of Tennessee, as the Episcopal Church, bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Are we practicing the fast of self-giving rather than self-absorption? Is our worship heartfelt and sincere? Are we satisfied with how we are practicing our faith together and living it out in service to our community, the nation, and the world?

But it doesn’t stop there. We are also invited to consider, as we expand the circle of our concern even wider, the corporate sins and shortcomings of the country and culture in which we live. In the litany of penitence that we will pray together in a few moments, we confess not just ways that we as individual Christians have sinned and ways the Church has sinned, but systemic sins rooted in our wider culture: “Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people… Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts… our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” This “our” is much bigger than you or me or all of us in this church combined. It is an “our” that resonates with the wider American culture: our materialism that values things over people, our individualism that leads us to believe we need to care only for ourselves and our families and not for the wider community, and our obsession with violence that desensitizes us to the image of God in all people.

If you read the announcements in the February newsletter and last week’s Take-Out about our upcoming Lenten series on Thursday nights, you know that our adult Lenten program this year will be on the topic of gun violence. You may have wondered, as you read that announcement, what this subject has to do with Lent. I believe that the prevalence of gun violence in our country at this time is a corporate sin that we are called to grapple with, and it is in the Lenten spirit of self-examination and “taking stock” of ourselves that we will consider this issue in our Lenten study this year.

Gun violence is by no means the only corporate or systemic sin in our country, but we will focus on this one because of its immediacy in our national discourse at the moment. In the seven short months that I have been with you at St. Paul’s, there have been three mass shootings in the U.S. that have made major media coverage: the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July, the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in August, and the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in December. Although mass shootings are nothing new in this country, the frequency and intensity with which they happened last year has led many people, including me, to take note and begin to ask questions about why these things are happening, and about what it says about our culture. After the shootings in Newtown, the Episcopal bishops of Connecticut called for their diocese to spend the season of Lent this year in “a time of discernment and action on how all of us can best work to overcome the death-dealing culture of violence that seems to be so prevalent in our society at this time.” This is an appropriate topic to explore during Lent, a time set aside for reflection and self-examination, and a time during which we reflect on the ways in which another “death-dealing culture of violence,” in first century Palestine, led to the death of our Lord. My prayer is that these discussions will help each of us discern what part we are called to play in “loosing the bonds of injustice” (Isaiah 58:6) that leave too many parents childless and too many children motherless and fatherless.

And as we do this, I pray that we are mindful of another one of our confessions from today’s litany: “for all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us.” There can and will be very different views amongst us about the best way to address the issue of gun violence, especially considering the ways this issue has been highly politicized. Our study will attempt to offer a balanced presentation of the issue and encourage honest dialogue between those of you with different perspectives, a dialogue that will attempt to dismantle those false judgments and prejudices that we may have toward those whose views differ from ours.

On Ash Wednesday, we are invited us to remember and contemplate our own mortality and the fragility of human life. During this season of Lent, my prayer is that we as individuals and as a community will examine our priorities and the intentions behind our actions, and take stock of what is really important in the life of faith. Whether each of you do that through participation in the Lenten study or through examining and contemplating other issues or concerns that are more pressing and relevant in your life right now, the underlying theme of our work this season is the same: to consider how we are called to live out our faith authentically in the world, in such a way that we contribute to God’s work of bringing justice and freedom to all. Through our Lenten fast, whatever form that may take for each of us, may we all seek a deeper knowledge of the heart of God and bear fruits of authentic repentance.

Bear fruits worthy of repentance

Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012 (Third Sunday of Advent, Year C), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18).

Although today is the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of “joy,” and much of the scripture we heard today calls us to rejoice in the grace and love of God, we haven’t completely lost the Advent theme of repentance. In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist tells the people who come to him asking to be baptized that they must “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” His message is that all people need to repent, even those who are sure they are already part of God’s chosen people who have found favor with God.

Against any within the Jewish faith who might have felt that their lineage as sons and daughters of Abraham entitled them to a sort of “free pass” at the last judgment, who might have thought that they were worthy just by virtue of the fact that they were part of God’s “chosen people,” John reminds them that they must also live an authentic life of faith that bears visible fruit in their actions. Being a son or daughter of Abraham means nothing, John says, if your life does not bear witness to God’s justice and love.

According to John, bearing fruit is the standard by which we will be judged, not our membership within a particular religious community. We will be judged not by what we’ve said we believed, but by the testimony of our hearts and our lives.

I’m sure that at some point in your life you’ve heard someone comment on the good deeds and sound life of someone who professes no faith at all. The statement usually goes something like this: “I know some atheists who are better Christians than most Christians I know!” What they are pointing to is the issue of bearing fruit. They see many people who say they believe in Christ judging others, saying one thing and doing another, going to church on Sunday but engaging in corrupt business practices or questionable moral behavior during the week – while they see many people who say they have no religious faith feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick, working for justice – the very things Christians are called to do. And so, they sigh and say with frustration, “Some atheists are better Christians than most Christians I know!”

That’s actually a very biblical statement. It’s essentially what John the Baptist was saying to the first-century Jewish community, and what Jesus would wind up saying to them as well. “Tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you,” Jesus says to the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 21:31). In other words, the supposedly “unfaithful” can actually be more faithful than the faithful at times. This is why the prophets continually remind us that bearing fruit is of utmost importance.

But lest we think that “bearing fruit” is simply a matter of doing the right things, the prophets also remind us that doing the right things without the right intentions is equally as empty as trusting in the fact that you were born into the “right” religious community. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” John the Baptist says. Repentance is a matter of the heart, of the inner orientation and intentions underlying our actions. Not only is it not enough to be children of Abraham, but it is also not enough to observe the right rituals if our hearts are not in the right place.

“For you have no delight in sacrifice,” writes the psalmist, “if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17). The prophet Amos brings this word of God to the people: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them… but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21-22, 24). The prophet Hosea said God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6), and Jesus quoted this in his teachings.

In all these passages, the issue is not that the rituals themselves were bad – the people believed God had commanded them to do them – but that the people were doing them without the proper intentions in their hearts, and their lives were not bearing the proper fruit. The apostle Paul echoed this theme in his first letter to the Corinthians, when he insisted that without love – without one’s heart being in the right place – all the most praiseworthy actions on behalf of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ were utterly worthless. “If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing,” he wrote (1 Corinthians 13:2). This is a common theme, from the earliest of the Hebrew prophets all the way through the New Testament. Although our faith engages our heads – in our assent to certain beliefs or doctrines – and our hands and feet – in our actions in the world – at the end of the day, the life of faith is ultimately a matter of the heart.

This is why we pray the Collect for Purity at the beginning of every Eucharist: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord.” We acknowledge that, as the book of 1 Samuel puts it, “The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). We might appear to be doing all the “right” things here, being in church, participating in a ritual that we believe Jesus commanded his followers to continue in his name, but if our hearts are not in the right place, our actions will not please God. And so we pray for God’s assistance in orienting ourselves toward God and cleansing our hearts of any sin within them so that our worship of God may be an authentic expression of love and praise.

The word “Advent,” from which this season of the church year takes its name, means “coming,” and the early church fathers spoke of three “advents” in the Christian religion: the first coming of Christ, in his birth at Bethlehem in the first century which we will commemorate at Christmas, the second coming of Christ to judge the world at the end of time, and the daily coming of Christ into the hearts of individual believers. Without that third advent, the first and second advents won’t have much meaning to us. In the season of Advent, we do not only remember what has already been and wait for what is to come, but celebrate what currently is: the presence of Christ with us every day in the hearts of believers around the world.

“Let every heart prepare him room,” says the Christmas hymn “Joy to the World,” and that is indeed the work of Advent, the work of examining our hearts and opening them to receive the coming of Christ that is available to us every day. In this way, John the Baptist’s calls to repentance are not incongruous with our theme of joy for this Third Sunday of Advent, for it is through the heart-cleansing work of repentance that we might discover the joy of the daily coming of Christ into our lives.