When have we heard from God? Last week on my drive to work I began to take a different way. My drive to work takes me across a stream and meanders around through a pastoral scene complete with a herd of deer that seems to always be nearby. It forces me to slow down, so I’ve had an opportunity to reflect a little more.
In my reflection I’ve considered the future and the past; where I am now and where I am going. Hearing from God has been one of the things on my mind this week.
I’m not sure of the exact source of my reflection. It may be that something has bothered me a little. One of those nagging little things that just wouldn’t go away. I find that occasionally people who claim to be religious are a bit too quick to explain away difficult situations as God’s will, or to say that something—say, a major unexpected life change—is the action of the Holy Spirit. It always seem to happen just when we feel like the situation deserves an accountable answer.
In my work as a teacher accountability is something I have become familiar with and something that I feel is key to today’s lesson. I’ll return to it in a moment.
I think really the question I had for myself this past week had more to do with how we tend to confine God to fit into our preconceived ideas about religion. If we are here at Church today, it’s likely because we are people of religion. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of being religious. In the late 1970s when I was about 20, long before I became a Catholic, I was a member of Christian group where the men grew their hair long and wore beards. We would come to church in our “holy jeans” and the sign of peace was a “peace sign.” We had a song we sang, “I’m not religious, I just love the Lord.”
Even if it’s not easy for us to be religious, it is easy to identify with a particular religion or to make the claim to belong to a particular faith. We might hear people say, “I’m Catholic,” or “I’m Christian…Jewish…Muslim…Hindu,” whatever it might be.
Our first reading tells us to follow the commandments. These commandments, or words from God, or the law of God as it may be, serve as the basis for more than one great world religion. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are part of one family of religions and there are many variations for each. The way anyone becomes part of any religion is to follow its precepts.
However, for many people religion is about hearing only. I’m not saying we do this here, but you know it happens. The scenario looks like this: we gather on our holy day, we listen to the sermon—more or less—we walk through the ritual and then out the door for the week.
In some cases we may feel that in our personal prayer life we get an added word in our hearts. I encourage people to pray, but maybe this causes some people to feel that it qualifies them to offer godly advice to their Internet friends—I know, I’m guilty of it too. I don’t want to be a hypocrite about it. However, does this alone, coming to church, listening, going through the ritual acts, and then praying at some time during the week satisfy our obligation and duty? Is this religion?
The one point that I want to make today, and I’ve been told that a good homily has just one point, is that religion may not be what we think it is. It may transcend things like church attendance, or belief in particular doctrines, or which day is right to worship. The list could go on and on and it’s really not what is important. What is important is that in the gospel Jesus points out that the people had lost sight of true religion by ritual practice. They were so busy trying to get to heaven that they considered only themselves. Theirs was a very self-centered or selfish kind of religious practice.
There’s a place in the New Testament, in Acts, where Peter asks the other apostles, “What shall we do?” Really, this is the question for us to ask too. Actually I like it a lot better than the one I asked myself on the way to work this past week, because even more than our asking when we have heard from God, it gets at the heart of the matter of what it means to have faith. It’s interesting that the answer is found in the question. “What shall we do?” It’s all about what we do Sunday through Saturday, and in what we do is probably where we also are most likely to hear from God.
In the second reading—the letter of James—James interprets religion as being about a way of life that’s directed toward those who are in need. James had a close relationship with Jesus, a family relationship. He likely grew up in the same household as Jesus, so he understood that true religion was a matter of heart and real-life living. He learned from Jesus that pure religion, true religion, means caring for those who have the greatest need. Here is where accountability comes in. Caring for the poor is a job that belongs to everyone and it defines true religion.
Moses describes our religious duty as a public or civic obligation. “What great nation,” he asks “has statutes and decrees as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?” To act upon what God says we, as Christians, look to Jesus who tells us to have a pure heart because our actions come out of our hearts.
In the gospel Jesus gives us a list of things that shouldn’t be in our hearts—murder, adultery, greed, etc. Instead of these we should fill our hearts with good and then not only do good actions come forth, but responsible and accountable actions come forth. We build a moral society by caring for those who have the greatest need with free generosity. We let go and we give of ourselves. With pure hearts we practice true religion only by abandoning self-centered or selfish ideals.
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