Whatever
Prelude
Welcome
Call to Worship Leader: Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song.
Sing his praises in the assembly of the faithful.
People: Let us praise God’s name with dancing, making melody to God.
Leader: For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; God adorns the humble with victory.
People: Let the faithful exult in glory; let us sing for joy! Let the high praises of God be in our mouths. Let us worship God! — Adapted from Psalm 149.
*Hymn of Praise # 43 Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Invocation O loving God, author and shaper of community, you promised that where two or three are gathered, the living Christ would be among them. Here we are — two, three and many more — families, friends, pilgrims, seekers. Come among us, Spirit of God. Knit us together in all our variety. Speak a bold word to us this day, that we might be moved to respond as your beloved community. (the Lord’s Prayer) Amen.
Gloria Patri
Kids Time What Is the Church?
Teach this action rhyme to the children. Invite the congregation to join you.
This is the church. (Place outside of hands together, lace fingers, fold hands with palms together with interlaced fingers hiding inside and thumbs side-by-side.)
This is the steeple. (Keep hands in same position, except raise index fingers to form a point.)
Open the door. (Open hands with fingers interlaced.)
And see all the people. (Wiggle interlaced fingers.)
What is a church? (Accept responses.) In today's Bible story Jesus taught the disciples about what it means to belong to a church. Jesus said, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." Did Jesus talk about a church building? (No.) How did Jesus describe his church? (Two or three people meeting together to worship Jesus.) Whenever and wherever people come together to worship Jesus, that is where the church is.
Prayer: Thank you, Jesus, for church buildings where we can gather to worship you and share your love. Amen.
Our Offering to God Let us bring our offerings to God, trusting that they will be received and celebrated.
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication O God of compassion and love, you have entrusted the whole of your creation to our care, but most especially you have made us responsible for one another. We humbly acknowledge this responsibility. As we offer material gifts to symbolize our gratitude for the physical world and to continue our good works in it, so too we offer ourselves, gathered in prayer, as a spiritual gift. We pledge that we will be for each other honest and supportive companions, correcting our faults, forgiving our sins, and healing our world so we may make a more perfect offering to you, our bountiful God, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Scripture Reading Matthew 18:15-20
After the disciples are urged to seek out anyone who strays from the community, Jesus instructs them about what to do with someone who sins against them but remains in the community. The three steps are intended to show whether the sinner has the proper disposition to belong to the community or not.
*Hymn of Prayer # 204 There’s a Quiet Understanding
Pastoral Prayer O patient and loving God, we gather as your community to praise you for the gifts you have bestowed upon us and to ask for courage, honesty, and love to face each other when we have been hurt or offended. We acknowledge that you have placed us in each other's care. Help us realize that we honor your trust when we are willing to confront the wrong we do, as Ezekiel confronted the wayward shepherds of Israel. Keep us mindful that love should govern all our actions and judgments, as Paul reminded the Christians in Rome.
We feel the awesome responsibility you have given us to pass binding judgments here on earth. Help us remember that we are to arrive at these judgments through prayerful consensus, for where two or three of us are gathered together, you are in our midst. Amen.
Prayer of Confession - Gracious and forgiving God, we come before you as a community of saints and sinners. Despite the outpouring of your love and your Son's sacrificial death on our behalf, we continue to sin against one another.
Sometimes we misuse our positions of power and authority to take advantage of others as the shepherds of Israel did at the time of Ezekiel. Forgive us.
Sometimes we forget to love, and try to fulfill your will by demanding conformity and imposing our own preferences on others. Remind us.
Sometimes we refuse to listen to the honest, caring intervention from members of our faith community who perceive us doing wrong. Open us.
Sometimes we pass judgment casually and rely on our personal feelings, rather than on prayerful discernment to determine right from wrong. Teach us.
Renew us during this time of worship and keep us responsible for one another in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
*Hymn of Praise # 149 Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me
Scripture Text Romans 13:8-14
In this section of Paul's instruction on Christian conduct, he commends love as the fulfillment of all law, Mosaic as well as civil law, which, in the preceding verses, Paul had urged Christians to obey. This advice is all the more urgent and reasonable since the day of the Lord's return is at hand.
Message Whatever
When kids are asked not only to do well, but to do better than anyone else, too many adolescents today are saying, “forget it.” How can we prevent them, and ourselves, from becoming care-less?
Laurie’s 16, An ex-cheerleader and honor student. You wouldn’t expect her to do a stint in a closed psychiatric ward after overdosing on drugs — some of which she couldn’t even remember taking.
When questioned about her behavior, she said, “I don’t know. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything or anybody. I didn’t care about my life. I didn’t care if I — if I died. I didn’t care if I woke up dead the next morning. Sometimes I wanted it. I was just like — you know how you can be alive but not really living?”
Terry, 12, summed it up this way after being sent to jail for the first of many times: “I was like, whatever. Take me to jail. I don’t give a s**t.” // “Whatever!”
Sounds harsh, right? When we hear this, our reaction might range from mild irritation, to anger or despair. How do you deal with someone who expresses such utter indifference and disdain?
Whatever! It’s an adolescent mantra that’s bonded to a snarling semantic: “Do what you want, it’s not like you’re going to listen to me anyway, or if you do, what are the chances you’ll understand what I’m saying? Whatever!”
And you ask yourself, “How did this happen?”
It’s easy to blame, the choices are so vast: television, movies, music, schools, friends, marketing and other “cultural” stuff.
But when we do this we’re swimming in a pool of meaningless finger-pointing. We see the whatever culture as a matrix of bad choices, evil alternatives and disconnections. We see it as a market-driven culture that is not “living right.” And if all that is “true,” whom do we have to thank for all of this? ////
In his new book, The Road to Whatever: Middle-Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence, Elliot Currie tells the story of Laurie, Terry and other teens who surprisingly come from middle-class families, and he offers an interesting and powerful argument. He suggests that we’re all to blame for the “whateverness” and care-lessness of the youth culture. Whatever you think of his thesis, he has the credentials. He’s an acclaimed sociologist, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his book Crime and Punishment in America, and when he’s not writing, he’s a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine.
His thesis is one that a lot of people would rather ignore: that “all is not well with the children of middle-class America.” He tells us what we might already suspect, that there are too many kids today who are not on the road to maturity, or the road to success, or the road to prosperity. They’re on the road to “whatever.” Thus the title of his book.
What we’re talking about is the hug-and- shrug culture in which you’re embraced in one moment, and dismissed as irrelevant in the next. And Currie says that if we want answers we have only to look at ourselves.
These children are the kids of parents who have bought into the “simplistic theories” of tough love, teen boot camps and what some call “half-baked measures” that “humiliate teens instead of according them respect and basic human dignity.”
Add to this four additional problems: the inversion of responsibility, the problem of contingent worth, the intolerance of transgression and the rejection of nurturance. No wonder so many kids consider themselves screw-ups and respond by shrugging and saying, “Whatever.”
Don’t check out. We’re getting to the Romans text. In fact, we’re going to use Currie’s four ideas as a rubric for unpacking the apostle Paul’s pastoral advice in 13:8-14.
But first, let’s look at Currie’s four issues:
The Inversion of Responsibility. In his research, Currie heard kids telling him that they were burdened with too much responsibility for their own lives. Parents argued that their children needed to learn to make “good choices,” and so kids were left to figure this out themselves. Often they had to behave like “adults” because no one else in their dysfunctional family was. Many parents thought this was right, and that it’s wrong for children to be given too much help in dealing with the issues of life. So a responsibility that one would think properly belonged to the parent, has now become the responsibility of the child.
Haven’t you heard parents say, “I’m not going to force my children to go to church, because I don’t want to impose my religion on them. That way they can choose for themselves when they’re older.” Yeah, right. Whatever!
When a parent does this, it exposes a child to “the multiple perils of an increasingly risky world” and does so without the benefit of parental supervision. Kids therefore plunge into a world of confusing and alarming choices and learn by trial and error. Frequently — surprise! — they mess up.
The Problem of Contingent Worth. In a culture of contingent worth, it’s not enough for a child simply to “do well.” The child must “do better” than anyone else. Their value as an individual is determined by performance. For an adolescent, this means - in the words of Kafka - that the “court is in continual session.”
The Intolerance of Transgression. Just as kids are subject to rigid standards of performance, they are also expected to function within a narrowed and closely defined set of moral boundaries and to do so without failure. When a transgression occurs, as it inevitably will, it’s like World War III broke out. There’s no room for failure, or for the making of legitimate mistakes. Adolescence is a time when kids do stupid things. That’s why they have parents — to ease them through those missteps. Too often, however, middle class kids are expected not to wander off the straight and narrow, and for Christian families, this expectation is often severe. Moreover, there is no recognition that some mistakes are not as catastrophic as others.
The Punitive Reflex and the Rejection of Nurturance. So, Currie continues, if a child believes he’s messed up, he’s failed to perform acceptably, his worth is contingent on his performance, a sense of care-lessness creeps into his attitude and behavior. Who cares? Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Nothing I do is going to be good enough.
Things are made even worse when parents go into a punitive mode rather than a nurturing mode. Often the response of parents and schools is to “send away” the offending child who is then without guidance and direction. (For more on these four issues, see pages 68-122 of Currie’s book.)
Now, let’s look at the Romans text before us and ask ourselves the question as to whether it is possible the church has functioned like the parents Currie describes and has produced “whatever” Christians.
What we discover is that Paul cautions against the very attitudes described in The Road to Whatever. What he says demonstrates that the church’s role is not to produce “whatever” Christians, but “whenever” Christians. Let’s look at the rubrics again one at a time:
The Inversion of Responsibility. At first glance it might appear that Paul is laying down a boatload of moral and religious obligations here. But we know that this is not true. Paul is very clear, in Galatians, for example, that the keeping of the “law” is beyond our scope. Moral perfection, even with the most conscientious attention to the details of the law, is not going to happen.
But Christ has kept the law for us. Our responsibility is not to be perfect — that is, without flaw — but rather to be faithful in one thing: loving one another. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (13:8). Whenever we act in love, and with love, toward those around us, we effectively fulfill the intention of the law. “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (13:9-10).
If we have become whenever Christians we do not look at the needy, the less fortunate, or our own family members or our sisters and brothers in Christ and say, “Whatever.” We have made ourselves available. We say, “Whenever.”
The Problem of Contingent Worth. Whenever Christians understand that, apart from Jesus Christ, there’s no point in talking about worth or value. Whenever Christians understand that whenever they minister to others, or the “neighbor” (13:10), they are reaching out to a person of worth, and they themselves are people of worth because they know that their worth is embedded in God’s deep and profound love for them.
The Intolerance of Transgression. Moreover, Paul doesn’t raise the expectation that there is no room for failure. Instead, he urges Christians to “wake from sleep” (13:11). Mistakes will be made. But there is so much work to be done, so much service than needs to be rendered. It’s not the task of the church to be beating its members over the head about being perfect, but rather to understand the urgency of the hour: “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near” (13:11-12).
Christians who have moved from whatever to whenever understand that as people of worth, they minister to people of worth, and that they do so as imperfect but willing instruments of the love of God. And that such ministry and service must be rendered now, while the opportunities are still before us!
The Punitive Reflex and the Rejection of Nurturance. Make no mistake, we should not live “in reveling and drunkenness, [nor] in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy” (13:13). But to talk about punishment misses the point. Instead, we should “lay aside” these things, and “put on the armor of light” (13:12). We should “live honorably as in the day” (13:13). And finally, we should “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (13:14).
The Body of Christ is encouraged, built up, trained and made effective by living honorably, and by clothing ourselves, as it were, with “the Lord Jesus Christ.”
These are good words for us to remember in a culture of whatever. At a time when we’re so politically and religiously and culturally divided, it is tempting to expect everyone to match or live up to our own peculiar or specific expectations. If we continue this line of reasoning we’ll produce a generation of “whatever” Christians who feel that they can’t measure up, so why try? We’ll generate a culture of nonbelievers who look at the church as irrelevant and unreal.
And if there’s anything the whatever culture can’t stomach, it’s hypocrisy, un-realness, phoniness and pretension.
It’s time for the church to be populated by Whenever, not Whatever, Christians. The text before us clearly articulates the difference between the two:
Whatever Christians care less about others than about themselves; Whenever Christians look for opportunities to express love. They do so whenever they can.
Whatever Christians focus on religious scrupulosity — keeping moral codes; Whenever Christians zone in on what they do best — loving one another.
Whatever Christians give up, knowing that they can’t do it all; Whenever Christians understand that they can make a difference wherever they are and whenever an opportunity arises.
Whatever Christians are tired and sleepy; Whenever Christians have been awakened to a new vision.
Whatever Christians are subject to spiritual wardrobe malfunctions; Whenever Christians have clothed themselves in Jesus Christ.
This text calls us to be “whenever Christians,” who seize the moment to act as Jesus Christ himself did who, when he saw the teeming masses said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29 NIV).
Source: Currie, Elliot. The Road to Whatever: Middle Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence. New York. Metropolitan Books, 2005.
*Hymn of Response # 233 There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
Communion
Communion Hymn Bind Us Together (insert)
*Sending forth The commandments of God are encapsulated in this:
that we love our neighbor as ourselves.
We are not alone in this task —
Christ gives us strength and courage for the task.
In a world consumed too often by darkness, let us prepare for ministry by clothing ourselves in the light of Christ.
In the name of the triune God. Amen.
*Postlude
Thought for the Day
The sinful acts of a member of the church should be confronted directly and personally with the intention of regaining that person for the good of the church and the glory of God.