The Great Divorce

    Sunday mornings have become a great source of sadness for me.  My wife is the worship leader at a church in a small town 1/2 hour north up the expressway.  We used to get up at 6 and she would get ready and I would get our baby girl ready.  Then she would leave to go practice with the worship band and I would follow.  My two year old in the back seat, we would race through the curves in the country road in my stick shift as we listened to music, just me and her.  Then I would drop her off in the nursery and go write while we waited for the service.  I would come back and pick her up at the start of the service and we would listen to her mom sing worship.  I would stay for the service.  Afterwards we would all go home and take a long nap in the afternoon.  

    None of that happens any more. Now my wife and daughter go up themselves.  Sometimes I follow later and drive a half hour just to rattle around at the cafe down the street from the church, working on my books and writing.  My baby girl wonders why I am not there to take her to the service or play with her in the nursery.  My wife is sad that we don't come to listen to her sing.  For 5 hours on Sunday mornings, we are divorced.  You see, after many years of reading and studying scripture, I have come to believe something that is incompatible with the teachings of our small church.  I believe the church has missed the whole point of Jesus' ministry by making him divine. We have taken Peter's response to Jesus's "who do you say that I am" and misunderstood Jesus's response when Peter said "you are the son of the living God."  We took this to mean he was God.  I don't believe that he was.  I don't believe the real Jesus thought he was either.  He believed we are all "sons of God." He is the Jesus hidden in scripture beneath the theology and legends passed around about him.  I think Jesus was one in a long succession of prophets and messiahs in the history of the Jewish religion who called us back to the simple faith of Abraham and Jacob and David.  Every few generations another prophet or agitator stood up and told the rest of Israel that they had gotten away from this simple, nitty-gritty, "come as you are" faith of their forefathers.  They had gotten lost in the trappings of religion.  It is the story of the entire Old Testament as the nation of Israel moved from a tribal God to a loving Father God.  And that story has gone on to this day.  It is the repeating cycle of us getting lost in religion and someone standing up and reminding us of it, calling us back to God.

    Jesus stood up and railed against the exclusionary system of religion that the "religious authorities" had built up which separated others from God.  They "heaped burdens on the people, and did not lift a finger to relieve them," he said.  The burdens were the grain, food, and monetary sacrifices the people supposedly had to make to be "right with God," because they were all "lost in sin" according to these authorities for the simple reason that the people of Jesus's time could not afford to make these sacrifices to atone for their sins.  Jesus, contrarily said God is our intimately loving Father.  And we are all his sons and daughters.  He prayed to, he loved, and he taught this God to the world.  And when the world reacted by killing him brutally, stories circulated that he rose from the dead because his many of his followers reportedly believed he was God.  And then we codified these stories in the new Testament and began to worship him as God.  And my divorce on Sunday mornings has happened to billions of people all over the world for over 2000 years.  Kinda makes it obvious that we missed the point.  We have separated others from God by requiring they believe Jesus was divine: or else they must not know God.  They are not "saved." They are lost in sin and error.  Wouldn't that make us in a sense just like the Pharisees?  Wouldn't Jesus call us out on it?  Haven't we lost our way?

    I love Jesus.  I love the man I see in scripture. His teachings and way of being are slowly saving me from my own human separation from God and others.  How can I hold an exclusionary religion and forget the simple faith of those who have come before me in scripture by requiring that others believe he is divine to be "saved?" It is for this simple reason the church will never spread the world over.  And so the kingdom will never come.  And of course, the hope that Jesus will come back in the flesh when the whole world has come to believe in him with never happen.  He's not coming back in the flesh.  And we are holding the world at arms length. Modern churches are making themselves into community centers with giant indoor playgrounds for families and community programs, relevant sermons and modern worship music.  They spend most of their time, energy, and resources on outreach.  But many churches are working against themselves. The salvation of the world over will never happen until we drop the divinity shtick and simply present his teachings to the world without any requirement in the belief that Jesus is divine to be saved.  I know my pastor does not have this view.  But it seems to me that it is still a common belief in the laity. While I was writing this down the street at the cafe', my wife texted me the sermon preached was about the joy of knowing God from psalm 84. I stayed at the café because I don’t believe Jesus is divine and I felt that I was an outsider.  I did not feel at home there.  Psalm 84 is a beautiful poetic song about a life lived in the presence of God.  "Better is one day in your courts, than thousands elsewhere," it says.  But I was elsewhere, for I felt I did not belong.  Is this the story we want to write for the majority of people in the world? Or can we bring them the teachings of Jesus and his love? If the world accepts his teachings, and those of people like him, the kingdom comes. Not down out of the clouds - Jesus said the kingdom is "neither here no there," instead, he said that it is all around us. It is here when everybody opens their eyes and finds that we are already in it.  And Jesus fulfills his purpose.  I long to see that day.  I am doing my own little part by writing this.  I want to bring Jesus' wisdom and love to the world.   The church , as a whole, exists to love and serve the world - to be the body of Christ.  And to serve the world just as Jesus did. Jesus longed to see the day in his own religion in his time when everyone woke up to the realization that they are loved far beyond all human understanding, and that everyone is already standing in the midst of the Kingdom of God here and now.  And it is a universal story that runs the whole bible through and up to now.  Let's write the happy ending to it.