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.
4 comments:
Today I had a conversation with my dad. He said he's been pushing for outreach in his sermons and it's been really difficult because the majority of his church body is senior citizens, and so many of them are very content with how their Christianity has progressed so far. He said the other week he mentioned the thought of selling their building after figuring out how to best proceed with the money gained as a church. Apparently their building is old and nearing the phase of dilapidation. An appraiser told him they could probably get $500,000 for it. They don't have a huge congregation, and the building could definitely be considered superfluous. Regardless, this was a breaking point for one elderly couple at the church. My dad said that the lady actually told him before they left, "I just want my little church again." (Perhaps I could get the preacher's info privately and send her his way? jk, jk.)
He had also started a Wednesday night thing at Starbucks so that people would be a bit more willing to bring their friends and coworkers. There would also be a class at the church building. After a few weeks, he was asked to stop the Starbucks thing because there weren't enough people at the church building on Wednesdays. He said he had to go back and babysit the Christians.
It's really sad how misinformed people are about what Christ was actually saying. Misinformed or lackluster. Either way it's sad.
I definitely agree about the rude driving example. That kind of thing really is a good indicator on one's perception of his or her faith, I think. I've heard a lot of Christians respond to such actions (e.g. rude driving, foul language, temper problems, etc.) by saying that it's something that can't be helped. "I'm just not even thinking and it happens." I think it's probably a lame excuse that's hiding a lack of will, but people seem to stand by it.
Sorry if I'm doing this wrong and making my comments too long. I don't know what general blog commenting protocol is. Regardless, at least you know your blog is inspiring thought.
I appreciate your comments. It lets me know that someone is listening.
I like your comments, Daniel and Daniel. The church, too many times, takes the form of a personally encouraging social club. People like the consistency and the way they feel enriched. The mentality is: I have a good relationship with Jesus because I pray and read my Bible and vote a certain way and talk to others about salvation. We can talk it out and pray it out instead of acting it out. Why has social justice become a secular ideal? It just doesn't make sense to spend money to build and maintain churches that don't actually make a contribution to society outside of helping the self-justified feel comfortable.
I'm so sick of the idea that my praying for someone will fix everything. The disciples weren't called to go to their homes and pray for disciples; they were called to recklessly abandon themselves to action. I know that's something I'm not doing well enough. I think I'm afraid.
I think the going home and praying for people thing rather than going out and acting upon conviction is not just a result of how churches are conducted, though that has a part in it. I feel like that mindset begins in people's lives outside of the church and is carried over (the problem already seems obvious). When you think about the work place, school, going to the store or mall, there's always an assumed professional demeanor that is kept up for mostly justified reasons. It's one thing to refrain from acting immorally in those situations. It's another to actively travel the extra mile in order to promote an ideal that goes beyond that assumed and approved conduct. It's always seemed to me to be much like a mathematical equation that has to add up when it's all said and done. The problem is that it often can't, and one side of the equation has to be compromised, and I guess that's where that fear comes in.
It's easier to compromise the side that doesn't have a lot of people disapproving of your behavior, and after that compromise is made enough, people go through that process of disillusionment that ultimately gets brought into the church, the one place where the equation is allowed to add up. This results in people developing a condescending faith, meaning they have faith in the equation being able to add up within the confines of "church time", but when a grander scale is brought into question concerning faith, there's an attitude similar to that of adults promulgating Santa Claus--been there, done that, great while it lasts, I don't want to ruin it for you so I'll smile and play along. I guess people lose faith in faith, really.
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