Sam Bush, “I Don’t Know Who Needs to Hear This”
One of my favorite bits of humor online these days is what I call public service announcement tweets. Maybe you’ve seen them. They’re short, pithy declarations, always about something very specific and always starting the same way. Here are some examples: “I don’t know who needs to hear this but you can throw away that box your iPhone came in” or “I don’t know who needs to hear this but cancel that free trial.” My favorite one is, “I don’t know who needs to hear this but stop trying to track that package - it’s in God’s hands now.”
I appreciate that someone took it upon themselves to help set free some anxious soul out there in the ether. It proves that the noblest deeds are set forth in simple, straightforward language.
These little proclamations playfully cut through all the carefully curated profiles that we work hard to maintain. In her piece in the New York Times this week, Tish Harrison Warren addressed how, with the help of social media, nearly everything has become performative these days. She quotes a marketing writer, who said we are each “head marketer for the brand called You.” Now, whether or not your own social media, this concept of self-branding has been woven into the fabric of our culture.
Whatever your brand is - the public servant, the cool mom or the country gentleman, to some extent we’re all selling ourselves in a way. Just take it from the newly ordained minister who grew a beard just to have some extra gravitas in the pulpit. By branding ourselves, Warren says, “we turn ourselves into products, content to be evaluated instead of people to be truly known and loved.”
Sadly, the church is just as liable to fall into this trap. This is what the Apostle Paul is talking about in his letter to the Corinthians we read this morning. Corinth was a bustling port city. It was a place where various cultures and religions mingled. As a result, it attracted all sorts of professional public speakers. They were called the Super Apostles (which, if you ask me, has self-branding written all over it).
These were the spiritual influencers, the televangelists and gurus of their day. Each would charge a fee for people to hear them speak privately. To get more followers they paired the gospel of Jesus with whatever the hot topic was that day. Their message was Jesus PLUS. Jesus plus 10 steps toward more self-discipline, Jesus plus the latest parenting trend; Jesus plus the current dieting fad. And they were not impressed with Paul. They had him pegged as a one-hit wonder, always yammering on about the Cross, week in and week out as if to say, “Come on, Paul. Try to keep up, OK? You need to work on your branding. You need to keep things fresh.”
But Paul had a problem with the Super Apostles. He thought that if Christianity veered away at all from Christ crucified, it started to sound like worldly wisdom. He was suspicious of any Gospel branded as new and improved. G.K. Chesterton once said, “Every new religion bores us with the same stale rhetoric about closer fellowship and the higher life.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. Closer fellowship is what helps get me through the day. Harvard just closed a study they started back in 1938 on happiness. After 85 years, they found that basically the only guarantee for happiness is having deep relationships. Likewise, the higher life of virtue is something we could all use a little more of around here if you ask me. But when the world gets a whiff of a good thing, it’s not long before it gets commodified and subject to branding. Closer fellowship gets branded as, “When You’re Here Your Family” (Olive Garden) and virtue gets branded as “Save Money. Live Better” (Walmart). By the way, we do receive a small percentage of any generated revenue from sermons.
But Paul wasn’t interested in selling anything. He does not proclaim the wisdom of God using lofty words, but proclaims the capital-w Word of Christ himself. Unlike the Super Apostles, Paul spoke publicly, free of charge. And he kept it simple. He says, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” He says, “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” In other words, “If you want to know the truth, I was scared to death about how to talk to you about Jesus. Nothing I could say would impress you. Because how impressive is a man hanging on a cross? Who’s gonna buy that?”
On the Cross, Jesus changes the game - he is not interested in what you are selling, nor is he interested in selling you anything. The gospel is a gift. There’s a reason why we call the body and blood of Jesus “The gifts of God for the people of God.” They don’t cost us a thing because they have been paid for in full by the one who gave up everything for you and me. The Cross boldly proclaims that you are not a brand. You need not sell yourself because you have been bought and paid for by the blood of Christ.
The thing about branding is that you end up serving it more than it serves you. Like cattle marked with a hot branding iron, a brand might help a person feel like they belong to something, but they’re not free. In the upside-down wisdom of God, Jesus himself as the Lamb of God, takes on the scars for our sake. We are marked as Christ’s own forever with the marks in his own body. What does this mean for you? It means that you can approach God, not as a Super Apostle, but in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, knowing that He made himself weak for your sake.
In her 2009 memoir Lit, Mary Karr tells the story of when her eight-year old son asks her to bring him to church one day. She suspiciously asks why and he says, “to see if God’s there.” So they try out an Episcopal church, but they don’t go back because it’s too cold - not emotionally, it’s physically freezing (and people wonder why they call us the frozen chosen!). They try out a different church. She says the sermon, about doing justice to one’s fellows, has so squeezed out any mention of God or Jesus that it may as well have been taken out of Reader’s Digest. So they go to a different church; and, where the previous church denied the existence of God, this one saw gods everywhere, more or less interchangeable, she says, “No more potent than the rabbit’s foot my son carries into the batter’s box on a belt loop.” At this point they are 0 for 3.
Finally, they try out a church that talks about the Cross of Christ which intrigues her, but leaves her befuddled. One Sunday, as her son is fiddling with a knot in his shoelace, she’s studying the mangled body of Jesus on an icon. “Why the crucifixion?” she asks. “Why does redemption have to come through the crucifixion? I mean, why couldn’t you play hopscotch or win at solitaire?” Her son rolls his eyes. “Who’d pay attention to hopscotch, mom?” As he runs off playing, the dots begin to connect for her.
You see, Christ crucified may be unsettling and scandalous to those with perfectly curated brands, but it is a message that cannot be ignored. If you are like Mary Karr’s eight-year old son and you want to know where God is, look to the Cross which boldly proclaims that God is no stranger to suffering, loneliness and despair. In fact, it was through his own suffering, loneliness and despair that He redeemed this broken world. You try to put a brand on Christ crucified and it’ll fade away like hopscotch. Brands are here today and gone tomorrow but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
On that note, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you are not a brand, but instead a beloved child of God. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your sins do not need to be rebranded, because they have been forgiven (all of them, even that one you are thinking about right now!). I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Jesus died so that you might live. I, for sure, need to hear this, week in and week out, as Paul says, “that my faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” Amen.
