Faith beyond Religion.
The readings this morning
are very interesting. As we progress towards Pentecost Sunday in a few weeks’
time, the reading from Acts is already chronologically after Pentecost and yet
the gospel reading is before Pentecost and is pointing us towards it. The
readings feel slightly out of sync. But that conflict, that dissonance is
actually what has inspired my title this morning, namely, faith beyond
religion.
Acts tells us the story of the stoning of Stephen. We read it nowadays
with a sense of disassociation, a cool objectivity. In fact we often joke about
it saying it is not a story about being stoned on drugs. But it was cruel and savage way to be killed. It
was a cruel and savage way to kill. Just recently I saw a similar real life
example of just such savage and cruel behaviour. It was a video taken in my
birth country of South Africa of a women being stamped and beaten upon by a mob
of people while large crowds stood by watching. Without going into the graphic
and really disturbing details, I was shocked at how humans can treat one
another without a sense of guilt or remorse; how people who kick someone
helpless on the ground do this without hesitation or restraint. Some even
lunged themselves into the air so as to land upon this lady with both feet and
their full body weight. This blood covered women lay helpless on the ground. I
stopped watching when a man approached her with an axe and proceeded to use the
back of the axe on her head.
Human beings in this story in Acts,
with malicious intent, picked up stones with the aim to cause another human
being grievous harm. As we read, this harm caused the death of that human whom
we know to be Stephen. He was brutally killed for his religious convictions. In
the video I watched recently, which I sent to Amnesty International, it seems
these actions of the mob were politically motivated.
Verse 58 here in chapter 7 of Acts says, ‘the witnesses laid their
clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul’.
This act of brutal violence was religiously motivated. Surely that is a
contradiction? Surely here too there is conflict and dissonance? Surely such
violence is not the true intent of religion? Surely any such violence towards
humans by humans, religiously or politically motivated is unjustified?
If you have been watching the news recently, you will know of the
actions of a religious fundamental group that have kidnapped girls in the north
of Nigeria and liberated them
because they have converted in fear to Islam. Surely this is not what religion
is? Surely Christianity as a religion is not like this? Surely us here on a
Sunday expressing our religion are not like that? Surely there is no
dissonance, no conflict in our religion?
Pete Rollins in his book
‘Insurrection’ says, “the person who affirms God through fear of persecution
makes the claim in order to convince another, while people who affirm God
through fear of hell or meaningless seek to convince themselves” (p10). What I
suggest is being implied here is the difference between religion and faith.
Saul was driven and motivated by his religion and was zealous and driven for
that cause but he did things that could not be justified. Our passage from John
this morning especially verse 6 has been used in the same way in different ways
throughout history and still today within our religion. This is where I suggest
religion and faith differ.
Paul Tillich the theologian said that the kingdom Jesus came to
proclaim was transreligious, thereby no justifying any religion credence over another or insolence towards that which is
different. Karen Armstrong in her chapter about a second axial period says,
“every theological statement should be paradoxical, to remind us that when we
are speaking about God we are at the end of what thoughts and words can do and
that the divine cannot easily be contained within a human system of thought”
(p27). Faith therefore as Geering
explains is that which “refers to the personal attitude of trust and hope which
we humans manifest as we interpret the world in which we live and respond”
(p33). It is a position which surrenders control especially control over others
and replaces it instead with wasteful generous love. It is a position which
places action as a result of the faith it holds to respond to the world in love
and in many cases it is love that directs our actions against injustice.
In contrast, religion often is
about control.
Allow me to illustrate this point about control through another story
form the Bible. In Genesis 32 we
have the story about Jacob wrestling with God. In ancient society to name
something was to have control over that thing. Note God asks Jacob his name and
Jacob provides it. As a result, his name is changed by God from Jacob to that
of Israel. Jacobs tries to control God by asking him his name but God does not
concede. There are 2 significant aspects here in this story. One is that God
likes us to wrestle and he blesses that action. Religion often likes to have
all the ‘t’s crossed and all the ‘i’s dotted and does all in its power to exert
this constant unchanging position. Faith on the other hand is about mystery as
defined by Hebrews 11 ‘sure of what we HOPE for’. The second aspect is that of
control by naming things. A similar situation can be found in the story where
Moses is being sent to Egypt and he really does not want to go and so Moses
asks, ‘who shall I say sent me?’ In other words, what is your name?
Interestingly God replies ‘I am that I am’ has sent you.
Here in John we have the very same reference in verse 6 ‘I am way. truth and life’ and it is
part of a long list of ‘I am’s’ such as ‘I am the bread of life’(6:35), ‘the
light of the world’ (8:32), ‘the living water’ (7:37) etc. found here in the
gospel of John. Bishop Spong says that ‘Johns gospel is so profound so poetic,
so skilfully crafted, so dependent on images and concepts out of the Jewish
past that it is worthy of the study of a lifetime’ (p189).
Faith is so much more than
doctrines, rules, control, naming. Faith is about hope and love just as Paul
writes in the letter to the church in Corinth chapter 13 saying, ‘and these 3
things remain, faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love’.
I’d like to think that as Stephen lay there on the ground, helpless and
innocent, being unjustifiably and brutally killed in the name of religion, his
pronouncement of forgiveness to his
enemies, the ultimate expression of agape love was a seed of conviction placed
within the heart of young Saul.
Stephen exemplifies faith, love and hope. As Rollins writes, “This is
what love does. It does not make
itself visible but, like light, makes others visible to us. In a very precise
sense, then, love’s presence cannot be described as existing, but rather is
that which calls others into existence; for to exist literally means to stand
forth from the background, to be brought forth’.
And finally, Bernard Brandon Scott in his chapter ‘from parables to
ethics’, says “hope is a state of
mind, not a state of the world….and its not essentially dependent on some
particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation…it transcends
the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its
horizons…it is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the
certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out” (p132).
May we truly be Easter people where we do not believe for what value it
solely gives us but may we be truly faith people, inspired by our faith, hope
and love that the world is transformed by our faith living in the way, that it
matters to the world what we believe, that our faith catapults us into loving
action against any form of injustice for we seek to live life, celebrate life
and life in all its fullness. And may God empower us through the coming of the
Holy Spirit in this way.
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