The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2024, Dr. Tamilio

I was reading the Gospel Lesson for today and it struck me: I think I know why people are not going to church the way they used to, although the trend seems to be changing.  Actually, there are several reasons why, but there is one in particular that jumped out to me.

When I was in college, the literature I read encouraged us to be independent thinkers, not to conform to the norms put forth by society.  We read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance,” poetry like Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” and novels like George Orwell’s 1984.  The message was to think for yourself, forge your own trail, be your own person, do not conform to the norm.  This is all good advice, but it can (and sometimes does) make one feel separate from community which also feeds our being.  After all, humans are social animals.  Fast forward from the time I was in college.  Here we are.  Thirty-five years later (meaning today) and such thinking has taken steroids.  Today, you can think and be whatever you want.  It is all about you, and your instant gratification.  Relativism has become the norm.  In other words, you can think whatever you want.  There are no overarching norms.  You decide.

Jesus’ teaching is different.  At this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus is getting closer to the cross.  He can see it on the horizon.  He spends a couple of chapters giving his disciples their final instructions.  He prays for them to be united, to be one in heart and mind and purpose.  And then he explains the importance of love and how love is a central part of their identity.  This is the heart of his ministry.  It is about love.  God loves us, Jesus loves us, and we are to love one another.  Jesus says that we are his disciples if we are united in love.  So, there it is: our identity is a corporate, communal, social identity connected directly to Jesus.

If I were a gambling man, I would bet that the rejection of religion is a subconscious, knee-jerk reaction that seems to align with the desire to be independent, self-reliant persons: those who reject any form of authority, especially authority that curbs one’s independence in any way, shape, or form.  The system is being bucked so much that it appears radically misshapen, quite different from what most of us grew up with.

Such a way of thinking makes religion wishful thinking for the weak-minded simpleton.  Karl Marx said that religion is an opiate for the masses to delude us from our economic situation.  Marx believed that religion made us conform to the wishes of the state.  If we got rid of it, we would think more clearly about our situation and would revolt.  Religion placates us.  It makes us obedient.  If we were more self-reliant, we wouldn’t need antiquated beliefs.

Listen, if you want to define the church as a human institution where people assume power, just as they do in the political sphere, and they lord that power over others (no pun intended), then yes…I get it…such conformity does not give life.  It saps us of everything we have: our hearts, our minds, even our spirits.  Maybe that is why people left the church in droves at the end of the twentieth century.  It was just another institution that wanted your money, and it was run by greedy and sometimes immoral hypocrites.  If that is how you define the church, then I get it.

But that is not how Jesus defines the church.  In fact, the church Jesus envisions does not look the way we do church today.  People gave up everything to follow Jesus.  They weren’t greedy.  They left everything: homes, vocation, family…everything to follow the Promised One who would lead them to spiritual freedom if not physical freedom in the life to come.

How many of you remember the 1964 Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas classic Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer?  I watch that show every year.  It isn’t Christmas until Rudolf comes on the TV!  There is one line in particular that makes me laugh every time I hear it.  Rudolf has run away because everyone is making fun of his nose.  Hermie is an elf in Santa’s workshop, and he runs away because he wants to be a dentist.  When Rudolf and Hermie meet they realize that they are a couple of misfits and decide that they are going to be independent together.  Independent together?  How can you be independent together?  But that is a fitting description of the Church!  We received life from God, and we receive new life in Christ!  As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  We are free, but we are not free in the sense that we are supposed to wander the earth alone in order to find meaning in empty spaces.  We travel together and we find meaning together.  We are united in the love of God made manifest in Jesus.

We say that a lot.  God is love.  God loves you.  Jesus loves you.  But do we ever stop and really contemplate the significance of such a claim?  God’s love is beyond human love.  It is whole and it is healing.  It forgives and forgives, and forgives.  It is welcoming.  Whenever you run astray, you’re welcomed back with open arms like the Prodigal Son.  No matter how terrible your sin, if you return to God with a truly penitent heart, your sins are washed clean like a sponge across a chalk-covered slate.  As Paul told the believers in Rome, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39b).

And it isn’t just about us: it is a love that is offered and felt supremely in the community.  Jesus told his followers, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  And Jesus did lay down his life for his friends, he laid down his life for us, too, and he did so out of love.  He shouldered the sins of the world, paying the ultimate price for them.  He took those sins out of love, and they were nailed to the cross.  Remember when you were a kid and you told people you loved them this much [arms outstretched]?  That is what Jesus said to us from the cross.  I love you this much [arms outstretched]!

That love will never let you go.  It doesn’t matter what the world says.  It doesn’t matter how you are judged by others.  It doesn’t matter how much money you make, how successful you are, how many friends you have, how long you’ve been a believer — none of that matters.  What matters, what gives you your ultimate identity, is that you are loved by God.  And because we are loved by God, we are to love one another the way God loves others: friends, family members, neighbors, coworkers, even enemies, even that crotchety person who scowls at you no matter how often you smile and say, “Good morning!”  You were made to love, and when we love one another, we are in the presence of the Living Christ.

Saint Augustine once said, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”  But there isn’t only one of us.  There are 8.1 billion of us, and God loves us all: from the wealthiest business mogul to the poorest child in Africa whose life will be cut short by starvation or AIDS, whichever one strikes first.  Jesus loves you this much [arms outstretched].  Go forth and love each other the same way.  There is a type of conformity that goes beyond being a puppet.  Conform yourself to Christ.  Such conformity will give you love and life — life everlasting.  Amen.