Pentecost 9A 2020
Dale Matson
I would like to begin by restating a portion of our opening Collect for today. “Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your grace that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
Let me contrast that with statements by the late Sociologist Phillip Rieff.
“Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased.”
“Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going.” From Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud.
The prophet Amos put it like this. ““Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.” And people are surely running to and fro in 2020.
Phillip Rieff was not only a sociologist, he was a prophet also. He had this to say in 2006. “The wisdom of the next social order, as I imagine it, would not reside in right doctrine, administered by the right men, who must be found, but rather in doctrines amounting to permission for each man to live an experimental life.” He also stated, “Men already felt freer to live their lives with a minimum pretense to anything more grand than sweetening the time.”
I agree and believe we are there now where the individual is the supreme being. Each person is his or her own god. “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” (From Invictus by William Ernest Henley)
I came from a Protestant white middle class family that embraced what President Herbert Hoover called rugged individualism. Many have pointed to Teddy Roosevelt as the archetype of the rugged individualist.
When I interviewed student prospects as the director of the school psychology program, I would ask them to tell me their story. What became clear to me over the years was the different world views the students brought to the program. Almost all of the Hispanic and Hmong students told their story in the context of their family and culture. They did not see themselves as individuals distinct from the family which included the grandparents.
There is a risk of an egocentricity that accompanies individualism. Perhaps males are given more latitude than females on this. Someone once said that we give our boys wings and our girls roots. In our society today, individualism has now been raised to the level of idolatry. Human rights translated in today’s terms is, I’ve Got to Be Me (A song popularized by Sammy Davis Jr.). Carol Gilligan correctly asserted the role of relationships in moral development and challenged Lawrence Kohlberg on his system of moral development based on individualism. Today, when the individual is free to do whatever she wants as long as it does not encroach on my rights; it is really a “work around”. It is me absolving myself of a responsibility to my neighbor. Ignoring my neighbor is failure to love my neighbor as myself.
Eventually, I have come to see myself not as an individual with personal goals to be accomplished and a resume’ to be embellished. While I still enjoy the alone time, it is obvious that I depend more on others every day. God puts those people around us to help us. Our infirmities and aging frailties force us to rely on others.
Life lived in a collaborative fashion produces richer results, affirms and empowers others and draws us out of the hell of self-absorption. There is no such thing as a self-made person. Each person begins with a genetic endowment from ancestors just for starters.
Hyper-reflection is a preoccupation with self. Kierkegaard called it “extravagant subjectivity”. Our contemporary society caters to and assists this narcissism. This individualism contributes to the symptoms of anxiety, hypochondria, depression and character disorders. At its most pathological point, it is the Schizophrenic collecting his urine because his bodily functions have become his sole focus and vocation.
An individual in isolation may succumb to hyper-reflection, dryness and desperation. A life lived interconnected to the community does not threaten the loss of individuality; it nourishes it. Family, friends and the Church are groups that provide structure, nurture faith, provide service opportunities, and direct us toward God and away from ourselves. The older I become, the more I see individualism as a pernicious modern malady.
The poem Invictus has always bothered me, even in my youth. I prefer, “"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal. 2:20, NASB)
These are difficult times. As a faith community at St. James, we are one in the Holy Spirit. I do confess that Sharon and I now sit through the entire services from our church office. But we enjoy the singing and saying the liturgy. Maybe some of you folks that are timid about singing in public are bold when singing in your own dwelling.
I am a person of rituals and routines. The Covid 19 virus has made me anxious because it has interrupted many of my routines and rituals. I often feel disconnected from my own family and friends. We aren’t gathering for meals together. I have spent way too much time on YouTube. The news is coming at us in full panic mode. It is hard not to get caught up in the “sound and fury”, which interestingly enough is also the title of a James Faulkner novel about the decline of a once prosperous family who lose their faith. Many family members also die over the span of Faulkner’s story. Isn’t there a kind of sound and fury to the ripping of the social fabric of this country? This is not the country where I grew up. I am now a stranger in a strange land.
A Stranger In A Strange Land is the title of a novel written by Robert Heinlein and published in 1961. It is the story of a human born and raised on Mars by Martians. He was later brought back to earth. The protagonist Valentine Michael Smith has supernatural powers and intelligence with almost limitless funds. He is attracted to the ideals of a neo pagan hedonistic cult and founds his own cult “Church Of All Worlds”. He is eventually murdered by a mob instigated by the rival ‘Fosterites’ cult, his body is eaten by his followers and he has post death appearances.
It is not an original story is it. Smith is a pagan version of a Christ-like figure. Even the title is from Exodus 2:22, “And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”
Heinlein had an interesting remark about his book. "I had been in no hurry to finish it [the book], as that story could not be published commercially until the public mores changed. I could see them changing and it turned out that I had timed it right." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land
A pagan “Church Of All Worlds (CAW) was actually formed in 1968 using ideas from the book. “This spiritual path included several ideas from the book, including polyamory, non-mainstream family structures, social libertarianism, water-sharing rituals, an acceptance of all religious paths by a single tradition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land
The similarities with contemporary society are unmistakable. Polyamorous relationships of three or more people were recently recognized by the town of Somerville Mass. The destruction of the nuclear family is also a contemporary goal.
Heinlein was right when he said that the public mores had changed when his book was published in 1961. It was the beginning of the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll. There is a certain irony in this because I was a part of that changing society. I had been raised in a different Kingdom. I was raised in the Baptist church with much of my formation in the 1950’s. The 60’s transported many of us to a new planet; a new era. I came to believe, that God was dead and that abortion was a good solution to the “Population Bomb” (Paul R. Ehrlich, 1968). My morals changed with this new world of premarital sex, drugs and rock music that promoted a pagan life. It almost destroyed my life and did destroy the lives of many around me. I am a survivor of that era.
Having been rescued by Christ, I became a stranger in a strange land. It is a land on a trajectory of entropy not evolution. The people of this land are rushing headlong into an abyss. One characteristic for the unsaved people today is their state of confusion. No matter how words are arranged, much of what is said is nonsense. It is word salad. It is a kind of “New Speak” lacking meaning. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1st Corinthians 13:1) “At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:10-12)
Are you a stranger in a strange land? I believe these are the last days, Lord, pour out Your Spirit on all flesh.
Our society is undergoing another massive change. In the face of this especially for us older folks, this is not a change for the better. I see no justice, no mercy, no faith, no hope or love. What will the next generation of surviving Christians look like? Modern thinkers like Ben Shapiro and David Rubin believe that it is possible for an individual to be a moral atheist but it is not possible for an entire culture to survive without a religion.
So, what is our belief firewall? It is Christ Jesus who never changes. I don’t believe there are more consoling and comforting words in all of Scripture than our Epistle Lesson today.
“35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen
2 comments:
In the traditional Prayer Book which I heard this morning, the Gospel reading was Matthew 8:15 and following. "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You shall know them by their fruits.... Every tree that bringeth forth not good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire."
We are seeing a lot of literal fires in our streets these days, which represent the fires burning our faith and our culture. Lord, have mercy upon us.
Amen Katherine.
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