Religion Versus Faith

Religion versus faith

Luke 5:12 – 16

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

12 While He was in one of the cities, behold, there was a man covered with leprosy; and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” 13 And He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately the leprosy left him. 14 And He ordered him to tell no one, “But go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing, just as Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” 15 But the news about Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.

In Luke chapter 5 verses 12 to 16, we have the story of Jesus curing a man who had leprosy. This narrative becomes interesting when you research on the Internet and find out that the process to be declared cured of leprosy, according to the Mosaic law, is quite elaborate. It is an endless series of rituals and sacrifices and thanksgiving to God. Yes, we should all give thanksgiving to God when we cure any kind of disease, whether it's the common cold or something like leprosy.

In Jesus' day when people became ill, they went to the priest in their area and asked the priest what they had to do. With leprosy, we can look and see all the distinct steps that had to be done. Then we have the story about Jesus. A man with leprosy walks up to him and says please make me clean again. That phrase means he wanted to be cured of his leprosy. In the ancient world of Judea, people believed that diseases and fevers were brought on because the person had sinned in some way. Therefore, the leper is asking for two things in his mind.

He may have been expecting a long drawn-out process, which he did anyway. But at the moment of his healing, Jesus simply did one thing: the narrative tells us that Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man and told him he will cure him of the leprosy. Miraculously, Jesus cured the man of leprosy. There was undoubtedly a crowd around who witnessed this event. Interestingly enough, Jesus told the man to go do what the priest, tells him to do for the cure of leprosy even though he was cured.

We don’t know if that man went to the priest and did all the steps that it took to be cured of leprosy, or perhaps the priest looked at him and said there’s nothing wrong with you. This made me think of the difference between having religion and having faith. Probably the best thing I can say is that if you have faith and religion, you’re in great shape. I believe that religion helps us to express our faith in Jesus. However, religion can also impede expressing our faith.

That sounds like a double-edged sword, so let me explain a little of what was going on in Jesus' day and what’s going on today. In Jesus' day, the Pharisees were controlling the religious aspect of the people and developing all these different rules and regulations that the people had to follow. Many of those rules and regulations were not even in the laws of Moses. Therefore, you can question where they were getting these ideas. Well, many of them were based on the laws of Moses, just interpreted a little differently. Especially one idea of giving attribute, or giving money, to the priest to cure you.

The same thing is happening today in church. As I look out at the different denominations of Christianity, I see a lot of religion and a lot of it is not truly scripturally based. That is why Christianity has different denominations because theologians past and present cannot agree on what Jesus' words and actions in the gospel are about. Instead of having one Christianity with multiple facets of the religion decided it was going to have multiple denominations, thus separating the multiple facets.

For example, many of the denominations of Christianity baptize infants. This idea mainly came from the doctrine of original sin that was given to us by St. Augustine about 1600 years ago. This doctrine says that the baby is born in sin and needs to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ immediately. Part of the culture of the day fits and because infant mortality was not very high. Losing babies within the first few weeks or even months of their life was not unusual. Therefore, you wanted to ensure that your baby was not going to hell, so you baptized it.