EPIPHANY 7-2006 | Mark 1:40-45

This week, Valentine’s day reminded me of when I was a teenager at Berea Baptist Church in Illinois. Love was always in the air back then, it seemed. In the small, insulated community of our parish everyone knew everyone else’s business, and few soap operas could boast more drama. We had a very large youth group, and many young adults, so there was a lot of pairing off, and a lot of breaking up. Quite frankly, it was a gossip’s paradise, and most people indulged in this vice to some degree or another.

One day Jose asked Susan out, and the air in the church was so thick with endorphins you could cut it with a knife. Jose was about 17. He was a tall, dark, and yes, handsome Puerto Rican, in training for the clergy—what we called a “preacher-boy” at the time. He was a smart, good kid, and everyone admired him. He was the next in line in the ministerial pecking order after the “official” clergy, and was often called upon to preach or lead services when one of the paid clergy were not available.

Susan was in every way his equal—tall, brash, intelligent, and possessing a sweetness that was disarming, that instantly made you love her. She was of Norwegian stock, and had long blond hair that hung all the way down to her waist. She was beautiful, and we all counted Jose a very lucky man, and secretly hoped that this was one coupling that would stick.

And it might have, had the paid clergy not interfered. One day the youth pastor called Jose and Susan into his office. He showed them the verses in the Torah that forbid the mixing of different kinds of fabric, and he interpreted this to mean that the Bible prohibited the mixing of races, and that dating each other was a sin against God. He told them that their relationship was an “unclean thing,” and that if they had children, they would be abominations that belonged to neither one race nor another, that God would turn his face from them and would not bless them. If Jose and Susan continued dating each other, he told them, they would be excommunicated from our fellowship, and that God would surely punish them if not damn them outright.

Jose and Susan were crushed, as you might expect. To all outward appearances, they stopped seeing each other, stopped arriving for church together, no longer held hands. Very soon, Susan disappeared—rumor has it she moved to another church. And Jose became bitter and disillusioned. He stayed at the church, but his manner was filled with a passive aggression that poisoned everything he touched.

I feel sad whenever I think about those two. I feel angry at Brother Frank, Jr., our youth pastor, and the rest of the pastoral staff who conspired to break up what was, after all, a beautiful young couple. But as I look back on it now, I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Our pastors were all from Texas, after all, and racism, not only against African-Americans but also against Hispanic people was still very big in the south—and of course, in some places, still is. But I have also seen enough examples of how religion makes people act contrary to the demands of compassion and even common sense to not be surprised, today. Religion is, in many ways, the enemy of compassion and common sense.

And that’s why I say to you today that too much religion is just not good for you. You have to be careful with it, because although a little bit of it is a good thing, too much is almost always dangerous.

I have diabetes in my family, so we have to be careful about sugar—and religion is very much like this. Fundamentalism also runs in my family, and so I must be cautious. A little sugar, a little religion is a sweet thing—but too much of it can make you blind, or even kill you.

History bears this out. Almost every human cruelty, every atrocity that humankind has inflicted upon itself can be traced back to a fanatically held belief. For all of our lauds and praises, the saddest day humanity has ever known may very well be the day we discovered God, for the vast majority of horrors and tears have followed directly in the wake of that discovery. Think of the Aryan conquest of the Indian subcontinent, the Jewish genocide of the Canaanites, think of the Christian atrocities against Muslim and fellow Christians alike in the Crusades, think of the massacre of the “godless heathen” on our own shores, of the Native Americans. Think of the Nazis, who made a god out of Darwin, and twisted his survival of the fittest into a quest for the master race—for racial purity.

In all of these atrocities, the idea of “purity” has played a huge role. The Jews wanted a “pure” race untarnished by gentile blood, unthreatened by gentile gods. The Christians in the middle ages killed millions of other Christians, all in the name of doctrinal “purity.” And fundamentalists today wage culture wars against homosexuals, attempting to “purify” the culture of their “evil” influence.

There are many problems with this. One of them is a misunderstanding of the Biblical ideas of “purity.” In the Old Testament, much ink is devoted to defining what constitutes things that are pure and things that are impure. But if you look closely, some of these things may surprise you. Women, when they are menstruating, must spend several days outside of the camp afterwards before they can rejoin society because they are “impure.” What misogynist claptrap is this? we might ask, but if we do, we misunderstand the commandment of scripture. For women are not required to separate themselves because they are dirty, or because they are less-than—they are required to go outside of the camp because when they bleed they evidence the power of life that is greater than any possessed by a mere man. Their periods are holy things and possessed of too much power to be safely contained within the camp.

The same is true of Scripture. The Bible is known by the Jews as “the books that defile the hands.” Is this because the Bible is filthy or dirty? No—ritual defilement has nothing to do with dirtiness. Once again, it has to do with POWER. The Bible defiles the hands because it is powerful, because its words are holy, because it has the potential to create great good or wreck unspeakable evil. Therefore one must be careful when handling it, should not handle it too much, should always use appropriate caution, and should observe a ritual waiting period afterwards before rejoining society.

We have lost this sense of danger when approaching the scriptures, or our religions in general. Secular society ignores or denies its power, and it does so at its own peril—for no foe is so powerful as one that is underestimated. It does not esteem religion as it ought to, and because of this it has no adequate defense against it when it turns ugly, since outright rejection of something leads to ignorance of it, and ignorance breeds fear and reactivity.

Fundamentalists, on the other hand, do not understand that powerful things must be done in moderation or they will destroy you, destroy your family, destroy your community—may even destroy the world. This is never so true as it is with religion. A shot of whisky give the world a rosy glow and lifts the heart, a gallon of whisky can kill you of alcohol poisoning.

Just so, a little religion can enhance one’s life, make it richer, sweeter, invest it with an appropriate amount of meaning and power. But too much can lead to religion poisoning, a malady our world has suffered from for a very long time.

Think of the current furor over the cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. This has exploded precisely over this very lack of balance. In my opinion, this whole mess arose because the secular press does not esteem religion to the degree that it ought to, and the Muslims on the other hand are taking it all way too seriously. The press needs to show a little respect, and the Muslims need to get a sense of humor.

I think back with anger on the fanaticism of my old church that denied Jose and Susan the joy of their union. It was a small evil, in retrospect, but it makes sense when taken in context with other things considered “impure” biblically. They were right to fear the mixing of the races, because in this mixing is power. An “impure” society is far more powerful than a “pure” one, because it is possessed of many more resources—more narratives, more stories, more traditions, more wisdom, more tolerance, more ideas, more creativity, and more love.

What a terrifying thing, eh? The impulse towards purity is almost always a dangerous impulse, and it almost always leads to violence, whether it is racial purity, religious purity, political purity, dogmatic purity, or even archetictural purity—keep it up and someone is likely to get hurt. And this is especially true of religion.

Religion is a powerful thing—religionS are dangerous things. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca—these are all four-letter words. They are all impure, they all possess way too much power to be safely handled without danger to the community. So what is the answer? How do we safeguard ourselves?

Lao Tzu said, “Forget religion and the people will be much better off,” but perhaps that is going to far. Solomon’s advice is better—he said, “Be not religious overmuch,” and that’s in the Bible. It is also good advice.

In our gospel reading, Jesus makes the leper clean. Leprosy is a skin disease that eats away the flesh until there is nothing left. Since religion is a brain disease that eats away common sense until there is nothing left, perhaps there is an apt metaphor to be had, here.

Jesus was not a terribly religious person. Sure he talked about God, but he only really got angry at the fundamentalists who took things too far, who used religion like weapon to hurt people instead of heal them. He told them, “Damn you, Pharisees—you are like dogs who guard the water trough—you neither drink, nor allow anyone else to drink.” Jesus knew that sometimes religion could provide helpful boundaries, but sometimes compassion was more important than religious rules. Jesus wasn’t interested in making anyone into a religious fanatic. He encouraged his disciples to esteem religion, but to hold it lightly, not take it too seriously, not to let it blind them to human need or even the suffering of animals. He tried to show them that there need not be any contradiction between faith and common sense.

Gandhi once said that “Christianity is a wonderful idea, too bad it has never been tried.” Jesus was frequently frustrated with his disciples because they just didn’t get it. We still don’t. We haven’t yet tried Christianity as Jesus taught it, and my friends, it is high time we started.

I think we should respect religion in the same way we should respect a shotgun, but as our vice-president proved this week, some people do not know how to play safely with either. A shotgun can save someone’s life, or end it, we should neither worship it or dismiss it. Religions are just the same—they can hurt or heal. And it is up to us to find the balance. Let us pray…

Jesus, with a word, you healed the man with leprosy and made him clean. Heal us, likewise, from the leprosy of religion. For it is a disease that is eating away at the human family, turning us against one another and against ourselves. Help us to heed you, and the other prophets of moderation, that we may hold our faith in proper balance, so that it brings our lives sweetness, not brain death. Amen.