July 22, 2012 Proper 11
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2the king said to the prophet Nathan, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent." 3Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you. 4But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: 5Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" 8Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. 12When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings.
Mohandas Gandhi was born in British ruled India. As a young man, in order to be successful, he tried to become as much of an Englishman as he could. He went to England to study law. He practiced Christianity. He dressed like an English gentleman, tried to speak and act like one. But he discovered that no matter how English an Indian tried to be, that he could never be accepted as one of them.
That disappointment motivated him to look again at what it meant to be an occupied country and to have one's religion and culture demeaned and extinguished. He returned to the religion of his homeland and resumed dressing, and behaving in a way reflective of his own culture. For a while, it would be fair to say, that he was something of a sectarian Hindu but as he spiritually evolved he began to accept all world religions as having both insights and flaws.
He famous replied to one person who asked him if he accepted Christianity by saying, "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ," which may be only an approximate quote given in an interview.
What he did say that I would like for us to pay more attention to is that "God has no religion." God is not a Muslim, God is not Buddhist, or Confucian, nor is God Jewish or Hindu and God is not Christian. All of the religions of the world are an attempt by a specific culture to express their most deeply held beliefs about their object of greatest concern.
I always ask my students to think of a religion in the way that they think of a language. Christianity is a language that tries to speak of God, and so is Judaism and Buddhism.... And just as you cannot say that French is right and Spanish is wrong, it makes no sense to say that one religion is right and all others are wrong.
But that doesn't mean that they are all the same. The reason why most opera is written in Italian is because that language is simply more beautiful when sung in the grand style of opera. Regional languages are going to have some advantages in describing the life and experience of people in that region but it doesn't mean that the other languages are wrong.
God doesn't have a religion. Religions are our way of trying to describe God. Everyone here grew up being primarily influenced by the Christian language set and we are the most comfortable using that language to express our faith but would you really try to teach concepts of the Trinity to a Buddhist, or try to convince a Jew to believe in incarnation or atonement by substitutionary death?
Some people would, of course, but we don't go to that church anymore do we?
The second of the 8 points we publish on the front of our bulletin every week says, "By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who affirm that the teachings of Jesus provide but one of many ways to experience the sacredness and oneness of life, and that we can draw from diverse sources of wisdom in our spiritual journey." Though, I think that Michael Franti says that more succinctly in his song, "East to the West" when he shouts, "God is too big for just one religion!"
Still, we almost always base our services, not only on a text from the Christian Bible, but usually one of the choices from the common lectionary. This keeps us in a kind of synchronous conversation with a lot of our peers in the Christian churches around us. But I'll admit that some weeks none of the offerings in the lectionary really speak to my progressive beliefs but I always manage to find a topic that I believe is relevant to our day.
Today is the first time in my 33 years of preaching that I have chosen a test, not for what it offers but specifically because I want to speak in opposition to it. Rev. Mel read for us that labored passage in 2 Samuel about how God commissioned the building of the temple in Jerusalem. I would like to go on the record immediately saying that I do not believe that God is interested in either architecture or real estate.
I do not believe that one mountain is more holy than another or one building more sacred than another. Again, I love what Michael Franti says in his wonderful song, "Hello, Bonjour" Every bit of land is a holy land and every drop of water is holy water and every single child is a son or a daughter of the One Earth Momma and the One Earth Papa.
Let's be very factual about this: cities build great religious temples and cathedrals to make their city seem important, powerful, wealthy and superior to their neighbors. There is sincere devotion and a desire to give honor to God in there but, folks, do you know what the difference between a city and a town is? A city has a cathedral and a town does not.
When you are a tourist in Paris you go to Notre Dame and San Supice, when you go to London you visit Westminster Abby and St Paul's, when you go to Egypt you visit the grand mosque of Cairo and the temples of Luxor and Karnak. The ancient Judeans didn't have a directive from God to build a temple. The building of the temple is how David wanted to make Jerusalem the capital of a united Judah and to make the city where he was the ruler the most important site in the region.
But since we were children we have known that God doesn't live in a house. God doesn't need a building.... The very suggestion is blasphemous. But what we need to accept with the same certainty is that God doesn't fit in your box, or my box, or the Jewish box, or the Muslim box.
Once you accept that fact, then what we realize that we are giving up is religious certainty..... and that is why there are not more of us here on Sundays. Most people want certainty. They don't want to believe, they want to know. They want to be confident in the face of death and the prospect of judgment.
And so, even though they cannot know, they cannot be certain, they choose to act as if they can be. Progressives choose honest uncertainty over false certainty. It is not easy, especially not at first.... It can be frightening but most of us who are here realized that we were more angry about having been lied to and manipulated by religion than we were afraid of living with uncertainty.
People will say that wars are fought over religious differences but I pretty sure that is hog wash. Governments use religion to whip up the simple minded to make them go fight their wars, but the government doesn't want to go to war over religion. Governments go to war to gain wealth, real estate or power.... They just have to dress it up in fear and religion to get the poor people to be willing to die in a war. ....let me know if I'm going too fast for you!
We acknowledge that a great deal of our religious belief is based on faith and hope and about those things we need to be liberal in allowing others to believe differently. What we, in this church, have elected to focus on is what we can know. As a matter of faith and practice, we believe that love is superior to hate. That forgiveness is better than resentment. That poverty, hunger, homelessness and illness are not divine judgments but they are opportunities for us to show compassion and to practice love. We will work for peace and sacrifice to avoid war. We will love our country and often do so by challenging our government when our politicians lower the ethical standards of what it takes to be a great nation.
We will teach our children to love God by first loving one another without regard for race, nationality, sexual orientation, class, age or appearance.
We will challenge one another to care for our earth and one another just as we care for ourselves. And we will speak up for justice, even when everyone else is silent.
I don't believe that God told us to build a temple or a cathedral or a box of any kind..... we fill our boxes with our sacrificial compassion and we take it out into the streets wherever we are needed and that is doctrine, creed and religion enough.
