Hilton Head Island, SC – January 21, 2018
The Chapel Without Walls
Joshua 8:24-29; Luke 23:13-25
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Texts – And all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai. – Joshua 8:25; Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus; but they shouted out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” – Luke 23:20-21 (RSV)
The word “zeal” can refer to any kind of human interest. There are zealous sports fans, movie fans, golf and tennis players, Harry Potter readers, bridge players, internet addicts, and aerobic exercisers. Originally, however, the word zeal was solely related to God and religion. Both the Hebrew and Greek languages have words that translate as “religious zeal,” and both the Old and New Testaments refer to people who acted zealously on behalf of God. They may have been zealous rightly or wrongly, but the Bible almost never faults anyone for misplaced zeal.
There would be no organized religions had there never been people with religious zeal. The Bible is filled with people who had extraordinary enthusiasm for God. The Greek word “enthusiasm” literally means “in God.” Enthusiastic religious people see themselves as being “in God,” and they also believe that God is in them.
Sometimes zeal is taken to extremes, however. Our two biblical readings for today illustrate that tragic tendency. The first reading is from the book of Joshua. After the death of Moses, it was Joshua who led the Israelites into the Promised Land of Canaan. They became convinced that God had promised Canaan to them in perpetuity. Surely God would not do that, because it would be unfair to the people already living there. Furthermore, the “perpetuity conviction” has led to terrible political tension in what has long been called “the Holy Land” in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The biblical Israelites believed that God wanted them to conquer the land and either obliterate or drive out the people who were already living there. That very notion represents zeal in the extreme. But there is nary a negative word said about it.
Much of the book of Joshua is the chronicle of one bloody battle after another as the Israelites secured possession of all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. After the battle of Jericho, the next Canaanite city to be destroyed was Ai, spelled A-i. The strategy for capturing Ai is detailed in the eighth chapter of Joshua. When it was all over, the narrative says that the twelve thousand people of Ai were all killed. It states that all the men and women were slaughtered, and the account almost certainly implies that all the children were also killed.
The first two verses of Joshua 8 quote God as saying that He commanded the Israelites to destroy everyone in Ai as they had done to everyone in Jericho. It is impossible to imagine that God ever said that, but they were positive that He did. The people who are the most zealous for God tend to be those who are convinced they have direct messages from God. Looking back on what they do, sometimes that seems to be correct, and sometimes not. The zeal of eleven of the twelve disciples was greatly beneficial, but that of Judas proved disastrous for both him and Jesus. The zeal of most Christian missionaries through the centuries was instrumental in the rapid spread of Christianity, but on occasion it damaged political relationships between western and eastern nations. Secular governments do not always look kindly on missionary enthusiasm.
If the Gospel reports of the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion are historically accurate, there can be little doubt that misplaced zeal by some of Jesus’ theological opponents was a factor in his execution. There is no unanimity on why the Roman governor ordered Jesus to be crucified, but in general we are led to believe Pontius Pilate did not favor the killing of a man he had judged to be innocent. The crowd who shouted so loudly for Jesus to be crucified convinced Pilate he must grant the zealots what they wanted, or he might end up with an insurrection on his hands. And so he reluctantly gave the order, according to the Gospels.
The Crusades are one of the sorriest chapters in the history of both Christianity and Islam. For a good part of three centuries, armies of the two competing religions battled one another throughout the Holy Land and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean area. In the end Muslims regained control of the entire region. In the early twentieth century, however, Jewish settlers began to pour into Palestine, and Israelis and Arabs have been exercising their zeal against one another ever since. When zeal results in wars, the kingdom of God is inevitably weakened.
The Thirty Years War in Europe lasted from 1618 to 1648. Protestants and Catholics zealously tried to exterminate one another. They managed to liquidate many thousands on both sides. Their carnage led to an increasing sentiment against all forms of religion among many people. That sentiment culminated in aspects of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era in the late eighteenth century and beyond. It may be that the large-scale secularity of millions of contemporary Europeans harkens back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
When religious zeal becomes excessive or violent or irrational, religion itself is harmed by the ensuing backlash. Some moderate adherents of the various religious sides may drop out altogether, and those who always opposed religion are given more ammunition for their opposition. Over-zealousness can give religion a bad reputation both inside and outside its ranks.
The most egregious example of current over-the-top zeal is that displayed by terrorists who attack western soldiers or civilians in the name of Islam. Sadly, they are giving Islam a bad name, because many Americans and Europeans unthinkingly blame either Islam or all Muslims for these terror attacks. It is not Islam which is orchestrating the attacks; it is a very small group of ultra-zealous nationalistic criminals who claim to be Muslims who have planned these bombings or shootings. No reasonable person would strap a bomb to himself, walk into a crowd of innocent people, and detonate the explosives. Only someone who has allowed irrational zeal to take control of him would do such a thing. Such people are not insane. Instead, they have permitted themselves to be radicalized in direct opposition to the fundamental teachings of Islam.
We have similar Christian people in our own nation, although fortunately there are far fewer of them, and they are far less violent, at least at present. Over the past two or three decades, there have been isolated incidents where anti-abortion zealots have murdered physicians who performed abortions. There was an instance several years ago when a man walked into a church where he knew an abortion provider was sitting in worship with his wife. He shot the doctor dead before a horrified congregation. Many abortion clinics have been bombed. In most of the cases the bombings occurred at night, but in others, people were injured or killed during the daytime.
It is painfully obvious that anyone who engages in such extremist actions is far beyond the bounds of acceptable religious zeal. There always will be people who strongly oppose abortions, and they are entitled, both legally and morally, to their opposition. People with good intentions on both sides of this divisive issue must admit that there are two strongly-held positions on the matter. However, no one can escape moral and legal repercussions and punishment for deliberately resorting to violence to try to prevent abortions.
Two days ago the annual March for Life was held in Washington, DC. It is a means for anti-abortion people to express their zeal. The day before, the Trump Administration announced a decision it had made in private supporting doctors and nurses who refuse to perform abortions or sex-change operations. I doubt that anyone has ever tried to force them to do so, however. If I were to want an abortion (which is very unlikely, for at least two vital reasons), I would not want a doctor who opposed abortions to be involved in the procedure. And if I wanted a sex-change operation (which is unlikely for a whole host of reasons), I really would not want anyone opposed to that laying a hand or scalpel on me. It seems completely unnecessary for the President to have gone on record supporting anti-abortion or anti-sex-change medical personnel. Despite that, it does a great deal to enhance the presidential political base.
Since the Roe vs. Wade case was decided by the US Supreme Court in 1973, giving legal permission for abortions, every candidate for a vacancy on the Court has been directly or indirectly carefully examined by the Senate Judiciary Committee to try to decide what their position is on this uniquely American brouhaha of jurisprudence. Almost every other advanced nation allows abortion in its legal code. But in America, both sides of the abortion divide want to ensure at least a 5-4 majority for their position the next time this zeal-inducing question comes before the Supreme Court. Thus the battle has continued unabated for over forty years.
No one should be ethically ecstatic that abortion is legal anywhere. It would be far better that the removal of a fetus was never considered by anyone. But we live in an imperfect world, and trying to perfect it by excessive religious or moral zeal does not solve the problem. The better solution, or at least the least-bad solution, is to grant women the right to an abortion, even if they cannot be happy to choose to avail themselves of the inexpressibly heavy burden of that right.
Or take the very recent issue of same-sex marriage. Only in the past decade or so has same-sex marriage been legal in any nation in the world. Now it is legal in a few dozen countries, including our own. Like abortion, however, the question has been fiercely opposed by people who zealously argue that same-sex marriage is against both the laws of God and of nature. Once again, it is legitimate both legally and morally to make that claim, but it ought not to be legal to prevent such marriages if they are determined to be inherently a legal right.
Or, to give yet another example, take the issue of transgender people, those who decide for very personal reasons to take physical and/or surgical measures to change their sexual identity. There is bound to be strong and vociferous opposition to this very limited new social trend. Anyone who does not expect this is wanting to live in a world which does not exist and never has existed, at least in our solar system. But it is excessive zeal for people to try to use laws to oppose anyone becoming transgender. The various “bathroom bills” in various state legislatures, including that of South Carolina, are illustrations of this strange zealous fixation. It is severely twisted zeal to try to force transgender people to use public restrooms of their original gender.
Why is it that so much religious zeal is devoted to matters of sexuality? Are there not more important issues for the expenditure of biblical zeal? After all, the Bible says nothing either about abortion or transgender sexuality. And why are so many zealous men determined to keep women subjugated to them? Why do zealots become so fired up about relatively minor questions while ignoring far more pivotal questions altogether? Or, as Jesus asked the Pharisees, “Why do you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and yet you have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith?” (Mt. 23:23) Why, indeed?
There is something about excessive zeal that it so often seems to focus too much on small matters and too little on the really big picture. Is it because the overly-zealous cannot or do not or will not try to see the big picture, and so they concentrate on the smaller issues which seem morally more manageable to them? What is it?
People of broadly-based good will agree to disagree with one another in a peaceful, non-belligerent fashion. People with excessive zeal sometimes address their pet issues as though the future of the world hangs in the balance over their victory in their disputes.
In most cases, most people who are motivated by religious zeal tend to be religiously and socially very conservative. That is not always the case, however. There are people who are socially and religiously quite liberal who can become overly zealous as well. I confess to having to check myself against myself in that regard. It is easy to see what any of us might perceive to be the misplaced enthusiasm of someone on the opposite side of our own pet issues, but are we able to observe the same tendencies in ourselves? Could it be that one person’s just cause is another person’s endless obsession?
God wants all of us to live harmoniously with one another. When religious people disagree with one another rudely or disdainfully, it undermines the very religious principles they so strongly want to uphold. Though this may seem to be an antithetical statement, moderation may be the best method for zeal to succeed in its aims. Zeal by itself may launch important campaigns, but immoderate zeal may also torpedo them.
We are living in what may be the most polarized period in national and international religious and political relations during the lifetime of any of us. Zeal on all sides appears to be controlling nearly everything that happens around us. In the middle, we may feel immobilized by the process.
I realize that I am preaching to the choir in preaching this sermon. If those who attend The Chapel Without Walls are zealots, they are zealots for openness of mind. They are enthusiasts for reason and sensibility. But we need to live with the reality that close-mindedness and irrationality are what capture the headlines. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, “If you can keep you head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;/ If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,/ But make allowance for their doubting too;/ If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,/ Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies;/ Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,/ And yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise.” He ends his poem by suggesting that if we can do all those and many other similar things, we will become the mature people God intended us to be.
Too much zeal can damage virtuous intentions, and religion can suffer when religious people defend too strongly what they believe are religious values. Because of the excruciating complexity of many of the issues confronting the world in which we find ourselves, we may despair that peace and calmness of spirit will ever again surround us. Nevertheless, God never gives up on the world, nor should we. Whether motivated by blazing zeal or coolly reasoned conviction, God goes with all of us, whatever the future holds.
The world was once less stressed and more relaxed. It will be again. Don’t give up. Wait it out. Zeal is basically good, but when it gets too far ahead of itself, eventually it realizes it must draw back, and proceed with caution. So don’t give up. Wait. Wait patiently. Wait.