Dear St. Paul’s Family,
If you’re looking for a hero, try a theater near you.
‘Tis the season for blockbuster movies, and lately it’s been a fanboy’s dream: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy, Wanted, and most recently, Batman, have turned our neighborhood theater into a perpetual comic book convention.
Far be it for me to extract too much meaning out of mindless pop culture, but I have thought about a connecting thread among all of these movies. Each film’s plot is anchored on the premise that the main character becomes a hero by overcoming his shortcomings. His journey is one of becoming more than he is.
This has been the great American plot summary. We love authority that rises from anonymity. We gravitate toward politicians who can prove that they rose to power despite their past, because it makes us think we can do the same. Our cultural landscape is filled with images that reinforce the point: the rugged individualist, the cowboy at high noon, the astronaut in outer space, the home run king at the plate, the home town boy made good.
We are a nation built on notions of individual achievement: overcome your shortcomings, and you can rise to greatness. There is a hero in you waiting to emerge.
But what has this mentality done to the Christian faith in our culture?
I suggest that it has brought a radically privatized, individualized dimension to American Christianity. It means that we have transferred the hero’s narrative to our own journeys of faith. We think, “If I can just get my life right with God, if I can just live the kind of life I’m supposed to live, then I can do great things for God.”
So, we get bestselling books that tease us in that direction. Their titles are dead give aways to this trend:
- Your Best Life Now (Joel Osteen)
- The Purpose-Driven Life (Rick Warren)
- Facing Your Giants (Max Lucado)
- Look Great, Feel Great (Joyce Meyer)
We might as well have a book titled, How to Become a Spiritual Superhero and Rise Above Being Just an Ordinary Nobody. It would be an instant bestseller.
The Christian church has had to deal with this kind of ultra-privatized spirituality before. In fact, it didn’t take long before the fledgling Christian movement had to deal with a belief system called Gnosticism, which was growing in popularity among those who believed that ultimate power and ultimate light were to be found through a radical turn inward. Gnostics believed that the way you find that power is by discovering it in you, overcoming your fleshly barriers, and expressing it. We see this on the big screen: When Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Clark Kent break out of the confines of their alter egos, they become superhuman. Otherwise, they are ordinary - and vulnerable.
There are several problems with having this as a guiding narrative for the Christian faith journey. First, ours is an incarnational faith. The task of the Christian is not to escape what it means to be human, but to be “living sacrifices” to God, embodying God’s love with every aspect of our being.
This is the problem with that tired cliché: “I’m a spiritual person; I’m just not that religious.” What this suggests is that it is possible to be a Christian inwardly without being a Christian expressively or relationally. This form of modern-day Gnosticism suggests that we can believe the right things without practicing the right things.
Second, a full and complete reading of the Bible will not allow us to view the Christian faith so individualistically. When Jesus is proclaimed as Lord in the New Testament, he is not just the In the Garden Lord that “walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am his own.” He is also the “Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all Nature.” His rule is over all of creation, and over all peoples, despite our tendency to think that it’s just all about “me and Jesus.”
Third, ours is a faith rooted in community. Whenever the work of the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the New Testament, it is always in the context of its work in and through the community of faith. Spiritual gifts are given for the work of the church. The fruit of the Spirit is given for the edification of the community. The letters of Paul are written to communities faith, not just individuals, and they are meant to strengthen their love for each other and their commitment to their mission. That is why, in order to grow most consistently in your faith, you should do so in the context of community: in worship with others on Sunday and studying the Bible with others in a small group.
Ultimately, this vision of an alternate community is one of the most subversive aspects of the Christian faith to modern American culture: the world will not be transformed by the sum effect of individual “heroes” rising beyond their inadequacies. It will be transformed by the collective work of the body of Christ: a wholly distinct community that advocates and models a radically different ethic, based on the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.
We are, together, more than we can ever be on our own. We need each other to grow in our faith, and the world needs the full complement of our individual gifts in order to effect change in the world around us.
This is why it is so important for us to enter this celebration of our 150th Anniversary with the acknowledgment that the kingdom of God is advanced in and through the collective efforts of a committed community of faith. It is a work not just relegated to a long string of appointed pastors, or a few memorable, prominent Christians. It is, in fact, built with the joint efforts of ordinary, every day followers of Jesus, just like all of you.
The world needs a hero, and the body of Christ can provide one. Indeed, it still good to be the church.
Grace,
Magrey
The Rev. Magrey R. deVega
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
531 W. Main St.
Cherokee, IA 51012
Ph: 712-225-3955
http://www.cherokeespumc.org
ST. PAUL’S TURNS 150
We begin our Sesquicentennial Celebration this Sunday with the return of Rev. Bob Davis, who served the church from 1977 to 1986. He will be preaching one of his famous “Sermons in Song,” and the service will be followed by an ice cream social and games for the children. Rev. Ray Hampton joins us on August 3, and our Sesquicentennial Service is on August 17.
STORM RELIEF UPDATE
A team from this church is leaving next week, July 28-30, to spend a few days in the Cedar Rapids area. You can support the team through your prayers and your contributions of time and materials for their work. Consider contributing toward the fund to pay for gas, meals, and (designate checks to “Storm Relief Team”). A list of items needed for the team’s recovery work is available in the church office. At this time, donations of clothes food items for the victims are not advised. Thank you for your support and prayers.
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