Listening to God, Part III:  Assault Rifles and Zen Decor

Transcribed from the sermon preached March 10, 2013

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Psalm 120:1-7, Jeremiah 6:10-14, James 3:6-18, Matthew 26: 45-56

Here at St Johns one of the things we value is inclusivity. God created and calls us all. Yet in our desire to be inclusive, there is a danger of being passive rather than peacemakers. In this postmodern age spirituality can easily focus on the love of nature and the internal peace of the individual.  In this Lenten series on listening to God, we began with listening to God in nature.  It doesn’t matter who we are, what our faith background, what our political party; it is easy for all to agree that Creation sings of the glory of God.  
And next week we will reflect on listening to God through silence, through creating space, slowing down enough to breathe and listen.  All religious traditions are for this and it is an individual thing, so it works well in our individualistic culture.  It helps all the more that one of the great places to get in tune with ourselves and find quiet is in nature.  There is a fast growing market for home décor and gardens, which promise to help you find your inner peace.  One ad says, “If you are tired of feeling stressed out and overworked, creating Zen inspired interiors will make you forget your worries, and relish in relaxation and peace.”  There is no question that where we live and how we decorate our home can influence how we feel, especially if our home helps shelter us from the lack of peace in the world.  There is also a huge market for spas, retreats, and resorts where wealthy people can afford to travel to exclusive places to find inner peace.  The world is a crazy madhouse, so the least and maybe the best we can do is focus on inner peace.  In our culture, which is so focused on individual freedom and choice, a spirituality, which calls us to find our own inner peace, is very inclusive because everyone is allowed and expected to define it for themselves.  It requires no commitment, no involvement, no relationship.  Now don’t get me wrong, as I said two of our weeks during lent focusing on listening to God promote just such natural and inner reflection and rest.  I love yoga, and the personal physical, mental and spiritual relaxation and peace it provides.  It helps me be a better Christian.  And there are certainly prophetic, socially active Hindu and Buddhist doctrines and people.  But I don’t think there is any question that the popular form of Yoga and Buddhism in the United States has shaped to fit the upper middle class individualistic capitalist consumer.

Psychology and therapy too have found their niche in our culture.  I am grateful for it and have personally benefited from therapy.  I recommend it often and am working on completing my Dr. Min in pastoral counseling now.  It helps us get out of our own way, and helps loosen up stuck relationships.  It is very valuable.  Yet it too is individually focused. Even though psychology and therapists are judgmental, they strive to be non-judgmental.  Psychology clearly has a bias for independence and individuality.  Peace, for psychology is an individual thing.  

Much of Church evangelism and marketing reminds church leaders that seekers these days will choose churches that meet their needs, and needs are defined individually. A lot of churches today are also focused on individual salvation.  Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?  Yes, then it doesn’t matter if we cause climate change, if the Palestinian Christians are being displaced or there are not meaningful jobs that pay a living wage for the working class; it doesn’t matter that the world goes to hell, because you are going to heaven.  Now don’t get me wrong, we believe faith in Jesus can transform individual lives, and if you are stuck in a behavioral nightmare or addiction, Jesus can change that in an instance by his grace.  Humbling ourselves and accepting God’s grace is the most powerful medicine in the world.  But the question becomes what next?  Who are we to be, what are we to be about once we have received God’s grace?

Yet even with all of the businesses focusing on your individual needs and desires, with all the decoration and vacation and spirituality and psychology and everything else, loneliness, alienation and depression have increased rather than decreased.  Violence, Greed, unjust gain, dishonesty, fear and judgment of the other are all around us.  I am afraid, as God says through Jeremiah, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
In addition to grace, the thing that has kept me proud of the Christian faith is the ongoing presence of prophets who continually call us to covenant community, peace and justice.  We are not in this alone; our identity is tied up with the community and the world.  Our own peace and prosperity is tied to the peace and prosperity of our community and nation, and our peace and prosperity of our community and nation is tied to the peace and prosperity of the world.  According to the prophets, it doesn’t matter if this is the truth we are seeking, this is the truth of God. They are not always popular; they don’t lead the biggest congregations; they don’t have a long life expectancy. But because of them, nations rise and fall, but the word of God lives forever. Now here is the cool thing about the prophets: they are incredibly grounded, they are strong individuals, they go out in nature or a garden and pray and find inner peace.  And because of this powerful inner connection to the God of inclusive love, to the God of covenant community, they are strong enough to stand alone if need be to call people back to God’s peace and God’s justice.  

These are not wimpy people the prophets: they do not speak of peace because they lack the courage of a soldier.  They are not passive people who hide from trouble or retreat to nature to find God and stay there.  They are not so worried about getting along and being popular or being successful in this world that they are afraid to speak an inconvenient truth.  They go on their vision quest, take their Sabbath and sabbatical, go up to the mountain, out on the lake or into the garden to pray and listen to God, and then with clarity and renewed passion and commitment to God’s children they get back and get busy.  

We have a problem with gun violence in this country.  There are 30,000 deaths a year from guns in this country.  On average, 83 Americans are killed every day by someone using a gun. 68% of murders and 55% of suicides involve a gun.  Nine children are killed by gun violence on a typical day in America.  As followers of the non-violent prophet Jesus of Nazareth, we are going to act.  Better law enforcement is one way, and so we have a letter to our representatives for you to sign today.  That is one thing to do, but the problem is bigger than that.  We have seen that when there is a mass shooting, gun sales go up.  Why?  In part it is because of marketing of gun manufacturers. But that is only a symptom of the bigger reason.  Because we are a nation led to solve problems from an individualistic perspective.  If our society is going crazy, our response is to protect ourselves. But Jesus said those who live by the sword die by the sword. Inner peace and personal protection, Zen furniture and assault rifles, in America: they may both come from the same logic – that we resolve our fear and lack of peace individually and materially. Furniture and assault rifles will not solve our problems. Neither will the government, which has its own issues with self-serving violence.  Michael Moore is prophetic in Bowling for Columbine when he notes the hypocrisy of adults who expect kids to be peaceful as the parents and nation manufacture weapons, use them and market them across the world.   We must watch carefully for the decline of civil liberties and the intrusion of government.  But it is time we acknowledge that whatever particular freedom we value, whatever financial and material niche we serve or profit from, we will tend to deny its part of the problem and its need for change. To whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear? Asks Jeremiah. Behold, their ears are closed, they cannot listen.

The idea that sex is not related to family and should be indulged in whenever titillation strikes may seem to work fine for the privileged.  Yet, non-committed sex has led to poor mothers and fatherless children.  Young boys find role models for what it means to be a man on the Internet or in gangs and in prison.  The government is a poor husband for single moms and a poor father to fatherless children.  The government can only help kids from starving and throw them in jail. It can only try to stop people after they break the law.  It does not teach the child on the street or the businessman how to be kind, honest or just - whether or not there is a law to say so.  The government cannot teach us to work hard and save.  

The media is a mess and in denial.  They say, “we don’t shape culture, we just mirror it.”  You can’t blame us and besides, we have freedom of expression.  So any child or man can see the most shameful things within just seconds: videotaped bullying, child pornography, degradation, racism, prejudice and hatred in every form we can think of and then some.  And since the way to conform and be popular is not to conform and push the social envelope, each movie, song or film has to be a little more violent, a little more shocking.  It is like a frog in a pot of water placed on the fire to boil: we get used to the last level of shocking and it is no longer shocking, so we need more to be shocked.  The Simpsons becomes the Family Guy and South Park; and in the supposed world of politically correct, there is equality of bigotry. The bigotry doesn’t necessarily win in these shows, but we get to laugh at it and it is back on tomorrow night. The only thing that loses is restraint.  The same network that has relentlessly biased and divisive news also feeds us garbage TV programs, and then blames Democrats and aliens for the nations problems.  The solution, says another, is relentlessly biased and divisive news from the other side.  Reality TV is reality. Violent video games are reality.  Alienated anger is reality, and give this anger an AR-15, mass shootings are reality.
 
Institutional religion has made it easy for people to lose faith.  Often stuck in petty bickering, petrified doctrine and bureaucracy, endowing imperialism and war with God’s blessing, promoting ignorance of science as the truth of faith, defending patriarchy and abuse, there is plenty of reason for God and people to be angry at the Church.
Have we reached a time, as Livy said of Rome, when we can endure neither our vices nor their cure?  Jonothan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and a member of the House of Lords in England, notes that in the 1820s,
“in Britain and America, a similar phenomenon occurred. People were moving from villages to cities. Families were disrupted. Young people were separated from their parents and no longer under their control. Alcohol consumption rose dramatically. So did violence. In the 1820s it was unsafe to walk the streets of London because of pickpockets by day and "unruly ruffians" by night.
“What happened over the next 30 years was a massive shift in public opinion. There was an unprecedented growth in charities, friendly societies, working men's institutes, temperance groups, church and synagogue associations, Sunday schools, YMCA buildings and moral campaigns of every shape and size, fighting slavery or child labor or inhuman working conditions. The common factor was their focus on the building of moral character, self-discipline, willpower and personal responsibility. It worked. Within a single generation, crime rates came down and social order was restored. What was achieved was nothing less than the re-moralization of society—much of it driven by religion.

Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam is famous for his diagnosis of the breakdown of social capital he called "bowling alone." More people were going bowling, but fewer were joining teams. It was a symbol of the loss of community in an age of rampant individualism. That was the bad news. At the end of 2010, he published the good news. Social capital, he wrote in "American Grace," has not disappeared. It is alive and well and can be found in churches, synagogues and other places of worship. Religious people, he discovered, make better neighbors and citizens. They are more likely to give to charity, volunteer, assist a homeless person, donate blood, spend time with someone feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger, help someone find a job and take part in local civic life. Affiliation to a religious community is the best predictor of altruism and empathy: better than education, age, income, gender or race.

We are all in this together, no matter our education, age, income, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or race.  We are all a part of the problem.  We are sexual beings, family members, business persons, psychologists, government employees, people who rely on the government, gun owners, consumers of media and the earth’s resources, seekers of individual peace and security.  We are all part of the problem, and we are all invited into God’s Church where the forgiveness of Christ is offered to all.  And that is just the beginning.  As a member of Gods prophetic Church, we are called to covenant community, to get off our comfortable couch and put down our guns and put on our pants, to attach to our freedom responsibility. Wee are called to hold each other accountable, as family members, as consumers, as business people and as citizens.  We are to work together collectively, to preach good news, hope, peace and justice. This is the wake up call of the prophetic of our faith. For this we can be proud. For this we may have hope. For this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.