Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Today's first reading (1 Timothy 6:2c-12) emphasizes two distinct ways Christians can understand religion: as a way to gain stuff, or as a way to follow Christ.
But hold on! If you're thinking about religion in the way we mean it today - as the beliefs of 5 or 6 big religious traditions like Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and so forth - you're not quite hearing what Timothy probably with this letter. The way we understand religion today is not gospel-oriented, and it certainly doesn't promote peace. In fact, our way of understanding religion these days most often promotes war and dissension in exactly the ways Timothy is concerned about.
There's a richness to be gained in how we live our lives when we learn Timothy's view of religion - a richness that should impact how we live our own lives for Christ. In ancient culture - including Jewish and Christian culture, as well as that of Greeks and Romans, the word "religion" doesn't refer to different sets of religious beliefs. It refers, instead, one thing: to our interior lives. The word "religion" asks us to consider to whether or not we are holding open space in our lives for God.
In ancient culture, regardless of whether a person was a pagan, or Jewish, or Christian, it was possible to hold open a space for God through worship, prayer, fasting, and festivals. Everyone could hold this space in themselves and had different ways of practicing holding this space open for God. People might have different ways of holding open space for God - but the main question was whether that space was being held open or not.
For Christians, this view of religion links to our belief in creation: God creates each human being in God's own image. That means all of us have an irrepressible dignity and worth and all of us have God's image. Therefore all of us can cultivate keeping that interior space open for God. From this understanding of both religion and being created in God's image, we have the Church's teaching from the document Nostra Aetate that all people participate in God's truth in some way - even if they do not know the fullness of God in Christ as we profess and teach it.
So what does this knowledge of how Timothy probably heard the word "religion" mean for us? The main thing is to see that there's a connection between belief in Jesus Christ and our practice of our faith. We can see this in the whole of Timothy's letter, and not just in today's reading. What matters when we follow Jesus is how we practice our faith - so that our interior lives hold space open for God.
If you look earlier in this letter to Timothy, you'll see Paul talk about how it is fine for Christians to eat the food of the Greek idols - not because Christians believe in idols, but because Christians see the goodness of God's creation, including in food. (See chapter 4:3-4) Practicing religion means trying to respond to each other with Christ's peace - even when we are faced with people who practice religion in a different way. Practicing religion means presuming that the other people in our lives also have this space for God within them and already cultivate it - even if they are not fully practicing Christians. We can hope, pray, and most especially, live, so that perhaps others will invite Jesus in to the space that already exists.
Today's gospel (Luke 8:1-3) reiterates both that Christians seek to spread the good news of Jesus Christ - but we don't do that in a way that insists on power or control. Rather we joyfully seek to spread the good news. If we are rightly practicing our faith, if we are living our lives so as to hold space open for God, then we will reap the benefits in our relationships with God and each other. Our lives will be peace and love and gentleness.
Today, let us practice our religion so that we hold open space for God to enter into our lives
- Jana M. Bennett