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Rev. Billy’s Shopocalypse: Putting the Odd Back Into God                                           Jane Field

Isaiah 2:1-5                                                                                                      December 2, 2007

Matthew 3:1-6

 

I.          ‘Tis the Season

 

A.        Unless you’ve been unconscious in the Australian Outback since Halloween, you know what holly-jolly, hall-decking, bell jingling season is now fully underway.

 

B.         And in this holy season, all across our country, Americans are converging on their centers of worship…

1.         Churches?  (No.  Average American spends less than one hour per week at church during Advent and Christmas.)

2.         However, they are spending, on average, more than five hours a week at the REAL center of worship: the shopping mall.

 

C.        Sandy Muschler’s lament last Monday—“It’s only November 26, and already I can’t turn on my TV or radio without being bombarded with screaming ads and commercials, telling me I need these things, I have to have these things, I must BUY these things!  It makes me so angry!”

 

D.        Some of my personal favorites from this year’s crop of holiday commercials:

1.         “The more money you save at Wal-Mart, the more Christmas you can give.”  (Oops, I didn’t realize I gave Christmas to people—silly me, I thought it was God who took care of that—I’d better get busy!)

2.         “Think Honda for Christmas.”  (Forget peace on earth, good will toward all.  Never mind about that “unto us a Son is given” stuff.  It’s Honda I’m supposed to be thinking about at Christmas.   I see!)

3.         “McCormick is the difference between a recipe and a family tradition.”  (What a surprise!  A bottle of cumin is what will create my family tradition—not love, or being together, or laughter, or tears!  You learn something new every day, don’t you?)

4.         “You need more furniture to celebrate Christmas at your house….”  (I do???  Wow, I hadn’t noticed.  I was actually trying to move my furniture out of the way to make room for the Christmas tree and Nativity crèche.  Go figure.)  The second half of the slogan is even better: “For the holiday, two names say it all.”  (Ooooh.  I know this one!  First name: Jesus, second name: Christ, right?  Nope.  Who knew?  It’s actually Raymour & Flanagan!)

 

E.         On Tuesday, Carole Rowe was at the church office putting the finishing touches on our “Gift of Christmas” catalog.  As she put her coat on she said, “Well, wish me luck, I have to go to the mall now.”  All of us let out a simultaneous groan and offered her our sympathies.  As she headed out the door her last words echoed in the hallway, “I know, I hate it.  I just hate this.”

 

F.         She’s not alone.  A recent survey revealed that 78% of Americans actually DREAD Christmas more than they look forward to it.

 

G.        Somehow we have given up the simple pleasures and meaningful moments of this special season, trading them for more time shopping and other actions that wear us out and tear us down.  We snap at the children because we have spent too much time and money trying to find toys to make them happy.  They have more stuff in their playroom and less of us.  With too much to do, we skip church, neglecting the lessons of the season for an early dash to the mall.  Little joys disappear amidst concerns of how we’ll pay the credit card bills in January.  We become Scrooges because we so dislike the deadening crush of Christmas commercialism.  We feel like we’re being forced to sprint through the six-week marathon between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.  We feel the calendar vise squeezing us as our to-do list grows.  We put unrealistic expectations on ourselves and others—whatever we do, we feel it doesn’t meet the high standards we think we’re supposed to meet.  Nothing is good enough, no amount of effort is ever enough to match the glossy image of the “perfect Christmas” we have in our mind (put there, no doubt, by the aforementioned ads and commercials, and of course, by my arch-enemy, Martha Stewart.)

 

II.         Enter stage right: The Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop-Shopping

A.        You may have heard him on NPR, seen him on ABC news, or read about him in the New York Times.  Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to encounter him on the streets or in the stores of New York City.  Rev. Billy is actually actor and performance artist, Bill Talen, and since 1998, dressed in a white tuxedo, black shirt, priest’s collar, and an Elvis-inspired blonde pompadour haircut, he has been preaching in Times Square, and staging “shopping interventions” at places like the Disney Store, Wal-Mart, and Starbucks, because, he says, “we live in a shopping addicted country” that has come to believe if you buy something, life is solved for a moment.  He says that the most powerful church in the world is now “the Church of the Stupefied Consumer,” that we’re in this church and we don’t even know it.  The consumer-believer is expected to fetishize a vast and endless array of gadgets, pills, cars, clothes.  The Church of the Final Consumption, Rev. Billy preaches, promises us a full, rich life—but it turns out that the opposite is true.  Products actually compete with real life.  He, and his “Stop Shopping Choir” (a really good gospel choir of about twenty voices) call people to seek “God who is not a product and who has no advertising campaign,” and they try to shatter the illusion that commodities can make us safe and happy.  When he’s moving through crowds at a Wal-Mart, mall, Starbucks, or Times Square, he shakes hands in a pastoral way with strangers walking by.  He says he’s welcoming his parishioners, and often says to them, “I’m glad to see you made it to church this week…Good to see you…I’ve become concerned about your shopping sins…”

B.         The Church of Stop Shopping’s statement of belief

o       consumerism is overwhelming our lives

o       if we practice the sacrament of “backing away from the product,” we will put the Odd back into God

o       the first job of a church is to save souls, and pulling people out of the advertising/debt/waste cycle of consumerism is The Church of Stop Shopping’s idea of deliverance

o       real experiences and local economies of independent merchants are where true community and god-sightings happen—not in the big box or multinational chain stores that wipe out local neighborhoods.

C.     Yesterday, Sophie and I went to NYC to see a new documentary film about Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping that was released nationwide last Friday.  It’s called “What Would Jesus Buy?” and the tag line is “The movie Santa doesn’t want you to see.” The film is based on an indie documentary short, “Preacher With an Unknown God,” which won an honorable mention at Sundance last year.  “What Would Jesus Buy?” documents a cross-country tour, a road-trip mission to “save Christmas from the Shopocalypse.”  “We think we are consumers at Christmastime,” preaches Rev. Billy as the choir hums and sways behind him, “NO! We are being consumed at Christmastime.”  Rev. Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir drive across the U.S. in a bio-diesel bus, starting at Times Square, and stopping at places like Wal-Mart World HQ, the Mall of America, and Disneyland.  They chose to make the trip in December because they saw that the epidemic of over-consumption is at its worst during the Christmas season.

III.       This “epidemic of over-consumption” at Christmas is “Not what Jesus had in mind for you,” Rev. Jim Wallis points out when he is interviewed in the film.

A.        Wallis goes on, “Christmas should not be an excuse to just do more shopping.  We already have closets full of things we don’t use.  Shouldn’t that teach us that more consumption just leads to less satisfaction?  How about trying less consumption that leads to more satisfaction?  After all, Christmas is meant to shake things up!”

B.         That was precisely John the Baptist’s point, over 2,000 years ago when he stood on the edge of the wilderness, raised his voice, and tried to prepare a way for coming Messiah.  Like Reverend Billy, John was definitely “odd for God”—he lived out in the middle of nowhere, dressed in animal skins, and ate locusts and honey!  But he understood that the first Christmas was meant to “shake things up,” and he called people to repentance as an integral part of their preparation for the coming Lord Jesus.

1.         Repentance is part of our getting ready for the Incarnation of God, too.  Repentance, in the original Hebrew language, literally means to turn around, to do a 180.  To repent means more than feeling bad about what we have been doing; it means to change what we have been doing. 

2.         Furthermore, the promises of God revealed during Advent, this season of expectation, are that God resolves to transform our world and make it utterly new.  It is, at the same time, a heavy judgment on how things are now, and an enormous statement of hope about how things can become.

3.         John the Baptist and Reverend Billy are calling us to embrace those divine promises, and to truly repent, to change, as we prepare for the birth of Christ.

C.        Jesus came so that we can find rest, peace, and joy.  It does not bring honor and glory to him when we wear ourselves out and become laden with chores, guilt and debt, all for the sake of “celebrating” HIS birth!  Surely, Jesus would not appreciate us being such lousy stewards of his Father’s resources in the name of celebrating his own birthday?!  Sadly, as Rev. Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping remind us, these days, it has become a birthday party to which Jesus, the birthday-boy himself, isn’t even invited.  It’s time to change that.

IV.       Change is possible.  Even this year—don’t wait until next year, do it now!  Find more joy in this Advent season by being open to ways to slow down.  Enjoy the people you love, savor meaningful and fun activities, jettison the things that drain you and make you cranky.  Quit spending so much money.  Make a conscious effort not to allow the retail world to dictate to you what the holidays are all about and what will make you happy.  Don’t wander through this spiritual season with a wallet full of plastic and a heart full of dismay.  Some possible suggestions:

A.        Turn off the TV, radio, iPod, cell phone.  Be still and know that God is God.  Early in the morning, or late in the evening, when the world is quiet and dark, turn on the Christmas tree lights and sit quietly in a spirit of calm simplicity.  Pray contemplatively, perhaps using the Advent Devotional Booklet created for us by some of WPC’s newest members.

B.         Attend church every Sunday in Advent.

C.        Serve others by volunteering.

D.        Include manger scenes in your holiday decorations at home (Sophie and I have an Advent tradition: adding one figure to the crèche each day of Advent until Christmas Eve when we place the baby Jesus in his manger.)

E.         Take time for uncomplicated joys like music, lights and play

F.         Shop differently: locally at independent sellers (the difference between buying a tomato at Stop & Shop, vs. buying one from the Offinger’s farm stand on Chestnut Hill Road); use the Gift of Christmas catalog and websites that allow you to buy someone you love a chance to donate to the charity of their choice; use the website responsibleshopper.com to be sure any products you buy are fair trade.  Go to see the movie, “What Would Jesus Buy?”  It’s playing at the Village Cinema in Greenwich Village, and at the Criterion in New Haven.  If you can’t, then read the book of the same title, and/or “What Should I Do If Rev. Billy Is In My Store?”  It will change the way you think about your shopping, and then it will change the way you shop.

G.        Make homemade gifts; write letters saying what the person has meant to you this year, or what special memories you share with them; exchange “services” like chores, backrubs, or going to concerts, plays or movies together.

H.        Create space for God who invites you to choose a different way of living this Advent—to prepare carefully for the coming of Christ, the birth of God’s most precious gift to the world.  Advent, done right, helps us turn off the crazy commercial side of Christmas and re-focus on Christ’s coming incarnation.  This life of the Spirit frees us from the compulsion of grasping and accumulating things and products, and enables us to spend less money on presents and more time with the people God has given us to love.

V.        Making these changes won’t necessarily be easy.  Expect push-back and resistance, from within yourself, and from others.

A.        Article in last week’s Sunday New York Times, in which the reporter, Alex Williams, wonders “if the holidays are the right time to preach austerity,” claiming that those of us who do are “the new Grinch.”  He quotes one woman as saying, “It’s just such a joy to be more extravagant with presents.”  Williams says that the call for less excessive consumption during the holidays sounds “un-American.”  After reading his article, I’d say that Mr. Williams is the one who gets my vote as the new Grinch!  But be aware that when you try to make the changes we’re talking about this morning, you will encounter his kind of opposition.

B.         In the “What Would Jesus Buy?” movie, there were dozens of heart-breaking examples of people who equated spending themselves silly on material things with expressing love and celebrating Christmas.  One of the most shocking segments was a montage of people from all across America whom Rev. Billy asked, “What would Jesus buy for Christmas?”  By far, the number one response?  An X-Box 360.  (My favorite guy was the one in Minnesota who paused and then said, “He’d probably buy socks because it’s cold here.”)

C.        As we spent yesterday afternoon together after seeing the movie, Sophie and I talked a lot about our thoughts and feelings.  She shared a story of one girl in her 5th grade class at school who works on her Christmas List every day during class, and as of last Friday, Sophie reported, the list was 8 pages long.  Sophie said it reminded her of the song from Disney’s “High School Musical 2” movie, “Fabulous.”  Those of you who are parents of elementary-aged school children probably already know the words by heart.  For those of you who don’t, this is what a young girl sings:

It’s out with the old and in with the new,
Goodbye clouds of gray, hello skies of blue
A dip in the pool, a trip to the spa
Endless days in my chaise
The whole world according to moi
Iced tea imported from England,
Lifeguards imported from Spain,
Towels imported from Turkey,
Turkey imported from Maine,

I want fabulous,
That is my simple request,
All things fabulous,
Bigger and better and best,
I need something inspiring to help me get along,
I need a little fabulous, is that so wrong?

Fetch me my Jimmy Choo flip flops,
Where is my pink Prada tote?
I need my Tiffany hair band,
And then I can go for a float.

A summer like never before

I want more!

Fabulous pool, fabulous splash,
Fabulous parties even fabulous trash,
Fabulous fashion, fabulous bling,
She's got to have fabulous everything.

Nothing to Discuss
Everything's got to be perfect.

For me

This won't do, that's a bore,
That's insulting, I need more!
I need, I need,
I need, I need,
I need, I need

I Need FABULOUS!

D.        As I said, it won’t be easy.  We’re up against 2nd graders who already know what Jimmy Choo flip-flops, Prada tote bags, and Tiffany hair bands are—and that they want, no--NEED them!

VI.       But it is possible for us to reclaim Advent.  In fact, it’s not only possible, it’s essential that we do.  There is a paradox and an irony that when we attempt to fill up with “things,” we remain empty, but when we stop accumulating products, we start to fill up with an unbuyable joy. 

            If we can change Advent and Christmas this year, even a little, if we buy half as much and give twice as much, then the change for which we wait with such great longing, will begin to occur right before our eyes.  Our world, the whole world, will change.

In the closing scene of the film, Rev. Billy speaks softly and gently to his congregation: “Remember what we are waiting and preparing for, brothers and sisters.  The birth of a child who will grow up to teach us peace.”

This Advent, remember: HOW we wait for the Messiah, says everything about the Messiah for whom we wait.

Amen.