"SUBURBAN CHRISTIANITY"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 14, 2001
Text: Mark 5:21-34
For the purpose of this service, because he is a real, live human being, I am going to change the name of the gentleman who terrified me. His name, for the sake of this morning, is Jack. He petrified me because like so many people who are scary, he had a "reputation". Jack was a former RCMP officer. He was large and strong and since his early retirement from the RCMP he had taken to overindulging in drink, food and in other vices. He was not the sort of man with whom you would willingly go out of your way to spend an afternoon or evening. The problem with Jack though was that he had a most delightful wife. She was what one would call one of the saints of the church. When she called me one day in a great fit of anxiety and asked me if I would go out of my way to visit her husband who was now in hospital I felt I could do no other. I prepared myself for this cataclysmic event. I prayed with my whole heart and soul before I entered his room and there was no one more surprised at my presence in his hospital room than Jack. Basically he did not look pleased that I was there. It was mid-afternoon and clearly Jack was quite taken with a soap opera on TV. He spent most of the time looking beyond me to see what was going on on the television of the person in the bed next to him. As he terrified me more and more and I realized that my presence was not wanted I tried to figure out how to get out of there without simply getting up and running away. But he gave me the impetus to do so; he said, "Oh Reverend, before you go," (there was a hint) "I would like to tell you a joke." I thought, ”˜Oh dear, this is going to be awful!' He said, "This was a joke about a cannibal who had been given a considerable amount of money to improve his country. So the cannibal decided to go to a supermarket and look at the various bins that were there to see what parts of the human anatomy he might be able to purchase. He decided he needed wisdom to help him spend all this money wisely so as all cannibals do, he went to the brain bins. There was a variety of sizes of brains available and he thought to himself, ”˜What kind of brain should I consume to attain wisdom?' He thought he would try an Economist. It would cost him $2.30 per pound to purchase the brain of an Economist. So he asked what the Economist would tell him to do. Someone there told him, ”˜Oh the Economist would tell you to join the International Monetary Fund and that you should establish in your country an independent judiciary.' The cannibal thought about that and decided that that wasn't what he wanted to do. He went to the bin of Philosophers' brains for $2.50 per pound. This particular Philosopher would have told him that he needed to change his whole orientation and approach to life and that maybe he should make his nation literate in order that they could understand the writings of Heidegger and Plato and Maimonedies. But he decided that that was too dull, so he went to another bin. This one contained a Monocultural Ecotherapist's brain. That was $2.90 per pound. This Monocultural Ecotherapist would tell him that he should make sure that NATO becomes an Aid Agency and that his country should plant more trees because the world needs more trees. He thought about that and decided that no, he wanted something more direct.
He approached the final bin there and it was the bin of the brains of Ministers of Religion and they were sold for $15.00 per pound. He looked at this and wondered what these brains would tell him to do. A woman there said that they would tell him to take the money and run! He said, ”˜Oh, I like that advice. But $15.00 a pound! This is extremely expensive.' The woman said, ”˜You have to understand something: do you know how many ministers have to die before you can get a pound of brains?'"
You can imagine that by that time that this visit was not going very well. So I offered to pray for him; I was even willing at that moment to lay hands on him, but not in the manner you might think! I departed speedily.
I heard nothing from Jack for weeks and I was relieved, until one day I received a sudden call out of the blue. Not from Jack's dear spouse but from Jack himself. This time Jack was desperately in need. The operation that he'd had and thought would be a success did not work. They discovered within his body diseases that couldn't be cured. They told him that he had only a few months or at the most, a year, to live. In an act of desperation Jack phoned me and said, "Reverend Stirling, would you come and visit me and have a word of prayer with me?" I did as he requested and I went to him and prayed with him. I am pleased to say that he is still alive today and is now an Elder in the church in which I used to serve!
When I think of Jack I think of the story that we read from the Gospel of Mark. Here was a similar person who had found that the doctors couldn't cure her, who realized that every single attempt at healing had fallen and there was no recourse. So she runs up to Jesus of Nazareth and grabs hold of his gown or tassel. She comes through the crowd, through the back way so no one would see her approaching and she desperately tries to find a source of healing in Jesus of Nazareth. Now the Talmud of the Jewish faith tells us that this woman was suffering from a bleeding illness and that there were eleven different cures for that disease. We also read that there were some superstitious things that a woman like that should have to do, such as carry around ashes of an ostrich egg for one whole year. She tried all that and it hadn't worked. This was a woman who because of her bleeding was also, according to the Scripture, ostracized from the Synagogue and community and had become a pariah. Not only was she bleeding physically, she was also emotionally and spiritually an outcast. We read that this woman comes to Jesus through the crowd, incognito, grasping a tassel of his gown. (Jewish men who were in fidelity with the Covenant would wear four different tassels to show that they were believers in God.) She grabbed one of these tassels and as a last resort when everything else had failed, she grabbed hold of Jesus in hopes that he just might be able to do something for her.
Jack and this woman in Mark's writing are what I refer to as Suburban Christians. I don't mean that they're from Aurora or Etobicoke or Scarborough; I mean that they are those who are on the periphery of things, who don't want to commit themselves to the centre but want to keep at an arm's distance. The sort of man like Jack who has no time for formal religion but when the going gets tough calls on it anyway. Or like the woman who wants to come to Jesus through the crowd, from the back, not to be seen at the centre but simply to stay on the periphery. Suburban Christians are those who want the benefits of the faith without the commitments. Those who want something that is going to please them and be good for them but don't necessarily feel that they have any obligation or any need to have a faith or commitment or calling of their own.
I would like to suggest that in this generation in which we live there are many, many Suburban Christians. The reality of the Suburban Christian can be seen in a couple of things. The first is that they have a quest for spirituality. One of the things I find that seems to be de rigeur at the moment is the desire to be a spiritual seeker, someone who is reading books on spirituality, someone who is enlightened by spirituality and the people who consider themselves to be spiritual are legion. In this search to be spiritual most people are coming from a position of hunger, that they have tried the world and other things to find pleasure or peace or healing or hope or meaning but now in their deep dark souls they're wanting to see if there is something else that can give their lives richness and purpose. I was reading recently an article given to me by a member of this congregation called ”˜A Quest For Spirituality'; it's a Canadian article, very interesting. It suggests that people are not only seeking spiritually within our world, but they are looking to find meaning and purpose from that spirituality in every single facet of their lives. Many of them, for example, are actually trying to find some spirituality in their work places. They are tired of isolation, they're tired of the stresses of the day and the fact that people today in 2001 are working 15% longer than they were in 1991. They are tired perhaps with consumerism, with the ethics of the day and they are deeply seeking for something that will give their work meaning and purpose. The writers of this article say the following: A spirit-driven workplace handles stress and politics more maturely while its people bring to work creativity, compassion and wisdom that they might otherwise leave at the door. In other words, there is a belief that a spiritual person is someone who is more productive in their work, happier in the marketplace and more at peace with the whole world. But there is a dark side to this because the writer goes on and says: Organizations must harness the immense spiritual energy within each person in order to produce world class products and services. Some have come to the realization that a sort of passive workforce or a workforce that is spiritually at ease will be more productive, be able to generate more and so therefore the marketplace is more efficient through those who are somehow spiritual seekers.
Now I'm all for people having a spirituality that they live every day of their lives. I am all for people who are spiritually aware, at peace, connected with every part of their personality or their being, but sometimes at the heart of this spiritual quest today there is a profound selfishness and self-centeredness that the very reason that one desires to be spiritual is in order that one might have all the benefits of life without the commitments and obligations. It reminds me of two men who went camping and woke up one morning and saw in the distance a grizzly bear. One of the men, who was the more enlightened and spiritually aware and wiser of the two, ran and put on his sneakers. The other man looked and said, "Why are you doing that? You'll never outrun a grizzly!" The first man said, "I don't need to. I only need to outrun you!" The spiritual seekers of our day are sometimes driven by that very profound selfishness that although it might seem wise or productive, is driven nevertheless by a profound selfishness. That is why I see people in the bookstores with gobs and gobs of books on spirituality and healing and inner strength. They pay hundreds of dollars for these books in the hopes that somehow they will be better people. While this quest sounds good, and is good in many ways, it can be potentially destructive because they are seeking without a sense of commitment.
The other thing that these people who are suburban are doing is rejecting all sense of a formal religion You read it everywhere; everyone wants to be spiritual but the last thing they want to do is to have anything to do with anyone else in that spiritual quest. They certainly don't want any commitments. It reminds me of the story I told the very first week I was here at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church of when I was a theological student and one of my friends and I used to go to a Tim Horton's Coffee Shop in Halifax at 1 o'clock every morning. (yes, morning.) We would spend our evening with our studies and then go and order our large donuts and double coffees and sit there with the night people of Halifax, the prostitutes and cabdrivers, the night watchmen and police officers, you name it. My friend and I decided that away from the esoteric life of theology we might be able to glean some wisdom in the coffee shops. After a while he and I became part of the social fabric and became well known. I'll not forget one night when we saw two cab drivers who we knew and they invited us to their table along with a couple of others. We sat down together and talked about the Montreal Canadiens and the government of John Buchanan and the future of the fisheries and had a real heart to heart about life. We ordered extra coffee and all was going so well. Then one of the cabdrivers asked me what my friend and I did. We told him that we were theological students. That didn't seem to mean a thing to him so he looked at one of the other cabdrivers and asked, "Huh? What's he said?" "You idiot! They're ministers!" I have never seen cabdrivers consume coffee so quickly and get out of there in thirty seconds and we were left sitting there wondering what we had said or done. There was something about us that terrified these guys.
I think to myself what is it about the representatives of Jesus Christ, what is it about the Christian religion that spiritual seekers find that they want to run away from? Is it commitment? Is it that deep down in their own hearts they don't want anyone to challenge them to hold on to something greater than themselves? Is it perhaps that they are frightened of change? I can understand that. I can understand that when you look at fundamentalism and people see the obnoxious side of it and say, ”˜I don't want to be like that, I don't want to be brain washed, I don't want to make a change in my life that is forever narrow and has no light and joy and hope.' I can see people like that. The problem is that in choosing not to go that way they decide to go no way at all; they decide to abandon faith and religion completely and say that they want nothing to do with anything that has formally existed and may influence their own time or mind. They want to make up their own spirituality as they go.
That I think characterizes Suburban Christianity. It was the case of Jack, who in many ways wanted the benefits of my prayers but was terrified of having me in his room in case I might demand something of him. It is the same with the woman who came to Jesus. She had been rebutted so many times by religion that the last thing she wanted was to be publicly recognized as seeing this Jesus and she was frightened to come from the suburbs into the urban centre of following Jesus Christ. So I ask the question: how should we treat Suburban Christians and I turn to Jesus as our example. When this woman came quietly through the crowd, she did so and grasped his gown or tassel. We read in Mark's Gospel that he had this feeling that the power was going out of him. He felt that the very presence of God's spirit was leaving him and this woman was receiving a healing and that he was giving something up in order that she might receive it. That's why Mark put that phrase in the gospel. Jesus did not turn this woman away, he did not tell her that he was a thaumaturge that he was just some sort of a magic healer. He knew that he was giving something of himself in order that this woman might be healed. This woman who had come to him openly, in great need and pain and embarrassment, rather than being turned away was given something by Jesus Christ that gave her life renewed healing and meaning. But for that woman to do that, Jesus recognized that this was ultimately an act of faith. He said to her, "Woman, your faith has made you well." Your decision, your commitment, your desire to seek me out has brought your healing. I'm not just some sort of magician, it is your very act of a committed faith that has brought about your healing.
Recently I have been reading a book by Mary Catherine Bateson, "Round Circles Overlapping Lives." The author is the daughter of the social anthropologist Margaret Mead and writes about students at Spelman College in The United States, an Afro-American college. She interviews many of the graduating class and talks to them about where they are going in their lives. These young women she has interviewed are wondering if there is anything solid in their lives, if there are any real commitments they should make. Mary Catherine Bateson makes a very strong point when she reiterates to these young woman that unless you have some commitments in your life, you will never have a rock strong relationship. Every relationship that is worthy or life giving or affirming or strong, is based on a covenant. It is based on an agreement, it is based on a commitment. She said, rightly, that all relationships are like life-long learning; they don't remain static, they always change and develop and grow. She said to them, " So it is in your life as you go out into the world there are some commitments that you really need to make but you make them as a covenant and on the basis of that covenant you then go forward and grow, not into some sort of static life but into a life that is dynamic and growing." I think that Mary Catherine Bateson's words are wise and I think they speak to Suburban Christians because Suburban Christians want the benefits of spirituality but they do so without a covenantal relationship or without commitment. They want the joys, the pleasures, the successes, the virtues of being spiritual, they're not willing finally to touch the garment in faith. I think the great joy of the Christian faith, the great wonder of this Suburban World needs to hear so desperately is that Jesus Christ is ready for you to touch his cloak if you will do so in faith.
My father used to have a wonderful phrase which he repeated to me again and again. He said, "Humanity's extremity provides God's opportunity." Therefore it seems to me that people who are in need of healing, in need of hope, in need of meaning and purpose, people who are seeking something spiritual in their lives can indeed, if they understand, find in Jesus Christ, that very thing that they are seeking. I appeal to them to give the Jesus of Nazareth that that woman touched, that my friend Jack touched, an opportunity to touch them, for in so doing they will find that living in the Urban Centre of the faith is a great place to live. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.