The United Methodist Church of Monroe

Part I

"A Dearth of Thankfulness"

Anyone who has a love of walking on ocean beaches knows the thrill of discovering both the new and the long buried. One can find the odd shell that bears the unique marks of former inhabitants life, and scattered on the shoreline is always the littered glass that has become as semi precious as it has been created semi translucent by the incessant rolling and beating of the waves against sand and stone. Storms provide the would be littoral archaeologist with a potentially remarkable variety of novel or lost things to explore. Anyone who combed the beaches after super storm "Sandy" moved through the area, or even saw pictures of the coasts after the historic tides receded would notice a plethora of once submerged float some and jet some the ocean left behind. All of this was either treasure or just trash.

In a similar fashion super storm "Sandy" uncovered social lessons that litter the shorelines of our country's social expressive media. Heroic stories abound of those who sacrificially went out of the way for others, even as the media cameras tended to look the other way. The corollary is also sadly true, there is plenty of press recording the tremendous decline in altruism that has become the hallmark of the last generations of humanity in the West. From the pelting of power line repair personnel to looting and pirating in the cities and suburbs these headlines tend to blaze in our memories.

When confronted with such historic and tremendous loss of life, over 110 and counting, not to mention estimated economic liabilities of between $30 billion to $50 billion with untold impact of economic recovery, most people's thoughts turn, oddly to thanksgiving. A common comment is “I could have it worse, just look at what so and so is going through.” It seems to be common to not really think about being and, therefore, living in thankfulness, true appreciation for the relationships and material comforts of life, until one is presented with the tragedy of loss, and then thankfulness emerges as a contrasting emotion to the fragile nature of life. Our forbearers lived constantly on this cutting edge of life’s tragic nature and thereby seemed to be able to witness a greater sense of marvel and thankfulness then contemporary populations.

Today one’s microcosm is controlled as in no other time. Too hot, turn up the air conditioner. Too cold, turn on the heat. Want to live within an environment that does not fluctuate by more than a couple of degrees? Not a problem. One need but move from an environmentally controlled house to a similarly controlled car, and finally into a controlled store. Don’t like a neighbor anymore? “Unfriend” them in a click. Can’t stand what those Republicans/Democrats/Whatevers are saying? Turn the channel, pull up another website, or take them off of your “tweet” list. One does not need to be inconvenienced by anything, so that when one is, one is traumatized by it. Perhaps this is why super storm “Sandy” gave so many pause to think and feel again: it blew in unscripted and uncontrolled, it made us reconsider the priorities in our lives. On the beaches of personal and social realities, “Sandy” exposed in each one of us the need to be thankful.

The dearth of thankfulness that plagues the West has become catastrophic. Consumer capitalism has fed and grown on the insatiable appetite that lurks deep in the human soul. Think about the advertising that has become so popular in every area of our lives. Things no longer fill a purpose or are a tool for living, but have taken on existential priorities in their own right, consuming becoming an end in and of itself. Be an individual, buy our new sneaker, that, by the way, was mass produced in the millions, and you will, no pun intended, stand out in the crowd. Just don’t think too long about it or you might have to buy our newest model as well, for it makes more of a statement than last year’s. The goal is to keep the hunger going. The hunger for convenience, the hunger for the novel, the hunger for extra ordinary, the hunger for acceptance, the ultimate hunger for love and relevance, an appetite that can only be filled through a life of thankfulness, and ultimately expressed to the Author of all life who wills to fill the hunger, to quench the thirst that is everlasting in the human soul.

Perhaps this is why it is so necessary for evil to co-opt the vitality of Christianity, for in it the hunger of the world is satisfied so that the hunger of the world’s inhabitants might find their filling. Perhaps this is why Hitler found it necessary to usurp the power of Christian truth and symbols to pull its power behind him and propel him to even greater heights of relevance and control, even as today’s consumerism has co-opted the Christian faith in the West to propel personalities who sell the next best book, sermon, or music title, leaving the true Church shriveled and depleted by its association. A hungry heart is, above all else, a heart open to manipulation and exploitation.

When one is thankful, one is content, both in season and out. When one is thankful, the hunger is gone. When one is thankful, one recognizes not only the giftedness of life, but one is also humbled by the thought that this giftedness is not earned by either piety or works, but can be both taken away or diminished through a lack of either. This is indeed one of the conundrums of faith, God makes His rain to fall on both the good and the evil, but the good are able to use it through the thankfulness of faith where all the evil can do is mourn its falling on them. Indeed, this is the gift of a life in thankfulness, not in contrast to the “even worse,” but in an acknowledgement that God has blessed one and even in the valley of the shadow of death, God will walk with us in care, protection, and power. When one is thankful, one is taken out the market of looking to fill “wants.” One need not consume what is already supplied, as enough becomes the perpetual feast. Thankfulness moderates and completes.

The challenge is for one to transform thankfulness from a season or a holiday to a life discipline. More on this in next weeks post entitled “Thankfulness the Mark of a Disciplined Life.”

What is remarkable are the unsaid things that we know about both of these characters. First is Elijah. Talk about a non team player! Elijah is not just align against the religious authorities of his time, but is doing battle against them. He has also aligned himself against the political office in the persons of the king, Ahab, and the queen, Jezebel. Elijah’s isolation is almost complete, but it is this loneliness, to the point of despair (1 Kings 19:4) that gives Elijah a clarity and prophetic purity that escapes both the secular and regular offices against which he is aligned. Elijah is at God’s full disposal to see, preach, and teach, the fullness of not only what is happening, but also the ends to which is will lead.

The second character in the dialogue is Ahab. The Old Testament has a very critical view of this king of Israel. But what is not said is that he is a very successful figure as a political leader. Under “[h]is skillful foreign policies, which provided Israel with strength, security, and prosperity, which safeguarded peace and the balance of power, and which, finally contributed to the (temporary) containment of Assyrian expansionism, may be inferred from the few sources that yield reliable historical data.” (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 1, pg. 103.) It is exactly this success that blinds Ahab to the ends of the political trajectory which he has placed Israel on, and which includes his religious compromises. Ahab is an historically successful king, but one who looks only to the next footstep and not to the long term impact of his decisions. One might say that his vision is clouded by the very institutionalization to which he has dedicated himself.

We live in an age of a similar prophetic myopia. Secularly we are coming to the end of policies and practices that have benefited a few at the expense of the many. It will become increasingly clear that our youth will have a much harder time in establishing careers and growing families as our economy and guarantees continue to languish. With the demise of orthodoxy comes the proliferation of those world views that would replace the traditional Christian understanding. Whether in the guise of “secular consumer Christianity” or pure secularism humanism, both are increasingly devoid of any kind of religious hyperopia. Instead, the majority of world views are increasingly Darwinistic in their understanding of the future and potential of humanity and political structures, regular and secular, that it produces: “survival of the fittest, baby,” is mantra of the age in both the religious and secular worlds about us.

With youth unemployment far outpacing the roughly 8% of the national average, the increasingly burdensome toll of college debt, and the prospects of college graduates not able to obtain employment in their fields of disciplines, not to mention that these same youth have the added disadvantage of not being exposed to the higher social values of morality and ethical behavior that is a Christian strength, which is also limiting their employment future, the emergent imperative will be, who will care for them and their world? The baby boomers are going to have enough on their hands trying to make ends meet with the necessity of shrinking social security and Medicaid resources. More and more multi family dwelling arrangements will only stave off the inevitable. Yet more to the point is the myopia of the age which cannot look forward to embracing a new social and religious reality without the veneer of the past.

Unlike the great depression, the churches of America either don’t have the resources or lack the inclination to define the current reality. One Mormon Church in the area has actually laid up a supply of emergency freeze dried food for its membership, while Christian churches in the area continue to spend hundreds of thousands on AV equipment and clergy salaries. Of these types of churches no one will indeed miss, but of the body of Christ that truly and passionately cares for the human condition, and that can prophetically see down the road, the church of tomorrow will not be about bigger programming, but about authentic communities that unite, even as they did in the early pre Constantine church, to address and redress the basic needs of the age, which will include how to include the many youth who have been disenfranchised and disillusioned by errant American dream which has turned out to be somebody else’s dream over the past thirty or more years.

Ahab chose not to doubt his own vision of the future and Israel would not the sword of the conquer and the defeat that sword would bring. To the churches of today, the news is less grim than the close up view would have us see, for the unheard voices that spoke against the ages of reckless excess will be vindicated in the “bill” finally coming due to payment, but the Church of Jesus Christ is made for times like these. The Church of Jesus Christ is about the authentic Christian world view that knows that we are greater together as a body of Christ than all the powers aligned against us. Finally the Church of Jesus Christ is kingdom breaking in that will one day be victorious as God’s intended reality for all humanity, not just 1%.

Premise: While our denominational leaders wrestle with recreating a "golden age" church that never existed, a program model church that is now found in the mega church movement, our smaller churches are being sapped of energy and spiritual vitality by not ministering in their strengths, community and witness, but trying to redefine themselves by what they are not, and, for many is plainly unachievable.

When one looks at the emergence and success of the mega church movement there is a sense of déjà vu, for it was in the cradle of the mainline denominations that the current program consumer Christian model was born. By the time we hit the mid point of the last century, the church had already progressed markedly down the path to both small group and program integration under the mistaken guise of mission. Many churches had or wanted the coveted men’s or women’s groups, most churches had a variety of youth offerings from minimally Sunday School, to a variety of youth programs, with a wide variety of nursery and kindergarten experiments dotting most of the ecumenical landscape. By the eighties and nineties clergy were being told to develop alternate experiences through vacation Bible schools, adult fellowship opportunities, like coffee houses, and the all too familiar phrase “if you target the children, you get the adults.”

The mega church movement has leveraged all of the mainline pioneering and marketing to remarkable advantage. The siren call of contemporary consumer prosperity theology has gone out into not the unchurched evangelical wasteland, but has reverberated through the halls of mainline denominationally indoctrinated populations that have created whole campuses to the salvation of themselves and their own. They have done this by leaving behind the vestiges of traditional populations and cradle to grave ministries in order to cater to specific growth populations that are now becoming harder and harder to court.

Mega church programming is having to excel in a constant vision for servicing their populations. As “contemporary worship” gives way to “grunge worship” gives way to “emergent worship,” the dynamic of the timelessness of the Christian truth claim is slowly being co-opted by a need to encounter the latest and greatest in order to achieve a feeling of both meaningfulness and vitality in the face of our faith. One must wonder if there is not an underlying malady that relates more to the quality of faith in consumer America of today that must, in so many areas of life, continually go back to the well purpose and meaning. Yet is this not what consumerism is all about? What good would faith be if it were a spring welling up inside of us, constantly quenching our thirst for more, constantly satiating our troubled spirit? You can’t program for “enough being as good as a feast.”

Yes, the mainlines have been beaten at their own game, but it was a bad game to begin with, and it produced even worse results for us than losing the game, for it did not produce the fruit of a vital discipleship in Jesus Christ, but an institutional mindset that catered more to the base needs of our selfish humanity, it was a game we deserved to be beaten at. Maybe now we can stop playing games and produce fruit that is worthy of eternity in Jesus Christ.