Our most persistent sin is that we are religious.
Of all the sins that men and women commit, of all the wrongheaded directions we take, of all the wayward wanderings on which we go, none is more persistent than this: that we are religious. As someone has put it, we are incurably religious.
Apparently there is no society so primitive that it does not invent some kind of religion, some kind of practice whereby people think they can be put in touch with divinity. And that, I am saying, is our deepest sin. Religion is our most persistent sin.
When the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, sets out to warn us against those things that weaken our relationship to God, it weighs in very heavily about idolatry; it speaks vigorously about the sin of religion. And some of' the prophets even picture God as saying that he will not accept our festivals, our Sabbaths, our sacrifices, our religion. Religion is our most persistent sin; and yet we are incurably religious.
You see, the heart and core of the issues I am going to get at here is that our God has made us for Himself. Our God has made us for a relationship with Him. He has created us for dynamic interpersonal relationship. But what do we do? We choose to cheapen that relationship by reducing it to a business transaction; we choose to step aside from God’s desire to love us and to reduce Him to rites and rituals and little duties. We want to get off cheap. That’s what religion is: out most persistent sin. We are incurably religious.
I suspect you are still mystified by what I am saying. We thought that we church folks were supposed to be religious; we thought that's what God expected ... that we would do our church thing and perform our routines every Sunday, right on schedule. Why is the pastor, whose livelihood comes from religious people, weighing in against religion?
Because our God has created us for relationship not for religion, for personal interaction, not for ritual routine. Because our God asks us for prayer, not for prayers; for love, not for legalisms; for worship, not for getting off cheap.
You're still mystified, aren't you? What exactly is the distinction we're looking at? And what does God want from me on Sunday morning if it isn't religious routines and rituals?
I invite you this morning to sit with me at a well in Samaria and to eavesdrop on a conversation, a few words between a woman with tremendous needs and a man who could supply all that need. Drop in with me and listen, and discover why religion is our most persistent sin. Discover with me what God wants on Sunday morning as we worship.
Here is Jesus, waiting at the well of Sychar in the region known as Samaria. He was thirsty. And so when the woman came to draw out water with her earthen jar, it seems natural enough that he would ask her, "Give me something to drink." Natural enough to us, maybe, but not to her. She was startled, because she could see that he was Jewish, of course she could see that he was male, and all that should have added up to a snobbish silence, not an afternoon's conversation about water.
But as the conversation went on, this Jew began to speak to her of living water, something which would quench her thirst forever, and then he spoke to her of her personal life, which was clearly in a shambles. But now it seems that the closer he got to her personally, the more she wanted to deflect the conversation to religion.
Jesus has just reminded her that she has been married and divorced some five times, and he has revealed that he knows that she is now somebody's live-in lover, and to get the conversation away from all of that, to get on to something more manageable, the woman begins to talk religion. Let's listen in: John 4:19-26
Can you begin to see why I would say that religion is our most persistent sin? You see that instead of dealing with her own life issues, the woman at the well wants to talk religion. Instead of moving forward to unburden her heart about all these failed marriages, she wants to talk about the right place to go to church. Instead of letting Jesus tackle the issue of her less-than-ideal living arrangements, she'd rather talk about who's right, the Jews or the Samaritans? Who has the better theology, the Baptists or the Methodists? Who reads the Bible better, the conservatives or the moderates and the liberals? Oh, listen, religion is our most persistent sin, because it tempts us away from what counts and to spin our wheels in little things. We'd rather major on minors than invest ourselves in relationship with the living God; and that is sin. That is getting off too cheap.
In Lexington, Kentucky, where I used to live, right down on the Main Street of the city, there is a historical marker which says that on that spot in 1835 the Reverend Luther Rice and the equally Reverend Alexander Campbell debated for two weeks, for two solid, entire weeks, the question of the necessity of baptism for salvation. Can you imagine anybody talking about baptism for two solid weeks? Can you imagine somebody else standing toe to toe and arguing the point? And can you imagine a crowd of Kentuckians coming back day after day to listen to all this? I imagine there were more exciting things to do, even in Kentucky!
But, yes, I can imagine it, because we are incurably religious. And because religion is our most persistent sin. We would rather debate religion than live our faith. We would prefer to get caught up in technicalities than to get caught up in ministry for Christ. And when you and I go out as we hope to do this year to share the good news about Christ, inevitably folks are going to try to hook us on religion. They are going to want to talk about how much water we use to baptize and how long the preacher preaches and how much money you are expected to give and what kind of songs you sing. Why? Why will they not want to talk about Christ and why will they not want to deal with their relationship to the living God?
You know. Because religion is our most persistent sin, and we are incurably religious.
But listen again to Jesus and the woman. Listen again as he reminds her what our God wants from our worship ... what, you might say, what God wants on Sunday morning.
"The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth, for such the father seeks to worship him … God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth … in spirit and in truth.”
What God wants on Sunday morning or any other day of the week is those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Let's unpack that for a couple of moments.
Our God wants those who will worship Him in spirit. That means that our God wants those whose worship is personal, interior, honest, relational. Our God has made us for himself, for relationship, and he will be satisfied only by our love, and not by our religious routines.
You see, what religion says is, “What formulas can I use to appease God? How can I make sure he's on my side? How can I get God in my corner." That's what religion says; but faith says, "How can I love my God? How can I tell my lord that I love him and trust him and want to be with him?" Religion says, "Baptize me so that I can be saved;" but faith says, "I want Him." Religion says, "Let me get here on the first Sunday and get the magic bread;" faith says, "I sense His presence, take and see."
God is spirit. God is person. And those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit, in person.
You know, I do love our forms of worship here. I do like the way that we have received from the whole of Christian tradition many things that Baptists have not usually used: robes and stoles, candles and responses, processional hymns and liturgical seasons, Lent and Advent and Pentecost and all the rest. I do love those things. But the challenge is always to breathe life into them and not to treat them as dead forms, not to reduce God to a set of formulas.
I had to laugh a few months ago when one of the more recently ordained ministers in our church called me and asked me for my book, my formulas, on how to do weddings and funerals. And I laughed and told him I didn't have one, that everyone is different, everyone is designed personally. But, Brother Green, you remember that you pushed a little harder and said, well, there must be something that you use. Aren't there certain words you're supposed to say? Yes, there are certain words it's customary to say, but, you know, I just do not want to reduce worship to a formula at any time. That's why I may have you standing up and singing at all these crazy times ... just never know what I may ask you to do on Sunday morning, because the worship of God is to be personal. It is to be interactive. It is to be spiritual. And by being spiritual, that doesn’t mean loud. That doesn’t mean full of pious language. Spiritual doesn't mean that our worship has to be something that borders on entertainment. No, to worship God in spirit is to face him, and to face life issues; to worship God in spirit is to confront a living reality and to hear what He has to say. What God wants on Sunday morning is that we worship in spirit.
I like the way one philosopher put it when he said that God is not a formula to be solved but rather a mystery to be lived with. What God wants on Sunday morning is that we worship him in spirit personally, in the depths of our hearts.
But Jesus also says something else. But God also wants us to worship him in truth. The Lord Jesus says to the woman at the well, who has decided it would be fun to hook him on a theological debate, "You worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know ... those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth ... in truth."
In other words, what God wants on Sunday morning is you, informed, aware, careful about what you are doing and thinking. What God wants on Sunday morning is someone who loves him, yes, but who can and will love him in heart and soul and strength and mind. What God wants on Sunday morning or any other day of the week is those who will worship him with truth. It ought not to be that you hang up your brains with your overcoat at the front door!
Every now and again I have reason to work my way through the church rolls. I've done that again in the last few days, helping our deacons with their assignments. And I find on the rolls of our church some 573 names and addresses, folks who came this way and joined, but many of them disappeared. And I will not go on to mention the nearly 200 whose whereabouts we do not even know. What is wrong here? What has happened here?
Well, there may be several hundred different stories, but I suspect there may be one powerful common denominator. I suspect that many of them joined the church on the basis of feeling: how they felt in the tummy, you might say, and that they are waiting for the feeling to come back. But they did not join on the basis of truth: truth understood, truth apprehended, truth that claims us.
I say again, I cannot really know about all these folks or about you, but I do know that religion is our most persistent sin, and that lots of people have come by here and walked aisles like these without much knowledge of what the Christian faith is, but they just wanted a one-way ticket to heaven. But when the feeling wore off and life got a little tough, then if there was no truth, if there was no understanding, if all there was was a kind of fuzzy warm religious feeling … well, they disappeared and are presumably still waiting for the old feeling to come back.
But what God wants on Sunday morning is those who will worship in truth, those who will take the time to understand, those who will invest the energy to examine His word, those who will love him, yes, in a deep personal way, those who will work at understanding the Scriptures … but who will also love him in their minds and with their brains.
And so my challenge to you this morning as you come to the Lord's Table is this:
Come here prepared and expecting to meet the Christ who loves you and who is reaching out to you. Do not imagine that just by going through this religious ritual somehow you are blessed. Do not imagine that the mere tasting of bread and sipping of wine will bless you; but come here and wait for an intimate encounter with the living Christ.
And come here knowing something, expecting to learn about yourself, about your savior. Do not come with empty heads and wandering thoughts, but come and focus on truth, on the truth that reaches out to claim you and motivate you. Come to this table, not because it's the religious thing to do, but because it is the faithful thing to do.
Come here not because it's some sort of magic that will buy you more blessings, but because it is the spirit and truth that you encounter.
What God wants on Sunday morning, after all, is not prancing preachers and carefully honed rituals. What God wants on Sunday morning is not self-centered saints or fleeting feelings. What God wants on Sunday morning is you, in spirit and in truth.
