Someone asked me a few days ago if I am religious, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t have a ready answer. I hesitated... and finally said that I go to church... regularly. That was a conclusion to the conversation... but not the end of my trying to determine what would have been an honest answer to the question. I’ve spend several days wishing I could have another good heart-to-heart talk with my old friend and mentor Joseph Fletcher, who died at age ninety-four in 1991. We met when his son was a student at Darrow School where I was headmaster. Joe and his wife had a standing invitation to stay at our house whenever they came to Darrow; and I always looked forward to those visits. He and I would stay up talking long into the night. Joe is credited with being the founder of the theory of situational ethics in the 1960s. His book Situation Ethics was published in 1966. My friend Gary Gasser and I read the book that year and had long discussions about it.
In the last conversation I had with Joe Fletcher... I think the year was 1986... he said before we went off to bed that night, “Jerral, I must tell you something. I have lost my faith.” My friend who had been ordained as an Episcopal priest, had written almost a dozen books and dozens of articles, and had been on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School and was the first medical ethicist at the University of Virginia Medical School let it be known to anybody who was interested that he was an atheist at the end of his life. It took great courage for him to say it.
When I was very young, I would have answered yes to a question about whether or not I was religious. Learning later that religion and spirituality are not at all the same thing gradually changed the way I view the institutional church. I learned that for it to become a religion, faith must be institutionalized; and institutions by their very nature change... evolve... metamorphose. I am not at all convinced that Jesus was interested in establishing a religion. As a Jew he already had religion... but he obviously wanted more meaning for his life and for all human life than religion provided... than any institution can provide.
So I should have said to the fellow who asked me if I am religious that I am trying not to be. I should say that I believe what Jesus and Joe Fletcher and Paul Tillich and some other good people have been saying all along... that a set of codified , prescriptive laws cannot do the good that the world needs to have done for it. The greatest philosophers and the brightest teachers and certainly Jesus taught us that love is the ultimate law.
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It’s interesting that, as best we can tell, the actual teachings of Jesus and the earliest Gailiean Jesus movement were pointedly opposed to the institutional church and the hierarchies of wealth and power that it undergirded. The second earliest Christian document found to date, written earlier than either the canonical gospels or the Pauline epistles, makes this clear. This Oxyrynchus manuscript is a rather complete copy of a list of the sayings of Jesus, and is predated only by P52, a fragment of 2.5 by 3.5 inches that contains so few complete words that it is barely identifiable. It was around for some time before complete copies of it with an intact first page were found at Nag Hamadi in the late 1940s, allowing for its positive identification. It certainly challenges the institutional church and state of Israel and the existing system of dominance legitimated by the religious doctrines of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. They provoke thought, are designed to jar someone out of the taken-for-granted cultural definitions of that (or our) society. Are they truly philosophical>
A few example verses
20 The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.” He said to them, “It's like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”
63 Jesus said, “There was a rich man who had a great deal of money. He said, ‘I shall invest my money so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouses with produce, that I may lack nothing.’ These were the things he was thinking in his heart, but that very night he died. Anyone here with two ears had better listen!”
64 Jesus said, “A man was receiving guests. When he had prepared the dinner, he sent his slave to invite the guests. The slave went to the first and said to that one, ‘My master invites you.’ That one said, ‘Some merchants owe me money; they are coming to me tonight. I have to go and give them instructions. Please excuse me from dinner.’ The slave went to another and said to that one, ‘My master has invited you.’ That one said to the slave, ‘I have bought a house, and I have been called away for a day. I shall have no time.’ The slave went to another and said to that one, ‘My master invites you.’ That one said to the slave, ‘My friend is to be married, and I am to arrange the banquet. I shall not be able to come. Please excuse me from dinner.’ The slave went to another and said to that one, ‘My master invites you.’ That one said to the slave, ‘I have bought an estate, and I am going to collect the rent. I shall not be able to come. Please excuse me.’ The slave returned and said to his master, ‘Those whom you invited to dinner have asked to be excused.’ The master said to his slave, ‘Go out on the streets and bring back whomever you find to have dinner.’ Buyers and merchants [will] not enter the places of my Father.”
(one of many sayings suggesting that those who seek after money will not enter the kingdom of heaven.)
96 Jesus [said], “The Father's kingdom is like [a] woman. She took a little leaven, [hid] it in dough, and made it into large loaves of bread. Anyone here with two ears had better listen!”
(one of the imperative “ears” sayings that powerfully opposes the temple Judaism of the time, and, thereby, the Sadducees especially. Unleavened bread is a primary symbol of Jews’ faithfulness to the Law given in the Torah. Exodus 12 and 13 establishes the commandment to eat only pure unleavened bread at the time of Pesach. Exodus 13:7 commands that all leaven itself must be disposed of before the beginning of the 15th day of Nisan. Thus the statement that a woman hid the leaven “in the dough” and the result was excellent is diametrically opposed to one of the holiest of holies of the faith upheld by the Sadducees.)
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