Do you think Jesus has a lot of tolerance for the petty divisions we modern Christians perpetuate? Especially the arrogance and self-righteousness so many seem to exhibit? I don’t think so. I think he wants us set aside our divisions, listen to his teaching with the simple trust of a little child, and then practice His ways. And if we see others advocating His ways with integrity - it is not ours to stop them.

Think of how that statement grounds me…as I face any of life’s challenges. “I struggle with an addiction. “In life and in death…I belong to God.” I have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. “In life and in death…I belong to God.” My spouse died. “In life and in death…I belong to God (and she belonged to God).” I am in Law Enforcement, or the military, or my work routinely takes me into perilous circumstances. “In life and in death…I belong to God.” I am in the middle of a divorce. “In life and in death…I belong to God.” I am a counselor for people caught up in terrible circumstances and my compassion fatigue is really starting to take a toll. “In life and in death…I belong to God.”

These reports make a clear correlation between what we fill our minds with, what we give our time and attention to have an incredibly powerful influence on how we think and how we act. The same could be said about entertainment sources, news sources, political activism groups, recreation choices, and the positivity or negativity of who we choose to spend time with.  This is what Jesus was talking about in last week’s gospel lesson when he told his followers to “remain in” or “abide in” him. What we choose to “abide in” or “spend time in” or “remain in” impacts how we think, how we act, and who we are....

The poor ignorant farmers who built the church where I grew up didn’t have to contend with these contemporary things. They only had to contend with getting un ceremoniously run out of their homeland. Fleeing a lack of any sort of economic opportunity and experiencing severe religious persecution. So they took a perilous voyage in dangerous ships to immigrate to a land with strange customs where they didn’t know the language. They had to clear wooded hills to farm land with literally
only a very few inches of topsoil over solid limestone beneath. And of course their new nation was divided by slavery and on the brink of Civil War. Most of the strong young men, who had never met a black person in their lives, in a state that dubs itself “The Land of Lincoln” were being rounded up and formed into regiments and sent off to fight in the Civil War, which was pretty much bankrupting the very divided nation they lived in. It was not a simpler time.

But more than anything else the declines [in church numbers] are tied to people’s desire. In fact, the cultural insistence to define one’s faith for one’s self. People don’t want to worship a God that constrains them. Unless a faith is willing to allow for their obsessive pursuit of economic excess, or their sexual proclivities, their ethical flexibility, their need to be able to retaliate in response to perceived wrongs, their over-zealous nationalism, their lack of self-control, their insistence on self-gratification. They would rather view themselves as spiritual, but of no particular faith. Or they would rather re-define the way of Christ to match their desires.

How many of us have lived our entire lives in the shadow of the church? Perhaps we grew up going to Sunday School, or our parents were members and drug us along. Perhaps we have shared in or even benefited from the ministries of compassion at a time of illness or need? We think Jesus must have been a kind soul and we really believe there must be a God out there, but it all seems rather remote and un-specific. Like the Hebrew people of Moses’s day we struggle to get a handle on it. We feel spiritual, but we really aren’t religious.