Sunday 6th August
Imagine No Religion #5
1 Corinthians 13
John 15: 12-17
It was lunch time … and after greeting me the barista remarked ‘Oh, I had a Christian here today and she said if I didn’t believe in God I would go to hell.’ He paused … waiting for a response.
Well, I was ordering coffee not seeking a pastoral conversation, but my instinct kicked in and I replied … that’s rubbish.
Oh, he exclaimed to a workmate this priest thinks what so and so said is rubbish. Then he leaned over to me and said I’d like to believe in god and an afterlife but I can’t.
Well, there in a nutshell the big shift of belief in our times. The idea of God has become impossible for many people in a secular world. Thirty percent of Australians claim no religion, and many are part of your family. Every indication is that this number will grow over the next few years.
My sample of one was told by a believer that he would be condemned forever for non-belief. How would you respond?
The Western world – previously living under the umbrella of a Christian, religious world-view now shelters under the brolly of a secular, non-religious worldview.
God is love
Symbolically Christianity began with the birth of a weak, vulnerable child.
His birth changed the world. If he hadn’t been born, hadn’t responded to God’s call, hadn’t taught in parables, hadn’t embraced the cross … hadn’t been raised to new life the world and religion would be very different.
In fact, it is impossible to imagine as Judaism was deeply shaped by its response to Christianity, and Islam also is a sibling which has deep connections to Judaism and Christianity.
At its heart Christianity isn’t a religion, as the gospel of Jesus wasn’t seeking to establish a religion. He was seeking to reform Judaism, advocating a new community which lived by the prayer ‘May your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.’
A key expression of his ministry and teaching was God is love. Of course that’s obvious, quite unremarkable, and assumed in many churches that it just slips off our tongues. Yet the Christian who told my barista friend he risked going to hell held a different conviction – God is wrathful.
One of the characteristics of liberal Christianity is the rejection of the idea of God as wrathful judge, to a God whose nature is love, forgiveness, compassion – and that revolution made flesh in the life of Jesus the Christ.
Our beliefs about God are deeply tangled. Ideas that we pick up as children, and struggle to let go. The images and doctrines given by hymns we sing, or ones sung over many generations shape us deeply. Questions and doubts, fears and concerns which influence our personal beliefs in God.
We are also influenced by scientific thinking challenges older religious ideas. One of the most obvious is the ancient doctrine of creation, and the new emerging story of the universe. Another is the tension between old ideas of God’s judgement and also old ideas about divine love. They are woven into both Old & New Testaments.
The early church grew as it explored the gospel about Jesus – and it’s that great missionary, St Paul, whose letters to young churches are the backbone of Christian thinking about God.
A core idea is the priority of love. Though he never puts it this way Christianity is not a religion because everything Jesus represented meant the end of religion – law, sacrifice, rules and regulations – through the great act of his self-giving love.
Paul’s letters were written to shape and guide new Christ community in their life together. This new community – which was regarded as atheists by the ancient world – had a vision of living in faith through the gospel of Jesus. They hoped of God’s new world, and practicing a radical love which broke down the barriers of gender, religion and economics ( see Galatians 3: 23-28).
It’s a vision which caused others down the centuries to start new religious ventures in other centuries of the Christian era.
Paul devoted a chapter to the weakness and strength of love. He couldn’t have imagined a world without religion – it was so embedded into everyday life – but he wrote this wonderful chapter about a universal web for all healthy , life-nurturing relationships.
Keep in mind love doesn’t exist as such, but it is a weak power that can change people, communities, religions and the world. By, weak I mean it doesn’t dominate, demand or control – otherwise its ceases to be love,
You probably recall the hymn to love is preceded by a passage on the body of Christ where everyone from least to greatest is equally valuable. Like the human body every expression is interdependent. There are many gifts which are valued, but the ‘more excellent way’ is love.
Paul only evokes God indirectly as he hymns life practice for Christian community:
“Love is patient; love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends …
Love itself doesn’t exist. It’s not an entity which can be weighed or measure, bought or sold. It’s not a commodity for the stocks and shares market-place. Love is very ‘weak’, yet has tremendous power. Love gives room for people to grow, explore, mature and help one another …..
The non-violence of Love
One reason, I suspect, that people became non-religious was the cultural memory and a practice of institutional Churches which too often controlled, dominated and judged.
The experience of my barista friend echoed something of that experience where a ‘Christian’ would tell someone else about their eternal destiny. That’s totally out of character with the way of Love, and out of the character of Jesus’ teachings.
Love is a universal regardless of culture, colour and creed. Love is an expression towards the good of others, including our enemies. Lover is a word, an experience, a reality that can be debased but is a fundamental human need.
Remember the letter of John: “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, for God is love..” (1 Jn 4: 7), and,
Or “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 Jn 4:16)
And “This is the commandment we have from him (Jesus): those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. “ (1 John 4:21).
The vision of God through the life of Jesus implied an expanding circle of love reaching well beyond our immediate family and culture.
In the gospel of John as Jesus shared the last supper he has much to share with his friends who have a host of questions about the future.
The story is rich with imagery during this meal concerning betrayal, about serving others ( the washing of feet), about fear and denial, about belief in God seen through the way, truth and life of Jesus. The conviction undergirding this is love.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
It is as simple and difficult as that. Melbourne’s cartoonist & pray-er, Leunig, expressed like this:
There are only two feelings. Love and fear.
There are only two languages. Love and fear.
There are only two activities. Love and fear.
As a Christian community we are called into the way of Love, the word and life that Jesus embraced and embodied.
Rev David Carter