No-fault Religion
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle B
It happened in a church parking lot, and my friend saw it happen. A lady, backing out of her parking space, rammed my friend's car, causing considerable damage. My friend was able to talk to the woman before she drove away. She was distraught and he was distraught. But, after exchanging the appropriate information, they departed to leave it in the hands of the insurance people.
When it got into the hands of the insurance people, the no-fault insurance clause went into effect. Yes, the woman's insurance company agreed to pay the damages -- but only up to a point. My friend had an older car. The repairs would cost more than the car is worth, they told my friend. Therefore, we are only going to pay you a fraction of the repair costs.
My friend went to small claims court to try to collect the full amount of the repair from the insurance company or from the woman, but he lost. He lost, he told me, because of the no-fault provision. Shaking his head in disgust and disbelief, he grumbled about no-fault insurance. "People should be held accountable for their actions," he said. "If they are wrong they should take the blame and pay the consequences."
Another friend of mine went through a painful divorce. However, long before the painful divorce, his wife had begun having an affair with another man. The affair became intense, so much so, that my friend's wife actually moved in with the other man. In time, that cooled, and my friend and his wife reconciled and she moved back home, only soon to be gone again.
Eventually, my friend's wife sued him for divorce. In time, she walked off with half the assets including the house and half of his business assets. It was a case of no-fault divorce, even though she was the adulteress, even though she walked out on him, and even though he was willing to reconcile after her affair, she still got half of everything.
My friend described the situation in terms unrepeatable here, but suffice it to say he felt he got a raw deal from the so-called no-fault divorce system. "Shouldn't the person who violates the marriage contract somehow be held accountable?" he asked. He was not that keen on no-fault divorce.
So why then, you might ask, would we discuss a topic like no-fault religion. At first glance, it would appear that a no-fault religion would be one where "anything goes." At the very least it would be a watered-down, Reader's Digest condensed, abridged religion of the Ten Suggestions, the Golden Hint, and the Last Brunch. At the most, it would be a religion of relativism where your idea is as right as mine, and your conduct as good as any. It would be the religion typified by the wall plaque which reads:
There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it ill behooves us to judge any of us.
Presumably, in no-fault religion God would abide by the same slogan. No one would be held accountable, no one would be blamed, no one would be guilty, no one would be responsible, and even though everything might be wrong in the world, everyone would be regarded as right.
In this no-fault religion, criticism would be left to unreconstructed curmudgeons and judgment would be dismissed as the disposition of the perpetually dyspeptic. Values would be only matters of taste and principles would be regarded as rationalizations of the way we prefer to behave. In short, no-fault religion would condone anything and condemn nothing, and God would look amusingly like a senile grandfather with the grin of a benign Cheshire cat.
No-fault religion? Is this what Paul had in mind in this text where he says God does not hold our faults against us? Hardly. What then does he have in mind?
I
Strangely and ironically, the no-fault religion Paul has in mind is one that gives us courage to face up to our faults and to accept responsibility for them. He gives us the courage for disclosure.
Biblical scholar, R. H. Strachan, in his excellent study of Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, says that Paul emphasizes God's attention to humanity and his involvement with humanity. When Paul preached to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers on the Aereopagus in Athens, just below the Parthenon, they scoffed at the idea of God being intimately involved in humanity -- indeed if God even existed. And for some of the Stoics, life might be best lived by withdrawing into a tortoise shell existence so as to not be hurt.
But this was not the God Paul had experienced through Jesus Christ. Quite the contrary. Here was a God who was indeed transcendent, holy, and powerful, but a God who was also intimately involved in humanity, manifesting himself in human flesh, and making himself known personally in time and space in Jesus Christ.
We humans may choose our independence and go our own way. We may choose to ignore God, but God does not choose to ignore us. And God's judgment of us is a manifestation of his incapacity to be morally indifferent and to let evil alone, says Dr. Strachan. "Divine love is also divine goodness. No love can be called good which lacks the capacity for instinctive repulsion in the presence of the mean and the base," says Strachan.1
If it does not really matter to God what we do and who we are, we are hardly more than insects and worms. The cynics and skeptics would be right. If God doesn't care, if there is no moral order, if there is no right and wrong, if there are no ultimates of good and beauty and truth, then in the end it is all chaos and futility.
But it is precisely not that kind of religion which Paul suggests in his no-fault religion, rather, it is the religion that encourages us to face up to our faults and wrongs precisely because there is meaning in a universe where God is God.
Consequently, one of the first tasks of this kind of religion is disclosure, says the late Daniel Day Williams of Union Theological Seminary. In his excellent book, The Spirit and the Forms of Love, Dr. Williams points out how important it is to admit the conflict and disorder in our human living. And, he adds, "Nothing is more common in human relationships, both for individuals and groups, than the belief that we are men of good will and all the ill will lies in the other."
Dr. Williams continues, "The history of human pretenses, self-deception, and failure to see our hostility and resentment of the other is a constant theme of the world's literature, and its consequences are strewn throughout history in politics, revolution, and all the tragedies of human hatred."2
Therefore, one of the painful works of love is that of disclosure -- disclosure not so much of somebody else's wrongs, but of our own. And Paul's no-fault religion is one that assures us that "behind a frowning providence, [God] hides a smiling face." We are able to face up to our wrongs, because we have the confidence that underneath there is a right, a truth, a justice, and a love that will prevail.
We can make ourselves vulnerable to the judgment of God believing his mercy will prevail. We can open ourselves to his holy scrutiny, believing that in the end he will not reject us and cast us out, but accept us and include us as his own, as did the father of the prodigal in Jesus' famous story.
No-fault religion does not mean the universe is indifferent and there is no fault anywhere. Instead, it means God cares infinitely about us, and because of that he gives us the courage to confess our faults, so that they will not be held against us. Isn't that good news!
II
If Paul's no-fault religion gives us courage for self-disclosure, it also gives us hope for reconciliation.
Theologian Paul Tillich got his start in Germany as the son of a Lutheran pastor. A brilliant student, he excelled in his studies and soon was advancing to significant teaching posts in Germany. But when Nazism threatened both his life and his career, Tillich, with the help of Reinhold Niebuhr and others, immigrated to this country to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Tillich soon attracted national attention and ascended to became one of the world's leading Protestant theologians. Although his personal moral conduct often left much to be desired, he was a very popular lecturer and preacher. Whenever he preached in James Chapel at Union Seminary, the place would be packed not only with seminarians, but also with students and faculty from Columbia and Barnard across the street.
Tillich liked to preach about reconciliation, a reunion with oneself, with one's community and with God, and reconciliation is possible, said Tillich, because of forgiveness and acceptance. "He who is accepted ultimately can also accept himself. Being forgiven and being able to accept oneself are one and the same thing," said Tillich. "No one can accept himself who does not feel that he is accepted by the power of acceptance which is greater than he, greater than his friends and counselors and psychological helpers."3
And this forgiveness we receive is unconditional. "There is," says Tillich, "no condition whatsoever in man which would make him worthy of forgiveness. If forgiveness were conditional, conditioned by man, no one could be accepted and no one could accept himself."4 We always want to bring something, a gift, a good deed, something to show we have earned it. Just as many of us have difficulty accepting gifts graciously from one another, (perhaps because we think there may be strings and obligations attached), so we have difficulty accepting the gift of forgiveness from God. "We want to contribute something," says Tillich, "and if we have learned that we cannot contribute anything positive, then we at least try to contribute something negative: the pain of self-accusation and self-rejection."5
Human communities set up severe requirements for belonging, for being included, for being accepted. A friend of mine, a distinguished professional, told me of his application to an exclusive private club. The professional was well established in his career, was a veteran of several highly placed relationships and groups, and was regarded as a leader in his field.
Nevertheless, he was required to submit numerous letters of recommendation from club members as to his worthiness, qualifications, and suitability. He then was subjected to casual, but rather stuffy, scrutiny as the membership committee sniffed him out at a reception for potential new members. He made it, but later quoted Groucho Marx's self-deprecating line that he wasn't sure he wanted to belong to a club that would have him for a member!
Private clubs need to have their membership rules, of course, but belonging to the people of God is quite different. God doesn't sniff out our qualifications, scrutinize our credentials, review our accomplishments, or weigh our merits. He includes us not on the basis of our merits, but on the basis of his grace.
We can be reconciled to God and therefore to one another, not because we are without fault, not because we are without sin, not even because we might in our anxiety, claim to have impeccable credentials. No, not because of all that, but because God was in the world reconciling us to himself, not holding our faults against us.
III
The no-fault religion of which Paul speaks promises the power of re-creation. "If any person is in Christ, he is a new creation, a new being," says Paul (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Very often when people are in a pessimistic mood they will ask. "Do you think it is possible for people to change?" And from time to time when we are weary and perhaps in a pessimistic, cynical mood ourselves, we ask the very same question, "Is it possible for people to change?"
To be sure, over the years we have developed a mild skepticism toward those who say with their mouths they have changed, but whose actions say they have not. If the general public complains about the hypocrites in the churches, ministers could probably complain even more -- ministers who have been the targets of vicious and vociferous attacks by their own parishioners who profess to have had their lives changed by Christ.
Nevertheless, despite all that, I believe people do change and sometimes radically. Probably the twelve-step groups experience radical change as much as any in contemporary society. And in some of the more conservative, Evangelical churches, radical conversion and change often are witnessed. In our more staid mainline churches, we are reluctant to allow the fact that God might change someone rather suddenly and dramatically, instead of through a long process. But whether as a seed changing into a flower, or as a self-centered, spoiled, rich kid in a former church of mine, who overnight became generous and kind and thoughtful, because of conversion, I do believe people change. They can become, as Paul said, a new creation, a new being.
And why is that so? It is because in God's no-fault religion our past is not held against us. After all, it was Paul himself, who in his arrogant legalism, persecuted Christians, locking them up and consenting to their murder. "I was the chief of sinners, because I persecuted the Church of God," he confessed in his writings. Yet God did not hold his past against him. Instead, he made him the vibrant, vital, ambassador of grace and renewal throughout the Greco-Roman world.
But it is the power of God that does it, says Paul. And M. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist says the same thing. In his book, The Road Less Traveled, which has been on the best-seller list for many years, Dr. Peck says, "God's grace and God's love can help people change and grow." He says, "There is a powerful force external to their consciousness which operates through the agency of loving persons other than their parents, and through additional ways which we do not understand." Then Peck adds, "It is because of grace that it is possible for people to transcend the traumas of loveless parenting and become themselves, loving individuals who have risen far above their parents...."6 To experience this grace is to know God and to know tranquility and peace, says Peck.
That's it exactly, said Saint Paul nineteen centuries before Peck. Anyone who has experienced the renewing grace of Christ is a new creation, a new being. The old has passed away. All has become new. It was the grace former slave trader, John Newton, experienced when Christ touched him, and he gave up his terrible work, and wrote the familiar hymn, "Amazing Grace."
No-fault religion is not morally ambiguous or ethically indifferent, nor is it without rules and standards and principles. Rather, it is a religion that says that it is precisely because God is principled and involved, forgiving and loving, we can say, God was in Christ, reconciling us to himself, making us new persons, not holding our faults against us. And that, dear friends, is the gospel, the good news.
____________
1.ÊR. H. Strachan, Second Corinthians, Moffatt Bible Commentary (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 117.
2.ÊDaniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).
3.ÊPaul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999), p. 12.
4.ÊIbid., p. 12.
5.ÊIbid., p. 8.
6.ÊM. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Touchstone Div. of Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 300.
When it got into the hands of the insurance people, the no-fault insurance clause went into effect. Yes, the woman's insurance company agreed to pay the damages -- but only up to a point. My friend had an older car. The repairs would cost more than the car is worth, they told my friend. Therefore, we are only going to pay you a fraction of the repair costs.
My friend went to small claims court to try to collect the full amount of the repair from the insurance company or from the woman, but he lost. He lost, he told me, because of the no-fault provision. Shaking his head in disgust and disbelief, he grumbled about no-fault insurance. "People should be held accountable for their actions," he said. "If they are wrong they should take the blame and pay the consequences."
Another friend of mine went through a painful divorce. However, long before the painful divorce, his wife had begun having an affair with another man. The affair became intense, so much so, that my friend's wife actually moved in with the other man. In time, that cooled, and my friend and his wife reconciled and she moved back home, only soon to be gone again.
Eventually, my friend's wife sued him for divorce. In time, she walked off with half the assets including the house and half of his business assets. It was a case of no-fault divorce, even though she was the adulteress, even though she walked out on him, and even though he was willing to reconcile after her affair, she still got half of everything.
My friend described the situation in terms unrepeatable here, but suffice it to say he felt he got a raw deal from the so-called no-fault divorce system. "Shouldn't the person who violates the marriage contract somehow be held accountable?" he asked. He was not that keen on no-fault divorce.
So why then, you might ask, would we discuss a topic like no-fault religion. At first glance, it would appear that a no-fault religion would be one where "anything goes." At the very least it would be a watered-down, Reader's Digest condensed, abridged religion of the Ten Suggestions, the Golden Hint, and the Last Brunch. At the most, it would be a religion of relativism where your idea is as right as mine, and your conduct as good as any. It would be the religion typified by the wall plaque which reads:
There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it ill behooves us to judge any of us.
Presumably, in no-fault religion God would abide by the same slogan. No one would be held accountable, no one would be blamed, no one would be guilty, no one would be responsible, and even though everything might be wrong in the world, everyone would be regarded as right.
In this no-fault religion, criticism would be left to unreconstructed curmudgeons and judgment would be dismissed as the disposition of the perpetually dyspeptic. Values would be only matters of taste and principles would be regarded as rationalizations of the way we prefer to behave. In short, no-fault religion would condone anything and condemn nothing, and God would look amusingly like a senile grandfather with the grin of a benign Cheshire cat.
No-fault religion? Is this what Paul had in mind in this text where he says God does not hold our faults against us? Hardly. What then does he have in mind?
I
Strangely and ironically, the no-fault religion Paul has in mind is one that gives us courage to face up to our faults and to accept responsibility for them. He gives us the courage for disclosure.
Biblical scholar, R. H. Strachan, in his excellent study of Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, says that Paul emphasizes God's attention to humanity and his involvement with humanity. When Paul preached to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers on the Aereopagus in Athens, just below the Parthenon, they scoffed at the idea of God being intimately involved in humanity -- indeed if God even existed. And for some of the Stoics, life might be best lived by withdrawing into a tortoise shell existence so as to not be hurt.
But this was not the God Paul had experienced through Jesus Christ. Quite the contrary. Here was a God who was indeed transcendent, holy, and powerful, but a God who was also intimately involved in humanity, manifesting himself in human flesh, and making himself known personally in time and space in Jesus Christ.
We humans may choose our independence and go our own way. We may choose to ignore God, but God does not choose to ignore us. And God's judgment of us is a manifestation of his incapacity to be morally indifferent and to let evil alone, says Dr. Strachan. "Divine love is also divine goodness. No love can be called good which lacks the capacity for instinctive repulsion in the presence of the mean and the base," says Strachan.1
If it does not really matter to God what we do and who we are, we are hardly more than insects and worms. The cynics and skeptics would be right. If God doesn't care, if there is no moral order, if there is no right and wrong, if there are no ultimates of good and beauty and truth, then in the end it is all chaos and futility.
But it is precisely not that kind of religion which Paul suggests in his no-fault religion, rather, it is the religion that encourages us to face up to our faults and wrongs precisely because there is meaning in a universe where God is God.
Consequently, one of the first tasks of this kind of religion is disclosure, says the late Daniel Day Williams of Union Theological Seminary. In his excellent book, The Spirit and the Forms of Love, Dr. Williams points out how important it is to admit the conflict and disorder in our human living. And, he adds, "Nothing is more common in human relationships, both for individuals and groups, than the belief that we are men of good will and all the ill will lies in the other."
Dr. Williams continues, "The history of human pretenses, self-deception, and failure to see our hostility and resentment of the other is a constant theme of the world's literature, and its consequences are strewn throughout history in politics, revolution, and all the tragedies of human hatred."2
Therefore, one of the painful works of love is that of disclosure -- disclosure not so much of somebody else's wrongs, but of our own. And Paul's no-fault religion is one that assures us that "behind a frowning providence, [God] hides a smiling face." We are able to face up to our wrongs, because we have the confidence that underneath there is a right, a truth, a justice, and a love that will prevail.
We can make ourselves vulnerable to the judgment of God believing his mercy will prevail. We can open ourselves to his holy scrutiny, believing that in the end he will not reject us and cast us out, but accept us and include us as his own, as did the father of the prodigal in Jesus' famous story.
No-fault religion does not mean the universe is indifferent and there is no fault anywhere. Instead, it means God cares infinitely about us, and because of that he gives us the courage to confess our faults, so that they will not be held against us. Isn't that good news!
II
If Paul's no-fault religion gives us courage for self-disclosure, it also gives us hope for reconciliation.
Theologian Paul Tillich got his start in Germany as the son of a Lutheran pastor. A brilliant student, he excelled in his studies and soon was advancing to significant teaching posts in Germany. But when Nazism threatened both his life and his career, Tillich, with the help of Reinhold Niebuhr and others, immigrated to this country to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Tillich soon attracted national attention and ascended to became one of the world's leading Protestant theologians. Although his personal moral conduct often left much to be desired, he was a very popular lecturer and preacher. Whenever he preached in James Chapel at Union Seminary, the place would be packed not only with seminarians, but also with students and faculty from Columbia and Barnard across the street.
Tillich liked to preach about reconciliation, a reunion with oneself, with one's community and with God, and reconciliation is possible, said Tillich, because of forgiveness and acceptance. "He who is accepted ultimately can also accept himself. Being forgiven and being able to accept oneself are one and the same thing," said Tillich. "No one can accept himself who does not feel that he is accepted by the power of acceptance which is greater than he, greater than his friends and counselors and psychological helpers."3
And this forgiveness we receive is unconditional. "There is," says Tillich, "no condition whatsoever in man which would make him worthy of forgiveness. If forgiveness were conditional, conditioned by man, no one could be accepted and no one could accept himself."4 We always want to bring something, a gift, a good deed, something to show we have earned it. Just as many of us have difficulty accepting gifts graciously from one another, (perhaps because we think there may be strings and obligations attached), so we have difficulty accepting the gift of forgiveness from God. "We want to contribute something," says Tillich, "and if we have learned that we cannot contribute anything positive, then we at least try to contribute something negative: the pain of self-accusation and self-rejection."5
Human communities set up severe requirements for belonging, for being included, for being accepted. A friend of mine, a distinguished professional, told me of his application to an exclusive private club. The professional was well established in his career, was a veteran of several highly placed relationships and groups, and was regarded as a leader in his field.
Nevertheless, he was required to submit numerous letters of recommendation from club members as to his worthiness, qualifications, and suitability. He then was subjected to casual, but rather stuffy, scrutiny as the membership committee sniffed him out at a reception for potential new members. He made it, but later quoted Groucho Marx's self-deprecating line that he wasn't sure he wanted to belong to a club that would have him for a member!
Private clubs need to have their membership rules, of course, but belonging to the people of God is quite different. God doesn't sniff out our qualifications, scrutinize our credentials, review our accomplishments, or weigh our merits. He includes us not on the basis of our merits, but on the basis of his grace.
We can be reconciled to God and therefore to one another, not because we are without fault, not because we are without sin, not even because we might in our anxiety, claim to have impeccable credentials. No, not because of all that, but because God was in the world reconciling us to himself, not holding our faults against us.
III
The no-fault religion of which Paul speaks promises the power of re-creation. "If any person is in Christ, he is a new creation, a new being," says Paul (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Very often when people are in a pessimistic mood they will ask. "Do you think it is possible for people to change?" And from time to time when we are weary and perhaps in a pessimistic, cynical mood ourselves, we ask the very same question, "Is it possible for people to change?"
To be sure, over the years we have developed a mild skepticism toward those who say with their mouths they have changed, but whose actions say they have not. If the general public complains about the hypocrites in the churches, ministers could probably complain even more -- ministers who have been the targets of vicious and vociferous attacks by their own parishioners who profess to have had their lives changed by Christ.
Nevertheless, despite all that, I believe people do change and sometimes radically. Probably the twelve-step groups experience radical change as much as any in contemporary society. And in some of the more conservative, Evangelical churches, radical conversion and change often are witnessed. In our more staid mainline churches, we are reluctant to allow the fact that God might change someone rather suddenly and dramatically, instead of through a long process. But whether as a seed changing into a flower, or as a self-centered, spoiled, rich kid in a former church of mine, who overnight became generous and kind and thoughtful, because of conversion, I do believe people change. They can become, as Paul said, a new creation, a new being.
And why is that so? It is because in God's no-fault religion our past is not held against us. After all, it was Paul himself, who in his arrogant legalism, persecuted Christians, locking them up and consenting to their murder. "I was the chief of sinners, because I persecuted the Church of God," he confessed in his writings. Yet God did not hold his past against him. Instead, he made him the vibrant, vital, ambassador of grace and renewal throughout the Greco-Roman world.
But it is the power of God that does it, says Paul. And M. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist says the same thing. In his book, The Road Less Traveled, which has been on the best-seller list for many years, Dr. Peck says, "God's grace and God's love can help people change and grow." He says, "There is a powerful force external to their consciousness which operates through the agency of loving persons other than their parents, and through additional ways which we do not understand." Then Peck adds, "It is because of grace that it is possible for people to transcend the traumas of loveless parenting and become themselves, loving individuals who have risen far above their parents...."6 To experience this grace is to know God and to know tranquility and peace, says Peck.
That's it exactly, said Saint Paul nineteen centuries before Peck. Anyone who has experienced the renewing grace of Christ is a new creation, a new being. The old has passed away. All has become new. It was the grace former slave trader, John Newton, experienced when Christ touched him, and he gave up his terrible work, and wrote the familiar hymn, "Amazing Grace."
No-fault religion is not morally ambiguous or ethically indifferent, nor is it without rules and standards and principles. Rather, it is a religion that says that it is precisely because God is principled and involved, forgiving and loving, we can say, God was in Christ, reconciling us to himself, making us new persons, not holding our faults against us. And that, dear friends, is the gospel, the good news.
____________
1.ÊR. H. Strachan, Second Corinthians, Moffatt Bible Commentary (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 117.
2.ÊDaniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).
3.ÊPaul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999), p. 12.
4.ÊIbid., p. 12.
5.ÊIbid., p. 8.
6.ÊM. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Touchstone Div. of Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 300.
