The Seekers
The Seekers
Luke 4:16-19
So, let’s pause to consider some recent news. Researchers have studied religious membership (churches, synagogues and mosques) since 1937. From 1937 to 1998, these numbers were relatively steady, coming in at 70% or above. Within Christianity, there were shifts toward evangelical Protestantism. However, the overall numbers seemed steady. Since 1999, membership in religious institutions in the United States has fallen from 70% to below 50%. Even among those who are members, people are far less likely to attend services regularly.
We could go to a conservative Protestant church this morning and be told that God wants us to go to heaven, not hell, and that Jesus came to pay off our debts to an angry God. We could go to a deeply political church (conservative or liberal) and hear what public policies God has allegedly endorsed. We could enter the never ending argument between traditions and faiths about who is right and who is wrong. However, while we were doing this, almost half of America would be having none of that.
The interesting thing is that many of the same people say that they are spiritual but not religious. It’s not that they don’t believe in God. They don’t believe in the church. They are open to learning about spiritual practices like mindfulness and meditation. They ask questions about meaning and purpose in their lives. Many are actively involved in intentional acts of charity and service based on what they believe. What they seem to want, though, is the chance to ask their questions without being forced toward a narrow answer. In surveys, 87% of Americans believe in God, with more or less certainty. Again, less than half of Americans belong to a church.
Of course, the tempting thing is to hear these numbers and reactively ask, “What’s wrong with them?” There are a lot of churches who are being exactly the church they have always been, doing everything the way that they have always done things, and the next generation of members has not shown up. We can sit and try to figure out what’s wrong with them: “Why are they not like us? Why don’t they like us?” Or, we could open ourselves to the possibility that they might be telling us some things that we need to hear. Sometimes, though, the hardest thing in the world is to hear the truth that you have worked hard to avoid.
Let’s work through a few of those truths. First, we should remember that because most of these folks are not a part of a religious community, most of what they are rejecting is the public perception of what religious institutions are. The biggest decline in church affiliation has taken place in the last 20 years. We’ve gone from 70% to 48%. The question we should ask is, “What turned those people away?” I would suggest a couple of things to ponder. On 9/11, whether you were religious or not, we saw what religious extremists can do. Religion has been used to inspire people to do terrible things. And because religious extremism—Christian, Jewish or Muslim—makes for good ratings, people who have nothing to do with a religious institution are offered a steady diet of the crazy things that religious people do. So, if you follow the news of our world, chances are that most of what you will see about religious people will be evidence of how dangerous religion can be.
In reality, the vast majority of religious people—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—are not dangerous at all. In fact, most of those people are mainstream members of our society who, historically, have been some of the most generous people around, translating faith into acts of compassion. The thing is, though, that for the most part, that’s not news, at least it is not news that draws high ratings or lots of hits. Instead, religious people play the same role that reality t.v. plays: “Here’s someone who is so crazy that just getting a little exposure to them will make you feel a lot less crazy, yourself!”
The truth is that the religious people whom non-religious people are exposed to are pretty crazy. You can look back in history and find sermons supporting slavery, supporting Jim Crow laws and lynchings, and opposing civil rights. (Of course, people of faith also led the abolition movement and showed up and died in civil rights marches in the south.) Still, in really public ways, prominent Christians have been on the wrong side of history in ways that seem pretty hypocritical, especially when we are supposed to be loving our neighbors, right?
In the time slot in which the most precipitous drop in religious affiliation has taken place, while younger people (the missing generation) have become more accepting of differences in sexual orientation and gender identity, a prominent Christian leader (at least one who draws big ratings!) announced that Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment on gay people in New Orleans. Some of the same people have sought the right for the church to be excluded from anti-discrimination laws because, well, we’re the church and should be able to discriminate, I guess. Of course, while all of this was going on, faithful people were reaching out to the victims of Katrina and reaching out in meaningful ways to the LGBTQ community. The non-religious people are telling us that they are tired of the hypocrisy of the religious people whom they see. They are right!
Non-religious people are also saying to us that religious people see the world in crazy ways that don’t speak to them. The religious people whom they see (not all religious people) are focused on guilt and shame, on heaven and hell, on promises of happiness and prosperity. Of course, not every person whom they see espouses all of these things, but the cumulative effect of the fragments of “religion” that come their way is the conviction that religious people see a world that they simply don’t see, a world that they have no interest in inhabiting. As a result, the conclusion for those on the outside who are given a peek into what life in the church seems to be about is that the church has nothing meaningful to say to them.
Finally, we should recognize that many of those who are not affiliated with a religious institution grew up in families that were affiliated. Mother’s Day in non-pandemic times, is traditionally the third highest attended service of the year in our church. Why? I think the answer is simple. If we go to church as a family, that will make Mom happy, right? This is the major reason that a lot of folks as children and youth go to church—because this is what my family does or this is what will make my family happy. The problem is that in order to affiliate with a church or a synagogue or a mosque, at some point, I have to go because I want to be there. As a culture, this kind of commitment to an institution—any institution—has really fallen away. On a daily basis, the imperfections of our religious communities, our political life and just about every other way that people gather, are hammered into our consciousness. The same thing happens with the flaws of those who lead these communities. In the end, the net effect is that we have a generation of folks for whom the trend is simply not to gather or affiliate at all.
Understand…I’m not judging those people! I’m saying that if all that I saw was what they see (and what they see is real!) I would not want to have anything to do with the church, either. If churches are rigid and judgmental, count me out of that church. If churches refuse to be inclusive, forget it. If the church wants to spend its time worshiping the building or focused on appearances, or finding some way to be “holier than thou”…good riddance. If all we are is what those people see, then they are right to dismiss us.
The truth is that Jesus’ ministry was about something far deeper than self-help and far more challenging than endorsing the status quo. Jesus’ ministry was a call to humility not privilege, a call to align ourselves with those who are suffering—the poor, the overlooked and ignored, the lonely, and the sick. This is the calling he announced in our text. Our calling is to suffer with people who are suffering in an all-too-often cruel world. Our calling is to love those people, not to judge them or shame them or add to their pain. Our job is to actually do something, however inadequate, to help them even if the net effect is simply the knowledge that someone cared enough to try. Our calling is the same within the church. We are to suffer with one another through the really hard things that eventually happen to all of us. This is the essential work of being the church. So, while so many people are devoted to judging others and so many people are busy arguing about politics and policies, we are left with more pressing questions: “Who’s hungry; Who’s lonely; Who is being overlooked and ignored?” When we ask these questions, God inspires us and empowers us to respond. When we rise to our calling, the world sees a different kind of church.
I think what the seekers are looking for is the meaning and the purpose that we discover when we are being who we are called to be. Yes, we do gather for worship. We don’t gather to prove how holy we are or to score eternal life points. We gather because someone might need us and because we need each other’s encouragement to be loving people and to navigate life’s challenges. We gather because we are grateful. We gather to challenge each other to be better than our worst instincts. We gather because we can do more together than we could ever do apart. Yes, we do have budgets and buildings because every family has to deal with such concerns and we are a church family. However, what brings us together is the common desire to ask the big questions and to take on the biggest challenges of all: to make the world a little more loving and a little less lonely; to genuinely help someone. We say to a hurting and often broken world that the only way through this life is together—period. Either everyone matters and everyone is in or we are simply no longer the church.
So, in the end, we need to tell folks that the church that they have seen—the judgmental, holier-than-thou church, the “far too often on the wrong side of history” church—is not who we are. We need to own the pain that such expressions of faith have caused. Then, we need to find ways to invite the seekers to take another look. Of course, we need to create a community that is inviting and that welcomes them when they come. We need to be honest and say that we won’t always get things right but that we are determined to keep trying. Then, we need to let them know that we’d probably be a lot more likely to get things right if they were willing to join us and add their perspective.
In the end, I’m convinced that what will speak most loudly for us is not our words but the integrity of our actions. We will make mistakes but can we own them and learn from them and not just make the same mistakes again and again? We can’t do everything but can we do everything with compassion and love? As God’s church today, are we willing to change and grow into God’s church for tomorrow?