Scripture: Psalm 63:1-8; Matthew 5:1-11
My thoughts this morning are still rooted in the season of Lent. I was thinking what I thought of as Lenten type thoughts last week, and I am thinking Lenten type thoughts again this week. But before I tell you what it is I’m thinking about, let me tell you how I came to be thinking about it.
I was rummaging around among the materials I’ve saved in my computer that have something to do with Lent, and I came across a statement that I had liked enough to keep but that had nothing attached to it as to who wrote it or where it came from. It’s long enough ago by now that I have no hope of remembering, so I just have to apologize to whomever I am quoting without proper attribution.
The few paragraphs I had copied out said essentially this: that Lent didn’t seem to be a tremendously popular religious observance, that many Christians pretty much ignore it while others treat it as a kind of excessively serious time that doesn’t compete very well with the start of spring training or the promise of springtime. Christians tend to pay attention to it in a kind of self-punishing spirit, or not at all. This person, on the other hand, said that Lent was his—or her—favorite time of year. It is, she said, a very counter-cultural holiday. There is nothing to buy. People don’t send cards to each other to wish each other a happy Lent. It’s not a marketable thing. In fact the whole point of it is not buying, not consuming, giving something up. And for this person that makes Lent not such a serious affair after all, but a joyous one. I’ll quote the last sentence of what I have copied into my computer. “A little self-denial is more than just a nice thing in this glutted age and culture. It’s a celebration.”
Now there, I thought to myself, is a sentiment I could turn into a sermon. Let’s see. How about a sermon that reflects on all the ways our Madison Avenue culture drums into us the idea that we can buy our way to happiness or that our sense of self-worth depends on what we possess, and how Madison Avenue is so good at that that even though we know those things are not true, they work their way into our psyche anyway? I could preach that. Or how about a sermon that suggests that our whole society give up something for Lent, like…I don’t know, like…oil—not olive oil, petroleum? OK so that’s not realistic, but maybe the sermon could just suggest that we cut back a bit on our oil consumption, or how about the radical idea that we intentionally cut back overall on our standard of living. Actually reduce our standard of living. We could do that and still consume way more than our fair share of the world’s resources. I could preach that sermon too. Or, let’s see, there was a mention of self-denial in that statement. How about a sermon on how the need for instant gratification has taken over our lives, how easily seduced we are by the promise of immediate results, how hard it is to sell projects that require long, slow, painful effort—from losing weight to fighting racism. Yeah, I think I could preach that sermon too. And probably several others as well that would fit in nicely with the notion of Lent as a truly counter-cultural observance.
To be honest, I’m not sure why I am not preaching any of those sermons. They could all be sermons I might give, and probably will one day if I haven’t already. I’m really not sure why I rejected them for today, but I did. What I found myself thinking about instead is not how our consumer society undermines our spiritual values, not how we could stand to be less acquisitive as a whole society and not measure our society’s worth either by material measures, and not how we have been sold a bill of goods that everything ought to be as easy as picking a jar off a shelf at the grocery store. But as I thought about those things, each of which in its own way suggests that the consumer mentality is in competition with religion or with a more spiritual approach and pretty much has the upper hand, I also started to wonder about something else, not how consumerism clashes with religion but how it has in many ways worked its way into religion, infiltrated the spiritual life, co-opted the spiritual life. Maybe spirituality has come to be not so much an answer to consumerism as an extension of it.
Here are the kinds of questions on my mind. Is religion, in what ways has religion become just one more consumer commodity, something to be packaged and marketed like any other product? Do we look on religious faith as a means to some other end, like inner peace or happiness or health or salvation—in which case we could ask the same questions of our religious faith we might ask of a can of soup: does it taste good and is it good for us or bad for us? Has religion become just one more way to satisfy our needs and gratify our desires?
Hearing me ask the questions in that way, you may have the feeling that I think the answer to all those questions is “yes”. You would be right. I do have a pretty strong suspicion that the answer to those questions is “yes”. We do package and market religion as though it were something to sell. We do sometimes, in fact quite often, look on faith as the means to some end we have in mind. We do use religion as a way to satisfy needs and gratify desires and if it doesn’t do those things, we may just give it up. What good is it? All of that is true in important ways. My additional question is: Is that all bad? I confess to some confusion at this point. I don’t have an absolutely clear answer for you, or for myself, about this. I’m not sure that I’m supposed to have a clear answer about this. It may be that the life we live with God is just by its nature not very clear and not subject to being neatly described. I’ve always liked that part of 1Corinthians 13 that says we seek through a glass darkly, because it describes so much of my experience. “Now we know in part” is for sure the truth. So let me just share some of my thoughts, even though they may not be completely consistent with each other.
I have always had problems with approaches to religion where it seemed that the main goal was for individuals to get into heaven after they die. For one thing, I’ve felt that life in this world needs to be loved and cherished as God loves and cherishes it, and as scripture says God loves and cherishes it. It is not just some place we put up with until it’s time for heaven and where there are some tests we have to pass in order to have the door to heaven opened to us. But also I have difficulty with that approach to religion because it has always seemed to me to be essentially self-centered. Religion is precisely that thing that I need, that commodity if you will, that will get me where I want to go. It is of a higher order than an earthly commodity because it promises me something better than an earthly reward, something better than creaturely comforts and earthly pleasures, better even than earthly happiness or fulfillment. But still the principle is essentially a consumerist idea. I am trying to satisfy some need or desire. So I’ve always seen that approach to religion as tainted with self-interest, more than tainted, infused with it. I believe or have faith because of what it will get me, in this case salvation. That has always been clearly, so far as I am concerned, off the mark of what religion should be all about.
But then what happens when we bring this down to earth? What if what we are looking for is not so much otherworldly bliss, but something much more this-worldly, such as peace or happiness or a sense of wholeness? Those things have the advantage of valuing the very real and immediate lives that you and I are engaged in, but in the long run are they any less self-centered? Do we believe in God, trust God, have faith in God, praise God, follow Jesus—do we do any of these things with no ulterior motive, or do we do them because it will make me more at peace with myself, reduce my stress, make me happier or more joyful, make me healthier physically, emotionally, have some result that is good for me. Isn’t all that, too, religion that is tainted with self-interest, that we’re using to get us someplace we want to go or some feeling we want to have?
I can say yes to all that, and yet I also do truly believe that at least at some points in our lives and under some circumstances God wants those good things for us. I have trouble relating to a God who does not want his children to be filled with love and joy and peace. I have trouble relating to a God who does not want her children to know those good things that our souls desire for ourselves and for each other. So why not a religion that helps us along those paths? In fact, isn’t that understanding of religion pretty deeply embedded in us? It is common for people of faith to say that acquiring things will not fill the needs of the soul. There are empty spaces inside us that need to be filled but that cannot be filled by consumer goods, cars or food or alcohol. There are empty spaces inside us that cannot be filled by consuming more entertainment. There are empty spaces inside us that cannot be filled by work. But those empty spaces do need to be filled.
Is there anything wrong with plugging up the leaks, filling in the empty spaces? Sometimes we do this intentionally. We are grieving over a loss of some kind. We adopt a strategy of staying busy so grief doesn’t get the best of us. Do something constructive. It’s better than wallowing or doing something destructive. So yes we fill up the empty spaces the best we can sometimes, with whatever is available. But ultimately, we people of faith are apt to say, the only thing that can really fill the empty spaces inside us is God. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what we legitimately expect God to do? Feed us? Fill us? Fill up those empty spaces, those very deep needs of the soul? Isn’t that what God is all about?
Well, yes, I say to myself. But maybe no too. And also I don’t know. I want to hold on to a God and believe in a God who wants every single child of God to have—abundantly—happiness and health and peace and wholeness and salvation of eternal oneness with God. I also am wanting to believe in God, I am wanting to love God with no ulterior motive, no personal agenda, no conditions, no strings attached.
And then there’s Jesus, who does sometimes stand at the center of my faith and sometimes haunts the margins of it, and it’s coming toward the end of Lent and I picture him having decided to set out for Jerusalem, knowing at the very least, that it’s a dangerous thing to do. Somehow in my pictures of him during the last phases of his life health, happiness, serenity, fulfillment, salvation—none of that quite fits in the picture. Somehow his relationship to God does not seem to have been about any of that, not then anyhow. I’m not sure there are any easy, precise words for what it was all about, but not about those things we can so easily believe God is about the business of providing.
I also think of what we call The Beatitudes, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus began by saying “blessed are the poor in spirit”. Some people prefer the version in Luke where Jesus says simply, “Blessed are the poor”. It shows that the gospel is about economics too and that Jesus had a special concern for those who lived in material poverty. I’m grateful for that too. I’m grateful for Luke’s version, but I also take Matthew’s version seriously. The poor in spirit. Who is that exactly? And why are they blessed? In our glutted age and culture, where it is assumed that our need is there to be satisfied, where we put such a high value on abundance, we might expect to hear Jesus say blessed are those not who are rich in material things but who are rich in spirit, rich in their prayer life, rich in their love of God, rich in faithfulness and serenity. In fact, at other points in the gospels he is reported to have said pretty much that. But not here. An honest church member many years ago asked me about that. Don’t we want to be rich in the things of the spirit? What’s so great about poverty of the spirit? Why does Jesus bless it?
I honestly don’t remember what I said then. What I’m thinking now is that maybe not every emptiness of the soul is meant to be filled, not by material things, not by being entertained, or by work, or even by God. Maybe because those parts of us, those empty parts, are precious too. And maybe because there’s more to me and more to God and more to my relationship to God than the filling of my spirit. Maybe part of my need is to stay unfilled, to be in a place of longing, longing for the coming of God’s reign, and longing just for God, just God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 13, 2005