Sermon 7.26.26 Organized Religion
- standrewcin
- Aug 6
- 9 min read
Sermon 7.26.26 Organized Religion
Our gospel says that um the scribes will bring out what is new and what is old. And I take that as a challenge to bring out something new.
People often we read this this this passage, there's going to be a separation of the good from the bad. There's going to be a separation of the good from the bad. And I wonder we all do that, right?
We all separate good things from bad things in order to live our lives. And uh one of the things I've been thinking about is is one aspect of the good versus the bad that regular people do on a regular basis.
Have you ever been approached by somebody and you talk, you start talking, this happens to me a lot because I guess it's part of my vocation, but I talk to people and I start talking to them about Jesus;
And by the time we get to the end of the conversation, we've kind of we've kind of gone through some of their objections, the bad that they want to throw away of what they've known or learned or perceived about Jesus and Jesus's people.
And we get to that part and then I tell them what I think about Jesus and then they'll say to me something like this.
“If only there were more Christians like you.”
Have you ever had that? Have you ever had that happen to you where somebody says, "If there were only like more like good Christians. If there were only more good Christians like you, we wouldn't have to throw away all the bad."
And you know my in my brain I'm always like, "Well, I mean there could be more good Christians. You could be one of them. We could do this together. If you agree that wholeheartedly, we could do this together.
I'm going to come back to that.
There is an Episcopal priest named Jay Sidebotham, whom you probably know of, but don’t realize that you know.
You’ve never met him, but I’m sure you’ve seen his work.
He is a cartoon comic artist, and if you’ve ever gotten one of those Episcopal Church calendars with priests making church jokes, or my favorite when the clergy person is the butt of the joke,
Then you have seen a Jay Sidebotham comic.
One of his comics this year was particularly funny, but it also got me thinking a little deeper about our work in the church and society.
The comic went like this.
It was set up in the office of a church near the desk of the church administrator.
Unlike our church administrator, Mrs. Harris, the comic did not end with her saying, “Lord, he doesn’t mean it.”
In the comic, the administrator is sitting at the office desk and a visitor has come into the office to talk to the priest.
The visitor says to the priest, “You know, pastor, I’m spiritual but I don’t believe in organized religion.”
At which point the administrator, sitting in the background, pipes in, “Oh don’t let that bother you, he’s not organized at all.”
I’m moved to preach to you this morning about Organized Religion.
I think that we have all heard sentiments from folks at one time or another that are similar to Jay Sidebotham’s comic in the church office.
We’ve all been in conversations with friends, or acquaintances, who have said something similar to this, when we talk about religion.
Usually there’s an undertone of, “Oh you go to church, that’s so cute, I’m more enlightened than that,” which actually sometimes means “actually, I have brunch plans,”
Or “doesn’t the bible say in the Gospel according to Lil’ Jon, ‘snap yo fingers, do yo step, you can do it all by yourself, let me see you do it’?”
Now, I know that I am of a generation, where these kinds of statements about “organized religion” and “spirituality” as its opposite have been around for my whole lifetime.
Certainly, many of you can remember a time when, if someone said this out loud, everyone would look at the person side-eye, and say what does that even mean?
So, sometime in the last 50 years or so, this opposition of spirituality vs. organized religion became a cultural phenomenon, a popular shorthand for, “I don’t go to church.”
But, rather than wring our hands and opine this sad state of affairs where people in our lives have seemingly traded biblical truth for the theology of Lil Jon’s song “snap yo fingers,” as if there is nothing that we can do about it,
I wonder if there is a lesson for us, a reason for hope, some way for us to actually get organized and to reach
In the book of Genesis, we hear the tale of Jacob and his would-be father-in-law Laban.
It’s a story we’ve heard often.
And there’s no way to sugar coat this and make it respectable, Jacob makes a deal with Laban in their patriarchal society to buy a wife from his uncle with his labor.
And for one of the first times in recorded history, we have evidence that capitalism’s “bait and switch” is actually an ancient practice and not just something that happens on TEMU or infomercials.
Laban switches the promised daughter, Rachel, for her older sister Leah.
And notice, that though all of the negotiations between Jacob and Laban happen in the open in our text,
It is likely that Leah had no idea that she was the second choice.
I think this is a good lesson for those of us trying to understand why folks might not be interested in “organized religion.”
How do we go from people thinking of what we do as Laban’s bait and switch in Genesis to the pearl of great price, or the treasure in the field?
And the answer, I think, begins with remembering why we are organized in the first place.
One of the most interesting things to me about the term “organized religion” in our society is how its definition has changed over the last few decades, but many of us haven’t realized it.
As if what people meant in the 1960’s and 70’s by “organized religion” and what people mean today is the same thing.
60 years ago, even 40 years ago, when people spoke of “organized religion” in this country, what they usually meant was denominational Christianity; catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, etc…
If you went out today and asked people what “organized religion” is, my guess is that more than 50% don’t know what a denomination is and they would just say Christian.
What they would mean is either mega-church, or televangelist.
And, though who is considered “organized religion” has changed, I would venture to say that there is one thing that has remained constant, one main thing that people have meant, when they set-up “organized religion” as a straw man that is opposed to their private spirituality.
My sense is that what people are actually upset at “organized religion” for is not that it is organized or that it is religious.
They’re upset about what it seems to be organized for; power, prestige, influence, money, comfort, tribalism.
In other words, people see the church as little different from any other organization in a capitalist economy, whose main goal is not the benefit of its people, but its own survival and thriving.
People go to church, because they want to meet Jesus, because they want to be transformed by his Grace.
They want to know that his truth is eternal, and that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate them from the love of God as it says in our reading from Romans 9.
They want to find a pear of great price, or a treasure in a field.
They want to see what is the tiniest seed bloom and grow into a tree, they want to see the bread that rises so that a multitude can be fed from the abundance that is created by a tiny bit of leaven.
People don’t mind us being organized.
But, they will hold us to account if we’re not organized for the purpose of transforming lives, meeting Jesus, and saving souls.
The last time the church was organized in this way was during Civil Rights.
During that era, we broke down dividing walls: Baptists, and Catholics marching together, Jewish Rabbis and Episcopal priests marched together, gay and straight people marched together, black and white, muslim and Christian.
We marched together singing we shall overcome someday.
We broke out of country club churches segregated on Sundays to march on Moral Mondays, to sit at countertops on Tuesdays.
As a nation we passed some of the broadest and most sweeping reforms in our nation’s history.
The church was organized, and it was beautiful, and it was putting its life on the line for people the way Jesus did 2000 years ago.
But, as soon as the victory was won, we went insular.
We changed our organization to self-preservation.
We went back to the old tribalisms of denomination.
We went back to prosperity as a sign of blessedness, to comfort as a sign of salvation.
We went back to the bait and switch.
Work here for seven years and then I’ll see what I can do for you.
That is not the pearl of great price.
That is not, “you have been foreknown, predestined for glory.”
That is not a true God who searches the heart, who is calling us into righteousness and truth.
That’s a puppet god who is used to leach our life and agency.
Organized religion is a bad word, because we have let it become one.
People aren’t allergic to the word organized,
Nobody gets queasy when they hear the words community organizing.
And that’s because they know what the organizing is for.
St. Andrew’s, we have been doing a lot of organizing.
Like the Jay Sidebotham comic, I won’t say that it has always been totally organized.
But, we are making a difference.
We are a place where people know that they can go to find nourishment for their bodies and a word for their souls.
We’re part of an organized diocese and a group of churches throughout southern Ohio, the nation, and the world, where people who are struck by disaster can get emergency relief,
Where teenagers who grow up in rural areas and find themselves outcasts because of gender or sexuality can find a safe place to see that nothing can separate them from the love of God.
Where people of conscience can show up to protest rallies and know that the church is also in the struggle for human dignity no matter where a person was born.
Where people can meet the risen Christ in the breaking of bread and know that they are more than conquerors through the one whom even death could not defeat.
My brothers and sisters, the good news of today is that this is not the end of organized religion, it is a revival of religion being organized for the right purpose.
We haven’t just come here to be anesthetized from the harsh realities of the world, we’ve come here to be galvanized for the coming of Christ;
To be transformed by what we experience here.
This place where organizing and religion meet, we’re about to show the world what we’re about.
If you believe in us, then you gotta share it.
Tell people to come and get organized with us, to come and worship with us, to meet Jesus with us in the faces of children reading, neighbors laughing at a parking lot barbecue, and the body of our church turning into a dwelling place for people in need of a home.
No other organization in this world has the power and potential to change lives like the church,
Because no other organization has the unique mission that we have, if we’re organized correctly.
Insurance companies are not going to invest in our healing, we are.
Media Entertainment companies are not going to feed our need for civility, kindness, and morality, we are.
AI is not going to solve the epidemic of loneliness, intimacy, and human thriving, we are.
It’s time for us to re-invest in the only organization that has ever shown the promise that its mission can overcome human sin, even though it has often failed.
Organized religion, when it is organized for the right purpose can be the solution to what is wrong in the world.
It doesn’t just have to be, “Oh I wish there were more Christians like you,” it can be, “there will be more and you can be one of them too. Let’s do it together.”
All we have to do is get organized.
You people of conscience in my life that I'm willing to talk to about Christ;
Willing to say “I have found this way of being in an organized setting that is organized for people and not for the institution. You can be part of that with me, but if we don't get organized, then we're not going to do it.”
We have to get organized.
We have to be an organized religion and we need other people to join us.
That is your mission:
To talk about Jesus.
And when somebody says, "I really like that Jesus. That sounds like a pearl of great price," Show them which field where they could buy it.
Amen.
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