August 10, 2025: The Go Bag of your Heart

John Bellaimey

 

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

August 10, 2025 John Bellaimey

St. John’s, Linden Hills

The Go-Bag of Your Heart

In the name of Christ within us, Christ beside us, Christ above us, Christ below us.

 

A neighbor recently told Lynnell about sharing the last weeks of his mother’s life, praying with her and talking about God. We didn’t know our neighbor was religious. But as his mom neared death, and as he got ready to say goodbye to her for the last time, talking to God comforted them both.

One famous critique of organized religion says it’s brainwashing people into waiting patiently for a made-up eternal reward in some invisible paradise. It takes people’s minds off trying to change things in this life and blesses their suffering. It soothes the dying. It keeps people from demanding justice. It even helps them feel smug about cruel kings and officials finally getting what they deserve. Marx called it the “opiate of the masses.”

 

 

More than a hundred years ago, the Swedish-born labor organizer and atheist Joe Hill coined the term “pie in the sky,” in a song called “The Preacher and the Slave.”

Long-haired preachers come out every night,

Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right

But when asked about something to eat

They will answer in voices so sweet:

 

You will eat, bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die!

 

Joe Hill was often homeless. He worked day labor jobs in the west, got beaten up by goon squads, and helped organize labor unions. When a former police officer was murdered in Salt Lake City, the cops rounded up twelve undesirables, including Joe Hill. The prosecutor picked Hill with only sketchy evidence, happy to execute a hobo, an immigrant, a union troublemaker. Hill refused to testify and his guilt or innocence is still a mystery.

 

He was shot by a firing squad, but his ashes soon became sacred relics, sent in 100 envelopes around the world as inspiration to workers everywhere. The envelopes read [read it from the slide]

 

When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he was, indeed, sometimes talking about an afterlife. He often warned people to be ready to meet their maker. Last week’s rich farmer never got to enjoy his big barns. Abraham never got to own a piece of the Promised Land, unless you count the field and cave he bought to bury his wife in. His son, grandson, and great-grandsons never got any Promised Land. It was only hundreds of years later that Moses got to the mountaintop to even see it; but he died without entering it.

 

In both Sweden and Japan, there is a tradition of selling or giving away your belongings as you get old. It spares your children the task of decluttering your house, garage, cabin, barn, storage unit, and legal matters.

 

Margareta Magnusson recently coined the term Swedish Death Cleaning in a book about how joyful she found the practice of carefully finding new owners for all her stuff so she could focus on the people who she loved and who cared for her.

 

She’s right: we should be ready. Have a go-bag, like people in wildfire or earthquake zones. Jesus tells his followers to sell their possessions and give to the poor, because you never know, Death could come any time.

 

 

Not to mention the Second Coming. When Jesus returns, he said, he’s going to clean house and usher in everlasting peace.  Here he is, coming down the Golden Escalator. Jesus is coming, said a bumpersticker. Look busy!

So Joe Hill had a point: if following Jesus means an eternal paradise in heaven, which is just a lie religious people tell to keep the poor in line, then what good is that for the world? Take care of your own soul, and warn others to do the same? I’m with Joe: don’t give me that old time religion. It’s not good enough. Pie in the Sky is too individualistic. Faith is both a personal thing and a group thing. A planetary thing, even. Give US this day our daily bread. Forgive US our sins. WE believe in one God.

 

My college anthro teacher Wyatt MacGaffey used to divide ideas into four quadrants on the chalkboard, like this. It helped us understand how cultures differed from each other, and how writers differed in their explaining.

 

Briefly, Quadrant I, the top right box, focuses on material things as they relate to an individual, like the guy last week with the plans for a huge new barn to hold all his surplus grain.

Quadrant II, the top left, focuses on the material things in our life as a society, like affordable housing or food shelves.

Quadrant III, the bottom left box, focuses on ideas, not material things about life, God, and society. Policy. Opinion columns.

Quadrant IV, the bottom right, focuses on our personal thoughts, plans, and feelings. Worries. Prayers for our own needs.

 

Calling Christians out for only preaching “pie in the sky” is Joe Hill’s way of saying that the heaven-or-hell preachers have it wrong. It’s all talk, all quadrant IV. Joe Hill was a quadrant II man: focus on the real world. Decent working conditions.

Joe’s mind was already made up. Joe wasn’t going to listen to a thoughtful reply about the Christianity of Dorothy Day or Casa Maria or First Nations Kitchen. Yeah, yeah, he would interrupt you before you could get very far, [retainer voice]  Jesus loved everybody and he healed the sick and fed the hungry, yadda, yadda. But Jesus only did that to draw crowds, Joe would reply, so he could tell them they won’t get to heaven unless they say the prayer about Jesus being your own personal, individual Magic Sky Friend.

 

Fortunately, you are all too polite to interrupt me like Joe did, before I can finish, so here goes: Okay, Pie in the Sky is somewhat true to Jesus’ message, but it’s a distortion. A heresy, actually. Heidi Joos defines heresy as a good idea taken too far. A heresy ignores all the dimensions of a thing except one, and pronounces that one thing as the only one that matters. Jesus did preach about heavenly reward, but so much more.

 

The Good Samaritan was a Quadrant II parable. Bind up the man’s wounds, take him to an Inn, and leave your credit card number! Individual. Practical.

But the point of the parable was to imagine everyone being a neighbor. A radical idea: a universal social world. Quadrant III.

 

The Prodigal Son, the wasteful younger  one, loved the material world: he burned through his money on partying, nice clothes, maybe even a red convertible. Which Quadrant did he represent?   I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the point of the parable was to imagine that God loves even him, that wayward, ungrateful, selfish individual. A radical idea about unlimited individual salvation. Quadrant IV.

The good news today is be ready. Not because the deed to the Promised Land is going to arrive by FedEx tomorrow. Not because Jesus is coming, and we’re going to wake up in the morning playing harps and singing sacred songs. Be ready because Christ is always coming. The three year old having a tantrum is the voice of Christ trying to be understood. Your patient who won’t take her medicine is Christ telling you she’s afraid and might give up. Your neighbor who never returns the stuff he borrowed could be Christ in disguise, but still annoying. The older relatives with the news on tv all day might not be angels in disguise, or tests of how good a Christian you are, but they bear the image of God, no matter how loudly their behavior suggests otherwise.

The good news is be ready. Check your go-bag again, be sure you have all four Quadrants packed and ready. The bag of wise habits and hope. So you can love yourself and love your neighbor. The go-bag of your heart.

 

 

10am Service