"Telling our Faith's Story" | The Rev. Peter Sipple | March 21, 2021
SERMON – Lent 5B – Trinity, New Haven, March 21, 2021
We Episcopalians are known for loving our Church. We love its language, its music, its décor, its usually welcoming red front doors, its theology and liturgy, and often but not always, its clergy. Many of us are comforted by the Church’s organization and leadership, and in recent years by the motive of inclusivity, by the intention to be open and welcoming. Above all, we feel at home with our Church’s understanding of and teaching about Jesus.
If, then, there’s so much that’s positive about our denomination, why has it declined in the number of folks who attend and support it? The other so-called main-line denominations are equally bewildered. Searching for answers launches us into research in the social sciences; but for this morning let’s look to ourselves first: how might we Christians express our love in such a way as to attract more outsiders to our worshiping communities? What might we do?
Jesus had an answer and posed a challenge to those who worshiped God with him: don’t love your worship too much! Don’t love the trappings of worship to the degree that they become what you cherish and celebrate instead of God. Doing so will in the long run make others aliens instead of converts. As described in the Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke , Jesus stormed into the Temple, upsetting the liturgical apple cart. He was reminding the Jews that the buying and selling of birds for sacrifice was not at all what God had in mind when establishing the new covenant described by Jeremiah: “I will put my law within them; I will write it on their hearts.” God will inhere in what God’s people do and say. They won’t need to teach or learn about God because that knowledge will have become second nature. As we heard in the Fourth Gospel this morning, Jesus makes the same point, now in John’s theological language: as we reduce our loyalty to the things we hold most dear, we can discover the new life God offers us as a gift. That was Jesus’ response to the Greeks who came to interview him: they will need to bury the world’s attractions before they can follow me and rise to the new life God offers.
Soon we’ll re-encounter the death and resurrection of Jesus. Meanwhile, Lent seems a good time to ask ourselves: are we caught up in the earthly things we cherish, including our Church, and assume that the meaning they give our lives is the ultimate meaning? Is it possible that’s how we appear to others, as members of a secret society instead of people whose hearts are given over to God? Like the Greeks coming to see Jesus, the cultures outside Christian churches may see us holding tightly to our faith, polishing it like a gemstone and keeping it in our secret places. But there it won’t grow! Again we confront the paradox that love can only be kept as we give it away.
“Love is something if you give it away, give it away, give it away.
Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more.
It's just like a magic penny, hold it tight and you won't have any.
Lend it, spend it, and you'll have so many they'll roll all over the floor.”
Sunday school wisdom!
Letting our faith be an active thing for others to see in our deeds and hear in our words makes us—yup!—evangelists. The term may scare us because of its various uses in today’s culture. But the thing is, the way we live day-to-day is the way we tell our story, the story of our faith, the way our faith in Jesus has helped us through and over tough times, the way it sheds light on life’s challenging questions, feeds our spiritual hunger and makes our hearts glad. Bishop Michael Curry teaches that “unselfish, sacrificial living isn’t about ignoring or denying or destroying yourself. It’s about discovering your true self—the self that looks like God—and living life from that grounding.” So rather than keeping faith safe in a bushel basket or stored in the confines of our church, we can show forth an evangelical zeal in our own delightful ways—the ways of our true self.
Consider some evangelists who are popular these days. A recent op-ed piece in the NY Times describes them as “influencers.” They’re offering advice and guidance mostly, it seems, to people with no religious affiliation—the “none-of-the-aboves.” The writer, Leigh Stein, notes that nearly a quarter of Millennials are not affiliated with a specific religion. “Many” she says, “who have turned their backs on religious tradition have found alternative scripture online. Our new belief system is a blend of left-wing political orthodoxy, feminism, self-optimization, therapy, astrology and Dolly Parton. And we’ve found a different kind of clergy: personal growth influencers who give us permission, validation, and community on demand…we don’t even have to put down our phones… We’re still drawn to spiritual counsel, especially when it doubles as entertainment.”
Ms. Stein observes that the influencers’ millions of followers, mainly women, are “desperate for good vibes, coping skills for modern life, and proactive steps to combat injustice and inequality.” Nevertheless, she has found, somewhat to her surprise, that “the pandemic has cracked open inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe. I have an overdraft on my outrage account. I want moral authority from someone [else]… The women we’ve chosen as our moral leaders aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood?... There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Instead of helping us engage with our most important questions, our screens might be distracting us from them.” And Leigh Stein concludes that “maybe we actually need to go to something like church? It’s time to search for meaning beyond the electric church that keeps us addicted to our phones and alienated from our closest kin.”
You and I don’t need to compete with influencers, but we can offer our own faith stories to those searching for meaning and a spiritual home. As we are assured of God’s ubiquitous love and forgiveness, others will find that assurance as abundantly life-giving as we do. To those who view the institution of church as outmoded, unwelcoming or remote, let them see our love for God in our actions and words, in the ingenious ways we spend that love. AMEN.