I call it “puke dust.”
Remember what happened in elementary school when a kid puked in the hall? So it could be absorbed and swept up, a custodian would come and pour that green sawdust-looking stuff upon the putrid puddle. I once saw this done to a pond of puke just outside the cafeteria door.
What got me thinking about cleaning up puke? It wasn’t getting the flu. It was a sermon.
Have you ever been traveling and had to visit a church out of obligation to your host? Yeah, it was that kind of sermon — and, to boot, it addressed the Second Coming of Jesus and its implication for Israel/Zionism. (Oh, boy. Here we go.) While most congregants were eating heartily of the proclamation and offering a chorus of amens in praise of the “food,” I had previously been in the kitchen, seen how the sausage was made and wanted to retch.
Brad Bull
Occasionally, I moaned. The person beside me — let’s call her Abigail Adams — knew of my revulsion with this pastor’s sermons I had sworn never to endure again after sitting through a Fourth of July “sermon” that was indistinguishable from a partisan political rally. Amid a sanctuary awash in “Merica” icons, including an American-flag-toting eagle landing on a cross — and without a trace of irony — the pastor’s sermon had been on the sin of idolatry. (Two reviewers of a draft of this piece said they were confident they knew what church I was describing. They were wrong, and I replied, “The doubly sad thing is it could be about 80% of the large churches in the United States.”)
Anyway, in response to my moans, Abigail Adams pressed her elbow into my arm with a “tone” somewhere between “it’ll be OK” and “don’t you dare make a scene.” My eyes said, “But JESUS turned over tables in the temple.”
“The pastor was pushing — and the congregation was willingly snorting — the feel-good poison of sermonic meth.”
It’s one thing not to feel spiritually fed by a sermon. A person might hate spinach so much they don’t eat it, but it’s still nourishing to others. This sermon was something else.
I grew up a teetotaler and once, while visiting a church not in the Welch’s grape juice tradition, I got buzzed from a sip of Communion wine. With my metabolism, drinking much alcohol at all would leave me puking pretty quickly. Others might be reveling in large quantities of booze, but that doesn’t make it nutritious. Similarly, meth reportedly feelsamazing, but it’s deadly.
In this case, the pastor was pushing — and the congregation was willingly snorting — the feel-good poison of sermonic meth.
Many consider the preacher to be one of the best in contemporary homiletics. His preaching packs the pews of a large church and — to his credit — the church he shepherds performs many substantially good ministries. Yet not too far beneath the surface of his meticulously researched and charismatically delivered sermons lies not love but, at best, disdain and, at worst, hatred.
His detailed proffering of Greek and Hebrew anointed in self-deprecating references to praying for God to speak through him make it easy to pawn off biblical claims as fact and create an atmosphere where the congregation esteems the message without critical analysis.
“This logical fallacy of appeal to authority has fueled centuries of Pied Pipers kidnapping the brains of congregations.”
I once heard someone critically analyze an assertion in a similar preacher’s sermon, and another person in the conversation scolded: “How can you question the preacher, he has a doctorate.” This logical fallacy of appeal to authority has fueled centuries of Pied Pipers kidnapping the brains of congregations. It’s breathtaking to see our human tendency to mental gymnastics when we question the training of someone with whom we disagree, but we will affirm the truth claim of a leader with whom we agree simply because they have training.
So, what prompted my gag reflex with this sermon?
First, the pastor has a long history of equating the biblical covenant people of Israel with the modern secular government of Israel. For decades, Zionism has been promoted in American churches out of a sense of fear that any opposition to “Israel” will bring harm to the United States, while blind support of Israel will yield God’s blessing.
This isn’t faith, it’s superstition rooted in a simplistic, superficial reading of Scripture. To promote “Israel” while ignoring the guilt-by-association slaughter of innocent Palestinian civilians is bereft of anything resembling the behavior of Jesus Christ.
Second, utilizing a literalistic reading of the book of Revelation, the preacher said when Jesus returns after the tribulation, he will “make earth great again.” This turn of phrase represented a winking political endorsement. Even more concerning than the mixing of secular politics with preaching was this implicit subtext: We don’t need to worry about taking care of the environment because a) it’s doomed anyway, b) its ultimate demise is part of “God’s plan,” and c) God’s gonna fix it — so let’s keep adding septic tanks since the pump truck described in one clause of our age-old deed will surely come eventually.
“The preacher said when Jesus returns after the tribulation, he will ‘make earth great again.’”
Third and most offensive to me, the preacher twisted Scripture to promote a bigoted ideology. Without reading aloud the passage at all, the preacher referenced the sheep-and-goats story found in Matthew 25:31-46.
In the story, Jesus says God will separate the righteous from the unrighteous like a shepherd divides sheep from goats. The distinction is made based on the righteous having cared for the hungry, naked, thirsty and imprisoned. The unrighteous “goats” did not provide care to their fellow humans, and they are expelled from the realm of God.
It’s a pretty cut-and-dried illustration. The righteous are those who help those in need, and the unrighteous are those who don’t. However, the preacher took an entirely different tack that got me turning to Matthew 25 as I asked, “What the heck?”
The story, in the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, begins with this: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
Again, the passage was not read aloud. Using rhetorical sleight of hand, the preacher declared Matthew 25 says God “will separate the nations.” Note that the passage does not report Jesus saying God will separate the nations but that God will separate the people. God distinguishes them not based on nationality but on the basis of their caring for those in need.
Yet, the preacher said God will separate the nations. In retrospect and to be fair, I bet the pastor was using the Holman translation in which verse 32 is rendered: “All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
That translation does omit the word “people” and lends itself to reading the segregation of nations. Still, in the greater context, the passage is about whether or not individuals cared for others. But the pastor emphatically asserted that those expelled from the realm of God would be those who were antisemitic.
Wait, what?
OK, I applaud condemning antisemitism. But in the context of this preacher’s broader work, I condemn the sermon as well. This is a preacher who once spoke in favor of a municipality blocking a congregation of Muslims from building a mosque. This preacher publicly said granting a building permit was helping spread a false religion and Islam did not deserve the same legal protections because it was not a religion but a political movement. Ugh.
“We need to take a firm stance against the pastor’s abuse of Matthew 25.”
Words escape me. Except this: In our current context of innocent Palestinian civilians being slaughtered in a genocide waged by secular Israel’s government, we need to take a firm stance against the pastor’s abuse of Matthew 25. He told his congregation the “goats” in the Matthew 25 passage are “the antisemitic nations.” The subtext is clear in the context of the preacher’s overall messages of several years. He not-so-subtly asserts that the unrighteous “goats” are Muslim nations.
This reckless assertion ignores the many Muslims who love their Jewish neighbors, as beautifully exemplified by this poetry performance by Jewish and Palestinian teens. Worst of all though, the pastor’s assertion horrifically inverts the message of Jesus from the spiritual necessity of feeding the hungry — even convicted criminals — and makes it a message of bigotry in the guise of opposing bigotry.
You can say “amen” to bigoted manipulation of Scripture all you want. As for me and my house, we vomit.
We must not wait for the second coming of a Great Custodian. God, the Great Supervisor, has made us stewards of creation and caretakers of each other. May God bless our pouring of puke dust and the sweeping up of all our barf — so that we may proceed with the ongoing communion in the cafeteria of here and now.
Brad Bull holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Carson-Newman University, a master of divinity degree in pastoral counseling from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in child and family studies from the University of Tennessee. His counseling, storytelling and retreat endeavors can be reached via DrBradBull.com.