Religion: Hindrance or Help?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

March 2, 1997, Third Sunday in Lent

From Job l3

Job sits on his garbage heap, blistered, ulcerated, bewildered by what he perceives to be a totally undeserved condition. He broods about the reversal of his fortunes, the devastation of his family, the savage attack on his health. His wife mocks the futility of his life and leaves him to stew in his pain. Alone, abandoned, tormented by his suffering, Job works at resolving the volatile, unpredictable and incomprehensible catastrophe shattering his life.

So there he sits, brooding. Three friends, Eliphaz the Temenite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamthite, as the story says, meet and go to console and comfort Job. They plan to boost his spirits, buoy his mood, cheer him up. And what do they discover? They glimpse Job from a distance. Shock engulfs them. They see a man so disfigured they barely recognize him.  They wail. They moan. They tear their clothes. They cover themselves with  symbols of mourning. Then driven speechless by what they encounter, they sit with Job on the ground for a week, overwhelmed by Job's agony,  silenced by the human mess they confront.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Job screams his defiance. He damns the day of his birth; curses his mother's womb; wishes he had been stillborn.  He "longs for death, but it does not come."

Hearing his complaint, witnessing his condition, these three friends, Eliphaz,  Bildad, and Zophar, begin their efforts at consolation. Their approach to Job's condition over the course of long conversations with him, their furious arguments with him during an extended confrontation, rest on one premise: "Job, it's your fault. Job, you fouled up. Job, in this world you get what you deserve."

Through a dialogue proceeding antiphonally, Job's so-called comforters seek to ferret out the breach of his innocence. What did he do with his wealth? How did he get it? How did he abuse it? If Job cannot recall the errors and abuses he inflicted, they then ask, "So what did your kids do? What injustices did they initiate, Job?" They insist, "You did something to deserve this."

Now Job believes the same thing. That is why he is so upset. He asks himself, his comforters, his God, "What did I do to deserve this?" He pores over the events of his life, he reviews their direction and content, and although he tends to agree with his so-called comforters that there must be something there triggering this catastrophe, by God, he cannot come up with it. He protests his innocence to the end. He hurls questions at the God laying him out in this condition.

But most of all, Job begins to wonder if this doctrine of retribution offered insistently by his comforters is really true. He questions their premise. He begins where they do, "I must have insulted God to deserve this!" And then assessing his life he continues, "but I can't figure out what it is; this makes no sense, this perception of divine retribution fails in my case. This quid pro quo you comforters lay on me just doesn't add up; it doesn't compute. You may believe it," he says, "it's something I've always placed stock in, but I've got to tell you now, the intensity of my pain, the depth of my suffering, the chaos in this collapse is far beyond anything I deserve. This doctrine of divine retribution we assert just makes no sense; this proposition of cosmic redress falls apart in light of my circumstances." And finally, desperately,  aggravated at his friends' delineation of his problem and their remedy for it, Job commands them keep still. He says, "I've heard your baloney before.  You are worthless physicians, hacks, liars in God's name, religious frauds."  Finally he simply asserts, "I've had enough of this rubbish, thank you very much! You clods," he screams, "miserable comforters, all of you. What keeps you prattling on and on? Just shut up!"

I

Do you know what has Job stumped? Can you guess what upsets him? Do you know what he has discovered? He has discovered that a lot of stuff passing for religion does not mean a darned thing. He concludes, as these religious types babble on and on, that as far as their religion is concerned, it is trivial, irrelevant and does not speak a solitary word to his condition. He discovers their eagerness to help gets in the way of healing; that their words of consolation echo hollow; that their presence and their efforts at dealing with his suffering and anguish only make him feel worse. In short, their religious consolations are not a help; they are a hindrance a thousand times over.

Now, I have got to tell you, that as a so-called "man of the cloth," I sympathize with Job. And I have a strong suspicion you do too. This matter of what really counts in our Christian religion, what matters most as we surrender to the love and ministry of Jesus Christ, is a question many of us can answer clearly and quickly. But much of the time religion, its shapes and forms, its styles and approaches get in the way. Religion subverts our search for the Divine; it interferes with the reception we reach for. As one shrewd observer comments,

"The power of hell is strongest where
The odor of sanctity fills the air."

And Thomas Edison sums it up for a lot of people: "As far as the religion of the day is concerned," he writes, "it's a damned fake. . . Religion is all bunk."

And we professional types are no help. Frederick Nietzsche commented that  "after coming into contact with a religious man he always wanted to wash his hands." Heaven knows we religious professionals block the way to the Eternal.

Let's look at it this way for a moment--and I hope you will excuse the personal nature of this reflection. I am thinking about our tradition now, our pursuit of Divine grace and peace here in this church and through our own heritage. Now, there are many things I love about our heritage, about our tradition, things I claim in gratitude. But they come with a double edge.

I love, for instance, the fact that Congregationalists always take education seriously. Wherever Congregationalists migrated they founded churches first; they founded schools next. Our partners in the United Church of Christ from the Evangelical and Reformed side founded churches first, and then hospitals. But Congregational types founded Harvard and Yale to educate ministers. A Congregational missionary from Yale founded Dartmouth to educate Native Americans in the upper Connecticut Valley. Andover Theological Seminary provided the first specialized graduate education for ministers in this country. Education: for the life of the mind, for reading the Bible, for plunging into Bunyan and Milton--all of this permeating our religious tradition. I do appreciate it profoundly.

But, hold on. Isn't there a downside to it? Perhaps my standing here speaking about it is illustration number one. My soul! Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Andover Seminary, not withstanding, education with its words, words, words, its compulsion to reading and writing frequently gets in the way of the Living God. Texts, responses, readings, printed prayers, sermons, 10 pages of bulletin, explanation, recitation, elucidation, emendation, annotation, interpretation, translation, clarification, explication,--glory be!--we can lose ourselves in wordiness and veil the truth and beauty of the One who finally radiates beyond, behind, beneath fragile and plastic words, and who we might best countenance in the depths of our hearts and the full and numinous dimensions of the ineffable where words finally fail.

Or again, in addition to education ours is a heritage looking toward what John Calvin called, the "restoration of order in creation." In our tradition, church governance takes a top priority. Our Congregational tradition of democratic governance came about in the 17th century in direct reaction to the power and authority, if not the tyranny, of Prelate and Prince. Church and state locked arm in arm ruled the world. Royalty sought and received the blessing of the church on their domestic and imperial policies. Violent reaction became almost inevitable and we are the progeny of that inevitable revolution. It began with a bloodbath as Congregationalists and Presbyterians went on the rampage and put Oliver Cromwell in charge of their new Commonwealth. As for King Charles I, convinced he inherited a Divine right to rule, in 1649 we hanged him. That is nothing to be proud of, but today New England with its town meetings and its Congregational churches testify to the conviction that democratic processes can surface the best possibilities in the human spirit but no less so, protect us from the worst tendencies of the human spirit. So I am devoted to this polity.

But, oh brother! Don't tell me that our polity cannot get in the way of our encounter with the living God. As much as I appreciate our Congregational polity's encouraging participation on the one hand and protecting us against the abuse of authority on the other, I have to tell you incessant church meetings to deal with money, personnel and program can choke the spirit, veil the divine, lose the love of God in bureaucratic minutiae. It could happen right here, you know. There is a risk. Thirty-eight pages of by-laws, sub-committees reporting to standing committees reporting to this jurisdiction referring to that forum sending it to that panel and so on and on. We live here amid dispersed authority and responsibility. We thrive on checks and balances. Is it any wonder when we conduct an opinion poll among our congregation we receive hints of burnout? Sometimes I wish I had the authority of a Rector. . . . But for good reason--human sin--you would not--and should not--stand for it! This is not a complaint! Nonetheless, we can love the democratic impulse in our church life, but we need beware--I need beware--of its possibly dissipating, displacing or eclipsing other vehicles for the grace of Christ.

And just once more: our liturgy, our order of service? Here we gather in a room designed to point us through many symbols toward the true ground of our existence. Here we sing hymns enabling us to praise the Living God.  Here we join in prayer opening communion with the One we worship. Here we ask the preacher to bear a message assuring us of Love for us grounding the universe, revealed in Jesus Christ, empowering us through gratitude to rejoice in the creation and to serve our neighbors. At its best the liturgy and worship of our free churches can get us off our own hands into God's hands, can refocus our priorities, transform our souls, recreate us in the image of Christ and offer us a glimpse of life with and for the Love of God. That is why worship can be vital in our lives. That is what I hope we can taste here on a Sunday morning together.

But I have to tell you, I know it does not happen all the time. Maybe for some of you, never. As I look at those three comforters coming to Job, eager to speak with him about the religious dimensions of his condition, I confess those of us in the religion business can fall into the same stupid,  blind, and dogmatic cul-de-sacs those comforters do. The very things we believe to be the heart of our religious practice are the very things blocking you from experiencing the grace of God.

Rabbi Heschel puts his finger on the problem and the risks. He writes, "When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past, when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion; its message becomes meaningless." And he could go on: when we substitute aesthetics for ethics; when we confuse ritual with service; mistake church attendance for justice, our morning offering for self surrender, the warmth in this glorious room for investment in a world where the human race becomes the human family, we--I--allow "religion" and all of its inviting substitutes to divert from you and obscure for you the grace of Christ, the new world it heralds, the changed life it creates in us.

O friends, what can I say? For all those moments over these two decades I have served as a miserable physician, a false comforter--in God's name, as Job says, a liar, I cannot say to you enough, "I am sorry." For all those moments you came here searching, yearning pleading for bread and I gave you a stone, I beg your forgiveness and God's. I pray each Sunday we may encounter and commune with the God who loves us and sends us into the world as ambassadors for Christ. God grant that presence may shine through from time to time. And bless you for your many kindnesses, your patience and endurance even amid my shrouding of God's love for you and our world.

And so we close. Question: If you were Job on that ash heap, for what consolation would you look? What might, touch, heal and restore you? Maybe silence. Perhaps an embrace. An empathetic word. All of them, perhaps, at one time or another. I think, however, if I were Job, from somewhere, from someone, by word, by presence in solidarity with my condition I would yearn for assurance grounded in love, expressed in indomitable hope: assurance sounding, feeling, like this:

"Hey, Jim! Hey, Jim! What can separate us from the love of Christ? Can hardship, or distress, or rejection, or failure, or family crisis, or job insecurity, or terminal illness, or death of a loved one? No! No! In all these things--and they come to us whether we deserve them or not; that is life and it is unfair!--in all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor threats you  cannot control, nor a confounding illness, nor a natural calamity, nor a family loss, not things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Now, to me, that spells help.