Give Me that "True" Religion

Photo from Sojourners (sojo.net)

For those unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church, we often begin our services with a hymn, a short prayer (called the Collect for Purity), another short song of praise or "the Gloria" and then the priest offers a prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer that is called "The Collect of the Day." 

The "Collect" (and we pronounce it CALL-ect, not co-LECT) is a prayer that is supposed to set the scene or at least summarize the themes of the Scripture readings we're going to read that morning. These collects are assigned as the "proper prayer" for whatever Sunday we're in this long season of After Pentecost. I have my favorites, and there are those which are just kind of "meh" in my opinion.

But the one for this past Sunday...to be read at the Sunday closest to August 31st (which happened to be Sunday's date)...seemed to call for me to do some teaching. Especially in this time where white Christian Nationalism is on the rise in the country.

See what you think.

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Texts: Collect for Proper 17; Luke 14:1, 7-14

I don’t often find myself guided by the words that are in our collect of the day when I write a sermon.

But there is a phrase that comes up in this one that always grabs my attention.

I should’ve known it was coming because it’s always the one we read right around Labor Day.

At the beginning of our worship… we prayed:

“Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion;”

The first part…”Graft in our hearts the love of your Name” is a play on words found in the First chapter of the Letter of James.

But it’s that second part—“increase in us true religion”—those words always make me pause.

So…I went looking for some explanation…and pulled out my very worn out copy of Marion Hatchett’s “Commentary on the American Prayer Book” which has the extended history behind everything the committee studied and looked at as they created the Book of Common Prayer we now use.

Thomas Cranmer…the Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King Henry VIII and author of our first two Books of Common Prayer in the middle of the 16^th Century…wrote this collect.

According to Hatchett…this idea of “true religion” was likely Archbishop Cranmer’s reflection on the state of the times in the English Church back in the middle of the 1500s.

Those were bleak and dangerous times of struggles between the Roman Catholic Church with its adherence to the Pope and its beliefs about what happens at the Eucharistic table when the bread and wine are blessed… and Henry VIII’s desire to be the head of his own Protestant Church of England…taking over Catholic Church property as he divorced and killed his wives.

When Henry died…and his sickly son Edward took the throne at 10 years old…Cranmer and others solidified England as a Protestant country.

But when Edward died only about seven years later…and his half-sister Mary became Queen…she not only turned England back to the Roman Catholic Church…she went on the warpath against Protestants…including Cranmer.

There’s a reason she was called “Bloody Mary.”

Cranmer was forced to recant his protestant reformation-minded theology…but then…while in prison…he stiffened his spine and refused to deny his beliefs.

Queen Mary ordered him burned at the stake…and he famously insisted on putting his writing hand first into the fire as a further sign that he was sorry for ever having signed off on recanting Protestantism.

So…for Cranmer…”true religion” was about “church as state politics”….and “who was the more theologically correct Christian” in the struggle for national power.

We have come a long way from burning each other at the stake in Christianity. 

But we still have our own version of churches splitting…and personal prejudices masquerading as church doctrine…and pursing earthly…nationalistic goals…

 All in the name of “true religion.”

None of it seeming to pay attention to the actual teachings of Jesus…our Lord and Savior who shunned such power.

For Jesus…what makes any religion really “true” is whether we are treating creation…from the earth and the sea and the animals all the way up to our fellow human beings…as the beloved of God that we all are.

That’s what we’re hearing in this morning’s Gospel.

Now…once again…the reading we’ve heard is not complete.

The diviners of the lectionary have left out a portion of the scene.

So let’s fill in some blanks.

First thing to know is that before Jesus shows up to a sabbath meal at the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees…a group of Pharisees went to Jesus to warn him that he faced serious danger from Herod if he went into Jerusalem.

I think it’s important to mention that because too often…we tend to see the Pharisees as “the bad guys.”

And like so many groups of people…they weren’t all bad.

Jesus encounters the Pharisees so much because they were the predominant Jewish group at the time that the Gospels were written.

In this case… there was this group that worried about Jesus and what was going to happen to him if he took on the Roman power structure.

Jesus isn’t deterred by this news.

He says some sassy things about Herod being a fox…and then laments over Jerusalem…which was the center of Jewish worship that had been so corrupted by Rome.

As he’s entering the house of the leader…he sees a man who has terribly swollen legs…dropsy or edema.

There all these Pharisees and lawyers at the house…so Jesus asks if it’s lawful to cure on the sabbath?

They don’t say anything…but Jesus does.

He heals the man and sends him on his way.

And then he looks around at the group and wants to know if one of their children or an ox fell into a well on the sabbath…would they not rescue them?

Still…they all look at him without answering.

We might imagine Jesus shaking his head at their silence as he goes inside for the sabbath meal.

Once inside…he sees that the guests of the Pharisee leader are taking all the choice seats.

Still fresh in his head that he just saw this same group standing by silently as they saw a man suffering on the sabbath…Jesus decides to do a little schooling.

And that’s where we come back to our Gospel reading…with this parable about where to sit at a wedding banquet.

The custom in ancient Palestine for a wedding was that men reclined on couches…with the couch in the center being the place of honor.

The place of honor was reserved for those with wealth and status.

If someone of a lesser station took a seat too close to the center and someone with more privilege were to show up…the lesser man would have to move…and it would be an embarrassing faux pas.

So he’s looking at this room of those who have presumed a place of honor…and warns them not to be so sure of their station.

As one commentator notes…this isn’t so much about Jesus giving First Century Miss Manners advice to his audience.

Rather he’s telling them something about the kingdom of God.

That one should not presume a more lofty place in God’s kingdom.

And then he talks about the host…and who should be invited to this meal.

Should it just be those who might be able to turn around and invite the host to equally wonderful spread?

Nope.

Blessed are those who are the forgotten…the easily ignored…like that man with dropsy who Jesus just healed and nobody knew what to say or how to appropriately respond.

Again…this is about the kingdom of God.

We can’t presume that because we have a particular status in society that we are automatically the favored ones of God.

That’s why the whole “prosperity Gospel” business…that God somehow rewards people with lots of money… is a bunch of bunk.

We see throughout Jesus’ ministry…and even here in this Gospel…that God isn’t interested in our economic systems.

God is always and forever looking to expand and widen the circle of inclusion….and is always about siding with those who have nothing to give but themselves…their brokenhearted…worn-out…overworked…and yes…even joyful… selves.  

And God’s commandment to us is to put our efforts into the building up of people…to look for those whom others are rejecting and invite them to the literal…and even the metaphorical…table of God to experience what means to be loved beyond all measure.  

Getting to know the stories of others…meeting and greeting people who aren’t our “kinfolk”…is an important part of that building up process.

The more we know another’s story…their history…and the more we openly swap our stories with one another…the stronger the foundation of community.

Both out in the world and inside the church.

I’ve mentioned before about how in an Education for Ministry seminar…one of the first exercises is sharing our spiritual autobiographies.

I can tell you that so often I would listen to someone else’s story… a person completely different from me in all kinds of ways…and yet as I listened to them talk about their experiences with God…I could hear things that made me think, “Oh, yeah: I get that!” or even a “Wow! You, too?”

Sometimes…one of the most religiously…and maybe even politically…conservative men in one of my groups would come up to me afterward and take me aside to express gratitude about things that I had shared about myself and my journey.

Like me…they could hear in something that I had said a word or a phrase that broke past all the artificial human barriers that keep us divided from one another to understand a simple truth: we’re all children of God…created by God out of Love…for the purposes of Love…with mission to share that Love with others.

Which brings me back to “true religion.”

“True religion” isn’t about holding the right belief for political power.

It isn’t about controlling the earthly levers of government…or even about asserting some kind of Christian supremacy.

“True religion” is about hope.

Hope which is found in the God who is Love.

Hope for a world where we care enough about each other…have enough empathy for those who are the have-nots…that we seek mercy…compassion…and justice for all.

The rest of our collect for this morning asks for God to “nourish us with goodness…and bring forth in us the fruit of good works.”

May we carry that prayer in our hearts as we meet the many challenges of our world.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.