We went to church yesterday and, I must say, the sermon wasn’t very impressive. But more generally speaking, I haven’t really been impressed by a sermon in quite awhile.
I got to thinking about this while the sermon was going on, and while I was trying to follow what she was saying. Specifically, the pastor was talking about Creation, referring to the scripture readings from the beginning of Genesis (“In the beginning…”-type stuff). Now, she got to talking about dirt, how the ground can give you things and how you can “play” with/in dirt, etc. I was hoping she would then move into how this is important for farmers in the area, or people at home with their gardens. How the earth provides food that we need, and how satisfying it can be to use the earth at our disposal to be productive.
But she didn’t go there. Instead, she moved past that and made it to how, essentially, we need to read the Bible (i.e. “The Word”) and glean everything from it. She also repeatedly referred to “visions” she had (hopefully she meant “dream,” ’cause otherwise, I think she needs to adjust her meds accordingly) that provided analogs of Heaven, with people praising God in His Creation.
Basically, she re-tread the same steps countless pastors of mine have tread in the past. And these are things I’ve been exposed to practically every Sunday for 28 years.
Now, I realize that there is a time and a place for such talk. “Seeker churches,” for example, where you have a proportion of individuals that have not been attending church for as long as me and they are hearing these things for the first time in their lives. And I also realize that, at any church, there will be folks that walk through the door and need to hear some of these things as an introduction to the Christian faith. Likewise, children in church need to hear it at some point, too (but there’s this thing called “Sunday School” where a lot of that can be addressed, and frequently is).
But seriously, it feels like Brooke and I have been attending churches on various levels for the last 5-10 years (and separately before that), hearing sermons in a variety of contexts, and the vast majority of them tread the same ground as has been done before. And the most serious problem for me is that “the same ground” is losing relevance quickly. The things being discussed in most of these sermons are the things I heard discussed when I was in elementary school. Are they still important? Sure. But so is poverty. So is on-going war. So is strife in third-world countries. So is crime. So are natural disasters. These are all things that are relevant in today’s world, that apply to everyone, and that need to be addressed in the church setting.
I’m not talking “poverty” in the sense of “poor people” like discussed in the Bible. I’m talking about specifics. About people in Asia and Africa that live on less than I make in 2 min, let alone all the people in the United States that don’t make a livable wage and can’t afford to feed their families. I’m not talking “war” in the sense of battles waged in the Bible, but the specifics of Afghanistan and Iraq, amongst other places in the world. I’m not talking “disasters” in the sense of a Great Flood, but in the specifics of Hurricane Katrina, tornadoes, flooding and a Gulf oil spill. And, moreover, I’m not talking about pastors devoting a sentence, or a mere mention to these issues, but rather about devoting the entirety of their sermon on such things.
To me, it represents a form of intellectual laziness. A given pastor can sit at their desk, read a book or two, and effectively repeat most of those tenets on a Sunday morning in their sermon. Books written that are designed to “transcend time” and talk generally about issues that affect a great many people in the world, but still don’t talk about today.
I think it takes quite a bit more thought and analysis to “find God” in the situations of the present, in the aforementioned poverty, wars, and crimes. It requires a lot more bravery on their part to discuss complicated issues that we are exposed to on a daily basis, including abortion and homosexuality. For some reason, these issues are popular to talk about outside of church, but once you are within the doors, they are ignored to avoid offending congregation members.
That is, I argue, what people today need to be hearing. Not what God did 2000+ years ago, but what He’s doing today.
