Prosperity preaching is very popular. When I was in seminary, some friends and I went to one of the original mega churches outside of Chicago. We went to several worship services, trying to figure out why this expression of Christianity was so popular…
Some of what we saw was impressive; there are things that kind of tradition does well; they make sure that new members are brought into the greater community through small group ministries. Everyone has a place; but we also heard every sermon be this cosmic cheerleading kind of thing where one’s success in business or in some other area of life were considered to be blessings from God… lots of sports images in those sermons, lots of stories of sailing on the lake and of success…
I can see why that might be appealing, at least for a while. Who doesn’t want to be successful? What I wonder though, is what the long term membership of such a church looks like. What happens when we aren’t successful by society’s standards?
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Paul’s words from his letter to the Romans are a powerful summation of the gospel… the gospel that I have been surrounded by in my life has nothing to do with my success and happiness and everything to do with Jesus, and with his commandment to love one another…
My issue with the prosperity preachers of the day is that it seems to me that their focus is misplaced… it also feels to me as if it denies love in the sense that Jesus meant it…
Certainly, God wants the best for us… but we don’t obey God or worship God in order to be happy… it’s just not that simple… Jesus certainly loves us, loved his life, loved his friends… I am certain that he loved hanging out and having fun with his friends and family. It’s certainly good for us to spend time together, enjoying each other’s company, and celebrating each other’s joys.
But… you and I know that the life of faith is built on things much tougher, and much deeper than that. Paul reminds us this morning, that in loving our neighbor we fulfil the law and commandments…
Loving our neighbor is not always a “feel good” kind of thing, and in fact, I would say that it is often hard, painful work… It’s not about making ourselves feel good; when that happens as a by-product of loving another, that’s a gift; but it’s not why we do it…
Loving another often means that we have to make hard decisions about our behavior and perhaps our resources that we don’t often like to part with. Loving another sometimes means sitting with someone late at night in a hospital waiting room; sometimes it means feeding someone who is hungry; sometimes it means standing up for what is right instead of what is popular, no matter the personal consequences… much of the time, it doesn’t feel good or make us happy… I doubt that Jesus was happy as he walked toward Golgotha. I doubt that any of us would continue to worship a God whose only concern was for happiness, be it God’s or ours. What you and I know is that God loves even in those times when happiness isn’t possible. God is present in our darkness as well as in our light… We know, or at least I hope we know, that God will not leave us even when we have turned our back on him or on our neighbor. God continues to beckon us toward love; a love that helps us to serve with and care for another.
I knew a priest, who while serving a poor church in Chicago, took on a night job in addition to his parish work, as a bag handler at O’Hare airport… why? So that he could open a school for poor boys in the neighborhood who didn’t have a chance if the church didn’t help them. Did that second job make Jack successful or happy? I imagine what it did was make him tired down to his bones. I imagine, that there were lots of nights he didn’t want to go to a second job, spending time away from his family… but he did it…. he did it because he felt like Jesus was asking him to love his neighbor, in this case, the boys of the neighborhood, enough to help them make a better life for themselves… Did it make God happy? I guess at some level maybe it did, but the God that I know, more likely wept with sadness at the plight of these boys and wept for Jack who did what he could to make life better for at least some of them. Love, the kind of Love that God gives and that God is… isn’t a feel good platitude… rather it’s the kind of love that gives life in the face of death; it’s the kind of love that speaks justice for the weak; the kind of love that sits in the dark when all seems lost… it’s the kind of love that was crucified on cross, not so that we could be happy…. but so that death would never have the last word.
So… go out and love… love everyone you see today… if it makes you happy, great… but i think if it makes you too happy, you probably aren’t loving hard enough… love isn’t easy… but it is who we are, because it is who God is… go… love… go… and be loved…