James 1:17-27
Transformative Religion
James Sledge August
30, 2015
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the
Father, is this…
Religion… The term could use some PR help. Most of the stories associated with
it are negative. Article after article has chronicled the dramatic rise of the
“Nones” those folks who check “none of the above” when asked to list a
religious preference. They and many others sometimes say they are “spiritual but not religious,” SBNR for short.
The
exact distinction between “spiritual” and “religious” is a bit fuzzy. One dictionary
says that “spiritual” has to do with sacred things, with religion, with
supernatural deities, but the definition of “religious” mentions many of the
same things. However “religious” feels more connected to the corporate and
institutional: congregations, denominations, churches.
In
her delightful, witty, snarky, and insightful book, When “Spiritual But Not Religious” Is Not Enough: Seeing God in
Surprising Places, Even the Church, UCC pastor Lilian Daniel challenges
SBNR thinking about church. She complains about such folks needing to share
their spiritual insights with her upon learning she is a pastor. Writing of one
such encounter she says, “Everybody loves to tell a minister what’s wrong with
the church.”
This
particular fellow had started out Roman Catholic but had left for a variety of church
“failures.” After college he become part of a conservative Baptist church,
drawn by relationships with the people there. But he chafed under a long list
of prohibitions and eventually drifted away. Later he married and became part
of his wife’s Mainline congregation. It fit him rather well, but then they
divorced and it felt like her church, so he drifted away again. Now he spent
his Sunday mornings sleeping late, reading the New York Times, and going for runs through the woods.
This was his
religion today, he explained. “I worship nature. I see myself in the trees and
in the butterflies. I am one with the great outdoors. I find God there. And I
realized that I am deeply spiritual but no longer religious.”
He dumped the
news in my lap as if it were a controversial hot potato, something that would
shock a mild-mannered minister never before exposed to ideas so brave and
different and daring. But of course, to me, none of this was different in the
least.
This kind and
well-meaning Sunday jogger fits right into mainstream American culture. He is
perhaps by now in the majority— all those people who have stepped away from the
church in favor of …what? Running, newspaper reading, Sunday yoga, or whatever
they put together to construct a more convenient religion of their own making.[1]
Daniel
shares a good bit more of this fellow’s story and his attempts to enlighten her
before concluding, “It finally hit me what was bothering me about this
self-styled religion he had invented— he hadn’t invented it at all. It was as
boring and predictable as the rest of our self-centered consumer culture, and
his very conceit, that this outlook was somehow original, daring, or edgy, was
evidence of that very self-centeredness.”[2]
This
“self-centered consumer culture” is American individualism run amuck. At its
worst it imagines that “what I want” is the same as “what I need.” It expects
to find fulfillment in choosing just the right items off an endless smorgasbord
of goods, services, experiences, and beliefs. It imagines all these choices are
free and un-coerced, oblivious to the enslaving power of advertising, culture, or
status quo; unable to entertain the notion of sin distorting us.
In
keeping with such self-centered consumer notions, spiritual but not religious, at
its worst, imagines that it can do faith better as an individual, personal
quest, without the hypocrisy and messiness of other people, picking and
choosing just those spiritual elements that are personally appealing.
There are Christian, or at least
Christian-ish, versions of spiritual but not religious, but at its heart,
Christian faith is community based. At times we have allowed it to be overly
shaped by American individualism, turning it into a quest for personal
salvation or treating it like another consumer item where we are free to grab a
few elements, cafeteria style. But despite messing up regularly, just like the
Christians to whom James writes his letter, we keep working to connect more
deeply to a God so much bigger than ourselves, to be part of a hope beyond our
imagining or inventing. We seek to become part of a new day that we glimpse only dimly, a
day beyond any status quo, a day when the poor are lifted up, the hungry are
fed, the captives are freed, and mourning and crying and pain are no more. And
none of this happens without the messiness of community, the messiness of
church.
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There’s
little doubt that former President Jimmy Carter understands this. I think the
biblical James would say that Carter’s understanding of the faith is spot on. Some
of the “spiritual but not religious” crowd need to consider how the sort of
religion James recommends has shaped Carter into such a compelling public figure,
even though he is quite different from most who gain notoriety in our world
today.
I
watched news coverage the other day of Carter teaching Sunday School shortly
after his first cancer treatment. He spoke of the importance of “being able to
admit you MIGHT be mistaken and that the other person MIGHT be right” for
Christian faith and for love. Or as James wrote in his letter, Let
everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.
When our older daughter was in college,
she spent a semester in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world. The
experience was supposed to include some work with the Carter Center program
there to eradicate guinea worm disease, a terrible parasitic illness contracted
from contaminated drinking water. But she didn’t get much of a chance because
the work was mostly done. When Carter began the program in 1986, 3.5 million
cases were spread over 21 African and Asian countries. Last year there were 126
cases worldwide. Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.
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At
times the church has encouraged the growth of those who identify as “spiritual
but not religious” by forgetting the advice James gives us today. We’ve
sometimes said we believe without changing our behavior, hearing without doing.
We are often better at speaking than listening, and our anger is too often on
display. At times we’ve forgotten that Christian faith is supposed to be Spirit
filled, with a deep, experiential connection to God.
But we get it right plenty of times,
too. Drop by the Fellowship Hall on the first and third Wednesdays of each
month and watch all the doers, preparing, cooking, serving, cleaning, offering
welcome to the people James and Jesus tell us to serve. Come to worship the
last Sunday of September and hear some of our youth tell about their Pittsburgh
Project mission trip where they helped senior citizens on fixed incomes repair
their homes. Come to Centering Prayer on Tuesday mornings. Talk to people
who’ve had meals brought to them or been cared for in other ways when dealing
with illness or facing some crisis in their lives. None of these things happen
because of a vague, consumer spirituality constructed out of personal
preferences. They are part of a messy, fleshy, incarnate faith; part of a
religious community that seeks, however imperfectly, to embody Jesus.
_____________________________________________________________________________
As
I’ve watched all the media coverage of President Carter and how he is facing
his cancer, I’ve been struck at times by the way some folks are so perplexed at
how he faces death so well, how he remains committed to helping others, how he
still shows up on Sundays to teach his class. A lot of people seem most baffled
by that last one. “Why would a former president teach Sunday School?” they ask.
Perhaps
President Carter understands something about religion that easy,
consumer-styled spiritualities cannot know. Carter’s religion, along that James
discusses in his letter, is messy, as human communities inevitably are. But
when, by the Spirit, such communities become the living body of Christ, they
have the power to shape and form us in the image of Jesus, to transform lives, to
transform the world.
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