Comments on a Sermon

This past Sunday morning I went to a church in St. Augustine. I'm not going to divulge the name of the church because I am about to critique a sermon given by the pastor there, and I have no interest in flinging personal insults at any fellow Christian. I feel that letting the individual church remain anonymous is the best way to comment on the practices and ideology of Christianity today without actually insulting anyone publicly.

The sermon was primarily preached on Luke 2:7, the passage in which Mary and Joseph are told that there is no room for them in the inn. I was deeply disappointed to watch the pastor recycle clichés and present a sermon that I can only assume was almost meaningless to most of the people present. I doubt it deeply affected anyone because everyone has heard this sermon in some variation a hundred times before. He basically compared the inn-keeper to Christians today, and asked whether we made any room for Jesus in our lives. Would we give Jesus the presidential suite in the inn of our lives, or would we relegate him to the stable? What a tame, overused message with absolutely no bite.

How long will ministers insist on delivering sermons about some vague concept of making room for Jesus in our personal lives? What does that even mean? What does it mean to "make room" for Jesus in our lives? Does it mean going to church once or more each week, attending bible studies, reading our bibles or a Christian devotional book, and praying before meals? Perhaps in part, but those measures seem to me to be lazy and weak. I believe that we Christians have a completely skewed vision of the Christian self.

It is time to stop focusing completely on the private sphere of our lives. We have all bought into the Enlightenment separation of the private and the public spheres. And Christianity, now labeled a "religion", is relegated to the private sphere, because religion is a private matter, as opposed to public matters like business and politics. To "make room for Jesus" in our lives means to integrate our "religion" into the completely private sphere of our practices. What a comfortable and easy task that is! By making Christianity a private religion, we don't have to face the scrutiny of others, and we rarely have to change the way we interact with others.

Let's face it. Our lives are made up of our social interactions. This is evident not only from a sociological and psychological perspective, but also from a biblical perspective. The Messiah acts on earth through the Church, a social body of Christians. This social body called the Church is the central focus in the book of Acts. Jesus himself instituted this idea of a centrally important social body of Christians when he gathered twelve disciples to learn from him and carry out his mission.

So why are Western Christians so focused on "religion", on Christianity as a personal, private aspect of life? If anything, Christianity opposes the personal. As humans, our every action is driven by the motivation to protect and enrich ourselves. We are mammals, animals like the others, driven by the need to survive and procreate. However, there is something that makes us different from the other animals. God created us in his image. He calls us to sacrifice our animal interests, like Jesus did, in order to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The longer I go through life, the more I am convinced that humans are fundamentally selfish. However, Christians are called and empowered by God to constantly battle our self-serving nature. God has revealed to us that we are so much more than a self. We are children of God, and we were created to live forever in the Kingdom of God.

So it is time to cast aside this division between the public and the private. It is time to cast aside this category of religion that we often use to describe and understand Christianity. Your relationship with Jesus, your calling by God should not be separated from your job, your finances, your relationships with friends and strangers, or your politics. Otherwise, your faith is a farce. To use a simple and common example, stop joking about how you are a rude driver, about how you always tailgate and cut people off. All you are doing is revealing a festering sore in your life. You are just declaring to the world that your faith is safely relegated to other, more convenient aspects of your life.

So yes, "make room for Jesus" in your life. But realize that this is a fundamentally social calling. Remember that you will have to make room for Jesus when you are in a hurry to get somewhere on the road, or when a homeless person asks you for a dollar, or when someone new shows up on the periphery of your friend group, or when you are faced with a choice between making a bigger profit or selling a better product.

I need to start writing.

I'm not sure if I really thought I would ever write in the blog again. However, I have recently been having a crisis about what I want to do with my life. I'm starting to doubt whether I should go on the get a PhD in religious studies. I have discovered more and more evidence pointing to the horrible prospects of the job market for academics in the humanities. I am also witnessing more and more clearly the failure of members of the academy to actually reach and communicate with those outside of the academy. One thing I know I want to do for sure is communicate with those who are not scholars. I want to make a real impact in the world, rather than an impact confined to a few old white men who happen to be interested in the same obscure specialized field in which I am writing. In order to communicate in the way I want to, I need to start laying out my thoughts. I need to start writing. So here goes; I hope it lasts.

Today I am going to talk about Christmas. Most of the people who know me well know I have an awful lot to say about Christmas. I believe that Christmas has been commandeered and shaped by secular America and nominal Christians. The biggest enemies of the Church and Christmas are not those who insist on saying "Happy Holidays" or those atheists who recently put up a billboard outside the Lincoln Tunnel claiming that the Nativity story is only a myth. Our biggest enemies are those who only manifest their "Christianity" on Christmas and Easter. These are people who are most driven by the secular humanism and Western Liberalism (and I don't mean Democrats. I mean the kind of Classical Liberalism that reigns on both sides of the aisle.) that runs rampant in America, but are hardly driven at all by the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. For these people, Christmas is all about the "spirit of giving" or some other vague warm and fuzzy notion that we have all seen in a thousand Christmas tv specials that center around Santa Claus, or a lost elf, or Rudolph. For these nominal Christians, Christmas is that "most wonderful time of the year" when you for once don't cut someone off in a traffic jam. The "spirit of giving" is well and good, but it is not as significant as the Holy Spirit. Remember, that Spirit that fell upon Mary the Jewish peasant so that she would give birth to the incarnate son of God? This is the spirit that secular America won't touch with a ten-foot pole.

Now I don't feel like taking the time or effort to explore this issue fully, but I do want to touch upon two aspects of Christmas that America holds sacred and bluntly assault them. The first aspect I want to undermine is the idea of "Home for the Holidays." This idea that Christmas is fundamentally about family. Actually, it's not. It's about the birth of the Messiah. And furthermore, the Christmas story itself is fundamentally one of complete alienation, not warm and cozy family values. Think about it. Joseph and Mary are forced to travel away from their home while Mary is 8 or 9 months pregnant. What is more alienating than that? One might argue that Bethlehem was the town of Joseph's family, but this does not exactly seem to be the case. Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to register because it was the "city of David" and he was descended from David. If you look at the account in Luke, it does not look like Joseph had any close family or friends in Bethlehem at the time when he arrived with his pregnant fiancée. I suppose he might have gotten the kind of reception that I would get if I traveled back to the region of Germany where my family is descended from. There was absolutely no one who offered him and his pregnant wife a place to stay. Instead, his wife had to give birth in a shelter for livestock without the support of any family or friends.

To make matters worse, the gospel of Matthew tells us that shortly after Jesus' birth, Joseph and Mary had to flee their home again, except this time they had to leave the land of Judea all together. They had to sojourn in Egypt. Thus, the alienation only gets worse. Joseph and Mary are forced to raise a child in a completely foreign land.

We might also take a look at the alienation of the incarnation itself. Jesus, the eternal Logos, takes on a human body. He takes on the burdens and limitations of human life. He enters into the most dramatic alienation that has ever occurred. He funnels his divinity into the world. He becomes a human body. He distances himself from the Father he has known from before time and comes to see God only as we do, as in a glass darkly.

I'm not saying that we should all stop going to visit our families on Christmas, or that we should make an effort to alienate ourselves. I am just saying that the cosiness of family is not the point of Christmas. It is not the most important thing. It is not the focus. Maybe we should spend more time remembering those who are unable to retreat to the arms of a welcoming family. And beyond just remembering those who are alienated, maybe we should embrace the Nativity as a call to embrace those who are lost or alone. We need to hear the call to protect those who have no safety.

The next sacred cow I would like to slaughter is Santa Claus. I despise Santa Claus. I'm pretty sure there are a significant number of people throughout the world who think that Christmas is the American celebration of the birth of Santa Claus. Now I have no problem with the story of St. Nicholas. I do have a problem with that imaginary fat man dressed in red who is supposed to slide down chimneys delivering presents to middle-class children whose parents have a decent amount of disposable income. I become full of fury when I see some Christmas movie or tv commercial which assumes that if Santa is unable to deliver his gifts, then Christmas is cancelled. I am so sick of this Santa Claus and his "Christmas magic" that helps us to realize the "true meaning of Christmas" (which, of course, never involves the birth of Christ) while also making reindeer fly. Why do parents promote Santa Claus? What is the point? He automatically becomes the focus of Christmas for children. Why focus on the birth of Jesus when you have a flamboyant man with a giant beard at the mall offering you presents? Jesus certainly doesn't offer up presents on demand like that, and he doesn't look nearly as interesting. Is it better for children to believe in an imaginary man that brings them presents when they are good, though he often happens to bring more presents to wealthier children, or for children to realize that their parents are giving them presents as an expression of love? Also, what sorts of ideas about God are Christian parents teaching their children when they promote Santa Claus? Why should children believe that their parents are telling the truth about God when mom and dad are clearly completely willing to promote lies about mythical figures in order to promote happiness. Could not Jesus, then, be just another mythical Christmas character that mom and dad made up to spread good feelings and cheer? Indeed, it seems like Santa has become a bastardized image of God based on Americans' idealized image of God. Santa appears exactly when you expect him to. He gives clear earthly rewards to the good and punishments to the naughty. Furthermore, if you're good, Santa will give you exactly what you ask for.

Well, that concludes my post. I think I'm at least fairly satisfied with it. I hope I gave you guys something to think about.

- Daniel