Sunday, March 29, 2015

Life-or-death faith (or why Christianity is against comfort)

Scripture: Matthew 21:1-17

“That’s interesting.”
You know what that means. To the unsuspecting outsider it sounds like we’re curious about something, like we might even be intrigued, but we know better. To the Scandinavian, interesting is concerning, flavorful is sinful, and different is wrong. So we furrow our brows and say, “That’s interesting.” It’s cultural, it’s our heritage; we’re salt of the earth Scandinavians—we’re an ethnic church, and we like it that way.
Many of these are really positive traits. I tend to like people who are humble, who don’t brag about their achievements and just go about their business whether the world notices or not. I think that’s good. But Jesus’ Palm Sunday example is challenging for us because it shows a brazen disregard for convention. It is most definitely different and interesting, which puts us in a tough spot. Jesus was the Son of God. He took liberties we may have trouble observing, but the life that he lived is one we must observe and consider. Are we brazen enough? Is this faith we have life-and-death enough? Because it sure was for Jesus.
            Life-or-death. That’s really the question of Holy Week: Is our faith a life-or-death thing? And, honestly, I think the answer we usually give is “no.” Not for most of us; not most of the time. It’s just a personal thing. It makes us feel better and maybe it gives our families a moral center. That’s American religion in a nutshell.
            Jesus hated this kind of religion. Hated it. He threw moneychangers out of the temple, because they had made religion a thing to be consumed. Religion had become a token for comfort, and comfort—they felt—must be appropriately priced. But just as bad as the moneychangers were the holy rollers who complained about the kind of crowd that followed him. They, too, had grown to love the comfort of a tidy religion, even though, as Jesus harshly reminds them: it is “out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies” that God has prepared praise. Jesus tells us straightaway that faith is less a commodity and much messier than we would like. Praise is not something we control. Worship is, by its very nature, out of control. It begs us to wonder what Jesus would say about our worship. Is it about praise, or is it about making us feel better about ourselves?
            I hear a lot about how much people get out of worship. Some people tell me they got a lot out of worship one day; some people tell me they never get anything out of worship any day and are only there because it’s expected of them. But Jesus begs us to consider: Is that the right question? Do we worship to get something out of it?
            I could give an answer, but I think it’s more valuable to let that one sit with you. What is the purpose of worship? And, if it’s not about us, then what is it about?
            Even more important still are the implications of who followed Jesus into the temple. Who should be in worship? The best dressed? Those who know the rules? Yes. Absolutely. But also those who don’t. The poor. The diseased. Even the disturbed. The priests worried they were going to ruin the worship experience for the rest of the people. Of course they would but only if worship is about us.
            This stinks. Because we love to be part of the crowd waving palm branches. That’s the party. It’s also easy to package and market. Just hang up a few posters, share it on Facebook: Jesus is coming to town, riding on a donkey. Let’s celebrate. But what the people are really celebrating is a road that leads to a cross. The same crowds who love the party love shouting “Crucify!” even more. It’s in our nature to praise with one breath and shout “Crucify!” with the next, which is why Jesus does not say that worship is waving palm branches on the road into Jerusalem. Instead he says that worship is children crying out “Hosanna to the Son of David!” to the utter disbelief and despair of their parents. It’s not proper. Real, authentic worship IS NOT proper. It can’t be, because we have a God who takes us in our weakness, not in our strength; a God who waits for us, like Peter, to ask, “Lord to whom shall I go?” because there is no other.
            Worship is the in-breaking of God so to say that we have that nicely packaged is blasphemy. It is also why the most worshipful thing we do many weeks is the Children’s Sermon, because you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen. The rest of worship is predictable. Faithful, yes, but predictable. Often deep, yes, but predictable. And predictable is dangerous only because we sometimes zone out and miss the Holy Spirit doing something exceptional right before our eyes. I love liturgy, but liturgy itself is not the thing we worship. Liturgy is a framework in which the Spirit works in and through, and it is so important because in-between the normalcy of call and response and spoken words repeated week after week by generations and generations of Christians, there is an expectation not that God is going to do the same thing again but that God will do something new and different—that God will speak to me in my particular life situation every week. But it requires us to open our eyes. If we forget that, then liturgy is just words.
            It struck me reading this bit about Jesus in the temple that the church exists to invite discomfort. Here we take the losers and the outcasts, the last picks on the team, and all people who are distinctly unsexy. Having such a hodgepodge of human imperfection means one of two things will happen to visitors who stop on by. The ones who enjoy comfort will be made uncomfortable; and the ones who live lives of discomfort will find rest. That’s the effect the church should have. That’s what Jesus is forever doing by raising up the poor and lowering the rich, by speaking law to the Pharisees and Gospel to the prisoners of sin, the hungry, and the helpless.
            And the only reason I don’t say it enough is because I’m afraid, just like many of you are afraid—I’m afraid of rocking the boat. The poor and the helpless don’t pay the bills, and I’m afraid the comfortable tithe to keep their comfort. I’m afraid that you’ll take this as a threat, that you’ll take it as my agenda, and that you may believe this is a place just like any other where the ones who benefit are the comfortable and the stakeholders are the ones who’ve put in their dues. But the country club church has no soul. A church that embraces discomfort is the only church for Holy Week. It’s the only church worthy of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I hate it because I’m comfortable. I hate it because I have a daughter and a wife and most of the time things are pretty swell. I hate it because 95% of the time I’d rather be playing chess or watching Netflix. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that… until there is, until my comfort means I no longer have the time to reach out to the disquieted soul next to me, until I prize my down time more than the safety and security of somebody who has none. Then it’s all over. Then I’m just another high priest, yelling at Jesus to get off my lawn.
            We have to be better than that. We have to worship better than that. Our worship has to be life-and-death because for too many it is. People are dying every day in ridiculous, terrible ways—to bombs and cancer, to alcoholism and depression—and it is only by the grace of God that it isn’t me or my wife or my daughter; or your children or grandchildren. Just because we have relative comfort only means it’s harder for us to see the value of a promise of new life. Only when death smacks us in the face do we actually turn to religion, looking for answers, missing the opportunity to ask the hard questions at a time when we’re more emotionally prepared to listen for an answer. If we don’t embrace the obvious brokenness of others, we are ill-prepared to embrace our own brokenness when it rears its head. Jesus came into town riding on a donkey, and it’s fine to seek him out on that glamorous road, but deeper faith finds him in the corner of the temple, making a mockery of what the priests considered holy.
            Palm Sunday is the most anxious day for a comfortable church, because Jesus did not come to Jerusalem to make you feel better, or to make your kids behave better, or to assuage your guilt. Jesus came to die. And he doesn’t give a damn about waving palm branches except to show what the people praising him will do just five days later.
            This is life and death stuff. Faith has to be. But still “out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies” God has prepared praise. It is the children—the least and the forgotten; the not-yet members; the don’t-yet-get-its; and the need-to-learn-how-it-is’s—who have the blind trust necessary not to kill the man who brings them salvation. It is still children—always children—who remind us what it means to be church. We might think we’re bringing them here to help them become better people. We might hope they come because they are the future of the church. But all of that is wrong, wrong, wrong. Children are often our only hope to see the promise we once took on faith and believed in wonder but now minimize and ignore because we like our comfort. Children are often the only ones who can keep us from stupidly waving palm branches, oblivious to the mob turning against the one we are praising. That’s Palm Sunday.

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