4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle B
Jesus Loves Religion
If I hear one more person say they’re spiritual but not religious I’m going to scream.
23-year old Jefferson Bethke posted a rap video on You Tube a couple of weeks ago entitled “Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus”. In it he makes the case that religion is destructive to the message of Jesus. He says that religion either ends in pride or despair. Pride that you have all the answers and others don’t or despair that you can never live up to all the requirements for salvation religion places upon you. He says that religion is man-centered, Jesus is God-centered. Like many people these days, he thinks that we can love Jesus without the burden of religion.
It must have struck a chord because it received over ten million hits in one week. As of this morning there have been over 17 million hits. Of those who commented, five times more agreed with Jefferson than disagreed. I’m not going to get into a lengthly refutation of his position here. You can check out his video yourself, and if you like you can buy one of his t-shirts. But I am interested in the response he received, because I have been hearing people take similar positions for a long time now, especially among our young people, and it is disturbing.
People like Jesus, or who they think Jesus is. They like his nice teachings, all about loving your neighbor, feeding the poor, let the little children come to me. Jesus is welcoming, loving, and approachable. Following this image of Jesus is easy, because there really are no challenges in doing so. We all think we’re good people. We all try to love our neighbor, give to the less fortunate, and think we love God. It’s the religion part that we don’t like, because sometimes religion can be challenging.
I think one reason people feel this way is that they have no real understanding of what religion is. Jefferson Bethke has it exactly backwards. Religion is not man- centered, it’s God-centered, and Jesus is not God-centered, he’s man-centered. Religion is God-centered because it focuses us on the Almighty, and yes, God does place certain requirements on us. If Jesus wasn’t man-centered than why would he have bothered to come down here in the first place to suffer and die for us?
We are all given faith as a gift to some degree or other. In fact, if God did not give us faith we would have no way of believing there even is a God. Religion is the way we put that faith into action. Archbishop Timothy Dolan from New York said in his blog this week, “We Catholics have always believed that God chooses us and gives us the supernatural gift of faith. It’s not that we decide our faith. You bet, we freely decide how firmly and generously we will live out our faith, but we are “born into” a Church. Faith is a gift from God given us on the day of our baptism into His Church.” As Christians we all are called to not just believe but to act upon that belief.
Action. That’s the part about Jesus people are uncomfortable with. We don’t hear them talking much about the challenging teachings of Jesus. “I have not come to bring peace but division.” “Father will be pit against son and son against father.” “They will hate you and persecute you because of me.” “If you are my disciple you must take up your cross daily and follow me.” Jesus said that if you follow him you will be hated, despised, persecuted, and even killed, just as he was. If you don’t believe this is true, post something about abortion on Facebook and see the comments. Religion is hated because it causes us to actually live the faith we profess in Jesus. The image some people have of Jesus is too easy. Religion can be hard.
You cannot separate Jesus from the Church. You cannot separate the Church from Jesus. Last Wednesday we celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. You may remember the story. Saul was on his way to Damascus to arrest the Christians there and drag them back to Jerusalem for trial. On the way he was startled by a bright light that knocked him to the ground and blinded him. He heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, sir? Saul asked. “I am Jesus, who you are persecuting.” Jesus didn’t say, “I am Jesus, whose followers you are persecuting.” He said, “you are persecuting me.” Jesus also told Simon Peter, “You are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my church.” He said, “I will not leave you orphans”, and “I will be with you until the end of the age”.
He promised to send the Holy Spirit upon his church so that the gates of hell will never prevail against it. He lives on in his church. We are Jesus to the world today. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus by yourself. He left a group of people behind to spread his good news, not individuals. Saying you love Jesus outside the community is very self-centered, not God-centered. It is exactly within religion that we are able to know and love Jesus. How else could we learn about him? By ourselves? Without it you get some really weird ideas and post them on You Tube.
St. Mark says today, “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. A new teaching with authority.” What were the scribes teaching? The Law of Moses, which had been handed down to them through the centuries. Moses was a great prophet, but he was not the author of his teachings. In Deuteronomy today God tells Moses that he will send another prophet in his place, one with authority. Jesus was that prophet. Jesus is the author of the teaching, and so of course he had the authority to preach it. Author and authority have the same root.
Say you wanted to take a college course on a subject. Would you just go into the classroom and be handed a textbook to read, or would it better to have someone teach it to you, too? And would it be even better if the professor had actually written the textbook? Of course it would. Then why do people think they can simply sit down with the Bible and learn about how to live as a disciple? Why not go to someone with authority, someone who actually wrote the book? Jesus said he would be present in his church for all time. We don’t make this stuff up on our own. We believe that when we hand on the teachings of the apostles accurately we cannot make a mistake. Our teaching has authority, because we are guided by the Holy Spirit.
Sounds conceited? Actually, it’s the opposite. We remove ourselves from the equation. We don’t make changes here or there on a whim. We humbly follow the apostolic teachings without deviation because we know that we are not the author.
We don’t like authority. It smacks of rules and regulations. We don’t like to be told what to do. But that’s not how Jesus taught. His authority was not about sticking to the law. He did not simply repeat what Moses said and demand that his disciples stick to the letter of the law. He had certainty and confidence in the truth of what he was saying because he is that truth. We can all claim authority in our own areas of expertise. We are Jesus’ area of expertise. He knows the subject of us so intimately because he authored us. And so of course he would teach with authority. That’s the authority he endowed his apostles with. That’s the authority the Church has taught with for two thousand years. That is the authority he has endowed us with today.
