2 Kings 5:-14
Psalm 30
1 Cor 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
When it comes to religion, humankind has, for the most part, used it well. We have allowed religion to support us through difficult times, to spur us to great acts of love and sacrifice, to give us meaning and hope in times of despair. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe in the value that religion can bring to the world.
But that's not what I want to talk about this morning. That's not the premise of our Bible passages for this morning. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. Today we are confronted with the shameful truth that oftentimes humankind has used religion badly. We have used religion to support and encourage racism and all kinds of bigotry and prejudice, we have used it to stir up hatred against others, to make some people's lives worth less so that ours are worth more.
It starts, sadly, with our own Bible. Although these days we highlight Bible passages that talk about God's grace being available to all, and about Jesus touching the untouchables, the truth is that there is a strain in the Bible that is not so inclusive. We see it in the Old Testament, beginning with the exclusion of non-Israelites. Certain stories are written to give us the impression that God does not show mercy or favour or grace to anyone outside of God's chosen people. When the Hebrews leave Egypt, their successful escape is attributed to God sending plagues to torture and kill the Egyptians and using the waters of the Reed Sea to wipe them out and finish the job. As the people of ancient Israel move into Canaan, their victory and complete slaughter of the Canaanites is attributed to God being on their side, and not on the side of the pagans. As the Israelites reel from the destruction of their temple and exile into Babylon, the book of the prophet Ezra attributes it to God's punishment of them for getting involved in mixed marriages and contaminating their "holy seed" with the blood of non-believers.
Using God as an excuse to practice discrimination about who is in God's circle is a definite strain in the New Testament as well. The authors of the Gospel of John filled its pages with holy condemnation for those who aren't Christian - namely, the Jews, and did it in the name of Christ. Paul insults and even vilifies pagans because they don't follow Jesus, and encourages his readers to separate themselves from those whom he thinks fall outside of God's favour. It never occurs to Paul to question the fact that the people he doesn't like and the people God doesn't like always seem to be the same people.
So, we acknowledge that our Bible has exclusionary tendencies and that sometimes people used God as an excuse for their own prejudices and hatred. That's not the problem. They are a part of our religious history, we take them for what they are, and we seek the good in them. The problem comes when we take these mistakes of our past and bring them into the future, into our present. The problem comes when we continue, in this modern age, to use religion to keep people out of God's circle, to justify our turning our backs on them when they need help, to reinforce our subtle biases against those aren't the same as us.
There are a number of examples I could give of Christians, in particular, using the Bible and religion as an excuse to practice hatred. Women have historically, and even today, been told that God has no use for them. Blacks have been kept out of white churches and white families on the premise that God wants it that way. The assault and even murder of gays and lesbians today is tolerated because some people seem them as undeserving of God's grace and even, it would seem, God's gift of life. But the example that's most on my mind these days is the shameful treatment, by people who call themselves Christians, of Muslims.
It's on my mind, of course, because of the recent troubles over insulting cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. While the violence of the last few weeks can never be condoned, what I find particularly appalling is the way Christians have either done nothing or inflamed the situation by reprinting cartoons that offend the faith of others. The fact that all of the countries who have reprinted the cartoons, with the exception of Jordan, are traditionally considered "Christian" countries is telling. And what it tells me is that as Christians, we do not consider Muslims to be either worth our attention and support, or even worse, worth respecting when it comes to matters of religion. What it tells me is that when it comes to Muslims, we believe that God is on our side, and therefore God is not on their side. Like the situation of the Hebrews and the Egyptians, or the Israelites and the Canaanites, or Paul's Christians and the Roman pagans, we seem to have put a religious spin on our own biases and prejudices. We seem to have decided that God is for us, which means God is against them. And so we have acted as all people do who think that God is on their side alone, and we have said, either directly or indirectly, that God is against the Muslims. We use religion to malign them and separate ourselves from them, we rejoice when they suffer, we proclaim that God is favouring us when we achieve victory over them. And we find justification in our religious writings, in our Bible, for doing so.
If we look closely, though, we will find condemnation for our behaviour in the Bible, too. Because as I mentioned in the beginning, our Bible does contain stories and the message that God is a god of grace and inclusion. Two of our readings for today are stories of God acting in ways that are so gracious and inclusive that they were offensive, and even blasphemous, to the people of the time. The first is the story of Na'aman, the commander of the king of Aram. Aram, as I found out when researching this passage, is now known as Syria. And like today, Aram and Israel were not friends, to put it mildly. They were enemies. Which makes the story of Na'aman without parallel. For one thing, the story starts by saying that because of Na'aman, "the Lord had given victory to Aram." Now, if you think about it, that's a really subtle way of saying that Na'aman was victorious in battle against Aram's enemies. And who would those enemies be? Yup, Israel. So the story is set up that a non-Israelites, an anti-Israelite, if you will, falls sick and the only cure is to go and see a prophet of God, a member of the Israelite nation. And God, through the prophet Elisha, heals him. Can you imagine how offensive that would have been to the Isrealites? To hear that God had chosen to heal one of their mortal enemies, a man who was committed to wiping them out, someone who didn't even worship the right god? It's almost unbelievable that God would show favour to one whose life was so outside the circle of whom the Israelites considered acceptable. And yet God did.
And God did it again through Jesus in our Gospel reading. We hear the stories of Jesus touching and healing the lepers so often that it seems completely commonplace, but again, this is another instance of religious blasphemy. Lepers were outside the circle of religiously acceptable company. To touch them was to defile yourself, to make yourself contaminated and unholy. It was a religious offense to come into physical contact with a leper and not to religiously purify yourself. And yet here is Jesus, the Son of God, the most holy of all people in Israel, transgressing those boundaries, stepping outside the acceptable circle, and including in his generous love a man who was completely unworthy of being there.
God has transgressed the boundaries we've set up in God's name again and again throughout history. When we used the Bible to say that women were not holy enough to be included in the circle of God's ordained ministers, God showed us we were wrong, that God's circle was big enough. When we used the Bible to say that blacks weren't holy enough to be included in the circle of God's worshippers, God showed us we were wrong, that God's circle was big enough. So I have to ask: Is it going too far, is it too offensive to say that when we use the Bible to say that Muslims and other non-Christians aren't holy enough to be included in the circle of those whom God favours, that God will show us that we are wrong? That God's circle is more than big enough for them, too?
I don't think so. I don't think it's going too far to say that Muslims, too, are included in the circle of those whom God loves. Because the truth that we proclaim is that there are no limits to God's favour, no boundaries on God's grace. God welcomes everyone into the circle, Christ died for all people. Our Lord welcomes in those who are excluded, and thank God, even welcomes in those who do the excluding. There's no need for us to use the Bible to draw artificial lines between us and them, to say that we are marked for God's grace while they are not. For goodness' sake, it's not like God doesn't have enough grace to go around.
But more than that, there's no need for us to stay silent when others use religion to try and close the circle off, to keep people away from God's mercy. In fact, the Gospel, which proclaims that we - as people who are both excluded and who exclude - are welcomed and loved by God, compels us to speak out when we see this happening. We are compelled to reach out, as Jesus did, to those who have been shunned in the name of religion, to reach out, as Elisha did, to those whom are considered God's enemies. We are compelled, as forgiven and welcomed sinners ourselves, to proclaim that forgiveness and welcome to others, without discrimination or prejudice. And that is how we will finally use religion, in particular Christianity, well - as a way to demonstrating great acts of love and compassion, as the means to achieving justice and peace, as a the way to bring God's love to the world. Amen.
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