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TRINITY 19 Philippians 3.4 If anyone thinks he can trust in external ceremonies, I have even more reason to feel that way. I was circumcised when I was a week old. I am an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a pure-blooded Hebrew. A heading such as this is enough to get me labelled a Communist - not these days a popular affiliation to have. But it was provoked by a surprising insight that Paul and Marx seem to have come to similar conclusions about religion. The Hebrew people in Jesus' time had a conception of religion common to almost all peoples of their era. It was something like this:
I leave you to ask yourself if this concept of religion may have survived even to this day. Underlying all this is the idea that we can influence God, a principle which powered Hebrew laws about sacrifice. Just as one could placate someone with a gift, so also if one gave something to God, one might avoid punishment. Similarly, if one touched a corpse or a menstruating woman one could be contaminated and rendered unacceptable to God. The religious cure was to wash, giving rise to purity rituals. So when Paul decries "external ceremonies" his point is revolutionary, undercutting the entire religious system of his day. When he urges us to accept God's freely-given love, he's putting aside a complex religious system designed to make us acceptable to God. Marx made what seems to me to be the same point in the nineteenth century. As an ex-Christian with deep Jewish roots, he attempted to look past the religions of the day to address the intense distress of ordinary people caught up in an industrial revolution. His secular theology focused on practical ways of eliminating the stark gap between rich and poor. He wrote:
But both Paul and Marx are of less account to Christians if they don't build upon and develop what Jesus started. Responding to a teacher of the Hebrew Law, Jesus is reported as saying,
With these words, Jesus abolishes religion of the sort which tries to cajole God into doing our will. He pioneers the way for Paul and, much later, for Marx as they point out that religion can neither buy God's approval nor bring social justice. The upshot for us today is, I think, to recognise that religion in churches on Sunday doesn't define how we are to be Christian. Nor is the Christian way of life defined by an ability to believe seven impossible things before breakfast. But Christians are defined by a choice to love - rather than by obedience to religious laws (says Jesus); by a willingness to abandon the security of external ceremonies (says Paul); and because they have gone cold turkey on the drug of religion as a substitute for social justice (says Marx). The Old Testament prophet Micah asks the rhetorical question (6.6):
and provides an answer answer identical to all three:
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