IT'S THERE WRITTEN ON YOUR HEART! JUST CARRY IT OUT!

          

                                                 

                      This command that I give you today is not mysterious

                      and remote. You do not have to search the heavens or

                      cross  the sea looking for  it. No, it is very near to you.

                      It is  in your mouth and  in  your heart. You only need

      to carry it out.  

     

Deuteronomy 30

  

Religion! Can’t live with it and can’t live without it! Religion! Wears you out and gives you life! Religion! So complicated and yet so simple!

Those of us who bother with religion, sometime or another, feel like the great prophet, Jeremiah. Jeremiah tried his best to be faithful, tried to do what God had called him to do, but he ended up so frustrated with all this “God-stuff” that he screams out at God in frustration, “You suckered me into this stupid mess and I fell it!” If he had been a country music writer, he would have surely written the famous song that goes, “Take this job and shove it. I ain’t workin’ here no more!” Like many other saints, before and after him, he was close enough to God to get up in his face and vent his frustration. St. Theresa of Avila, patron saint of liberated women, is said to have let God have it in her convent chapel one day when she had almost reached the breaking point. “Listen, God, if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you don’t have many!”

Over the years, many believers have worked through their frustrations with religion and remained faithful, in spite of their deep disappointment. Many have gone on to become great reformers in the church. Others have been God’s “fair weather friends,” dropping out and moving on when the going got tough.

Jesus, himself, was known for his frustration with the organized religion of his day. The ancient Jewish religion that he knew and loved had become so tedious, complicated, twisted and burdensome that he actually went on a rampage outside the temple in Jerusalem, kicking over the tables of the money-changers, screaming in frustration.

In another place, looking at how worn-down the average God-loving person of his day was, Jesus cries out, “Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome and I will refresh you. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” The “yoke and burden” he was talking about was the “yoke and burden” of an overly complicated religion that was crushing the people that it was supposed to lift up. “The ease and lightness” that Jesus offered, in contrast, was the “ease and lightness” of a heart given completely to God and simple service to one’s neighbor.

The Ten Commandments were the essence of Jewish faith. Our spiritual ancestors, the Jewish people of old, struggled to live by them. But over time, living them in community led to an immensely complicated set of rule books, guidelines and ethical codes.  When Jesus was asked which of all those rules and regulations was most important, he cut through all those layers of complication and said, “love your God and your neighbor as yourself “ and you will fulfill the whole law. Today’s “reformers” are not calling for a conversion of heart and back to the basics, as much as they are simply pulling old religious costumes, customs and furniture out of the attic. What we really need right now in the church are not more canon lawyers, as important as they are! We need inspiration and that inspiration will only come from a church focused on living the essentials of our faith. I cannot stress living the essentials enough. 

I am more interested in inspiring people to live the ten commandments than in defending marble replicas of stone tablets on courthouse lawns. The problem is not that we have too few copies of the Ten Commandments around. The problem is too few people are living them. If we as a church were living them, they would be enshrined in us. People would say about us as they said about the early Christians, “See how those Christians love one another!”

God tells Moses and the people, “My commands are written on your hearts. All you have to do is carry them out.” We keep forgetting that. People forgot the Commandments many times before Christ and we have forgotten them many times since Christ.

There is an old story, a favorite of mine, one I have told many times. It is similar to Adam and Eve losing the Garden of Eden. In my story, the first man and woman lose the secret of happiness. After the Fall, three angels meet to decide what to do with the secret of happiness so that human beings would never find it. One angel suggested that they hide it among the stars. The idea was rejected out of fear that someday humans would go to the stars and find it. A second angel suggested that they hide it deep in the earth. That idea was rejected, as well, out of fear that someday human would dig way down and find it. The third angel suggested that they place it within human beings themselves. The idea was agreed on because the angels knew that human beings would never think to look there. And so, even to this day, the secret to human happiness remains undiscovered within human beings themselves.

We are not just here as individual human beings either. God has always dealt with his people as a family, not just one-on-one. Our faith is a communal faith. Communities need structures and laws, but sometimes those structures and laws, which are meant to protect the essence of our religion, become more important than the essence of what it is trying to protect. The church therefore is “semper reformanda,” always in need of reform.

Jesus did not come to destroy organized religion, but to renew it, one heart at a time. The “church” can never become an enemy for Christians because it is the very Body of Christ in the world. Christianity will always be messy because it is a communal religion. Those who choose the “just me and Jesus” brand of religion really don’t know Jesus all that well. Jesus told the assembled church when he left this world, “I will be with you always.” He even filled us with his Holy Spirit. The church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic, and yes, because it is made up of human beings, will always be in need of reform.  Reformed people reform the church. Changed people change things.      

With all that God has written on your heart, as Winnie the Pooh put it, "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think!"