From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

One thing I’ve never quite left behind from retail work is my fascination/horror about branding.

The goal of so many brands is to create a lifestyle brand—a brand in which we find or express or define an identity. Politics is becoming the most effective lifestyle brand we can conceive of with the help of social media. Now one can define oneself as religious, down-to-earth, pro-gun, manly, and not politically correct with one lifestyle brand choice. You can also decide that you are tolerant, open-minded, welcoming, cosmopolitan, and educated with another lifestyle brand choice. At no point in American history have identities been so embedded and encoded within our politics.

After education, the second most predictive data about our voting behavior are our racial attitudes. The next most are religious attendance patterns. So combine our education, racial attitudes, and religion and you have not just a sense of who we are but of who we will vote for. That is not politics—that is identity. Never has identity been so deeply intertwined with our politics. It was once possible to be a liberal Republican. Pro-choice, civil rights supporting, highly-educated Republicans were once pretty common. Pro-life, religious, fiscally conservative, militarily hawkish Democrats were pretty common, as well.

Yet as politics has become brand and brand has become lifestyle and identity, the rifts and divisions are becoming much more firmly set. Yet, as Christians we have to ask where our true identity is to be found. If it is in Christ and not in secular politics then why are we so addicted, transfixed, and transformed by them? Do we desire to prove how right we are? How educated? How righteous? How tolerant? How politically incorrect? Whatever we are out to prove is almost certainly not what Jesus is calling us to prove.

The gift of God in Christ is that our identity is fixed in him. We are baptized into his death and into his life and into his resurrection so that we might know perfect freedom. Yet, we too often use that very freedom to argue about things that are not of eternal or even lasting import but, rather, of fleeting insignificance. Our divisions have become so entrenched that they now seemingly transcend even the eternal and transcendent promises of Christ that bridge our devices and have taken over our attention, consumption, and future.

So advertising is less and less based on a product we want to have than it is on who we think we want to be. Who do we desire the world to see us as? For the Christian, there is an additional layer to this.

How can the world see Jesus through us? This is the heart of evangelical desire. We hope that through our hope, through our joy, through our way of being that people can encounter the Risen Lord. Is this happening in our social media interactions? The way we treat waiters or flight attendants? The way we talk to our kids or our parents? Is helping others encounter Jesus through us something we desire? Is it something we want?

It should be. If we take the Gospel seriously, it must be. As we go through our week ahead, I’m going to think more and more about how to help people see Jesus through my interactions—not just by yelling Jesus loudly or the like but by how kindly, gently, and lovingly I can treat them. It’s not easy in days when we’re quick to anger and slow to forgive but I’m feeling that this is where I’m being called. How about you? Where are you being called to reflect Jesus just a little more these days?

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert