by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS Micah 6:1-8, Luke 14:1-6, Ephesians 4:1-16
Transcribed from the sermon preached on JANUARY 29 2023
The national bird of the United States is the bald eagle. I think that is a good choice. We imagine that we should fly like a lone eagle to have freedom. This week our stormy weather finally gave way to crystal clear sunny skies. I was finally able to get over to the ocean to go surfing. I got over to the ocean just after sun rise and it was just gorgeous, with a moderate offshore wind holding up and blowing off the crest of the waves. While I was sitting and waiting for a set of waves to come, a long line of pelicans swooped down in formation gliding along the crest of the waves. It was stunningly beautiful synchronicity, communal flight, free and graceful yet together, together with the wind and the wave, too.
A high school religious studies class went in to see one of my colleagues. They asked her a group of questions. Most of the questions we will discuss as a group after worship in the adult forum. I decided to take one of the questions and respond to it myself. The question is
Should communal beliefs override self-contained individual free will?
I think this is a great question. It is such a great question that I certainly will not answer it adequately in one lone sermon. In fact, this is a question I think we must ask and answer in different contexts throughout our lives. Also, the answer we give may be different in different contexts. This question leads me to ask a couple more questions.
Which communal beliefs are we talking about? How do we know that what we think, or desire is self-contained? Where do the thoughts and desires we find in our head come from?
Jesus was a rebel. He was crucified for the difference between his own thinking and that of the people who had the power to crucify. But when he was questioned for healing a person on the Sabbath, for breaking a communal belief, he said “the law was made to do good, not harm.” He also said he came “not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” So, he was not trying to do away with communal beliefs but to help a people, as Martin Luther King Jr said “to rise up and live out the true meaning of our creed. “
So, both Jesus and King by their individual words and actions resisted certain communal beliefs while affirming and upholding other communal beliefs. So, context matters: What situation do we find ourselves in? what communal beliefs seem relevant to that situation? And how do those ideas talk to each other in that situation? In our own head?
Before we get to Christian communal beliefs, I want to reflect on an American cultural belief.
In Modern and Post-modern Capitalist culture, the market and thus culture emphasizes individualism, or the idea that we as individuals should consciously choose as much as possible rather than rely on any community. This idea which we get from our culture has gone so far that some of us tend to think that if you are a free individual that we have to have a different point of view from the community: that if you are not “different” then you are not “free” or authentic. Freedom is such a high value in our culture that it supersedes almost any other value by a long shot, and almost nobody questions its extremely high placement in the hierarchy of values. We just unconsciously accept, we do not choose the idea that we should personally and individually choose as much as possible, and further, that if we have beliefs, behaviors, and practices like others it means we must not be free thinking individuals. Other values like family, marriage, honoring elders, cooperation, commitment, compromise, discipline, and sacrifice for the greater good have faded in the shadow of individualism. We value free will, but it is not the only value worth having.
Individualism is great for the market economy, since we believe we should always seek something new and different in order to distinguish ourselves to show we are free, which drives the market to provide and sell the latest “different” thing or idea to us. The market reinforces this idea that to be a good and happy person you have to be free, to have it your way, and being free means being different. Therefore you need to purchase these new and different products to prove you are free. So, in western capitalist economies, freedom very often translates to the freedom to choose between things on sale.
The weird twist to this idea that we should individually choose and be different, to show others and ourselves we are free is that we tend to follow others in fashion and fad to show we are free choosing individuals. We copy others to show we are different. Those who sell themselves as different and free are copied. The community decides what different and free looks and sounds like today, so we copy the community to show we are individuals. If this seems a little schizophrenic it is. We are not supposed to care about being like and liked by others, so we try to be like others who seem to be good at not being like others. This leads to a rapid and constant change in culture, for when everyone catches up with the latest thing or belief to show how free an individual we are, it is no longer cool, fresh, or unique, so we have to change again, choose again, purchase again.
People in Western Capitalist cultures are constantly being jerked around and blindly following the latest thing that supposedly shows what a unique and free individual we are. It is an addicting tread mill in which many become trapped, and many are not as free as we would like to think.
Many, many other cultures do not place this supreme value on individuality nor assume that such a high priority on individual choice or sticking out as an individual is the key to contentment, happiness. Peoples in Japan, Korea, China, India, Israel, and rural agrarian cultures all over the world have cultures where individualism doesn’t stand so high on its own. Sticking out and being different is not nearly as important in most other cultures.
On Christian Understanding of Individual and Communal Identity and Beliefs
One of the beliefs Christians choose to agree upon is that the person, actions, and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are highly valuable for those seeking both individual and communal health and peace, so much so that his life reflects the Spirit of God, a spirit that is still alive and available to us today. Many, many conversations have happened over the last two thousand years about who Jesus was and is and what exactly makes his life and teachings important and valuable. Much of the description of who Jesus is and what his life and teachings do for us has been communicated through metaphor (the Messiah, the Shepherd, the Suffering or Sacrificial Servant or Sacrificial Lamb). We also have adopted language, story, descriptions, and metaphors from the Jewish tradition since Jesus was Jewish or Judean. So, we share the idea that there is Creator who creates the world and calls it good, and that each and every human individual is created unique and valuable. So, the Judeo-Christian tradition influenced the US Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (sic) are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We also receive the tradition of both communal identity and the prophetic critique of the power relations in that community from the Bible. When Martin Luther King Jr preaches “Let Justice flow down like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” he is quoting the prophet Amos who said the same thing amidst the injustice and inequality of Israel some 2,600 years ago. So very much of the individuality in Western culture that we so value today whether we are religious or not, comes from the communal Judeo/Christian tradition.
Another one of our Protestant Christian communal beliefs is that individuals can and should be educated so that they have the tools to determine for themselves whether the community and its leaders are staying true to the ideas that lead to both individual and communal peace and justice. It is assumed that peace and justice are primary values and that what leads to the establishment of peace and justice in society is mostly good for individual wellbeing.
From the individual point of view, the primary supreme value for Christians is love. We seek to be loving in our individual actions and that will lead to peace and justice on the communal level. So, for Christians, the individual choice to be loving like Jesus takes primacy over individual free will to be selfish, and sometimes even over our individual free will to avoid suffering. The logic is, if enough of us are willing to sacrifice some of our desires and sometimes sacrifice immediate personal well-being out of love, in the long run we will all be more free, safe, and happy. But even if our individual commitment to love doesn’t lead to communal peace and justice, at least we will know how to be connected to God who is love.
Another communal belief of Christians is that humans are always fallible and finite. That is, we do not and never will know enough or be good enough to be perfect. We make mistakes. Both individually and collectively, we are “sinful.” Greed, arrogance, selfishness, hatred, violence, prejudice, racism, sexism, environmental and economic exploitation, and all the other ways we humans mistreat each other have and will continue to infect us. Thus again, we emphasize both individual and collective self-criticism and humility. Phrases and emphasis on institutional or systemic racism or sexism and intersectionality reflect our culture’s new secular religious puritanism, a rephrase of the Christian notion that sin is all around us and deeper than individual acts. But in Christianity sin is deeper even than race and gender, or nation – it infects all of us.
So then in Christianity, we elevate the value of grace. Grace is the idea that even though we are prone to mess up, God loves us anyway. God wants us to try our best to do the right thing, to learn from our mistakes, to wake up and try not to repeat them. Grace is like forgiveness, but it is more than that. For now, I will break it into three things: First, Grace is the freedom to go ahead and do our best even though we know ahead of time it might not be perfect. Second, grace is the gift of doing it right when we do. Third, Grace is forgiveness after the fact when we don’t.
Now when it comes to individual and communal beliefs, grace allows us to accept the fact that we live in a culture or community which has a bunch of beliefs and practices we go along with, or to accept criticism from the community about how we are behaving, or to accept the possibility that our unique situation and person don’t quite fit the norm (and that is ok). Grace empowers us to give back criticism to the community and say its norms are not promoting peace, justice, or the wellbeing of individuals or certain segments of the community.
With regard to particular doctrines or beliefs, various church communities hold differing views and individuals within these communities will have some differences of beliefs or understanding. We swim in a stream of tradition and trust. There is wisdom in those who have gone before us, even as we understand God may be leading us in new directions. Either way we should not just accept just because, nor should we just reject just on a whim. We often think we are so much smarter and better than those who have gone before us. In some ways we are, in others we are not.
There is a saying that “We are free from the law in Christ.” But, while breaking a law or norm, or holding a different belief may not condemn us, we still want to do the right thing and walk together as a community. New is not always better. Different is not always better. Sometimes it is. I would hope in America that some of us might begin to be different by not needing to be different, to be different by learning to be content where we are rather than always wanting more, different, and bigger. I think nature would appreciate that. I would hope we might freely choose commitment to community and search for those winds that allow us to fly in synchronicity, together and free. Personally, I would rather be a pelican than an eagle. As far as I know, there is no mention of pelicans in the bible. But I have decided, with my individual free will, in this context, in this land I call holy, God is here with us, lifting us up as a community, that we might fly together and free.