August 14, 2016
Thank you for the opportunity to share today. I appreciate the chance I had to prepare for this teaching and reflect on my spirituality in the context of this faith community. This is the first year in the decade that I’ve been attending 8th Day that I haven’t committed to be a community member. The reason I didn’t commit was because I was distracted with work and other activities over the last couple of years and I wasn’t keeping up with the disciplines I agreed to practice. I needed to take a step back and re-examine my priorities. I do miss a deeper connection with God that comes from practicing spiritual disciplines and I would like tpo draw closer again.
In the lectionary scriptures for today, I found two themes. They seem to represent bad news and good news for humans. First, I’ll focus on what seems to be bad news. In these scriptures, God is a judge and divides people who are faithful from those who are not faithful.
Psalm 82
Luke 12: 49-56
I’m at a loss with how to interpret this idea of God as a judge. I see God as overwhelmingly a loving God so I’m not sure how to match that view with the idea that God is judgmental. I have observed that some people feel that because the Bible says God is a judge, they have a license to be judges as well. This tendency has spurred a lot of conflict within religions and between religions.
But, in fact, I don’t think people are commissioned to be judges. In Matthew 7, Jesus is quoted as reprimanding people who judge others: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. … Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
I said there was also good news in the lectionary scriptures for today. The good news is that we are not alone in striving to be faithful. The scripture says a “cloud of witnesses” have come before us. They are people who when under pressure did the right thing, which should help us to be fixed on Jesus and stay on the right course ourselves. Let me read from Hebrews.
Hebrews 11: 29-12:2
The question I’d like to explore is: why do I go to church? Why do I participate in what some of my peers call “organized religion”? Like me, you’ve probably heard people say, “ ‘I’m spiritual, but I don’t participate in ‘organized religion. ’”
This sentiment is represented in a piece written last year for the Huffington Post, called “Why I choose to live my life outside of organized religion,” by Mick Mooney. He also wrote a book called An Outsider’s Guide to the Gospel.
The thoughts and questions that God stirs my heart with — and the answers I find — are never going to be the same as everyone else, because my relationship with God is personal.
Contrary to this is organized religion. Religion creates a corporate identity. When we buy into religion we end up speaking, sounding, even looking like everyone else within that corporate branded identity. Same thoughts. Same beliefs. Same well-defined doctrines; and if you step out of line and have questions that don’t fit that corporate identity, chances are you might be silenced, or even booted out.”
The writer has a point that we could lose our spiritual identity to the church, but I counter his argument with the point that the church also helps to nurture our spiritual identity.
So why do I go to church? The short answer is that I find “a cloud of witnesses” there. That’s not to say that the Christian church is the only place where there are people who are faithful to God. I have a friend who is a Muslim who is an inspiring witness to God. She once told me “you’d make a good Muslim.” I have another friend who is a Buddhist, who is also a witness.
But Christianity is my heritage and my faith, and so I go to church because I find a concentration of people there who inspire me to continue in my struggle to connect with God. I was struck by David Hilfiker’s comment a couple of Sundays ago about Mary Cosby. He said that once when he was having a crisis of his faith, she told him: “Lean on mine.”
But can there also be a danger in leaning so much on others in church? Could it be so much a crutch that it would be a hindrance to my developing a faith of my own, as the writer for the Huffington Post suggests?
Personally, I’ve found that my spirituality is healthier as a church-goer than as an outsider. I have some experience with this.
While I was baptized into the Mennonite church when I was 16, I had a faith crisis during the two years during my mid-20s that I was a teacher in China. The Chinese Communists, who dominated the culture of that country, believed in Karl Marx’s idea that “religion is the opiate of the people,” and religious practice was greatly discouraged.
A few old people attended a church in the city where I lived and taught, but most working people did not set foot in church because they would have been labeled as irrational, and it likely would cost them their jobs.
During those two years, I didn’t attend church. And though I was accompanied by another Christian on my teaching assignment, my faith shriveled up. I met so many good and kind Chinese, I couldn’t see how they needed God. I questioned if God was something just invented by the church people I’d grown up with.
I came back to God at age 25. Soon after I returned from China, and I was living with my parents for a year, I was in a car accident that was my fault. No one was hurt but I couldn’t forgive myself for my mistake. I had a religious experience in which I felt that God comforted me and forgave me and since then, I’ve called myself a Christian and I’ve participated in church.
I also was supported by two people who were part of the “cloud of witnesses” in the church in my hometown that my parents attended. These two were the pastor and his wife at the church. They had strong faith and they took me in often to hang out with their family, regardless of my level of belief. I leaned on their faith.
Some of you may bristle at the fact that I consider 8th Day to be “organized religion.” We’re not part of a denomination. Members don’t need to believe in a particular doctrine. Still according to some definitions, we do represent “organized religion.” One definition I came across, for example, said “organized religion” is “an institution to express belief in a divine power.”
I thought about “organized religion” often this summer, when I toured three countries in Eastern Europe plus the city of Istanbul in Turkey. The Eastern European countries were Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. I joined a group of strangers for the trip, operated by an Australian company called Intrepid Travel. I taught world history for four years and had become intrigued with the religious and cultural history in this part of the world. I was curious how Eastern Europeans were faring under their post-Communist governments.
Organized religion provided a backdrop for the tour because churches, synagogues, and mosques are some of the hottest tourist spots in Eastern Europe. I was surprised that so many historical houses of worship remain, given that the Communists didn’t value them. For example, in Bucharest, the capital of Romanian, our guide told us that 17 churches were destroyed to build Communist buildings. But after that the people saved at least one Orthodox church by getting permission to move it so it wouldn’t be razed.
It was clear that while the Communists may have tried to stamp out organized religion, they did not succeed. The post-Communist governments and people of Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria have gone to a great deal of trouble to restore the beautiful houses of worship still standing that were constructed before World War II. They’ve also re-built some religious buildings, such as a convent.
In the stories of these houses of worship, you can find examples of both conflict and peace. And the question I kept asking myself was whether organized religion has been more a source of conflict or a source of peace. And what will it be in the future?
I hope it will be peace.
History has plenty of examples of conflict within and between religions. And when people tell me they don’t want any part of “organized religion,” they often cite examples of these kinds of conflict.
The legacy of one huge church conflict, called the Great Schism, which occurred in 1054 A.D., is still very evident in Eastern Europe. At that time the Pope, who headed the Western churches, and the patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey), who headed the Eastern churches, excommunicated each other. These excommunications stood for almost 1,000 years, until they were reversed in 1965. Honestly, it’s hard for me to even understand what the causes of this split were. One dispute was over the origin of the Holy Spirit (Did the spirit come from the Father or from the Father and the Son?). Another issue concerned whether bread made with leaven (such as yeast) or without leaven should be used for communion.
Because of the legacy of the Great Schism, Hungary is full of gorgeous and ornate Roman Catholic churches and Romania and Bulgaria are filled with gorgeous and ornate Orthodox Christian churches. [Romania also has a large area, Transylvania, with Lutheran churches. Those came out of a church split within the Roman Catholic western churches with the Reformation.]
But regardless of church conflict in the past, these churches seem to be a source of peace for the people who worship in them or the people wouldn’t have worked so hard to preserve them.
Today, the Rila Monastery, a Bulgarian Orthodox monastery is one of the most visited sites in that country, both by tourists and pilgrims. Monks at the monastery are credited with helping to preserve Bulgarian culture under Communism. Today, it’s a peaceful place located in beautiful mountains. The monastery is covered with colorful murals of the life of Christ and saints. I saw pilgrims of all ages praying in the church and kissing relics.
In Romania, I visited an Orthodox wooden church from the 1700s in a village. Why were these churches built of wood? Dating back to the 14th century, Hungarian rulers of Romania, who were Roman Catholics, forbade the Romanians to build churches out of a more permanent material, such as stone. (By the way, Protestants suppressed Roman Catholics in a similar way in restricting how they built their churches in St Mary’s County in Maryland in the early history of this country.)
The guide who took us to the wooden church was a devout Romanian Orthodox man named Nicolae, who was probably in his 60s. He was a humble man. He told me he had recently gone to school and become a nurse so that he could better assist his wife, a village doctor, in her work. For him, his faith had been a source of peace through the difficult Communist years and he felt he had a calling to share it with tourists.
The church we visited has been lovingly restored since the fall of Communism in 1989. The people of the village actually needed a bigger church for regular worship, so the tiny wooden church is used mostly for baptisms and weddings, Nicholae explained.
The floor is covered with lovely carpets and a local artist painted murals of scenes from the Bible. Local women wove scarves that are hung around the icons.
He said to me about the little church, “I feel at home here.”
On my trip I also reflected on conflict that led to the killing of 6 million Jews during World War II. Religious conflict helped to lay the foundation for the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust.
In several cities, Budapest, Bucharest, and Sofia, after World War II synagogues fell into disrepair. I studied the Holocaust in Eastern Europe a couple of years ago for a history class. The Christian churches did little to resist the Holocaust and some Christians participated. I researched a paper for the class about how some people from my own church tradition, Mennonites living in Poland and the Ukraine, also participated in the Holocaust by constructing buildings in a death camp, using Jews as slaves for farm labor, and even working in death camps. At least one man from Mennonite background was an SS officer and participated in killing Jews.
It is a sign of peace that the governments and people of Europe are starting to acknowledge what happened during the Holocaust. In Budapest, plaques have been installed in sidewalks telling where Jews were removed from their homes. Some synagogues have been restored and have Jews worshipping there. A wonderfully hospitable Jew who appeared to be in his 80s took me on a tour of a synagogue in Bucharest, Romania. “Please, come with me,” he said, repeatedly, as he led me through the building.
Perhaps the most glaring conflict that some people categorize as religious that I thought about during my trip was the work of ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. On June 28, when I was still touring in Bulgaria, ISIS suicide bombers attacked the Istanbul airport. Forty-five people were killed. The news hit close to home because I was scheduled to fly out of that same airport eight days later.
But I refuse to consider ISIS a part of Islam. I see it as a renegade ideology that has usurped the name of Islam.
When I arrived in Istanbul, it was Eid, the holiday to end Ramadan, the month of fasting for Muslims. The city was full of families with several generations of people enjoying the holiday as a peaceful experience. They picnicked in parks, visited the beautiful mosques in that city, which were open to everyone, and bought snacks of ice cream or roasted corn on the cob as treats.
And on the last day of my tour, I found members of one particular brand of organized religion, the Sufi branch of Islam, to express a wonderful sense of peace.
At a restaurant, monks from a Sufi monastery, demonstrated their tradition of being whirling dervishes. As a form of meditation they spun around in a dance while seemingly in a trance.
One monk played a guitar-like instrument and another sang. For about 45 minutes these men spun to the hypnotic-like music, seemingly oblivious to the audience. I felt their sense of peace.
I think as church-goers, we need to continually examine our practices to stay on the path of being a source of peace rather than conflict and to nurture each other’s individual spirituality. We are not called to be judges. We are called to be witnesses. I like the words of confession printed in our bulletin. “Sometimes we carry on with our lives as if there is no God and we fall short of being a credible witness to you…we ask your forgiveness.”
One of my favorite spiritual practices from 8th Day is participating in a silent retreat with the community each spring.
In the silence, I’m forced to examine my own my faith and develop it. But also I have around me a “cloud of witnesses.”