The Truth Will Set You Free (Part One)
The Truth Will Set You Free
John 8:31-32
For a long time now, I’ve been making the case that Jesus didn’t come to start a church. There were plenty of temples and churches and other holy places to visit. There were rituals and sacrifices and feasts and fasts that were all about getting right with God. I don’t think Jesus came to change where we went to worship. I think Jesus came to show us how to actually live differently.
The earliest followers of Jesus did form house churches pretty quickly but they did so in order to survive. Jesus’ followers were being arrested and persecuted and jailed, sometimes even killed. Life was safer in community with other followers. The followers also pooled their resources. They ate and slept and worshipped, all under the same roof. These house churches and the persecution that made them necessary continued for the first three hundred years of Christianity—living under the radar, sharing everything, surviving.
These early followers didn’t have the luxury of worrying about the things that churches would worry about later. Everyone was welcome: women and men, young and old, regardless of whether you thought what I thought. There was no time to worry about power, or hierarchy, or orthodoxy. In dire circumstances, those things just did not matter.
This is why it was a terrible day when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Yes…people were not going to be persecuted any more for following Christ. However, when religious authority and political power mix, faith always suffers. The church sanctions the politicians and the politicians give the church security or laws or money for the effort. When the church and the state align, the church is corrupted and suffers and loses it’s unique calling. It becomes just another power hungry force in the world.
When Christianity became the state sanctioned religion, the great experiment that was the first 300 years of our faith ended. The hard won sense of what mattered and what didn’t matter disappeared. Newfound power and control would lead to a rigid hierarchy of professional religous leaders that would establish a gulf between the “pros” and the rest of the people. The church would relfect the partriarchal bias of the culture and women would be sidelined from any real leadership. Institutional authority would replace spiritual power. Attending worship and giving to the church would replace the focus on actually living a faithful life out there in the real world. Rather quickly, faith would become a matter of agreeing with certain ideas and doctrines. A faithul person’s job was to conform to the church’s ideas and expectations.
Eventually, centuries later, the church would become corrupted enough that the Reformation would take place. Various leaders and groups would split form the church, establishing new practices and theologies. However, what did not change was that almost all of those “Protestant” churches retained a state relationship. The Presbyterians settled in Scotland. The king’s rejected divorce in England led to the Anglican Church. Italy remained Catholic. Although there was much that was new about the reformed churches, what was centuries old was the notion that citizenship and church membership and church and state were meant to be intertwined.
This led to shameful moments in which theological disagreements over the understanding of communion or over the understanding of resurrection led to people being executed by the state. It also led church leaders and state leaders to have a shared interest in maintaing the status quo and holding onto power. If the people have a question about the king, all they need to know is that God appointed the king. If the people have a desire to question church teachings, perhaps a little time in the state run prison will answer their question.
Those in power will generally do anything they can to stay in power. This is true of leaders in the church and leaders in the state. In better days, the church might have prophetically critiqued the state and the state might be willing to hold church leaders accountable—financially, ethically, legally. The problem is that almost as soon as political power and religious authority mix, those better days are done.
The problem on both sides is pretty similar. There are really good people who go into politics for really good reasons: to make things better, to work for the common good. There are really good people who go into the ministry: to care for those in need; to help people connect to what is sacred in life and to live a loving life. The problem is what happens along the way. Politicians need to raise money. So do pastors and churches. Decisions begin to be couched less as a matter of right or wrong and more as a matter of what’s prudent and beneficial. Somewhere along the way, a lot of people fall prey to the sense of entitlement: “I’ve done some good here. What’s in this for me?” Keeping a job becomes more of a priority than actually doing the job. Principles get compromised. The ideals that inspired them in the first place are all but forgotten. No one is ready to speak the truth that might cost them dearly, much less act on that truth.
One of the really unique things about this nation was that the people who came here shared one thing in common: they had suffered in the face of the mix of politics and religion. They fled their homes and risked their lives coming here in order to get away from all that. And when it was time to put a country together, they built the separation of church and state directly into the constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” There should be no official, endorsed religion in America. You have a right to choose your religion, free from state persecution. You have the right to practice no religion at all. The founders, themselves were from all sorts of different faiths and no faith at all. They seemed to agree that we should leave things that way.
That worked for a long time—sort of. From the moment we landed on these shores, the church and the state established that the native people were “savages” and systematically destroyed them. One might have expected the church to challenge this. It almost never did. In the midst of that awful carnage, we began enslaving people, as well. Again, one would hope for outrage from a free church. That response did come but it took decades and decades for some really faithful people and some really faithful churches to find their voices. To all of those who say today that we used to be a Christian nation and that’s what we need to become again, I answer, “No, that’s not what our founders intended in the constitution and it is certainly not the role that Christianity has played in American life. Factually, we have never been a Christian nation. Aspirationally, we have never, as a nation, lived up to that calling, either.
Christian pastors preached the sermons that inspired people to force the “savages” out, that supported slavery, that kept women from voting and on and on. Other Christian pastors preached the sermons that inspired the civil right movement, that pushed for peace, and that reminded people that we are not in the power business but we are in the business of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and comforting those who grieve.
The unique thing is that none of those pastors have spoken with the power of the state sanctioning their perspective. Just as we have always been a nation of immigrants, we have also always been a nation of many faiths. The range of our perspectives is sometimes our greatest strength. What we need is not one powerful religion with one powerful person as its spokesperson. Rather, what we need is a rabbi and an imam and a pastor and a Catholic priest and a Buddhist priest and humanists and ethically oriented people sitting down together with equal voices and asking, “How can we work together to make this world better?” And as we listen to one another, we should be asking ourselves, “What do they see that I’m missing?” The point would be not to shout one another down or to jockey for political power but to listen to one another and learn.
When I was in high school, someone offered me the chance to ride their motorcycle. I said no…not because I didn’t want to but because of how much I did. I knew that I would love the speed and the thrill. I was pretty sure that I might kill myself on that thing. Still, it was so tempting.
It is always tempting for the church to grab the reigns. Think what we can do if we get the right people elected. Think what we can do if we control the court. The church has repeatedly sold its soul across generations for the promise of such gains. Inevitably, that power corrupts the church. We forget that we’re here to care for those in need and for one another. Instead, we care most about holding onto power and maybe even getting a little more.
Jesus wasn’t a public policy guy. His eye was on communities of care and personal responsibility. He invited us to be humble, to go last, to forgive relentlessly, to turn the other cheek, to give away our stuff, and to love like there’s no tomorrow. In a world in which, “What’s in it for me” is the refrain, that just seems like bad politics, right? Or maybe its just an invitation to be very warry of getting lost in the politics of self-interest.
I think this is honestly one of the most powerful things that has kept me at this church all these years. We’re not big enough for anyone who cares all that much about power to pay us much attention. If you’re a politician, there’s hardly enough votes here. If you’re into religious power and authority, there are other places that are going to a much better job of helping you climb and shine. So, the people who land here and stay—pastors and members—are folks who saw this truth about this place and thought, “Perfect…now we can get on with the real business at hand: caring and helping and loving—one person at a time.” That’s the truth that sets us free around here—free from ulterior motives and posturing and climbing. We are about to be bombarded with folks who are going to tell us that America has to become a Christian nation again, that a diversity of opinions is a threat to our nation, that people who live differently than we live are a threat to our way of life. Let’s remind one another today: we don’t worship any candidate; we worship God. We don’t expect any person to be our savior; we already have one whom we are working hard to follow. We don’t expect anyone to be perfect but we do expect people to have some interest in actually getting something done, enough interest to work with people across the aisle. Most of all, let’s take responsibility ourselves for being a part of doing that work.
It’s time to honor the constitution, uphold the rule of law, ensure election integrity and get on with the business of living our faith.