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.