Finding Our True Religion

   

            We live in a time of great turmoil.  There are arguments going on all around us.  These are not only political arguments that separate us, even our religious organizations are having trouble staying together.  This is a time when churches are losing members, small churches are foundering and some of them are closing.  There is an obvious struggle in many churches to stay viable.  I’ve been almost astounded to watch the Roman Catholic church merging parishes and closing others.  This has created agony among many people of faith who have looked to their churches as places of community where they knew their neighbors and found their friends. 

            It is necessary that we get all of this sorted out.  To help people of faith gather together in places where they can feel secure and practice their faith with some certainty that the institution in which they worship and know their neighbors will continue to flourish and be able to support them in their work and the ministry that they are anxious to continue to work.

            After Jesus’ resurrection, the apostles founded small churches in their homes.  These congregations were composed of 40-50 people all of whom wanted to celebrate the new life that had been given to them by their Lord.  These were joyful communities who did a lot of good in the world around them.  Care for the poor and the outcast was primary in the life of these newly created Christians.  This was probably the primary command of Jesus during his ministry: to love one another as we have been loved by our God and to take care of the need that we find around us with all of our resources.  I can’t imagine a better cure for the turmoil that I see in our society than this: to keep our eyes open for those in need and to do what we can to make them comfortable.  This is the mission that our God has set before us. 

            Look at Jesus ministry.  He constantly went out of his way to cure, to lift up and to help those who were in terrible need.  He even learned to go outside the bounds of belief to do this.  I think of the woman that he met on the road to Tyre and Sidon who had a sick daughter who asked him for a cure.  He told her that it wasn’t right to give the food on the table to the dogs.  She answered him by saying that the dogs eat the crumbs that fall to the ground.  Jesus immediately knew what he had to do and told her that her belief was remarkable and that her daughter was immediately healed.  Jesus was here for all of us.  His love and concern for our welfare extended to the whole world.  We are the inheritors of this mission.  What is necessary for all of us is to look around us to find those who are in need and to care for them.  When we do that, we follow our Lord’s instructions and create the kind of world that God intended from the beginning.

            It isn’t easy to do this.  We have to keep our faith and our religious life intact and to continue to follow our Lord’s teaching, wherever it leads.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers that they enter into his Kingdom when they fed him when he was hungry, gave him water when he was thirsty, welcomed him when he was a stranger, gave him clothing when he was naked and visited him when he was in prison.  They asked him when they had done any of these things and he told them the wonderful truth: When you did this for the least of those who are members of my family, you did it for me.  As we know, the members of his family are all of the people on this earth.  When we care for each other, we care for our Lord.  I can’t imagine a more perfect religion.