Followers, not Admirers

Back in the 60s, at the height of the Jesus Freak outbreak, all sorts of folks sported bumper stickers that read, “Honk if You Love Jesus.”  Amid the cacophony of blaring horns, some wit came up with, “Tithe if You Love Jesus – Any Fool can Honk.”

As the Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, “Jesus wants followers, not admirers.” The writer of Luke’s gospel also addresses the discrepancy, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?”

In Mark, always to begin our Lenten journey, we read of Jesus temptations in the Wilderness.  Thought to be a vast empty void, hostile to all life forms but the most dangerous.  Our minds immediately jump to the seemingly endless Sahara Desert of Africa or the Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula.  Some 250,000 square miles of sand.

Spiritually, those in distress, those who find hope a fragile thing, will look inward to their interior soul.  The mind, the heart, can be every bit as much a dangerous void.  A wilderness.

The uniquely American temptation in whatever wilderness in which we find ourselves, I believe is our individualism.  The belief that we have to go it alone and be reliant on no one and responsible to no one.  Some evangelicals imagine Jesus as a John Wayne character, the paragon of a corrupting individualism.[1]   Christ created in our own image.  This twisted mentality is killing us and polluting our faith.

This isolation and perverted individualism is at the heart of addiction and much of our mental illness. 

We can’t even have a Super Bowl celebration without mass carnage.  Our minds fog over with the enormity of it all.  To the point where it just blurs into a meaningless statistic.  Unfortunately, those killed and injured are real people.  Our friends and neighbors, children we knew.

America has become a deadly wilderness of mass slaughter, denial, and pay-to-play politics.  A virtual shooting gallery. 

Thank you, NRA and your bought-and-paid-for toadies in Congress!  And on the Supreme Court!  Thank you.

The results of insular thinking, our “rugged individualism,” were on full display last November 30, 2021, when an emotionally disturbed young man, Ethan Crumbly, shot up his high school in Oxford, Michigan.

His sociopathic mother’s response to his aberrant behavior?  “You’ve got to learn not to get caught.”  Only this? – Only this when he was discovered at school making disturbing posts on his social media page.  Only this, Mom?  Don’t get caught?  Really?

She was too busy to be a parent.  Lining up new assignations in her swinger lifestyle.  The ultimate result of the Ayn Rand mentality.  Just do “your own thing,” mom.  Kids will take care of themselves.  A deadly wilderness of too many emotionally empty households.

Ethan’s rampage was only one in a long list of mass school shootings.  In the following years, 2022 and 2023, there was no let-up – 82 students killed in 2023.  The highest number in a three-year span.  This does not include the hundreds of others wounded.  Then, add in all the teachers and other school staff gunned down.

These are not just mindless numbers, a statistic.  These are friends and family.

One of the four dead was a young freshman, Hana St. Juliana.  A beloved sister and teammate.  She was a star student athlete on her girls’ basketball team.

“’We will never forget your kind heart, silly personality, and passion for the game. Since 6th grade camp you have stayed dedicated to Oxford Basketball, soaking in the game,’ the team wrote in a post one day after the shooting. ‘Last night was your high school debut. This season we play for you Hana.’”[2]

Nice sentiments.  That, and some memories are all that’s left.  And a lot of sorrow.  And an emptiness as vast as an Asian desert.

It is into the interiority of such places, down from the beauty of Christ’s Transfiguration that we are urged, our Lenten pilgrimage.  The temptation we face is to cocoon ourselves away from all such unpleasantness.  Yes, a “Path of Sorrows” our “Via Dolorosa.”

We don’t want to hear about another mass shooting.  Certainly, don’t want to hear of those young victims cut down in their prime, before any of their dreams had come to pass.  We’re numbed.

Our politics are about as sick as our mental health.  Another empty wilderness.  And as deadly.

Our Bishop John recently posted that we have two old guys running for president.  One sometimes garbles the facts.  The other is unaware of the facts – and has now been seriously fined for massive business fraud.  A whopping $350 million judgement against him.  And his family business.  In fact, they’re outta business in New York.  America, is this the best we can do?  

And how was it that eighty-one percent of white evangelicals supported this “libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith?”[3]

Putting this insurrectionist and his supporters back in office would be a travesty.   A permanent stain on Betsy Ross’s “Grand Ole Flag.”  It’s depressing.  A political wilderness if ever there was one.

That he should now be romping to the nomination of his party, is an absurdity I cannot fathom.  The valley of the shadow of death threatening our republic. 

An evil of ignorance and indifference – of malfeasance and greed stalks our land.  O Lord, we pray, lead us not into the temptation to stick our heads in this sand.  And pretend it’s not happening.

While we cannot solve all the world’s problems, that doesn’t mean we just throw up our hands and let the devil take the hindmost. 

This is where followers step up – those who are true disciples following the path blazed by our Lord through his Lenten journey to Golgotha and the Cross.

Here’s the story of one group of students who entered the wilderness of mental anguish — helping their peers who are struggling with suffocating loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts.  Reaching out to those experiencing inner rage which sometimes results in the mass violence on our campuses across our nation.

It’s the national Yellow Tulip Project.  Last year at one high school, some students disturbed by the onslaught of reports of campus violence, decided to do something.  They were not going to passively sit back and allow mental distress to consume their school.

To commemorate Mental Health Awareness Week, a group at Sacopee Valley High School in Hiram, Maine, created what they called a “Hope Board.”  Shaped like a huge yellow tulip in the lobby, it was soon covered with scraps of paper on which students had posted their hopes, dreams and aspirations – ranging from the mundane, for their team to do well in the playoffs – to the slightly more serious, passing a driving license exam. 

Some hoped that they would be less angry and more hopeful.  One wrote, “I hope people are kinder and more mature.”

The leadership of this effort is what, most of all, gives me some assurance that our nation might do more than just muddle through.  It is these young people willing to enter the wilderness of mental anguish.  To bear the Cross.  These are the true followers of the Way of the Jesus Movement.  See Matthew 25.

Meet Elana, National Director of social media for the Yellow Tulip movement.  A young, African-American woman who is whip-smart and dedicated to the mission.

Elana relies on the power of storytelling to bring people together.  With a BA in English, focusing on Creative Writing, from The City College of New York and a minor in journalism, she gets the word out. 

Her specialty is in audience engagement for digital newsrooms to develop social strategies and create content that educates and inspires.  Her goal is to motivate young people to care for their mental well-being so that they can thrive.  She believes education, awareness and empathy will reach beyond the stigma of mental illness and bring people to get the needed help.

This is the sort of young person us older folks are looking for to step into our shoes — the sort who are true followers, not just admirers of some imagined ideal.

She has a deep interest in studying mental health and believes that sharing information and resources about mental wellness can help smash the stigmas about mental illness.

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps not a big deal.  But it surely matters to these students and those helped.  And their school.  And it just might prevent some unforeseen tragedy.

It’s all about being followers in the Jesus Movement, not passive admirers.  Don’t honk.  Roll up your sleeves.

We are here but a moment.  In the meantime, our summons to engage the Journey has been laid out in a poem by a Jesuit brother, Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked.”

“We are simply asked to make gentle our bruised world,
To be compassionate of all, including oneself.
Then in the time left over to repeat the ancient tale,
And go the way of God’s foolish ones.”[4]  Amen.

---

[1] Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright Publishing Co., 2020).

[2] Harriet Sokmensuer, “A Football Player, Bowler, Freshman and an Artist: Remembering the Oxford School Shooting Victims 2 Years Later, People Magazine, November 30, 2023/

[3] Op. cit., dust jacket.

[4] Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked” as set to music by Jim Strathdee, “Light of the World,” Caliche Records, Ridgecrest, CA, 1982. Words copyright 1976 by Peter Byrne, S.J. Music by Jim Strathdee, copyright 1981. 

February 18, 2024
1 Lent

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9;
1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-5

“Followers, not Admirers”