Why God Has a Problem with Religious People
Sermon by James W. Crawford
October 18, 1998
I think God has a problem with religious people. I believe God has a quarrel, a bone of contention with religious types. I think that is what that little parable we read a moment ago is all about: God's problem with religious people. The Pharisee and the tax collector: remember? The Pharisee standing there in the middle of the temple reciting how he meets the Divine requirements of good behavior, lives to the letter of the law -- indeed, expresses his religious convictions in ways exceeding the requirements. He is a good man. He is a religious man. He is a highly ethical man, a pillar of the community; a model of religious and civic behavior -- and by heaven, he is not like other people, adulterers, liars, thieves, nor, thank God, like that tax collector.
And that fellow over there in the corner: hidden in the shadows? The tax collector: a representative of the colonial power, probably a taker of bribes, perhaps extortion, maybe an informer of sorts, in some ways a traitor to his people. As Jesus paints the picture, the tax collector is a public crook, an ethical disaster. And before God, the tax collector recognizes it. The end of the story confounds its hearers: the crook goes home accepted by God; we find the Pharisee left standing in the middle of the temple, praying to himself.
Do you know what the word Pharisee means? It means separatist. It means ethical isolationist. It infers a claim to moral behavior and attitudes separating one from another. It refers to those who claim a moral high ground, who see a gap, a chasm, a canyon between the moral quality of their lives and acuteness of their perceptions, comparing themselves favorably to those others on other side of the canyon. And the canyon lies not simply in the quality of moral decisions -- the canyon lies in the separatist's setting him or herself up as one with a superior claim on Divine favor, a pipeline to God's will, a presumption of human superiority ordained by heaven's blessing.
That presumption, that claim to personal or group Divine favor is, I believe, a terrible problem for God. It sure creates problems for us. My word! look across our history and witness the horrors we do to one another in God's name: We Congregationalists worked at it right here in Massachusetts. Mary Dyer, burned; and that fierce, unrepentant Baptist, Roger Williams driven to Rhode Island. "Out!" we demanded.And the City of Providence was born.
And yes, in old New England, Africans found themselves diminished, declared inhuman, perceived as chattel by those who would twist the scriptures dealing with the orders of creation or rationalizing the authority of master over slave.
And today? What do we see in our world? Two days ago John Hume, chair of Ulster's major Catholic Party, and David Trimble, who leads the major Protestant Party, won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Hume, the Catholic, sees the prize as a sign of hope. Trimble, the Protestant, a pessimistic Calvinist to the core, hopes it is not premature. And right here in Boston this weekend, we entertain Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland. She is Catholic, from Protestant Belfast. As Kevin Cullen wrote in Thursday's Globe, "Her brother, who is deaf, was nearly beaten to death as he walked home one night. Her father's pub was bombed. On her wedding day, two of her best friends were murdered by Protestant loyalists simply because they were Catholic." Martin Dillon, in a little monograph entitled, "God and the Gun, the Church and Irish Terrorism" sees this tortured and bloody conflict as "holy war." As Dillon writes, "In the course of my research I encountered people who claimed to be saved, but in many instances they had exchanged the army of their tribe for the Army of God . . . Nowhere else in Europe has there been so much friction between churches, such a lack of commitment to the basic Christian principle of 'love they neighbor,' and such callous disrespect for human life. It would be too easy to condemn all church people and religious leaders, but it is fair to say that collectively they have allowed terrorists to fill the vacuum of despair, hatred, and suspicion."
And what goes on even as we gather here this morning? Yassar Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu, in a Maryland retreat center, holding one another in contempt, filled with fear and loathing, each supported by militant Divine rationale, and their constituencies claiming the benediction of Yahweh or Allah.
And in the divided sectors of Yugoslavia, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Moslems combine a blind nationalism to religious sanction ending in massacre and genocide. You see it: the problems of our world, in many cases set in motion, propelled with religious rhetoric and rationale. To be sure, they cause us serious and terrible problems. But that is not the half of it. They cause God, with hopes for transforming the human race into the human family -- they cause God a serious problem too: it is the frequent taking of God's name to dig chasms, to put down, to set us against one another. The problem God has with religious people involves the clothing of ourselves with divine rationale, setting others beyond the pale, or, as Luke says of that Pharisee, trusting in our righteousness and regarding others with contempt.
And we can find these problems not simply in the global arena; we can find them closer to home. . . like, as they say, realclose to home. These problems troubling God continue to afflict our churches, our mission, our self understanding, our very perception and action in behalf of the Gospel. (And, friends, I pray that what I am about to say will not simply be another plea from a Pharisee, a separatist, a morally arrogant procurer of Divine blessing. But I believe it must be said.) On the front page of October's Old South Calendar, our monthly newsletter, I wrote an article describing a breakthrough in ecumenical Protestantism. I said that the authority granted us clergyfolk on the occasion of our ordinations was now, for the first time, transferable from one denomination to another. In other words, my clergy standing within the Metropolitan Boston Association of the United Church of Christ would be transferable without a lot of rigmarole to a Lutheran, an Episcopal, a Methodist or a Presbyterian Church. My United Church of Christ Clergy credentials are valid in those denominations, and I could preside at the Lord's Table in those churches.
In response to my celebration of these dissolving barriers, I received an E-mail from a member of our congregation, The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Orth. Ken Orth is a UCC Minister who leads prayer groups here, who preaches regularly from this pulpit, who serves as a pastor to any number of members in this congregation, who is devoted to this congregation and to the success of every congregation he has served, who supervises a first class private enterprise in pastoral counseling and care, who is being "wooed," as he says, by one of our sibling UCC congregations to serve as spiritual director and pastoral counselor, who is known throughout this area as a man of enormous integrity, spiritual gifts, approachability -- and who happens to be a gay man.The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Orth wrote to me as follows: " Dear Jim . . . Your cover article for October was an inspiration, but I'm afraid not accurate for those of us who are ordained in the UCC and are gay or lesbian. When you say, 'No more!' (to various denominational exclusion of ministerial orders) I do see that you say that about yourself, and it hurts to know I am not included in that declaration. The current dialogues say something like: the ordinations will be valid 'in accordance with the rules of the receiving denomination.'" In other words, Dr. Orth writes, "I am still considered invalid in the Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, and I am afraid all other denominations except the Disciples of Christ. This is a painful, sad, and disheartening reality for many of us who feel that Christ has called us to serve and to be a member of his Body."
Now friends, I did not know this when I wrote the our Calendar article a month or so ago. So I asked Ken for some further clarification, assuming his UCC orders would be respected and valid at least as a UCC minister officiating at an ecumenical table. "No," he replied, "this matter of 'invalidated ordination' is in effect for any of the issues 'joining together ordinances at the table' i.e. although you, [Jim], would be welcome as a UCC minister to officiate at a Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian or Episcopal gathering, I would not. (Indeed," Ken continues, "if I went back to my alma mater at St. Olaf, because I am gay, I would not be 'valid' to serve communion at their table.)" He infers he might be able to do it with a surreptitious "don't ask, don't tell policy" but concludes, "that does not feel very healing or whole in my spiritual journey with God." And, this final reflection: "From what I understand," he writes, "the UCC has felt it more important to go forward with the affirmation of denominational colleagues with the caveat that those denominations have the right to exclude those of us who do not fit into their ordination laws. Interesting, difficult, but is it prophetic or what Jesus would have done?"
Now, I bring this matter to you not to plunge into the intricacies and small scale legalisms of ordination. What a confounding, bureaucratic and occasionally Mickey Mouse maze that can be. But I do want to call your attention to the exclusion of gay men and women from the legitimate orders of ministry in the Christian Church.
Let me approach it this way. Were we not all shaken by the violence, the furious irrationality of the murder last week of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, beaten to a pulp, lashed to a fence in Laramie, Wyoming, by two young men, luring him to his death, one of them posing as another gay man? The underlying fury and contempt exercised by those two young men is cut from the same cloth as the rationale excluding from ordination gay men and women who love Jesus Christ, and who have the credentials for ministry, educationally, faithfully, confessionally -- men and women bearing all the competence, imagination and spiritual gifts necessary. Thatmurderous Wyoming frenzy is cut from the same cloth as the attitude that would exclude your pew mate, your friend, your pastor, preacher, your brother in Christ, Ken Orth from the Christian ministry. It counts certain human beings disordered, unnatural, depraved, degraded, inferior, deserving a place, at most, on the margins of the social contract, unworthy of a place, as Andrew Sullivan writes -- unworthy of "a place at the table." It fails to recognize among gays and lesbians a humanity no less eager for love and nurture and humor and grace and respect, and capable of expressing them no less so than anyone else. It assumes a Divine disinheritance of gays and lesbians from the intimate, organic family of God. It assumes disenfranchisement from the human community. It is not only wrong, it is the seed and can be the nourisher of evil. And, by God,we must root out this demeaning -- yes, blasphemous -- perception and its ugly consequences, and to employ a sadly overused ethical mandate in reverse, if you will, loving the sinner, but not the sin -- loving the bigot, but not the bigotry.
Thus, in the ministry of the Church, in Dr. Orth's case, those who confess Christ as Lord and savior, those who confess Jesus Christ as their primary loyalty and the bearer of grace saving us from ourselves and what we can do to one another -- those who make this confession regardless of race or gender, or sexual orientation, those who get the schooling and who clear the proper denominational hurdles -- they deserve ordination and God counts their ministries valid, wherever and whomever they serve, and so should we.
Oh, friends, what problems we religious types cause for God -- and in God's name! Sad!
Just one final note: this matter of our separation from one another, the claims we make for ourselves, building our own case, frequently putting the other in some lesser or inferior position -- Mark Twain deals with this matter beautifully in his revelatory novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In a touching chapter Mark Twin, through Huck, shows brilliantly the solidarity we all share as human beings on God's good earth. Remember Huck and Jim, Miss Watson's black slave, mucking down the river on a raft? Huck finds himself conscience-stricken because Jim is black and therefore, in the iron ideology of the time, a human being of a second order, destined to be a slave, and because he is Miss Watson's slave escaped on that raft, he is also contraband. Huck is hiding stolen property. Huck wrestles with the possibility of sending Jim back -- or at least informing Miss Watson about Jim's whereabouts as they glide down the river. He knows Jim is condemned to slavery; Huck knows hewill be shamed forever helping a slave to escape. He knows he is considered a thief. As he ponders his condition, he considers himself a wicked boy, suddenly slapped in the face by Providence, overseen by a God who knows everything he does, especially the stealing of a slave from a woman who, as he says, "never done him no harm." Huck tries to make things easier on himself by just condemning himself as a bad boy, always has been, so wickedness, as he says, is nothing new in his life. But then he reminds himself, that had he gone to Sunday School, he'd darned well know that protecting a fugitive slave deserved, as he says, "everlasting fire." Stealing and protecting Jim, he is due for Hell.
He tries to pray his way out of his dilemma, but the words don't come. He finally decides his choice might be easier if he writes a note to Miss Watson, telling her where she can find Jim. He writes the note; its tangible presence frees him from his guilt -- but before sending it Huck broods for some time about the adventures he and Jim shared on their river trip. . . . Thus, the note to Miss Watson finished, Huck says: "I felt good and washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down, and set there thinking -- thinking how good it was all this happened, and, (for harboring this slave) how near I came to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the nighttime, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms. And we a-floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standin' my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I came back that time out of the fog (when he thought I was lost); and when I come to see him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by (telling the fugitive slave hunters) we had smallpox aboard, (scaring them off) and he was so grateful and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to turn around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' -- and tore it up."
Oh Huck, there you were, considering yourself God damned, and you did the right thing! Jim's goodness, Jim's solidarity you knew lay grounded in a common humanity and sustaining mutuality no human division could overcome. You refused to count Jim a lesser human being under any circumstance, just as he refused to count himself separate from you. As Mark Twain – no, as Luke would have it -- your readiness to go to hell with Jim means you are destined for heaven. What a revelation: No gap, no chasm, no canyon, no presumptuous virtue, no high moral claims setting anyone outside the arena of Divine grace and reconciliation, no one beyond heaven's blessing and acceptance, no one outside God's affirmation and embrace.
That is the way God wants it with us. Is it possible? God grant it may be so.
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