We will always have difficulty with the people who identify their Christian faith with the ceremony of baptism or the label of their religious belonging from childhood. We live in a time when our secular culture challenges us to be what we identify ourselves to be.
Believers have always asked the question: How can people claim to believe in God and yet are so racist towards our First Nations peoples, or black, Asian or immigrant people? Why do they pray and yet put these people down others in word and action? Can you actually have religious faith and be a racist?
Jesus has some very harsh words towards the religious leadership (i.e., the powers) who lived lives of double-standard. His teaching of respect and equality come out of some terrible fights. Is it any wonder that his enemies brought him down in a criminal frame-up? He stepped on their religious toes and he paid the price!
Human beings can be very blind to their own darkness and sinful attitudes. They may limit their religious faith only to ‘doing’ prayers and things like that in a church building.
The community of the Church is a sinful church. We are a long ways from perfection. This journey of faith is a long one. We are in the process of conversion. It is the Holy Spirit working on each one of us that will bring us to greater transformation into Christ. Religious faith is all about change and transformation. Some days that Holy Spirit will pull us along, kicking and screaming!
The journey of faith on this side of the grave is not always successful. People might give lip-service to their religion. They may say all the right prayers and then go out and exploit the poor and weak of this land.
Authentic prayer is not saying the correct words. It means entering into the heart and life of Jesus Christ. It means being exposed to his great love for the poor and the wounded of this world. It means sharing his pain at the suffering of others and his compassion to the hurting and the forgotten.
In the Church people are coming at it from all directions. There will always be people who put very little effort into living as a disciple of Jesus. There will be failures to give of our lives to Jesus, Son of God among us.
One of the hardest parts of our faith is to believe that the Holy Spirit is living and working among these people! Sometimes their racist attitudes or their selfishness are blatant! Sometimes their actions drown out any sounds of the Gospel.
It is all true. We lament and suffer by such moral failings.
And that is where the Holy Spirit challenges us. There are so many instances where there is moral failure, but God does not give up on double-standard people.
The Holy Spirit is giving us the strength to believe in the power of God-among -us, even when there is much failure among us. We believe that the Holy Spirit is working among us, a very weak and wounded people. It is only God who will make us holy.
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