Epiphany 4
26 January 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
W. Gregory Pope
A TALE OF TWO CATHEDRALS:
THE COVENANT PRACTICE
OF CHRISTLIKE FORMATION
Series: Life Together in Covenant Community
Micah 6.6-8. Galatians 5.18-23
Mark 1.16-18. Matthew 28.19-20
With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6.6-8)
If you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. (Galatians 5.18-23)
As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea – for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Mark 1.16-18)
Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28.19-20)
We’ve been talking the last couple of weeks about our “Life Together as a Covenant Community.” Last week we made promises to each other as pastor and people. Today I begin with you a conversation about Five Covenant Practices that mark our identity as the Body of Christ. The first: “The Covenant Practice of Christlike Spiritual Formation.” I invite you to engage your holy imagination as I share with you “A Tale of Two Cathedrals.”
Imagine with me a large sprawling structure surrounded by concrete. Before entering you have struggled to find a parking place. The venue is not as popular as it once was, but can still be crowded especially around Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day. It has much to grab your attention. Everybody says you need what it offers if you’re going to feel good about yourself. And if you want to keep feeling good about yourself, they say you’ll have to keep coming back.
You walk into this “cathedral” and there are “chapels” all around. The “priests” are there to help you find what you’re looking for. And if you’re not sure what you’re looking for, they have suggestions. If you just want to look around, that’s perfectly fine. “Just looking” almost always creates a desire to have what is available, even though before entering this cathedral you didn’t even know you wanted it.
On the outside of the chapels are windows not of stained glass but with pictures of “saints,” sacred icons, if you will, of the cathedral’s faith, with beautifully airbrushed sculpted bodies most of us will never possess. They are on display to make us believe what we could be if we spend enough time worshiping in that particular chapel and acquire the many “blessings” it has to offer. And most of us fall for the lie.
When you find something you want, the attending priest will take an “offering” from you and you will get to take the “blessing” home. It will make you feel happy – at least for a couple of days. But by next year, the priests of the chapels and the bishops of the cathedral will tell you that the “blessing” you received is no longer good enough. You need to return and make an additional “offering” and receive the latest, most updated “blessing.” For your identity in this cathedral is that of a consumer. Your worth is based on what you buy. The “blessings” at the time of consumption promise to make you happy, but the invisible print says your happiness will only be temporary.
This cathedral has its own “bible,” its own story in which you are encouraged to live. The members of the cathedral put their story into songs of identity and promise performed by various bands. Oh, the bands! They often sing in front of a fountain. You might think of it as a “baptistry” of sorts. The band today is from the early 2000s. They call themselves “Nickelback.” Perhaps they’re being asked to sing in this cathedral has something to do with the nickels you toss in the fountain. I’m not sure. Their song this morning describes what it looks like to be formed by this cathedral’s congregation. It goes like this:
I want a brand new house on an episode of Cribs
and a bathroom I can play baseball in,
and a king size tub big enough for ten plus me.
I need a credit card that’s got no limit
and a big black jet with a bedroom in it.
I want a new tour bus full of old guitars,
my own star on Hollywood Boulevard –
somewhere between Cher and James Dean is fine for me.
I’m gonna dress my[self] in the latest fashion,
get a front door key to the Playboy mansion,
gonna date a centerfold that loves to blow my money for me.
I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame.
I’ll even cut my hair and change my name
Cause we all just wanna be big rock stars,
live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars.
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap,
We’ll all stay skinny ‘cause we just won’t eat
We’ll hang out in the coolest bars,
in the VIP with the movie stars.
Hey hey I wanna be a rock star.1
After the band sings, you can hear “sermons” by various talking heads, eloquent preachers they are,
with their own version of spiritual formation (though they don’t call it that) encouraging you to become a certain kind of person, offering you an identity and a mission with its own list of do’s and don’ts.
In this chapel we are told that we exist to support the economy. We are not to ask where the products we buy come from, why we can get them so cheap, whether child labor was involved or if adults in third world countries worked 80 hours a week in sweatshops for mere pennies an hour or if the products are doing harm to God’s creation. No moral or ethical questions please. Just trust what the market will bear. Come and get whatever feeds your desire and what you are told you need.
If you receive this “gospel” into your heart, “salvation” will come in looking attractive and appearing successful. And if you have to put your “offering” on a credit card, that’s fine. The downside is there’s a chance you’ll be treading water in a pool of debt. But that’s okay – you’re being a faithful member of the congregation and we are impressed with how you look.
Perhaps by now you know the name of this cathedral. That’s right – it’s The Mall2 – America’s true sanctuary, our national church – which many of the faithful now attend online. The mall usually gets the first fruits of our labor, and well more than ten percent. And we buy into its “gospel” message more deeply than we might imagine.
Have you ever given thought to the idea of The Mall as a place of spiritual formation with advertisers having a vision of the person they want you to be and then seductively marketing what they have in order to form you into that vision, all the while leading you to believe you are acting freely and just expressing yourself?
The mall and our global economic machine need you and me to be a certain kind of person, a person continually discontent with who you are and what you have. If you ever reach the point where you mistakenly think you have enough and where you feel good about wearing clothes from three years ago (gasp) you will be frowned upon and likely ridiculed. Because that’s not good for the national cathedral budget. You’re not being who they need you to be.
Now I’m not suggesting that we never visit the mall or buy new clothes or tools or (certainly) books. We can make purchases, but we need to ask questions as we do so. Perhaps we could do a good deal of our purchasing not for ourselves but for those who are without basic essentials, those actually in need of clothes, socks, maybe even a good used car to get to work. We can buy things to support jobs and local businesses without buying into the notion that what we own determines our worth or defines our identity. Just don’t buy stuff in order to feel good about yourself or to gain the lame approval and shallow admiration of those around you.
But be very clear: Our advertising-marketing-economic-political system is very intentional about shaping you and me into a particular kind of person, a person who is never satisfied with what we have, and is very intentional about maintaining a system whose purpose is to continually create within us the desire to want more.
So, given that spiritual formation – even deformation – is always happening: What can be done to counter this false identity and dubious mission our culture seeks to create within us?
Well let’s imagine another cathedral – one that we’ll be talking about over the next four weeks. To take just a moment to introduce this cathedral – the parking lot is not quite so full except at Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day. There have likely been no glossy advertisements to lure you in. Maybe someone invited you to visit. Maybe you’re seeking God or something deeper than the life you have now.
You walk in and you’re greeted by a smiling face, someone to welcome you and point you in the right direction. As everyone begins to gather in the larger chapel there is a warm presence of love among the people. Music is offered that lifts your heart toward God. You are invited to sing hymns to Christ to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and never be the same. You find that children are welcomed in the place. They are valued and loved. Prayers are prayed, helping us center our lives and our life together in God and God’s purposes. Holy Scripture is read and God speaks and the Holy Spirit breathes life into the room and into our hearts. An offering of possessions is made, a grateful returning to their Rightful Owner to be shared with the community and a world in need.
The preacher for the day reminds us what it means to be spiritually formed in the likeness of Christ, and how counter-cultural the words of Jesus really are. The preacher tells the story of someone visiting a small town in Michigan the week following 9/11 where people across town begin noticing sheets of purple paper appearing in many of the businesses and restaurants. Beginning at the top of the page and going all the way to the bottom is a list of phrases:
Blessed are the peacemakers
Love your enemies
Do not retaliate
If you forgive, your heavenly Father will forgive you
They are words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. The visitor says that as he sat in Suzi’s Restaurant with the purple piece of paper in his hand reading the words, a man seated next to him looks over and says, “I don’t know what them words are, but they don’t sound right to me.”
And you have to agree. In our world the words of Jesus are profoundly strange. You will never hear them on the lips of a politician wanting to get elected. They just don’t sound right to our ears. The apostle Paul actually called the message of this gospel “foolishness.” Even in the church where we have often traded costly discipleship for comfortable membership the words of Jesus sound irrelevant, naive, idealistic.
And yet Jesus has commissioned us to go into all the world and make disciples. Not just believers who “accept” Jesus and are baptized. But followers of Jesus who teach and obey his “foolish” words no matter how odd they sound, because on our best days we know his words lead to life.
The preacher reminds us that this evangelistic calling to be disciples and make disciples extends beyond the large chapel into other small chapels throughout the cathedral where small groups gather each week to study the Bible and pray, to talk with one another about what it means to follow Jesus and to encourage one another not to worship in the cathedrals of consumerism. We gather in these small groups to be grounded in the basics of our faith, but also to learn to think critically about faith, asking questions, making faith our own, exchanging bumper-sticker platitudes for thoughtful theology. All of this for the purpose of being formed in the likeness of Christ and partnering with God in the healing of the world.
We gather in this Cathedral so that God’s Spirit can bear fruit in our lives wherever we go, gradually forming us into people who put to death compulsions of selfishness and self-interest, behaviors of jealousy, anger, and envy that lead to quarrels, dissensions, and strife. People who embody life-giving love and joy peace and patience, kindness and goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. People who put aside petty preferences and focus on what really matters like – doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. We invite people into the life Jesus lived as the only life worth living. We seek to form people who spend their lives loving enemies, living generously, helping the needy, advocating for the poor, offering grace to the wounded.
And while spiritual growth certainly requires time alone with God to pray, Christlike spiritual formation is learned best with others. It was in community that Jesus taught his disciples. We are individual members of the Body of Christ who cannot function alone, a community of faith where we become disciples and make disciples for the good of the world.
In this Cathedral of Christlike Spiritual Formation this is our reason for being. No matter what else we do in this place, if we do not form faithful followers of Jesus we have failed. It is the mission of the church to be a community of Christian formation.
As the church we must be more intentional than the world around us in our task of spiritual formation, careful that the cathedral of the church does not act like the cathedral of the mall where we treat people like customers, read scripture only for something useful, promote the gospel as a product, manage the church like a business, review the budget like a stock market portfolio, or market ministry through glitzy commercialization.
As we leave the mall-cathedral having been told we are consumers that must never be satisfied, a benediction is passed along to “Have a nice day!” and “Come back and see us!” As we leave the cathedral of Christian spiritual formation we are told to go as God’s beloved children, members of the Body of Christ, whose mission in this world is to live as faithful followers of Jesus, citizens of the kingdom of God, doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with God, with the Risen Christ going with us empowering us every step of the way.
So, given that spiritual formation of some sort is always taking place: In what cathedral are you being formed? What kind of person are you becoming? And having worshiped in this cathedral this day, how then will you live?
____________
1. Nickelback, “Rockstar,” 2005
2. I am indebted to James K. A. Smith for introducing me to the image of the mall as a religious site in his book Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Baker Books, 2009, 19-23.