Excerpt from a recent sermon I preached at St Stephen's, reflecting on St John's version of the cleansing of the temple
...Because of Jesus, the apparatus of religion is no longer necessary (the term 'apparatus of religion' was coined by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin in his excellent commentary on John's Gospel, The Light Has Come) John, in his gospel, understands this and emphasises it. T
he apparatus of religion takes many forms. In this story the apparatus is the temple, and its associated activity, along with King Herod’s great work of rebuilding and renovation (so far 46 years in the making and still with scaffolding). The work of renovating the temple was an act of humans securing for future generations the fact of God’s dwelling among them in this holy transcendent place – a place where Jewish men and women, along with certain converted Gentiles, could gather where God has provided the ‘mercy seat’ where sin is put away through the ritual sacrifice of animals.
The problem of the apparatus of religion is that the place and ritual become necessary for God’s mercy to be received. The temple is human-made (and in not too many years it will be destroyed by the Romans) and the rituals act as boundaries for who can received mercy. In the temple cult was God’s mercy freely available to the Gentiles? No. Nor was it freely available in the earliest part of the church’s life where up until Acts 9, salvation in Christ was understood as only being for the circumcised and their families.
In how many ways has the church through the ages put religious apparatus in the way of what God has been doing in Christ? Un-baptised infants not being able to be buried in the church graveyard… the unbaptised not welcome at the Table… children not able to receive Holy Communion… women not able to fully participate in the church where Paul himself claims that there is no longer Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, women or men, all are one in Jesus Christ [Galatians 3:28]. Yet how often do we put impediments in the way?
There has been an example this last week of the ways the Christian faith has turned into a religion. Speaking in Africa, Pope Benedict commented that the availability of condoms somehow increases the spread of HIV-AIDS. I guess that the thinking is that if condoms are easily available then more people will have sexual intercourse and therefore the potential for the transmission of HIV increases. But isn’t it more logical to concede that while the use of condoms might indeed mean that more people are having sexual relations, they are at least having protected sex, are therefore are much less likely to transmit the virus?
The real point the Pope is making is that the HIV virus would not be spreading at such an alarming rate if people were not having sex prior to marriage and not with anyone other than their spouse once married.
Perhaps he is also indicating that the virus would hardly have spread at all under such constraints. But of course that is theoretical and idealistic, and not how the world is in reality, and this is what makes the African announcement considerably controversial.
Is it reasonable to ask ‘Can the church adapt its message in light of the reality of people’s lives?’ It can, but only if it can also let go of some of the apparatus.
The point I am trying to make in light of Jesus cleansing the temple, is that when Christianity is a religion – with institutional rules and laws, such as what I believe to be a misguided notion that the only purpose of sexual intimacy is for procreation, then Christianity becomes something other than what it should be.
Christianity becomes a prescription of laws to be obeyed and a guide for ethical living rather than a joyful response to live freely in the salvation that Jesus has secured for us, despite the imperfectness of our response to him.
The newspaper this last week added a shocking story to illustrate the difficulties associated with the kind of comment the Pope made. In some country in recent years a 9 year old girl was found to be pregnant with twins. It transpired that she had been impregnated by her stepfather. Her doctors performed an abortion. The church leaders acting out its condemnation of abortion, excommunicated the girl and her doctors, but did not excommunicate the stepfather. I am not offering an opinion about the rights or wrongs of abortion, but reflecting on the apparatus of the Christian church, which, acting as a religion, condemns one action as a sin worthy of excommunication, but does not consider the prior action as being morally reprehensible enough to also be condemned in the same manner.
And more than that, what is the foundation of the notion of excommunication? On what grounds does the church exclude people? This is the kind of apparatus of religion that has become attached to Christianity that I believe is incongruous with the teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught and lived a gospel of love, grace, forgiveness and restoration.
The apparatus of religion goes when Jesus comes to town.
