“Rejection Slips”

Psalm 118:22-23

22The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.

23This has been done of the Lord; and it is wonderful in our eyes.

There has been much made of the Pew Opinion survey that came out this week about religious practice in America. Not surprisingly, the mainline denominations continue to shrink, but we are joined by Roman Catholics, and, for the first time, evangelical churches flatlined. The one statistic that commentators leapt upon was the revelation that Millenials (under 30s) are leaving and not returning to church. At some level, this result comes as no surprise as Millenials have steadfastly revealed a complete loss of faith in anything previous generations see as necessary institutions—government, schools, marriage, corporations, etc. The Church is simply the institute of spirituality, and, therefore, subject to suspicion.

They may be onto something.

Jesus was fairly skeptical with regard to institutional religion, too.

All four Gospels portray Jesus’ relationship to the Church of his day as prickly. They saw him as  a reformer, and reformers always seem to come under fire. Recall that Martin Luther had no intention of creating a new wing of Christendom, but only to make the existing Church better and more in line with what scripture actually said, but the Church saw it differently, declared him a heretic, and the rest, as they say, is history. Jesus came to bring the world back into line with God’s eternal intent in creating the world. He came to recall humanity into a proper understanding of their role as the Image of God. He came to reestablish love as the cornerstone of human existence. These were all to be hallmarks of the faith community within the world, but that community lost its way, fell into moralism as praxis, and strayed away from the kingdom of God on earth. It did not take kindly to someone naming it for what it had become, and so grew in its animosity toward Jesus. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, here we sit in the pews of a church firmly entrenched in the institution named the Church. I suppose we should be fairly nervous, being here, since our scriptures this morning do nothing else if they do not call into question that very presence. What should we do?

The first thing to do is LISTEN—listen to Jesus’ critique, listen to his counsel, and listen for his direction. What is Jesus telling us?

The critique he leveled at the Temple authority twenty centuries ago remains stunningly apropos. We, too, struggle with the temptation to reduce the praxis of faith to the level of moralism. It is a whole lot easier to follow a set of rules than it is to grasp the nuance implied by those rules. We no longer seek to follow the 600+ commandments of the Torah, but we have established a rather encyclopedic set of goods and bads, rights and wrongs, acceptables and unacceptables as we meet the world. We seem to figure that if we present God with a slate of overwhelming proof of good behavior, then all shall be well. We forget completely that the Pharisees already tried this approach, most famously ending with St. Paul holding the cloaks of those murdering St. Stephen, convinced he was right. Nothing has changed—the end result of moralism is still the end result of moralism. Someone gets hurt as someone rises to be judge, jury, and executioner. Codes allow no grace.

And that was the cornerstone of Jesus’ message—grace. 

So, the second thing we should do is reacquaint ourselves with the whole concept of grace. Grace is how every one of us wants the world to meet us; but something we find terribly hard with which to meet someone else. We want others to be patient with us, but grow impatient far too often. We want others to offer us multiple chances to get it right, but grow frustrated when someone else struggles to succeed. Grace begins at home—first thing in the morning—as we accept that tumbleweed rising next to us with morning breath to kill the gods, hair that ran through a blender, and a face mashed to pulp by a pillow. It grows quickly into more profound expressions as we deal with the inevitably follies and failures of the humans around us. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company actually captures the full reality of grace in its series of ads revealing that our greatest obstacles and dangers are other humans, but with the attendant call to deal with one another in compassion, gentleness, and kindness—even the neighbor who sawed a tree to pieces, sending those pieces sailing through our windshield. 

In other words, we will have to break the code. We will have to step aside from rote obedience or flawless adherence to move to the daily exceptions, excuses, and exonerations that make life livable. 

Which brings us to the third thing to do which is to recenter ourselves on God—not the rules God gave us, not even the scriptures God formed for us, but God himself. Here, we have to restore things to their proper place—scripture, the moral codes therein, and even our creeds and church practice are all TOOLS to find God, not God himself. God, St. John reminds us, is love. So, the tools are only so good as they inspire love, instruct us in its practice, and instill within us a love that follows the model and standard of Christ. 

And that means we join Jesus in his opposition to things as they are. St. Matthew makes this a hallmark of his Gospel, the one Gospel that loudly proclaims hell and damnation for those disobedient. But look where the curses come—they are cemented as final exhortations to live by love! The most notable example is there in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats—the Sheep, those who live completely in and through self-emptying compassion, meet God; the Goats, those who live only to themselves, wind up strangely warm! Keep that in mind—love redeems, love forms communion within humanity and between humanity and God, love transforms the world into the living kingdom of God; and to live otherwise leads to ruin, as we have seen so explicitly and so powerfully recently in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Syria, Palestine, and Nigeria. Reject compassion, grace, and mercy, and nothing good will come of it. So, do the other—practice compassion, grace, and mercy. Risk rejection to accept the sure foundation of life. Risk standing against the status quo to usher in justice, righteousness, and reconciliation.

This is the sure and firm foundation—the only real foundation—we have.

Build on it.