June 21, 2007
Organized
Pentecost 4/7C Gal 3.23-29
Major league baseball (like organized religion with beer) is a mass mechanism for the experience of hope and the deep contemplation of humility. (R D Rosen, New York Times, 21.8.01, p A19)
Anybody knows, of course, that Anglicanism is hardly an organized religion. Also that it is arguable just how well it offers a venue for either hope or humility. (And that some preachers will use anything for a lead.)
Whatever, somebody seems always itching to tidy up our ongoing American experiment in British piety — also known as the Episcopal Church — so that it at least seems bespoken. Think Nigeria, Anglican Mission in America, the Network and any number of other gatherings of bewildered bishops and congregations here and there who might be expected to know better. Some of whom might even try to hook a rheostat to the sunset.
In the face of all this, it is good that Paul reminded the Galatians of some things that we, ourselves, might be better off being reminded of — and practicing — today. He said, “Now before faith came, we were confined under the law… our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith… But now… through faith (we) are all (children) of God. For as many… as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek… slave nor free… male nor female; (but) all are one in Christ Jesus… heirs according to promise” (Gal 3.23-29 more or less).
Faith and law. The problem now is that we seem to forget Paul’s gently firm and comforting admonition from two thousand years ago. For we are in the same old bind between religion and faith that troubled the Galatians.
The Anglican tradition has managed this tension rather well over the years, if somewhat loose-handedly. But there are those of late who can’t seem to tolerate this way of following the Way. They just don’t seem to want let go and let God. They don’t seem to understand that the more they tighten their grip, the faster they lose it.
A crisis now and then is inevitable, maybe even necessary or welcome, but it doesn’t have to resort to ecclesiastic genocide. Anybody knows that religion in whatever form is always the more powerful and well-organized and lethal than is faith. It will continue its often desperate endeavor to control faith (ie, collapse the tension between the two) by rendering faith not only memorable, but, more importantly, manageable. It will use and attempt to justify almost any means at hand with which to do so — if not canon law, then canon lawlessness, whichever seems most convenient.
On the other hand, faith is usually too naive and indifferent for its own good up to the point of not even recognizing when it’s being used and patronized. Faith, like love, communicates by spiritual osmosis, not by systems. This reality frustrates and beguiles some of the Anglican satrapy and leads them into their present ridiculous behavior.
The security of church as institution and the uneasy wishful thinking of church as sacramental community is always caught in this impasse and has been at least since the 4th century Council of Nicaea. What was created at Pentecost to be a theater of expectation has often become at any cost a theater of the absurd. And we wonder why folks lose interest and why the established (aka organized) religions wane.
Like any other healthy, decision-making tension, the one between religion and faith is anything, of course, but soothing. The current lust after orthodoxy arises out of a climate of fear as it attempts to assuage and even appease such discomfort. During the middle ages, similar crises and their inevitable subsequent religiosity led precisely into the arms of the Inquisition. Today, that same intolerance for anything but “doctrinal purity” ironically creates a crippling and paralyzing climate in the very community whose true vocation is rather to love and to champion justice.
TEC’s often clumsy and sometimes maladroit search for grace through its collegial system of doctrine, discipline, and worship obviously irritates the purple socks off some prelates. Especially those who prefer organized religion over love and justice and inclusion and who have precious little patience for apostolic lip. Heretics aren’t often burned at the stake these days. But ignorance (”any ‘C’ student can become president of the United States”), together with threat, intimidation, indifference, exclusion, and enough dissimulation to cover some episcopal backsides, have effectively replaced the bonfires.
So what is one to do when an 800-pound primate knocks on the narthex door? Grab a valid baptism certificate, of course, and run to beat hell. Who knows when we may even need passports at the altar rail? And be sure and keep a copy of Paul’s letter to the Galatians at hand because beating hell is what it’s all about.
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