February 12, 2023

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:21-37

If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.

Follow the commandments of God. Walk in his ways. Observe his decrees. Do so, and you will be blessed. And if you do not, there will be trouble.

This passage in Deuteronomy precedes the entry of the people into the Promised Land, the land of Canaan which will become the land of Israel. This is the culmination of 40 years wandering in the wilderness. There are many symbolic reasons for why it took 40 years to walk five hundred miles. But there is also one practical reason. After 40 years, every person who was enslaved in Egypt is said to have died, replaced by those born during the journey. Even Moses would not make it to Israel. He died on Mount Nebo to the east, overlooking this new land.

Forty is a round number and perhaps represented the symbolic time it took to transform these former slaves into free people. But there were many challenges along the way and the people did not always rise to the occasion. They built a golden idol in the shape of a calf. They repeatedly asked Moses to ask God for this or that. They were not exactly perfect. But then again, who is?

Is that the goal, by the way? Is the goal of leading a religious life to be perfect? Not only to never make a mistake, but to be completely moral, completely virtuous, completely good every moment of every day. Is that the plan we signed up for when we walk through the doors to this church? Let me get that out of the way right now – no, we did not. We are not perfect here and we were never intended to be perfect. But some might desire otherwise.

To be perfect, or to achieve a state of perfection, means that something or someone is complete. They are whole. They are done. They are flawless. And what exactly does that mean for a person to be flawless?

Today, I wanted to talk about another culture that has influenced the development of Christianity. And this time, it is French culture. The French have had various effects upon Christianity over many centuries. Music, art, literature, philosophy, theology of course. But also doubt, atheism, radical politics, and cultural revolution. So many different twists and turns, it was hard to settle on one. But I did.

Nearly a thousand years ago in southern France, there was a religious movement. This group had grown out of the Christian tradition, but the Catholic church considered them to be heretics. People who not only failed to follow the teachings of the church, but who were corrupting others with their teachings.

The church referred to these people as the Cathars. The name was applied to them rather than used by them. It derives from the Greek word for “pure”: katharos. As the name suggests, these were the supposed “pure ones” those who sought to live perfect lives. They are said to have had a form of clergy, or elders, and they were called the “perfects.” Talk about pressure.

They believed that baptism was the only way to forgive sins in this life. But you could only be baptized once, so any sins committed after that moment were an indelible stain upon your soul. For this reason, people would not be baptized until they were on their deathbeds. Otherwise, you had to try to live a perfect life, a flawless existence. Again, lots of pressure.

Eventually the church tried to counteract the influence of these people. A papal envoy was sent to the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, who was the local ruler. He did not consider this to be a priority for him, mostly because he was struggling to control a large area against contending claims from the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor. So, Raymond did not concern himself with the worries of the pope. Which turns out to be a big problem.

I realize that the political landscape of 12^th century France has little immediate relevance to our lives today. But bear with me. Raymond sent the papal envoy packing, but before the man returned to Italy, someone killed him. The pope used this as an excuse to apply pressure on the French to get their house in order.

And the pope had a new tool for bringing about order: a crusade. The first crusade was in the 11^th century and it ended with the capture of the city of Jerusalem from the local Muslim leaders. A hundred years later, the pope would call for a different sort of crusade, this time in the south of France and against the troublesome Cathars and their claims of perfection. And so, the Albigensian Crusade was called for by the church, named for the nearby city of Albi in southern France. About 20,000 people are said to have died and the kingdom of France gained greater control over its southern regions and its southern noblemen.

It may seem crass to describe a crusade as a tool, but it was truly a mechanism for bringing about a desired worldly result. The church wanted to root out its enemies, in this case a heretical sect growing within Christian Europe. It was a violent response patterned after the anti-Muslim crusades, which were also intended to enforce a certain form of orderly belief within an area of the world.

And the lords of Europe wanted something else entirely from this European crusade – they wanted land. In particular, they wanted the lands of Raymond VI, who showed himself to be vulnerable and without support of the church.

However, modern scholars are now questioning if the Cathars and their perfectionist ways ever existed. That does not mean that scholars disagree that there was a crusade waged in southern France or that thousands of people were killed. The question is about whether there was ever a group of people calling themselves Cathars teaching a different form of religion.

For example, no one had ever used the name Cathar before this conflict. The local people calling themselves “bon Chretiens” meaning “good Christians.” There may have been cultural and social differences in this area, like any place in Europe, but there is no written evidence that there were any theological differences before the church decided to call for a crusade.

Many people were arrested during this conflict and they were questioned under torture. And they then confessed to any number of things. They confessed to being Cathars. They confessed to believing in certain things. But outside of these confessions and the writings of the Catholic Church, there is little other evidence to support the existence of the Cathars.

Why confess to being something that didn’t even exist? There are theories. And the theory that makes the most sense to me is that the French king and the Catholic Church needed an enemy. The king of France was looking to gain control over the southern provinces by removing any troublemakers and keeping out the Holy Roman Emperor. And the pope was looking to shore up support for the church in this area and to remove any heretical elements. These became mutually supportive efforts.

Both the king and pope were looking for problems and they found them, regardless of whether those problems existed before the start of the crusade. Are you a heretic? If you say yes, we will stop torturing you. And do you have heretical beliefs, like these ones? Do you believe that God and the Devil have equal power? Do you believe that Jesus had a body or was he only a spirit?

These rather obscure theological ideas were attributed to the Cathars. Why were these alleged beleifs problems for the church? Because according to church doctrine, God is all-powerful and the Devil is not. According to church doctrine, Jesus was both divine and human and was neither just God or just a man. The church was returning to early Christian arguments that had made their way into the Nicene Creed. “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty.” “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father…”

That earlier fight was used as the measure for whether someone was a heretic. Whether they are perfect enough when it came to the teachings and beliefs of the church. And this process of measurement creates a pattern. A pattern that will be followed for centuries to come.

The treatment of the Cathars is used as a blueprint for how to respond to heresy within the church. How to question those accused of heresy. How to organize the church’s response. This would become the playbook for the Inquisition. And it would lead to various forms of religious oppression throughout Europe.

For example, European kings would over the coming centuries begin to force Jews either to convert to Christianity or to leave the country, minus anything they could not carry on their backs. Jews would be expelled from England in 1290, France in 1394, and Spain in 1492.

But religious intolerance does not end there, it simply finds new targets. In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, approximately 40,000 to 80,000 people would be put to death in Europe because of another form of heresy: witchcraft. In case you were wondering, Germany and its Lutherans had the highest number of accused witches, so this was not a uniquely Catholic reaction.

Clearly, because Europe was not alone in its witch hysteria, as you might recall. In 1692 and 1693, the Salem witch trials were held, leading to 200 people being accused, 20 people executed, mostly by hanging. Many people confessed to being witches while imprisoned and sometimes under torture. One person who died was Giles Corey, who refused to confess to being a witch. He was placed under increasing weights of stone in the hopes of securing his confession. He never confessed and died during questioning.

Saying something is a witch hunt has become a term of derision suggesting that you are looking for an enemy where one does not exist. That was true in Salem. It was true during the witch trials of Europe. And it may have been true in southern France during the Albigensian Crusade against the poor Cathars.

Were there any other times in history when this was true? Other times when people went looking for an enemy, one manufactured or one perceived?

Think about the crusades in the Middle East. These were religious wars in one sense, but they were also wars being fought for power and influence, for wealth and prestige. When Pope Innocent III was waging his war against the Cathars, he had already called for the Fourth Crusade to the Holy Lands. And along the way, the crusaders attacked and looted the city of Zadar in modern day Croatia, and attacked, looted, and conquered the city of Constantinople. These were Christian areas but they were also convenient targets for plunder and political opportunism.

The expulsion of Jews from various countries often coincided with the need for a handy scapegoat for some problem of the time, like the economy being in shambles or the latest outbreak of the plague. There was an implicit religious excuse of trying to make everyone the same, worshipping the same god in the same ways, making everything just right and perfect. But this religious façade often covered political expedience or monetary gain. When the Jews were expelled from Spain, there was a great windfall of lost property and because people were not allowed to take more than they could carry.

There is generally more than one reason for intolerance, whether that intolerance is by nature religious or racial, ethnic or economic. Religious intolerance is particularly insidious because it uses religious arguments to bring about irreligious results. Our readings today would steer us in a different direction, but we should never assume that the scriptures will determine what people will do.

The Christian crusaders understood the Muslim residents of the Holy Lands to be invaders, to be interlopers in lands set aside for them. The same would be true when the Hebrew slaves traveled to the Promised Land, land that was already occupied by other people, land that would be taken away from the Canaanites because the newly named Israelites needed a place for their own.

We stand here on the land of the Massachusetts tribe, who were too weak to fight off English settlers. Those same settlers were almost wiped out during King Phillip’s War—where would we be now if they had lost? Who would dwell upon this land and would we be lamenting that loss somewhere far from here?

In our current age, we have a fixed understanding of how this country is supposed to be. Massachusetts is a state with certain borders and certain cities and towns. And that is how it is supposed to be. Certain people live in certain places, familiar groups that we recognize and we take comfort in being around.

But what happens when that changes? When the people are not the same? When the old ways fall into disuse or even disrepute? What should we think about that?

A friend of mine recently was arrested while protesting at Faneuil Hall in Boston. The protest was about Peter Faneuil’s name being attached to the building which is owned by the City of Boston. Faneuil was a slave trader. He had proposed the hall as a centralized marketplace and it was named for him after he died.

The protesters seek to have the name of the building changed. I have spoken to people about this issue and there has been a range of responses. Some think it is just political correctness. Some think history should not be cast aside because modern sensibilities have changed on an issue. Some think it is much ado about nothing. And some care deeply that the names of slave owners should not be given places of honor.

What this local example suggests to me is that the social dynamic leading up to the Albigensian Crusade remains a factor in our lives. This dispute over the name of the building suddenly takes on outsized importance. And by that I mean few people had any idea who Peter Faneuil was, or what he did for a living 300 years ago, but now they do.

A desire to change the name of the building has gained traction as people have become more aware of the legacy of slavery in the United States and, perhaps unexpectedly, in northern states like Massachusetts. One group calls for the name to be changed. And others resist for various reasons.

Those points of resistance have to do with concerns about erasing history, changing for change’s sake, indulging political wokeness at the expense of communal preferences. This resistance could escalate into a declaration of disdain for radicals trying to create friction in our country. That might be followed by a counter-declaration about white supremacy and institutionalized racism.

Now what? Lines have been drawn. An effort has been made to categorize one side versus the other, an effort usually performed with a meat cleaver rather than a scalpel. One side can now focus its energy against the other using predetermined ideas about themselves and about the other side.

I do not mean to suggest that there are not real issues to be considered in this example. The United States has a long history of racism that endures in many societal practices and institutional norms. And we need to come to grips with that history as well as those practices and norms.

However, I am not going to pretend that I have any clear answers to those questions in the waning minutes of this sermon. I do not know what if anything we should rename Faneuil Hall. And I do not know what if anything we should rename Washington, D.C. or Jefferson City, Missouri, both cities named after two well-known slave-owners. Because the concern about names seems logically connected, even if it is not currently about renaming streets or places named in honor of figures more central to the American civic ethos.

I am not going to step in with suggestions because we are not at the point in the national conversation when we should be offering up quick solutions. Because we are still using a social handbook from long ago, one that could lead us into bitter conflict and ongoing recriminations. One of the lessons from this particularly nasty handbook is that we need to become pure, straight from the mouths of our Puritan forebears, those who thought social divergence could somehow equal witchcraft. Anything less than purity is corruption. Anything less than outright success is utter failure.

The definition of perfection is to be flawless and we have many flaws. But the definition of perfect can also be about wholeness. We are also not whole, but no one is ever truly whole. Wholeness is an objective, a goal. It is putting that last piece down in a thousand-piece puzzle, but life is not a puzzle needing to be completed. We will never be done.

We grow and change and those around us grow and change. Or at least we should. And the underlying goal of our lives together should not be about becoming perfect or pure or exactly like one another. The goal of life is to live, to live together as best we can.

There are many people who have historically been treated badly by our society. Because of their race, their religion, their gender, or sexuality. Responding to that history is not about completely opposing or agreeing with one another. It is not about rooting out heresy or defeating political opposition. It is about talking to each other and coming to understand what matters to each other.

Back in the days when I was a lawyer, if someone came into my office and told me they were fighting with someone because of the principle of the matter, I would tell them I was going to charge them triple my usual rate. That was not because I do not believe in principles. It is because someone fighting for a principle might not be interested in ever stopping the fight. Even when something could be worked out, even when a mutually beneficial compromise was possible. I must confess to being fairly pragmatic when it comes to disputes.

Renaming buildings is one response to the historic emblems of racism. But that push for change would not scratch the surface of achieving true diversity, equity, or inclusion in our society. That does not mean we should ignore such symbols, but that we need to consider responses that are not merely symbolic. If one were to ask those affected by the legacy of racism and intolerance which they would prefer, new building names or police reform, new street names or fairer access to economic opportunities, the answer seems weighted in one direction.

These are not mutually exclusive efforts, obviously, but one leads to a path of resistance and symbolic gain, while the other to similar resistance and real world benefits. Again, I am very pragmatic about such things, but it would be worth asking the question to those faced with these challenges. That would be another step toward wholeness without being too caught up in being perfect. Amen.