Maria stood in front of the enormous Mall of America and said, “Good people of Minnesota, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as we went through the mall and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, we found among them an altar with the inscription ‘In God we Trust.’”
Her friend Stephanie always spent Saturdays at the mall with her. Somewhere between puzzled, amused, and aghast, Stephanie wondered what had gotten into her friend with this religion stuff. She smacked on her chewing gum and asked nervously, “What has happened to you Maria? These people out here are going to think you have gone nuts. Frankly I was thinking that myself, but then again I know how prone to practical jokes you are.” Stephanie paused. “You are OK aren’t you?”
Maria looked back at her friend while people going into the mall stopped and gathered into a circle. Minnesotans are polite people. They don’t want to tell somebody to buzz off, but they will in fact circle around a curiosity. Maria had become the latest source of interesting things that happened at the mall that Saturday. She replied “I’m sorry, Steph, I must have gotten the rapture or something. I was just thinking of Paul’s speech to the people of Athens. I mean have you ever noticed how much like a cathedral this mall is?”
“We did sort of make a pilgrimage after all” Stephanie observed. “Our families came all the way up here from Muskogee, Oklahoma just to shop in the world’s largest mall. Did you know that they have 8 acres of skylights in the ceilings?” “Oh you read the same stuff on the web site that I did”, Maria said. “Did you know that you could fit 32 Boeing 737 aircraft inside the mall, or that 40 million people visit the mall every year, or that 16 million people are just here as tourists? They never buy anything … Can you imagine?” Stephanie interrupted. “They’re not power shoppers like us. I spent weeks making up my list. Dad said when I turned 15, I could take a friend up here to the mall. I’m glad you came here with me.”
“Look at that group over there”, Maria exclaimed. “Are they models shooting a movie, or is this for real?” Stephanie replied, “This mall has had over 5,000 weddings performed in the chapel since they opened. Wouldn’t it be awesome to get married here? [gushing] I mean you and your husband could just go shopping on your honeymoon!”
“Come on Steph. We’ve got some shopping to do!”
In a scene repeated week after week all over the country, our children find meaning in life, relevance, a sense of purpose, social belonging, personal identity, and fulfillment at the local shopping mall. In a very real sense, the god of commerce has become the deity of our modern cathedrals. A recent book title says it all, “Will Our Faith have Children?”
Will our faith have children? Our competition is not only the youth group down the street, it is the lure of the mall, the siren call of commercialism that tells us that to be happy you must make a lot of money and spend a lot of money. To be respected, commercialism says you must wear the right clothes, listen to the right music and know about all the right products to own and places to see. To get ahead in life you must be willing to bully the weaker people and get what you want. And of course to really fit in, some of our children are falsely taught to develop the attitude that they earned everything they have and they deserve it.
Our culture and even some churches continue to teach the old heresy that poor people and people with lots of problems somehow deserved what they got because they sinned, and if you have money then that means God has blessed you. But then we know better.
We know that bad things happen to people who have done everything right. We know that whatever we do we cannot earn God’s blessing. We are blessed already for whatever we have in life. We are here. We are blessed. We teach our children that happiness is a choice not something we can purchase at the mall. Competing with the mall is what we must do if our faith will have children.
We have a marvelously diverse and faithful group at Grace Church. Many of us have weathered life’s storms and we come to church every Sunday smiling, happy to see others and with an unshakable confidence that ALL SHALL BE WELL. Fundamentally our faith is not about being perfect Episcopalians. It is not about perfection in liturgy or prayer or music. It is about sharing and passing it on.
Paul stood there in the public gathering place, the Aeropagus in Athens long ago. He connected their public pagan culture to the God of Israel who raised Jesus from the dead. Will we be bold enough to do this in our pagan culture? Will we be able to convey our faith to our children? Here are some things we can do.
Vacation Bible School – promote it, support it financially, volunteer for it, bring children to it
Sunday school – help out with it, bring children to it, teach or help the teachers
Youth group – help us build a top flight youth group over the next few years, support it financially, maybe you have a farm where we can do a hay ride, help get more teens involved
Nursery – help out by volunteering, support the nursery financially, bring more children here
Web site – if you have web skills, we need your help. It is time to get some new functions added for youth and Sunday school
Special events for children – We need to plan another fair or fall festival. We need to open up what we have for the community around us.
Grace Church has a lot to offer the youth in this community. Faith and the bible are not fixed things that do not change over time. They must be interpreted and reinterpreted in the context of every generation the same way Paul did in Athens that day. If you will roll up your sleeves, open your hearts and make room for our youth, then indeed our faith will have children.