Today at Mass, our deacon gave a homily geared toward the children in attendance. It was about advent and preparing for Jesus to come; pretty typical for this time of year. The interesting thing to me is that it was the best homily I have heard in a very long time. It was very basic and simple. It was based on the gospel. It was devoid of politics and guilt trips for money. It was about God.
Surprisingly, this kind of homily seems to be less and less common. I think one of the reasons I have become so wary of the church and religion is because any more it seems like merely a vehicle for political propaganda, at least in the U.S. When our priest told us a year ago that, while the church would not tell us who to vote for, we should bear in mind that abortion is murder and therefore voting for someone not set on abolishing abortion would be a terrible sin, I about walked out of the church. It's not that I believe abortion is a good thing; I don't. I think it's pretty awful. But I also think the millions of people dying in Darfur, Guinea, and many other African and Middle Eastern nations is pretty awful too. I think it's pretty awful that millions of people in America die because they are denied health care. There are many things happening in this world that are pretty terrible. So why would I choose just one group to care about and ignore all the rest? Is that really the Christian thing to do?
It seems to me that the church has been a little too focused on using their power to convince or coerce me into voting a particular way on one or two issues, and ignoring what they're really supposed to be doing for the congregation: teaching us about Jesus and God and his love for us. And that is precisely what the deacon did today. He told us John the Baptist was the bulldozer, who "made straight and clear the path of God." I love that image. And he says that John was a living sacrament. And each one of us are too, because "Christ" means "anointed one," and each one of us was anointed at baptism. So we have to make clear the path for others. We have to do the right things so others will follow our lead.
And the things we are supposed to do have nothing to do with politics. We should help other people. We shouldn't argue with each other. We should love each other, because God loves us. He loves us more than anything else in the world, because he made each one of us absolutely unique and special. Now that's the kind of religion I'm interested in: loving each other and treating others how God would want us to. It was a refreshing sermon, and it gave me hope once again, that maybe there is something to this religion thing. But it also reminded me once again, that my faith is a personal thing, and I won't let any organized religion get in the way of that, no matter how well-intentioned they claim to be.
