Talking About the Weather

The Rev. Amy Morgan
August 15, 2010

 

 

 

 

A few months after I began seminary, I sat with my friend, Kelly, comparing notes on the people we’d met so far.

 

“My next-door neighbors are the Hiltons. Have you met them?”

“Oh yeah,” Kelly replied, “They’re really nice.”

“There’s a girl – Katie – on my hall.”

“Yeah, I’ve met her. She’s really nice.”

“She is nice.”

“You know, I had lunch with a couple of people from our Old Testament class. They were nice.”

“I think our theology professors are nice, don’t you think?”

“Oh, for sure. They’re super nice.”

 

Finally, Kelly had had enough. “Everybody’s nice!” she shouted in disgust.

 

And everybody was nice. After all, we were on the campus of a Presbyterian Seminary. Everyone was studying the bible and learning how to be pastoral and living in Christian community. When a moving truck pulled up, it was generally surrounded quickly by nice people offering to help unload or pack up. When someone was sitting alone in the dining hall, nice people came and sat with them. We’re Christians. We’re supposed to be nice, right?

 

Maybe. But maybe not. In fact, maybe being nice is getting in the way of being Christian.

 

The cover article in this week’s Christian Century magazine is about the Christian formation of teens in America. A few years ago, the first-ever study of the spirituality of teens in America was conducted. What it found is that the faith we are passing on to the next generation is very nice, but looks very little like Christianity.

 

The authors of the study call this new religion Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. The Christianity most American teens ascribe to, the Christianity we have taught them, goes something like this:

 

Youth ministry guru Mark Yacconelli calls this “nice and safe” Christianity, and it’s what most churches want for their youth ministries. Make church fun so that our kids will want to come and we won’t have to fight with them about it. Teach our kids how to make good choices so they’ll be safe and successful in life. That is what most American churches want for their youth. It is little wonder youth aren’t particularly interested in American Christianity. What 15-year-old wants to be “nice and safe”?

 

But this is what we’ve taught them Christianity is about. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Be nice. God is there when you need God. Believe in God and don’t worry about Jesus too much.

 

Because the truth is, Jesus wasn’t nice. Jesus isn’t like a bank account, as the Christian Century article says. You can’t just have Jesus in case you need him in the future. Jesus demands our whole life, our whole being.

 

And, yes, Jesus is divisive.

 

On the front cover of your bulletin, you’ll notice that the beautiful stained glass picture Diane Lea created for our theme this year has been, shall we say, tampered with. This shattered image of releasing, renewing, and restoring God’s world is the image we get when Jesus starts speaking in this passage today. All these images of Jesus as the Prince of Peace, the one who frees captives, heals, uplifts, blesses peacemakers…those images are shattered by the words, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

 

It’s like Jesus threw a baseball right into that notion of peace on earth and goodwill to all. Suddenly, Jesus is no longer the nice boy next door we hope our kid hangs out with. Now he’s the jerk who threw a ball through our expensive window. Suddenly, Jesus is not such a nice guy.

 

But in fact, Jesus did not advocate for being nice. Being a peacemaker is not the same thing as being nice. Loving others has nothing to do with being nice to others. Peace on earth and good will to all is only accomplished by confronting the injustices, prejudices, conflicts, and practices that keep God’s kingdom vision from being fully realized. Jesus is the prince of peace. But peace often comes at a price. Jesus paid that price on the cross. And as he was preparing to do that, he warned those around him that bringing in the kingdom of God would create a crisis for the status quo.

 

When the captives are released, there is division between the captors and the releasers.When God’s world is renewed, there is division between those who profited from it the way it was and those who worked for renewal.When God’s world is finally restored, there will be division between those who are oriented on God, who want the world restored to God, and those who feel like the world belongs to them.The kingdom of God creates a crisis for the status quo.

 

There’s this great scene in the book “The Help” where a young man from a prominent family invites the young woman he’s been dating over to meet his parents. Her parents are invited as well, and as the family sits down to dinner, the fathers begin discussion the politics of race. The book is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960’s amid the tumult of integration and non-violent resistance to segregation laws. It turns out that the two men agree that things should change, but the one man is a politician who refuses to alter his public opinion on the matter for fear of tarnishing his reputation and losing an election. As the other man begins to press him on this, his wife quickly changes the subject to talk about the weather. She wants her daughter to marry this well-off young man. She wants to maintain the status quo. She wants to be nice. She understands the issues, and what is at stake, and she chooses to talk about the weather rather than changing the world. She does this so that her world, her nice and safe world, doesn’t have to change.

 

And that is what Jesus is so riled up about in our passage today. He calls the people in the crowd hypocrites because they know how to interpret the signs of the times just as well as they can interpret the changing weather patterns. They know what Jesus has done and what he has taught. They aren’t ignorant to what they’re supposed to do. But they would rather talk about the weather than talk about changing the world.Because in those times, as in ours, changing the world was not nice and safe.

 

The kingdom of God is a kingdom of reconciliation and peace, but it is a kingdom that also requires decision and commitment. Those commitments and decisions can be divisive. Today, 100 members of our church are worshipping in the unity of the Holy Spirit with a church from a different tradition, with people who are predominantly of a different race. This is an activity that is all about unity and reconciliation and peace. It’s an act of worship and an act of courage. It is also an act of witness. Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America, and we are challenging that because we believe that what we are doing is living into God’s kingdom vision.

 

But there are plenty of people who prefer the status quo. This kind of action, this kind of kingdom living, creates division between those who want the world to look more like God’s kingdom and those who profit from and prefer the way things are.

 

Harvey Carey, pastor of the Citadel of Faith church in downtown Detroit, tells the story of how his ministry here began. He felt called to create a multi-ethnic church in the heart of one of the worst neighborhoods of Detroit. As this ministry began to thrive, as white people moved from the suburbs to be closer to the church and live out its ministry and mission, Carey says he was called in by a group of the most influential African-American pastors in Detroit. They told him that what he was doing was wrong, it was against the will of God, and they were going to see to it that it failed. For Harvey Carey, God’s unity, God’s peace, living into God’s kingdom vision, created division.

 

The division created by God’s kingdom, the crisis created by Jesus’ ministry, flies in the face of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It’s not about being nice and safe. It’s about risking everything – your reputation, your paycheck, maybe your very life – to live into the kingdom vision Jesus proclaimed. It’s about reaching out to and fully including those on the margins, not because it’s the nice thing to do, but because it’s what Jesus did and calls us to do. Its about knowing God is there for us SO THAT we can be a blessing for others. And it’s about proclaiming the amazing love of Jesus Christ in a culture that is much more comfortable talking about a generalized God that possibly everyone can believe in who makes no claims on our life.

 

If your faith sounds a bit like this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, if Jesus isn’t creating a crisis in your life, I would invite you to come talk to me about that. If you’d rather have your children love you than love God and know Jesus, come talk to me about that. If you don’t talk about Jesus and the kingdom vision he proclaimed, either because you don’t know how to, or because you’d rather not experience the division that arises from that, come talk to me about that.

 

Because I don’t want our youth to adhere to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It’s a bankrupt faith. I want them to love God, to know the grace of Jesus Christ, and to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to release, renew, and restore God’s world. I don’t want us as a church to talk about the weather. I want us to change the world.

 

We are doing that today, at New Bethel. We are doing that by including children and adults with disabilities. We are doing that by creating five new worship experiences to draw in people who might otherwise never set foot in any church. We are doing it in our Confirmation classes, and music programs, and fellowship times.

We aren’t going to talk about the weather here at First Presbyterian. We’re going to let Jesus create a crisis in our lives. We might shatter the stained glass. But that might be what it takes to piece this messy world together.