“The Call”
Mark 9:30-37
Last
week as I was driving somewhere I heard part of an interview on NPR about the
history of fraternal organizations and lodges
During the interview, someone said that people don’t join groups as much
as they used to. He mentioned Robert
Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone: The
Collapse and Revival of American Community, which was published in
2000—about the time social scientists started talking more about a trend of
declining in-person social relationships and community, which became more of a trend from around 1950 on.[1]
I’d read Bowling Alone when it was first published. The title of the book came from a trend in bowling: the number of people who bowled had increased
between 1970 and 1990, but the number of people who bowled in leagues had
decreased significantly. If people bowl
alone, they don’t participate in social interaction and civic discussions that
might occur in a league environment.
I think the trends Putnam and others
were identifying fifteen years ago are even more evident today, in the
aggregate loss in membership and number of volunteers in Parent-Teacher Associations,
Women’s Clubs, any number of civic organizations, and the church. Our leisure time has become much more individualized,
via television and internet.
We live in a culture in which individualism
and consumerism are prominent values. As I was looking through my notes on this
scripture passage, I came across a commentary Kenneth Woodward wrote in Newsweek some time ago, in which he said
that one of the most common theological questions asked in our society is “What
do I want?” [2]
In that article, Woodward described
a kind of “mix-em, match-em, salad-bar
spirituality."
You know how salad bars work. You take what you want: the mixed greens, the cherry tomatoes, the
potato salad. You leave behind what you don't
want: the sprouts, the pickled beets,
the broccoli and cauliflower. Woodward
says a lot of people today assemble their spiritual lives in much the same way. He cites a contemporary seeker who declares,
"Instead of me fitting a religion, I found a religion to fit me."
"What do I want?" is the question we might ask standing in the
door of an open refrigerator. Have you
ever done that? I feel this strange, vague
hunger inside me. I know I want something.
"What do I want?" is the
question we ask standing in the shopping mall, or the car lot-- hoping something we buy might make us feel whole
or happy... or just better.
"What do I want?" When that becomes the only question—or the
main question-- religious faith is no
longer seen as the center of life and an integrating force holding our lives
together-- but rather as just one more
thing added into the life we try to put together for ourselves… or something to
take or leave, depending on what I want.
The thought that religious faith is
only about getting what we want can be pretty attractive... seductive.
By contrast, Jesus' words in today’s
gospel lesson are anything but pretty, when he talks about how he will have to
suffer…be rejected…and die.
Though the way of Jesus sounds strange-- there is also something strangely appealing
about it. Jesus speaks so confidently
about the new life he offers: life so
abundant that if you give it away you only find more of it. Life so precious that it can't be bought-- but only received as a gift. The gospel is paradoxical and counter-cultural.
The popular culture gives us strong
messages about who we are and what we’re worth and what life means. We’re bombarded by commercials on T.V. that
tell us that we’ll be happy if we use the right products to keep up
appearances…if we have the right look for ourselves and our homes. Even young children are targeted by
advertisers who want to sell toys and junk food.
The way of consumerism invites us to
grasp and grab... and work and toil,
never satisfied, always wanting more....
always trying to fill some deep emptiness which can't be filled with
anything less than God.
When we have ears to hear, we’re
invited to choose the way that leads to life and abundance. As Christians, we’re challenged by our faith
to repent—to re-think, to open ourselves to be transformed by the good news of
the gospel.
One of the great joys of the
Christian life is when parents present their children for baptism. This is their public declaration that they
want their child to be a part of the church and to have a ministry in it—even
before the child is old enough to be fully aware of all the love that surrounds
her or him.
For some of us, our children can be
the reason we begin to participate more faithfully in the life of Christ. In my own life, I’d been turned off by some
experiences in the church I grew up in, and so I left the church when I went
away to college. Part of what drew me
back into the church some years later was a feeling that I wanted my son to be nurtured
in a church family.
Because of my own experience, I
identify with the story of a woman named Karin in Nick Taylor’s book Ordinary Miracles: Life in a Small Church.[3] Karin
had been baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and defected as a teen
to the Methodists, who had a better youth group. Then, after high school, she fell away from
church. “I graduated from nursing
school…and went to work. There was no time
for God in my life. But our God is a patient God,” she wrote.
Soon she was living her version of
the American dream. She had a husband
who loved her and whom she loved, a house in the suburbs, a station wagon in
the driveway, two kids, the dog, the whole nine yards. The material things were all there. But something was missing.
Karin realized she was looking for
God in her life when she brought her children to church and made baptismal
promises for them. She said, “God was
calling me back, and I finally heard….”
At St. Mary’s, she found a loving
community of people trying to live as Jesus taught. The congregation welcomed her and her
husband, and later her husband decided he wanted to live his life as a follower
of Jesus.
Karin made a discovery about the
essence of her spiritual journey as she was making a trip she’d been dreading,
when she delivered her first baby into a new life away at college. Her daughter had stayed up most of the night
at a farewell party, and she was sleeping in the seat next to her. Karin wrote, “I had so many things to say to
her. There’s a saying that your children
aren’t yours to keep, but God loans them to you for a while. It was time for me to step to the sidelines.
Karin reflected: “God has blessed [us] with our
daughters. That morning on the long
drive, I thought about the past eighteen years and how different my life has
become. Would I be the same person I am,
if not for this sleeping young woman next to me? Again,
I realized God had put Susan and her sisters into my life for a reason. In making sure they had a religious
education, my own knowledge and love of God has been deepened
immeasurably. The void I felt so long
ago has been filled.”
When parents bring their children
for baptism and promise to raise them in the faith, it can be a new beginning
for the parents—and for all of us-- as well.
Baptism is central to our identity
as Christians. As we live into our
baptism, we learn who we are and whose we are.
We are nurtured to see ourselves as beloved children of God, and that
can make all the difference!
Baptism is a life-changing,
transforming event in our lives. The baptismal
font stands at the front of sanctuary as we worship God every Sunday, reminding
us that we’ve been initiated into this congregation, as well as into the
universal church of Jesus Christ. It
reminds us that we’re an important part of the Body of Christ—marked and
identified as a disciple of Christ. The
church is where we grow in faith and learn over a lifetime what it means to
follow Jesus Christ.
In our Presbyterian and Reformed
tradition, our understanding of baptism emphasizes God’s initiative. God reaches out graciously to us, and offers
us the gift of life in the kingdom as a free gift. We respond by dedicating our lives to Jesus
Christ as our Lord and Savior and committing ourselves to follow him. Baptism is the beginning of our life in the
church…a first step in a journey that takes a lifetime.
When we baptize children, we promise
to teach them who they are in the light of God’s truth. We promise to teach them what makes them different
as part of a holy people…a royal priesthood…consecrated to God’s service. We’re called to tell the good news of what
God has done for us in Jesus Christ…and to show in our lives how God has saved
us by calling us out of darkness into God’s marvelous light.[4]
When parents present their child for
baptism, they promise to live the Christian faith themselves, and to teach that
faith to their children, by word and example.
When we baptize a child, the whole congregation makes promises to
nurture that child in a variety of ways, and to teach them the faith. To grow up in the faith, we and our children
need to worship and learn together—in our families, and in the faith community
which is the church.
Each time we baptize a new
Christian, we’re inviting that person on a journey that will take a lifetime. Today, we’re inviting Leah to be part of the
great adventure we call church.
What God will make of Leah’s life,
or where God will lead her, we don’t know.
But what we do know…what we can say
with certainty-- because we have God’s promise—is that God is with us every
step of the way.
May God bless Leah and her
family…and all of us on our adventure as we discern our call further into the
life God is offering us!
Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
October 11, 2015
[1] Robert
D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse
and Revival of American Community (2000).
[2] Kenneth
L. Woodward and others, “A Time to Seek,” Newsweek (Dec. 17, 1990), page 50.
[3] Nick
Taylor, Ordinary Miracles: Life in a
Small Church (1993).
[4] 1 Peter
2:9
No comments:
Post a Comment