Sermon
Religion and Power
The Rev. Jack D. Bryant
First
After I had given the deed of purchase to
Baruch son of Neriah, I prayed to the Lord, saying: Ah Lord God!
It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by
your outstretched arm! Nothing is too
hard for you. You show steadfast love to
the thousandth generation, but repay the guilt of parents into the laps of
their children after them, O great and mighty God whose name is the Lord of
hosts, great in counsel and might in deed; whose eyes are open to all the ways
of mortals, rewarding all according to their ways and according to the fruit of
their doings.
Second
I.
We
are the hollow men
We
are the stuffed men
Leaning
together
Headpiece
filled with straw. Alas!
Our
dried voices, when
We
whisper together
Are
quiet and meaningless
As
wind in dry grass
Or
rats’ feet over broken glass
In
our dry cellar
Shape
without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed
force, gesture without motion,
Those
who have crossed
With
direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember
us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent
souls, but only
As
the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II.
Eyes
I dare not meet in dreams
In
death’s dream kingdom
These
do not appear:
There,
the eyes are
Sunlight
on a broken column
There,
is a tree swinging
And
voices are
In
the wind’s singing
More
distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let
me be no nearer
Let
me also wear
Such
deliberate disguises
Rat’s
coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In
a field
Behaving
as the wind behaves
No
nearer --
Not
that final meeting
In
the twilight kingdom
III.
This
is the dead land
This
is cactus land
Here
the stone images
Are
raised, here they receive
The
supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is
it like this
In
death’s other kingdom
Waking
alone
At
the hour when we are
Trembling
with tenderness
Lips
that would kiss
Form
prayers to broken stone.
IV.
The
eyes are not here
There
are no eyes here
In
this valley of dying stars
In
this hollow valley
This
broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In
this last of meeting places
We
grope together
And
avoid speech
Gathered
on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless,
unless
The
eyes reappear
As
the perpetual star
Multifoliate
rose
Of
death’s twilight kingdom
The
hope only
Of empty men.
V.
Here
we go round the prickly pear
Prickly
pear, prickly pear
Here
we go round the prickly pear
At
Between
the idea
And
the reality
Between
the motion
And
the act
Falls
the shadow
For
Thine is the kingdom.
Between
the conception
And
the creation
Between
the emotion
And
the response
Falls
the Shadow
Life
is very long.
Between
the desire
And
the spasm
Between
the potency
And
the existence
Between
the essence
And
the descent
Falls the Shadow.
For
Thine is the Kingdom.
For
Thine is
Life
is
For
Thine is the
This
is the way the world ends
This
is the way the world ends
This
is the way the world ends
Not
with a bang but a whimper.
Sermon
For many years, my reading habits have included
books on war and religion. At first, it
struck me as an odd mixture, but on reflection I realized it made perfect sense
– because war and religion have so much in common. If you read the bible, you will find images of
war and power throughout it – both in historical accounts and in the choice of
metaphors used to describe God – “O great and mighty God whose name is the Lord
of hosts . . .” You
will also find words of peace and caring, such as the Twenty-third Psalm and
the Beatitudes of Jesus – “suffer the little children to come unto me.” This paradox was brought home to me in a
recent essay by Martin Marty, the historian of religion, noting the correlation
between corruption and religiosity on a national level. I was so struck by it that I mentioned it in
one of my recent newsletter columns.
The correlation is not perfect; and there are
some notable exceptions. But comparison
of two recent and independent studies – one that attempts to quantify the level
of corruption in different countries and another that looks at how religious
different countries are – shows a strong relationship between how corrupt a country is and the strength of religious practices. Makes you wonder what we’re doing here.
It is an inescapable reality that
throughout human history, religion and power have been associated with one
another. And I associate power with both
war and corruption, because war is an exercise of power, and corruption is the
abuse of power. Power and religion can’t
be separated. But how they relate to one
another makes all the difference in the world.
Let me say that again: How they
relate to one another makes all the difference in the world.
The religion of Jesus, for example, was
one that called for a radical recasting of that relationship. I think this is best illustrated by Jesus’
references to God as poppa. The usual
translation of the original word in Greek is father, but a better translation
is poppa, a word whose familiarity is shocking.
How can one possible refer to God – the “great and mighty God whose name
is the Lord of hosts,” as poppa? In
truth, it would have been commonplace for people in the time of Jesus to refer
to God as a father. The Gods were understood
as having gender. The Gods were believed
to have fathered human children. But
that kind of fatherly God was a tyrannical father who wielded absolute power. When Jesus referred to God as poppa, he was
challenging the commonly held notion not just of God, but of the relationship
between religion and power. This
recasting of the relationship between power and religion is carried forward in
the story that tells of Jesus going into the desert for forty days and being
tempted by the devil with offers of power which he refuses. Joan Campbell describes the story in these
words:
[Jesus’] ministry was clearly defined, and the
alternatives to the illusion and temptations of the desert were spelled
out. A choice was made -- life abundant,
full, and free for all. Make no mistake
about it, the day that choice was made, Jesus became
suspect. That day in the temple he
sealed the fate already prepared for him.
How was the world to understand one who rejected an offer of power and
control? Sojourners, August-September,
1991
The answer is that the world didn’t
understand.
Following
the death of Jesus, the religion of Jesus was transformed into the religion
about Jesus and eventually into the religious bureaucracy of the
Religion as power pervades the world today. Within every religion there are traditions
that challenge this idea, there are traditions that
call out for us to experience the power of religion instead of submitting
ourselves to religion as power. I don’t
know if Thomas Jefferson was talking about religion, but I think these words of
his capture the essence of the problem:
“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less
we use our power the greater it will be.”
Unfortunately, the human instinct seems to be to equate religion with
power and to make it self-justifying.
Few have heeded the words of
In our modern world, religion is mostly about
power. Whether it is fundamentalist
Islam or fundamentalist Christianity, the essential image is that of
power. But religion as power is not just
about religion and politics or religion and armed force. It is also a question that plays out in a
multitude of more immediate and familiar ways.
One of these is the root of much of the talk in our churches today about
empowerment. Go into most churches today
– regardless of the denomination or faith tradition – and people will offer to
empower you. Churches do so in many
ways. Some offer personal empowerment,
others offer wealth and success, others offer health
and long life. But one of the strangest
ways in which we offer power to people is through committee work.
Stop and think about it. How many people do you think visit a church
for the first time in the hope that they will be able to serve on a committee?
Or the hope that they will be put in charge of supervising the church’s janitor
or its music director? But that is
precisely what churches across
I think the answer lies in the origins of
liberal theology that have influenced not only the mainline Protestants, but
our own Unitarian churches. Those
origins are rooted in the writings of the German theologian Friedrich
Schleiermacher, who argued for a radically different understanding of the
nature of religion in general and Jesus in particular. Religion, said Schleiermacher, is rooted in
human experience – not beliefs and creeds, but experience – the experience of
the sacred that I talked about last week – that experience which even an
atheist like Sartre found compelling.
The idea that religion is rooted in human experience is at the heart of
liberal religion. Schleiermacher, and
the religious liberals of his time, went on to understand Jesus as unique
because he had an uninterrupted consciousness of that experience. The problem that religion confronts, then,
from the liberal perspective, is not about belief or faith or power, but of the
disruption the human heart experiences, our separation from the experience of
the sacred.
I believe that is why people visit
churches. They have a sense of something
that is missing, something absent in their lives. It takes many forms, and there are many words
that describe it. For Sartre and others,
it has been the transcendent experience of looking upon a newborn child. Others find it in nature. Others experience it in music or art or
poetry. Some people may not know something is missing. That was my own experience. It wasn’t until I got to church that I
realized something was missing. At other
times, we know something is missing, but we don’t know what it is – so we go
looking for it. But even those who are
already in churches don’t necessarily know what’s missing. Some believe it is creeds and beliefs. They will tell you that what’s missing in
your life are the right kinds of beliefs.
If you’ll believe properly, if you will recite the proper creeds,
everything will be okay. Others will
tell you, you just need to be a stoic, because that’s just the way life
is. Or it’s submission. If you’ll just submit, and do what you’re
told, everything will be okay. Or it’s
jihad. Just go to war, just blow
yourself up, and everything will be okay.
Or it’s a crusade. Just invade
another country and you’ll feel better.
I bet you feel better already.
But none of these address the real problem. None of these address the deeper disruption
in our lives, the sense of disconnection or brokenness or loneliness or incompleteness
that tugs at our heart. And that’s what
wrong with how religion and power usually relate to one another. Religion too often offers power or
empowerment – but like a drug we take to produce a false sense of euphoria, it
will never satisfy, it will never give us peace, and we will have to keep
coming back, looking for a new form of power, a new form of empowerment, a way
in which we can feel that we are in control.
But no matter how much power we acquire, no matter how much control we
gain, nothing of substance will change, because such an approach to religion
teaches not the love of God, but the love of Power.
We
are the hollow men
We
are the stuffed men
Leaning
together
Headpiece
filled with straw. Alas!
Our
dried voices, when
We
whisper together
Are
quiet and meaningless
As
wind in dry grass
Or
rats' feet over broken glass
P.J. O’Rourke once said, “Giving money
and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage
boys.” Sometimes that’s how I feel about
churches. We give money and power to
churches and expect to get them back a hundred fold. We want to be in charge, we want to have
power – but if that is our goal, if that is all the church has to offer us,
then we will remain the hollow men and women of whom T. S. Eliot spoke. And the world of our religious exploration
will end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
But I have a different vision of
religion. Like
But it’s not easy to do. And it’s not always safe to do so, because
religion as power is a safe and easy refuge that offers immediate – if
temporary – relief from the emptiness of our lives. It is a form of self-medication, not unlike
drug abuse or alcoholism. And if you
want to see a nonreligious example of this, just look at the ongoing controversy
over public education. The basic premise
of the current political solution is to get control of, and to exercise power
over, public education through increased use of standardized testing. We just need more discipline. But the plan will fail,
the plan will worsen the state of public education, because what’s needed is
not more control over the classroom, but more inspiration, more vision, and
more leadership in the classroom. And
the same is true of religion.
The alternative in the church is not to
empower people, not to tell them we’ll put them in control, but to challenge
people that they might discover the power they already possess. The alternative is to inspire people, that
they might in turn inspire others to pursue a vision based on our shared values
– values that uplift the human spirit and celebrate the sacred in life, no
matter how we may experience it. The
alternative is to offer people religious leadership. The world, of course, will look askance at us
– for the world has never understood those who reject power and control. But it is only by letting go of power and
control that we can say yes to what religion truly has to offer us: not the power of religion, but the power of
love.
Amen.