In the name of God- Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Which
came first, the chicken or the egg? Or in theological terms, are we called to
orthodoxy or orthopraxy? Orthodoxy means right belief and orthopraxy means
right action. That is do we listen to St. Paul who wrote “For by grace you have
been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing” or shall we listen to
St. James when he says “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my
works will show you my faith...so faith without works is dead.” So which is it?
I
pose this question because a recent survey done by the Brookings Institution
found that 59% of Americans say that being a religious person is “about living
a good life and doing the right thing,” while 36% say that it is primarily
about “having faith and the right beliefs.” And as I read about this data, I
couldn’t help but wonder how this attitude does or does not fit with the Gospel
of Jesus. If the clear majority of Americans think that religion is just about
being a good person, then what does Jesus have to do with any of this?
Sociologists have coined the term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism to describe the
faith of the thousands of teenagers they interviewed. And they found that the
prevailing beliefs are that God created the world, wants us to be nice, that the
goal of life is to be happy, that God need not be involved in our lives unless
there is a problem, and that good people go to heaven when they die. And it
seems that it’s not just teens that espouse this belief, but 59% of the
population as well.
There
was an article on the Huffington Post recently called “Do You Really Need
Church?” And at least according to this data, the answer seems to be “no.” Why
do people come to church? Community? You can get that at Scouts, or Rotary, or
tailgating. Service? You can get that by volunteering at Urban Ministry or
Habitat for Humanity. Intellectual stimulation? You can read books or attend
lectures. Support groups? There are lots of secular groups dedicated to healing
and wellness. Because if religion really is just about being a good person, it
seems that you really don’t need the Church. And so the question remains, do
you really need the Church?
This
article tells the story of a campus chaplain having a conversation with a
student who had concluded that the Church had become irrelevant. And the
chaplain considered the question for a while and pondered: “Why don't I just
hit the bagel shop, join another yoga class, buy some more U2 tickets (you
know, for a little transcendence) and volunteer at a soup kitchen every once in
awhile? Why bother with Church at all?” And she concludes that she does need
the Church because as she says, “I have a terrible memory. Especially when it
comes to remembering who I am as a child of God. Especially when it comes to
remembering what God has done, and continues to do, in and through Jesus
Christ. I forget who I am. I forget who God is. I forget God’s epic story of
Redemption and Liberation and Renewal and Beauty and Hope. So I admit it. I get
tired. And I get distracted. And more often than not, I forget. I need Church,
because Church reminds me of everything that’s important.” And I couldn’t say
it any better myself.
That
is what the Church provides that no other civic or community group could ever
begin to provide- a transcendent story. And this isn’t just some olden tale of
yesteryear. The Church makes this story a new reality each time we celebrate
the Sacraments of the Church. In the Sacraments, we elevate earth heavenward
and get a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. And in doing so, we are reminded
of our story. That God deeply loves us and cares for us. But it’s easy to
forget that. Our lives are busy, the world will tell you otherwise, and
sometimes we’ll doubt that we’re lovable. And so the Church is here to remind
you of that love and to empower you to share that love.
Our
first reading today comes from a book that perhaps is new to some of you. It’s
known as Sirach or Ecclesiasticus. It is dated to roughly the second century BC
and is a book of wisdom sayings, often found the apocryphal section of the
Bible. And the part that was read this morning expresses the same sentiment about
the importance of knowing our story. The writers says “The beginning of human
pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.” We get
off track when we forsake, or forget, about God.
The
passage concludes with “Pride was not created for human beings, or violent
anger for those born of women.” In other words, this sort of pride that pulls
us away from God doesn’t need to be normal. There is another way for us to
operate. We don’t have to forget about God. And I find this to be an extremely
joyful and liberating message, to hear that pride and violence wasn’t created
for us.
In
Luke today, Jesus tells a story that is about liberation as well. There are a
lot of ways to approach this parable that Jesus tells in Luke. A fine sermon
could be preached on the role and obligations of guests and the importance of
humility, but I’ll leave that task for another time. Instead, I’d like to focus
on the role and obligations of the host; in particular, Jesus’ exhortation that
“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your
brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in
return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor,
the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they
cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
To
our modern ears, this sounds like Jesus was advocating being a generous person,
perhaps even a proponent of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism who does the “right
thing.” But what Jesus was saying is more subversive than that. A host was
known by the people who came to their banquets. Social events, just as they are
today, are all about who’s who. And so the host would have to be risking their
credibility and honor to invite such people as the poor, crippled, lame, and
blind. Typically if you invite someone you don’t know that well to such an
event, either you’re hoping that they’ll invite you to something in the future,
or you want to be able to call in a favor at some point down the road.
But
Jesus takes that off the table. He says that we are to invite these people into
our lives not so that we’ll be gaining any social capital, but because we could
never be repaid for our generosity. That’s tough. Look around this church
building? I think it’s safe to say that there are more friends, family members,
and rich neighbors than there are poor, crippled, lame, or blind people here.
I’ve never hosted or been invited to a party where this happened. Have you?
We
like prestige and sitting in those places of honor, as Jesus observes. We live
by idioms such as “you can judge the character of a person by the company they
keep.” What in the world would it say about us if we hung out with the
homeless, the mentally ill, felons? Some of you know that the church I served
before coming to St. Francis is a rather well known one. It’s situated directly
across the street from the White House. And you know what? I liked the prestige
that came with it. I liked walking up to my third floor office and having a
view of the Washington Monument and White House. I liked being invited to the
White House as a member of the clergy from prestigious St. John’s Church. I
thought cool that some of our regular parishioners included the Director of the
FBI and Presidents Bush and Obama. My ego loves having stories to tell about
conversations with the Secretary of Defense at a Christmas party. And I suspect
that many of you know that feeling as well. Now to be clear, St. John’s is a
wonderful parish with a true heart for and dedication to the Gospel, and for
every member of Congress that we had as a member, we had even more people who
were homeless or undocumented immigrants. It is a place that could go to your
head, but it is also a place where profound ministry happens.
But
as Sirach says “pride was not created for human beings.” So how do we avoid
that temptation? We need to remember. We need to avoid the trap of Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism. We need to realize that it isn’t just about doing the right
thing through orthopraxy. We need to realize religion isn’t about our actions,
but God’s. Now I realize that the term “orthodoxy” doesn’t have the best
reputation. People fight over what is orthodox and what isn’t. Orthodoxy has
become synonymous with close-mindedness. But the only way that I know to have
the courage to be the kind of host that Jesus is suggesting is to be rooted in
God’s story- to know that God is the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, and Lover of
all of Creation and of me as well. Simply trying to be a nice person doesn’t
give us the intestinal fortitude to do this.
Fifty
years ago, Martin Luther King did not stand on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial and tell us about his dream because he thought doing so would make him
a good person. He didn’t do it because he believed in a Moralistic Therapeutic
Deity. He did it because he believed in the dream of God. He had the courage to
share his dream because he believed and trusted that God is a God of
compassion, of justice, of love, of mercy, of hope, and not just some vague
being in the sky that wishes that we be nice people. And so he concluded his
remarks by saying “when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from
every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be
able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men,
Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and
sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
This
freedom is the good news this morning. This freedom is exactly what we find
when we allow ourselves to live in orthodoxy, having the right belief that God
is a living, breathing, caring, loving God. We can debate theology and fill in
the other gaps later. But the orthodoxy that I hope that you walk away this
morning is the orthodoxy expressed in Psalm 46: “Be still, and know that I am
God,” it is the orthodoxy expressed in Hebrews this morning: “Jesus Christ is
the same yesterday and today and forever.”
This
orthodoxy will drive us to do crazy things, to do things we never thought that
we’d do, things that we never thought possible, such as dreaming that “little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We might start
talking about Jesus in public, or perhaps we’ll reexamine our budgets and share
more, perhaps we’ll start hanging out with the poor and homeless. And we might
be a little uncomfortable; it might feel strange to act so radically. But let
us remember today’s words from Hebrews when we find ourselves in those awkward moments
of ministry- “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do
to me?”
So
which is it? Orthodoxy or orthopraxy? If we can have the courage, strength, and
grace to live our faith, to be orthodox and not just focus on being “a nice
person,” we too might remember the powerful freedom that comes through living
for God.
And
that, my brothers and sisters, is why we need the Church. We need to be
reminded of the transformative and transcendent presence of God in our lives
and in our world through the Sacraments. We need to be reminded that the
Christian life is about living for God, not simply about being a nice person
who does the right things. We need to be reminded of the freedom that we have through
Jesus Christ who is the same today as he was yesterday to live for the Kingdom
of God instead of the kingdoms of this world. We need to be reminded that God’s
story is our story. That is why we need all of you as members of the Body of
Christ, because our communal story is made richer when there are more voices,
when there are more people at the wedding banquet.
But there are a
lot of people missing right now. There are a lot of people whom the Church has
forgotten, ignored, pushed aside, disenfranchised, abused, and made itself
irrelevant to. And this morning Jesus is exhorting us to invite them to the
banquet, to remind them who they are, to tell them that they are the beloved
children of God, to tell them that they are our brothers and sisters. So I’d
like ask you all do please do me a favor this week- remember that you are loved
and redeemed. Remember that the Christian life isn’t about prestige or power,
but rather the freedom to reach out to those that need to know of God’s love
for them. Find someone that needs to be reminded of that, and tell them. Tell
them that you love them, and remind them that God does too.
