The Religion of Jesus

by the Rev. Rich Smith
December 10, 2006 - Advent 2

Luke 1:68-79

Each year at the conclusion of our Confirmation Class we read a short play together, called “The Trial” in which a man named Joe Smiley is arrested and brought into court on the charge of being a Christian. Witnesses are called and arguments are made, and then the script ends, with the instruction that the readers are now to convene as the jury and decide the case. Sometimes Joe is convicted and sometimes he isn’t, but the discussion is always lively, and it causes each of the students to ponder the question in their own lives: If you were arrested and brought to trial on the charge of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Of course, part of the deliberations also involve deciding what it means to be a Christian in the first place. Is simply being a member of a church enough, or having a certificate of baptism, or having made a public profession of faith, or a pledge of monetary support? Or it is harder than that? What are the standards for the rules of evidence here?

I am reminded of Mark Twain who once said, and not entirely cynically, “There has been only ONE Christian so far, and they had him crucified!”

To put it another way, it would probably not be very hard to convict a person of being a Christian if that means following a religion about Jesus. It might be very difficult to convict them of following the religion OF Jesus.

This time of year it’s hard to avoid the religion ABOUT Jesus, as we prepare again to hear the stories of his birth in a manger. Indeed, the liturgical calendar, which we follow rather faithfully, is organized around the events of Jesus’ life – his birth, his ministry, his passion, death and resurrection. For the super liturgical there are feasts celebrating things like his epiphany, transfiguration, and ascension. And if we do them well, regard them not as literal historical events but as symbols pointing beyond themselves, they can lead us to deeper faith and help us encounter God in some new way, and motivate us to be better followers of Jesus’ way. Sometimes the religion of Jesus breaks through our practice of the religion about Jesus. That’s what great liturgy and music and religious art should do – point beyond themselves to Jesus – who pointed beyond himself to the Holy, in what has been called a God-saturated, or even God-intoxicated, way of life. But it’s also very easy to settle for the outward form, the rituals, the identification with a particular group, without actually practicing faith as Jesus himself would.

So what is the religion OF Jesus?

There are a lot of opinions about that. In my research, for example, I came across something called “The Religion of Jesus Church,” based in Hawaii. Their literature starts out promising enough: “The Religion of Jesus Church is a group of like-minded individuals who believe:
–That God is our Father and that we are all, the entire human race, one spiritual family, that there are as many paths to God as there are people to walk them.” (So far, so good, I could join a church like that!)
“–We draw upon many religious texts, including the Bible... to establish and verify our religious practices.” (Yes, God IS Still Speaking!)
“–That religion is society’s adjustment, in any age, to that which is mysterious.” (That’s good, I think we should pay attention to mystery!)
And then, “– That Cannabis is a Holy Sacrament from times of antiquity....it brings us closer to God....and there is no reason the members of the Religion of Jesus Church should be prevented from partaking in the blessings of Holy Smoke....!”
Is this the religion OF Jesus, or a pseudo religion ABOUT something else?

The next thing I found was a book, which sounded a bit more promising – The Lost Religion of Jesus, by Keith Akers. What is the “lost religion of Jesus” you ask? Vegetarianism! His theory is that Jesus’ inspiration came from a sect of ascetic Nazorites, of whom John the Baptist was one, whose beliefs and practices included vegetarianism.

Now, I have been a practicing vegetarian at various times in my life, but I am wary of anyone who tries to use Jesus to justify their own peculiar habits, like the ones who believe Jesus sanctions smoking pot, or that Jesus wants you to vote only for a particular political party who shall not be named. Beyond mention of bread and wine and fish, you’d have to do some pretty complicated textual gymnastics to prove much about Jesus’ eating habits. He was accused of being a glutton, unlike John the Baptist, whose birth is celebrated in our scripture lesson, who ate mostly locusts and wild honey. But before I dismissed the book entirely, I read on.

The subtitle of the book is “Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity.” Akers contends that the original teaching of Jesus – centered on simplicity, non-violence and respect for all life – which is lived out partly as vegetarianism – was changed by his followers, and especially by Paul, so that the Gospel was no longer about that, or the inbreaking kingdom of God in which these values would be lived out. It was changed into an institution centered on Jesus himself, or ideas about Jesus himself. It was no longer about the message, but the messenger. It moved from the religion OF Jesus to the religion ABOUT Jesus.

Akers summarizes the story this way: “Jesus, inspired by a group of Nasaraeans who are vegetarian and attack animal sacrifice, is baptized by John the Baptist. He proclaims a Jewish gospel based on a radical interpretation of the universal law of God – a gospel resulting in simple living, pacifism, and vegetarianism. He goes to Jerusalem where he protests against the animal sacrifice business in the temple. He is brutally crucified by the Romans as a trouble-maker at the instigation of the temple priests.

“His followers come together at Pentecost and, after powerful revelations, declare that Jesus has appeared to them. The authorities still violently oppose Jesus’ followers, arrest the apostles, try to kill James the brother of Jesus, and kill at least one other prominent follower (Stephen). They are checked by the more moderate Pharisees. The sect survives and grows.

“The Jesus movement gains adherents and a new twist with Paul. Paul, on the basis of his own visions and independently of the other followers of Jesus, preaches adherence to a Jesus who is more than a prophet – a Jesus who does not merely proclaim the law but actually replaces it.”

Akers provides ample historical detail to show how, due to persecution, Christianity proved unsurvivable in Jerusalem but not in Rome and why Pauline Christianity was able to eventually become the official state religion of the Roman Empire in less than 300 years. Basically, this occurred because the church embraced a few of the empire's values, such as a tolerance of personal materialism, an acceptance of patriotically based violence, and eating the standard diet of the culture which included meat.

As I said, I’m not sure you could prove much about Jesus’ eating habits one way or the other, but it is unmistakably clear to me that those who follow the religion of Jesus, which was certainly based on a reverence for all life, could practice vegetarianism as a part of a whole array of life-affirming choices. And that the message of Jesus was indeed subsumed by the religion that now bears his name.

The religion about Jesus takes all kinds of forms now, not all of them positive. As outspoken and progressive Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong said recently, he has received over a dozen death threats in his life, threats so legitimate that they required police investigation. Not one of those threats, he said, came from an atheist.....nor from a Jew or Muslim or Hindu.... Every single one came from a self-professed Bible-believing Christian. But is that the religion of Jesus?

So, again, what was the religion of Jesus? And if you were arrested and charged with following it, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

And we might to do well to take a minute and ask, what is religion, anyway?

To me, religion is outwardly a set of beliefs and practices, which can be fairly easily defined – such as the five basic pillars of Islam, or the Ten Commandments – but inwardly is a way of framing reality, a way of understandings one’s place in the mysterious universe, a way of binding everything together, a way of being in the world, a way of being that leads to doing. That’s harder to define, and should be.

We could put it this way. Jesus was Jewish. Outwardly, that meant going to the Temple or synagogue regularly on the Sabbath, studying the scriptures, gathering with family for the Passover Meal, getting away for times of solitude and prayer. All of this informed how he framed the world, how he understood reality and his place in it. Inwardly, he experienced God as a God of love, and whose love embraced all people. He experienced God as a God of grace, who provided even for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and who was always ready to receive and embrace even those who stray. He experienced God as a God of justice, who displayed, as Catholic bishops would put it 20 centuries later, “a preferential option for the poor.” It was this experience of God, of being held in God’s love, that animated him. It gave him hope, as he lived within the tradition that found expression in Zechariah’s words in our scripture lesson. Zechariah was from a Jewish sect known as the Anawim, the poorest of the poor, who relied fully on God because they had nowhere else to go. At the birth of his son John, he sang –
“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel,
who has looked favorably on our people and redeemed us...
who has shown mercy, and remembered the covenant...
By the tender mercy of our God
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Jesus trusted in God, just as Zechariah did. And that is really what religion is about. For after all, another word for religion is faith, and another word for faith is trust. The heart of religion then, is trust in God – the God of love, the God of grace, the God of justice. This is what grounded him, framed his world, animated his way of being – his way of being that led to doing.

And so because of his religion he could preach good news to the poor, befriend the outcast, welcome sinners to his table, proclaim that there were no boundaries to God’s love which extends even to one’s enemies.

If we want to follow the religion of Jesus, beyond the religion about Jesus, it doesn’t mean that we will become Jewish, although we will certainly recognize the values of that historic faith and how it shapes ours. And hopefully we will have a similar experience of God that leads us, as the prophet Micah says, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly, which to me is even more central than the Ten Commandments. That’s what’s in our Westmoreland Statement of Purpose, after all! But following the religion of Jesus, I think, will result in our taking our own experience of God, our way of being, and then begin “doing.”

We’ll talk more about that “doing” next week, when I address “The politics of Jesus.” Today let me leave you with one example.

We are in the midst of a National Weekend of Prayer for Darfur, that region of the Sudan which is now suffering its fourth year of genocidal madness. It’s incredible to me that this holocaust still continues! I’m sure you are well aware of it, and share the concern of a Darfurian woman who offered this prayer –
“I want to join my prayers to many other voices. Every few months we are driven away from one refuge camp to the other, so far in the desert where nothing, nothing at all exists. This is no way for a human being to live. No way to live in such a shocking place – uncultivated, waterless, treeless and barren region. Everything is burning, Lord, around me, around us....in me, in us.... Everything is a barren hell! Yet, Lord, we believe you are there, beside us. We pray for all the Africans living now in our same condition. Bring back peace and tranquility to our beloved country. Peace which is desired by everybody, the old and young, rich and poor, women and men. Amen, Amen, Let it be so.”

I think if we are followers of the religion of Jesus, our way of being in the world will lead to doing. We will pray, we will protest, we will find some way to make a difference. And then, we might have a pretty good answer to the question, “If you were arrested and brought to trial on the charge of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” And we could join with Zechariah in singing,
By the tender mercy of our God
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.