<< Back to Main Sermon Page

The Rev. Mark Byers
May 13, 2006- Year B, 5 Easter
St. Ives’, Arlington

No Fluff Preaching! No Rock Music!

My friend Nathan sent me this picture.

Now, I know a lot of people who, in spite of the questionable lyrics and volume of rock music, enjoy it. I enjoy it a great deal myself. And I know a lot of folks who, in spite of the fact that public schools in some areas can be a bit spotty, prefer not to home school their kids.

But who in any church isn’t against fluff preaching? I mean, NO PREACHER thinks that she or he is a fluff preacher. I certainly don’t think I am, although I’m sure that others have thought so at one time or another. And I have sometimes heard a sermon that I’ve thought was fluff. But I would be very surprised if you ever met a preacher who said, “You know, I don’t really consider my primary function as a preacher to be substantive. I think of myself as more of an entertainer.”

Isn’t it interesting to think about how it is that a community comes to say, in one way or another, “We’re serious about God, and other people aren’t?” That’s a ‘value judgment and a half’ that most of us who make it don’t even think twice about. It’s a founding principle of many churches: there are people who are saved, and there are people who are lost, and many of the people who think they’re saved are lost, and certainly all the people who don’t like talking about whether they’re saved are definitely lost. And I would bet that a leading cause of being lost is fluff preaching: Certainly it’s got to be as big a cause as rock music and a public school education.

I disagree with a lot of people about faith. I think that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction. I do not believe the Koran was dictated word-by-word from God to Mohammed. As fascinating and full of wisdom as I have found sections of the Bhagavad Gita, or various Buddhist writings, I don’t subscribe to Hindu or Buddhist cosmology. I’m a Christian, and I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

But I also believe that even Christian faith is tangled and hard to navigate with truth and integrity. Just because I believe something fervently about someone else, doesn’t mean that I should assume that I’ve been given some special insight about their condition. After all, it may very well be the case that the fact that I don’t want to home school my kids and that I still like rock music ARE going to be to my condemnation. (Although I find it hard to believe that God likes all contemporary Christian music either, frankly.)

Or it may be the case that the Mormons, or the Muslims, or the Unitarians, or some other faith IS right about God, and I’m wrong. Or that there is no God at all. It is certainly true that faith, even among those who are most fervent, is a gamble we are making that the things we believe are true are… well, true. And the things that others believe are true are either completely false, or at the very least not completely true.

I was saying to a small group of clergy the other day that I think it’s a shame and a sin that many times churches do mission and evangelism as acts of aggression against their neighbors. This sign I showed you is certainly an obvious and almost comical example of this. But other examples abound. Within the Episcopal Church, so-called “progressive” and “orthodox” factions willfully flout the authority of tradition, doctrine, and discipline in our church repeatedly and without meaningful consequence to themselves, and do it in the name of Jesus Christ. Other churches invade the public sphere and attempt to use the electoral process to reassert the social dominance of Christianity.

Some people will not agree with the observations I have made, but for those who do, I ask this question: How do I, with truth and integrity, proclaim the Gospel without lashing out at my neighbor? How do I believe in Jesus Christ and share the love of God even with those who I think believe wrongly? How can I be a citizen and yet draw a clear boundary between the claims of my Lord and Savior and the claims of my culture? More precisely, is the point of my ministry to correct the world around me, or to form a protective enclave where there is no fluff preaching or rock music? Or is there another way and purpose to bearing witness to Jesus Christ that is not only more effective, but closer to the heart of our Savior?

Certainly I don’t believe that I’m called to embrace whole-heartedly everything that different cultures endorse. But isn’t part of what John wrote in his letter precisely related to this very question?

“We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.”

Now, some would say that doesn’t mean that we embrace people who we believe are engaging in sin. That means we confront their sin. How precisely does Jesus confront the sin around him? Well, he does speak out against it, but all the speaking he does leads up to this: he died on the Cross for all of us while we were still enemies of God. That is to say that Jesus didn’t die simply to save those who already knew and loved him. He didn’t die only for his disciples and family and those who were most easily convinced by the apostles.

He died for those who were actively hostile, indifferent, or even betrayed him. If we imagine for a moment that Jesus Christ didn’t die for Judas or Osama Bin Laden, then we don’t know God very well. It is hard, but possible, for any one of us to sacrifice even our very lives for someone we love. We call those people heroes.

But to sacrifice for the people who are actively opposed to us, who hate us… Can any one of us claim that we would do that? Frankly, I think most Christians are uncomfortable with the notion even that Jesus Christ himself would do that. That’s how we come up with terms like “The Lost” and that’s how we can be dismissive and even angry when people don’t do church the way we do, or listen when we speak to them about Jesus Christ. That’s how, in thousands of different ways, we put up our barriers like so many lawn signs.

In Washington, they call the failure to find common ground with their opponents and move forward together in the business of governing the country “gridlock,” like a traffic jam. And they blame one another for causing the traffic jam, because that’s easier than admitting that everybody who is in a car and on the highway during a traffic jam is equally a part of the congestion on the road. We deceive ourselves in the church if we imagine that our situation with other Christians and with the world is all that different.

“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?”

Isn’t it strange, when you think about it, that we place all sorts of conditions and rules about how we will help other people, or include them, or love them, and yet Jesus went to the Cross without having negotiated some sort of deal, or compromise, but rather, in abject humility and carrying the cross that our ancestors placed on his back? Isn’t it strange, when you think about it, that when he rose from the dead he didn’t blame or punish all those who participated or watched or ignored his crucifixion?

Would it change the church and perhaps even the rest of the world dramatically if we quit putting out “No Fluff Preaching” signs and embraced our neighbors, even when we hate them, and even when embracing them draws blood? Isn’t that why he died and rose again? Isn’t that why we are baptized into his body?

<< Back to Main Sermon Page