"Can I have some wings with that?"

“Can I have some wings with that?”

Matthew 23:37

Eventually, I’m going to talk to you about chicken wings this morning.  First, though, I need to tell you a few hard truths…

Christianity has been in decline in America for decades now.  Here’s a question:  when do you think it’s decline began? Interestingly, in 1976, 91percent of the American population identified as Christian—91 percent.  Really, that’s a pretty staggeringly high number.  I would have guessed that if there had ever been a number like that it would have been in the late 1950’s or 1960’s, when there seemed to be so much of a sense that a person was either a godless communist or a God-loving, Christian, patriotic American.  Surprisingly, the beginning of the decline of Christianity was not in the turbulence of the 1960’s but was in the height of our disco days.

Two things happened in that era: the rise of the Yuppies and the rise of the evangelical right.  Who were the Yuppies?  In the 1980’s, the Yuppies were young people with high paying jobs and fashionable lifestyles.  Their focus was on material success.  Do you remember the movie, “Wall Street” in which the character, Gordon Gecko, for all intents and purposes, preached a whole sermon on the conviction that “Greed is good!” The cream of the Yuppies were the “Dinks,” young couples with two incomes and no kids who could maximize their social and economic success.

At the same time, the late 1970’s and the 1980s marked the rise of the evangelical right, particularly with the presence of televangelists who became cultural icons or pariah’s, depending on who you asked.  These figures, not unlike the Yuppies, were focused on material success and to this day preach a Gospel that is focused on God showering material successes on true believers.  People like Joel Osteen have built fortunes for themselves. Their churches worship in sports stadiums, all grounded on the message that God wants you to be rich.

The rise of the evangelical right and televangelists at a time when America was identifying as less and less Christian meant that the evangelicals became the public face of Christianity.  In my opinion, the mainline Christian churches allowed this identification to happen when we failed to provide any visible alternative.  So, if you ask the average person whether they are a Christian or not, they aren’t thinking of Jesus of Nazareth.  What comes to mind is what they’ve seen on television.  What they’ve seen on television is Jim Baker going to jail, and Jimmy Swaggart repenting for his latest sins with tears streaming down his face.  How many times have we witnessed bald-faced corruption and greed being associated with people who were once trusted religious leaders?

Of course, what followed was the unfolding story of corruption and greed and sexual abuse in the mainstream church.  Priests and pastors and youth leaders were revealed to be predators—just like the folks we had laughed at on television.  And, just like on television, far too many of the denominations that those folks worked for did everything they could to discredit their accusers.  (Not everyone though…Do you remember Cardinal Bernadine? My own Presbytery, when a pastor was accused, sold all their assets and immediately compensated and cared for the victims.  I was proud of that.) Still, there’s nothing like decades of hypocrisy to leave people feeling utterly betrayed.  I have to say…the church has to a large part “gotten what it deserved.”

Beyond hypocrisy, the mainstream church has failed to speak meaningfully to our members through rapid social changes.  I believe the church was on the right side of history in supporting the civil rights movement when I was a child.  However, as one example, it has taken the church a long time to embrace the changing opportunities for women.  We often still program as if all our women in the church are still readily available at all times to volunteer.  There are still churches within a few miles of us in which women cannot be church officers or pastors.

While we quietly tried to support the effort to care for those with AIDS, the loudest “Christian” voices said that AIDS was God’s punishment on gay people.  While we made good faith efforts to respond to the victims of natural disasters, the loudest “Christian” voices declared that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on New Orleans and gay people and everyone else that they were convinced that God didn’t like.  Today, the loudest “Christian” voices proclaim that America has always been and must become again a Christian nation—not a nation of religious tolerance or a nation that cares for the poor— but a theocracy in which “Christian” values can be enforced.  The truly toxic combination of late is the notion of White Christian nationalism—a cocktail of prejudice, a distorted notion of faith, and an idolatrous view of the nation.

So, if I meet someone out in public and they discover that I’m a Christian pastor, what do they assume?  They assume that I think it is my job to pass judgement on people, that I hate gay people, that I consider people of other faiths or no faith to be destined for hell, and that the latest iteration of the supreme court is my dream come true.  I’ve had people wince when they found out I was a minister.  Really, in this world, with what they’ve seen, why wouldn’t they.  Maybe that’s them being kind…

So, in 1976, 91% of Americans identified as Christian.  In 2016, that number was down to 73%.  In 2022, that number plummeted further to 64%.  Here’s the really telling number: when people are asked not just what they believe but how often do they actually go to church, only 20% of Americans report that they attend church weekly. 

So, why am I mentioning this today—on Mother’s Day?  Well, typically, this is the church’s largest attendance Sunday of the year, behind Christmas and Easter.  We all know why this is the case, right?  This is the case because either you know that what you mother would really like for Mother’s Day is to go to church as a family or your mother looked you in the eye and said, “We’re going to church!” (God bless the mothers of this world!)

Beyond that, though, I think there are a lot of mothers who shape us by being a force for honesty.  Left to our own devices, we might say nothing about the hard stuff and avoid the conflict altogether.  My Mom would look my father in the eye in that moment and say, “Hmmm…. Ken, what do you think?” Not even my father could avoid that inquisition.  Moms tell us to “use our words.”  I’m just trying to use mine about the state of the world around us.

The good news for us as a particular congregation is that we’re doing okay.  I’ve seen estimates that 4500 to 7000 churches close a year in the United States each year.  In a lot of respects, by comparison, we are thriving.  We’ve retained members and taken in new members.  Our membership has been financially supportive of our budget and our mission.  We’ve managed not to become a political caucus instead of a faith community with our refrain being that faithful people can disagree and still be faithful people.  (What mother hasn’t spent time making sure that everyone knows there’s enough love to go around and that you and your sibling don’t have to be the same to be part of this family?) 

So, today, I’m just being honest about the world around us.  We don’t get to assume, as we might have in the past, that as soon as someone leaves the church, another person will be waiting to step in.  Finding a church isn’t at the top of all that many people’s lists.  We can’t assume that schools or employers or club sports are going to recognize that scheduling activities on Sundays gets in the way, at the least, of family time and, importantly for us, time to go to church.  It appears that those days are long gone:  “You can go on your work trip but not if you want this job or not if you expect to play this sport next year.”

My commitment to you is that there is a conversation that everyone will be invited into about what it means to be the Union Church of Lake Bluff going forward.  There are probably defining things about us as a community that differentiate us from other churches.  What are those core characteristics?  How can we let people know who we are?  How can we help people who want a different kind of church to come give us a try?

Personally, my commitment to you is to work hard to decipher how to speak to a world that is “spiritual but not religious.”  In any other setting in our lives, we would do everything we can to speak meaningfully to the person right in front of us.  As a faith, though, we have continued to speak about God in ways that were shaped by the world two or three thousand years ago.  In that world, God was an all powerful king because they still had kings.  In that world, Jesus was “the lamb of God” because everyone had been to the temple and participated in animal sacrifices.  We don’t have all powerful kings.  Who would stay if I announced that next Sunday was “Goat Sacrifice” Sunday?  Yet, folks in the pews are expected to “grin and bear it” and nod.

Here’s the thing…when we talk about God, we are talking about the great “I am.” God will never be fully captured in any of our symbolic language.  There are experiences of what is sacred and holy and powerful in every part of life imaginable that generate songs and novels and poems and treatises as we attempt to describe what we’ve experienced.  I think it’s time for us to open ourselves to some new ways of speaking about God that might not only speak to some folks who haven’t been a part of the traditional discussion but might actually be renewing for us.  There’s room to be creative, to use our creativity and honesty and imagination to see God in a different light..

This is what brings us back to chicken wings.  One of the images of God that runs like a thread through Scripture is the notion of God being like a mother hen.  It appears in the Psalms and a variety of other places but today, I’m quoting no less than Jesus, himself.  Jesus is looking at Jerusalem, a place with a checkered history of religious corruption.  A lot of prophets have died there.  Many people have been stoned in God’s name.  What Jesus says is that he has wanted to gather the city under his wings like a mother hen and protect them.  (Anyone who has ever seen this happen in real life knows that a stray chick or two always run away from their mother’s sheltering wings.)

So, in a world that talks about God as a father or a king or a judge and forgets over time that the language is metaphorical, not concrete, Jesus puts an image of God as a loving, caring mother before us.  It turns out that speaking about a mothering God is not just some new-fangled, hippy sort of vibe but is actually a direction that Jesus himself, explored.

Why wouldn’t he?  He had a mother who loved him.   Why wouldn’t we?  We’ve had mothers who loved us, too.  What if your loving mother offered you a glimpse of our loving, mothering God?  Isn’t Mother’s Day the perfect moment to entertain that possibility?