Tempest in the Temple

NY Times 1-1-11, QUOTATION OF THE DAY

 "Whatever your vice is, we're your folks."

TENA ALONZO, director of research at Beatitudes nursing home in Phoenix, which gives Alzheimer's patients whatever they want.

This online/headline caught my eye last month.  The Beatitudes name makes for serious irony. (coincidently the Beatitudes are this week's lectionary gospel passage Matthew 5: 1-2.)  How many church leaders/pastors/employees wear themselves out trying to keep everybody happy instead of challenging each other to please God?

The current edition of Christian Century has a book review of G. Jeffrey MacDonald's "Thieves in the Temple:  The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul."  Right in line with last Sunday's message from John 2.  In the review, Lillian Daniels writes, small mainline churches are not immune to the temptation to bend over backward to meet people's desires.  We think if we provide it and they like it, they will come.  Conservatives and liberals share the same consumer orientation and the same temptation to put people pleasing programs about disciplined faithfulness.  

After some years of pastoring, I no longer find the labels "liberal and conservative" very useful.  But that aside, MacDonald and Daniels have put their cooperative fingers right on the point.  Every group I've ever worked with that was "high expectation" thrived.  And I've watched every one that aimed for the lowest common denominator as it bottomed out. 

Our denomination, the United Methodists, have spent quite a bit of energy developing hospitality in the past few years.  I think there's real value in welcoming each visitor as we would welcome Christ.  

But what if Christ came in swinging, as he did in John's account of his visit to the temple?  What do we do with the angry people?  Would we surround Jesus with "simmer downs" so he doesn't disrupt our careful cultivation of the right people and programs? Or would we have the presence of mind (soul?) to look at what sheep, cattle, coins, he was shoving toward the door?

MacDonald takes whacks at the prosperity gospel and "vacationaries," (those who do good to feel good).  But I don't think the rest of us should let ourselves off the hook too quickly.  Are we trying to give people what they think their hearts desire?  Or are we offering the real soul food of a gospel that challenges our hearts, minds and souls to be renewed by the power of a living Lord and the presence of the Holy Spirit?