Religion - One Way to Get in God's Way
Sermon
SEEK GOOD, NOT EVIL
that you may live
Another clash between religion and the worship of God. To put it another way, "The Bible is anti-religious because it is pro-God." That statement strikes at some of our most cherished traditions. Isn't religion automatically pro-God? Both the Old and New Testaments say, "Not automatically so." The Bible takes issue not only with the pagan religions, it takes issue with the religion of God's people when their religion puts God in second place. Christ said of some of the religious leaders who worshiped regularly in the temple, "They forclose mortgages on widow's houses. Their cover-up? Long prayers."
This twisting of worship comes about, says Evelyn Underhill, "Because God is invisible; worship must, therefore, be concrete." For example, when we worship God, we bow the head, close the eyes, bend the knee. These actions are second nature. They range from the simplest of such actions to the most ornate and complex imaginable, using buildings of surpassing grandeur, responding to music of the most ethereal kind.
It is this concrete action, inescapable as it is, that all too easily becomes the focus for its own sake. "Should they continue fasting?" was the question of the people of Zechariah's time. It was a seventy-year practice which reminded them of the destruction of the temple. "No," says Zechariah, that is not at the heart of God's desires. "Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me; 'Say to all the people of the land and the priests, when you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?' " You can see how the very thoughtful practice of fasting took them off course.
What's the solution? Zechariah says, "Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to the other, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart." That's but a variation on, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength and with all thy mind." The second is much like the first, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
What does it mean to love God in that way? It means to love the neighbor. That's a hard statement. We easily respond to the first, recoil from the second. Yet the words of the text are action words. They don't call for a committee, or discussion, or the tracing of the origin and the problems of evil. They call for action: render; do; see that it is done.
To love is to treat people the way we want to be treated, the way God would treat them because both they and we are God's representatives to each other and for each other. The neighbor is not to be dealt with as we will. Not our keeping of fasts or some other religious duty, but the decisions and actions we take toward people determines what our religion is, what our worship life is.
Zechariah's message from God is one of compassion, "a keen awareness of the interdependence of all those living beings, which are all part of one another and involved in one another," according to Thomas Merton. To render true judgment is to give people an even break, to give them what they have coming. They don't owe us thanks. We are not bestowing something special on them. They are only receiving what is properly theirs, which had always been theirs. Neither the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln nor of the United States gave the black man a gift, as though he had no claim on freedom or liberty. He was but receiving that which was already his and had always been his but which had wrongfully been taken away from him. To show kindness is to serve the neighbor in such a way that it is beneficial for him.
Such is the breadth of our action and doing that it is utterly inclusive and non-restrictive, not only the brother or the sister with whom we have a close family relationship, but the widow, the
fatherless, the alien, the poor. Gone from Zechariah's thinking are any such thoughts as, "As soon as I am doing well, then ..., as long as my family is doing well, then ..., or once the unemployment rate drops to 10%, we need not bother, or the trickle-down economic theory works. If we take care of the rich, we hope the poor will get theirs later."
No matter how good things look statistically by business, industry, or government measures, they are not good enough in God's eyes until all are faring well. How are the defenseless? The fatherless? The poor? The alien? The widow? Walter Brueggemann states that the Old Testament sees chaos present despite the appearance of peace as long as the widows and orphans are not getting a square shake. God makes that claim and that accusation because we are one family.
For God and, consequently, for us, there are no states and nationalities, no countries or boundaries which separate us from each other. Most have denied that most of the time. Sometimes the church itself has been no less guilty in denying we are all brothers and sisters.
If we are brothers and sisters, a sense of fairness is the only way we may deal with one another on a one-to-one basis. A sense of fairness would do much, especially in those casual meetings which seem to be of no consequence.
But we are slowly becoming aware that a one-to-one response is not enough. Structures and systems, perhaps even structures and systems of which we are a part, may oppress the alien, the poor, the widow, and the orphan. The impact of structures may not be apparent. Then oppression may go on silently for years.
Witness this statement of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, the leader of the Normandy invasion of World War II and the conqueror of Europe. He is speaking of the arms race. Terrifying as it was then, it has ballooned to irrational proportions since then.
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated. The worst is atomic war. The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all people. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its science, the hopes of its children.
The cost [in 1953 dollars] of one modern heavy bomber is this, a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand in population. It is two fine, fully-equipped hospitals. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people.
This is not a way of life at all. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Has anything changed in response to this gut-wrenching plea from a man who has experienced the terrors of war firsthand?
Thirty-two years after the Eisenhower statement and forty years to the day of the first atomic device at Los Alamos, New Mexico, five of the major scientists engaged in developing that device came once more to Washington, a constant quest of theirs for these forty years to say to the Congress and President of the United States, "We, who felt the pulse of heat at Trinity [the unusual name for the first atomic device], call on you, our fellow citizens, for a response deep enough to match the insistent signal from the fireball.
"We ask that you join us in insisting on a policy for nuclear weapons that abandons two grand illusions of our times: that nuclear warfare can achieve rational military and political objectives, and that a defense of populations against nuclear attack is possible."
The Eisenhower plea and the five atomic scientists' insistent cry revitalize Zechariah's call to genuine worship: "Thus says the Lord of Hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to his brother, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart."
If Zechariah's intention needs any further clarity, here is clarity in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ never mistook forms of worship for worship, or mistook religious activities for worship. He saw that religion could easily continue while "people could be devising evil in their hearts against their neighbor," the kind that unthinkingly thinks of nuclear winter. For him worship is worship in spirit and in truth, not prescribing and advising, but being and doing and giving and rendering true judgments, showing kindness and mercy, lifting up the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, the poor; and devising our great good, the good of all in his crucifixion and resurrection. Do we need a more vivid reminder in the day in which we live that we have an infinite capacity to crucify? Do we need to remind ourselves that, because of our infinite capacity to crucify, Christ was willing to be crucified for us that we too might worship in spirit and truth?
That is Christ's deep response, deep enough to match the insistent signal from the fireball of our times. It is that same crucifixion and resurrection which equips us to match the insistent signal from the fireball. It is through that same crucifixion and resurrection that we devise good for the neighbor, not only for the neighbor we know, but for the whole family of God around the world. Amen
For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go forth leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.
(Malachi 4:1-6)
This twisting of worship comes about, says Evelyn Underhill, "Because God is invisible; worship must, therefore, be concrete." For example, when we worship God, we bow the head, close the eyes, bend the knee. These actions are second nature. They range from the simplest of such actions to the most ornate and complex imaginable, using buildings of surpassing grandeur, responding to music of the most ethereal kind.
It is this concrete action, inescapable as it is, that all too easily becomes the focus for its own sake. "Should they continue fasting?" was the question of the people of Zechariah's time. It was a seventy-year practice which reminded them of the destruction of the temple. "No," says Zechariah, that is not at the heart of God's desires. "Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me; 'Say to all the people of the land and the priests, when you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?' " You can see how the very thoughtful practice of fasting took them off course.
What's the solution? Zechariah says, "Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to the other, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart." That's but a variation on, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength and with all thy mind." The second is much like the first, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
What does it mean to love God in that way? It means to love the neighbor. That's a hard statement. We easily respond to the first, recoil from the second. Yet the words of the text are action words. They don't call for a committee, or discussion, or the tracing of the origin and the problems of evil. They call for action: render; do; see that it is done.
To love is to treat people the way we want to be treated, the way God would treat them because both they and we are God's representatives to each other and for each other. The neighbor is not to be dealt with as we will. Not our keeping of fasts or some other religious duty, but the decisions and actions we take toward people determines what our religion is, what our worship life is.
Zechariah's message from God is one of compassion, "a keen awareness of the interdependence of all those living beings, which are all part of one another and involved in one another," according to Thomas Merton. To render true judgment is to give people an even break, to give them what they have coming. They don't owe us thanks. We are not bestowing something special on them. They are only receiving what is properly theirs, which had always been theirs. Neither the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln nor of the United States gave the black man a gift, as though he had no claim on freedom or liberty. He was but receiving that which was already his and had always been his but which had wrongfully been taken away from him. To show kindness is to serve the neighbor in such a way that it is beneficial for him.
Such is the breadth of our action and doing that it is utterly inclusive and non-restrictive, not only the brother or the sister with whom we have a close family relationship, but the widow, the
fatherless, the alien, the poor. Gone from Zechariah's thinking are any such thoughts as, "As soon as I am doing well, then ..., as long as my family is doing well, then ..., or once the unemployment rate drops to 10%, we need not bother, or the trickle-down economic theory works. If we take care of the rich, we hope the poor will get theirs later."
No matter how good things look statistically by business, industry, or government measures, they are not good enough in God's eyes until all are faring well. How are the defenseless? The fatherless? The poor? The alien? The widow? Walter Brueggemann states that the Old Testament sees chaos present despite the appearance of peace as long as the widows and orphans are not getting a square shake. God makes that claim and that accusation because we are one family.
For God and, consequently, for us, there are no states and nationalities, no countries or boundaries which separate us from each other. Most have denied that most of the time. Sometimes the church itself has been no less guilty in denying we are all brothers and sisters.
If we are brothers and sisters, a sense of fairness is the only way we may deal with one another on a one-to-one basis. A sense of fairness would do much, especially in those casual meetings which seem to be of no consequence.
But we are slowly becoming aware that a one-to-one response is not enough. Structures and systems, perhaps even structures and systems of which we are a part, may oppress the alien, the poor, the widow, and the orphan. The impact of structures may not be apparent. Then oppression may go on silently for years.
Witness this statement of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, the leader of the Normandy invasion of World War II and the conqueror of Europe. He is speaking of the arms race. Terrifying as it was then, it has ballooned to irrational proportions since then.
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated. The worst is atomic war. The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all people. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its science, the hopes of its children.
The cost [in 1953 dollars] of one modern heavy bomber is this, a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand in population. It is two fine, fully-equipped hospitals. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people.
This is not a way of life at all. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Has anything changed in response to this gut-wrenching plea from a man who has experienced the terrors of war firsthand?
Thirty-two years after the Eisenhower statement and forty years to the day of the first atomic device at Los Alamos, New Mexico, five of the major scientists engaged in developing that device came once more to Washington, a constant quest of theirs for these forty years to say to the Congress and President of the United States, "We, who felt the pulse of heat at Trinity [the unusual name for the first atomic device], call on you, our fellow citizens, for a response deep enough to match the insistent signal from the fireball.
"We ask that you join us in insisting on a policy for nuclear weapons that abandons two grand illusions of our times: that nuclear warfare can achieve rational military and political objectives, and that a defense of populations against nuclear attack is possible."
The Eisenhower plea and the five atomic scientists' insistent cry revitalize Zechariah's call to genuine worship: "Thus says the Lord of Hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to his brother, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart."
If Zechariah's intention needs any further clarity, here is clarity in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ never mistook forms of worship for worship, or mistook religious activities for worship. He saw that religion could easily continue while "people could be devising evil in their hearts against their neighbor," the kind that unthinkingly thinks of nuclear winter. For him worship is worship in spirit and in truth, not prescribing and advising, but being and doing and giving and rendering true judgments, showing kindness and mercy, lifting up the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, the poor; and devising our great good, the good of all in his crucifixion and resurrection. Do we need a more vivid reminder in the day in which we live that we have an infinite capacity to crucify? Do we need to remind ourselves that, because of our infinite capacity to crucify, Christ was willing to be crucified for us that we too might worship in spirit and truth?
That is Christ's deep response, deep enough to match the insistent signal from the fireball of our times. It is that same crucifixion and resurrection which equips us to match the insistent signal from the fireball. It is through that same crucifixion and resurrection that we devise good for the neighbor, not only for the neighbor we know, but for the whole family of God around the world. Amen
For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go forth leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.
(Malachi 4:1-6)
