THE BARRIER OF RELIGION
Barriers to Bridges - Part 3
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Mark 3:1-6
Then he said to them, “Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they said nothing.
Mark 3:4
“Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.”
Richard Rohr
That just about sums it up. There is something about being a good “religious” person that makes us feel good. In many ways it is like a “to-do” list. Our goal is to get everything checked off by the end of the day or week and then we feel a sense of accomplishment.
Our religious “to-do” lists may look different., but they usually include tasks like attending church, praying, maybe going to a Bible Study or doing our morning devotional readings, donating money to the church or to some charitable cause, etc. When everything gets crossed off the list, our “religious” responsibilities are done for that week, just like our household chores or that tasks we must accomplish at work. At the end of the day or week, it is easy to take our religious checklist to God and feel good that we’ve completed everything we were told.
That’s what it’s all about in our culture… a sense of accomplishment. We want to feel productive. We always need to be “doing” or “accomplishing” something.
Productivity, however, does not correlate with strong relationships. We might be happy or proud when our kids get all of their chores or homework done, but we don’t stop loving them or spending time with them until their to-do list is completed. We might work hard to get the house clean, but if we finish the chores and sit down in front of the TV the rest of the weekend when our spouse wants to get out for a nice dinner together, what good was our accomplishment?
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were great at following the rules and checking off the list. But something was missing. They may have rested on the Sabbath, but how many people in need did they ignore while they were fulfilling their “religious responsibilities?” The problem with checking off a task list, religious or otherwise, is that we feel like we are finished. We have done enough. And when we feel we have “done enough” for God by fulfilling all of our religious duties throughout the week, it is easy to give ourselves a pass on those extra things that would strengthen our relationships with God and with one another.
John Wesley’s General Rules for Methodists begin with the call to:
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.
Jesus told us to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
I wonder, at what point can we check these off our religious to-do list? At what point have we truly done “all the good we can?” At what point can we say we are finished loving God and our neighbor?
Let us not hide behind our religious accomplishments to justify the many ways we have failed to love God with our whole hearts and failed to love our neighbor as ourselves. So long as we have breath, there is still much more to be done, even if it means we have to heal during the Sabbath.
