GION OR GOSPEL BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Isfiah 29:/3-16 LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
rk 2:15-17 JOHN M. BUCHANAN
APRIL |, 1973

Howard Moody, who has become rather well known for his creative Jeadership at New
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York's Judson Memoriat Church, once seid: \aoth the Old and New Testaments make it very
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clear that the major obstacle to restoration of authentic piety to the people is usually

reLigion’ | (Who's Kilifng The Church? P. 36)

Our scripture fessons this morning substantiate that assertion.\ speaking on behalf

of the God of israet, the prophet Isaiah seid, (“this peopic draw near with their mouth
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and honor me with their \ips"|- that is to say, they are very religious - but PTheir
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hearts are far from me, and their fear of mé is a commandment of men learned by rote." -|

that is , they're saying the right religious things, but in their hearts and minds and

wiits they are miles away from my imtent for them,
Leeann ar ieee imitates,
In the Incident described in the second chapter_of Marks Gospel ~ a prototype, by
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The way, of a lot of other similar occasions in the life of Jesus = he was sitting at
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table with a group of very unsavory characters. | Sone proper, religigus types saw It,

were offended by it, questioned it, and reyealed ~ here, at the beginning of his public

ministry, that he was going to have persistant and unrelegting conflict not with crime,

Iimmoratity, atheism - but with religion and its most respected representatives.

The contlict between religion and the Gospel is perhaps the clearest, single theme
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that emerges from even a superficial reading of the New Testament.| My suggestion this
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sorning is that the conflict is otill very much alive and wel! in the twentieth century,
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Commenting on our situation WI}liam Stringfellow has writton:|\tas 1 find it,

retigion in Ameria is characteristically atheistic or agnostic. \ Rel igion has virtually

nothing to do with God and has litthe to do with the practical lives of men in society.
Religion seems, mainly, to have to do with religion.& (A . . ihire-PoB)

And before him, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was caught up In perhaps the clearest
expression of the conflict between religon and the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our time -
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the Nazi_era_ In Germany - left behind a suggstion that has been intriguing and fascinating

Christian thinkers ever since. | He said that the worid has "come of age” and that In a

world come of age we need to become "relIgionless Christians."

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| would like to hold up the idea this morning that Religion and Christianity are

aitforent:[ thot there is a lot of the former around but not much of the latter’ that to

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be "religious" is not necessarily tc be a Christian, or ~ more to the point - to be a

Christian is not necessarily to be "religious" at feast in terms of any popular definition

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of that vord.| But before we begin to think about our situation fet's go back and look

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again at Jesus and the conflict.
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| believe it is basic to any understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to_see, to
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acknowledge, and to reflect upon these three simple statements of fact:

one - Jesus never heard of the word Christianity

two - Jesus was not very religious
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three - Jesus was hated and ultimately crucified by men who were very religious

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The problem in the first century was that the faith of Israel, the faith of Jesus,

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had become the religion of Judaism | And it is not too difficult to understand why.

More than 500 years before Jesus the Jews had undergone the most traumatic experfence
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in their tife as a nation.\ The Babylonians had invaded, conquered, leveled the Temple
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and carried them off into oxitel, For all practical purposes Israe} disappeared. \ when,

by historical good fortune ~ or God's providence ~ they were released from Babylonian

captivity, allowed to return to the land and to restore the nation they were understandably
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anxious that the same errors that had caused that tragedy not be repeated again.

And so they became obsessed with their law and ciivals\\ i God had punished them
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for their unfaithfutness, they would never again be unfaithful. They would obey the law!

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to the letter and then some.\ They became obsessed with purity and cleanliness and
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exclusiveness - and it's understandable.) Having nearly fost their national identity

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once, they weren't about to risk it again. \The result, however, was the emergence of a

religion with its own cult, rules, symbols, and rituals, cut off from the rest of
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hunanity.\ One schotar describes it in these terms:

"The Lord of al.l peoples had become the party leader of the

legalists, obedience to the ruler of history had become a

finespun technique of plety."\tounthor Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, P. 37)

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In the first century, Palestine was a Roman Provines, governed very loosely through

the offices of various puppet ruters.\ 14 was a threatening situation.\ And init the

provingialism and parochialism and exclusiveism of the Jews is totally understandable.

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And along came Jesus, this Nazareth carpenter, born on the wrong side of the tracks,

with The supreme audacity to ignore and contradict everything that the plous religionists

thought was Inportant.\ From the very beginning everything he did and said stood in the

sharpest contrast to what the religious Jews were doing and say.ing\\ People like that stil]

get crucified in one way or another.

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Consider his friends - those with whom he had to do mpsthe people with whom he stood

and ate and talked ~ the people he obviously loved. \ie the Beatitudes he drew a pi¢ture
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of tna: | te poor, the hungry and thirsty, the mourners, the peace lovers, the persecuted.

And the one thing they all had in common was that they stood outside the perimeter of
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religion.\ Poor peopie weren't religious ~ they couldn't afford to be.\ They were des

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pised because their poverty prevented them from even considering fulfiliing the demands
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of religion - tithes, sacrticies, temple taxes.
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He touched lepers ~ which act in itself constituted the breaking of a handful of

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ceremonial laws. But more importantly leprosy was regarded as God's penalty for sin \ e

befriended taxrcoliectors, despicable traitors to the national! cause \ He was seen In the
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presence of prostitutes - who wouldn't have been caught dead in the temple.\ He even told

a story one time that had a samaritan - a racial haif=breed and theological heretic -
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come out as the “good guy" - while a Temple priest comes out looking pretty bad \ 14 The
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Samaritans are neighbors, God's children, the whole world is a neighborhood; | there are no

barriers any more; no outsiders, which means there are no insiders; \no heretics, which
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means that tedious religious orthodoxy is suddenly seen to be tedious religious Idolatry.
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In particular Jesus was in conflict with two religious types.| Twee Pharisees and

their Scribes - who show up in. Mark 2 — wee the "supgr-religionists” | the extremists;
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the ones most obsessed with doctrinal orthodoxy and legal purity. \ they were gocd men,
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devoted, loyal, commited, patriotic, generous to eoult.\ But in Jesus they saw an ulti-

mate threat to their religion and they saw accurately.
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The Saducees, on the other hand, were typically wealthy, privileged men, many of
them from priestiy fami ties.\ Their commitment was to the status quo, to (re! igion in

it : ; 1 . . . « PI :
general!) They were willing to compromise with paganism, with Roman _influénces, here and

there, If it meant keeni + a\ Afte id ij 2 3 ial
ean eeping the peace \f ter all, what did it real ly naires? Religion is

retigion.\ They saw in Jesus something far too precise for their liking. \ He took [+t tao
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seriously. \ It's one thing to discuss God's love for al | non: \ iis another thing to eat

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a dinner in the home of a social outcast. \ it?s interesting that scholars are now thinking

that these compromisers may have bean more re ib ise t i
D ay & bean more responsible than the Pharisees for arranging

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his death.| The Pharisees were oppossed to him - but the Sadducees had the connections to
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pull off an execution.
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In any case, neither group |iked nin.\ His mintstry was in sharp contrast to their
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retigion. \tn his teaching there was no trace of their divisiveness, their exclusiveness,
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In fact, when they ask, he tells them that he has not come +o deal with the holy and pure

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and good + but with the lost \ Josus! friends are the outcasts: ("this exhausted flock
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were

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that has no shepherd ) these people who have been rejected, scorned and excluded by

rel igion. \ The Gospel was for them. , ?

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They didn't have to hide their need behind a facade of righteousness and respectability.

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They could confess their need for love and acceptance. \ They could weep when they were
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sad, and jaugh out bud when they were happy \ They were people The wortd_ couldn't heip;

people totally out of touch with any help religion nightotter\ The Gospel was for them:

they were open to the unconditional love of cod | they were open to God's mercy and grace

and forgiveness.\ They were the ones who could weep the tears of joy when they sensed that

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in the name of God, this Jesus loved them,

Jesus Christ, we believe, was the bearer of Good News ~ Gospel \ He was the flesh

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and blood incarnation of God's fove. \fhere wes little similarity between him and the

religion of the first century. \Let's Think about that \let's focus on religion.
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It is a truism in our culture that Vreligion is a good thing - it doesn't matter

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what kind it is, so long as it Is believed sincerely." | think that is wrong. Historians

have noted that people have always used religion as e means of self assertion \ And that
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religion notoriously thrives on condemnation of other people.
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As religion Christianity brought the Spanish Inquisition = devoted te the rcating out
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of theological heresy. \ Jesus loved Samaritans - heretics. \christign religionists

burned them at the stake. \ ant i—semi+t in has i¥s roots in Christian religion \ The Jew

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has always been the ultimate outcast, the complete heretic. \ And i+ Is no accident that
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the culture that has been most religiously Christian, the culture that spawned Johann

sebastian Bach, and Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, also gave birth to

Adolph Hitler and the gas chambers and 6,000,000 Jewish corpses. aa

in American history there has been no more consistantly religious and pious organiza-
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tion than the Ku Klux Klar, and in the name of Jesus Christ, it has burned, plundered,
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bombed and lynched, quoting scripture all the while and meeting under a firey cross | And

no one need doubt the sincerity of the Klan about religion.\ The radical right wing
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today; the groups that are most racist, most nationalistic, most militaristic: |the groups
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that would send the niggers back to Africa and bomb the Commies into eblivion, spew
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their venom in the name of God and country. \ they depend for their very existence on a

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naive American assumption that religion has to be O.K.,\and [tf the name of Jesus Christ

can be assoctated with ft, it has to be atright.\ Meanwhile, in Northern freland, very

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pious,-religious people are in the process of committing national suicide.\ And, again,
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we need not doubt the sincerity of their relgion.\ The truth is that when Christianity

becomes a religion it acts like a religion which means that it forgets the Gospel.
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Now, we live in a very religious culture:\a culfure that it is not unlike the Cc ae

temper of the times in Jesus? day. Religion in the general sense - not Christianity, ut

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religion - peryades our culture. \ God in the general sense - not the God and Father of
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Jesus Christ, but the vaque, nondescript God who likes Americans better than anyone eise -

is extremely popular.\ He even_made it into the Academy Awards Tuesday night - in the
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person of Charlton Heston whose career has beer built on Holfywood's rape of the Judeo

Cparistian tradition. \ I love to contempate God iaughing in his heaven, by the way \end |
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am certain that he doubled over when Heston was applauded and the young Indian gir! booed,

—

We have, in addition, contemporary counterparts to Pharisees and seducees.| The

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pharisaic among us are the "super-Christians", whose religion excludes anyone and every-
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one who does not see things and do things their way: {the ones who bask in their own sense
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of righteousness while in all sincerity condemn the rest of humanity to heli - in the name
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of the one who sat at table with sinners and taa collectors.
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The contemporary Saducees are the cultura! religionists, line ones who believe that
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réligion is a pretty good thing so long as It doesn'+ interfere with the status quo.

Although they are miles apart theologicaliy, they sometimes arealiies when it comes to

religion. \in the recent discussion of the legality of distributing Gideon Bibles in the
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public schools, it was generally agreed that a little religion never hurt anybody, even

though that decision, It seems to me, now makes i+ necessary to grant the same privilege
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to any group who wants to exercise iv the Jaws ought now fo be allowed to distribute
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the Torah, the Moslems the Koran and so on, because it's religious, it's believed
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sincerely, and religion is a good thing.
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| think the Gospel stanus in Judgement of both positions | believe Jesus himself
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would say Wa pax on both of your pouses".) { think he would ask the 'super-Christian "

about his exclusiveness, and | think he would push the compromiser to the wall about his

vague God who Is to be Invoked at svery opportunity but never taken very seriously.
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Now, In conclusion, let's clear the air.| Jesus was not anti~religion,| He was a

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Low. \ He practiced his rel igion.\ He went to the Tenpie.\ He prayed and fasted and

observed the ceremonial feast aays.\ 14 may have sounded like it, but | hawe not been

trying to convince you that all religion ts contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ - just
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that if can ibe - and often ie \! nave been trying to say That It is noteasy to te a

faithful follower of Jesus Christ:\people will not always understand, because our cul ture

is more interested in religion for the sake of religion than it is in the Gospel.

Bult ultimately | have been trying to say that the Gospel _ Is a matter of race;|

matter of God's unconditional love for you md me quite apart from anything we've done or

not tone, 145 a matter fifially of standing with those poor, broken peopte he so ob-

viously loved. \ it's a matter_of seetng - as they were forcad to see ~ that if God's Jove

for us depends on our religiosity - we're all in trouble. It's a matter of admitting

our own powerlessness - of pushing aside all the religious gemes we play in order to
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make ourselves feel good - and of finally saying to God - "You must fove me as | am.”
— TCS
And the miracle - the Gospet - the Good News - is that he does. AMEN

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Father, free us from the fear that if we weren't religious you wouldn't love us.
Free us with the power of your Tove, so that being here in worship together will

be a response of gratitude and great joy: through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN