Religiosity

What did you do that you loved in worship this past Sunday? What is the event or portion of Sunday morning coming down you care for the most? What is your religion in your religion?

Do you love the discipline of religion? Do you love the method (for those Methodists out there among us)? David, king of Israel, wrote about how he perceived ritual: "I hate all this silly religion, but you, God, I trust. I'm leaping and singing in the circle of your love; you saw my pain, you disarmed my tormentors, You didn't leave me in their clutches but gave me room to breathe."

So the question is, do you love your religion or do you love the object of your religion? Those are two very different things.

 I feel an urge to discuss this thing we call religion. While having my morning coffee, I read a piece in the local newspaper that told me that as Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, came to a close, Syrian security forces killed at least seven protesters. Thousands, the article told me, poured out of mosques to stage anti-government demonstrations. The protesters were forming to have their say against Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.  Nothing like a little bloodshed to signal the end of a religious holiday. Nothing like protests piled upon prayers. The Apostle Paul told his student Timothy, "As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God. They'll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they're animals. Stay clear of these people."

Rosh Hashanan, a key Jewish religious event, is less than a month away. Security will be intense during that period of time, despite the fact the holiday is about not allowing work in Israel for those who follow the tenants of that religion. This is the beginning of the Jewish year, and one way that is celebrated is the blowing of the shofar, a ram's horn. It is a call for repentance, a 10-day call for repentance that culminates with the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, Oct. 7 this year.

Ramadan, Rosh Hashanan, Yom Kippur, Sabbath. Repentance. Repairment. Reframing. Rehash of what it means to love Jehovah, Allah, God the Father.

Religion, religion, religion.

It seems to me this morning that we must acknowledge there is a humongous difference in religion and redemption, in religion and the relationship. Christianity is about, at its purest, no set of rules one must follow to gain entrance into a religious club. No. Christianity is about one man dying on the cross saving the world.

Nothing we do, nothing we can do, saves us except confession this to be truth.

Have we mutated this "system" at times into how to's? Surely you know the how to's? How to be saved...how to worship ... how to pray ... how to be good ... how to do missions, evangelism, church itself? That's the religion of Christianity. I try desperately not to belong to that club.

But heaven help us all, we were never -- in Jesus' eyes -- to be about religion. We were to be about, saved with, galvanized by Christ's cross and the shed blood of a very, very innoncent and pure Lamb of God. No doxology, no prayers, no ritual. Jesus. JESUS. JESUS. And nothing else.

While doing my morning Bible reading, I came across these nuggets, first from Isaiah, then from Luke:

In Isaiah, "The Lord says, 'if you treat the Sabbath as sacred and do not pursue your own interests on that day; if you value my holy day and honor it by not traveling, working, or talking idly on that day, then you will find the joy that comes from serving me."
In Luke, "Jesus was walking through some wheat fields on a Sabbath. His disciples began to pick the heads of wheat, rub them in their hands, and eat the grain. Some Pharisees asked, 'why are you doing what our Law says you cannot do on the Sabbath.' Jesus answered them, 'haven't you read what David did when he and his men were hungry? He went into the house of God, took the bread offered to God, ate it, and gave it also to his men. Yet it is against our Law for anyone except the priests to eat that bread.' And Jesus concluded, 'the son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.' "

The key portions of those two sections of scripture are "your own interests" in Isaiah and "the son of Man" in Luke. Sabbath isn't about ritual or calendaring. Whose Sabbath is it?

Clearly Jesus had his thoughts about what constituted good "religion" and what didn't. Religion, it seemed to him, wasn't about our own interests but rather it was about the son of Man. It wasn't about how do we do this as much as it was about what are we doing this for.

In Luke we find, Jesus saying in another area, "Watch out for the religion scholars. They love to walk around in academic gowns, preen in the radiance of public flattery, bask in prominent positions, sit at the head table at every church function. And all the time they are exploiting the weak and helpless. The longer their prayers, the worse they get. But they'll pay for it in the end."

The apostle Paul tells us his letter to the budding church in Rome, "[ Religion Can't Save You}

And, finally, James (Jesus' brother) told us this about religion, "Anyone who sets himself up as "religious" by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world."

Religion isn't, or shouldn't be, about months on a calendar or days on a PDA.  It's not grape juice and homemade bread. It's not hymns or praise choruses or guitar or pipe organ. Christians, true worshipping Christians, know it is about one man who loved dearly, walked humbly and faithfully, and came to demonstrate not only humanly but Godly love. No ritual, no planning calendar, no event can love us.

Jesus did. Jesus does.Jesus will continue to.

Someone once said you can't lose what you never had. You can't lose religion if you never had a big ol' chunk of it. If that's true, praise be to God.

As the songwriter wrote, "I'd rather have Jesus than vain applause; I'd rather be faithful to his dear cause."

Not once did this man Jesus ever tell us to start a new religion. He did, however, say this: "Burning out on religion? Come to me. ... I'm after mercy, not religion."

Kick the religiosity out of your life and invite the King in.