In the March 16, 2009, issue of Newsweek an article appeared entitled “A Christian by Any Other Name.” The basic thrust of the article is that as the landscape of the Christian church continues to change in our time, more and more people who traditionally would have called themselves “Christian” no longer do so. Moreover, even if they hold to the descriptive term “Christian” they resist any denominational particularity. I sometimes hear the term “non denominational” spoken with an obvious tone of pride. I’m not sure I entirely understand that, but there’s no denying that some things in American Christianity have changed dramatically.
“People used to be Methodists or Lutherans, Episcopalians or Baptists,” Lisa Miller, the writer of the Newsweek article, notes. “Each denomination had its own culture, its own jokes. A Congregationalist friend once defined himself to me this way: ‘We’re the ones who fold up the chairs after church to make room for the basketball court.’ Outsiders could – and did – make assumptions about their neighbors’ personal habits and politics based on denomination. The United Church of Christ was left-wing. The Southern Baptists leaned to the right. Methodists, Episcopalians and Lutherans fell somewhere in between.”
She doesn’t mention Presbyterians, but we’re somewhere in the mix, organized intricately in committees and boards, holding proudly to our democratic process of governance and our Reformed tradition of biblical authority and the sovereignty of God.
In recent years, the writer notes, major shifts have occurred around the weakening of denominational identity if not also a decrease in those who identify themselves at all as religiously affiliated. She notes that: “On Facebook [and what greater authority or measure is there than that?!], more than 900 groups use some variation of ‘follower of Jesus’ [to identify their Christian affiliation].” One reason so many like to use the term “follower of Jesus” to describe their religious identity, they claim, is that it doesn’t “carry baggage.”
What kind of baggage would that be? The popular new label – follower of Jesus – some claim, is that it distances them from the culture wars that have made American politics so divisive. A former senator from Minnesota puts it this way: “As my party in particular has begun to characterize its base as ‘Christian’ and to express its values as ‘Christian’ values . . . it has been really important to identify myself as a follower of Jesus [rather than as a Christian].” But as a contemporary columnist who writes on religious issues correctly notes, the term “follower of Jesus” isn’t really new. The earliest Christians, in fact, called themselves “followers of the Way.” “The Way,” of course, refers to the way defined by what Jesus said and did.
And, in theory at least, if not always in practice, Christians over the centuries in whatever family name they’ve chosen – ours comes from the biblical word presbyter, meaning elder, an important word in the way we govern our life together – have professed to follow the way of Jesus Christ, as in Jesus’ foundational statement of identity in John’s Gospel: I am the way, the truth, and the life. That’s what all of us Christians – Catholics and Protestants and every kind of splinter group – have professed to follow. But all of us at different times and to varying degrees have fallen short. So, apparently, did Jesus’ own disciples long ago.
As today’s Gospel passage begins, the disciple John raises the question of how the inner circle is to relate to the outsiders who claim to cast out demons in the name of Jesus. Jesus’ success in setting people free from demonic control had been such that the invocation of his very name was thought to have healing properties. The ancient world was filled with people who professed to have the power of exorcism, and some such people were capitalizing on Jesus’ authority. But the inner circle of disciples – those with the correct identity and presumed closeness to Jesus – saw such activity as an infringement on the rights due them exclusively.
We’ve been hearing in the last couple of weeks Jesus’ familiar message to his disciples to be as humble servants and not as entitled power brokers. But they have a hard time hearing that. And when some “outsiders” begin to do the work that they’ve been doing with Jesus, but without the credentials they hold, they become agitated. They want to hold the power closer to themselves for reasons they don’t exactly articulate. Their reaction just seems to demonstrate a very recognizable human trait that strives to keep things close and contained.
That’s what has happened in many instances over the years with denominational affiliation and loyalty, it seems to me. If we lament the loss of influence and numbers as Presbyterians or Methodists or Lutherans or Roman Catholics or whatever, perhaps we have only ourselves to blame. I continue to see a real value in the communal relationship we hold as a particular Christian family. At the same time I know our family doesn’t hold all the truth, doesn’t have the inside track on Jesus’ gifts of grace, and can’t define whom Jesus loves at the expense of others. It seems a shame that although Jesus struggled so hard to get us to be inclusive, we do not follow him when we make sharp distinctions as to who is in or who is out.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is reported to have said, “I know my own, and my own know me.” And when the church transgresses on those words through any act of selfish power it is not following in the way of Jesus Christ. The church then stands in judgment before God.
I remember as a child hearing early in my religious experience that some Christians were sure that they were Jesus’ favorites. Heaven was reserved for them and not for the others whom they defined as condemned to hell. Curiously, of course, those deemed hell-bent by one group conversely claimed heaven for themselves and hell for those who scorned them. So, I thought, they can’t both be right. It’s more possible that neither is right. That God alone knows who can stand upright before the throne of judgment. I began to think that maybe those who warred against each other for the heavenly realm might, in fact, find themselves together in hell. Now as an adult who gets all kinds of rewards just for showing his Social Security card and should be presumed to be a bit wiser than he was a few decades ago, I’m beginning to think my instincts as a kid weren’t all that wrong. Let’s face it; in today’s reading Jesus is rather harsh on those who would want to build cozy barriers to keep themselves in and others out.
Let the others be, Jesus seems to say. If they’re doing what we’re doing – even if they aren’t identified as part of our little group – then they’re doing our work, aren’t they? It’s a kind of negative way of professing inclusivity, I suppose, but we’ve never forgotten Jesus’ quite succinct words, have we? – Whoever is not against us is for us. Let’s not get hung up on labels or on envy of others’ success. If we’re pulling two loads in the same direction, then in some way we might be pulling one load together.
Such things play out even in small towns with several churches of different names. Our own church study within the past five years identified a desire on the part of members of our congregation to relate more closely to members of other churches in Swarthmore and Wallingford that bear the name Christian. Episcopalians walk with Presbyterians to help alleviate hunger. Methodists bring food and fellowship to our church home to help host families who have no home of their own to return to.
And connections extend even to other religious groups that don’t bear our name at all. For, in fact, some loads we pull are common even beyond the general label of Christian. There are some loads to pull that can be moved more easily if Christians join with Jews and Muslims and Baha’is and even those who profess no religious affiliation but are attracted nonetheless to the same causes of peace and justice in the world to which Jesus calls us. After the Jewish high holy days have ended I have an appointment to meet the new rabbi down the road at Ohev Shalom. I have a notion we might become friends and help lead our respective congregations to renew the ties of closeness we have experienced in the past.
Jesus cared deeply about the way to which he called those out from merely worldly ways, but he seemed also to care about those not in his inner circle who nevertheless sensed in the world’s needs the same hunger and thirst he came to satisfy. If you want hell-fire and brimstone, then grab on to Jesus’ graphic words that he speaks to his disciples about the judgment that will come upon them if they cause the “little ones” who are struggling to find their faith to stumble. “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”
Jesus always felt compassion for the struggling in much greater measure than he held to accepted matters of doctrine, dogma, and religious practice. That compassion is caught in the lovely image that counteracts the violence of the casting into Hell: “For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”
As Jesus walked along the road with his disciples, he talked often, as he does in today’s reading, about the qualities that would preserve and enhance their community. From all he said we might deduce from among them at least these qualities: being humble in relationships with others, giving of themselves for others, and reaching out and accepting others around them. In such ways might we all be “at peace” with one another.
Reflecting such humility and steadfast faith, Thomas Merton wrote in his book Thoughts and Solitude:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Such lack of certitude about ourselves, such constant faith in the providence of God, might be something all of us can try to emulate, for of such is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.