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We need to be countercultural, Jesus was

Published on by The Rev. Jason A Burns1 Comment

Sermon preached at the Ordination of Jaclyn Mayo

It would be hard to deny the prevalence of individualism in American culture, it is not unique to The United States, but it is generally defined differently here than in other places. For nearly two centuries’ Americans have drawn a direct connection between individual liberty and the belief that hard-work will achieve greatness. As technology has advanced, especially in the last twenty years, there has been a shift in our culture that has significantly changed how we interact with each other. It is a shift that is not entirely explainable, at least not yet, but what is becoming clear is that the American Dream, the idea that hard work can and will lead to success is not only alive and well, it has been heightened by an unwritten set of rules that require unfettered competition with everyone and everything, including social interactions. The subliminal pressure to be number one, to be the top-rated employee, to be the straight A student, to be the highest performing athlete is not only real, it is damaging to our health. The number of young adults, aged 18-25, who have reported feelings of anxiety has more than doubled in the past twenty years. My own students tell me that even though their parents do not pressure them directly to perform at their best, they feel pressured to do so. They fear that if they don’t stretch themselves to their limits that they will have no future, and the saddest thing for me is that I rarely see any joy in their eyes, I rarely see anything except their ambition to get ahead of everyone else so that they can go to college and make lots of money so that they can afford to live.

            While our culture has certainly shifted, I am also aware fact that little has actually changed since the first century. Paul told the Philippians to do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, which means that you have a baseless sense of superiority. What is the American dream if not selfish ambition wrapped in a bow of empty conceit? Now before you get your pitchforks, I am not saying that the idea of hard work leading to success is wrong or bad because it isn’t; the issue is that we have placed our sights on the wrong prize. As Christians we claim to desire humility, and love, and peace; yet the second our ideas are challenged on Facebook or Instagram or whatever technology we turn to, our inner tiger comes out and whether we reply or not, we get riled up because what we believe and what we want has been threatened. That, my friends, is the rearing of the empty conceit we all thought, just a moment ago, doesn’t apply to us.

            Paul tells us that God emptied themself of all their power and took the form of a servant, a servant that is to this day revered as one of the most influential persons to have ever lived and not just by his followers. According to Luke, that very servant told his followers that “the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves.” So here we have God, in the form of Jesus, telling their followers that when they achieve greatness, of any kind, that it is then time to set aside your own greatness and “humbly regard others as better than yourself”.

            It is of course easy for me to stand here and say that we all need to be humble, that we all need to act like servants. We all know that there just isn’t enough time in the day. There just isn’t time to volunteer at the soup kitchen, or to drop off those extra blankets we never use; there just isn’t time to plan a bible study, or give Alice a ride to the doctor; there just isn’t time do anything except work hard so that we have enough money to pay the rent, to make sure that we meet the deadline at work, to run our kids to ten different events that they don’t even want to do. The phrase “there isn’t time” is a fallacy and it is evidence that we all participate in the culture that values rabid individualism and competition over community and the only reason there isn’t time for things is because we refuse to change our behavior.

            The amazing thing about the life of Jesus is that he was the person we all want to be, and even though he has given us everything we need to lead a countercultural life, because that is what Christianity is, countercultural, we fail at it time and time again. We just can’t let go of the rat race, we can’t step out of our own way, we can’t bring ourselves to put others first, not even when we purposefully try to do so. For example, when do we volunteer? When do we protest for what is right? When do we stop working on the big work project? When do we write a letter or an email or make a call to a friend just to say hey, how are you? When we have time, that’s when.

            Jackie, today you are continuing a journey that began before you were born. You are choosing to accept a mantle of leadership that asks you to be countercultural and I am not going to sugarcoat the fact that this mantle is heavy. Choosing to live an ordered life, a life based on scripture, and prayer, and love, and humility while also bearing the burdens that come with wearing a collar is life changing. While you may not feel different after today because you are still the person God made you to be, you are still you, you are the deacon God wants in their church; how other people see you and interact with you will be different and that will change you because that is how it all works. The perceptions of others change who we are, it is our own fear that others might think we are unsuccessful or lazy to fuel our work ethic and allow our ambition to guide our life decisions instead of turning to the thing that we all know to be true, which is that we really want nothing more than to be loved. The role of a deacon is truly undefinable; yeah, we have our prayer book definition and every deacon in this room can tell you the song and dance about having one foot in the church and one foot in the world, but that doesn’t come close to truly describing who deacons are, it simply gives us parameters for our work. There will be times when you will be called upon to be a pillar of strength and it will feel like you are holding the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. There will also be times when you will want to burn it all down and just before you light the match realize that if you do it, if you do burn it all down, you will in fact be burning yourself down right along with it, which brings me back to how I started this long diatribe of randomness.

            Jesus has asked us to be countercultural, he has asked us to step back from the rat race and try, just try, to approach life from a perspective of love and doing so requires humility and it requires that we stop making excuses about time and energy. I actually believe that sharing God’s love with each other is quite simple, what isn’t simple is setting aside the parts of ourselves that want to win the race at all costs so that we can be sure that our future is secure. Humility requires risk and we don’t like risk. It is far easier to just run the race to win and suffer the consequences than it is to slow our pace and invite God and our neighbor to run with us. The American love affair with hard work is not wrong in principle, but let’s make sure that the hard work is the kind of work we should be doing in the first place. Let’s work on things like love, and prayer, and humility, and empathy, and God forbid compassion. What’s the point of being first, if itmeans you are all alone? God emptied themself of power, they humbled themself to the point of death by execution so that we could understand that a different way is possible. Being a Christian is hard work, it is transformative, it is life giving, but only if we are willing to trust God enough to run a different race, a race that will still involve pain, and anxiety, and even death; but also, a race that guarantees, by the resurrection, that everyone crosses the finish line, so be countercultural, and in humility regard others as better than yourself. Amen.

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God doesn’t test us

Published on by The Rev. Jason A Burns1 Comment

Paul says “he was tested by what he suffered”. This is an important phrase, likely a phrase most of us would overlook while reading or immediately bring to mind Jonah or even Job, it certainly did for me. It caught my attention for two reasons, first because I had recently had a conversation, with a former student, about whether God tests us, but also because of my belief that an emerging ministry of mine is the reclaiming of our spiritual heritage as Christians. I want us to reclaim our vocabulary, I want us to stop dumbing down our faith and pretending that being a Christian is simple, that it only requires a passing belief in God, as if generally doing the right thing means we go to heaven when we die or if we follow all the rules as spelled out in the bible, we are good to go. Those versions of Christianity can be likened to our childhood beliefs about various mystical creatures, the ones that bring you presents for being a good little boy or girl. Those versions of Christianity are passive in nature, they are designed for one thing and one thing only, making people feel good!

            What I find strange is that the people who push feel good Christianity also push the idea that God tests us to make sure that we are true believers; my question is: if God is all loving why would they test us? That sounds like an abusive relationship to me, the kind where a partner runs their finger along the top of a door jamb to make sure they are clean and if not, look out. That’s not love, it’s control and it is the same as telling the faithful that they need to follow the rules or God will smite them. God does not test us; God does not cause us to struggle; God only creates and loves, and any story, any rule, any interpretation that indicates otherwise is just wrong. 

             You might be thinking that your deacon has gone off the deep end, but let me give you some context. Many Americans, many of our neighbors, are scared right now. Many are wondering if we are being tested by God, and you of course already know how I feel about that idea. So, if God is not testing us, then why does it feel like so many things are going wrong and how can we rely on God if they never seem do anything? Or for that matter, why should we? In short, God is never the source of anything that harms. In the story of Jonah, the classic God tests the faithful story, God simply asked Jonah to be his prophet and Jonah runs away. The way it is written it makes it sound like God then punishes Jonah until he repents, but that doesn’t make any sense. No one repents because they are punished, they repent because they genuinely feel sorry for what they did. What really happened is Jonah realized his error and then trusted that God would help. God did not trick Jonah into doing this, God did not send a storm to threaten Jonah’s life so he would repent, the storm just happened and it was Jonah’s realization that he had been rejected God that saved him. To put it another way, like Jesus, Jonah was tested by what he suffered. Jonah was afraid of what God asked him to do, so he ran away and in running away bad things happened to him, but in the end, God remained with him and saved him.

            The other classic story of testing is the story of Job. Job had bad things happen to him, and he remained faithful to God throughout and in the end, because of his patience and trust in God, all that he lost was returned to him. Jesus didn’t run away and very bad things happened to him, and in the end, God remained with him and not only saved him, but gave him new life.

            My takeaway from all of these contradictory stories is that whether we follow all the rules or not, bad things are going to happen and while it may feel like a test at times, I can promise you that it is not God who is administering the test, it is you. In the story of Job, it is the devil or Satan who is behind the horrible things affecting Job, and in the letter to the Hebrews Paul says that Jesus became flesh so that he could destroy the one who controls death, namely the devil. I am assuming that upon hearing the term devil or Satan we have all conjured an image of a red skinned pyromaniac with horns and furry legs, but that is not at all what Paul or the author of Job is referring to. The term devil comes from the Greek word diabolos, which means accuser or slanderer. To me, this changes things considerably, it means that in the story of Job it is slander and accusations that lead to his suffering and it is God who restores him and ends his suffering. It means that it was Jonah’s fear of doing what God asked that causes him to almost perish in a storm and it was God who saved him. It means that Jesus was tested by the accusations and slander of people who refused to accept what he was saying that led to his death, and it was God who restored him to life.

            You see, what this means is that we are the devils. We are the ones who accuse each other and slander each other. We are the ones who test each other, by making up rules, rules we know full well are impossible to follow and that truly have nothing to do with God. It is our need for a sense of control that causes us to be devils, we think that if we can point out the flaws in other people it somehow shows that we are more faithful, that we are in the right; but that is a fallacy my friends. The only test we have to pass is the one where we refuse to take the test, which is what Jesus did. He didn’t fight the accusers, he didn’t correct the slanderers, he let them have their say, he let them cast their stones, he even let them kill him. Why? Because he trusted God. He had faith that God would not betray him, even in death, and he was right. Which is why Paul tells us that “because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” We’re the ones being tested now, we are the ones who have been asked to love our neighbor unconditionally, whether we like them is an entirely different story. We are the ones who need to have mercy on the people who harm us and our loved ones, not because it is “the right things to do”, but because it is what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus. The test is simple, will we continue to fall into the trap of playing by human rules or will follow Jesus’s lead and refuse to play, trusting that God is on our side?

            I am by no means implying that this is easy. It is not easy to watch others hate, or demean, or dismiss entire groups of people. It is not easy to listen as countless people, people who claim to be Christians, throw insults at anyone and anything that dares to think or act differently than they do. It is not easy to admit that we do the same, we do the same every time we dismiss them, every time we dismiss their beliefs.

            I am sure several of you are asking yourself, right now, but how can I not dismiss or refute hatred when I hear it? To that I say, I never said don’t. We should absolutely reject hatred, misinformation, and cruelty. What we can’t do, is dismiss the people spreading those things, because if we dismiss them, if we assume that their beliefs are all that they are, then we have failed our own test. We have failed to follow the path Jesus laid before us, the path of peace and love.

            “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” But he can only help us if we are willing to accept the help.

Take the message of Christmas where it belongs

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

In his Christmas message, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said that Christmas doesn’t really begin for him until he hears “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” and as I prepared for this morning by reading over the lessons I understood, I think for the first time, what the Presiding Bishop is referring to. The joy of Christmas does not come from the virgin birth, from shepherds in their fields, from kings following a star, or from angels singing with the heavenly hosts. It isn’t about the beautiful decorations or the gorgeous music, it isn’t about the happiness of seeing and being with family, or watching our children open gifts from Santa. All of these wonderful things are byproducts of the fact that God lives among us.

            I know that many people get discouraged by the dwindling number of people who attend church on a regular basis. The truth is that the institutional church is in decline. Every metric by which we measure the health of the church shows us that fact. Some have predicted that the church will disappear within decades and maybe it will; but before we get too far ahead of ourselves and begin thinking about how St. John’s will be the exception or all the ways we can get more butts in seats, let’s take a minute to think about a few things.

            On Christmas eve we hosted 341 people, many of whom were visitors. Some of us might be thinking: “Well if they can come on Christmas Eve, why can’t they come every week?” but that is the kind of thinking that’s killing the church because that kind of thinking is about us and what we want, not about what the church actually is. As many of us know, the church is comprised of the people of God, as in all of the people of God, not just those who participate on Sunday morning. The church includes all 341 people who sat in this room on Christmas eve as well as the many people who didn’t; it includes the people who are fed from our kitchen; the people who use the showers and laundry facilities in our basement; the people who come to the monthly Taizé service; the children who are fed on the weekends because of the Weekend Nutrition for Northampton Students program; and the people who ask us to baptize and bury their loved ones even though we rarely see them between those two events. 

            In her book “take this bread” author Sara Miles says “…that impossible word, Jesus, lodged in me like a crumb….I had no idea what it meant; I didn’t know what to do with it. But it was realer than any thought of mine, or even any subjective emotion: it was as real as the actual taste of the bread and the wine. And the word was indisputably in my body now, as if I’d swallowed a radioactive pellet that would outlive my own flesh.” What Sara is describing is her first encounter with taking Communion. One day she found herself drawn to St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco, despite having spent her entire life avoiding religion, adamant that her atheistic upbringing was all she needed; yet here she was accepting the word, the living God, Jesus, into her life.

In 1978, Howard Thurman published a poem titled, The Work of Christmas, which points the way to how to be the church.

When the song of the angels is stilled

When the star in the sky is gone

When the kings and princes are home

When the shepherds are back with their flock

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations

To bring peace among others

To make music in the heart.

The conversion of Sara Miles is a Christmas miracle and her life is an example of God’s power manifested in the world. Something drew her to St. Gregory’s, something drew 341 people to this space on Christmas Eve, just like something drew all of us here today. That something, is the word made flesh, Jesus Christ and all of the people who were sent to prepare the way for his coming. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah, for Emmanuel, God with us. The joy of Christmas rests in the realization that God dwells among us and it is our turn to be John the Baptist; it is our turn to prepare the world for the return of Christ; but it is also our turn to embody the spirit of God and be the church Thurman embodied in his poem, by finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, freeing prisoners, rebuilding nations, and bringing peace to others. It is this work that draws people to God; it is the hope of being found, and healed, and fed, and freed that brings people to God. It is not our buildings, or our traditions, or our prayer book, or any other human construct that draws any of us to God; it is the presence of the Word, the Spirit of God, that binds us to each another and makes us the church that draws us. Some of us feel drawn to the institutional church, but most people don’t and that reality is quickly becoming clear as more and more congregations close their doors. The future of the church does not rest in the pews, it rests in the hearts and minds of the many people who feel connected to God, and it is time that we let go of the idea that they are going to warm our pews more than twice a year, and take the message of Christmas where it belongs, among the people, the church.