Church of the Holy City

The Sure Foundation for Your Times

The Sure Foundation for Your Times
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
July 12, 2009

Isaiah 33:2-16 Luke 13:22-35

When Jesus looked over Jerusalem, he lamented. He said, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate.” The people of the Holy City were too involved with temple sacrifices and purity rituals to hear the message of love that goes way back to the foundations of Israel. And in our reading from Isaiah, we read that the highways of Israel “are deserted, no travelers are on the roads . . . The land morns and wastes away.”
I thought about our own society when I read these passages. Across denominational lines, attendance at church on Sunday morning is in decline. Even the mighty Catholic Church is closing its doors. There are a few pockets of Christian prosperity in the Fundamentalist denominations, which to me is even more alarming. Jesus’ words seem applicable to today’s world. We long to gather the children of the world together, but they are not willing. The houses of religion are left desolate.
This is not a message of doom and gloom, though. I do not fear for the future of the church. And despite our small numbers, we are holding our own. I do not fear for the extinction of this denomination in particular, nor do I fear for Christianity in general.
What really prompted me to think about the current state of religion in the world was an AA meeting I attended. The organizations of AA and NA are growing across the world. They number in the millions. I wondered why these organizations were growing. They ask very hard things of their members, much harder, I thought, than religious institutions do. AA asks a person to relinquish a drug with powerful addictive properties. Before a person does anything in AA, they have to give up something they love, crave, and have become physically addicted to. Then, after the addictive drug is put down, AA asks a person to change radically. They teach, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” This means that the same person, if they don’t radically change, will drink again. Part of this personality change is to create an exhaustive moral inventory of themselves, and then to ask God to remove all their defects of character. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the members of AA need to find a Higher Power. From being a hopeless drunk, AA asks its members to put down their powerful addiction to alcohol, change their personality, and to find spirituality.
Now that’s asking a lot. I think it’s asking more than churches ask. All you need to do in a church is come to church, listen to Bible readings and a sermon, and sing some songs. In fact, you could even daydream in church, and fall asleep during the sermon. Of course religion asks more than this, and we will talk about this later. And churches that ask only that are sure to fail. But still, at the bottom line, one could get away with these few things at church.
I asked Rich this question. I asked him why the very hard programs of AA and NA are growing. He said that people get beat down and tired of their lives when they suffer from addictions. Nobody comes to AA when they are on top of their game. Usually, people come to AA when they start losing things: their job, their family, their house, self-respect. When life becomes painful enough, a person will want it all to stop. There is often, maybe usually, an element of desperation in a person who comes to AA. They become willing to do anything to stop the pain.
But what about people whose lives are going good? What about people whose lives are going great? What about people who are wealthy and powerful? What about people who are succeeding in life? What about people who think they have enough? These questions seem to me to capture the trouble religion has today. People are complacent with their lives and in their complacency don’t see the need for God.
Our society is structured to provide rewards to successful people. Society recognizes those who have made it on their own. The self-made man or woman is a cultural icon. Sadly, I think society honors the rich and powerful. And the rich and powerful seem to have all that they need. Their very success seems to close the door on God, as they pride themselves on standing on their own two feet. And even the average person of ordinary means also feels that they have enough. We have iPods, television, computers, Facebook, Twitter, u-tube, and an endless array of distractions. As T. S. Eliot puts it, we are, “distracted by distraction from distraction.” Society seems to equate faith with weakness. Society feels that needing God is a sign that they can’t make it on their own. Accepting our human finitude is a blow to the self-made man or woman. The Christian virtue of humility is buried beneath the social norm of self-confidence. Our leading intellectuals are primarily atheist. I’ve been reading a book by the great philosopher Charles Taylor. When a person reads Taylor, one feels his Catholic beliefs just below the surface of his philosophy. You know he longs to speak religiously. But as an academic philosopher, he knows he can’t. In fact, his latest book is called A SecularAge, and it is an analysis of this world we now live in. The depth to which we are secular, Taylor maintains, is unlike anything the world has seen before. Most people today don’t have that desperation that an alcoholic feels. Most people don’t cry out for a change in their life.
So Christ’s words are apt today. “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” Fuelled by successes, our world sees no place for God in their lives. I am not saying that church is the only place where a person can find God. Indeed, people do find God outside church buildings. Perhaps in a forest, or a garden, or watching a sunrise, or in some other special place where God’s presence fills the air. But if that were the case, I wouldn’t mind. I think that back in the sixties people were finding God everywhere. But I don’t think that this is the case today. I see Charles Taylor’s secular age as the leading norm today. I don’t think that the spiritual quest is as alive. Rather, I think that God has simply been sloughed off.
But there are turn who do turn to God today. Usually only after they have been through some personal challenge in their lives. When the complacency that infects this world has been broken, people find that they need help. They find that they need God. They may even find that they need the spiritual support of church. Then, God gives people strength. The church gives people community. And religion gives people hope. Swedenborg states that spiritual growth usually begins after sorrow or misfortune. He speaks of “temptation, misfortune, and sorrow, that cause the things of the body and the world, thus of man’s own, to become quiescent” (AC 8). So when the successes of the world fall through, a person sees just how thin they are as a source of identity. After those misfortunes and sorrows, a person begins to have some of that desperation the alcoholic knows.
Turning to God out of desperation, though, is not where spiritual growth ends. When the desperate straits pass, complacency can set in again. Rather, spirituality takes root in the soul when a person turns to God because she or he wants God in their life. Real faith is chosen, not used as a fallback under difficult times. One sees how vast and beautiful the truths of religion are, and from a love for truth a person seeks out a greater understanding of God’s works. One finds a heart that is moved by God’s love, and one seeks to cultivate that love. Spirituality enters a person’s soul to stay when he or she realizes the words of the prophet; that God is the sure foundation for our times, not our own worldly successes. To a person of faith, religion is an attractive proposition. The life of religion is richer and of more value than a life lived for materialism alone.
How this view of religion comes to a person, I can’t say. I can’t rightly say just how it came to me. I can say that when my aspirations of university teaching fell through and I was left for years without any intellectual stimulation, I did begin to turn inward. My true heart emerged, which had been buried under religious theories and cultural studies of the religious experience. When all that intellectualizing stopped, I found my own personal faith. God came to me and I came to God. Then, all that I had learned became like so many mirrors reflecting God’s splendor. And I finally came into this profession of ministry as if I had come home after a long wandering.
I guess the call to faith is finally God’s. God says that he continually stands at the door and knocks. Sometimes I wish He would knock a little louder, though. This is why I don’t fear for the future of Christianity, nor for the future of this church. God comes to people in the way that is right for each individual life. God makes Himself known at the right time, in the right way. And if the church is truly alive with God’s Spirit, people who are searching will know it. We still need to take every measure to reach out to the world by every means we can. And we need to embody those principals of religion that give true life. But finally I know that God wants to gather his children together as a hen does her chicks even more than we do. And finally, it is God’s call. Let us all be ready when He calls us. And with a faith that is truly alive in our hearts, we will be that person in Isaiah “who will dwell on the heights, whose refuge will be a mountain fortress. His bread will be supplied and water will not fail him.”