What took me to seminary was the conviction that there is a sacramental quality to existence. The Prayer Book defines a sacrament as an outward, visible sign of inward, invisible grace. I knew from some of my own experience that life and the world contained intimations, brief transitory moments, which seemed to hint or suggest that God, unseen, invisible, silent, was nevertheless present to us.

After a year and a half in seminary I found myself filled with doubt and uncertainty. I was a good student but the harder I worked the greater my doubt and skepticism. The more I studied the clearer to me were the outlines of the man-made edifice of doctrinal law, fixed tradition, religious dogmatism and grubby church politics which seemed about to surround and enslave me.

For the first time in my life I began to experience debilitating migraine headaches. I could recognize that I was swinging back and forth from an attitude of cynical doubt to attempting the “drill” of a good Marine through an obedient, perfect response to the demands of the strong culture in which I was now enlisted. Both approaches were dry and useless.

One day I found a book of sermons by Paul Tillich in the seminary bookshop. The title of the collection was “The Shaking of the Foundations”. That sounded good to me. I purchased the volume and began to read. One sermon was entitled, “The Yoke of Religion”. When I read the words, “we are all laboring under the yoke of religion” I was hooked.

Tillich was preaching to me and my situation. He was stating clearly and explicitly matters that I had been grappling with for months. “We are all permanently in danger of abusing Jesus by stating that He is the founder of a new religion, and [hence] the bringer of another, more refined and more enslaving law.”

The sermon seemed packed with specific, concrete advice. Tillich urged the reader to “forget all Christian doctrines”, urging me to forget my own certainties and doubts, achievements and failures. He said nothing is being demanded, no “idea of God”, no levels of goodness, nor being religious or Christian. When Tillich said, “it would not be worthwhile to teach Christianity, if it were for the sake of Christianity.” I thought, yes, and what has been happening for centuries is what he is warning against.

Tillich closed the sermon with what he called a “personal word.” He said, “we call Jesus the Christ not because He brought a new religion, but because He is the end of religion, above religion and irreligion, above Christianity and non-Christianity. We spread His call because it is the call to every person in every period to receive the New Being, that hidden saving power in our existence, which takes from us labor and burden, and gives rest to our souls.”

This sermon renewed my faith that there is a hidden saving power in our existence that does give rest to our souls. As Tillich states in the sermon and as I also believe, “the world would be better, truer, and more just, if there were more rest for souls in our world.”

I began this entry by quoting Tillich’s sermon. There clearly is a need in much of human kind to attempt to overcome the contradictions and limitations of life by reaching for a religious answer. The failure of this attempt to achieve perfection and to find victory over death and disorganization does not subdue the expression of the need.

Much of the criticism of Christianity is correct. We are the makers of religion and we have made a very heavy burden. The Old Testament prophets called this process idolatry, a message never well received, then or now. Isaiah said those who make idols “feed on ashes” led astray by a deluded mind. (Isaiah 44:20) Tillich said that the burden Christ wants to take from us is the burden of religion. Thank God.