Religion or Faith?

Text: Matthew 15:10-20

Focus: faith

Function: the difference between religion and faith.

¹⁰Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: ¹¹it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” ¹²Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” ¹³He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. ¹⁴Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” ¹⁵But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” ¹⁶Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? ¹⁸But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. ¹⁹For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

I just gotta say, I love that line from verse 17 in the King James version where it says, “Into the drought.”

Over the last couple of years, with all of the political division and what that means to associate with Christianity you might have heard the phrase something like: “I don’t follow the Christian religion, I follow Christ.” or “I believe in spirituality instead of religion.” Or probably the most prominent one, “Christianity isn’t a religion, it is a relationship.”

I can preach a sermon unpacking those statements, and we will consider the thought behind them in the sermon, but today I want to look at what I call, along the same lines as the phrases, the difference between religion and faith.

I hope at the end we see that our eternal reward is bound up in loving others instead of merely doing ritual with hearts that are still bitter and unloving.

We use the word religion to translate the word in the Greek NT that is probably best translated as piety.

The Puritans, who fled England for the New World were Pietists. And that was made obvious by their dress and all the rules that they had when they practiced their religion.

The Early Brethren were also influenced by the Pietists when they adopted the simple dress. Although it was more than that, the idea behind the simple dress was a symbolic action from the command to “come out from among them and be separate.” 2 Corinthians 6:17. It is called the uniform of the Christian and among the plain circles it is also a description of who is truly in and who is truly out of the kingdom.

And that is where religion takes over from faith.

Just as Jesus said how we eat doesnt make us any more or any less a part of the kingdom, so also does what we wear.

Remember last week’s sermon and the scripture that says that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved?” Romans 10:13.

We learned that salvation is trust, or rest, in Jesus and the work that Jesus did for us on the cross.

Salvation is by faith in Jesus and that kind of faith is best expressed in the way that we love the other.

If we want to practice religion, then we learn more and more to love and forgive, even our enemies. That is how we live our our Christian faith, in love.

And the problem with making up rules and a code or standard of dress so that we can use to easily identify who is in and who is out is that it leads us to pride and it can also have the affect of keeping us from loving others.

The Pharisees had these rules and were now excluding Jesus’ disciples who were great men of faith.

So why did Jesus say these things in this passage? We read in the verses right before that the Religious leaders were criticizing Jesus’ discipes because of the way they ate their food.

The discipes didn’t perform the ceremonial ritual of hand washing when they ate.

If you read the OT law, you read how that was important. There was a pool for washing that the Priests used right before their official duties. And out of those commands came a rule that everyone must perform this certain ritual before they ate in order to properly follow the Jewish religion.

Jesus came to set us free from the law and its commands and that freedom was already happening with the disciples. Since they were already in a right relationship with God through their trust in Jesus, they were clean and didn’t need to ceremonially wash. They were free from the bondage of the law and apparently celebrated it to the point that the religious people were offended.

We might relate it to the way we pray before a meal. Jesus gave thanks for the bread and brake it right before he fed the crowds and right before the last supper and communion.

So we give thanks for the meal and part of our religion. It is a tradition and is important to us.

But that doesn’t mean that people who do not pray before a meal are not believers, some of them apply the command of Jesus to pray in secret instead of public to include praying before meals. Matthew 6:6

When we pray before a meal in public, it is a public witness and our tip should reflect the generosity of living by faith that Jesus demands.

That doesn’t mean don’t pray before a meal, it simply means if you do, be generous, they are counting on it to survive.

I don’t want to harp on that subject here. But I bring it up as a practical way to help us see that we can merely practice religion to help us feel good about ourselves, or we can truly love our neighbor and fulfill the law of Christ as we live our lives.

Jesus wants the latter, where we live by faith. This “living by love” practice instead of ritual takes faith in many ways.

For example.

It takes faith to be generous. We then have to trust that if we give to the poor or the less fortunate, God will indeed, as God promised us, pay us back because we lent the money to God that we gave to the poor. Proverbs 19:17

It takes faith to forgive people who have harmed us. It takes faith to rest in the provision of God’s mercy and judgment on our behalf. We let God judge, the problem is, God loves the one we are angry with. You see, it takes faith to practice following Jesus.

It takes faith to not get caught up in the political rhetoric and divisiveness and rest in the fact that God is indeed in control, even of elections.

Religion can be mere ritual if it isn’t coupled with a life lived by faith.

The Pharisees were relying on external acts of worship in order to please God. Those acts of worship can be big and glorious, even thrilling, but God is asking for people who will trust the Christ in the way they live.

What we are doing here, depending on each other for community, encouragement and support works for me. I feel and sense the Holy Spirit whenever we gather.

My God is the God of whose mercy triumphs over his judgment. So, I am generous with grace and I see the tent of God’s people as being big enough to eventually include everyone. When people ask me what I believe, I tell them, I believe we should love one another because everyone who abides on Love abides in God. 1 John 4:16

And when we abide in love, we are practicing true religion.

Rescued!

 

Text: Romans 10:5-15

Focus: salvation

Function: to see how God’s salvation is a rescue from the evil of the world.

⁵Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” ⁶But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) ⁷“or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). ⁸But what does it say?

“The word is near you,
    in your mouth and in your heart”

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim), ⁹because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For one believes with the heart, leading to righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, leading to salvation. ¹¹The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” ¹²For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. ¹³For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

¹⁴But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? ¹⁵And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

When people have come to me with the desire to be baptized, or to make a formal confession of their faith because of a life changing event, I have often referred them to this verse when we pray a prayer of confession together.

The prayer has always been along the lines of verse 9 where he says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you will be saved. The prayer is something like: “Lord Jesus, I believe that you died and rose again to free me from my selfish ways and I ask you to forgive my sins and heal me.

Now I want to be clear, the passage says that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. In one way or another, people who sincerely pray are expressing their rest and trust in God and are included among the saved.

So, don’t write down my formula and pray it as if it is magik. God is looking for people who trust God, that is what salvation is.

I don’t like to distinguish between the saved and the unsaved because I am not sure that there are any who are unsaved. I believe that every knee shall willingly bow and willingly confess to the glory of God that Jesus is Lord.

But the bible refers to those who are in the Church as those who have placed their faith, or their trust in Jesus. Those are the people that I believe we can call the saved.

They rest in Jesus and in Jesus’ saving power.

Now this is significantly placed in the book of Romans. My Romans professor called chapters 9-11 the answer to “The Jewish Question” since Romans the epistle is considered by some to be the framework for the doctrine of the Gentile Church. Remember, we are the gentiles.

And Paul writes those words, Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved to remind the Jewish people that Gentiles can call upon the name of the Lord and be saved as well.

It is important for me to remind you that the word translated righteousness is best translated as just. Jesus died and rose again, I believe, so that he could send his Spirit into us and we will respond to the evil in this world with the love with which he fills our hearts.

I don’t want to consider myself among “the saved” as if I am better than others, but among the just because God has called me to serve and love the other.

And in this passage again, Paul is reminding the Jewish reader that Gentiles, people who were formerly cursed by God are now included in the family of God.

I find that God keeps opening up the circle of who has the power of the Spirit to be just and decent people.

So, again, let us examine the idea here behind the word “saved.”

We are saved and that leads us to think of what we are saved from.

I used to believe in a God that paid retribution in a place like hell and salvation was deliverance from the flames of hell fire.

But that isn’t correct doctrine or theology or a correct understanding of what it means to be saved.

To be saved is to be rescued. To be healed. To be restored to God and to wholeness. The plan of God for us is to heal and restore us.

Saved. Healed. Rescued from the evil of this world by Jesus, these are the terms that salvation implies.

I spoke earlier of a TV commentator who appalled me at his ignorance after the Pope was interviewed on public TV during a visit to the United States several years ago.

The Pope was extolling the virtues of Matthew 25 where Jesus says “I was naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me, sick and in prison and you visited me when we did it to the least of all people, we did it to him.

And the Pope reminded the audience that the ones who clothed, fed and visited the marginalized were given the reward of heaven.

And again, I used to think that salvation meant merely that we weren’t going to hell anymore.

The Pope also reminded the crowd that those who didn’t do those works lost their eternal reward.

He told them what Jesus said a just, or righteous person would act like.

That is important because I used to misuse this Romans passage into thinking that our actions didn’t count for anything since if we take this passage by itself without the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 25 that tells us that we must actually do the works of justice toward the poor and marginalized if we want an eternal reward then our actions are covered by what we believe.

Belief without actions is not belief.

Jesus gave us the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. It tells us what to do and it is three chapters long. Eventually the church came up with the Apostles creed which is reduced to a few paragraphs and it tells us what to believe.

And this passage tells us that if we believe the right thing, we are saved.

But remember, when Jesus and the scriptures are talking about salvation, they are not talking about rescue from Hell but rescue from the evil in this world.

Jesus said that he had overcome the world and then John said that we too, will overcome the world by faith in him.

Jesus has rescued us from the evil in this world.

I see the death and resurrection as a potent example of this.

Evil says that we must pay back evil for evil. Jesus said we must forgive and let God be the judge. God will judge, in God’s love.

And God will judge the world in the mercy that God has for all of his children, every one of us.

In the example of Jesus, we are delivered from retribution in justice to love and forgive others.

I believe that God places God’s hope in the power of Love to eventually overcome the evil in this world with the good. That, I believe, is part of the mission Jesus has given to us when he blessed us as peacemakers.

A Spirit of Generosity

Text: Isaiah 55:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21

Focus: generosity

Function: to help people see the nature of Christianity is generosity

Isaiah 55:

¹Hear, everyone who thirsts;
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.
²Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread
    and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
    and delight yourselves in rich food.
³Incline your ear, and come to me;
    listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
    my steadfast, sure love for David.
⁴See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
    a leader and commander for the peoples.
⁵Now you shall call nations that you do not know,
    and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
    for he has glorified you.

Matthew 14:

¹³Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. ¹⁵When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

 

This is a powerful story, and I love the fact that the authors of the Lectionary include the OT reading from the book of Isaiah about the generosity that would signal the new kingdom.

There is a lot to unpack in this miracle. This miracle appears in all four gospels. Mark says something about the imagery of the miracle that changes the dynamic of what it means to be in the Kingdom of God.

Mark says that Jesus sets the crowd down in groups of 100’s and 50”s. The symbol here was military formation.

But instead of calling them into battle, like many of them expected, he feeds them and fulfills the prophecy in Isaiah 55 about how the Kingdom of God is full of mercy and generosity to everyone.

However, I think the most salient phrase from the morning’s text is in verse 16 where Jesus says “you feed them.”

They have an obvious response that they are not equipped to feed such a large crowd and Jesus responds with, “Use what you have.”

And their resources are limited, but then a miracle happens and God transforms they small amount into a mighty amount.

All of my life I have understood this miracle in that fashion. God supplies the abundance when we are willing to give what we have.

Again, though, this is about generosity. God is telling them to expend all of their resources in the moment. Do we trust God that much?

One of the biggest reasons that people are not generous is because they are afraid that there will not be enough for them. Well, maybe that fear is also what leads to greed.

And it reminds me of the Lord’s prayer and our daily commitment to trusting God for the bread we need today. It is a statement of faith that we will rest in God’s provision.

The first Church, as soon as they got saved, individually, rich and poor alike, gave all their resources to the church and lived communally so that they excess that they generated could be used in outreach toward the poor.

They lived by faith.

Let me interject our OT reading at this point. Everyone who is thirsty gets a free drink and a free meal without money and without cost. And it isn’t rice and beans, but the choicest of food. Of course, this is a metaphor for God’s saving mercy, but the whole point of it is generosity.

And this next statement is important. Be generous without judgment to whether or not they need it or deserve it. The point of the song that Isaiah is singing is that God’s grace is free and generous to all.

Jesus didn’t feed the crowd because they deserved it, he fed them because they were hungry.

Although they didn’t have much, Jesus was asking them to give it all and trust him to provide for their future.

That isn’t easy. It isn’t something we just choose to do. This learning to rest in God comes by faith. We know that trials come, and they teach us to rest in the provision of God. I was deep in prayer the day I heard that they were searching for Leukemia in my son and I believe that in my anguish I heard the voice of the Lord speak to me these words from scripture: “I will provide. I am Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides.”

I felt a deep peace come over me.

And then I thought of where that scripture came from, it was Abraham on the mountain entrusting the life of his son to God and God providing his needs.

In today’s story, the apostles have already left everything behind to follow Jesus and Jesus is telling them to let go of it all and rest in him.

Rest in Christ. Whether we live or die, we belong to Christ and nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Matthew and Mark’s gospels also tell of the feeding of the 4,000 and the telling of that part of the miracle is part of the Kingdom of God being a welcoming place story and will explain perhaps the significance of the 12 baskets left over.

When Jesus fed the crowd of 4,000, there were 7 baskets left over. Now, this was not a Jewish crowd, it was predominantly a Gentile crowd in Syro-Phonecia.

There were 12 tribes of Israel. And there were 7 Gentile nations in Canaan that were displaced by the Jews.

12 baskets represents Israel in the Kingdom of God and 7 baskets represents the gentiles in the Kingdom of God.

It is a welcome place for everyone.

In the Isaiah passage, I often wondered if the food “bought” for no price, who paid for it?

Somebody raised the crops, tended the flocks, butchered the cow, sauteed the mushrooms and all of those people are also included in the Kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, it is the simpler, unpretentious people who make up the kingdom of God.

Many of the rich are afraid of losing the power and security that they think they money brings them and refuse to rest in God’s promise to provide for them. And they hoard their wealth while others are starving. And Jesus condemned them for it in Matthew 25.

So, who paid for it? I don’t’ believe that the workers were slaves.

We read the conversion story of the Church in the book of Acts and how the rich in their group, who got converted paid for it. They trusted God for the future and gave up their greed.

I certainly do not want to shame anyone in to giving away anything. Paul says that everything we do must be in love. And that love is a result of our communion with the Holy Spirit in prayer, study and Christian action or service toward others.

Jesus’s answer, again from the salient verse, verse 16 is “they need not go away” is to the disciples request that Jesus get rid of the mob.

Jesus was moved with compassion for the mob, we read elsewhere in Matthew 9:36.

In this miracle, Jesus wants to share a meal with them in love, communion and fellowship.

I reminds me that where ever two or three of us are gathered together, Christ is in our midst.

Jesus was having a time of community with the crowd and was not ready to part with their company. It shows us his love and compassion and yet this happens right after Jesus hears the news that his Childhood friend, John the Baptist has just been beheaded and Jesus has gone away to be alone. The crowd followed him and instead of serving himself, he served them and let their community with him perhaps be a healing force. Just like it is here with us.