Gratitude, Entitlement, & Religious Privilege - Vince Brackett
SPEAKER NOTES
Opening Story
So we have a family wedding coming up in downtown Chicago, and my dad realized that, probably unbeknownst to the couple getting married (my cousin - they live out in the distant burbs), the weekend for this downtown Chicago wedding is the weekend of the Festival of Lights downtown — it’s going to be insane! No way that wedding is starting on time.
Anyway, my dad brings this up when my siblings and I were all together because he was trying to think creatively about a way to save us all from parking and turn it into a fun thing for us all. It turns out he and my step mom have a bunch of points for hotels and transportation services that they can use to get a free limo for the whole family that day - to pick each of us up and take us downtown comfortably not worrying about traffic and parking.
So generous, right?
So the first thing out of my siblings and my mouths after he says this are all these anticipated obstacles like “well that will only work for me if x, y, and z is true” and questions like “well have you thought about this? Because that’s going to be hard!“
And my wife, trying not to show her rightful disgust on her face, diplomatically takes the floor saying: “Wow, Dad, this is so GENEROUS, right everyone? I just want to say thank you… WE ALL want to say thank you, RIGHT… guys?”
Of course she was dead on.
My dad has our whole lives always been so generous toward us, his kids, with his money and resources — it was birthday and Christmas presents when I was a kid, then helping with un-budgeted-for car trouble when I was in college, then taking the whole family out to eat on a birthday - even his birthday, and then helping my wife and I buy a house.
And so I (and my siblings in their own ways) can fall so unthinkingly into entitlement with him. We are so privileged by his generosity that we don’t even think to say thank you. Ugh! Keziah was so right!
Well ::my entitlement:: comes to mind for me this week as I continue to draw inspiration for my talks this fall from the Gospel of Luke, one of the four biographies of Jesus that kicks off the New Testament of the Bible.
Today we’re going to look at an episode from Jesus’ life recorded in Luke 17. ::Read with me…::
11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
So, just a little bit of context: in Jesus’ day — 1st century Palestine — lepers were one of the saddest cases of societal outcasts: leprosy and other diseases that afflicted the skin were contagious, so they were quarantined for that, but it also carried social stigma, so they were emotionally and spiritually ostracized from community as well. Luke draws attention to this — these lepers are living in a region between two population centers, sequestered away from the villages of people, and they “kept their distance” as they called out to Jesus, who they’d evidently heard about.
Continuing...
14 When [Jesus] saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean.
15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Jesus uses the word “foreigner” here not as a dig at the Samaritan, but as a dig at his Jewish peers. This is one of many examples where Luke’s Gospel draws special attention to Jesus making a marginalized person the hero of a situation or story — 1st century Jews, themselves an oppressed people by the Roman empire, unfortunately, did not (by and large) deal with their pain healthily; they transmitted it to others turning around to oppress who they could. One big victim of that was half Jews, know as Samaritans.
So two things strike me from this.
First, there’s what’s happening at face value — Jesus restores these 10 outcasts to a place in society. I mean, incredible message alone right there. What is Jesus about? He’s about giving people a place in society. He’s about healing. He’s about restoring dignity lost. And he offers spiritual power that backs up his vision. He doesn’t ask any pre-requisite questions, he doesn’t vet these guys to see who they really are — he sees the suffering of physical affliction and of societal marginalization, and he responds to it. In and of itself, that is powerful.
But that’s not where this episode ends.
10 lepers are healed, but one, a Samaritan, returns to Jesus to express praise and gratitude to him, we’re told.
What’s this detail driving at?
I once heard two questions posed in response to this story from Luke 17 that really helped me. It was part of a spiritual practice called Lectio Divina - which is a devotional way of reading the Bible where you try to imagine yourself as a character in a story with Jesus. ::The questions were: if you were in this story...::
What might lead you to respond with praise, like the Samaritan? What might lead you to not, like the other 9 lepers?
Being asked this, it hit me: the Samaritan is a double outcast. He was an outcast before leprosy, and he is still an outcast now post-leprosy. The other 9, the story seems to imply, only became outcasts due to leprosy, and so they can return to societal acceptance now, but not this Samaritan.
Of course he would be the one to return back to Jesus with praise and gratitude. Gratitude is always more present on the margins than it is in places of power and privilege, isn’t it?
Where do you see more gratitude? The historically black church in America? Or the white evangelical church in America?
When you think about times you’ve been in immigrant-dominant settings vs. white-American-dominant settings — where do you experience more gratitude?
When you think about times you’ve been around wealth and affluence, and then the times you’ve been around poverty, where was there more gratitude?
The second “imagine myself in the story” question really grabbed me too. What might make me not respond with praise and gratitude?
After being quiet for a moment, what came to me was: entitlement and bitterness.
That is what would lead me to not respond with praise at being healed and restored to society — un-dealt-with pain over this horrible circumstance festering and turning into bitterness.
So much so that I turn and use that bitterness as a weapon to offload my pain to others — in the form of entitlement: I, unlike this Samaritan, never deserved to suffer in the first place. Of course I should be healed and restored.
I think this passage from Luke is about privilege.
2000 years before we coined the term “woke”, Jesus was flipping upside down notions of societal privilege and power.
“Some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last” he famously says in Luke 13.
::So, my first suggestion for us this morning:: on finding freedom from entitlement and bitterness is this: ::Examine your privilege, and pivot to gratitude.::
It’s worth stepping back here and talking about privilege for a minute… It comes up a lot here because this church was started by two white men, and (setting aside the vision we feel God has given us and we have seen so many of you all inspiringly attach yourselves to) we feel it’s important to acknowledge the realities and limitations of a church started by two white men.
So, privilege…
First off, it is not an analog “one way or another” thing. You’re not privileged or not privileged — privilege is a layered thing.
There are countless layers we can find in our reality.
If you’re a white woman, you have privilege of being white, but you experience the marginalization of being a woman
If you’re poor, you experience the marginalization of being poor, but if you’re white, you don’t experience that to the extent that a person of color who is poor.
If you live in America, no matter who you are, you experience a level of privilege over the rest of the world just by virtue of living in the most technologically developed society ever.
We see layers even in the Luke story — all of the lepers lack privilege as outcasts — but not equally — within these 10 lepers there are other layers that carry measures of power or lack of power: like one being a Samaritan.
Second note on privilege, talking about privilege is NOT meant to leave people feeling guilty or ashamed if we have more than someone else. This is NOT the “woke” version of “in” vs. “out” or “good” vs. “evil”.
It’s just meant to provide us with insight:
- The more privilege I have the more likely I am to turn entitled and bitter, to be tormented by what feels unfair to me or by what I feel I deserve but am not getting. Because privilege teaches me life in general SHOULD be fair and SHOULD go my way, so when it doesn’t (because for all people one way or another it doesn’t… eventually) I am crushed.
- And therefore the more likely I am to transmit my pain of being tormented and crushed on to others. The more prone I am to scapegoating or blame-shifting. That’s unexamined privilege run rampant.
Privilege doesn’t equal entitlement and bitterness and scapegoating and blame-shifting. Not at all! What’s important to learn is just that it makes those things more of a struggle.
And so my encouragement is to examine our personal privilege makeup… And then to pivot to gratitude.
Intentional gratitude is one of my go-to spiritual practices. I just set aside 5 minutes, and thank God for whatever comes to me, big or small — from jobs that pay the bills to coffee — from feeling purpose and meaning to a a great chat with a friend.
The great thing about gratitude is that it’s one of those things where we “make the road by walking” — it is both the destination we’re trying to get to AND the path we take to get there at the same time. This is why it works well as a practical tool — we do it enough and one day we suddenly find we just feel less entitled and bitter.
My second suggestion is in the spirit of the lens we’ve been looking through as we read the Gospel of Luke this fall: the question “What kind of world do we want to live in?” — That’s a pretty good summary question for the picture Luke is painting of Jesus’ mission. Luke’s Jesus is trying to get us to expand our moral imaginations to a bigger, more inclusive, more expansive vision for human flourishing.
Here’s where I want to take that this morning:
::Help this church examine religious privilege, in particular, and lay it down::
So, as is obvious at this point, here at BLV, we have been super helped by the increase in discussion about privilege in wider culture — we have learned a lot, and we feel it drawing us closer to Jesus and his vision for community.
And, yet, one area of privilege we feel is still less-examined is the religious privilege of American Christians.
Maybe that feels like a strange thing for a pastor to bring up in a sermon at a church service?
Well, first off, again: privilege is not something anyone has to feel guilty or ashamed about.
Unfortunately, there is a real instinct of defensiveness against admitting religious privilege on the part of American Christians — it is common to hear in our current cultural conversation cries of: “Christians are the underdog. American society is secular, and people who are standing for quote-unquote Christian values are on the margin! Give us back our Christmas Starbucks cups!”
But that’s actually missing the point. Privilege isn’t necessarily about “what is popular or what most people do.” (It can be in some cases, but it’s not necessarily that.) Privilege is about perceived norms.
It is the norm in our culture that you celebrate Christmas. It is only notable if you don’t. Like: the Davis Theater, our hosts here, host events for holidays that we help out with — you know what those holidays are? Christmas and Easter — and no one thinks twice. Because Christianity is the norm — therefore it carries privilege.
So I bring this up here not because I think any of us here might be prone to defensively refusing to examine Christian religious privilege. You guys don’t strike me as that. But because I think we might be prone to concluding that, since we’re not people who are up in arms about Starbucks cups, there must be no religious privilege at all in us needing examination.
That I’d like to gently challenge this morning, if you’ll allow me to.
If you grew up going to church regularly as a kid, you have religious privilege — because you know what to expect generally in a church service — you are not caught off guard by language, elements of a service, things people might do or say at a church service. Someone who is searching for God or spiritual fulfillment or community but is new to an experience of a church service might be caught off guard, or not get all the references you do. If you laugh at Christian inside jokes, that’s religious privilege.
If certain passages from the Bible bore you because you heard them so many times in your youth, that is a bummer, absolutely, BUT it is also religious privilege — you are far less likely to feel left out for not knowing something than someone like me when I first became a churchgoer (who didn’t grow up being told to read the Bible)
If you have spent at least a few years of your adult or young adult life going to church regularly, you have religious privilege — in the form of tastes and preferences you’ve formed and can talk about with others — music you like, music you don’t like, topics or speakers you prefer or don’t prefer, things that speak to you or don’t speak to you about a service — people who are newer to church or faith or haven’t had much experience in religious settings don’t have tastes and preferences, they only have brand new experiences, and therefore can’t participate in those conversations.
So we’ve tried really hard to make BLV a church
- That doesn’t reward religious privilege, and instead tries to lift up those without religious privilege
- That doesn’t require someone to have familiarity with a specific set of religious norms in order to thrive here or have powerful, meaningful experience of God’s Spirit here.
- That asks everyone to speak only for their own experience and beliefs and avoid “we all know…” or “of course everyone…” phrases, so that no one feels pressure to hide their true thoughts or conform to a groupthink.
And this has made our community a place that is especially attractive and resonant for people who are searching for connection with God or with community but have not found a home in other religious settings (that’s many of you!) — which fills me with joy — it’s why I wanted to start this church.
BUT as a result this also makes our community a place that can stoke the tendency toward entitlement and bitterness in people who do have more layers of religious privilege.
I want to say that, if that’s you and you’ve felt that, we get that!
Just as I, a white man, am used to having my voice heard in public settings, people with religious privilege are used to feeling in control in church. So we get that our church feels different.
I won’t lie to you about this. We are not going to reward religious privilege here.
But, here’s the amazing opportunity for you here that I think is better than that:
What many people with more religious privilege have told me they’ve found in investing in this church as their home (even given the way it challenges them) is that they love this. It’s the church they’ve always wanted because it makes sense to and connects with their friends and family who aren’t people of faith. They don’t have to apologize for it.
And second I’ve been told by people with more religious privilege that they grow spiritually here in ways they never would anywhere else. I think that’s because, again, examining privilege of any kind kills its chances to brew entitlement and bitterness in us (which are toxic to a spiritual life), and gives gratitude a chance to take hold (which is foundational to a spiritual life!)
And that makes sense. Sacrificing privilege is the way of Jesus — Jesus is the God who sacrifices himself to protect and lift up others — he willingly becomes the victim of human bitterness and scapegoating, so no one else has to. If you want to be close to Jesus, being comfortable and in control and in power doesn’t really help that much. But examining your privilege and willingly lay it down — that is a surefire way to be in the company of Jesus — to find yourself feeling his presence and hearing his voice more readily in your life.
So, as we often encourage (because this church is volunteer investment driven), take a moment to ask yourself: does the vision of this kind of community inspire me?
Are you someone who wouldn’t be going to church if not for this church?
- Then help us keep building this thing!
Or are you someone who does benefit from some religious privilege, but the promise of this community’s vision to lift up those without outweighs the costs to your comfort?
- Then help us keep building this thing!
A really important next step you can take is making it to our Annual Meeting for stakeholders next Sunday morning before service. We’ll tell you more about it later in the service, but it’s showing up here at 8:30 AM next Sunday.
And if something moved for you on the investment scale today, we want to hear about that! We need to hear about that, because this church only drives forward through the investments people make. I’ll buy you coffee, and let’s chat. Leave us a note on a connect card later and we’ll follow up.
On that note, let me pray for us…