Laughter, Disillusionment, & Gospel Hope

PHOTO: On a recent trip to Salado, TX, we stumbled on the most fun book store and Episcopal church - St Joseph's.

"And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts." (St John the Evangelist)

A lot of people talk about burnout these days. Anne Helen Peterson has been something of prophet when it comes to describing the state of affairs that many in my own age demographic (millennials) are experiencing. And there's a typical litany of structural factors that typically undergird the story of American burnout: rising student debt, an epidemic of loneliness, general suspicions that the institutions that pay our bills don't have our best interest at heart.

Some of this is amplified when it comes to "passion work." Peterson describes "passion work" as the work that people do, not just for compensation but for calling. The work done because someone feels like they are "making a difference." But in this kind of work, the what that we do and the who that we are become intimately intertwined. The lines between work and identity blur.

The philosopher Charles Taylor talks a lot about how even in our secular moment our culture is haunted by the language, custom, and spirituality of the Christian faith. Faith, even for those who claim none, can be sticky and subconscious. I can't help but think that the zeal of younger generations to move into impact jobs that pay less and demand more, all the while using the spiritual language of "call," is a place where the secular and the spiritual, even if without intent, begin to meld.

And even beyond the structural factors which no doubt frame job satisfaction, sustainability, and our well-being, I can't help but think that moments of disillusionment play a greater role in burnout than in non-passion work. When the non-profit we work for isn't really making the impact we hoped. When the people we work with seem to lean toward cynicism. When the institution seems to not be what we thought it was. Between the expected and the actual, we start asking questions: Can we do this? Is it worth it?

Heck, I had one of those moments just a week or two ago when one of the most influential Christian leaders in our country wrote an article reflecting on the recent events with former President Trump. It contained this line: "Say what you will about Donald Trump and his sex scandals, he doesn’t confuse male and female."

For the sake of seeming pastoral, I won't describe my reaction to reading this. But it did make me raise questions about the future of this wobbly enterprise we call the church, especially the one in America.

I'm pretty convinced that there's no remedy for these moments of disillusionment. In our lives we all float somewhere between expectation and outcome. In fact, I think these are often the spaces where the Holy Spirit has done the most grueling and sanctifying work in my life. Even if there's no final fix, I wonder what fuel we might find to patiently continue our labors.

God has often provided for me in these moments through the gift of laughter. Life, I have found, often feels like levity. The Sunday after reading the above, we were celebrating communion at church. One of the youngsters I had asked to help serve was excited because they had never helped in this way before. I often try to encourage our serves to use the words that mean most to them when they are serving. This person definitely followed my instructions.

As the folks in worship began their journey forward, upon receiving Christ's cup they heard the gentle words, "May the Force be with you." It continued this way until his mother realized what he was doing and with a certain enthusiasm (!) convinced him to alter his phrasing.

Moments when I can't contain my own sniggering are often when I know that the stone has been rolled away.

I couldn't help think of the sermon that converted the late, great Fredrick Beuchner. Upon sitting in a pew in Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on the Upper-East Side, George Buttrick said that Christ is crowned in the hearts of believers "among confession, and tears, and great laughter." Beuchner wrote that it was when Buttrick reached the words "great laughter" -- a phrase not in his original manuscript -- Beuchner broke down in tears. "It was not so much that a door opened as that I suddenly found that a door had been open all along," he would later write.

Many of the young adults that I know have described the kind of heavy, walled-off, disillusioning experience of burnout that Anne Helen Peterson describes. Many of them are doing work that is so needed in our world. There are all kinds of structural forces that need tinkering and adjusting to make this kind of work more sustainable, and as that work gets started, maybe first a hope for the in-between:

May we always feel the release in our shoulders when heavy burdens are made light. May we always know the tightness in our chests when, in the best of company, we can't contain our laughter. And, even when life feels cramped, may we always see the doors that have been opened before us.