Last call for "Call" - last one in the series!

So we’ve been talking about “Call” over these past few weeks in the Season after Epiphany. And how all this relates to our Christian life. What is “Call”? IN that classic sense it is guidance from God coming from within our faith or our religion – guidance that leads us towards some action usually, some form of living out our faith.

This is connected with Discipleship. The first few Sundays in our Epiphany season, some of the Gospel readings had to do with Jesus calling disciples. It’s that part of our faith that informs how we live our lives. Discipleship is our journey as we listen for and to God’s call in our lives.

Jesus, Paul, Peter and various other disciples understood this connection between Discipleship and Call. You were called to live your faith! … More fully… as you grew into it. You were called to express what you believed, to put it into action – “faith” in that sense wasn’t just intellectual agreement to some theological statements about what God was or wasn’t like, and left at that… as it often has become today. Faith really was a way of thinking, acting, living, of going about your daily life.

It wasn’t about following scripts or traditions for the sake of traditions. It wasn’t about some prescribed actions – doing certain things at certain times (like giving up chocolate for Lent… and then when Lent is over, to start eating chocolate again, without any real faith-filled thought as to why this deprivation might fit into the whole “faith” thing) with no connection to the real world. How does- for example- giving up something in Lent help you recognize where you might serve God better, or help make the world a better place, or help you in your efforts to become a better person? If it does, great! But more often, we do it because “it’s just what we do”.

In the early church it was a whole lot more about really living out the faith – at the risk of rejection (by society as a whole- since “Christians” were thought of with deep suspicion… or of rejection by your family- if you were the only Christian, you were often at risk of rejection) or death. In the latter part of the pre-Constantinian times, Christians were imprisoned, and/or killed rather easily.

Prior to Constantine, Christianity was often seem, by those inside the religion and those outside, as a separate movement- outside the scope of the culture. Almost a “separatist” movement. It was seen with deep suspicion by the rest of the culture- Christians did not offer sacrifices to the gods of daily living like the agricultural gods, the gods of the rotary club, the gods of the republic, etc. Adherence to these other gods helped cement your fidelity to your society… but these people didn’t do that! They did not take oaths of allegiance, they did not accept their emperor as a god… things that really put them outside the scope of their culture. They were seen then, sort of like how we see Amish and/or Jehovah’s Witnesses… they are in our culture, and perhaps even benefit from it in some ways, but do not really seem to have an investment in keeping it going. The Jehovah’s Witnesses do not take any oaths of allegiance to our constitution or pledge allegiance to our republic, they do not vote, they do not serve in the Armed Services… all this as a statement of their faith. They, and the Amish, could really be said to be in our world but not of it.

Well, the early Christians were considered the same way by others, only more so. In fact, Nero blamed the burning of Rome on them.

Then Constantine comes along, around the 5^th Century, uniting the lands under one political banner, uniting the people under one religion…. Christianity. Christianity becomes not only the religion of the land, it becomes the politically correct religion to be in. If you wanted to advance in your political career… you became a Christian. If you wanted to get that “in” in that good job… you became a Christian. He organized it, he institutionalized it… he put it to very good political use. In this sense, he made Christianity “public”- he brought it out from the edges and into the very center of public life- he made it accessible to all! But some say the worst thing that could have happened to Christianity is what he did to it – from the discipleship and faith perspective.

Christianity became in short order a Too Big To Fail organization – it’s institutionalized, systematized, theologized! What was before a difference of opinion in terms of belief, now became heresy. The church went from the fringe of society, to now having power over the people – political power! The church went from being apart from the culture, to now BECOMING the culture. It went from a time where disciples and followers of the way of Jesus could and often would speak truth to power… to then becoming the power. Some say that when this happened, the church lost its prophetic voice.

A pastor friend who told me a story about something that happened many years ago. It seems that in a particular part of Baltimore, there was an article about a gun store that seemed to have been involved in straw purchases, in illegal activities, etc. As it turns out, this article motivated some out-of-town anti-gun organization to come and begin protests around the store. Well, this caused the locals (who up to this point may have had some negative opinion about the guns store) to actually rally around “one of their own” – regardless of their previous personal beliefs about the gun store. This left some of the local clergy in a quandary. What do we do now? Who do we support? Do we publicly agree with the out-of-town anti gun protesters, who actually do have a point about the activity of the gun store? Or do we support the locals – people we minster with and to and for- and rally around the gun store as well? So they had some kind of prayer service- to acknowledge the feelings and thoughts of the community, and to pray for peace. She said this community prayer service seemed to smack of “irrelevance”. She expressed the idea that the church knew not what to do, and did something that seemed to have no real point in the grand scheme of things. She said she thought those attending the prayer service might in fact have been attending the wake of the church as a relevant part of society- that part that can speak truth to power, that part that can be an instigator of change.

The church became, in a few generations after Constantine legitimized this new religion, that which that which Jesus railed against. It became an institution that was quick to use its rules of religion to diminish the human spirit. It was easy for it so make ordinances and rules to control the behavior of its adherents, it was another tool to make people into good citizens…. Another tool to order society.

I was at a church conference not long after ordination, centered around “Staff Ministry” for Lutheran pastors. This was for associate pastors, and assistant pastors. At one point the conference leader – who happened to be a Lutheran pastor – wanted to help us understand something, so he asks us to “Give me an example of what churches fight about.” One of he people next to me says- “Moving the baptismal font.” There was a little laughter from us, but the leader wasn’t buying this. “No really, can anyone think of an example of what some churches might fight about.” We responded- “Really, that’s what churches fight about!” Moving the pulpit, moving the flags, changing some custom. Sometimes things like this make you question whether people even remember what honest, real religion and faith is even about!

Jesus referred to this type of religion as white-washed tombs; pretty on the outside, but at best empty on the inside, and at worst killing the soul they are pretending to be feeding.

There has been an old saying in Buddhism for a while now, and it was a title of a book back in the ‘60’s; “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” What in the world night this mean? Makes no sense to us! We can convert it to our Christian taste – “If you meet Jesus on the road, kill him!” Why would you want to kill the very one you are ostensibly trying to following, to emulate??? Again, makes no sense does it! Well, here the idea is that to turn the Buddha into a religious fetish.. and to turn Buddhism into a religion… is to totally miss the essence of what the (Siddartha) Buddha was trying to teach. And whatever image you have of the Buddha, is exactly that… YOUR image…. Not the real Buddha! So, if you meet the Buddha on the road – it’s really a construct of your own mind. We only notice that which we are prepared to notice; based on our awareness, background, personal development, etc. The “real” Buddha may have walked by you a hundred times without us even noticing.

But… in true Buddhist fashion… having said that, keep up with your spiritual practices. Keep doing those things that sustain your faith. Keep doing those things that help you live a meaningful life. Keep being a disciple, keep following your “call”!

Strange all this coming from a paid representative of a religious institution! Those of us who represent the institution actually have a pretty huge investment in keeping the institution going, don’t we. Maybe we, more than the average person, would know the dark side of religion. Sometimes religion gets in the way of faithfully walking with God.

And yet, in spite of the fact that all these “churchy” things DO NOT SAVE US… maybe… maybe… those practices, those daily, weekly, and seasonal practices of faith; like participating in the life of a congregation of faith of some sort, like praying together- or alone, actually taking time for prayer (actual conscious time) in our daily lives, like giving up something for Lent (or adding some spiritual practice), or praying the rosary of some kind, or meditating, or engaging in the Liturgical Seasonal practices of faith.. with a right mind and heart can be very helpful in our journey of discipleship, in our journey of “Call”.

Those things often criticized over centuries – that dark side of religion – only seem to mask, but do not remove from its root, those things that do inspire, that do ignite connection to the divine. Those things, deep down, do lead us to helping us live that growing faith in our daily lives; like doing acts of love and kindness, of responding as we would imagine Jesus might want us to, of choosing things (or not choosing other things) in the real world – as informed by our faith.

That is being a disciple! That is living our call to be Christ in the world!

Peace,

Pr. C-