A friend shared an article from USA Today that reported that more and more Americans are "tailoring" their religion to suit themselves, leaving affiliations with congregations and denominations and even religious belief systems behind. Church shopping has become a smorgasbord of world views, ehtical standards and existential goals. To mix the metaphor, you can have one from column A, two from column B...
When I saw the thumbnail of the article I thought, "Oh! It's Sheilaism!", the term used in Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart back in the 90's. And indeed, when I read the article, it referenced Bellah's subject, Sheila, who basically believed in herself and was a practical atheist.
Now this may be shocking, but I'm not completely sure it's a bad thing. Or rather, I'm not sure it's a completely bad thing. There's always a little something scarey about people who are SO sure of what their religion teaches (or what someone has told them it teaches) that they feel justified in dismissing the validity of other peoples' faiths, of judging people on groundless preconceptions of what they will do because of what they believe, and of consigning everyone else to the wrath of the god the judger worships. These people come in every religious system and even when they use soft language, their refusal to tolerate any truth other than their own soon becomes apparent. My way or the highway.
I don't believe that that's what religion was intended to be. Do I think it's important to know what you believe and to trust in, well, to trust in what you trust? I do. I also believe that it's important to use that as a beginning point for growth, journey, exploration. I believe that there may be some times your faith in your god will require you to rethink what you thought was unchageable. There may also be times to ask yourself about the god you believe in and whether that god is worthy of your life.
When I was a young pastor there was a woman in our church who was the very definition of a blue-haired dynamo. Well, actually her hair was pure white, but you know the kind of little old lady I mean. She had been an original Philathea Girl (that only means something to people who have been around the Northern Baptist/American Baptist Churches for a LONG time), a leader of the women's work, a former Sunday School teacher and a grand story teller. She told me several times about how she had outlasted a pastor for whom she did not care: "I was a member of this church before he came and I knew I'd be a member after he left. This is MY church!"
Now it must be said that this pastor was not a fly-by-night who was there for a year or two. He was dearly beloved by MOST of the congregation and stayed for 32 years! And she was right, she was still there 20 years after he left! But she understood that a church is about more than the pastor: it's about the relationships between the people and it's about what we put into it. Pastors can break churches, but they can't make them, they can only help the people be the church.
What Muslo-palians and Roman Baptists lack is a community of believers and it's that community that keeps us honest. It holds us accountable to what we say we believe. It challenges us about what we believe, offering a safe environment in which to ask the big questions: Who am I? Why am I here? How can I be the best me? Communities of faith offer our children the witness of other adults who believe and practice some of those same things Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa do -- and the models of believers who live faith differently than in our own household but in ways that also have integrity, wholeness, holiness. There's a big difference between respecting other people's differences and the philosophy "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere." It does matter what you believe. It matters to you. It matters to how you live in the world.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that Christians at least (the tradition in which I live) should have an ongoing lover's quarrel with the Church. We should question whether that was REALLY what Jesus intended, whether Paul really meant for the church to look like that, and how to live out the testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures in ways that are read through Christian experience. We can learn from Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist people and respectfully visit their practices to enlarge our understandings and we can allow the questions of agnostics and atheists to move us into deeper explorations of our own scriptures and our understanding of them. But you need a starting point and you need a framework within which to work. Because whether you're wandering in a wilderness or a fertile valley, it's nice to know when you've caught sight of the Promised Land and the City of God.
PS - Diana Eck has some great reflections on this and either she or Harvey Cox have written a book called Salvations which deals with some of the fundamental differences between the systems of major religions in a very helpful way. I'm just not in my library where I can access the book. Apologies.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Reflections on preaching
I stepped into my pulpit with some trepidation this past Sunday. On the 10th anniversary of the Al Quaeda attacks against the US, with all the hype that had been going on in the media, and being in a geographical area where there was a high probablility that people in the congregation knew someone who had died on that day or knew someone who knew someone who had died, it was a worship service fraught with unspoken expectations.
It was also our "Homecoming" Sunday, getting back into the swing of things after the summer. I know there are places where there are more snow birds who return for summers than folks who leave, but here in New England people take summer seriously -- those lake houses and beach houses that have been in the family since landing on Plimouth Rock demand serious allegiance. Churches are pretty quiet during the summers, barring unforeseen funerals.
I was torn between scripture and newspaper, between culture and church; and the lectionary reading on forgiveness in the fellowship from Matthew was a lesson I think congregations need to hear repeatedly.
So I tried to do it all. I was a little afraid that my message about appropriate ways to remember and ways to heal and ways to move on would be heard as unfeeling, unpatriotic; but my own emotional turmoil broke through to at least let folks know I was seriously struggling with all this. Afterwards I had several people thank me, tell me it was a helpful sermon (which to me is a much higher compliment than a "good" sermon). They were folks who tend to be fairly liberal politically. The conservative folks didn't mention it, but they didn't walk out in the middle of the sermon or ignore me or scold me afterwards.
Preaching for me is always a little like performance art. I don't think I could recreate it again if I wanted to and to be quite honest it is a little of an ecstatic experience in the most traditional meaning of that word. Even though I work from carefully prepared notes, I also let the Spirit guide me and sometimes when it's all over I'm not exactly sure what it is I've said. (I'm sure the congregation often feels the same way!).
One of the frustrations of preaching is that once the words are out of your mouth they have a life of their own. And you have no idea whether people have heard what it was you hoped they would hear. One of the graces of preaching is that often people hear what they need to hear, regardless of what you have said.
When I was a college chaplain I used to preach the Baccalaureate Service at commencement. One year a geology professor who was a member of a Reformed Presbyterian Church, and a philosophy professor, who was an amiable agnostic who was practicing atheism, both came up to me after the service and said, "That was a GREAT sermon." I've often wondered if I was really that good, or whether I hadn't actually said anything worthwhile at all. I hope it was that the words were used by the Holy Spirit to speak to the need in each of their lives.
I've had people come up to me and say, "I'll never forget that sermon you preached where you said, "...." and they will quote something to me that I don't ever remember saying (though I do often file it away for future reference because it's good stuff!). Neither do I remember the occasion nor the point of the sermon. It's kind of like the orange cones you see for miles along the highway with nary a truck nor a flagman in sight. Preaching should begin with a neon sign: Caution: Holy Spirit at work.
It was also our "Homecoming" Sunday, getting back into the swing of things after the summer. I know there are places where there are more snow birds who return for summers than folks who leave, but here in New England people take summer seriously -- those lake houses and beach houses that have been in the family since landing on Plimouth Rock demand serious allegiance. Churches are pretty quiet during the summers, barring unforeseen funerals.
I was torn between scripture and newspaper, between culture and church; and the lectionary reading on forgiveness in the fellowship from Matthew was a lesson I think congregations need to hear repeatedly.
So I tried to do it all. I was a little afraid that my message about appropriate ways to remember and ways to heal and ways to move on would be heard as unfeeling, unpatriotic; but my own emotional turmoil broke through to at least let folks know I was seriously struggling with all this. Afterwards I had several people thank me, tell me it was a helpful sermon (which to me is a much higher compliment than a "good" sermon). They were folks who tend to be fairly liberal politically. The conservative folks didn't mention it, but they didn't walk out in the middle of the sermon or ignore me or scold me afterwards.
Preaching for me is always a little like performance art. I don't think I could recreate it again if I wanted to and to be quite honest it is a little of an ecstatic experience in the most traditional meaning of that word. Even though I work from carefully prepared notes, I also let the Spirit guide me and sometimes when it's all over I'm not exactly sure what it is I've said. (I'm sure the congregation often feels the same way!).
One of the frustrations of preaching is that once the words are out of your mouth they have a life of their own. And you have no idea whether people have heard what it was you hoped they would hear. One of the graces of preaching is that often people hear what they need to hear, regardless of what you have said.
When I was a college chaplain I used to preach the Baccalaureate Service at commencement. One year a geology professor who was a member of a Reformed Presbyterian Church, and a philosophy professor, who was an amiable agnostic who was practicing atheism, both came up to me after the service and said, "That was a GREAT sermon." I've often wondered if I was really that good, or whether I hadn't actually said anything worthwhile at all. I hope it was that the words were used by the Holy Spirit to speak to the need in each of their lives.
I've had people come up to me and say, "I'll never forget that sermon you preached where you said, "...." and they will quote something to me that I don't ever remember saying (though I do often file it away for future reference because it's good stuff!). Neither do I remember the occasion nor the point of the sermon. It's kind of like the orange cones you see for miles along the highway with nary a truck nor a flagman in sight. Preaching should begin with a neon sign: Caution: Holy Spirit at work.
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