Sermon Text
“Christianity Verses Churchianity”
Scripture: Micah 6: 6-8; 1 Corinthians 13; Matthew 22: 34-40
Mtth 22: 34-40
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
A couple years ago, new statistics came out of the Pew Research Center, confirming what many of us already suspected, which is that Christianity is in decline in the U.S. Just last week I heard on the radio that fewer than fifty percent of Americans now attend church. And not only is the Christian share of our population declining among mainline protestants, which we've known for awhile, but the latest research says Christianity is also now declining among Catholics and evangelicals as well. (That’s new.) Further, the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing quickly. Indeed, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or “spiritual but not religious” (known in the biz as “SBNR”) has increased dramatically… So here are my thoughts about this. The Chinese characters for “crisis,” as you may remember, are “dangerous” and “opportunity.” We, as organized religious folk, stand in a moment of history that is fraught with dangerous opportunity.
First the danger part: For decades now, we in the mainline have indeed been losing members to several other entities; initially, to churches that hold a simpler, more black-and-white theology, churches that lay out exactly what and how you should believe, and which therefore have more appeal to people who tend to dislike shades of grey. Additionally we are losing members to the “spiritual but not religious” folks who tend to mistrust organized religion altogether, and for some very understandable reasons, the priest scandal probably first among them. And there are theological reasons too, namely, the fact that traditional theology has relegated God to “up there and out there.” Poet Chelan Harkin says it this way:
The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath.
And so, they are practicing their spirituality through things like 12 step recovery programs, or yoga and mindfulness meditation, or other non-traditional, non-institutional means. Thirdly, we are now also losing members to an ever increasing and unapologetic secularism, the kind that has all but overtaken Western Europe. I believe this is the result of our all-pervasive materialistic world-view, believing, in other words, that only that which can be verified by the five senses is real. And finally, we are losing people most recently to the new and now “socially cool” Richard Dawkins style of atheism. It used to be that full-pop atheists were few and far between, compared to their agnostic counter-parts. And those who were atheists were mostly quiet about it because they tended to get harassed by believers. Not so these days! Atheists are feeling freer and freer to come out of the closet and speak their piece with conviction!
Anyways, these are just to name a few of the obvious competitors for our members, and it bears mentioning that most ecclesial prognosticators don’t see these trends changing. Our mainline heyday, the kind we saw in the middle of the 20th century through to the early days of this century, is, to put it bluntly, over.
But here’s the thing: We need not lose heart because, now comes the “opportunity” part! And really it is the same opportunity that we have when we as individuals get old enough to begin to face the fact that maybe we actually aren’t going to live forever, and rather than depressing us, this hard won wisdom begins to free us! When we accept that everything is always in transition, we need not cling so tightly to any perceived “golden era”, and we can use the newfound perspective to begin to speak our truth more confidently. It’s like that wonderful scene in Fried Green Tomatoes where the young girls blatantly steal the parking space from Kathy Bates and then smugly say, “face it lady, we’re younger and quicker!” And Kathy Bates goes ballistic, bashes into their car with her own, and says “face it girls, I’m older and have more insurance!” Aging may diminish some of our capacities, but it can also then free us up to speak our truth with clarity. And maybe being a successful “institution” in the traditionally defined ways, isn’t all it was cracked up to be anyway. Some of us think that Constantine’s decision to make Christianity the state religion back in the fourth century might have been a really unfortunate turn in Church History; that when Christianity moved from the counter-culture to the dominant culture, it lost its blazing, fiery identity as a truly counter-cultural community of love, and started getting bogged down with the need to perpetuate itself as an institution. I personally think this was a huge misstep away from the potency of our simple beginnings and purpose, and into a long process which resulted, finally, in our becoming, too often, a rather anemic arm of the state. And you know, I have a certain amount of admiration for the sects which remain dramatically, obviously different from the dominant culture. I am thinking of the Amish and Menonites, for example, whose clothing style marks them out as a people determined to live differently because of their faith. Too often there is little that marks us as different. Line us up with a group of generically nice people who do not claim the faith, and too often there would be nothing to differentiate us! Aren’t we supposed to be, at least to some extent, different if we are believers? Shouldn’t they be able to tell, if not by our dress then by our lives, that we do indeed operate with a different world-view than the secular one all around us? What does our faith, then, actually mean?
To make a stab at an answer, I go back to the Christian folk song made popular in the sixties and seventies, They Will Know We Are Christians By Our what? By our theology or political opinions or by hanging out with the pious and clean living? Indeed, by the clothing we wear or our modes of transportation like the Amish? Certainly not. The answer is simple: They will know we are Christians by our love.”
Now let me say that the love by which we love may indeed, and, in fact should inform our political opinions or the kind of car we drive, along with the rest. It had better make a difference in our lives, but the love has to come first. Like a bit in a horses mouth, it should guide our every decision and action and way of being, either directly or indirectly. But in the end, it is love, not ideology or piety of habit or anything else that is the ultimate litmus test. And it is love that heals.
First Corinthians Thirteen says it best: ' If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” And what is this love of which we speak? Bishop Michael Curry, Executive of the Episcopal Church in America, puts it bluntly: “Love is a firm conviction to act for the well-being of someone other than yourself. It can be personal or political, individual or communal, intimate or public. Love will not be segregated to the private, personal precincts of life. Love, as I read it in the Bible…affects all aspects of life. Furthermore, love manifests itself in action!” In other words, love as a warm feeling is not enough. It must lead to action to be worth its salt. And, (here comes the real, counter-cultural part) it must be directed toward everyone, including our enemies, be they personal or systemically political. To again quote Curry, “Love is a commitment to seek the good and to work for the good and welfare of others. It doesn’t stop at our front door or our neighborhood, our religion or race, or our state or country’s border. This is one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth, as the hymn goes. It often calls us to step outside of what we thought our boundaries were, or what others expect of us. It calls for us to sacrifice, not because doing so feels good, but because it’s the right thing to do.”
I am proud to say that we in the UCC have a better record than many in being out front to keep the central vision of Gods love for everybody burning brightly in action. Our predecessor denominations held the love ethic high in resisting slavery and championing the ordination of women, and more recently, in working for full inclusion of LGBT people and being the first denomination to ordain openly gay clergy, and standing often with the marginalized and oppressed as we work for justice which Niebuhr said is really just love working out its problems.
And that’s how I want to direct the remainder of my comments this morning. If we are no longer a large, dominant culture institution, what does that leave us to be? Well, I believe our dangerous opportunity in these “interesting times” is indeed to return to our roots of being called simply to love God, neighbor and self; being called to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly.
And that’s where we come back to our scriptures for today. What does the Lord require of us? That we somehow figure out a way to return to our big numbers from our institutional heyday? That we fill our pews?No. I like the line that says, “the measure of a healthy church is not in how many people attend, but in how many people live differently as a result of having attended.” More particularly, it should say, those whose lives will be more loving for having attended. hat God requires of us is just this: that we love God, neighbor and self; and that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly. The latter is a brilliant text to put those three things together. The prophet seems to know that when you are really committed to doing justice, there might sometimes come just the teeniest tendency to get a little self-righteous and judgmental about those whose take may be different from our own. So braided right into the command to do justice is the reminder also to love kindness and to retain a little humility about it all.
First Corinthians 13 spells it out even more particularly, in case there is any misunderstanding. It calls us back to the heart of our purpose as the Church at large, as well as to our central calling as local congregations and as individuals on a personal, spiritual journey. At every level, the call is the same: simply…to love. And in many ways, I truly believe, it really is that simple. The call, the dangerous opportunity both collectively and personally, is one of elegant simplicity: to become love, more and more to let go of anything that is not love. Both in our larger, systemic behavior as citizens in how we vote and how we operate as part of a culture, AS WELL AS how we function in our personal relationships, hopefully operating with grace and kindness for all we meet.
I have always felt it strongly when I walk into Federated. Love is palpable here. Even in the midst of inevitable, occasional disagreement, which is healthy as long as it is respectful, even in the midst of healthy conflict and disagreement, most of you hang in there, and warm, sweet, healing, love clearly runs deeper than ideology or opinion or social or theological position here. I was saved by it in my youth. My step-father had had a massive, debilitating stroke and had a soulful of anger as a result. My mom was deeply depressed. All of my elder siblings were already out of the house. And this church took me in. Not just the incredible youth group which became my tribe for those high school years, but adults as well! Many Friday and Saturday nights, we all drove out to Bob and Molly Rickerts’ home, where their doors and minds and hearts were all open wide and where they lovingly parented a whole group of us when for an assortment of reasons, our own parents could not. I firmly believe that if I had not found this church with its personal and systemic commitment to love, I would have gone down the path of least resistance and found my community with peers who were doing drugs. I was on the verge. But you stepped in. Maybe not you personally, but you as part of this loving community because you understand that If we have the most brilliant theology or ideology on the right OR the left, but have not love, we will be dry and self righteous. If we have the most well organized institutions but have not love, we will be lifeless and pedestrian and terminally boring. If we are beyond reproach in all our opinions, and end up proving to have been right every time, but have not love, we will be shrill pains in the neck whom nobody wants to be around. And even if we have the most impassioned voice for social justice, but have not love, our causes will ultimately ring hollow and finally fall flat. That’s why Dr. King and Jesus, just to name a few, so insisted on keeping love at the center.
So the next time you are accused of being in institutional decline or of being past your prime personally, for that matter, you might try saying, “Yes. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, because it has freed me to be more faithful; It has freed me to cut through the complexity and root my life in the simple ethic of love”
And so I charge you today, people of God at Federated, to keep embodying the love of God for all people. Without arrogance and always with kindness and humility, and willingness to engage and to love especially those who challenge you: those with whom you vehemently disagree and those who are different than you, especially in terms of race, class or sexual orientation. (Imagine the witness that would be to the world!) I charge you to seize the dangerous opportunity to love God neighbor and self. I believe this is our central call and our constant, dangerous opportunity. It is what should make us different from the dominant culture, and what makes us counter cultural as believers. Let them know we are Christians by our love.