Monday, October 21, 2013

Suburbs: Garden or Grave -- or the place from where we start

Proper 8-C; June 30, 2013
1 Kings 2:1, 6-14
Psalm 77
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

In the early 1960s, there were two popular books by then-young theologians. One was The Secular City[i], which talked about how little American society seemed to care about religion, or God, or the church – that we were moving into a “post-religious society.” 

The other was The Suburban Captivity of the Churches[ii], which described how Protestant churches had fled their cities of origin and had become captive to the nice life of the suburbs -- the place where middle class values reigned, where American choices were equal to God’s choices, where Jesus was secure, and kind, and comforting. Indeed, the church itself was the place to be comfortable, to be friends with people like “us.” This security allowed us to be “nice” to “our neighbors” and of course we had chosen just who those neighbors were. Looking back, we can see a dialog between these two books: one of the reasons one theologian noticed that fewer people were taking the church seriously and preferring a “secular city” to a religious world view was that the church had become something that it was not supposed to become, something that Jesus had never intended it to become: a safe place, an orderly place, a place with no poor people, no conflicts, no challenges.

Well, some 50 years later, times have changed. Instead of increasing secularization, society has become increasingly religious. Part of the reason is the richness America receives from immigrants from all over the world: Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, and of course Christians from all those places that used to be colonies. Soon after those books were published, the 1960s and ‘70s erupted in times of great upheaval – and so people began to realize that religious texts and faith were relevant – could provide guidance in troubling times.

Ah but there is the rub – and perhaps the explanation to the mindset of “the suburban captivity.” These biblical texts, these words and stories about Jesus, are often themselves troubling. Jesus seems to be offering us comfort at the same time he challenges us to leave everything that is comfortable behind. No wonder people want the church to be a place of order and calm; if we took this Jesus too seriously, what kind of trouble would we invite?

The Jesus we encounter in this week’s Gospel is serious and stern. We are not yet half-way through the Gospel of Luke, but already Jesus’ face is set toward Jerusalem, toward his confrontation with the powers and principalities, toward his passion and death. Jesus’ mission is serious and spare: he has no possessions, not even a place to call home. Whoever follows him is required to take up a similar strict regimen: “Let the dead bury their own dead” – the disciples are not even allowed the bare minimum of fealty to their families – “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” If Jesus’ face is set toward Jerusalem, so then are the faces of his disciples – and of all of us who even today consider ourselves followers of Jesus.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, the story of Superman was popular, and last night we saw the 2013 version. If the 1970s Superman was The Secular City version, slightly detached and ironic, then this Superman takes us right back to that decade where religious, political and social values all coincided. Superman, the ultimate undocumented immigrant, is indeed the All-American hero, very handsome, and very nice, and very sure that the power he so mightily uses is in the service of peace, justice and the American Way – and although they skirt the issue in the movie, they do make it appear that even God blesses his deeds of power. In the movie, Superman spends the first 33 years of his life getting ready for his big debut as the savior of the world.

Humanity has never had any shortage of “superman” types who purported to be saviors of the world – empires, and armies, and strong men abounded in the first century as in the modern era. But note that the Bible does not use those images when it talks about what Jesus brings.

The passage we read today from Paul’s letter to the Galatians reminds me of another text from the 1960s: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Remember that when Paul found Jesus, he lost everything else: his status, his job, his comfort zone of being a Jew with power to persecute others. Paul here recognizes that when he lost all those things, he found freedom. He became a disciple of Jesus long after he knew that following Jesus meant following him to his death. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, who reads these texts very closely, noticed that when you read today’s Gospel and this passage from Paul together, as we do today, you see that following Jesus does bring freedom but freedom 

… of a very peculiar kind. It is not self-indulgent freedom, but freedom that enhances the neighborhood. The sum of the new freedom is “love of neighbor” …[iii]

Fifty years after the original Superman, do we really need another muscle-bound hero? It seems that the challenges of our day call us to be different kinds of freedom-loving heros – indeed, to be freedom-loving neighbors, people who take the power and blessing which comes from following Jesus to tie together our communities, to reach out to our neighbors in need. There is one line I did like in the new Superman movie. Clark Kent’s earthly father assures him that “he was sent here to make this world a better place.” I agree with that. There is no better reason to be on earth than to work for its transformation into the kind of place God created it to be. This suburban church, which can capture us with its serenity and beauty, should be our launching pad to go out and do that very thing.



[i] Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (1965), Collier Books
[ii] Gibson Winter, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches: An Analysis of Protestant Responsibility in an Expanding Metropolis (1961), Doubleday
[iii] Walter Brueggemann, “June 27: Discipleship is No Picnic,” A Cast of Emancipated Characters, from Sojourners Magazine, June 2010 (Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 48). Living the Word.

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