SERMON FOR AUGUST 30, 2020          TEXT: ROMANS 12:9-21

          I came upon this article by the editorial writer Charles Lane in the August 24th e-edition of The Washington Post. It has been percolating in my mind all week, and so I want to share it with you at some length. Mr. Lane writes: “In the United States, one of the most consequential cultural changes of our time may be the swift and seemingly accelerating decline of religious commitment. Historically, Americans have recorded relatively high levels of worship-service attendance and belief in God, as compared with their peers in advanced industrial societies such as Europe or Japan. The U.S. example seemed to show that faith could survive in an environment dominated by science and technology.

          “A forthcoming book by University of Michigan political scientist Ronald F. Inglehart, however, suggests that the United States is now rapidly catching up with the trend toward secularization elsewhere. When asked to express the importance of God in their lives on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being ‘not at all important,’ and 10 being ‘very important,’ Americans rated God at an average of 4.6 in 2017 — down from 8.2 in just over a decade . . . . [T]he share of Americans claiming ‘none’ as their religious affiliation has grown from 16 percent to 26 percent since 2007. Fewer than half of Americans now attend services regularly — with only 35 percent of millennials going at least once a month.

          “Why the dramatic change in only a decade?    . . . Social and economic development renders human survival less precarious, human suffering less dramatic — and human beings less needful of existential comfort or guidance from age-old traditions. . . . [R]eligions generally revolve around beliefs, and rules, about sex, gender roles and family that are ‘closely linked to the imperative of maintaining high birthrates.’ In modern societies that have mostly conquered infant mortality — while extending life expectancy — that imperative loses relevance.

          “A possible additional influence is social media — whose arrival as a mass cultural phenomenon coincides with the onset of religion’s decline in 2007. Religious institutions make use of social media themselves, to be sure. But social media enable people to establish communities, make friends and meet romantic partners without the aid of a church or other religious gathering place. It offers near-infinite distracting alternatives to religious study. It enables negative information about organized religion — e.g., the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church — to spread in ways religious authorities cannot control or counter.

          “[T]raditional religion could have a comeback if the pandemic and associated hardships lead people to rediscover solace from God. Spirituality — the search for meaning — is a basic human need, which Americans will continue to address, either within established God-centered religions or otherwise. For the time being, however, the intense moral passion our ancestors in America once channeled into disputes among existing religious creeds, or the establishment of new ones, is finding a different outlet: politics.”

          Mr. Lane’s conclusion is pointed — religion in our country once served as the favored outlet for partisan conflict, but now politics is proving to be a more congenial battleground. The history of the Christian church, not just in America but across continents and across centuries, includes countless stories of division, prejudice and persecution. The concept of religious tolerance was a long time taking hold. It took decades of bloody warfare to exhaust those religious passions that were dangerously certain of their grasp of the absolute truth. Colonists fled the old world to settle in the new where they could practice their faith without interference from the governing authorities, be it Parliament or the monarch or the president or Congress. Yet despite the guaranteed legal right to religious freedom, Americans continued to discriminate against unwelcome “others” — for example, the indigenous people they forcibly converted; Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe escaping pogroms; Irish Catholics suffering the devastation of the potato famine, Muslims from almost anywhere. As a dear friend of mine who grew up in Minnesota pointed out, in her hometown there was even one church for Lutherans of Norwegian descent and another for the Swedes!

          The intense moral passion that energized our ancestors was as divisive as it was empowering. It could easily lose its hold on God’s pre-eminent gift and command — love. And judging from our public life, if that intense moral passion now channels itself into politics as its chief outlet, that passion is in danger of abandoning love altogether and making a mockery of the claim to be moral.

          As one Bible scholar trenchantly observes, for Paul “love does not get lived out in perfect environments, but is given birth, meaning, and essence in times when people are in conflict with each other. These verses encourage us to love in times of conflict, disagreements and persecution as part of the Christian identity.” Paul makes clear what love is by describing what it does and does not do: outdo one another in showing honor, he tells his readers; do not be haughty; do not pretend to be wiser than you are; never take revenge; “if it is possible, so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all.” Too often it is not possible; it isn’t all up to you . . . and that’s precisely when you have to figure out what love can do: what will you hold on to, what can you let go, and what must you resist.

          After two weeks of political conventions, after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI, the arrival of armed militia members in the city’s streets followed by the inevitable deaths, and now this morning’s news out of Portland, OR, Paul’s words cut to the quick. We fuel ourselves with anger and fear, and there is much in our world to drive us to those dark places. Indeed, anger and fear are energizing but not ultimately life-giving. Not when they drive us untethered from love. Paul urges his readers to show hospitality to strangers. This requires us to break through our guarded boundaries, to venture beyond our circle of the like-minded, and to learn to stand our ground without losing our decency.

          In today’s Gospel (Matthew 16:24-26) Jesus tells his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” The cross we are called to bear is love, the love of our Lord Jesus that refuses to be overcome by evil but rather faces evil head on and blesses rather than curses. It’s a hard art to master, and these days we are all enrolled in an advanced level course.    But it is in this struggle that we find life. Our witness can counter the dispiriting trends Mr. Lane describes in his article. It can win others, who are searching for meaning, to God’s more excellent way. Amen.