Religion is either one of life’s greatest blessings, or it is one of the sickest things we do.
Religion can be wonderful. I assume that because you are in church today you agree with that. Religion can be fulfilling, it can be instructive, it can be inspiring. Religion has driven so much of human progress. It can be one of life’s greatest blessings. Amen? Surely you would expect the preacher to say that. Like Calvin Coolidge’s pastor, who forcefully declared himself one Sunday to be dead set against sin -- duh -- you expect the preacher to be equally forceful in favor of religion. Ranks right up there with motherhood, the American flag, and apple pie.
But let me tell you that religion is also one of the sickest things we do. Religion is often sick. It hurts. It damages. It destroys. It deceives. It misleads. It deals in death rather than in life. It steals time, it mangles lives, it distorts values, it warps minds. It gets sick. Unhealthy, diseased, noxious, sick, sick, sick.
Everyone’s attention was focused just a few days ago on the Heaven’s Gate group. How in the name of common sense could thirty-nine otherwise intelligent, well-educated, privileged people decide to shroud themselves in purple and eat poison pudding on the basis of some notion of a UFO hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet? Utterly astounding! We say, “They must have been sick. They were all sick.” Well, I ask you to go a little deeper. Probe a little farther. Is it possible that the sickness was not so much theirs, each and every person, individually, but the sickness was in their religion? In their belief system? Religion gets sick, and sick religions make sick people. Sick religion infects otherwise reasonable people. Maybe it wasn’t thirty-nine sick individuals so much as it was one sick religion.
If you remember some recent history, Heaven’s Gate is just the most recent of a whole string of religious sicknesses. Four years ago yesterday we watched in horror as government agents and the Branch Davidian cult waged a pitched battle. David Koresh and his band of followers died, as did a number of federal agents, all in the name of a cause that most of us could not begin to understand. And very likely what happened there had its horrible spin-off, two years ago yesterday, in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Well, we thought the Branch Davidians were sick, too. It was glib and even fun to mispronounce the name of the Texas city where it all took place: not Waco, but Wacko. But it would be too easy just to write off the Branch Davidians as sick individuals. It would be too easy to write of the Heaven’s Gate group as sick persons. There is a sickness in religion itself.
For, remember, religion is either one of life’s greatest blessings; or it is one of the sickest things we do.
Jeremiah stood outside the gate of a grand temple in Jerusalem one fine Lord’s day some twenty-six hundred years ago. There Jeremiah spoke of the sickness of religion. To the people of Judah, who were arriving that day to do their religious thing and get their spiritual jollies, this troublesome man spoke very distasteful words. Imagine, a fellow who calls himself God’s preacher, has the audacity to stand right there in the Temple gate and accost all these respectable people and tell them that what they are doing is sick, sick, sick! Did they want to hear him? Do you want to hear him? Are you sure?
Jeremiah 7:1-23
There are three symptoms of sickness. First, religion is sick when it is a system only. Second, religion is sick when it is salvation only. Third, religion is sick when it is self only. System-only, salvation-only, and self-only.
I
First, religion is sick when it is system-only. When folks are more committed to a system than they are to the God whom that system is intended to serve, you have a sick religion. Sick religion creates a delivery system and then asks you to worship the delivery system instead of the living God.
Jeremiah stood at the Temple gate and mocked the people. He poked ridicule at them. “Do not trust in these deceptive words, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.”
Jeremiah saw that they had rooted their entire faith on being in the right institution, and working within the right system. They just knew that Jerusalem would not fall to the enemy, because it had the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord. Never mind that the northern Kingdom, Israel, had fallen. Those folks up there in the north, they didn’t have the Temple. And God is going to protect the Temple. We down south here, in Judah, we’ve got it made. We’ve got the Temple of the Lord.
But Jeremiah punched holes in that sick confidence game. Jeremiah said, “Go to [the Lord’s] place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.” People of Judah, you may have the Jerusalem Temple, but there was one up north at Shiloh, too, and I let that be destroyed. What makes you think you are any better? What makes you think that God is committed to any one institution, any one delivery system? What makes you think, Takoma, that your church, your system, will never be judged? It is a sick religion if we think that it’s all delivery system and nothing else.
I remember one year, when our son was very small, three years old. We gave him a birthday present. At that young age, he didn’t even know what a birthday was, much less a birthday present. It turned out that he was more interested in the brightly colored paper and ribbons than he was in the toy inside. Sometimes people get more interested in the wrappings of religion than in what it’s really all about. People get more caught up in the paraphernalia of church than they do in the Lord of the church. It’s like giving somebody a nice juicy piece of fruit, and they eat the peeling and throw away the flesh!.
Let me just pick out one aspect of this: leadership. Leadership is a part of the delivery system. But certain leaders capture unquestioning loyalty from their followers. Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, David Koresh, and now Marshall Applewhite, all of them demanded absolute loyalty from their followers. The sickness of the system showed up in the idea that there was only one person, or a small team of persons, like Bo and Peep, who knew the truth. Sick religion is built around an insecure, power-hungry leader, and it lifts him up to the place which only God should have.
Dare I say it? Should you ever find a Christian pastor who becomes demanding, who sees his way as the only way; should you ever be subjected to a preacher who tries to tell you what to do ... should that ever happen to you, run from that leader! Distance from him. And if his name is Smith, and he’s at Takoma Park, throw him out! Our Baptist forebears stood up to priests and popes, kings and bishops, and insisted that no church would govern them, nor any system take them over. They were going to know God for themselves. There is nothing more priceless than your own personal freedom under God; no leader, no system, should ever take the place of God Himself.
If you’d rather talk about church than Christ, yours is a sick religion. If you’d rather speak about how glib the preacher is than about how good God is, yours is a sick religion. If you’d rather get high on the entertaining music, the smell of the candles, and the look of the stained glass than getting gathered up in the Holy Spirit, yours is indeed a sick religion. Hear the prophet Jeremiah, “Do not trust in these deceptive words, ‘The Temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’” Religion is sick when it is a system only.
II
Second, religion is sick when it is salvation-only. Salvation only. Religion is sick when it is so focused on our own salvation that we think it’s all about a one-way trip to heaven and nothing more. Religion is uncommonly sick when it narrows its scope down to one and only one thing -- will I go to heaven when I die? -- and then separates itself from real, gutsy, here-and-now life issues. Religion is sick when it thinks it can get salvation at bargain basement prices and not also deal with the tough life issues.
Jeremiah thundered to the people of Jerusalem, “Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe?” -- only to go on doing all these abominations?”
Will we focus only on the simple notion, “We are safe!” That is the mark of a sick religion. to be satisfied only with being safe, without dealing with everyday life issues. Sickness is getting our one-way ticket to heaven and nothing else matters. We can do whatever we want because we’ve walked that aisle and we got baptized. We can live like hell on Saturday because we’re going to church on Sunday to be reminded that we’re on the highway to heaven. Let me be as clear as possible: No, no, no, no, and no!
Sick religion wants to put salvation over here and life over there. Sick religion wants to put our relationship to God over in a corner somewhere, and everything else is over there, irrelevant, doesn’t count, doesn’t matter. Sick religion wants to deal with some spiritual abstraction called salvation, “We are safe”; but does not want to deal, head-on, with the way you and I live out our lives, every day.
“Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely .. and then come and stand before me in this house ... and say, ‘We are safe’ ... only to go on doing all these abominations? Again, let me just hone in on one aspect of this. Jeremiah said that you can’t go on with murder and theft and adultery and so on and still claim to be saved. Let me hone on in just that word: adultery.
Sick religion has more trouble with sexuality than with any other single item. If you are looking for the marks of a sick religion, look at the way it handles sexual expression. The Branch Davidians felt that everybody was fair game, enjoy yourself with whomever you want. That’s sick. The Heaven’s Gate people took the opposite tack, but it was just as sick. They said, “Deny your sexuality. Try to make it go away.” They went so far as to subject themselves to physical mutilations. That is sick. For the God we know has made us male and female and has said, “that’s good.” The God we know has blessed a man and a woman coming together in the bonds of marriage to be one flesh. Healthy religion allows us to be sexual beings, neither wanton nor wanting, neither abandoning all restraints nor denying our God-given natures. Healthy religion says, “Be sexy”. Because that’s how God made you.
Sick religion does not deal positively with sexuality; more than that, sick religion does not deal with life issues, real life issues. Sick religion wants to deal with salvation only, over in a corner. That won’t do.
III
And third, sick religion is self-only. System-only, salvation-only, self-only. Sick religion is incurably selfish. It pays attention only to what feels good for me. Sick religion is all about me, me, me, and not about others. Sick religion cares only for itself and does not focus on things like justice and mercy. Sick religion is self-only.
The prophet Jeremiah was at the peak of his eloquence when he cried out to Jerusalem, to those who swarmed the gates of the Temple, anxious to parade there, “If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly with one another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan and the widow or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place.” If you truly act justly .. if you do not oppress ... then I will dwell with you in this place.
Men and women, the sickest symptom you will ever find in religion is its lack of love. The sickest symptom you will ever discover in a church is its failure to take its faith into the public square and to work for justice and to cultivate mercy and to develop compassion. The sickest of churches are those that just make people feel warm fuzzies, but never challenge them to witness, never push them to mission, never insist on justice. They are self-only churches, and they are sick!
What do we do? We focus only on the “don’ts”. We say you are a good Christian if you don’t drink, smoke, chew, or go with girls who do! We say you’re a good Christian if you say your prayers, give your tithes, and show up regularly at worship. We say you are a good Christian if you smile sweetly, speak softly, and sing the soaring songs of Zion. All well and good! But we have forgotten that this is a public faith! We have forgotten that there is a world out there that needs us! We have forgotten that what the Lord requires of us is to do justice and to love mercy, and then to walk humbly with our God! Sick religion is centered on the self, only, and it ignores the needs of others.
There is a church in New York City, a magnificent church building. Some of you have probably been to The Riverside Church. Soaring towers, glorious stained glass, an organ to die for, all the spiritual ambiance you could ever want. But some of the folks who go there now are a bit embarrassed by it all, because most of the money to build it came from a family of oil barons who made their money driving smaller competitors out of existence! Oh, now, these oil barons, especially the founding father, were very particular about their personal morality. No drop of alcohol crossed his lips. No labor on the Sabbath day, and certainly no messing around with other men’s wives. Personally impeccable. But absolutely without a social conscience, absolutely devoid of justice, absolutely without love for the poor, the needy, the disadvantaged, and the powerless. That’s sick religion, because It’s self-only religion.
Religion is at its very sickest if it is all about me. Religion is at its very sickest when it is about being good and not about doing good. Religion is at is very sickest if it’s just piety without action, words without deeds, no love, no justice, no mercy.
But thanks be to God. He has given us the means of healing. Sick though we may be, He has given us the way to heal our hearts. For that same prophet, that thundering Jeremiah, also says to us, “The days are surely coming ... when I will make a new covenant .. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts ... for they all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest ... I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”
You see, the real issue is not religion. The real issue is knowing God. The real issue is not what church you’re in or who your pastor is or what ritual you go through. The real issues is Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, and where you stand with Him.
Thanks be to God, who wants to heal the sickness of the human heart, even the sickness of religion. Thanks be to God, who in Christ Jesus has come as the Word made flesh, to show us health and wholeness, life and love. Thanks be to God, who in Christ Jesus is able to write his law on our hearts, so that it’s real, it’s ours, it’s personal, it’s first hand.
Thanks be to God, who instead of a system only gives us a person, Jesus Christ, whom we may know for ourselves. No system delivers Him; He is one you must know on your own. Just because a cat is born in a garage doesn’t mean it’s a Cadillac. It’s not where you go to church, but it’s whether you deal with Jesus Christ every day.
Thanks be to God, who instead of salvation only gives us a model of life, Jesus Christ, who touches every facet of life with His power. It’s not hanging your soul out to dry that He’s after; it’s redeeming every bit of your life, all of it.
Thanks be to God, who instead of self only offers us Jesus Christ, whose love encompasses all humanity, whose arms embrace all needs, and who is able to heal our hurting hearts. It’s not what you don’t do; it’s what you do do and for whom you do it. It’s whether love is the theme, love reigns supreme, whether the love of Christ constrains us.
Thanks be to God for His inexhaustible gift: oh, do you know Jesus Christ, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies? Do you know the one who is able to heal our hearts, even those infected with the sickness of religion?
