Give us Billy!

I'd like to make a small suggestion to President Obama and the inauguration planning committees: give us a blessing from Reverend Billy!

Say what you want about Reverend Billy or his message, but he's undeniably among the very best preachers in the world, maybe ever. This is preachcraft par excellance.

Don't believe me?

Watch this (OMG PLEASE WATCH THIS!):



Who is this guy?

The short version is that Bill Talen has taken on the role of anti-consumerism activist through using the image and techniques of a dime-store televangelist - the effect of using gospel music to sing about the hollow crap that surrounds us leaves a haunting sense of dread about what we've become, both materially and spiritually.

See What Would Jesus Buy, and as you watch the crunch of cars outside suburban shopping miles, with Christmas lights in the background, you hear Reverend Billy appealing with anyone who Has Ears To Hear to spend more time with their loved ones, and less time trolling malls or in cars. His mantra cuts me:

Shop less, give more.

He's blogging now, frequently, at revbilly.com - and it's just the stuff we need to be hearing now, as the Shopocalypse is upon us:

But now Americans are suddenly wise to Santa. We are rejecting this notion that Christmas comes from the FedEx jet, or Santa’s sleigh – from the outside. Our images of happiness are becoming self-made again, coming from within our loving relationships. Our dreams, memories and our imaginations are still independent from the grasping control of the marketing departments. This is the delightful and surprising world that is opened to us at the Stop Shopping church when we look at our email each morning. People report that they themselves are a fountain of dances, of paintings and song. They are making new memory fill-in games, promises of future journeys – we even hear of whole plays, dark comic musicals! In a word, we are awarding each other new experiences. This kind of gift is concocted from the funny adjustments that family members make over time to each other – those eccentric private arrangements that only we have, that no company could possibly mass produce.

Change-a-lujah, Barack! Give us Billy!

Unconditional Living

I’ve been reading a great book lately, called The Politics of Jesus, by a theology professor named James Howard Yoder. Yoder, a pacifist who died in 1997, peels back the layers of generations of interpretation and dogma about Christ to try and recover a sense of some of Jesus’s original, radical message. It’s challenging stuff, and I recommend the book to you.

One part that jumped out at me is Yoder’s discussion of Matthew, Chapter 5 – the Sermon on the Mount, the part that starts with the Beatitudes and ends like this:

“You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Yoder points out that the admonition to be perfect has been a stumbling block for many readers. “Perfectionist preachers,” he says, “saw there the promise of an accessible sinlessness; mainstream ethicists turned it around as the proof that the [Sermon on the Mount]’s intent is not at all to be obeyed, but to prepare people for grace by crushing them under the demand of unattainable Godlikeness”.

But reading more carefully, Yoder says, “The parallel [verses] in Matthew and Luke make it clear that ‘perfect’ here means ‘indiscriminate’ or ‘unconditional’ – a quite conceivable, even attainable imperative.”

When I read that, it occurred to me that what this verse is expressing is not the edict that you should “be perfect like God is perfect”, but rather something much closer to “Let your love be unconditional as your heavenly Father’s love is unconditional.”

That is a powerful message for me to internalize, as a father, a husband, a coworker, and a Congregationalist. What conditions am I putting on love?

Am I raising my kids to know that my love for them isn’t dependent on their success, or (gulp) compliance? Have I assured my spouse that she really can do nothing to earn – or lose – my love for her? Do I truly bear nothing but goodwill in my heart-of-hearts for my colleagues (or rivals) in the workplace? Am I helping to build a church that welcomes and embraces all God’s children, no matter where they are on life’s journey?