Before I begin, I want to start at the end: God is not Jewish. God is not Islam. God is not Christian. God is not Catholic or even Evangelical. God is God. And there is no religion! Jesus is not, and never was, the leader of Christianity! Let them elect emperors, popes or apostles for this, do not want Jesus to be the leader or founder of Christianity, because he is not! Whoever elects Jesus, the Christ as such a leader, is in fact placing him on the same pedestal as Mohammed for Islam, Buddha for Buddhism, Madame Blavatsky for theosophy, among others. God does not fit into religion, does not fit into this Christianity presented.
Remembering that, according to the Acts of the Apostles, it was the Hellenized who called Jesus' disciples Christians in the city of Antioch, and again Agrippa (Greek) at Paul's trial. And Peter in some versions brings in one of his letters the term Christian which is just a translation in terms of follower of Christ, different from today which is what professes Christianity, or worse, the ecumenical declaration says that a Christian is one who follows the religion of Christ.
I say:
– It is impossible to be a disciple of Jesus with Christianity or any other religion.
God is immeasurable and uninhabitable for any religious segment. God is God! And man is silent!
Religion, which in its etymology translates as “Reconnecting with God.” Became obsolete in Jesus:
”for this is the ministry of reconciliation: that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself […]”;
Therefore, if I am in Him, I am in God and reconciled to God, despite my sin, which is appeased by the blood of that reconciliation.
Choosing religion to connect with God is to nullify the sacrifice of Christ, even if it is done in the name of Jesus. Choosing a supreme pontiff, priests, bishops or gurus to connect with God is to nullify the high priesthood of Christ, which makes us priests of ourselves. Therefore, the veil has been torn!
However, in Ephesians, Corinthians and Hebrews, we have the advice that we need to gather, to congregate, to come together as people, for a greater purpose of worshiping the God who reconnected us in Christ. And this is not because if it is not so, God does not speak, does not see and does not hear. Not because by doing so we will score points with God, no! It is because we gather as people, with the same purpose, treading the same ground in this fallen world, we learn from each other, we share with each other, pains and joys, and we grow with experience. And all for the purpose of rational worship (which is not worship of reason) to God. Now do not gather before the priest and offer goats, sheep or turtledoves:
“when two or three are gathered in my name, I will be with them…”
Now the meeting only takes place with unity. And the fact of bringing together a group with the same spiritual purpose, psychic-social science calls religion. Just for that reason. Therefore, this phenomenology called religion is born.
From a social phenomenological point of view, which is religion, we are inevitably part of a religious group. And if on one hand we have the obsolescence of religion as something that God is part of or that connects me to God, on the other hand, we have the social inevitability of religion. And we are left with the question that was asked to Peter after his exposition on the day of Pentecost:
“What then shall we do, brethren?”
Now, in the gospel of Jesus, in John two. It brings the narrative of the wedding at Cana (Galilee - Israel) where Jesus goes to a wedding party, and at a certain time the wine runs out. Mary anticipates the shame of the bride and groom and tells the servants to do everything Jesus orders them to do, Jesus simply tells them to fill the cups PURIFUCATION CUTS of the Jews of water and take it to the cupbearer of the feast, and the miracle of transforming water into the best wine is perceived.
And John, unlike the synoptic gospels, brings his own sequence of the Gospel, and says at the end that he has a purpose in choosing these miracles and placing them in this order, and this purpose is that you may believe in the Son of God and by believing you may have life in His Name. I say this because after the miracle at the wedding, John tells the story of Jesus going to Jerusalem, and entering the temple, taking a whip and beating those who were exchanging money in the temple of the Lord, in the great temple. They overturn the tables of the money changers and release the doves, and put an end to commerce and religious exchange. And why is this? And why this sequence in John?
Now, we are faced with two paradoxes.
The first is a party atmosphere, but there was a religious tradition at that party, which was using jars to purify the Jews, an extremely religious symbol. Let's say they were baptismal fonts to get closer to the context.
And Jesus uses the religious symbol of the environment in a miracle of desire, turning water into wine, and all in a marriage, even with religion present.
On this side, in this religious inevitability, I can be in a gathering as a social phenomenon, I can speak a segment, I can do all this, but I am aware that God does not dwell in it. But I can make it a channel of joy, of miracles, of desires that should happen in every good marriage. I can grow in the experience of others, I can love and be loved, help and be helped, all this with the awareness that the church is each person who is inhabited by God.
On the other side, in this paradox of this religious inevitability, there is Jesus who enters the temple, the religion, and expels everyone. On this side, there is religion, the church that thinks it has control over God, on this side, there is religion, the church that barters with God, as if God were for sale, on this side there is the bargaining chip, there is not the desire that happens in marriage, but the desire that happens in ambitions, in power and behind the scenes, on this side it says that the Kingdom of God is here, that God lives here, and everything in the name of God. Here, Jesus expels with a whip, whether today or tomorrow. DAY, for in the heavenly city whose builder is the Lord himself, where God is the temple himself, it is not, and will not be, a house of thieves and robbers.
On one side, it is a rite, a statute without acts, statutes without law, law without grace, grace without freedom, freedom without Christ, sacrifices in service or monetary, penances and guilt, on the other side, to Jesus, The Christ And with Him, there is no room for anything else.
On one hand, the church is a building full of people, on the other, it is people full of God.
Therefore, the invitation is to be IN HIM who reconnected us to GOD.
May the Lord shine his light upon us, and have mercy on us!
Fabiano Moreno.