The Empty Wagon is the Noisiest

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

Nothing rattles quite so loudly as an empty wagon. That folk wisdom came to me through the song “Little America” by REM, my favorite band from 1983 to the present. Much to my frustration, the Christianity I love and depend on for my sanity, sobriety, and hope is too often misrepresented by the loudest, most clamorous and hateful voices today. As a church striving to be faithful to the steadfast way of Jesus Christ, it is appalling that one of our greatest afflictions is the chorus of all those who misrepresent him loudly.

Why is it difficult to pass the faith on to our children? One reason, among others, it that the amplified voice of right-wing Christianity has them convinced that all christians hate LGBTQ people, want women to be subservient, deny climate change, blame the poor for their suffering, and support white supremacy. If your daily media diet is flooded by bullying voices and their often stridently simplistic opponents, then why would you risk the company of Christians in the first place?

So how do we stand up to the playground bullies of Christianity?

The Bible is a good place to start. “If I do not have love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” (1 Cor. 13:2) Apply the love test. Is it love or is it aggression? Is it love or is it the noise of a rear-guard fight against cultural change and the loss of privilege? Yes, some Christian traditions are being discarded and for some that feels like a fearful loss of power and position. For me, I see us discarding oppression and returning our faith to its roots in liberating love. As a white, upper-middle class, cisgender man I find this disconcerting and disorienting. But as a man of faith, I embrace the loss as the way Christ proscribes for me, “You must lose your life to find it.”

The danger of the moment is increased by noisy gongs and clanging cymbals on the liberal Christian side too. It seems to me at times that liberal Christians are so zealous in skepticism and deconstruction of the tradition that they leave us no place to stand and resist. If we destroy our moral source and framework entirely, who are we to challenge any other (supposedly) equally valid point of view? You will never hear me describe myself as “liberal” Christian for this very reason. Our tradition and scripture deconstruct me more than I them.

I certainly do not want to live in a world without the faithful, long-suffering, and steadfast church of Jesus Christ. At our best we are the moral ballast that reins in our worst collective impulses toward greed, revenge, and domination. At our best we propose an alternative world order that resists the amoral gyrations of unrestrained free markets, even when we are not sure how to completely replace capitalism with something more just.

“If it is not about love it is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” says our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry. Filling our wagons with love is how we end the clanging and rattling and begin to ground our moral positions in their true and trustworthy source, Jesus Christ. What if we spoke about the love that drew us to a position of advocacy before we start to shout?

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector