Increase in us True Religion
Jesus carries the prophetic vision into his own life and ministry, and he challenges us to focus on the deep practice of faith–what the prayer for today calls “true religion.” In anxious and uncertain days, Jesus reminds us to trust the Spirit’s presence rather than asserting our own agendas and yielding to our impulse to grasp onto power. Such “true religion” offers us hope, and we need more of it these days.
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Transcript
In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I had written this one way, and this morning, while I was brushing my teeth and curiously listening to Tina Turner sing Proud Mary, I changed my mind. So I’m coming at this another way. Tina Turner will do that to you.
So over the past few weeks and well, really over the past several months that we have found ourselves and kept this conversation going, there continues to be this running theme in speaking with several of you, that looks like this: “how do I make sense of the days that we live? And how do I stay grounded with where I am, with what’s going on in my life, with what’s going on in the world? How do I stay honest about how I feel? How do I name what I feel I need to name in myself? How do I claim my voice? And at the same time, how do I not yield to despair or to fear? How do I stay grounded and aimed, oriented toward hope?”
That’s where we all, in a sense, find ourselves in these days. We are humans, and part of being humans is that we seek to make meaning. Ever has it been so since we sat around fires in caves, we seek to make meaning and sometimes we struggle to do that. So all of that has been coming back, like welling up in me, hearing from so many of you and talking with Brandon and Sister Genevieve and others and just asking ourselves “how do we do this?” How do we do this?
And then this prayer. So if you take out your bulletin, the collect for this morning is one that, every time it cycles through on our lectionary cycle, there’s a particular phrase in this collect that hooks me. So, as you know, the collect is the prayer that, in theory at least, collects major images from all of the readings that we have appointed for each day. There’s a separate collect for every Sunday, so that prayer is one that, at least in theory, can help us focus and look at all of the texts that we have and say, “what are the themes? What are the major currents, the threads that we can see weaving between all of these texts? That we make sense of it? So we can listen to the Spirit’s voice within our hearts.
So the phrase from the collect that’s on this Sunday that hooks me every year it comes round is this phrase: increase in us true religion. It’s a curious phrase. It’s a curious phrase in our postmodern context because with everything feeling so subjective, what does that mean? If we did a straw poll, being good Episcopalians, how ever many of us are in this room, there would be twice that many opinions, just from the people in this room around what that means and what that looks like. But I think there’s some clues in the text that I want to look at, and I think the clues in the text, at least for me, help me reframe and stay grounded and they help me orient myself toward hope and resist, if you will, that sense of slipping into a deeper hole around fear and anxiety and yielding to that. So that’s what I want to look at.
But this phrase is a curious phrase: increase in us true religion, which naming that out loud and naming it that way and putting it in print, if you will, begs the question, what’s not? If we’re claiming in some sense and praying that it’s something in us called, or that we see as “true religion” be increased, then the inverse of that there’s something that’s not true that needs to be decreased. It’s a curious… it’s a curious phrase.
And it helps to know, to just take a moment and remind ourselves maybe about what religion is. So we’re going to do that in two minutes. A quick recap. No problem.
Religion as a word is a phenomenon that’s always been there with humans, like we said, since we gathered around fires the first time and tried to make meaning of our lives. And that word “religion,” the root of that word is a fascinating one. Re-ligio comes from a root ligare. Now the medical people in the room might hear another word in that word: “ligament.” It’s the same root word as ligament. So re-ligio brings to mind… it says that it’s doing something similarly to what a ligament would do. And a ligament, as we know, binds, connects bones so that the skeleton as a whole can bear the weight of the body and carry the body through life. So the ligament enables the bones to stay bound to each other, so that the human body can support itself and be carried and travel. It’s a wonderfully poetic image when you think about it that way.
A religion does that too, on the level of the heart and the soul. To put it that way. Something in us is being binded, strengthened, joined so that our body, ourselves, can carry through our lives and we can live in a whole in a full way and seek wholeness and healing. It’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful way to think about it. So a “true religion” does that.
It’s not that we’re trying to define certain doctrines and argue about those. That’s on a different level. I think what this prayer is asking us to look at is on a deeper level around asking ourselves, what is that thing, what are those things in our lives that support us on the level of our heart, and the level of our soul, so that we’re strengthened and that we can be carried through our lives seeking and making meaning?
Sister Genevieve Lynn and her work over the past year or so has hit on this around asking ourselves around what our rule of life is. That’s coming at it as well. How do we shape our days? How do we organize our lives so that we can be supported and find and make meaning, that we can seek wholeness? Which means as well, in having a rule of life there are certain things that we say yes to, and there are certain things that we say no to, in order that we can say yes to other things. That we have space, that our soul has space. So that phrase increase in us true religion should bring all of that to mind, should bring all of that to heart.
Now, the texts this morning give us some clues. So if you look at the first one from Jeremiah, there’s some clues here that can teach us what that means, what that looks like. Jeremiah, of course, the prophet, as we’ve talked about. No one likes a prophet. No one who benefits from the status quo likes a prophet. I’ll put it that way. Some people love them and are drawn to them and want them. Those are the people who aren’t benefiting from the current status quo. People who benefit from the current status quo don’t like them. As Dr. Brueggemann said, there is within us this impulse to want a king, in that archetypal sense.
There’s something in us that’s drawn toward and wants to hold on to power and control. And that image, that person of a king fills that role. So there’s something in us, and you can look back through all of these texts. How many times did the people ask for a king? “Give us a king.” And how many times did the prophet say “be very careful about what you ask for. Because the reason you’re asking that is from the lower level of yourself. There’s something in you that’s wanting power and control, and you think that having a king will do that.”
So there’s something in us that is drawn to this sense of wanting to hold onto power and control. And there are people among us who would love nothing more than to be a king. That’s how it works. And that sense feeds off of itself. And Jeremiah knew this and looked at how the people were failing in their own lives, and the threat that they were facing with another nation coming in to conquer them.
And Jeremiah says the threat is real. “The threat is real. And you know who’s to blame for it? You are.” The people themselves are to blame for it. And he lays out at the end of it and dares to speak from God’s own voice and says:
But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit…
…my people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that hold no water.
So the prophet holds up a mirror and challenges the people to ask themselves “how much have you trusted in God’s presence and goodness and guidance in your life, and how much have you yielded to the pursuit of power and control and grasping?” And when you yield to the temptation of power, to control and grasping, there are consequences. No one likes a prophet. No one who benefits from the status quo likes a prophet.
Jesus picks up on this as well. If you flip to the Gospel. Jesus was always a hit at a dinner party. He was always a hit. Jesus is gathered there with those at this party, at this dinner, and he observes people being people. And it’s an echo of the same thing that Jeremiah cautioned. Jesus observes that in a sense, when we’re left to ourselves, when our own ambitions and agendas lead us, we will go toward positions of higher prestige. So Jesus just observes this and notices that when people were coming in to sit at the table, they would go to the places of highest honor, and they would sit there, proud that they had been recognized in some way. And Jesus, echoing and carrying that prophetic imagination, says “Be very careful. Be very careful how you situate yourself, what posture that you take.” And that’s a key piece, because you may think that you’re the most distinguished one sitting around the table until someone more distinguished than you comes in, and the host has to come to you and say, “I’m really sorry. I know this is embarrassing, but I’m going to have to get you to get up and move down to the lower seat.”
So Jesus says the posture to take is not to grasp and not to assert yourself in that way, but it’s to take the lower seat, to take the lower seat, to situate yourself there so that your host can say, “Come up here. Come up here.”
It’s a challenging image. Like I said, everyone loved Jesus at a dinner party because he would watch and observe and then reflect back how people were acting so that we could see that impulse within ourselves.
So those two texts give us a clue about what “true religion” is, and it has to do with the posture that you take. It’s the best way that I can think to come at it. What posture do you take within yourself? How do you situate yourself in the life that you live? Is the posture that we take to assert ourselves, to grasp out of power, out of control? To claim that for ourselves? Or is our posture to yield, to trust in the spirit’s guidance and movement? Is our posture to affirm that royal consciousness and seek to benefit from it? Or is our posture to participate in the divine consciousness, which affirms the dignity and inherent worth of every human being?
As the text says, this is what pinches us about a prophet. Affirming the dignity and worth of every human being means every human being, no matter their citizenship, no matter their status, no matter whether they’re in prison or not, no matter what they’ve done, who they are, who we are. The message of the prophets, the message of God, the message of Christ is that inherent dignity should be affirmed. And the posture that we take is to orient ourselves to support and participate in that divine vision for the world. And in doing that, in nurturing that sense of “true religion” within ourselves, then we discover what hope is.
Out of that posture we can face whatever life throws at us, whatever life brings, because we’re grounded in something that has substance, something that is true, something that will truly offer us hope.
So our friend Julia Cromartie, who many of us know, has been going through her husband John’s collection of books since he died. John collected a lot of books, and she goes in his office from time to time, and every time she goes in, she finds a nugget and she’ll call or text and say, “I found another nugget.” This was a bookmark two days back, and she sent a note and she said, “I found a bookmark stuck in one of John’s books. And I think this is wonderful. It’s just true. It’s a treasure.” So in all that we face and all that we hold and all that we wrestle with and all that seems uncertain in the midst of all of that, this bookmark said
Deep within us,
God has placed a Spirit
that refuses to be broken–
and we call this Hope.
Deep inside us, God has placed a spirit that refuses to be broken, and we call this hope.
Thanks be to God. Amen.