Hentikan komoditisasi gereja!

Gereja-gereja di manapun berada harus mendengarkan baik-baik seruan profetik Brueggemann ini. Kehadiran kita di dunia akan membawa berkat atau tidak, patut diperhatikan atau tidak, akan turut ditentukan oleh kelakuan kita dalam bergereja dan bermasyarakat. Apakah yang sedang kita karyakan saat ini sekadar buat unjuk kuasa, pamer kekayaan, main retorika atau sungguh merupakan upaya menunaikan tugas ibadah kita kepada Yahweh, yakni melaksanakan keadilan?

Mari bersama kita hentikan komoditisasi agama/gereja! Sebaliknya, majukanlah kesejahteraan rakyat di mana kita berada!

Faith with a price

Walter Brueggemann

The Other Side, July/Aug 1998.

Reflecting on 1 Kings, I was struck by how the construction of the temple made religion a commodity – and how familiar it all sounded.

Not long ago, I toured a well-known, free-standing “cathedral” on the West Coast. As we ambled around, the tour guide commented on everything in sight--the soaring arches, the glistening windows, the majestic altar. Although this was the spiritual space of a living congregation, she said nothing about the theological, liturgical, or missional significance of a single item. She commented on how stunning the components were, how well they all fit together. But what really interested her was the cost. She knew the price tag of everything!

Some time later I revisited the story in I Kings of the building of Solomon's temple. The description echoes the same celebration of order and beauty I'd experienced in the modern-day church building. But I discovered a third--and unexpected--similarity. The temple, like the tour guide, oozed conspicuous consumption. She probably could have gotten a job there!

As I read the report in I Kings, I was amazed at its endless detailing of just how expensive the temple was:

“Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold, then he drew chains of gold across, in front of the inner sanctuary, and overlaid it with gold. Next he overlaid the whole house with gold, in order that the whole house might be perfect; even the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary, he overlaid with gold” (6:21-22).

“All these were made of costly stones, cut according to measure, sawed with saws, back and front, from the foundation to the coping, and from outside the great court. The foundation was of costly stones, huge stones, stones of eight and ten cubits. There were costly stones above, cut to measure, and cedarwood. The great court had three courses of dressed stone to one layer of cedar beams all around; so had the inner court of the house of the Lord, and the vestibule of the house” (7:9-11).

”So Solomon made all the vessels that were in the house of the Lord: the golden altar, the golden table for the bread of the Presence, the lampstands of pure gold, five on the south side and five on the north, in front of the inner sanctuary; the flowers, the lamps, and the tongs, of gold; the cups, snuffers, basins, dishes for incense, and firepans, of pure gold; the sockets for the doors of the innermost part of the house, the most holy place, and for the doors of the nave of the temple, of gold” (7:48-50).

The construction is “gold, gold, gold, gold, gold.” The stones are “costly, costly, costly.” The accouterments--even the pans for the fire and the hinges on the doors--are “gold,” “golden,” and “pure gold.” Then the reason for all this repetition hit me: Solomon is showing off!

Given the immense, unfettered power of the global economy in our day, this wearisome report of the temple in Jerusalem is a warning of how religion can, and does, become a commodity. The practices of religious communal life are priced out according to an alien standard: money value, not theological value. Once this standard is entrenched, the tendency to “weigh” everything religious casts a shadow over courageous expressions of faith within the community. For all practical purposes, extreme and innocent acts of obedience, compassion, and generosity are eliminated.

But those acts are exactly what the Torah encourages. In building a common history and fabric for the Israelite community, the Ten Commandments attend to reverence for Yahweh and right relationships within the community. Seven of the commandments specify measures that preserve and protect those neighbor-to-neighbor relationships. As the distance widens between the simple neighborly commands of the Mosaic tablets and the gilded temple built to contain them, the test of true religion becomes not “to walk in all his ways” (I Kings 8:57) but to weigh the cost against the gain.

Yet the commoditization of religion is only a symptom and sign of the greater commoditization, in which each person finally becomes an object of disputed value. In the process, we grow numb to neighbor and alienated from self. We can see this larger commoditization with Solomon in his policy of “forced labor” which reduced thousands of fellow Israelites to objects employed in temple construction (I Kings 5:13-16).

So in the first chapters of I Kings, we witness Solomon commoditizing both religion and citizenship. The outcomes are severe. Initially, commoditizing produced a labor revolution, a kind of mass walkout that split the nation, depriving Jerusalem of people and territory as the ten tribes returned to their homeland and established a new kingdom in the north (I Kings 12:1-20). The long-term result of commoditization was the Babylonian exile, viewed by the prophets as the slow, inescapable consequence of Torah disobedience that resulted in Israel forfeiting the deep infrastructure and fabric of its common life.

The same losses threaten us today, and they spring from the same root: commoditization. In our greed we have commoditized the poor, with whom we are in relationship. Because they have no market value, because they produce nothing, they are assigned no value and get nothing. What's more, they are the first to feel the impact of our eagerness to “cost out” education and healthcare. Though this might be prudent in the short run, in the long run it precludes the generosity of neighborliness upon which human community finally depends.

The prophets endlessly protest Israel's commoditization of cult and citizenry. Whether it's Amos and Hosea in the north or Isaiah and Jeremiah in the south; whether the times are prosperous or perilous; whether the fault lies with kingly domination or wealthy exploitation-- the message rings out again and again: Do not treat my people like things.
In opposing the commoditization of religion, the prophets focus on abuses of religious practice. But the problem runs deeper, as the description of Solomon's temple demonstrates. Even in the best of circumstances--when cult and code are observed in a way that acknowledges personal validity and mutual dependence--there is still all that gold, all that glitter, all that gloating.

Perhaps no prophet sees this more clearly and attacks it more vigorously than Jeremiah. Called to stand at the temple gate as the worshippers file in, he quotes their entrance hymn, proclaiming: “Do not trust in these deceptive words, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’” (Jer. 7:4).

The people think that by honoring this thing, the temple, they ensure that their status and security will remain intact--even though they violate the covenant it symbolizes and the community it creates. Jeremiah condemns such faith as deceptive.

In the place of commoditization, the prophets proclaim a costly alternative--love of neighbor. Jeremiah puts it in concrete terms: “Act justly one with another . . . do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood” (Jer. 7:6).

In the wake of these ancient prophets comes Jesus of Nazareth. In the sixth chapter of Matthew, evoking the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, he issues a remarkable invitation out of anxiety--and away from a commoditized world.

The pursuit of things and the quest for commodities, teaches Jesus, produces anxiety. This anxiety may begin with everyday concerns such as food and clothing, but it stems from an insecurity that eventually demands endless acquisition, endless commoditization. Jesus gestures towards God's care of the birds and the lilies (Matt. 6:26-28) and proclaims the great worth his hearers have in the eyes of their Creator “who knows you need all these things” (Matt. 6:32).

People, Jesus says, are not a means to something else. They are an end in themselves, valued and cared for by the Creator. With this teaching, Jesus offers both sharp summons and deep assurance, an alternative to commoditization. He points to the lilies in the field: “Not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these” (Matt. 6:29).

Not even Solomon with all his commodities! Not even Solomon with all his high-priced religion and his hoards of conscripted laborers! Not even Solomon!

The biblical alternative to commoditization shuns conspicuous consumption; it does not use religion and community for personal or institutional glory. Rather, it is hidden, unseen, unnoticed. It is full of neighborly life.