++Rowan takes cue from Michael W. Smith

Preaching at a church in Rome after his recent meeting with the pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury challenged what he called the "religion factory" mentality of many Christians, addressing in particular those who have made the cross nothing more than a "religious decoration."

Sermon by Archbishop Rowan Williams


St Paul’s 'Within the Walls', Rome


11 March 2012

Lectionary: Exodus 20, Ps 19, 1 Cor 1.18–25; John 2.13–22

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Once again, let me thank you for your hospitality here. I know that your brothers and sisters in the Church of England would want me to convey the love and prayers that they feel towards the Anglican congregations in this great city, their fellowship with the bishops and the clergy here, and their gratitude for your witness in this place.

Reading the Gospel for this morning, I was reminded of visiting factories in South Wales when I was a bishop there, visiting the great steelworks not very far from the town where I lived. You entered this enormous space with deafening noise all around you – in fact, in some parts of the factory you had to wear ear plugs as well as a protective hat. Noise, activity; deafening and intense. That is what it would have been like to go into the temple in Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. It would be more like going in to a steelworks than going into a nice tidy church such as we’re all familiar with.

And what were they making in this great ‘factory’ in the temple in Jerusalem? They were making religion. Just as a steelworks makes steel, the temple made religion. It made intense, busy activity, all day and every day; and especially at the seasons of the great festivals literally thousands of priests would have been at work every day, slaughtering the animals for sacrifice. They were making religion; they were making a product with which God would be suitably impressed.

And the theme of all three of our lessons this morning is actually the difference between ‘religion’ that we make in religion factories, and the true God – the love and service of the true God.

At the very beginning of the Ten Commandments, we are warned not to put anything in the place of the true God, and not to make satisfying pictures, ‘idols’, of God. We can so very easily fill up the space in our minds or in our prayers with the picture of God that keeps us happy, drawn from our own preferences, our own ideals, what makes us safe and comfortable. We can use that to plug the gap – we can produce something, we can make religion. And instead of the mystery, the terror, the beauty and the freedom of the true God, we draw out something from inside us, project it onto the screen of heaven, and fall down and worship it: the ‘religion factory’.

The same thing is what St Paul warns us against in the second of our readings. God’s wisdom and God’s power are so strange, so different from what the world thinks of as wisdom and power – how much easier to step back and say: we’ll settle for the wisdom and the power we can manage. ‘Some seek for signs and some seek for wisdom.’ In other words, some people look for demonstrations of God’s power in something very like magic, and other look for demonstrations of God’s wisdom in human philosophy, all of it making us feel safer and more comfortable.

Over against all that, once again, the mystery, the terror, the beauty, the freedom of the true God, who is made known to us in the suffering love of Jesus Christ. There is the challenge of our biblical readings this morning: idolatry or truth? The ‘religion factory’ or the cross of Jesus Christ? Our temptations are always going to be strong to go back to the religion factory. It may be noisy, it may be crowded and uncomfortable, but my word it makes us feel good. We know we’re doing something, we know we’re giving God a good impression, we know that God can really not refuse to love us and take us seriously if we are so busy.

And against that, ‘you shall make no idols’. No pictures just drawn from the world you understand. And you shall set aside what you think is power and success, and what you think is wisdom and common sense. Against that is the God who takes the immeasurable risk of stepping down into our world, living a human life in Jesus, dying a human death, simply to show that his love cannot be frustrated or turned aside by anything that we call failure, even by the worst violence that we can perform. God remains God on the cross of Jesus Christ, and because God is God at that moment, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

I believe that, during Lent, one of the tasks we all have to face is to look into ourselves and ask how far we are involved in the ‘religion factory’. Because in spite of all this, Christians have been quite good at religion factories in their day, and the cross itself has become a religious decoration – not a call to renewal of life, not a call into a new world, but another thing that religious people make and hang onto.

During Lent, perhaps that’s the time when we need to be surprised by the cross once again. Isn’t it interesting that during Passiontide, in the Church’s year, we drape veils over the cross in church? Surely that’s the time when we ought to be thinking about the cross most intensely. But doesn’t that tell us that the cross needs to surprise us again every year. We need to veil – to put away – what we think about the cross and just be brought up once again, starkly, against the reality of what the cross means: God in Jesus Christ, overturning all that we think about success and security, all that we think even about ‘religion’ as a nice leisure activity. Calling us away from the religion factory into faith; calling us into trust in that unbreakable, undefeatable love, the kind of trust that will motivate us day after day to go in service of the poorest and the most unsuccessful and the most forgotten people.

Because that’s where all this leads – away from the religion factory and into service: service, love, silence, receptivity to God, and activity towards the world. Not to win God’s favour, but to express God’s generosity.

Every Lent, we ought to be looking at the various ways in which we get involved in manufacturing the gods that suit us. Every Lent is a time to get that little bit further beyond the idolatry, that constantly keeps us prisoner and draws us back to the old world. When Jesus has cleared out the temple, when he has thrown out those people involved in manufacturing religion, there he stands with his friends in a great silence and a great space. And he says: this is the space where all people may feel at home; this is a space large enough for all to come because this is where God lives. This is where God is at home, and this is where all human beings may be at home.

When we come to worship God together, when we come as the body of Christ celebrating the sacrament of the Eucharist, we come to that great space which Jesus has cleared. Here we stand – not busy, not anxious, not obsessed with what we’re producing and how we’re succeeding, but here we stand – still, listening, receiving. And we put out our hands, not to lay hold of something and manipulate it and squeeze it into our shapes. We put out our hands empty, to receive the gift of life and love, the body and blood of the Lord in the sacrament.

The temple, the true temple, is the space Jesus clears – the temple of his body, Jesus making room for all of us in his own presence and prayer before God the Father. As different as could be from the great pious steelworks of ‘temple religion’ – a religion which goes on not just in first century Palestine but in twenty-first century everywhere. This morning, let us look into our hearts to see just how busy we have been in ‘making religion’, and try a little bit of spring-cleaning, a little bit of that stillness and that openness, that open-handedness into which the miracle of life, God’s life, may come. The mystery, the terror, the beauty, the freedom, and above all the love that can never be defeated.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Peter Ould at Stand Firm sums up the archbishop's message succinctly:

Williams is calling us to genuine sincerity in wearing the cross. A sincerity that is seen not just in its wearing but in a cross-shaped life. To move beyond the “religion factory”, to genuine conviction. Rather than dismissing cross-wearing, he’s calling for what we might call genuine cross-living.

Admit it, folks. None of you ever thought you would see the day when the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams took his cue from Michael W. Smith!

Jesus and the cross: What more needs to be said?

Peter J. Leithart expounds on the awesome meaning of the cross.

Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus and the cross. Was that enough? What is the cross? Is it big enough to fill the universe?

The cross is the work of the Father, who gave His Son in love for the world; the cross is the work of the Son, who did not cling to equality with God but gave Himself to shameful death; the cross is the work of the Spirit, through whom the Son offers Himself to the Father and who is poured out from the pierced side of the glorified Son. The cross displays the height and the depth and the breadth of eternal Triune love.

The cross is the light of the world; on the cross Jesus is the firmament, mediating between heaven and earth; the cross is the first of the fruit-bearing trees, and on the cross Jesus shines as the bright morning star; on the cross Jesus is sweet incense arising to heaven, and He dies on the cross as True Man to bring the Sabbath rest of God.

Adam fell at a tree, and by a tree he was saved. At a tree Eve was seduced, and through a tree the bride was restored to her husband. At a tree, Satan defeated Adam; on a tree Jesus destroyed the works of the devil. At a tree man died, but by Jesus’ death we live. At a tree God cursed, and through a tree that curse gave way to blessing. God exiled Adam from the tree of life; on a tree the Last Adam endured exile so that we might inherit the earth.

The cross is the tree of knowledge, the tree of judgment, the site of the judgment of this world. The cross is the tree of life, whose cuttings planted along the river of the new Jerusalem produce monthly fruit and leaves for the healing of the nations.

The cross is the wooden ark of Noah, the refuge for all the creatures of the earth, the guarantee of a new covenant of peace and the restoration of Adam. The cross is the ark that carries Jesus, the greater Noah, with all His house, through the deluge and baptism of death to the safety of a new creation.

The cross is the olive tree of Israel on which the true Israel died for the sake of Israel. For generations, Israel worshiped idols under every green tree. Israel cut trees, burned wood for fuel, and shaped the rest into an idol to worship. In the last days, idolatrous Israel cut trees, burned wood for fuel, and shaped the rest into a cross. The cross is the climax of the history of Israel, as the leaders of Israel gather to jeer, as their fathers had done, at their long-suffering King.

The cross is the imperial tree, where Jesus is executed as a rebel against empire. It is the tree of Babylon and of Rome and of all principalities and powers that will have no king but Caesar. It is the tree of power that has spawned countless crosses for executing innumerable martyrs. But the cross is also the imperial standard of the Fifth Monarchy, the kingdom of God, which grows to become the chief of all the trees of the forest, a haven for birds of the air and beasts of the field.

The cross is the staff of Moses, which divides the sea and leads Israel dry through it. The cross is the wood thrown into the waters of Marah to turn the bitter waters sweet. The cross is the pole on which Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, as Jesus is lifted up to draw all men to Himself.

The cross is the tree of cursing, for cursed is every man who hangs on a tree. On the tree of cursing hung the chief baker of Egypt; but now bread of life. On the tree of cursing hung the king of Ai and the five kings of the South; but now the king of glory, David’s greater Son. On the tree of cursing hung Haman the enemy who sought to destroy Israel; but now the savior of Israel, One greater than Mordecai. Jesus bears the curse and burden of the covenant to bear the curse away.

The cross is the wooden ark of the new covenant, the throne of the exalted savior, the sealed treasure chest now opened wide to display the gifts of God—Jesus the manna from heaven, Jesus the Eternal Word, Jesus the budding staff. The cross is the ark in exile among Philistines, riding in triumph even in the land of enemies.

Jesus had spoken against the temple, with its panels and pillars made from cedars of Lebanon. He predicted the temple would be chopped and burned, until there was not one stone left on another. The leaders of the temple had made the temple into another wood-and-stone idol, and kept it so, even at the cost of destroying the Lord of the temple. Yet, the cross becomes the new temple, and at Calvary the temple is destroyed to be rebuilt in three days, where Jews and Gentiles unite in worship. The cross is the temple of the prophet Ezekiel, from which living water flows out to renew the wilderness and to turn the salt sea fresh.

The cross is the wood on the altar of the world on which is laid the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. The cross is the wood on which Jesus burns in His love for His Father and for His people, the fuel of His ascent in smoke as a sweet-smelling savor. The cross is the wood on the back of Isaac, climbing Moriah with his father Abraham, who believes that the Lord will provide. The cross is the cedar wood burned with scarlet string and hyssop for the water of purification that cleanses from the defilement of death.

The cross is planted on a mountain, and Golgotha is the new Eden, the new Ararat, the new Moriah; it is greater than Sinai, where Yahweh displays His glory and speaks His final word, a better word than the word of Moses; it is greater than Zion, the mountain of the Great King; it is the climactic mount of transfiguration where the Father glorifies His Son. Calvary is the new Carmel, where the fire of God falls from heaven to consume a living twelve-stone altar to deliver twelve tribes, and turn them into living stones. Planted at the top of the world, the cross is a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending on the Son of man.

The cross tears Jesus and the veil so that through His separation He might break down the dividing wall that separated Yahweh from his people and Jew from Gentile. The cross stretches to embrace the world, reaching to the four corners, the four winds of heaven, the points of the compass, from the sea to the River and from Hamath to the brook of Egypt. It is the cross of reality, the symbol of man, stretching out, as man does, between heaven and earth, distended between past and future, between inside and outside.

The cross is the crux, the crossroads, the twisted knot at the center of reality, to which all previous history leads and from which all subsequent history flows. By it we know all reality is cruciform—the love of God, the shape of creation, the labyrinth of human history. Paul determined to know nothing but Christ crucified, but that was enough. The cross was all he knew on earth; but knowing the cross he, and we, know all we need to know.

As Jesus said from the cross, "It is finished." What more needs to be said?

Look, Up in the Sky!

Commentary would be superfluous.