Authentic Religion

In my comments this evening I will refer to some passages of scripture that are before you in your bulletin, and I will also reference a favorite contemporary writer, pastor, and theologian, Frederick Buechner. 

 

"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven."  Matthew 6:1

The  theme of external expression of piety is repeatedly picked up by Jesus in the gospels. This passage from Matthew 6 has numerous other gospel connections and parallels.  For example, in Matthew 5, Jesus says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God." 

In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable (story) about two men who went to the temple to pray - one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee advanced his self-righteous agenda thanking God he was not like other people, especially like the lowly tax collector that was standing near him.  And of course, he wasn't like the tax collector - not by a long shot!

There were few, if any, who were more despised in those days than tax collectors.  The differences between the Pharisee and tax collector were stark and numerous.  Tax collectors were a part of a corrupt and oppressive system of taxation known for ripping people off, especially the poor.  Tax collectors were also considered ritually unclean.  Pharisees had no such reputation, but rather were noted for basing their lives on the Torah (religious law) and adhering strictly to the religious law - often obsessively.

But these passages and others show that Jesus was not impressed with the Pharisee's obsession with the religious law, but Jesus' deepest concern was about matters of the heart, not matters of outward lawful performance. He was most focused on matters of the kingdom of God, which were not matters of external piety.  The Pharisee's problem was that his piety was more a matter of appearance than a matter of the heart.  

Also, and most importantly there was apparently nothing about the Pharisee's religion that connected him with others who he deemed to be morally inferior.  In fact, his religion did just the opposite.  His religion disconnected him from others by creating an air of moral superiority. His religion separated him from others and even created a hierarchy of human importance. 

In Matthew 23, a poignant chapter filled with Jesus' rants against the Pharisees, which are really rants against a piety of performance, he says, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  For you tithe... but you have neglected the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faith... Blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."

Frederick Buechner in his book "Telling Secrets" says, "...if we don't stop from time to time to notice what is happening to us and around us and inside of us, we run the tragic risk of losing touch with God.."  (Telling Secrets, pages 35-36)

The Pharisees spent a great deal of time and energy focusing on the demands of the law, but in the process didn't pay attention to the kind of people they were becoming, obsessive about the minutia of the law, but blind to the good news of the kingdom of God's reign; blind to the centrality of justice, mercy, compassion and faith; blind to Isaiah's injunctions "to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free." (Isaiah 58:6) .  In their obsession with the minutia of the religious law they sacrificed being in touch with the heart of God; and tragically mistook their illusions of self-righteousness for the heart of God. 

Genesis says that that we are created "in the image of God."  I don't presume to know all of what that might mean, but I do think it means that our deepest self, our original self, if you will, was fashioned with God's imprint upon it.  It is the most essential part of who we are, and it's buried deep within us.  I think that  our greatest creativity comes from that deep original self: expressed in painting, writing, music, dance, poetry, composition and love.  I think our truest and most authentic prayers come from that deep self - those unspoken, unbidden prayers that can unexpectedly rise up from deep within us, believers and unbelievers alike, whether we even recognize them as prayers or not.  I think our best dreams and our greatest visions for peace, unity, fairness and equality for humankind come from there too. 

But somewhere along the line life does its thing to us; the world sets out into making us into what the world would like us to be - so we live our lives trying to make ourselves into something we hope the world will like better than the selves we were originally born to be. In the process we lose touch with the heart God gave us.  We become obsessed with appearance, achievement, security, and affluence.  Fear and anxiety set in and take control and we lost touch with the deepest self that God put in us in the first place - we lost touch with the heart of God.

You see, that's the difference between the Pharisee and the tax collector in Jesus' story.   The Pharisee  was living his life from the out-side in; mistaking holiness and blessedness for external appearance and adherence to rigid law.  But the tax collector had reached a place where he was ready to begin to live his life from inside-out with a new heart, a heart that had been there all along, but had been obscured by the prejudice and pretense of the world. 

Jesus told stories of the kingdom so that we might know that that the authentic religious life is lived from the inside out - from the heart outward - not from performance inward.  Jesus lived among us with the heart of God - lived among us full of the kingdom of God - lived as one of us full of the love of God - lived with a passion for the poorest of the poor - the lost and lonely - the rejected and forgotten - the unclean and uncouth. 

Perhaps the greatest test of the authenticity of one's religion is how does it connect you with others, and not just those like you, but those radically different from you - those you fear - those you dislike - those you are thankful you are not - those you may even hate or consider to be less than you.  If your religion doesn't connect you, then I challenge its authenticity.

In his book "Brendan: A Novel" Frederick Buechner creates a story based on a sixth century Irish saint known as Brendan the Navigator who spent most of his life sailing the seas in search of a paradise known as Tir-na-n-Og or "Land of the Blessed", which he believed lay beyond the western horizon, and its discovery would fulfill all his longings.  After a lifetime of searching for the Land of the Blessed without success, Brendan began to wonder if he hadn't spent all those years on a futile wild goose chase.  Towards the end of his life he meets the Welsh historian- monk Gildas.  They have a conversation,  and when Gildas stands up at the end of conversation, Brendan saw that he had only but one leg, amputated from the knee down. 

As he was hopping sideways to reach his walking stick in the corner, Gildas lost his balance.  He would have fallen in a heap if Brendan hadn't leapt forward and caught him.  At that fateful moment Brendan suddenly had the conviction that he had misspent his life entirely, and he said, "To lend each other a hand when we're falling - perhaps that's the only work that really matters in the end."

When we lend each other a hand, especially those whom the world doesn't hardly recognize, easily overlooks and judges harshly,  we fulfill and embody the kingdom of God.  When we lend a hand of acceptance to the rejected; a hand of affirmation tot he discouraged; a hand of empowerment to the powerless; a hand of grace to the condemned we embody the Kingdom of God.   "The kingdom of God is at hand,"  declared Jesus in his first sermon. It was at hand - embodied in his life and embodied in ours as we follow him.

For me, at this stage in my life, like Brendan, I can see that I often have pursued fickle and foolish dreams and schemes in the name of God; living the delusion that the kingdom of God is all about me and my righteousness.  I thank God that I have lived long enough to at least get a glimpse of the good news that the Kingdom of God is about Jesus and following him on the way that he leads - a way upon which I receive the heart of compassion and justice that God intended for me in the first place, but that I had lost touch with living in the frenetic life of the world.

These days for me Lent is about that journey - that heart - that kingdom - and rediscovering what it means to live with the heart God from the inside-out.   I invite you along on the same journey.