A reminder for those of you who were here last week, but for those who were not, I examined the question that was put forward at a debate at The Munk Centre three years ago: ‘ Is religion a force for good in the world?’ Last week, I concluded that is not a debate that we as Christians can enter into easily, but rather to very specifically draw people’s attention to the teachings of Jesus, and on the basis of that discuss what is good. We did so by looking at The Beatitudes of Jesus from Matthew Chapter 5, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. We concluded that a study of religion in general was not helpful in appreciating the power of Jesus’ words, and Jesus’ words stand as a point almost of contradiction to the whole nature of trying to make a case for religion in general.
This morning, I want to look at another source that doesn’t concentrate so much on the teachings of Jesus, but on the actions of Jesus. Whereas the Gospel of Matthew recounts, through the eyes of probably one of the Apostles, the teachings of Jesus in Galilee and the things that he said and did. The Apostle Paul, however, because he came across Jesus later and was encountered by Jesus as the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, is more interested in what Jesus’ life, death and resurrection means for humanity. Therefore, it is to those words that we turn today.
The question, “Is religion a force for good?” must stay in the background of our thoughts. But what we need to understand is that the Apostle Paul, rather than ever looking at religion in a general sense, always speaks concretely in the Christian faith. He speaks about the Cross. He says in our text – one of the most difficult passages to read and understand I think in all of Paul’s: “For I decided to know nothing among you, except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
For the Apostle Paul then what is central to his whole of faith is the Cross. But, why did he emphasize it? Why was it so important? Well, it was because he was writing to the Corinthian Church, and this was the Christian community that he had helped found, but this Christian community was very divided. It was divided and there was a schismatic spirit at work within that congregation. So divided was the Church in Corinth, that Paul felt that all he had tried to do could actually be lost if these divisions continued.
Isn’t it interesting that even two thousand years later one of the great criticisms of religion is division, the division that it sometimes engenders and the division that it sometimes produces? Even within its own ranks of a particular faith community, division can cause havoc! The Apostle Paul knew just that. There were within the Corinthian communities, two competing views of the world. Corinth was a very cosmopolitan city, very much like Toronto is. It was a place where the world came. It was a confluence of cultures. It was the place where people came from various and different backgrounds because of business and corporate interests. Corinth was a fascinating place! Corinth was made up essentially of two major groups of people and of thought.
The first of these were the Romans. Corinth was loved by the Romans. Corinth had become a powerful city within the Roman Empire. It had become a merchant city within the great sphere of the growing and expanding Roman Empire. But the Romans had a particular view of life and of the world. They had a premium placed on things like status and power and position and prestige. Roman society was highly stratified. You can see that in its military. You can see it in its legal procedures. Romans placed a high premium on status and order and structure.
They even applied this to the way they looked at society as a whole. It was very elitist. The positions of power that you took, your status as a Roman citizen, gave you a position of power and authority. But, if you were not part of the elite class, if you were part of the slave or the underclass, then in fact you were subservient and not part of high Roman culture. It was elitist. It spent a great deal of time emphasizing how you were born and from which part of the world you came from.
For all the glory of the Roman Empire, it had a concept of wisdom that was very much down to earth and practical. Its notion of wisdom was knowledge of the way that things should be, and knowledge and a wisdom that maintains that order. Roman thought was very structured and its wisdom was very structured.
It was also, and we forget this, very religious. In fact, the Latin word religare literally means a religious person or a religious trend. To be religare was to be and to participate in something that was ordered and structured. Rome had many gods and many religions, and in fact it ascribed certain religions to certain traditions and certain activities within society. It is ironic that the Romans felt that the Christians were not religious enough, and that they were overly free-wheeling in their views on things, and not structured enough in the way that they worshipped God. They were critical of the Christians for not being sufficiently religare.
Corinth was also made up by the Greeks. It was a Greek city. It was a city that cherished rhetoric and esoteric thought. It was a place and a culture that loved wisdom: wisdom that was special, wisdom that was knowledge of things, sometimes esoteric things, and sometimes spiritual things, sometimes things that not everybody could perceive and understand. Its notion of spirituality was one of it being “soulish” that recognizes that we all have a soul and therefore as souls that are immortal we should all enjoy the spirituality of our “soulishness.”
It was also very individualistic. Its wisdom was un-structured and very fluid. It wasn’t very religious. It had myths, it had traditions, it had all kinds of gods and demi-gods, but the structure of the religion was not the same structure as the Roman view. Rather, they believed that some people were spiritual and others were not. There was an elitism that came not from class and status like Rome, but from whether or not you had a particular inner knowledge of divine things.
You can see can’t you, in a city like Corinth this was being set up for division? You had people who came to this early Church, who believed in Jesus Christ, who accepted the Gospel, but brought with them all the baggage of being both Roman and Greek. They were elitist in their own way: one in a very religious way and another in a very spiritual way. One claimed to possess power and structure; the other possessed knowledge and insight. But in both cases, and this is central to Paul’s teaching, certain people were excluded.
If you didn’t have special Greek knowledge, you were nothing! If you were not of a particular status within Rome, you were nothing! These Christians came together, and you can just feel the division taking place. You can just imagine people coming from this culture, and the Corinthian Church wanted to be culturally relevant. It wanted Corinth to embrace it. They wanted to be part of the new community and this new emerging religion or movement in the midst of the city.
The Apostle Paul walks into this mess! What the Apostle Paul does is simply brilliant! This passage goes down in my mind as one of the most magnificent understandings of the Christian faith that exists. He says – and I paraphrase-, “Put aside your divisions, and let’s redefine the terms. Let’s redefine a term such as wisdom.” The Romans believed in it; the Greeks believed it. But the problem was that it had become a divisive force. You either had this wisdom or you didn’t have this wisdom, depending on where you stood. Paul says that wisdom is not about our own grasp of God; it is not about what we understand as order and structure; it is not about some special knowledge that one individual possesses and another does not. Rather, it is entirely different.
The great scholar Edith Humphrey, who teaches at Pittsburgh Seminary, and who is a long-time friend and colleague of mine, said this of this passage:
Wisdom is first and foremost for Paul a “who” rather than merely a body of knowledge or human capacity. It is a “who.” For the Apostle Paul wisdom is that which is revealed in Jesus Christ. Wisdom is not the spirit of this age; wisdom is not what we grasp of God; wisdom is how God grasps us. Wisdom is not esoteric, it is not something that one person possesses and another person does not. Rather, wisdom is God’s self-revelation: God coming to us and showing who God is. And Paul says the place where we see this wisdom manifest above all is in the Cross of Christ. The Cross of Christ isn’t something that we possess for our own status. It is not something that we glorify in for our own power. Rather, it is God’s way of coming to us. Wisdom then is a wisdom that comes from the Almighty.
For Paul, this obliterates all these arguments by the Romans and the Greeks about who has it and who does not. For Paul, none of that matters. What matters is what God has done and revealed. He says, “Who knows what your human spirit thinks except the person who thinks it.” So who knows God’s Spirit? It is God’s Spirit that reveals and manifests God’s self on the Cross. He re-defines wisdom.
He also redefines spirituality. Spirituality had become a buzz word in his era in the same way as spirituality is a bit of a buzz word in our era. Again, as with wisdom, there were those who claimed to have special spiritual knowledge and those that did not. It was all very individualistic. It was as if the Church in Corinth was made up by a few groups of elite people who thought they were superior and more intellectual or insightful than somebody else. They wouldn’t listen to common wisdom, and they certainly didn’t recognize that the whole community had been blessed by the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, it became very much their own wisdom – no matter what!
You can see later on in the Book of Corinthians I, how they struggled with this. There were those who claimed to speak in “tongues” when no one else did. There were those who claimed to have special knowledge when nobody else did. There were those who were particularly moral when nobody else was. There were those who claimed that they had proper status within the Church when nobody else did. That is why Paul concludes in 1 Corinthians 12, “I am going to show you a better way.”
The “better way” is linked to what we find earlier on in the book: the way of the Cross, which is the way of love. You see, you can’t just make up your own spiritual life and do so in complete isolation from everybody else. Paul said, “No! That is just a collection of individuals with their own little bits of human wisdom. It can be very divisive and very destructive.”
Not long ago, I received a Facebook note from a friend that I hadn’t heard from for a long time. He is a German, and he was somebody that I went to university with. Jurgen is a very clever and a very erudite person. By sending a Facebook note, Jurgen led me down Memory Lane. I don’t know if any of you are on Facebook, but it sometimes takes you down Memory Lane. You go back to moments many years ago and stories that you had forgotten.
I remember him telling me a story years ago about when he went to a very fine high-end dinner in Johannesburg. It was one of these formal dinners where you sit down and you look at the plate that is in front of you, and unless you know how to use the cutlery, it can be very intimidating and confusing. Four different forks, four different spoons, four different knives, four glasses, two plates, three cups: I mean a really formal dinner!
He went with his friend Yuri, who was Russian and had never been to a formal dinner before. So, Jurgen said to Yuri before the meal began, “You do realize that there is a very specific order to the way that you use your cutlery and your utensils when you eat?”
Yuri said, “Oh, I don’t care about conventions like that. I think I figured that out a long time ago. I don’t need you to tell me how to use a fork and a knife and a spoon!”
Jurgen says, “So be it!”
So, they sat down at the meal. Now, you all know because you are enlightened that you always start from the outside utensils and move in as each course is served. Yuri, on the other hand, was of the belief that you start with the inside utensils and work your way out! So, the first serving was soup. Well, what does he do with his knife and his fork in soup? He decides to do what any normal person would do at a banquet of high standing: he picks up the soup bowl and he drinks from it!
Jurgen is ready to take his own life at this point! Then comes the next dish which is an appetizer of sorts, kind of tiny, just to prepare yourself for the meal, an amuse bouche, and so he uses the big knife and fork on that. And then, you know where all this is going....... The fish dish comes. Well, he is okay – he’s got that figured out. He’s got that knife and fork. Finally, the main entree arrives and all he is left with is a bread knife and a soup spoon! It is steak! So, poor Yuri sits there and tries to eat his main course with a soup spoon and a little knife.
After the meal is over Jurgen goes to him and says, “You wouldn’t listen would you?” Yuri was convinced that everything was mad about all of this, that it was a silly way of doing things. It all needed to be restructured as he had imagined it, rather than as things actually were.
Now, if you apply what Yuri did to our understanding of faith, then you can see that just having your own individual view is simply not sufficient. Why? Because the Apostle Paul was helping found a Church, a community of believers, people who worshipped God and Jesus Christ. It is not enough just to have your own spiritual view; you needed to live in a community, one with another. For the Apostle Paul then, spirituality was not just about what you happen to think of God at any particular moment but rather it is an experience of the Holy Spirit working as God’s spirit amongst God’s people. This brings me to one of the big issues of our day.
One of the big issues of our day is a term that I have only just really stumbled upon in recent months, but that is people say they are SBNR. SBNR people are becoming really very powerful. In fact, they are becoming so powerful that according to Christianity Today, there are even now a group of people following it, a group of people the political parties are taking seriously. And, when they did their assessment of votes, the SBNRs are a group that have to be taken seriously. Have you any idea what I am talking about? No! SBNR = Spiritual But Not Religious!
How many times have we heard recently about people who are spiritual but not religious? I run into people all the time who tell me to somehow justify themselves – as if it is going to make them feel better – that they are spiritual but not religious. And then they look at me expecting me to do a little dance and to be so excited for them. I haven’t got a clue what they mean! They say they are spiritual but not religious, and I say, “That’s nice.” And then I hope we talk about something entirely different, like the Olympics or something.
SBNR is a term that is being bandied around, and I am not sure if people are really thinking about what it means. Let me tell you what I think they mean, and then you can correct me at another time if you so wish, but it is very interesting that this is a group that is growing. According to Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, who writes in Christianity Today, in 1998 8 per cent of people said they were SBNR – spiritual but not religious. By 2008, that had gone to 18 per cent, and now it is believed that for those ages 18-39, it is almost as high as 28 per cent of people who would say they are spiritual but not religious. The Gallup Poll has done a study of this and it is one of the fastest growing group of people in the United States of America, and probably in Canada, where we are even more advanced in that number.
It is also interesting that political parties are now trying to figure out how they can engage these SBNRs: what language they should use, what positions politicians should take, and some of the savvy politicians have been able to plug in to the SBNRs. Even when you look at these online dating services that are out there, you look at these and even then there are categories of SBNRs, and so-much-so that in fact if you say you are SBNR, you have a very high likelihood of finding a really good person to be with. Why? It is because it sort of implies that you are intrinsically spiritual and okay, but extrinsically you don’t care about any of that stuff.
This is what I think. I think people are tired of religion. I think they don’t want structure. They don’t want order. They don’t want to be Romans! They are tired of that. It is the old order. They don’t want anything that is systematic or dogmatic. They want something that is free-wheeling and something that is not constrained by anything that might require anything of them. But on the other hand, they desperately want to be something, so they say they are spiritual but not religious.
I am not questioning the integrity of people who make that claim. I think that in the same way that I am often, and I think the Apostle Paul would be, critical of those who put all their emphasis on religion and the outward structural manifestation of the faith, so too there is a need to question the spirituality that has no content or little content, that is made up as you go along, that is undefined, that is Greek and esoteric. This is because both of these are extremes that in the end can be very divisive.
It might sound nice, but does it really generate or present any meaningful change within the world? Does it really create community? Does it really enhance our relationship with the God who made us? This is because you can have spirituality, like the Roman spirituality, that was totally pagan and has no God, but is very religious, and you can have a Greek spirituality that is very Gnostic and elitist and individualistic. You can have the religion of Oprah and Chopra for all the niceness of it, but does it really cause you to be committed to something?
I think what Paul is saying in Corinthians is this. The Cross is the center of what matters most, not religious traditions and not individual spirituality, but how God is deemed to reveal God’s self within the world: not in status, but in weakness; not in power and glory like the religious types often are, but in humility and suffering; not in something glorious, not in something that is militaristic, not in something that is defended with arms, but something that lays down its life for the other. The God who is revealed in the Cross is the God who does not advocate sin nor condemn the sinner, but the God who removes sin by God’s suffering for the sinner.
The Cross is not about the individual to be able to say “I am saved! To hell with the world!” but says “The world is saved through the blood of Christ!” It does not speak of an individual and the warm cozy feeling of saying “I am somehow close to God because I feel it” but rather that God has come close to us and felt it for us. The Cross is about love. The Cross is about the spirit that speaks of that love. And, the Holy Spirit that comes from having recognized and declared that Cross is not just for those who want to possess it, but is given to the whole Church.
I love what Martin Luther wrote in his Small Catechism. He says it brilliantly:
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or even come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.
For Luther, God had done it all!
In this world that is so divided that religion is seen and questioned on one corner, and spirituality spoken loosely in another, just like in Corinth, the Cross will always be the center of God’s engagement with humanity! Amen.