The Predicament of Religion
Proper 21
The predicament of religion is that too often its real consequences contradict its real purposes. It doesn't take long. Already there is evidence of this in the New Testament accounts of the new Christian movement. Even before the new religion that would later be called Christianity had a name there was a disconnect between the reason the religion existed and the way the religion functioned. It was John this time according to our sources. He informed Jesus that they had caught someone casting out demons who was not one of them, a stranger, unknown to them, and had attempted to stop him. Jesus, who never lost sight of the purpose for religion was quick to point out that it was not who he was but what he was doing that mattered. In other words the substance (casting out demons) outweighed the appearance (who it was that was casting out demons.)
Do you know what the word religion actually means? It means re-binding. Bringing together. It is about connecting to something bigger than any of us but common to all of us, it is about making connections to one another through a common source. Yet the religion we see is a divider, separating us and placing us in hostile camps looking out for our own, competing with each other for power and influence. This is a reality but it is also a stereotype. There are connections between all religious people in the spirit of kindness, mercy, justice, and love, values summed up in every genuine religious experience with the golden rule: Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. This is even at the heart of the religion called common sense. So why is it so hard to do? Of course the fact that there are many genuine religious people connecting in love does not change the fact that religion is also divisive, causing pain all over the world. The predicament of religion is that it is both and. It is life and death.
Most people who want nothing to do with religion will tell you first that it is the hypocrisy that keeps them away. This is probably the most popular argument against religion. Of course it is. This is at the heart of the predicament, to say one thing and do something else. To speak of love and act unlovingly. In the first place, we are not always going to get it right. What institution does? Having said that though we religious types are apt to forgive ourselves too easily or find a reasonable explanation for why we fail to meet the demands of love and go on our merry way without changing anything. The predicament of religion is that it is a change agent that doesn't want to change.
We are torn between maintenance and discovery. We are afraid we will lose what we have if we don't hold on to it but we risk losing what we have because we hold on to it too long. When John brought his information to Jesus about how they had stopped the unknown healer it was not long after the disciples themselves had failed to do the same thing, had failed to heal someone, and not long before that that they were discussing among themselves who was the greatest. The early disciples were self-centered and insecure like most of us. They were afraid they would lose something if they did not have control of the situation. If you can't do it, make sure nobody else can do it either is a negative way of describing how religion can go bad. The predicament of religion is that it claims to want to set people free but it wants to control setting people free and it wants to control the freedom, too. Religion depends on trust but is unwilling to trust itself.
And so we live in a world that seems to grow farther apart and closer together. It is unreasonable to think that there will ever be at time when everything is in perfect harmony but it is reasonable to expect that we be willing to listen and respect what is strange to us only because it is not yet part of our experience.
Huston Smith writing at the end
of his book on the World's Religions claims that there is a place that all the
great religions meet. He refers to it as the wisdom traditions. If one of the wisdom traditions claims us,
we begin by listening to it. Not uncritically, for new occasions teach new
duties; but never the less expectantly, realizing that it houses more truth
than a single lifetime could fathom, let alone enact. But in our own
traditions, we listen to the faith of others, including the secularists. We
listen first because our times require it. Daily the world grows smaller,
leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home. Those who listen work for peace, a peace built not on religious or
political hegemonies, but on mutual awareness and concern. For
understanding brings respect, and respect prepares the way for a higher
capacity which is love. Understanding, then, breeds love; but the
reverse also holds. Love brings understanding - the two are reciprocal. So we
must listen to understand, while realizing that to the extent that compassion
increases we will listen more attentively, for it is impossible to love another
without hearing that other. If we are to be true to the wisdom traditions, we
must attend to others as deeply and as alertly as we hope they will attend to
us.
That doesn't sound like too much to ask. Listening, I mean, but how many of us really listen to anything? Smith believes if I understand him that there are shared values across religious boundaries that if we were to listen we would begin to not only understand others but would begin to understand that we are more alike than we are different. We would begin to make the connections that are, I believe, the real reason for religion in the first place. According to Smith, all wisdom traditions agree on three virtues: humility, charity, and veracity. I like his definition of humility. Humility is not self-abasement. It is the capacity to regard oneself as fully one, but not more than one. My own definition is similar but perhaps less clear: Humility is knowing who you are. Smith goes on to relate charity to humility: Charity is to consider one's neighbor to be fully as one as you are. Love is mutual concern and respect for all life. As for veracity, it extends beyond basic truth-telling to a sublime objectivity - the capacity to see things exactly as they are, freed from subjective distortions. To the degree that we have this virtue we are able to see plainly that we are in fact one human family, brother and sister humans notwithstanding the various walls of separation and difference we build between us. We also can see our own faults as clearly as the faults of others.
In the example for today from the readings the first thing to go when religions high purpose falters is usually humility. Charity and veracity of necessity quickly follow. John was concerned for his status and place. He had placed himself above the others as if he were more fully one than they. We care more about ourselves than others. We do not see clearly. This kind of thinking inspires us to judge others as if we knew better than they. The word in James should always bring us back to our truest self: who are you to judge another? Who are we to judge? Our business is not deciding who is right. Our business is doing what is right. To do that we must be humble, loving, and see clearly, all of which are connected.
Love and truth are big subjects,
complex and simple, demanding much of us. They are the heart and soul of
religion. When either or both are compromised by religion the consequences are
more painful than simply a failure of love and truth or even a failure of
religion but rather they are a betrayal of ourselves
and of our higher calling as human beings to find our way back to God and to each
other.
Given the violent conflicts that
continue in our world and threaten all of us, conflicts often associated at
least in name with religion, one might be inclined to think that such a calling
is nothing more than fantasy. The very thing that might unite us keeps us
divided. Nevertheless, as Smith points out, there is something more that still
keeps before us a certain hope, it is what the wisdom traditions call vision,
vision defined as the ultimate nature of
things. In Smith's words, It begins by seeing
things as more integrated than we normally suppose. Mortal life gives no view
of the whole: we see things in dribs and drabs, and self-interest skews
perspective grotesquely. It is as if life were a great tapestry, which we face
from its wrong side. This gives it the appearance of a maze of knots and
threads that look chaotic. From a purely human standpoint the wisdom traditions
are the species most prolonged and serious attempts to infer from the hind side
of life's tapestry its frontal design. As the beauty and
harmony of the design derives from the way its parts interweaved, the design
confers on those parts a significance they are denied in isolation. We could
almost say that seeing ourselves as belonging to the whole is what religion is.
The idea that things are more
integrated than they seem also implies that things are better than they seem.
There is more good in us and among us than we realize.
We are inundated with bad news and there is no problem finding bad news to tell
but there is so much that is not told. Peter Miano,
recently returned from the
At the center of the religious life,
he writes, is a particular kind of
joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful
beginnings, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.
The vision of the wisdom traditions are what we all hope for. It is a ground for faith. This vision does not come from nothing. It is not something I or anyone else made up. It is a culmination of the experiences of many over centuries and through a variety of outward rites and symbols and expressions of community.
The predicament of religion is that we are one and many, free and bound, whole and broken, lost and found. The predicament of religion is that it holds within itself the very best and the very worst of human possibility. At its best the world and its people are reconciled and a new creation is born and there is real hope for us all. At its worst we hate and kill each other in the name of God and hope becomes the worst kind of despair, the kind that gives up on any human endeavor. The predicament of religion is that it depends on human beings like us to be faithful to the God who calls the people of this world to serve one another and to thereby know peace on earth.
How do we serve one another? We listen. We do not insist on our own way. We do not lie to ourselves or to others. We do not protect ourselves by harming others. We put others before ourselves. We share the abundance. We recognize ourselves as an integral part of the one human family.
It was the Buddha who said, You may reach the utmost height, but you must
be eager to learn. Jesus said, Whoever is not against us is for us. Later he
took it even farther when he said, Love
your enemy.
When we dare to look into the
face of the stranger or the enemy and find there a sister or a brother, we will
begin to understand why God has gone to so much trouble to give us religion and
why it is so wrong to use religion to hurt each other. May the religion we
teach our children give them understanding. By the
grace of God may our religion soften our hearts and not harden them, may all
who inhabit the earth, by the grace of God, may we find each other in hope and
love.
