The Gospel Response to Peer Pressure

 

On Friday morning CBC Radio One had a conversation with Mayor Mike Savage. The conversation was about solutions to housing across levels of government. The Mayor commented that he has worked as a politician for a long time; stating that his leadership has been one of partnership not bipartisanship; willing to work with all levels of government, all parties, to the benefit of the municipality, rather than casting blame, setting a scape goat, playing for votes.

 

Over this past week, letters from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land and the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, along with organizations like Canada Lutheran World Relief and the Lutheran World Federation who have partnerships in the region and work that has spanned decades --- all shared a desire for pause and for peace; not a taking of sides and an escalation of violence.

 

Leaders – around the world and of all sorts- are surrounded by fear-filled people. They themselves also harbour fear. Fear-filled people panic. They harbour anxiety that makes it hard to regulate emotions. The brain is prevented from functioning well; reading situations, identifying options, living from one’s values becomes increasingly difficult. Fear-filled people are reactive rather than thoughtful and creative. Fear-filled people make demands of their leaders, pushing them to immediately stand and fight that which threatens, and wanting quick solutions.

What is a leader to do?

 

In this week’s Working Preacher resource, Zina Jacque, Assistant to the Pastor at Historic Alfred St. Baptist Church, Alexandria, Virginia, suggests that readers of Exodus have been hard on Aaron, Moses’ brother, and that readers need to take another look at the scripture and apply the timely lessons found therein. She adamantly writes that the story is not a failure of leadership on Aaron’s part. Aaron is rather, a good and faithful leader, who succumbs to peer pressure.

 

Most of us at some point bow to peer pressure.  We find ourselves, as Zina Jacque says, “on the wrong side of right, absent the presence of mind to adhere to an ethical standard, and wordless in face of wickedness.”

 

Peer pressure – in this case the peer group is a very large group of people who have fled slavery in Egypt, to journey through a desert region to find a new place to settle. They have what they are carrying. They have little knowledge of the desert and have complained about the lack of food, the lack of water, the lack of direction. The people become impatient waiting in the desert – in limbo- for leader Moses to return; he has been gone a long time. Fear is insidious; it has been with the people from the moment they stepped into the desert, as they have had concern for their survival. Fear has been shared, grown, articulated in complaints, and now reactive, demanding, pushing, wanting quick solutions – they pressure Aaron --- do something!

 

 Peer pressure – Aaron as a leader would know that a mob under the influence of fear and acting as a reactive unit of peer pressure, is a daunting prospect for a leader. When not under such stress, he would know, that peer pressure fueled by a fear-filled people will have people take sides; they will judge and demonize those whose views are differ; the people will solidify there stand and not change sides or cross the line they have drawn in the sand; and the longer fear percolates, the more who succumb to the peer pressure, the risk of mayhem and violence increases exponentially.

What is a leader like Aaron to do? What are readers of this story of Exodus to do?

 

Aaron had options – options that were veiled as he succumbed to peer pressure and came up with a quick solution to craft a golden calf to appease the peoples’ complaint.

 

Zina Jacque claims that Aaron had options, three good ones, three options that are the take- away for us. Three options to put into practice when facing a world that is ridden with peer pressure, peer pressure that has turned the peoples of the world into a pressure cooker.

Aaron -if he had taken a moment of pause- to let his heart and head catch his emotions and impulses- in the pause, Aaron could have grasped the remedy for fear-filled peer pressure, and stood firm as a good and faithful leader. The immediate options at hand were to:

 

Rehearse God’s word. Review God’s miracles. Remember God’s promises.      X2

 

Aaron was the leader who spoke to the people for Moses. Aaron spoke a lot of words that God told to Moses to tell the people. There were lots of words that Aaron could have repeated to the people. There were lots of miracles that Aaron could review with the people: making it safely across the sea, followed by a pillar of cloud by day/a pillar of fire by night, manna, quail, water that poured from rocks. Then Aaron had the option to remember with the people God’s promises: a relational covenant, a people who will number as the stars, a land, a fresh start.

 

The Gospel reading today could be interpreted as an extrapolation of leaders succumbing to fear-filled peer pressure. A big shot only invites some chosen people (those deemed worthy and proper) to a party; a reactive impulse when no one shows has the host invite those judged to be less than, to rub it into the face of those who didn’t come. But those who come can’t come as they are they are pressured into wearing a garment handed to them or get thrown out. The story is spoken to a group of religious elites subscribing to covenant, yet the story points to the way the group is not living covenant, how judging, pressuring, conforming, changing values has become the model – and ending up on the wrong side of right, absent the presence of mind to adhere to an ethical standard, and wordless in face of wickedness.

What are leaders – what is the banquet host to do?

Rehearse God’s word. Review God’s miracles. Remember God’s promises.

 

When it comes to pastoring, the things I do, I often do for myself and invite others to come along; I figure that if I am struggling, others might just be struggling with something similar.

I think and feel that we, as a community, through Sunday worship, practice rehearsing God’s word, reviewing God’s miracles, and remembering God’s promises. What I struggle with the most in a world ridden with peer pressure is the PAUSE. 

… the pause… wherein my heart and head can catch emotion and impulse.

To be a leader in a troubled world, to be church – a people of God- that is a leader in the world, we are called to practice the pause--- and invite others to enter the pause too.

 

On Tuesdays I have set aside 30mins to publicly pray, considering PRAYER to be my pause – our pause as a community and a place to invite others to practice the PAUSE. It is an invitation to be spread to our family, friends, and neighbours – shared on social media, written in letters, asked over the phone, mentioned in conversation – ‘what would you like prayer for?’ Would you like to pray with us? Either at the time or later on in comments, in the book in the hall, or tell you so that you can add other’s prayers to our prayers…

To our PAUSE

Where our heart and head catch emotion and impulse and draw them back, grounding ourselves in the source of our being, to Christ at the centre, strengthening us to withstand the peer pressure of the world, and boldly proclaim to the pressure-cooker of the world options for wholeness; options that start with a long PAUSE

A pause -a prayer- long enough to replace fear with humility, peace, and grace.

 

May this be so. Amen.