Have you ever heard young people say they
don’t believe in “organized religion?” That phrase always gives me a bit of a
smug chuckle. I want to tell the unbelieving slacker, “Dude, if it’s not organized, technically it’s not religion. It’s just some weird stuff
that rolls around in your head. It’s not a religion unless you can share it. To
share it, you have to have an agreed upon vocabulary and context with someone
else. Once you’ve agreed, you’ve organized
it.”
Yup. That’s the thing about religion. It
requires cooperation. We have to agree on a common mythology, a common
interpretation, a way to regularly recognize that common story through rites
and rituals, and a common understanding of how that story should play out in
our code of behavior and interpersonal relationships. When some millennial tells
me that she’s “spiritual, but not religious,” I just think she’s too lazy and
self-involved to want to deal personally with a community.
Okay. So maybe I’m just a grumpy old fart,
but look around. We in the US are a bunch of folks growing increasingly more
isolated. We drive alone in our cars, spend incredible amounts of supposedly
interpersonal time staring at the touch screens on our cellular devices, work
in cubicles, and shut the world out with our ear buds. I go to my local
Starbucks and see a table of millennials supposedly sitting together, yet each
is half focused on a cell phone in his or her lap. Our technology, instead of
pulling us together as was promised, is drawing us further apart as we each
sink into the oblivion on our computer screens and hear only the voices we’ve
chosen to hear. I’ve heard that young Muslims have become radicalized—not through
fanatical imams in their local mosques—but through zealots on the internet who
have tapped into the young person’s feelings of alienation and estrangement.
In the gospel lesson appointed for
Epiphany 3 (Mark 1:14-20), Jesus is creating community. He’s calling people
into a fellowship which continually gathers and welcomes newcomers like a
fisherman gathers fish in a net. That’s what religion is supposed to do—gather people
together. We’re all subjects in the kingdom of God, but we could use a little
work these days on the togetherness issue.
For my part, as a parish pastor in
beautiful Northeast Philadelphia, I’m going to try to work on three issues. The
first is young people. If you look at our gospel text from Mark, you’ll see
that Jesus really gets his recruiting motor revved up after radical John the
Baptist gets locked up for speaking truth to power (v.14). I think it’s interesting
to note that Jesus heads right into the neighborhood where John had been
preaching. He doesn’t run away from a dangerous mission, he runs toward it. I think young Americans are
just itching to speak out, make a difference, and see that justice, mercy, and
fairness exist in this country. What better leader could they have than Jesus?
Can we in the mainline Christian church
see ourselves as recruiters for those who want to make a change in society? Can
we gather those who see Jesus’ love of the poor as a call to mission to
redistribute wealth through acts of charity and a voice against the structure which
seeks to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut aid to children? In any event,
I’m going to make it one of my priorities this year to involve younger Christians
in the work of social justice, and—just maybe—teach them a little about the
gospel while doing it.
I see another call to gathering in our
relationship with Christians of other traditions. My Lutheran congregation
shares its worship facility with the loveliest congregation of Seventh Day
Adventists. These folks have given us an exceedingly generous facilities use
offering, and have been splendidly cooperative and accommodating to our
activities schedule. They keep the church clean, and are unfailingly polite. Unfortunately,
the way they worship, look, and speak is vastly different from the way we worship, look, and speak. Because of
this, we might forget that they worship the same God and Lord Jesus Christ that
we do. I think there’s a great need to bring our two communities together at
some point so we can know each other, appreciate our differences and
similarities, and give thanks to God for the gospel we all share. It’s far too
easy for American Christians to think of renter congregations as “those people”
who use “OUR church.” The church belongs to Christ, not to us, and our SDA
friends belong here just as much as we do.
(Additionally,
President Trump has just declared that our Adventist friends—who are Haitian and
Haitian-American—are somehow less desirable than people who’ve come from other
parts of the world. He should meet these people. They are kind, cheerful,
intelligent, respectful, and talented. It is an honor to have them as partners
in the gospel.)
Finally, I’m going to try to gather a new
part of our community into the net. I have an appointment next week at the
Muslim Youth Center of Philadelphia. Our Muslim neighbors have asked Christian
churches in the neighborhood to help them articulate their mission, so I’m
going to see what I can do to help. I want to practice what J. Paul Rajashakar
called the “Theology of Hospitality.” That is, acknowledging what I don’t know about my neighbor’s faith,
and trying to see if we can come up with a vocabulary to focus on the beliefs
we hold in common rather than dwelling on our dissimilarities. I think God will
be glorified by the effort.
I’ll admit that getting together isn’t
always easy. Sometimes we just don’t want to engage our neighbor. The Hebrew
Scriptures text from Jonah (Jonah3:1-5, 10) is a reminder that God’s desire for
togetherness and unity is not always our
desire. Jonah didn’t want those dreadful Nineveh people to be redeemed by God.
But God wanted it.
That’s what counts, don’t you think?
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