Hard Words: Religion
Just a quick show of hands before we start.
How many of us here have heard someone say they are “spiritual, but not religious?”
Spiritual, but not religious.
On the one hand, I get what they're saying. They're willing to acknowledge that there is a God, a divine presence, some greater force out there in the universe – a Spirit. That they, presumably, somehow interact with. Whether through individual prayer or meditation, through their own discernment, through their own reading of scriptures, whether its the Bible or the Qu'ran or the Bhagavad Gita, or whatever they happen to have around. And they're rejecting the structures of the church. That it's not the theology or the philosophy or the idea of God they have a problem with; it's the organized institution of religion.
And I get that. It's a struggle sometimes, because we can look around at churches and we know what they're supposed to do and supposed to represent, but we can also see that they're made up of fallible people, just like us, who make mistakes, get things wrong, and we think, “they're just hypocrites – why would I want to be a part of that?”
And so large numbers of people – more and more every year, it seems – they don't necessarily lose their faith; but they're perfectly fine with losing their religion.
So the question for us is, what does that mean? What does religion even mean? And what does it mean when someone gives it up?
Well, for starters - “religion” is a word that there's no direct translation for in the Bible. The only word that gets translated directly into English as “religion” appears twice in the Book of James, and that's the Greek word, threskeia. And that's a word that doesn't specifically refer to an organized system of practicing spirituality or anything like that. It's a much broader word that really encompassed everything about the ways Greeks organized their lives. It was a whole way of being, including not just what we think of as religion, but also thought, philosophy, social structures, cultural touchstones, and relationships.
So where does this word, “religion,” come from?
Well, it comes from Latin. And there are a few possible explanations for it. It could be from the prefix, re- meaning “again,” plus lego meaning “to choose or carefully consider.
Or it could be re- plus “ligere,” meaning “to connect.”
Or maybe it's from the whole Latin word, religare, meaning “to bind.”
So in religion we are either re-choosing, reconnecting, or binding.
And in truth, we don't know which of those elements is the actual etymological source of religion. But we can find evidence for each of them in how we practice, or how we're supposed to practice, our religion.
If we are re-choosing, or re-considering as part of our religious worship, we are thinking again on something that was there before. That faith has always been a part of our lives, and whether it's something we hold onto all along, or fall away from and later come back to, we are making ourselves part of something that has existed from the very beginning.
What do we know about the very beginning?
That in the beginning was the Word. And the word was with God. And the Word was God.
That Word and God are inseparable. So when we choose or re-choose to listen to that Word, to pray, to worship, we are committing to something that is more ancient and everlasting than even the earth we walk on.
In our Christian faith, God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and we cannot simply choose, consider, or commit to God. But we can only re-choose, re-consider, and re-commit to God. Because God, God's Word, God's faith, was with us before and will remain with us after.
Or maybe our religion is a reconnection, in much the same way that it's a re-commitment. God wants us to reconnect with Him. To remember him. To rejoin with him in prayer and praise and worship. As often as possible. In a few minutes, we'll break bread at God's table in remembrance of him.
And this reconnection isn't just something that we do willy-nilly. Or when we feel like it. But rather, God gives us specific instructions on how and when to remember, because he knows we forget.
That's why in Exodus and elsewhere in the scriptures we're given specific times to commemorate. Holidays.
Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Do it on these days. In this manner. With these foods. And do this to remember this particular event. In this case, the Passover, when God's plague on the first-born of Egypt will literall pass over the Hebrew households.
And because people forget, God gives us more than one holiday. Fifty days after the Passover, there's the Feast of First Fruits. With different instructions, different foods, and a different way to show faith. Then some weeks after that, there's the Feast of Ingathering. With yet more ways to worship and remember God.
And so reconnection is very much a theme in religion. We worship at regular times, hopefully at least every week, but even if someone can't make it one week, the church is still open and worship is happening. And even though our Christian calendar celebrates different holidays than our Jewish brothers and sisters, the structure is still the same. We have our two major holidays, Christmas and Easter, not back-to-back, but spread out 4 or 5 months between them, with other holidays – Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Souls Day, and the like – spread out around the calendar so we don't get a chance to forget. That we're always being called to remember God and to reconnect.
The third Latin word that could be a source for religion is religare. To bind. We may think of the literal binding that God tells Abraham to do, binding his son, Isaac, to the altar stone to sacrifice him, before God sees Abraham's faith and tells him not to go through with it.
We may think of the old hymn, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” and recognize that in our religion we are bound not just to our God, but to each other.
That in our religion we are put in covenant with each other, bound together, with our Lord and with other people to form a single community of faith.
That binding together is something that's an important part of our faith. So when I hear someone say that they are “spiritual but not religious,” I don't want to denigrate their spirituality, but I do wonder how their faith is practiced in a vacuum. I don't understand how a person can worship in a vacuum.
From my perspective there needs to be some kind of community – some kind of accountability – some kind of support system. Even when we think of religious hermits – monks living and praying in isolation – even they had communities near them that would bring them food, offer shelter, give them support. The ones who truly tried to go it alone – they didn't make it very long.
No matter which root definition of religion we look at – re-choosing, re-connecting, or binding together – they are sort of take on similar undertones when looking at our understanding of religion.
I get that there are many reasons to be wary of religion. Religious authority has been abused in some truly horrendous ways. And people often spit out the words “organized religion” in the same way they might talk about organized crime. I get it. There have been some experiences in our collective religious life that have been pretty persuasive in getting people to stop coming to church.
And there's a flip side to that as well.
The other danger in talking about religion isn't just in recognizing that there are some faithful people who don't want to come to church.
But that there are also plenty of faithless people who do come to church.
Who might be sitting in the pews on a Sunday morning, and being a ruthless and unrepentant sinner the other six and a half days of the week.
That some people might hear preaching of love and grace during the sermon. Yet go out into the world without any inclination for forgiveness or reconciliation.
That some people use church, not as a community to deepen their own faith, or support others in theirs. But as a vehicle for personal, social, or financial gain.
I think God likes it when we're religious. But there has to be sincerity to it. Jesus himself tells us to be careful that our worship has to be true, and for the right reasons. When he teaches us to pray the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, he prefaces it with this warning, “...and when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others... truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”
It's the empty practice of religion. Religious trappings without conviction. Festivals without faith. Prayer without meaning. That's what Jesus warns about in Matthew 6. It's what has God so angry in our reading from Amos that he declares, “I hate, I despise your religious festivals... your assemblies are like a stench to me... away with the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the music of your harps... but let justice roll on like a river; righteousness like a never-failing stream.”
We can see that God gets no pleasure in people just going through the motions.
I'm going to close by throwing just one more word at you this morning. We've looked at the possible Latin roots for “religion.” We've talked about the Greek threskeia. There's one more word that occasionally pops up that comes from the Hebrew that should, I hope, inform how we practice religion. That word is hagag.
And it's a word that simply means this: Celebrate.
Among all the things our religious practices call us to do; we are called to pray, to confess, to repent, to give, to forgive, to obey, to revere, to commit, to come together... among all the things our religious calling asks of us... we are called to celebrate.
There's a reason the ancient festivals were called feasts. They were, quite literally, feast days. Days of celebration! Days of music and dancing! Days when songs were sung and days of joy! Days when people came together in gratitude. Gratitude for making it through another winter; gratitude for having roofs over their heads; gratitude for the harvest; gratitude for not having an Egyptian or a Babylonian or a Persian or a Roman sword through their throats.
No matter what the reason, no matter what the time of year, or which particular feast was being celebrated – Celebrated! They were true times of joy and gratitude.
And I think we forget that sometimes. A lot of times. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. I'm not much of a dancer. Or a singer. I feel sorry for anyone who invites me to a party expecting me to be the life of it. And I do take my faith seriously – sometimes too seriously. That I forget, and I think most of us do from time to time, that our time with God; our relationship with God; our blessings from God, are to be celebrated.
That's what our religion brings us together for. Not just so we can say the same prayers over and over or sing the same hymns again and again. But so that we can celebrate together. So that we can share the things in our lives that we are grateful for; that we are joyful for; that we are even simply just relieved for.
That's one of the hallmarks that makes Christianity different from just about every other major religion. Our focus isn't on earning salvation. We know that can't be earned. It's not about achieving enlightenment. We're not trying to figure out the meaning of life here, though we may pick up a few things along the way. Our purpose isn't even to make ourselves better people.
But rather the fundamental, undeniable characteristic of our Christian religion... is that we are grateful. Grateful for gifts we have not earned, but are already given.
And so, over the course of 2,000 years, with lots of fits and starts – it hasn't always been a smooth ride – we've come to this modern iteration of the Christian religion – with it's somewhat regular calendar of holidays, with it's color-coordinated liturgical days, with our prayers and creeds and our hymnbooks. All telling us to celebrate in gratitude of all that God has done for us.
So when someone tells me they're spiritual, but not religious. I have to wonder. Why? Because my understanding is that religion is the gratitude. It is the celebration. It is the joyful coming together of the community. And so without that, they're missing the best parts.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, we are gathered here once again in thankful celebration of your many blessings. Lord, though our voices may sometimes crack and some of us may dance with two left feet, you know that our hearts are full with the jubilation of all you have given us. Lord, help us to remember your many blessings, to always give you thanks, and to always celebrate in your holy name. We pray this in joyful gratitude, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Just a quick show of hands before we start.
How many of us here have heard someone say they are “spiritual, but not religious?”
Spiritual, but not religious.
On the one hand, I get what they're saying. They're willing to acknowledge that there is a God, a divine presence, some greater force out there in the universe – a Spirit. That they, presumably, somehow interact with. Whether through individual prayer or meditation, through their own discernment, through their own reading of scriptures, whether its the Bible or the Qu'ran or the Bhagavad Gita, or whatever they happen to have around. And they're rejecting the structures of the church. That it's not the theology or the philosophy or the idea of God they have a problem with; it's the organized institution of religion.
And I get that. It's a struggle sometimes, because we can look around at churches and we know what they're supposed to do and supposed to represent, but we can also see that they're made up of fallible people, just like us, who make mistakes, get things wrong, and we think, “they're just hypocrites – why would I want to be a part of that?”
And so large numbers of people – more and more every year, it seems – they don't necessarily lose their faith; but they're perfectly fine with losing their religion.
So the question for us is, what does that mean? What does religion even mean? And what does it mean when someone gives it up?
Well, for starters - “religion” is a word that there's no direct translation for in the Bible. The only word that gets translated directly into English as “religion” appears twice in the Book of James, and that's the Greek word, threskeia. And that's a word that doesn't specifically refer to an organized system of practicing spirituality or anything like that. It's a much broader word that really encompassed everything about the ways Greeks organized their lives. It was a whole way of being, including not just what we think of as religion, but also thought, philosophy, social structures, cultural touchstones, and relationships.
So where does this word, “religion,” come from?
Well, it comes from Latin. And there are a few possible explanations for it. It could be from the prefix, re- meaning “again,” plus lego meaning “to choose or carefully consider.
Or it could be re- plus “ligere,” meaning “to connect.”
Or maybe it's from the whole Latin word, religare, meaning “to bind.”
So in religion we are either re-choosing, reconnecting, or binding.
And in truth, we don't know which of those elements is the actual etymological source of religion. But we can find evidence for each of them in how we practice, or how we're supposed to practice, our religion.
If we are re-choosing, or re-considering as part of our religious worship, we are thinking again on something that was there before. That faith has always been a part of our lives, and whether it's something we hold onto all along, or fall away from and later come back to, we are making ourselves part of something that has existed from the very beginning.
What do we know about the very beginning?
That in the beginning was the Word. And the word was with God. And the Word was God.
That Word and God are inseparable. So when we choose or re-choose to listen to that Word, to pray, to worship, we are committing to something that is more ancient and everlasting than even the earth we walk on.
In our Christian faith, God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and we cannot simply choose, consider, or commit to God. But we can only re-choose, re-consider, and re-commit to God. Because God, God's Word, God's faith, was with us before and will remain with us after.
Or maybe our religion is a reconnection, in much the same way that it's a re-commitment. God wants us to reconnect with Him. To remember him. To rejoin with him in prayer and praise and worship. As often as possible. In a few minutes, we'll break bread at God's table in remembrance of him.
And this reconnection isn't just something that we do willy-nilly. Or when we feel like it. But rather, God gives us specific instructions on how and when to remember, because he knows we forget.
That's why in Exodus and elsewhere in the scriptures we're given specific times to commemorate. Holidays.
Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Do it on these days. In this manner. With these foods. And do this to remember this particular event. In this case, the Passover, when God's plague on the first-born of Egypt will literall pass over the Hebrew households.
And because people forget, God gives us more than one holiday. Fifty days after the Passover, there's the Feast of First Fruits. With different instructions, different foods, and a different way to show faith. Then some weeks after that, there's the Feast of Ingathering. With yet more ways to worship and remember God.
And so reconnection is very much a theme in religion. We worship at regular times, hopefully at least every week, but even if someone can't make it one week, the church is still open and worship is happening. And even though our Christian calendar celebrates different holidays than our Jewish brothers and sisters, the structure is still the same. We have our two major holidays, Christmas and Easter, not back-to-back, but spread out 4 or 5 months between them, with other holidays – Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Souls Day, and the like – spread out around the calendar so we don't get a chance to forget. That we're always being called to remember God and to reconnect.
The third Latin word that could be a source for religion is religare. To bind. We may think of the literal binding that God tells Abraham to do, binding his son, Isaac, to the altar stone to sacrifice him, before God sees Abraham's faith and tells him not to go through with it.
We may think of the old hymn, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” and recognize that in our religion we are bound not just to our God, but to each other.
That in our religion we are put in covenant with each other, bound together, with our Lord and with other people to form a single community of faith.
That binding together is something that's an important part of our faith. So when I hear someone say that they are “spiritual but not religious,” I don't want to denigrate their spirituality, but I do wonder how their faith is practiced in a vacuum. I don't understand how a person can worship in a vacuum.
From my perspective there needs to be some kind of community – some kind of accountability – some kind of support system. Even when we think of religious hermits – monks living and praying in isolation – even they had communities near them that would bring them food, offer shelter, give them support. The ones who truly tried to go it alone – they didn't make it very long.
No matter which root definition of religion we look at – re-choosing, re-connecting, or binding together – they are sort of take on similar undertones when looking at our understanding of religion.
I get that there are many reasons to be wary of religion. Religious authority has been abused in some truly horrendous ways. And people often spit out the words “organized religion” in the same way they might talk about organized crime. I get it. There have been some experiences in our collective religious life that have been pretty persuasive in getting people to stop coming to church.
And there's a flip side to that as well.
The other danger in talking about religion isn't just in recognizing that there are some faithful people who don't want to come to church.
But that there are also plenty of faithless people who do come to church.
Who might be sitting in the pews on a Sunday morning, and being a ruthless and unrepentant sinner the other six and a half days of the week.
That some people might hear preaching of love and grace during the sermon. Yet go out into the world without any inclination for forgiveness or reconciliation.
That some people use church, not as a community to deepen their own faith, or support others in theirs. But as a vehicle for personal, social, or financial gain.
I think God likes it when we're religious. But there has to be sincerity to it. Jesus himself tells us to be careful that our worship has to be true, and for the right reasons. When he teaches us to pray the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, he prefaces it with this warning, “...and when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others... truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”
It's the empty practice of religion. Religious trappings without conviction. Festivals without faith. Prayer without meaning. That's what Jesus warns about in Matthew 6. It's what has God so angry in our reading from Amos that he declares, “I hate, I despise your religious festivals... your assemblies are like a stench to me... away with the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the music of your harps... but let justice roll on like a river; righteousness like a never-failing stream.”
We can see that God gets no pleasure in people just going through the motions.
I'm going to close by throwing just one more word at you this morning. We've looked at the possible Latin roots for “religion.” We've talked about the Greek threskeia. There's one more word that occasionally pops up that comes from the Hebrew that should, I hope, inform how we practice religion. That word is hagag.
And it's a word that simply means this: Celebrate.
Among all the things our religious practices call us to do; we are called to pray, to confess, to repent, to give, to forgive, to obey, to revere, to commit, to come together... among all the things our religious calling asks of us... we are called to celebrate.
There's a reason the ancient festivals were called feasts. They were, quite literally, feast days. Days of celebration! Days of music and dancing! Days when songs were sung and days of joy! Days when people came together in gratitude. Gratitude for making it through another winter; gratitude for having roofs over their heads; gratitude for the harvest; gratitude for not having an Egyptian or a Babylonian or a Persian or a Roman sword through their throats.
No matter what the reason, no matter what the time of year, or which particular feast was being celebrated – Celebrated! They were true times of joy and gratitude.
And I think we forget that sometimes. A lot of times. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. I'm not much of a dancer. Or a singer. I feel sorry for anyone who invites me to a party expecting me to be the life of it. And I do take my faith seriously – sometimes too seriously. That I forget, and I think most of us do from time to time, that our time with God; our relationship with God; our blessings from God, are to be celebrated.
That's what our religion brings us together for. Not just so we can say the same prayers over and over or sing the same hymns again and again. But so that we can celebrate together. So that we can share the things in our lives that we are grateful for; that we are joyful for; that we are even simply just relieved for.
That's one of the hallmarks that makes Christianity different from just about every other major religion. Our focus isn't on earning salvation. We know that can't be earned. It's not about achieving enlightenment. We're not trying to figure out the meaning of life here, though we may pick up a few things along the way. Our purpose isn't even to make ourselves better people.
But rather the fundamental, undeniable characteristic of our Christian religion... is that we are grateful. Grateful for gifts we have not earned, but are already given.
And so, over the course of 2,000 years, with lots of fits and starts – it hasn't always been a smooth ride – we've come to this modern iteration of the Christian religion – with it's somewhat regular calendar of holidays, with it's color-coordinated liturgical days, with our prayers and creeds and our hymnbooks. All telling us to celebrate in gratitude of all that God has done for us.
So when someone tells me they're spiritual, but not religious. I have to wonder. Why? Because my understanding is that religion is the gratitude. It is the celebration. It is the joyful coming together of the community. And so without that, they're missing the best parts.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, we are gathered here once again in thankful celebration of your many blessings. Lord, though our voices may sometimes crack and some of us may dance with two left feet, you know that our hearts are full with the jubilation of all you have given us. Lord, help us to remember your many blessings, to always give you thanks, and to always celebrate in your holy name. We pray this in joyful gratitude, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.