Spiritual Hiccups - Living within the Tension

Almost all religions have purity or holiness standards.  At the burning bush, Moses is commanded to take off his sandals because he is on holy ground.  Worship itself is a statement that they rhythms of life require regular cessation of all other activities so that we may focus ourselves totally on God.  The notion of a special day or Sabbath for worship helps enforce such rhythms.  Any number of religious rituals are related to purity .  I've always been amazed at the number of people with no church affiliation who nonetheless want their infant children to be baptized.  Something very similar goes on with secular Jews and circumcision. 

In recent years, a large number of young people have been attracted ancient Christian rituals as disparate as walking labyrinths to monastic chants to Eastern Orthodox worship.  Some of this may be the novelty and exotic nature of these rituals, but some is the recognition that drawing near to the divine demands that we step out of regular, mundane, even profane patterns and into patterns that are more resonate with the holy.

The Bible is filled with "holiness codes" and calls for us to be a holy people and a holy priesthood.  But the Bible is also filled with calls to love one's neighbor and even to love one's enemy.  It requires compassion for the weak, the vulnerable, and the outcast.  And these calls to love and compassion do not always rest easily beside calls to holiness and purity, as evidenced by how often Jesus found himself embroiled in conflict over Sabbath keeping.

During the Babylonian exile, Sabbath keeping had emerged as the central Jewish ritual.  It had allowed them to maintain their distinct identity as the people of Yahweh while captive in a foreign land ordered around foreign gods.  Both Sabbath keeping and synagogue grew out of exile and were central to the Judaism Jesus knew and practiced.  And yet he constantly came in conflict with the Sabbath rules.

The rabbis and Pharisees were never so rigid as to deny any tension between purity and compassion.  They created exceptions to Sabbath rules that allowed "work" on the Sabbath to save a life or rescue someone in distress.  But Jesus pressed beyond such exceptions when he healed a man with a withered hand in today's gospel.  There was not emergency.  Jesus could have waited until sundown when the Sabbath was ended.  But he doesn't.

Jesus never speaks against purity.  Jesus honors the Sabbath and calls his followers to holiness and righteousness.  But when Jesus is faced with a conflict between the demands of holiness and the demands of compassion, he routinely finds ways to move in the direction of compassion without ever abandoning holiness and purity.

In our culture, tensions between purity and compassion are easy to find.  The Westboro Baptist folks who protest military funerals with "God Hates Fags" signs are an extreme example of purity advocates.  But even fairly progressive religious groups such as my own denomination struggle with this same purity issue.  And even though we Presbyterians have recently approved changes that will lead to the ordination of gays and lesbians, a very large majority of our members believe such a move to be an affront to purity and holiness, and an affront to God.

At the other end of the spectrum are people who think all issues of purity to be superstitious relics.  Doing what is right and good require no rituals or concerns about holiness.  These folks note that many atheists do much more good in the world than do many Christians, which is of course completely true.  And even among many church folks, rituals such as Sabbath keeping have all but disappeared.  At times it is difficult to tell the atheist from the agnostic from the Christian except by which box they check on the survey form.

For whatever reason, we humans seem not to like tensions.  We want to resolve them.  Much of the differences between churches who proclaim a vengeful God of judgment who is itching to send the reprobate to hell, and churches who preach a benevolent God of grace whose love would not even permit the existence of a hell, arise from how they resolve the tensions between purity and compassion, holiness and love, judgment and mercy, etc. 

But resolving these tensions in one way or another usually creates a small god of our own making.  A dynamic, vital faith requires that we live within the tension between holiness and compassion, law and grace, mercy and judgment.  We cannot simply pick one or the other.  We cannot flatten God to conform to our limitations and preferences. 

And so I believe that a vital faith and a vital church require us to vigilant with regards to our dislike of tension.  If we are on the progressive/liberal side of things we must beware our tendency to see only the side of compassion, mercy, and love.  And if we are on the more conservative side, we must beware our tendency toward law, judgment, and purity.  Otherwise none of us will arrive at anything close to a biblical faith, instead constructing a proof-text faith that creates God in our own image.

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