(Ir)religiosity

Below is the manuscript — more or less, I tend to deviate quite a bit — of the sermon I will be preaching this morning, the first Sunday of Advent, at Quincy Community UMC.  It is based on the gospel text for this week (Luke 21:25-36)

There are probably two great “Fridays” people in the United States can readily identify.  Good Friday, of course, two days before Easter, marking the transition from one season to the next, and, perhaps even more popular, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year marking the beginning of the Holy season of Consumerism leading up to Christmas.  Today, we are in the midst of a transition, a cultural in-between time between the Fall season and the hectic Holiday season, the season of consumption where, if you are like me, you are tempted to spend money you don’t have, to buy things you don’t need, to impress people you may not even like.  We are in an in-between time:  between Black Friday, the biggest day of physical shopping, on the one hand, and Cyber Monday, the largest online shopping day, on the other.  Last year even amidst the growing economic crisis, on this same weekend, Americans managed to spend over $41 billion, an average of $373 per person.

We are in an in-between time.

Yet, as Christians, today marks another transition, another in-between time.  Today marks the end of ordinary time in the Christian year and the beginning of Advent, the beginning of our anticipation and celebration of God’s breaking into history through Jesus Christ.  This Sunday in particular, the first Sunday of Advent, we acknowledge a larger period of transition, between Christ’s humble coming in a manager in Bethlehem and God’s complete restoration of all creation in the future.  Today we celebrate God’s coming in Jesus so many years ago and at the same time we anticipate God’s breaking into history again, looking forward to the future redemption and salvation of all things.

So while the culture around us marks the transition into a time of unhealthy and unbridled consumption, we, as God’s people, celebrate and anticipate God’s liberating work in the world.  The question that I would ask all of us today, including myself, is whether we are marking God’s time today, or the time of Consumerism.  Do we look different from the rest of the world around us during this Advent season?  What are we celebrating?  Who are we celebrating? Read the rest of this entry »

…by refusing to participate in mass consumption. Today — buy nothing. Instead….Give. Imagine. Create. Be.

Click to enlarge (Original here)

Original here.

I was reading parts of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s Empire this morning and I ran across a really interesting section in which they are quoting Marx and Engels (Don’t run away!  I’m not trying to make Communists out of anyone!).

“The bourgeoisie,” Marx and Engels write, “compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates the world after its own image.”

This is interesting because I place a great amount of importance upon the Imago dei in my theology.  Moreover, I interpret the concept as a broad sort of foundational etiological myth from which our common humanity is derived and by which we pursue justice, reconciliation, and all those other warm fuzzy words.

So that being said, I wonder what it means to radically assert the veracity of the Imago dei presently in the midst of our failing economic system.  Clearly we have misplaced our trust and relied upon a system of exploitation and greed.  To assert that we are indeed created in the image of God is to say that we derive are meaning from God as we participate in the divine life.  It seems to me that we have betrayed that trust opting instead to derive our meaning from the unrestrained free market, participating in the life of consumption.

We have thus traded the Imago dei (the image of God) for the much more destructive Imago comburo (the image of consumption) that is indicative of our current economic crisis.

Perhaps a radical reordering of priorities should be in order.

Commercials usually don’t grab my attention when I’m watching TV, but this ad by Discover Card stopped me the other night.

“We’re a nation of Consumers,” the voice matter-of-factly announces, “and there’s nothing wrong with that.”  “After all, there’s a lot of cool stuff out there.”  The commercial then goes on to assert that the “material world can be made brighter” if you would only use Discover, which will somehow keep you from spending too much — never mind the fact you’re still spending money you don’t have — while still allowing you to accumulate more things and thereby, according to the announcer, improving your “quality of life.” Read the rest of this entry »

The White House released their predictions for the next fiscal year yesterday.  The federal deficit will once again break the last record topping out at $482 billion.  Only eight years ago Bush inherited a $128 billion surplus.  The administration has posted a federal deficit every year since.  ”If they gave out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility, President Bush would take the gold, silver and bronze; with his eight years in office, he will have had the five highest deficits ever recorded.”

This post may get me into trouble.

Gas prices just aren’t high enough.  They really aren’t.  That is, if we really want justice in the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate paying upwards to $4.00/gallon just as much as the next guy and I complain probably twice as much — that just proves that most days I’m a walking talking paradox of contradictions.  That aside, I find it very interesting that some people (myself included) who are constantly ranting and raving about the need for justice in the world are the same people demanding that they pay almost half as much in gas prices as the rest of world — the same world that according to them, is in dire need of justice.

That just doesn’t really add up for me.

Frankly, it makes it a little hard for me take the people who get on their soap box about all the problems in the world while at the same time Read the rest of this entry »

~bh ><>

Last year Americans spent almost $9 billion the day after Thanksgiving–ironic considering what we claim the holiday is for–and $18 billion the entire weekend following Thanksgiving.

I hate Black Friday. I hate the concept and I detest the hidden ethos. But every year when the ads come out with slashed prices and new and improved gimmicks I begin to get the urge. Never mind that the gleaming piece of plastic–which will eventually end up in a landfill somewhere further contributing to our pillaging of the environment–was likely made at the expense and exploitation of someone in the two-thirds world; someone who will likely be murdered due to the comfort of American consumerism. Never mind that the low, low, price I’ll pay for the item I just can’t live without will result in the scrawny, meager wage a factory worker on the other side of the globe struggles to survive on. No, last Friday, many, many people didn’t seem to care much for those on the other side of the globe; indeed, one might get the impression that we cared more about “the item” than ourselves as most of us deprived ourselves of sleep so we could get out and consume more before others got the chance. We didn’t even care if we had the money or not, just as long as it was a bargain.

In my own defense, I’ve never acted on this urge until this year. I guess you could say I’ve always participated in Buy Nothing Day, Black Friday’s antithesis and a concept that particularly resonates with me. For some reason I don’t think it will ever really catch on. Anyway, last Friday morning I got out with all the cutthroat consumers to “get a deal.” I was able to trick myself into believing I had a good excuse. A few weeks ago, my external hard drive containing all my music, videos, and some documents–250 gigabytes in all–crashed. What a tragedy! So last week I went out with the sole intention of getting a deal on a new drive. And I did. I just wonder who suffered, or who was killed at my expense that day. I suppose I’ll never know. I’ll continue to wonder as I sit and load my new toy–or weapon, however you view it.

~bh ><>