Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
1 Kings 19:4-8
4But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." 5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you." 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.
Over the past year our church has gone from being a small progressive outpost in an otherwise pretty ferociously conservative city to being, in a way, two congregations. We have our seated congregation here in Springfield who have purchased and maintained this building and who have created a very respectable outreach to the poor of this community while offering great adult religious education and progressive witness in the Ozarks. And we have a far flung congregation who join us via our YouTube and iTunes channels, usually amounting to more than two thousand downloads per week.
I spend a significant amount of my work week answering correspondence from our web based church and feeding thoughts and rants to our page on Face Book that is called, "The Emerging Church." As this congregation has evolved there have been two things that I've noticed that have been very surprising. The first is that our video's outnumber our podcasts in popularity by nearly ten to one. I don't know why anyone would sit at their computer and look at a corpulent cleric week after week when they could just download the audio to their phone and listen to the message.
They live all over the world, in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and Austrailia but demographically I have noticed that the two largest identifiable groups of people we have viewing are pastors and atheists.
That may sound odd at first but honestly I understand it. Being a progressive thinking pastor in a denominational church can be like being mentally enslaved. Many have written to me saying that our congregation gives them hope and I hope with them that the mainstream church can be transformed before it dies in irrelevance entirely.
But the atheists group is interesting to me in a different way. They often feel obligated to self identify as an atheist before saying anything complimentary.
Just this week, I heard from dozens of self described atheists, you can read many of them posted in the comments section on our YouTube channel.
They are often very flattering of me and of us, though most are tinged with a sense of hopeless isolation. It is as if they are saying to me, "You and I get it but no one else does."
If I am right about what I see here, the isolation they feel, the sense that they have a rational world view and they are surrounded by people imprisoned in misinformation, superstition, magical thinking and fear based politics.... Then, in fact, the atheist group and the group of pastors are probably here for about the same reason.
You feel as if you are very nearly or entirely alone. You have your eyes opened to the real justice issues of life, you see the ravages of poverty, the discrimination against racial minorities, gay people and the desperation of the sick who cannot afford health care..... and then you see the news..... just at the suggestion of a radio talk show host that invites people to stand up for bigoted prejudice and millions of people across the nation line up at Chick-fil-A to cast their vote.
The budget cuts recommended by Paul Ryan would turn Medicare into a voucher system telling sick elderly people to go try to buy private insurance......when it is obvious that handing the elderly sick a cyanide pill makes as much sense as giving them an insurance voucher. The budget plan is so cruel to the poor and so favorable to corporations that a bunch of nuns came out of their convents and started a nation wide tour on a bus to talk to voters and candidates about morality.....
And, of course, the Vatican told them to stop it and go back to their convents and talk about why women shouldn't use birth control or get abortions.
And nearly every pastor knows what that feels like..... anything that smacks of the radical claims of the gospel.... Anything that inspired you to go to seminary in the first place, when you try to talk about those things you are told by your bishops and your presbyters and board members not to talk about politics.... Not to offend those whose personal beliefs might be pro war, pro business, or pro slavery....just don't say anything that matters or you might get fired.
In our scripture text from I Kings, Elijah has run away.... He left the ministry.... He left the church.... He is hiding from everyone and lies down and says to God, why not just go ahead and kill me now.... Nothing makes any sense anymore.
If you looked under the bushes in that part of the wilderness, you are likely to find embittered pastors and cynical atheists under every bush. The most recent issue of Newsweek has an article in it entitled, "America the anxious." There are no jobs for the unemployed. The national debt threatens our future. Education is becoming too expensive for the middle class to consider. Wages are stagnant and health care costs are rapidly rising. People who had planned to retire can't afford to.....shoot, even though some people are still screaming about illegal immigration, the fact is that there are more immigrants leaving the United States than are coming here because there is no work here either.
So Elijah does what Mitt Romney suggested.... He "self deported." John Shelby Spong says that the fastest growing religious community in the United States is the church alumni society..... people are self deporting from church too. Churches either insult your intelligence or insult your morals.
When people who watch my sermons regularly tell me that they are atheists, I have to believe that what they are saying is that they no longer believe in the moralizing, guilt producing, threatening, supernatural deity who is the imaginary friend of Fundamentalists. Of course, we don't believe in that god either. I'm just not willing to believe that once you reject the "heaven or hell" gamble or the anthropomorphic super Santa in the clouds that I am then willing to run into the wilderness and die.
A couple of people write to me every week to say, "If you had been my pastor years ago, I would not have left the church." Which, I know, they mean as a compliment but, darn it, if you aren't writing from the cancer ward why are you talking about yourself in the past tense? There is nothing special about me.... I'm not doing anything you couldn't do.
The desert is littered with prophets hiding under bushes, filled with self pity because your Sunday School teacher told you a bunch of myths that turned out to be lies, or your parents used guilt, shame and fear to keep you from having sex and using drugs and now you want your church offering money back. The wilderness is full of preachers who have given up.... They wouldn't say that they have given up.... They sit under their scrub bush and think very sophisticated and well informed liberal thoughts and as long as the universe is just between their ears, they are just fine.... Smug, self righteous.... And pretty much worthless.
In this very metaphorical text..... let go of reading the tales of the prophets in the Old Testament as history... they are not historical... they are sermons.... Listen to the story as a sermon and try to see what the point of the sermon is.
The prophet has run into the wilderness to die and an angel appears to him and tells him to get over himself and go back to town and get to work..... you have to be able to hear through the religious language, .... He had gone out there to die of hunger and thirst and the angel brought him water and food and said, "Eat your fried chicken and drink your sweet tea because you have a lot of work ahead of you and you are going to need your strength."
I understand that saying you are an atheist is a way of protecting yourself from the disappointments that have marked your family and your religious history and I'm not asking you to believe in what you cannot see and what no one can know..... I'm asking you to open your eyes..... look at the sky, the sea, the land.... Look at the trees, the rivers, the people, the children, the elderly. Can't you see the disabled and the sick? Can't you see the emptiness in the eyes of teenagers who have lost hope, who cannot get an education and cannot earn a living wage. Can't you see the elderly greeting at Walmart, carrying out groceries at Harter House, sweeping the floors in hotels because they can't retire and they can't give in to their aching feet, sore back and chest pains because as soon as they stop they will die.
You can't see God but unless you are blind you can see the suffering around you and I'm telling you that the separation you may feel from those people is just an illusion. You are those people. Call that spirit that connects you to our polluted earth and our impoverished humanity God and if you can't believe in that God then you have let your heart turn into a cold hard place and you are as good as dead.
Pastors.... As denominational budgets have diminished, they have had to lay off and consolidate jobs and most of the best and the brightest have been shoved out of the nest because when resources get scarce the mean and the dishonest will find a way to survive and those of good intent will likely become unemployed. Your church structures will not save you but then you didn't enter the ministry to serve church bureaucracy did you?
Some of you need to get your head out of the clouds and a lot of you need to get your head out from between your legs. We need your education, your experience, your ability to write, to speak, to inspire, to lead.... But if you have allowed cowardice to make your decisions for you then all of your talents are just being wasted.
On Tuesday there will be thirty or forty of us gathered in front of Senator Blunt's office to protest his desire to keep women and the elderly from getting health care and he won't pay a bit of attention to us and we won't accomplish anything other than a few dozen good hearted people will spend an hour together. But if everyone would just come back out of the wilderness.....if hundreds of pastors came and they brought a few dozen church members with them.... If we had a crowd of thousands in front of his office then he would come out and want to have his photo taken with us.
In any number of efforts regarding war, poverty, pollution, discrimination, crime, racism, sexism, declining employment and compensation.... It is true, things are getting worse and when you are through with your pitty party and are ready to get back to work, we can change things.... And when you get back from the wilderness and are ready to take to the streets to make a difference you will find us there waiting for you because we're not afraid and we're not going to give up.
