Poolesville Presbyterian Church
06.24.2012; Rev. David Williams
Vacation is such a strange time. Vacation gives us that time away from the bustle and thrum and normal processes of life. It’s not hard. It doesn’t test or try us, beyond perhaps testing the elasticity of our stomachs. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want, and it’s all wonderful and free and delightfully liberating...at least right up until the next month’s credit card bill arrives.
One of the highlights of this last week’s vacation for my family was our two day visit to Monterey California, where the winds blew cool of the Pacific, and clear blue skies mirrored clear blue waters. It was seventy two perfect degrees, and totally lacking in humidity, the kind of day that makes Washingtonians grumble resentfully about. Monterey has an amazing Aquarium, and my family spent a long and highly edutaining morning there.
We wandered through exhibits about reef life, about anemones and mussels that wave their tendrils and tentacles through the nutrient-rich waters in the nearby Monterey Bay kelp forests, snatching up every passing morsel. From there, we wandered out into a strip of t-shirt emporiums and gift shops and the inescapable Dippin’ Dots, all of which seemed to approach us with the same basic filter-feeding principles as the mussels and the anemones.
We wanted to steer clear of the the typical tourista food dispensaries, so a little web-research on the Yelp social-review app lead us to a tasty little local Indian curry house right near the water. The staff were remarkably friendly, and the vegetarian options were plentiful, and the huge clay tandoori oven yielded some really amazingly fresh and delicious naan. Over the audio system played music that was equal parts New Age and Bollywood crooning.
Off in one corner of the restaurant was a statue, a three-foot-high golden multiarmed elephant-headed dude. On the arms and on the tusks were strewn dollar bills, and at the base burned three little candles. When my little guy asked about it, I told him that the owners were likely Hindu, and that this was a shrine to the Hindu god Ganesha. In the convoluted Hindu pantheon, elephant-headed Ganesha has many complex meanings, but is popularly considered the god of the kitchen, the god of business endeavors, the god of prosperity, and given all of the positive reviews, apparently also the god of Yelp.
It was a nice little splash of authentic Indian color in a lovely little place, but I was struck by two things as I mused about it. First, that there are some strains of Jesus folk who might be bothered by it, though I’m not among them. And second, that a prosperity-focused faith is remarkably successful belief system, one that is hardly unique to polytheistic religions. Worshipping the god of prosperity and business endeavors is actually the way a surprisingly large number of Christians approach their faith.
That version of the gospel..the name-it-and-claim-it, Word Faith, to-meet-your-need-gotta-plant-a-seed movement...is perhaps best known for it's tendency to emphasize material rewards as the fruits of faith. If you have faith, you will prosper. Your car will be large. Your shoes will be fancy. You will have all the very best toys.
That desire is strong enough that it has spawned functionally identical versions of the prosperity gospel across world religious traditions. It exists in basically the same form and with entirely the same purpose in Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, and neopagan traditions.
That emphasis resonates with a pretty basic higher primate desire. We want the tastiest fruit for our young. We want that female to be so awed by our abundantly padded nest that she can't help but approach us with the cooing sounds that mean we're going to get some serious...nitpicking...on. Ooooh. Yeah. Right there...
But that primal urge is alien to the Gospel, and totally opposed to the passage we heard from the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth this morning. Second Corinthians is an interesting mess of a letter. Unlike first Corinthians, which develops arguments logically and segues neatly from one concept to another, Second Corinthians wanders wildly all over the place. The tone of the letter changes suddenly and abruptly, with odd transitions and shifts of emphasis that just make no sense whatsoever. One moment Paul will be waxing eloquent about love, and then suddenly he’s attacking someone, and then he’s right back to being positive again.
Given the clear gifts of rhetoric that Paul shows in his other letters, most competent critical scholars believe that this text is a mashup, a cut-and-paste job that weaves together three or more free-standing letters into one single text. It’s a bit like a best-of-Paul playlist strung together by Spotify after the servers have been infiltrated by Stuxnet, as jarring as blending the Brandenburg Concerti, Death Metal, and the best hits of one of those 64 member J-pop girl bands.
In his dealings with the Corinthians, Paul repeatedly had to deal with that community’s obsession with the trappings of success, and to cast a vision before them that upended their view of the world. As a highly dynamic port city, Corinth rewarded those who rewarded themselves, and your place within the culture was measured by your status, wealth, and power. They were all about prospering.
And yet Paul, in asserting that the time to respond to God’s goodness, and challenging the Corinthians to be reconciled to one another, well...he chooses to tack hard against that worldview. His authority...what commends him...is not a list of achievements, not a resume packed with one triumph after another. Instead, for the second time in this letter, Paul hits the Corinthians with what’s called a hardship list.
A hardship list is, well, exactly what it sounds like. Both here and in 2 Corinthians 4:7-12, Paul sings out a rhythmic cadence of woes, a catalog of sorrows and injustices that he had himself endured in his efforts to spread the message of Jesus of Nazareth. The theme underlying this message is fundamentally simple: faith is something that inhabits an entirely different category of reality than our quest for material well-being and physical ease. That’s not to say that being faithful can’t sometimes lead to prosperity. Kindness and thrift and diligence and honesty and patience...values which may seem alien in this era but rise out of faith...those values have a tendency to result in both well-being and contentment. Instead, it’s important not to conflate faith with the quest for gain because of what that does to faith.
Of all the many problems with thinking that way, the greatest comes when you actually get past all your daydreams about God finally getting you all the wealth you’re sure will make you happy. Because if having faith means having your dreams all come true, then if you suffer...it must be because you just don’t have enough faith.
If you pray and you pray and you pray over someone you love...and they die anyway...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you pray and hope over someone who just can’t seem to get their lives together...and they never do...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you try your hardest to do what’s right, and that relationship just comes apart anyway, it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. If you put in long hours at work, and do your best, and don’t get ahead...it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. Just believe a little harder, they say. Just pull yourself up by your Jesus bootstraps, they say.
But faith doesn’t work like that. It’s not measured in the same way as worldly power. It’s not social. It’s not economic. It’s not a question of being able to do whatever you want, and impressing people with your power.
Instead, it is what deepens your joy in times of celebration, and what keeps you from unravelling in times of hardship. Faith is the thing towards which we orient ourselves, and that keeps us oriented no matter what we encounter. It governs our actions, whether we are deep in the fat of the world’s sweetness or in a place of bones and ruin and tears.
The measure of faith is not whether it stands when the world seems to pour out affirmation. The test and the purpose of our faith lies in the fullness of a life, in ill repute and good repute. Let's live out our every moment, no matter what it be, guided by that fundamental grace. Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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