Sermons

“Threat Preparedness, Lifestyle, or Mere Decoration?”

Luke 12:32-40; Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – August 7, 2016

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that our hearts might be opened to your transforming Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

There are a lot of ways to be a Christian. One of the things about our denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), is that we aim to embrace this reality, that not everyone does Christianity the same way. We don’t all believe the same things. We don’t all practice the same way. We don’t all interpret scripture the same way. But we declare that Christ is one and that God has made us one through Christ, and thus our diversity is merely richness, not a legitimate source of division.

So yes, there are many different ways of being Christian, and we cannot tell another person how they must practice their faith. On the other hand – you knew there had to be another hand, right? – on the other hand, God did give us the capacity for good judgment and wisdom, and these are tools we should use in determining how to live as followers of Jesus. Embracing the diversity of the Body of Christ doesn’t have to mean blindly latching onto whatever lands in front of us or shouts loudest for our attention.

I want to suggest that today’s scripture readings could go in a couple different ways, and which approach we choose does matter. The first metaphor of interpretation I want to explore is what I’m going to call ‘threat preparedness’.   If you look at the gospel reading, it’s easy to focus on the admonition to “be alert”. The urgency is a little alarming. The suggestion that we are slaves in relation to a master God feels a bit ominous. Sure, this master is coming home from a wedding banquet, but does that really help? And then, for some reason, Jesus compares the coming of the Son of Man to a thief coming unexpectedly in the middle of the night. How is that supposed to make us feel? Then you’ve got the reading from Isaiah, which isn’t much better. All the things that we thought were supposed to please God – the Israelite version of going to church regularly, tithing, singing in the choir, helping with the Father’s Day observance, volunteering at work day – suddenly we’re hearing that God is disgusted with all that. God doesn’t want to hear our prayers, and if we don’t shape up, we’re going to be devoured by the sword.

Whoa. Okay. So we’d better get ourselves on high alert! God is an angry god, and we’d better get it together so we don’t get wiped off the planet. This approach is like preparing for a serious threat. When I lived in Alabama, our house was just a few miles from the Anniston Army Depot, where they were incinerating chemical weapons that had been sitting around leaking for decades. It was good that they were getting rid of them, but there was also the chance that something could go wrong. Our house was just outside the “pink zone”, which meant that in case of an accident at the incinerator, rather than evacuating, we were supposed to “shelter in place.” We were supposed to pick up a kit to help us with that – basically a bunch of sheet plastic and duct tape and maybe a heavy duty air filter, depending on your address. That was what was supposed to protect us from whatever version of nerve agent or mustard gas might come floating our way. Fortunately, there never was an accident, which was especially good because we never got around to picking up our shelter-in-place kit. But I think about stuff like this when I read these scriptures and consider how some folks react to them. There is clearly a “threat preparedness” strain of Christianity.

It’s the approach in which people live on high alert all the time. We’d better make sure we’re always doing the right thing, and for good measure, that everyone else is too, because a lightning strike next door can be just as dangerous as a direct hit, right? This understanding of God offers an angry boss-man in the sky, just waiting for any little mistake to bring down wrath. When things go sideways for people who live their faith this way, it only makes sense to assume they did something wrong and God is punishing them. This kind of focus tends to make us turn inward, if only for self-defense, and so our understanding of morality becomes pretty narrow and personal. On the other hand, this understanding of God as punishing is also applied to everyone else, so that anyone with bad stuff happening probably brought it upon themselves through their own sinfulness, removing any obligation to help them. This may seem not very Jesus-y to you, but there are plenty of places in scripture that can seem to support such an approach, including, if you like, parts of the passages we read today.

Clearly, I would like to find another way of interpreting these passages and the Christian life. While I think it’s important to be prepared for disasters, ‘threat preparedness’ is not a fruitful or healthy approach to faith, in my discernment. I would prefer for us to see these passages as calling us to make following Jesus a lifestyle. Yes, the verses from Luke call us to be “alert” but does “alert” have to mean tense and anxious? What if instead, our faith was so integrated into how we live out every aspect of our lives that we would be naturally ready to receive Jesus at any moment? What if the arrival of Christ wasn’t something to be feared, but welcomed and celebrated? The passage we heard from Luke does, after all, begin with the words “Do not be afraid.” Jesus assures us that God is our Father, who longs to “give us the kingdom.” The idea of selling our possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor may, indeed, be a little intimidating. But what if we interpreted the parts about readiness as a call to integrate the generous hospitality of God into our lives so completely that even sharing all we have becomes a natural response of faith, rather than something we can barely imagine?

As we mentioned before, the passage from Isaiah makes clear that God is not mostly interested in whether or not we’re going through the motions of the required religious rituals. But if we look more closely at why God is frustrated there, we discover that it’s not because the rituals themselves are offensive, but because the people have neglected to let the rituals lead them from worship into righteous action, caring for the orphan and the widow and the oppressed. God is angry about the disconnect that had grown up between worship and the rest of life. If our worship of the Loving God isn’t causing us to be more loving, the worship itself is no longer true. If our praise for the God of Justice doesn’t cause us to seek justice for our neighbors, that praise is empty and two-faced. If our communion with the God of Grace doesn’t prod us to offer grace to others in our lives, we were not really seated at the Table of Mercy. This is what it means to have following Jesus become our lifestyle. It means that our faith is the primary influence on all the other decisions that shape our lives, rather than the rest of our lives determining how much space is left for participating in church. When Jesus says the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour, I’m pretty sure that means it won’t be 11 am on a Sunday. If we only give attention to Jesus when we’re at church, chances are high we’re going to miss him when he shows up. If we’re not out there seeking justice and loving kindness on Tuesday at noon and Thursday in traffic and Friday at the grocery store, how would he even know to say Hi? Are we counting on the cross necklace we wear some days?

The further we get into exploring Christianity as lifestyle, the more we realize what a tall order it is. More about that later. But first I want to talk about a way of approaching Christianity that is way more common than either of the two we’ve discussed so far. It was the cross necklace that gets us there. Both the ‘threat preparedness’ model and taking on following Jesus as a lifestyle require major commitment. They are intense ways of living out your faith. They involve all aspects of our lives, measuring everything by one version of the gospel or another. But is that what most of us do? I’m afraid the large majority of us take a different path – the approach of Christianity as life décor. We do a lot of things with our lives, and one of them is go to church. We have holidays, and it’s nice if there’s a service with pretty songs that reminds us that God loves everybody. We enjoy being part of a community where people are forgiving if we only show up when it’s convenient and they’re there for us when sickness comes and we can contribute to helping people out when we can. Within our culture, Christianity is one of the most common life decoration themes we have, right up there with sports, patriotism, shopping and repeatedly declaring we’d rather be at the beach with a cold drink. I mean this both figuratively and literally. We decorate our houses with Christian kitsch, and we casually scatter a little Jesus about in our lives, wherever it feels good. But this consumeristic, decorative approach to Christianity is not really about following Jesus. It doesn’t transform our hearts, because it’s only about the surface of life, the appearance of things. It doesn’t change how we relate to others, at least not all others, because it’s centered on us, not on Christ.

Now I know I may be cutting a little close to home, but believe me when I say this decoration approach to faith is just as much a temptation for me as anyone. If anything, preachers have more pressure to get the look of it right, so that we’ll be taken seriously. Part of the problem is external. Our culture has commodified our faith, and it’s hard to see the line between that and what’s real. I often use Google Image to find illustrations for our screens during worship. This morning, I entered “Christmas decorations” into the search engine. Do you know that I had to scroll through over 75 rows of images before I saw one with anything religious in it? There was finally a nativity scene that came up, but it was a couple rows beneath the zombie gingerbread man ornament. That is what we’re up against. But let’s be honest, a lot of it is our own hearts as well.

Whether you’re inclined to lean toward ‘threat preparedness’ or following Jesus as a lifestyle when you interpret scripture, I can tell you with utmost certainty that there is no scriptural support for faith as an accessory to be worn when it matches our outfit, or a hobby to be enjoyed when we have time. Jesus is asking for a deeper commitment than that. I choose to believe that he’s asking, not threatening. I choose to believe that God is longing to give us the kingdom and that we don’t have to be afraid. But the kingdom deserves our whole selves, our whole lives, not just whatever attention is left once we’ve finished our latest Netflix binge. Deciding to make following Jesus our lifestyle is a big deal. That’s why we do it together. That’s why we get together every week to renew our commitment and refresh our souls in the shared presence of God. Following Jesus as a lifestyle means our faith will touch every part of our lives, which is why we bring the concerns of our work places and our world and our hearts into the common prayer life of our community. Following Jesus as a lifestyle means that all the decisions we make are influenced by our faith, rather than the other way around, which is why we’re encouraged to be prayerful and intentional about our financial giving, so we can break out of the traps that money sets for us in our society. Following Jesus as a lifestyle isn’t a one-time magic trick. It’s a life-long commitment. It’s a journey. Like all journeys, it begins with one step, but then requires that you keep walking. We may wander; we may get a little lost sometimes. But we have each other, and we have a Guide who will lead us faithfully on. There are many ways to be a Christian. Let us choose wisely. Alleluia and Amen.