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Not the Rules – But the Ruler!
Acts 11: 1-18
Mt 23: 1-28
Once there were three clergy couples that died in horrible car accidents about the same time. One was a Lutheran couple, one was a Southern Baptist couple and the last couple was Methodist. When they came to stand before the pearly gates, St. Peter came out with a terrible scowl on his face and addressing the Lutheran minister and his wife first, he said, “I’m sorry you will have to go down. You care too much about alcohol, demon rum. Why your wife’s name is even Sherry.” Next, Peter came to the Southern Baptist and his wife, and with a similar admonition, Peter said, “I am sorry but you too will have to go down. You care too much about money, filthy lucre, the root of all evil. Why your wife’s name is even Penny.” About this time the poor old Methodist pastor, who had been standing quietly in the corner, turned to his wife and said, “Come on Fannie. Let’s go. We don’t stand a chance.” Religion can provide much fodder for humor.
My Dad liked to laugh. He had a great sense of humor. My Dad often said, “If you’re looking for something to stuff a shirt with, religion is a great place to start.” So what is the difference between religion and faith? What is the difference between knowing a set of rules, which we have corrupted and twisted, shaded and shaped for our own convenience and to suit our own image of godliness and correctness and really knowing and adoring the Ruler and Creator of all things, especially the Creator of our hearts, which is where He truly wishes to live? So – religion can also be a stumbling block between mankind and God and a source of division and dissension within the body of humanity itself. Religion can muddy and bloody the water of faith’s simple stream of truth.
A psychologist, an engineer, and a theologian were on a hunting trip in Canada. Seeking shelter in a snow storm, they knocked on the door of a small isolated cabin. Finding no one at home and no lock on the door they went in. Once inside they saw something peculiar. A large, pot-bellied, cast-iron stove was suspended in midair by wires attached to the ceiling beams. Immediately speculation erupted between the three men of letters as to the significance of this odd visual presentation. The psychologist postulated, “It is obvious that this lonely trapper, isolated from society, has elevated his stove so that he can curl up under it’s glowing embers and vicariously experience a return to his mother’s womb.”
The Engineer then formulated his theory. “The man is practicing one of the central laws of thermodynamics. By elevating the stove, he has discovered a way to distribute the heat more evenly throughout the cabin.”
Finally, the theologian sermonized. “I’m sure that hanging his stove from the ceiling has religious significance. Fire Lifted up has been a symbol of reaching out for the warmth of God for millennia.” About this time the door of the cabin flew opened to reveal the cabin’s owner. After a few startled introductions, in unison the three intruders, each believing the man would confirm his own hypothesis asked the trapper – “Why is the stove suspended from the ceiling?”
Without skipping a beat the trapper said, “Had plenty of wire, not much stovepipe.”
You have just heard the difference between religion and faith. Religion is endless banter, spiteful dissension, argument, speculation, self-righteous congratulation and fascination over things that do not matter. And faith answers, faith touches, faith speaks to, faith ministers to, faith responds to real human needs physical and spiritual. Faith brings warmth to a cold room; and Religion is a cold room with no warmth. Faith uses what’s at hand, wire or stovepipe to meet a need. Faith doesn’t quibble over the niceties. Faith makes good things happen.
The central message of the Word of God is witnessed in The Father’s efforts through the prophets, and then the Father’s attempts through the Son, Jesus, to explain and then to show, to demonstrate the difference between religion and faith, rules and righteousness, interpretive religion and actual hands on, caring, life changing, compassionate, empathetic, get down into the trenches faith. And the religious of the world are still wrestling with this key question everyday. What is the difference between Religion and Faith, Rules and Righteousness? This is the question at the center of every war, every dispute between nations, every political battle in every nation and every battle and controversy in every church, every synagogue, every mosque, every cathedral, and temple throughout the world. It is the question debated in the halls of congress today. If you don’t believe this, either you have missed the news, haven’t been around any people lately, or you haven’t picked up your Book of Faith in a really long time and truly examined what it is trying to say.
Was Jesus frustrated by this? You bet. It is the reason he came. For you see, Jesus’ biggest struggle is not with those outside of the temple, outside of the synagogue, outside of the mosque, outside of the church. Jesus’ biggest struggle is with those inside, the religious. What did Jesus say to the churchmen, the religious of his day? He said, “You are careful to tithe the tiniest portion of your income, but you ignore justice, mercy and faith. You strain your water to prevent ingesting an unclean gnat, but you swallow other acts of behavior, like gossip and harsh judgment the size of a camel because it promotes your own view of righteousness, and your own political position.” The Pharisees quibbled with Jesus, not over things that mattered, like healing a man born blind, or restoring a withered arm, but over whether it was done on the Sabbath. They worried about grain gathered on the Sabbath, rather than whether the hungry were fed.
Look at what opposition Peter faced from the Religious leaders and Apostles in Jerusalem, after bringing the Gospel to Cornelius, a Roman Army Officer and a gentile in Caesarea. The Religious were not concerned that hearts had been reborn, but rather that the religious proprieties had not been observed, like not sitting at table with gentiles or eating with them. The religious majored in the minors. They elevated minutia to the level of the sacred. They took that which was of man and made it to supersede that which was of God. For you see, this is the nature of the religious.
Now we may want to comfort ourselves. We may want to delude ourselves by saying Christians or Church people are not like the Sunnis or the Shiites killing each other over religious hair-splitting about the true line of descent from the prophet Mohammad; but if that is so, we have not read the history of Western Religion, of the inquisition, where “Religious Christians” were the tormentors and torturers of those the church labeled as heretics or distorters of true Christianity. We haven’t read the sorry history of the Salem Witch trials, where the religious upper crust (Protestants this time I might add), even well known ministers, like the Reverend Cotton Mather were the ones that allowed religion to be used to condemn the innocent. If we think we are above association with the Pharisees, we missed the church’s role in promoting slavery and later, social injustice and segregation in the name of religion and order in the Civil Rights era. Remember, it was the liberals in the church pews in the sixties who marched against racial injustice, not the conservatives.
I remember the first little church I served in Etowah N.C. before I went into the Army Chaplaincy. My first day at the office, an older lady came to see me. She said, pastor. “I’m from the “B” group.”
I said, “I see. And what is the “B” group exactly?” She replied I “B” here before you got here and I gonna “B” here after you leave.” I fell down laughing at her forthrightness and tongue in cheek good humor. Miss Ethel and I became close friends, not because she always agreed with me, or concurred with everything I said from the pulpit, because she did not, but because she was the embodiment of a soul who understood the difference between religion and faith. If something could promote unity and kindness and dispel or mute disunity, Miss Ethel was there with a down to earth faith solution that made a difference and brought people together.
I remember one of my first baptisms in this church was the baby of an interracial couple. The wife’s parents had been members for years and both she and her husband went through the baptismal classes and attended the church regularly. Well sure enough a few weeks before the baptism, some of the Religious Pillars of the church showed up on my door step with reasons why I should discourage this and why this was a bad idea, and that several people said they were going to leave if I baptized this baby. Well, Miss Ethel knew this would not sit right with me, and so before this became an issue she shows up while these folks are at my office with a baptismal gown of her own creation, wanting to know what every body thought, and pretty soon this issue became a non issue. As people oohed and awed over Miss Ethel’s work – because you see everybody liked Miss Ethel, the hostility seemed to melt away. Yes, a few people left the church. But that was okay.
Miss Ethel knew religion was not what was needed here, but an act of tangible, touchable faith reaching out to unite people over a child. Isn’t that what our faith, not our religion is about anyway? Miss Ethel understood something else. She understood that ministers who come and go as she said, were not put in the pulpit for everyone to agree with, but agree or not with what they say, they are called to the pulpit, to make people think about what they believe, to stretch, to challenge and hopefully to help people grow in their understanding of the difference between Religion, which is just a dry disembodied set of rules, or someone’s interpretation of them, and faith, which is reaching out with that extra peace of wire or stovepipe, or a baptismal gown, what ever gifts we have on hand, spiritual or physical to bring warmth and unity and understanding.
So, do we have Pharisees in the church today? Yes. And sometimes we have to take a good look in the mirror to see just what they look like. There will always be those religious pillars who want to say, that where someone stands on one side or the other of a controversial issue, and you know what those issues are, determines whether we are Christians or not, faithful or not faithful. But I say that is religion talking, not faith. That is self-righteous, judgmental, superficial piety speaking. That is the ghost of the Inquisition and the Salem Witch trials rearing its devilish head; not Christ walking with us in faith, struggling with us to make our faith relevant in a world that is not black and white, but shades of grey and all colors in between. I like what Peter said in Acts 10: 34 to 35. He said, “I see very clearly that God doesn’t show partiality. In every nation, [and I would carry it a step further. In every faith], God accepts those who fear Him and do what is right.” I have been around the world and I have seen much harm, havoc and death caused in the name of God and religion, but I have also witnessed Miss Ethels in every faith and denomination, who by their genuine goodness show us what the difference is between faith and religion. What is the difference between faith and religion? You have to decide that for yourself. I hope the Lord has given us all something to think about this morning. God bless you and thanks for letting me share with you this Lord’s Day.
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