Amos 5:18-24
Previously on “The Park Church,” we established that it is weird that a progressive pastor committed to climate justice is a fan of a sport that is a catastrophe of carbon-emissions and is closely associated with reactionary politics.
Not only do I watch Nascar, which closed out the ten-month long season last week, but my favorite driver is sponsored by a petro-trafficking syndicate and races for a team owner who has contributed heavily to the scariest types of politicians.
Even more odd is the fact that I’m not actually a car guy. I mean, I mostly restored a ’69 Mustang when I was younger, and worked as an insurance inspector at a Ford assembly plant, but hot rods were my Dad’s thing, not mine.
The through line from me to Nascar works like this: When I was a kid my family watched football. I washed out of the sport as a skeletal-thin ten year-old, and my days as an athlete were done, except for a little club cricket one summer in England. But Mom and Dad loved football, and there was no greater cause than the Washington football team now called the Commanders, the grotesque racism of the previous team name now thankfully behind us.
When Joe Gibbs retired as that team’s successful head coach, he moved to Nascar as a team owner. And my parents, loyal folks that they were, followed along, watching cars drive in a circle for hours and cheering for his drivers. I started watching Nascar while spending time with them, and since Dad cheered for one Gibbs driver, and Mom another, I took on the third. Now Dad is gone, and two of those drivers, including my favorite, race for other teams.
Something you notice about Nascar pretty much immediately is the overt display of hyper-Christianity. Despite the Nascar corporation’s talk of expanding the fanbase, every race begins with an invocation that is all Jesus, leaving no room for Jews, Muslims, the non-religious, and often excluding any Christianity that is not washed-in-the-blood Evangelical.
Heads will be bowed and hats will be off for the invocation and national anthem, and many drivers, should they be fortunate enough to win, will pop out of the car praising their Lord and Savior as if Jesus took the wheel for that last lap. And if it is Joe Gibbs Racing, the pit crew is going to huddle in prayer before heading to Victory Lane.
But that same crowd that is praying and saluting is as likely to be chanting profanities against our current president, and those drivers are going out there aggressively pursuing that big paycheck if they win, bumping and wrecking competitors, and when the competition gets ugly, as it often does, they are busy slugging each other in pit road, or storing up grievance, ready to wreck the offending party in the next race. Let’s just say there are a whole lot of bleeps when broadcasters play what is being said on the car radio.
There is no driver in Nascar today who is more smug and entitled and dangerous behind the wheel than Ty Gibbs, the baby-faced grandson of Joe.
The Christianity of Nascar, as dangerous as it is to an open society, is performative. Not that Christianity doesn’t have room for sinners. In fact, Christianity is exactly where sinners should be! But the High Church of Nascar is about white Christian ethno-nationalism and late-stage corporate kleptocracy, not about anything to do with Jesus or the Jewish tradition that was his context.
The beloved Franciscan Richard Rohr has warned that we become like the god we worship, though I think it may work the other way, with us imagining a god who is like us. It is no wonder that Nascar’s god is a violent narcissist.
Jesus had quite a bit to say about performative religion if we believe that the gospel contains a core of historic memory, and quite frankly, I do. This critique of performative religiosity is very specific, aimed at other Jewish movements, especially the Pharisees. And if you will allow me a very brief detour, let’s be very careful to always place these ancient disputes in their context. Rabbinic Judaism understands itself as in the tradition of the Pharisees, and though that is an adult forum for another day, we should understand that people on both sides have historically heard “Jesus versus the Pharisees” as “Christians versus the Jews.” Jesus was not a Christian.
There is nothing Jesus says about performative religion that had not been said before, that is not part of the Israelite prophetic tradition. We see it in that extended passage from Micah that ends with the famous command to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly, and in today’s passage from Amos, where the prophet repeats the claim that God abhors showy religion. What God wants is justice and righteousness. So maybe holding up a Bible on the steps of an Episcopal church after your jackboots have cleared the space of those crying out for justice doesn’t qualify.
The prophet Amos entered the scene near the end of the two-kingdom period, when the northern kingdom of Israel was at its zenith. They were militarily successful and expansionist. It was a time of peace and prosperity, at least for some. The professional prophets, dependent on the powerful, told the elite what they wanted to hear. Amos made clear that he was not a professional prophet. His gig was figs, and sheep, for he kept a flock and an orchard. Worst still, he was from across the border, from Judah.
Amos pointed out that while the rich were getting richer, the poor were also getting poorer. He claimed that God does not care about performative religion, about an orientation toward God, but instead cares about justice, about our orientation toward one another, toward what Matthew 25 calls “the least of us.”
What? God is a narcissist who craves our attention? You’re thinking of that other false god evangelicals worship. Do. Love. Walk.
But let me just jump out of my car, pull off my helmet, make a big show on camera of dropping to one knee, pointing up to the sky, and thanking my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for this victory today. While I’m at it, I might want to thank the front bumper that I used to knock another car out of the race, sending its driver to the infield care center to be checked for a possible concussion.
Now, I’m not exactly against ritual. Our senses are an amazing gift, our connection to the world. The flickering of candles, the vibration of that mighty organ, even the smell of incense in high church traditions, they all have their place in helping us step out of the mundane, helping us de-center ourselves for a moment, quieting our inner monkey mind long enough for us to hear celestial symphonies. Worship can be transformative but is not transactional.
And there is Jesus. “I can’t heal on the sabbath? But his hand is withered on the sabbath?”
And there is Amos. “So you had a festival. Whatever. I still see hungry people.”
Don’t tell me. Show me.
For me, that means stop telling me you care about unborn children and start funding maternal health programs. Among other things, many of which you have heard from this pulpit.
It wasn’t Jesus that wrecked that other driver.
If the litmus test for Christianity is blind acceptance of two thousand year-old truth claims, many of which are absurd, then I am most certainly not a Christian. If the litmus test for Christianity is striving for justice, is humility and kindness, is servant leadership and sacrificial love, then I can aspire to be called a Christian, and trust in grace when I fall short of the mark, for I will surely fall short of the mark.
And so will you. And our claim, the claim at the heart of our faith, is that the same God who calls us to show radical love to our neighbor, loves us in the exact same way.
I’m still not going to let Jesus take the wheel. Or an A.I. I mean, did those people not see Terminator 2? But that is a sermon for another day, maybe right after I figure out what is going on with the Bills this year….