From the Bible:  Matthew 25: 37-40

On our answering machine one day was a message that began with what the speaker described as the most important question facing my life: “Where would I spend eternity?”  He then quoted John 3:16.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life…”

If John 3: 16 is the touchstone verse for evangelical Christians Then, Matthew 25 may well be the touchstone verse for liberal Christianity.  As a part of this parable of The Sheep and the Goats, we hear this perplexed question and Jesus’ response:

“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food., or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?  And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” 

Sermon :

Last Sunday, in the Week in Review section of the New York Times, conservative Op-Ed columnist,  Ross Douthat, wrote an column entitled Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved.  Maybe you saw it.  It was his reaction to the recently concluded meeting of the leadership of the Episcopal Church where they approved a liturgy for same sex marriages moving forward (in my opinion) in a way that the Presbyterian Church, at its recent bi-annual meeting, failed to do. 

If you did not read it, here are a few sentences to give you a flavor of Douthat’s position: 

This decline is the latest chapter in a story dating to the 1960s. The trends unleashed in that era — not only the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism — threw all of American Christianity into crisis, and ushered in decades of debate over how to keep the nation’s churches relevant and vital.

But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance.

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God … the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

Absent such a reconsideration, the fate [of liberal Christianity] is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.  (New York Times, Sunday, July 15, 2012) 

In religious circles, at least progressive/liberal religious circles, Douthat’s article produced a flurry of responses both critiquing and criticizing Douthat’s reasoning.  Some of the critique is justified and on the mark.  The issues Douthat raises face no just liberal Christianity, but organized religion, in general, and are more complicated and nuanced than his “return to traditional theology” critique.  But, some of his observations are on the mark, and you and I need to take them seriously. 

First, as progressive Christians, we face the question of what is the difference between being good and being Christian.  The cultural question goes something like this.  “I am a good person.  Why do I need to go to church?”  And, the cultural critique is that they look at you and me and see nothing distinctive about who we are or how we act.  We fit in and blend in with little to distinguish us from the culture around us.  I saw this statement on Facebook on Friday as I was writing the sermon.  It is from the Right Rev. Michael Curry, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina.  The title is We Need Some Crazy Christians.

“We need some crazy Christians. Sane, sanitized Christianity is killing us. That may have worked once upon a time, but it won’t carry the Gospel anymore. We need some crazy Christians like Mary Magdalene and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Christians crazy enough to believe that God is real and that Jesus lives. Crazy enough to follow the radical way of the Gospel. Crazy enough to believe that the love of God is greater than all the powers of evil and death. Crazy enough to believe, as Dr. King often said, that though “the moral arc of the universe is long, it bends toward justice.” We need some Christians crazy enough to believe that children don’t have to go to bed hungry; that the world doesn’t have to be the way it often seems to be; that there is a way to lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside; that as the slaves used to sing, “There’s plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom,” because every human being has been created in the image of God, and we are all equally children of God and meant to be treated as such.”

If Christianity is to matter…
If our faith is to matter…
It needs to be seen as something more than being good people and polite worship.
It needs to be about compassion and justice and courage and compassion.
Not just here, but in the push and pull of our daily lives. 

Second, we need to be clear about our theology.
If the touchstone of our theology is not going to be about “a transcendent God (a God up there or over us) and the divinity of Jesus and personal redemption…” at least in the way that those terms are usually understood, then how are we to talk about our understanding of God and Jesus what it means to be saved?  In three bullet points, here is what I think.

• Rather than transcendent, God is interpersonal.
  That which connects us to one another and to Life.
  The divine spark/image/imprint which we all share.
  A quote by Gandhi sums it up, “If you do not see God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for [God] further.”
• In Jesus we are shown what God is like – compassion, abundant life, forgiveness, peace.
  When we embody those values in our own lives we find ourselves stepping closer to God and following in the way of Jesus.
• Salvation…
  Rather than “going to heaven,” which is how most people define salvation, what if we recapture the Biblical understanding of salvation which is about freedom more than heaven. 
  Freedom from those forces that diminish your life: from alcoholism to materialism; from stuck where you are to the possibility of new life in a more meaningful, meaning-filled way.
  Using Biblical language, salvation is going from blindness to sight; from exile to home; from infirmity to well-being and even from death to life.

Finally…
While I think Douthat is overly nostalgic about how much the traditional Christianity for which he longs was grounded in “Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship,” his comment raises an important question. 

What are those daily practices/holy habits which regularly reconnect you to your faith?

• Daily prayer?
• As you begin each day, reminding yourself or reciting a favorite verse from the Bible?
• Reading a book that stretches your faith?
• Participation in a Bible study or some other type of discussion group?
• A prayer before meals?
• Or, something more current like following BPC’s Facebook page or reading someone’s blog?

What???
No one thing is better than another, what is important is that there is something.

Something that on a regular basis and more often than once a week on a Sunday morning reminds you and reconnects you to what we know and name as God so that when you read the paper God is there.  When you walk into a business meeting you are reminded of the values that you say you want to embody in your life.  When you eat a meal you do so with both a sense of gratitude and an awareness that many who share life with us are not as fortunate. 

Will any of this save liberal Christianity?
Or, Christianity, in general?I don’t know.
But it just might you and me.