Gary Hall's Black Friday sermon
Early in the morning on the Friday after Thanksgiving, without having thought about it very much, I found myself at the Best Buy in Burbank, California. No, I did not go in search of a plasma TV or a new Sony Playstation 360. I had gone there to get my mother a new television set–a kind of parental offering to make her feel better about living in an assisted living facility–and I had not remembered that the day after Thanksgiving is now routinely referred to as “Black Friday” in the media because of the early-bird specials stores offer on that day.
“Where,” I asked myself, “are all these people on a given Sunday?” They’re clearly not in our churches. What struck me as so odd on Black Friday was this: what we Americans now call “the Holiday Season” is an occasion, not so much for religious worship or even family gatherings as it is for mere consumption. It will take a sociologist of religion to explain how the feast of the Incarnation became the occasion for deep discounts in big box stores. What fascinates (even as it appals) me is the way in which we contemporary first-world people cannot seem to do anything anymore that does not involve buying something. We have developed a culture which tells us that everything there is of value comes to us from outside ourselves. If we want to be worthwhile (or complete or at rest) we need to take in something that we do not already have. This has always been the message of Disneyland. It is now the message of the box store and the iPod.
In the Areopagus speech [Acts 17], Luke’s version of Paul remarks on the Athenian statue inscribed, “to an unknown god,” and then says this: “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands.” We inhabit a world in which more and more people worship that which they do not know. Again in Paul’s words, we are surrounded by people who “search for God and perhaps grope” for God. For Paul this is tragically ironic, because God is “not far from each one of us.” And he quotes a line, possibly from the philosopher Epimenedes of Knossos: “In him we live and move and have our being.” For Paul, of course, Jesus is the answer to the question which classical Greek culture has been asking. For you and me, Jesus is that answer, too.
Now the typical homiletic move at this point would be to spend the rest of the address beating up the church because more people patronize Target on Sunday than they do St. Swithun’s. Indeed, one track of congregational development thinking would have us make churches more savvy in our appeal to post-millennial religious shoppers. “Come to our church: we have free parking, Starbucks Coffee, and video games for the kids!” While I believe there is a lot we can do to make our churches more user-friendly to those who would join us, I also believe there is only so much to be gained in trying to blame ourselves for our inability to compete with the blandishments of 21st century culture. Remember that even Jesus had trouble appealing to the masses: after the bread of heaven discourse in John 6, that Gospel tells us: “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.” [John 6.66] The Gospel is always countercultural and usually counterintuitive. We are calling people into a joyous but demanding way of life. Our central message is at once life-giving and off-putting. Christianity is not a big screen plasma TV. It is a call to new and risen life through compassion and sacrifice. It will always be a hard sell.
No, what I would like you to think on this morning instead is the ailment we share with our siblings at the big box stores and malls this season: like them, you and I too believe that what we most deeply need will come to us from outside ourselves rather than from within. This is true in our holiday shopping; it is also true in our ministries. The Jesus who speaks to us in today’s Gospel [Matthew 25} talks both of God’s incarnate presence in each one of us and of God’s solidarity with the poor: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these . . . you did it to me.” [Matthew 25.40] Or in Paul’s words, “In God we live and move and have our being.” None of us is immune to the spiritual maladies that beset our time and culture. The tendency to look for fulfillment outside ourselves reveals itself in our Christmas shopping, in our classrooms, in our presence at hospital beds. What we have to offer is ourselves. And our call as Christian people is always to trust that what God has given us is enough.
Christmas will come whether I get everyone the right present or not. What I have to offer those I love in this season is not the perfect gift but myself. The same is true for you. And the same is true for you and me in our ministries. We live in a world which worships that which it does not know, a world which does not know the One in whom it lives and moves and has its being. Our task, as that One’s followers, is to make that One known by trusting and claiming what that One has given us in the gift of ourselves.
This morning at this Eucharist we are remembering the life and ministry of Barbara Klemme, a remarkable woman (educator, philanthropist, opponent of racism) who served on Seabury’s Board of Trustees from 1981 through 1996. She died this past September, and what I took away from my one meeting with her last Spring was a sense that she knew who she was, what she stood for, and that what she had to offer was valuable. As we spend this Advent stripping away our unknown Gods, may we also come to know and trust that the One in whom we live and move and have our being has endowed us with just enough to become the people that One has called us to be. Amen.