For Those Done With "Playing Church"--April 26, 2024

For Those Done With "Playing Church"--April 26, 2024

"Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." [1 John 3:18]

I guess the question really is this: are we for real, or is this just playing dress-up?

All this business of being disciples of Jesus, is this really what our lives are about, or are we just pretending?  The news, and the celebration, and all the messaging about being "Easter people" who shout the news that Christ is risen (indeed!)--is all of that just a game we play each year in the springtime, or is it who we really are?

I ask, not because it is easy to answer (or at least to live up to our intentions), but because these words we heard this past Sunday from First John won't let us avoid the question.  Are we people who just talk about Jesus, keeping things nice and abstract, easy and hypothetical, or are we people who live the Jesus life? 

I also ask because all too often, Respectable Religious Folks have talked a good game about how important Jesus is, only to shrug off the actual call of Jesus to live his kind of life, to share his kind of welcome, and to embody his kind of love.  And love, after all, isn't meant to be merely a subject we discuss or a topic we can preach on, but an action we practice.  Love is a verb for living, not a topic for speaking about.

Honestly, I've lost count of how many times I've heard young folks in the church walk away disillusioned, not because we didn't play "their kind" of music or put enough posts on the latest platform for social media, but because the loudest voices they heard who called themselves "Christian" didn't seem particularly interested in acting like Jesus.  The disillusioned and de-churched people I know have most often felt like so many of the big name celebrity pastors selling books and televangelists hitching their stars to political candidates sold out on actually living the Jesus way of life.  And the ones who have walked out of church rarely do so because they stopped finding Jesus compelling--they've left because they've heard so many Religious Talking Heads invoke Jesus' name while ignoring the needs of refugees, closing the door to outsiders and outcasts, trading enemy-love for war-mongering, and selling out Jesus' love for political or financial advantages.  They have been turned off, not because Jesus is irrelevant to them but because they have met so many church people who treat Jesus as irrelevant.

And over against all of that, these words from First John call us back to practice Jesus' kind of love as a part of the Jesus way of life--in "truth and action," not just as lip service.  As we've heard from him over these last several days' devotions, Christ-followers aren't off the hook to merely mouth Jesus' name and then ignore the needs of others around us.  We are called to something genuine.  We are called to practices patterns of life that echo Jesus' own priorities and show a family resemblance to Jesus' own gathering of outcasts, misfits, and mess-ups.  

And all of that, honestly, is good news!  This isn't meant to be drudgery or an impossible to-do list--it's the freedom of actually getting to experience the kind of life and community Jesus intends for us! It's relief from having to keep up appearances!  It's an end to the stifling emptiness of religious hypocrisy!  That's all good news--that's what all of us who have been let down and disillusioned before are really waiting for.

The next time a demagogue tries hawking Jesus as a product to prop up their cause, we have an answer:  "Sorry--I'm not interested.  I'm not here for a bunch of 'talk' about God or religion--I'm here to love like Jesus in truth and action."  The next time we run across loud religious voices that don't actually seem interested in the things Jesus is interested in, like feeding the hungry, visiting the imprisoned, freeing the oppressed, and welcoming the stranger, we know how to respond: "Thanks but no thanks--I'm done with playing church; I'm here to follow Jesus."  And the next time you run across someone who says they are done with church and organized religion because it's just full of a bunch of pretenders, maybe you and I can be the ones who say, "I'm not interested in being a pretender, either--I'm striving to let Jesus' kind of life unfold in me, too.  Will you help keep me real and join me?"

Who knows what might come out of that kind of honesty?  Maybe that's just what we've all been waiting for.

Lord Jesus, move us from empty talk and game-playing to lives that love like you.