The End of Religion

 The End of Religion 

Mark 11:1-11
11:1 When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples

11:2 and said to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it.

11:3 If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.'"

11:4 They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it,

11:5 some of the bystanders said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?"

11:6 They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it.

11:7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it.

11:8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.

11:9 Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

11:10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!"

11:11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

 

This weekend is what we Christians have dubbed, “Palm Sunday,” because of the “triumphal” parade that occurs into Jerusalem, with Jesus as its Grand Marshall. Of course, there are those who choose to honor it as “Passion Sunday,” reading and elucidating on the Gospel texts about our Lord’s death on the cross. Even with a two-time seminary education, I confess that I am more greatly influenced by the traditions of my upbringing at Grace UMC in Oil City, where this Sunday was always about the parade and the palm branches we all waved, in remembrance.

 

The mnemonics of the day are unmistakable: the donkey upon which Jesus rode (or “both animals” in a kind of circus act, if you are Matthew); the palms, or coats (if you are Luke); the people shouting, “Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”; and the disciples telling the owner of the donkey, “The Lord has need of it.” I confess, though, of something that has always caught my eye in the Markan narrative, even as a child, when it was read in church, and it is in verse 11: “Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything…”

 

Have you ever moved from a place where you had lived for enough time to generate a host of memories? How did that feel? Did you take some extended time to look around one last time, re-triggering some of those precious deposits of your history? Here are a few of my experiences…

 

Way back in 1977, I found myself spending my last week all alone in the home I was raised in. For the final decade of his working life, my Dad had accepted a new job with Venango County as the Assistant Director of Two Mile Run County Park, and the position required him, my Mom, and my youngest brother to live in a county-owned home on the park’s property. They had moved their just a few days ago. My middle brother was away at college, so I was left to close out the homestead, as I was to be married and move into my newlywed apartment with my bride—after a short honeymoon—at the end of the week. The house was empty of furniture, except for my simple bedroom furniture. (My parents were keeping the house, and moving my grandparents into it the following week.) I remember packing most of my belongings into a couple suitcases at the end of the week, putting on my suit, and heading off to the wedding, but before I left, I had to take one last walk around the now empty house that had so many memories for me. The cavernous emptiness of it echoed as I walked around from room to room, remembering many of the things that had happened there over twenty-plus years. While I would visit there again many times after my grandparents moved in, and years later yet again, after my parents sold it to my youngest brother on article of agreement, it would never be the same. That last tour was an emotional fulcrum, as the teeter-totter of life shifted from being part of a loving family to going off to start my own.

 

Years later, I would do another such “walk around” in a small home that was the first owned by Dara and me. This time, it was a small house we had purchased from an elderly widow in our home church, a house we had begun to remodel in a small community called “Rocky Grove” that was just as welcoming and quaint as it sounds—a place that we thought we might live in forever, in a house with both character and much potential. God had different ideas, though, and now I was revisiting one last time the place where we welcomed both our daughter and now a son, who was just a month old. Parked in the driveway and ready to roll was a large U-Haul truck with all our earthly belongings. Next stop: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in the suburb of East Liberty. I will never forget standing in my daughter’s room where we first placed that precious, tiny “package” into a custom-made bed built into the corner of the room by her loving carpenter/grandfather. Our little girl was two now, but as I took my last look around, I could only think of standing beside that bed/crib, rubbing her little back, and singing lullabies to her until she fell asleep. Even as I write this, I tear up, thinking of scenes like this that we will never relive. They are precious, but seeing them only in the proverbial rearview mirror of life brings a tinge of sadness to otherwise joyous memories. Little did I know that less than two decades later, I would be shedding tears in a similar bedroom scene…

 

Fast forward to the Fall of the year 2000. Our “little girl” had just been settled into her freshman dorm at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, some five hours from “home,” which was the mansion-now-parsonage of the Coraopolis United Methodist Church. We had been appointed to that church the Summer before my daughter’s sophomore year of high school, and she had chosen the third floor ballroom of the mansion as her bedroom. Now here was her Dad, sitting on the edge of her bed the day after we had returned from depositing her at college, crying elephant tears for yet another precious, yet traumatic transition in life. As excited as I was for Shelah and her “new life” at a wonderful college—a place where she would soon meet a man who would become her husband—and with a roommate who would be a life-long bestie, a Daddy had “lost” his “little girl.” Sure, she would be home and would sleep in this room again, but mostly as a guest, and not a resident, for her life was just beginning again. This scene of Dad shedding elephant tears on the edge of her bed would repeat itself for about two weeks before the joy of this transition would begin to overtake the grief.

 

I could go on with many other stories like this, several of them being about how it felt to take the final survey of a church from which I was moving, a place where I had preached a few hundred sermons, and served a congregation I had come to love. I would think of the weddings, funerals, baptisms, and other life transitions I had been privileged to officiate and celebrate with them. 

 

I’m sure by now you are thinking of a few of your own times like this, and if so, this sermon has met one of its key goals. These are precious and unforgettable times for us all, aren’t they? This weekend’s text reveals that even the Son of God had them, too. 

 

Of course, we can speculate that the tears Jesus shed in the Garden of Gethsemane were due more to the thought of leaving his human foray into the “far country” behind, and especially the Band of Brothers he had gathered unto himself. Don’t we try to recapture some of the emotion we imagine Jesus experience at the Last Supper when WE consecrate the elements of Holy Communion? None of us is immune to these deeply moving experiences and life transitions. None of us, even the Son of God.

 

Is this not exactly what was going on for Jesus when the Markan text tells us he entered the temple in Jerusalem and “looked around at everything”? Was it his humanness that was waxing nostalgic about the time he had spent in the temple as a youth? Was he reliving his discussions with the religious leaders when, as a teen, he held them spellbound with his “unearthly” knowledge of the scriptures and the Divine? Could Jesus’ “last look” around the Jerusalem temple have even a deeper meaning for us all?

 

Perhaps it was the timeless, divine “part” of the Son of God who visited the temple that day? Might it be that Jesus was thinking of how his “Father in Heaven” had set the wheels in motion for an eternal reconciliation for all of humankind, not only with the Godhead, not only that which would lead to an eternal home with God, but a redemption that would conquer the power of even the worst of human sin? Humanity, reconciled to God, to the rest of creation, and eventually even to each other, and the utensils and trappings of the temple would no longer be needed to affect it—one last look around the final resting place of religion would send a powerful message, wouldn’t it? This look at “everything” in the temple would most certainly have been an emotional time for Jesus, and for more reasons than we can ever imagine, I suppose. Add to this the fact that the drama that was about to unfold, with himself being the chief protagonist, and he may have also resorted to the familiar temple as a point of brief refuge. 

 

Any way you slice it, what this “look-see” punctuates is the end of religion. I’m using “religion” here to mean the many ways human beings contrive to “appease” God and/or make a useful “connection” to the Divine. After Jesus Christ and the totality of the Christ Event, God has forever been “appeased” by God’s own sacrificial love, and the “connection” is perpetual, due to the same agency. If we use the word “religion” now, we should see it as a polite term defining how we each appropriate the relationship that God has instituted with US, with little help on our part, except other than living with gratitude, pursuing peace with one another, and welcoming others into “the fold.” We may still have our edifices dedicated to our faith, but we Christians now call it a “Communion table,” not an altar—or at least should—because there is no longer the need for a sacrifice, except those born out of love for one’s fellow human beings, and the “least of these.” 

 

Unfortunately, “religion” of the earlier variety is hard to kill off. We rather like to manufacture out own “ways” to God, even if our faith traditions stress “relationships” over “retribution,” as Jesus would have us do. Why? Because we want to maintain control, reluctant to surrender it, even to the Son of God, and/or the Spirit of God. “Old Time Religion” keeps us in the driver’s seat, and too often allows us to welcome those whom we “appreciate” and close the door in the face of the ones we fear or despise. As we know from Jesus’ ministry, too often the temple had become a place of such controlling religion, from the “money changers” to the “high priests” who hammer Jesus because he threatens the hierarchy they had established to “maintain purity” and keep distance from the goyim (Gentiles). Is this not what Jesus prophesied when he said, “Tear down this temple and in three days I will raise it up”? His final look around the ancient temple may have given him the “real” courage he needed to “raise up” a temple not made with hands, but one that would welcome all of the people all of the time, forever. 

 

As modern believers, we are challenged to finally sound the death nell of the kind of religion that excludes and “filters” (judges?) who gets IN and who stays OUT. And as people who believe in the true power of love as came into our lives in the Jesus of God, we must also accept people of “other” religions who likewise focus on relationship than ritual. The three major biblical religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—are challenged to make peace with one another by the very same Christ Christians “claim” too often as exclusive Messiah. And all other people deserve to be accepted as the People of God, not because of what they believe—or don’t believe—but because of the sacrificial love God demonstrated to the world and the ages in Jesus Christ. It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself who dreamt of the advent of a “religion-less Christianity,” pointing instead to a faith that was lived out in beloved community, something Bonhoeffer sketched out in "Life Together."

 

The final end of death and hate was sown by the death and resurrection of the Son of God, and now we, as his followers, may bring it to fruition by ending religion and heralding that the Kingdom (Realm) of God is about relationships. Amen.