Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

What constitutes a ‘good life’?

There was a time when the American Dream was ‘a chicken in every pot’, then ‘a car in every driveway’.

These days, we think of a house, 2.5 kids, a dog and a white picket fence (as though anyone in Dallas can afford a house right now!).

Maybe your particular vision of ‘the good life’ isn’t that white picket fence.

Maybe it’s a certain dollar amount in your bank account.

Or that job.

Or a relationship status.

As you’re considering your vision of the good life, have you considered what role religion plays in it?

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, which is a time we set aside for self-reflection, introspection and repentance.

We enter into Lent by making an assumption: that the ways of our world are contrary to the ways of God.

Take the American Dream, for instance: not every American has equal access to the dream of a house with a white picket fence — thanks to decades of housing discrimination at the federal, state and local levels, Americans of color are significantly less likely to own a home.

Wealth, relationships, healthcare - nearly any metric by which we might measure a ‘good life’ is inequitable along various likes - class, gender, sexuality.

We can look at these inequities and know this is not God’s desire for our world.

But it’s hard for us to connect faith to those inequities.

For a lot of us, faith is a private activity, something between us and God.

It’s not something we discuss in public.

Faith might regulate our individual activities, but faith isn’t something we think about in terms of public policy.

Faith, in other words, is personal, not political.

Except… if our culture really is turned away from God, then it’s at every level.

It means our political reality is fallen as much as our personal realities.

Turn with us to Isaiah 58.

This division between personal and political realities is relatively recent in human history - maybe a couple of hundred years old.

If you were here during Epiphany, you might remember this text.

It’s from the years following the Exile, when God’s people are focused so much on personal piety that they’re ignoring the suffering of the vulnerable around them.

I want to revisit this text with you as a reminder that the division we make between personal and political is a false one — at least for God’s people.

Let’s read:

asdf

As far as God is concerned, personal piety that is disconnected from a whole, just society is nothing but performance.

That’s deeply important for us to remember as we head into Lent.

Let’s keep reading, to hear what God wants from us:

Again, for God, personal piety has to be paired with political justice to mean anything.

As Jesus says, we can’t separate love of God from love of neighbor.

What’s more, when God offers a vision of wholeness — what we might call the good life — it’s a world that encompasses both (personal and political holiness):

This is NOT quid pro quo.

This is God’s vision of the Good Life.

It looks very different from the American Dream.

It will cost us.

But Lent is where we trust that following Jesus to the cross leads to the empty tomb.

Song

Series

Personal + Political (where are you?

What is God healing in you?

What is God calling you to?)

Fast: will you?

For Catalyst: personal IS political.

We want to be both.

Communion + Ashes

You only have one life.

Make it a good one.

Assignment + Blessing