“Religionless Christianity”

(Isaiah 1:1,1-20, Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40)

August 8, 2010

              Every Tuesday afternoon this summer, I have been visiting the young men at the Juvenile Detention Center.  The purpose of “Juvi,” as it is normally called, is exactly what you would think – kids who commit rather serious crimes go there to await trial or some other resolution of their case.  Almost all the kids there are age 16 or under and almost all are boys.  There are about equal numbers of whites and blacks.  Most are involved in gangs – the Latin Kings, Gangsta Disciples, Vice Lords and others.  One of them said that he first got involved in the gang at age nine, delivering drugs for older gang members (if the young ones get caught, there is little the police can do other than work with their families).  Almost none of them have any relationship with their biological fathers, and if they do, that father is often one of the many people who have been poor influences on their lives.  Many of these 14, 15, and 16 year olds are themselves fathers.  Most of them are used to life with guns, some have shot other people, most have been shot at, and almost all have had friends or family die violent deaths – sometimes they have held dying friends in their arms.

              After eight weeks or so of visiting these kids for a couple of hours a week, it is strange how easily I have accepted the world in which these kids live.  All of us hear about this kind of life – we hear troublesome statistics about troubled youth, and we see terrible stories in the news about the terrible things these kids are doing, mostly to each other.  It is like a world we know is out there, or over there, but which is never quite real to us.  But going to Juvi as a chaplain and visiting – that’s made it real to me.  I suppose it is sort of like people who lived their whole lives looking at the moon in the night sky, and then in 1969 saw humans walking around the surface – it became a real place like never before.  So the world in which these kids live has become real to me like never before.

              What these kids tell me about their lives, the things they have suffered and the things they have done, are heartbreaking.  But to relate those things in a sermon seems sort of voyeuristic.  It would be almost impossible not to just talk about them, as observers from a distance.  But there is one aspect of their lives that has really drawn my interest, and that I am beginning to think connects to our lives as well, and that is their spiritual lives – and, yes, they all do have spiritual lives – they all, at least the ones I have talked with as a chaplain, think about God and what the whole religion thing has to do with them.

              Of course, this is very complicated, and probably touches at the deepest, most mysterious areas of human life, but on the whole I don’t think religion has served these kids very well.  And I don’t mean that religious people haven’t tried to help them.  In some cases they have, in some cases they haven’t.  But I mean that I am not sure that religion, they way they understand it, is very beneficial to them. 

              You see, they all have some exposure to religion, and for almost all of them, the religion is Christianity.  They have exposure through attending church, through television, through relationships with family members who are “really religious,” or whatever it is.  Then, often, they come into Juvi and, thinking that religion is a good thing, and being told that by people in the system, they begin to pray and attend the Bible studies and worship services they have for the kids.  Now, you would think that would be a good thing, but I’m not so sure.

               But in conversation after conversation I have found that their understanding of Christianity can best be described as “magical.”  Their faith has been shaped by the notion that God acts sort of well, magically.  As a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, God might pull a not-guilty verdict out of a trial.  As a magician makes a lovely assistant disappear, God might make their problems go away.  As a magician makes things float in the air, God might make their birth father truly love them.  When they talk about God, it is as if God is a big, powerful being up in the sky who might magically make things better.

              And, of course, there is the quid pro quo factor as well.  This for that.  If they do this, God is pretty much bound to do that.  If they pray every night, they can expect God to make their next court date go well.  If they read the Bible, they can expect God to make them feel less guilty about the things they have done.  If they go to worship, they can expect God to change things for the better once they get out.

              Let me be clear that I am not blaming these kids for this view of religion and Christianity.  They didn’t just make this stuff up.  It is what they have learned thus far in their lives.  And it comes from all corners.  What they hear in their black Baptist churches can be taken this way.  What they hear in their white Methodist churches can be taken this way.  What they hear in the mega-churches in town can be taken this way.  I haven’t run across any Congregationalist yet, but I suspect it would be the same.  The way they see religion presented on movies and on t.v. and in music can all be taken that way: God is more like a great magician than anything else, but a magician with a quid pro quo policy - if you do the right stuff, you can expect the right result.

              All of that began to make me wonder how widespread this magical view of Christianity actually is.  And I got to thinking it is all around us, and to some degree within us.  I think it is unavoidable, but I am sure the prayers we offer each Sunday can be heard that way.  I imagine the language we use in preaching can be heard that way.  Then I think of how some people view their church-going, and I can see an element of “If I go to worship, I can expect God to make things better during the week.”  “If I pray each night, I can almost expect my loved one’s cancer to get better.”  And there is the more secular variation as well – God may not be very active in the world anymore, but things are set up so if I do the right things, I will be rewarded with prosperity and happiness.

              Just the fact that we are often satisfied with some “touchstones” of faith – maybe the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, maybe the Golden Rule and once a week worship – show that we often treat these things like talismans that will somehow do something good for us, or at least protect us from harm.

              We don’t sacrifice animals any longer, but when you think about the version of religion, of Christianity, that the kids at Juvi have learned – that they have learned by the way Christianity is understood by a whole lot of people, including in some ways by us – then doesn’t this passage strike a whole lot closer to home?

10 Hear the word of the Lord,
   you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our God,
   you people of Gomorrah! 
11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
   says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams
   and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
   or of lambs, or of goats. 

12 When you come to appear before me,*
   who asked this from your hand?
   Trample my courts no more; 
13 bringing offerings is futile;
   incense is an abomination to me….
15 When you stretch out your hands,
   I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
   I will not listen;
   your hands are full of blood. 
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
   remove the evil of your doings
   from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, 
17   learn to do good;
seek justice,
   rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
   plead for the widow. 

And take note that this is the opening chapter of the book of Isaiah.  This is what the compiler of Isaiah’s work wanted to be heard first.  This was the main thing.  Israel had taken their religion and turned into a magic show, and magic show with a quid pro quo.  Israel had taken the good gift of the sacrificial system, and turned it into a way to manipulate God.  They had taken the good gift of religious festivals and turned them into ways to get what they wanted.  They, the kids in Juvi, and so often we ourselves, make religion a way to get what we want, rather than a way to bow humbly, selflessly before God, and thus pursue the real “sacrifice” God wants: justice.

              In the midst of World War II there wasn’t a whole lot of good theology going on in Germany.  The church all too willingly had fallen for Hitler’s seductive offers of status and social power.  Theology was just another way to justify the demonic forces of prejudice and a totalitarian nationalism.  It was the ultimate example of a magical God with a quid pro quo policy.

              But in a jail in Germany in 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw what was really happening, and he tried to make sense of it.  And what he began to talk about was “religionless Christianity.”  Bonhoeffer wrote,

my resistance against everything ‘religious’ grows.  Often it amounts to an instinctive revulsion, which is certainly not good.  I am not religious by nature.  But I have to think continually of God and Christ; authenticity, life, freedom, and compassion mean a great deal to me.  It is just their religious manifestations which are so unattractive…my suspicion and horror of religiosity are greater than ever.

              Bonhoeffer was channeling Isaiah.  He was trying to get to a Christianity that was not about controlling God - trying to get to a Christianity that wasn’t about using God to make our lives turn out better - trying to get to a Christianity that wasn’t about us at all.  But was rather a true commitment to putting God’s will at the center of our lives.  A true commitment to putting the cross at the center of our lives.

              If we use religion as a way to try to get what we want, to get health, or to get out of trouble, or to be successful, or to relieve guilt, or even to get into heaven – we are setting an unfortunate example for the kids in Juvenile Detention, and for everyone else.  And we have not yet found ourselves following the way of Isaiah nor following the Christianity of Jesus Christ.

God is no magician.  There is no quid pro quo.  It’s not about us.  That is what religionless Christianity is all about.  It is a Christianity in which we truly cease our efforts, even our “religious” efforts, to control God, and instead bow humbly, selflessly before God, and pursue the real “sacrifice” God wants – our commitment to God’s justice, our commitment to God’s way in the world.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.