Talking Religion

“1 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat them. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, `Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?'

3 Jesus answered them, `Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.' 5 Then Jesus said to them, `The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.'”

So one Sabbath day and Jesus and his disciples were out walking somewhere. The disciples did something that sounds weird to us; they just reached down and stripped some kernels of grain off the stalks. Then they rubbed them in their hands to get the husks off, and they ate the raw grain as a snack. And some Pharisees saw it and complained. They didn’t complain that his disciples would get indigestion from the raw grain. They didn’t complain that they were stealing from a farmer. They complained that Jesus’ disciples were breaking one of the Ten Commandments. They were both harvesting grain and milling grain on the Sabbath.

But Jesus didn’t accept their rebuke. He pointed out a precedent from the Old Testament. In the Old Testament tabernacle, there were special loaves of bread that were dedicated to God and only for the priests to eat. But the great King David, who wasn’t a priest, had gone ahead and eaten them once when there was urgent human need. God can be flexible about ceremonial things when there is a human need. And he made this amazing claim for himself, calling himself “the Lord of the Sabbath.”

It must have felt pretty obnoxious the way that the Pharisees were always nit-picking at him. But he didn’t turn it into a personal battle. He didn’t indulge in name-calling and counter accusations. What did he do? He turned it into a theological discussion, a time for teaching, a time for talking religion.

And you might say, “Well, duh,” of course Jesus talked theology. That’s what he did. But it’s something we often avoid, something mainline churches of today have largely forgotten how to do, and something we very much need to learn to do: to talk theology.

Why do we talk about theology so rarely? I see two main reasons. C. S. Lewis once wrote about giving a lecture with some theology in it to fliers in the Royal Air Force. And one of the tough old officers stood up and said, “I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there is a God. I’ve felt him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat dogmas and formulas about him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”

Have you heard those feelings before? Have you had them yourself? The implication is that theology is a waste of time, that you have to choose between knowing God personally in your own experience or reading about God second hand in an impersonal, abstract form called theology.

And C.S. Lewis’ answer to that was very wise. He said to think about the two ways of knowing God as like two ways of knowing the ocean. You can experience the ocean personally through walking along the beach, getting your feet wet. Or you can experience the ocean indirectly, through studying a map, back safe and dry in your home. Of course, there is no substitute for the wonder of walking along the seashore yourself or sailing in the open, high seas. You would be a fool to sit far inland looking at a map of the ocean and then consider yourself to know all about it without every gotten your feet wet in one yourself.

But it’s equally foolish to stand on one point of the shore of the vast ocean enjoying the soft sand and the warm sun and claim that you know all about the ocean from just that one contact. Sure you have now experienced one small stretch of the beach. But the map could tell you things about what thousands of other people have experienced about other parts of the same ocean, things that will give you new perspectives, even though the map is only made of paper. Your own eyes can only see to the horizon, but the map can give you a greater sense of just how big that ocean is. If you want to get somewhere in exploring the ocean for yourself, the map will tell you what to look for and how to get there. The map can warn you about dangerous reefs and rocks that have caused other people shipwreck. Depending upon one personal experience you have had is fine if you are content to sit in the sun and not get anywhere. But every explorer who is serious about experiencing more is hungry for any map that will tell him what others who seen who have gone before.