Easter 2003

Easter is appealing. Resurrection is the kind of thing people will want and ask for. That Christian-ity offers resurrection is a good selling point. Especially if the price is right.

Such marketing lingo feels odd, applied to something as holy and everlasting as Easter. But marketing is everything, or so it seems. (At least, it is what Americans do best. Apocryphally I heard that the California Raisin Growers Association made more money through licensing their "I Heard It through the Grapevine" music and characters than they did selling actual raisins.) So, this issue's first piece runs consumerism and religion through the Crossings prism to see what is there.

Then Jim Stapel, an astute layman who runs a hardware store, tells us what consumerism means to him.

We end with words from the late Prof. Bob Bertram. During his last year of living and dying with cancer, he had occasion to reflect on these things with a friend of his, likewise terminally diagnosed. Thanks to David Heyen and Cathy Lessmann for taping and transcribing Bob's words, as our Eastertide gift to you.

• C is for Consumerism
  "Consumerism" (an awkward word) signaled a sort of liberation movement. It encouraged people to use their "purchasing power" (the main discovery of consumerism) as leverage against the power of manufacturers and retailers, who otherwise could decide unilaterally what products are available in the marketplace and on what terms. "Buyers can have any color they wish, so long as it's black," said Henry Ford. Consumerism replied, if Detroit does not make the small, efficient or long-lasting car you want, then buy Japanese. If the salespeople at hardware store A are not helpful, buy your tools at hardware store B. If the new department store has lower prices, shop there until the old one lowers its prices. By the lever of purchasing power, rotating about the fulcrum of choice, even the mighty manufacturers can be moved.

• R-O-S is for Religion On Sale
  Someone quipped, exemplifying the way consumerism works, "Every Walmart manager knows that if your customers don't like your product, you don't change customers, you change the product." The manager, in humility and eagerness to please, does all the adapting. The fixed point is the customers' likes. And why not? Why should we have to buy a color or size or style or flavor we don't like? That makes pretty good sense in that area of life.

• S-I is for Saved from the Inevitable
  There is however, thanks to God's mercy, an alternative to this otherwise inevitable course of our disease. There is now a treatment for sinners. It is not the kind of treatment they deserve, but far kinder: a treatment that remedies the worst of this diagnosed malady at once, and the rest of it eventually.

• N is for New
  To see how the treatment advances, notice a curious item in Paul's testimony. He says he died with Christ and now he is no longer alive, but Christ in him. Since it seems to have cost Paul his life, we might question whether Christ's justification is genuinely free. But Paul was not purchasing justification, rather he was responding to the gift of it. And who could not respond to such a gift, provided she believes she truly has it? ...

• G-S is for God's Shaping
  God's treatment for our malady comes to a final stage. These new hearts take commandments instead of giving them. That is, consumeristic demands of God give way to studying God's commandments in order to obey them. Rather than trying to shape God to our will, we work at shaping ourselves to His will. The results are mixed, of course. For while we recognize the goodness of God's law (Paul: "I serve the law of God with my mind"), our flesh still wants to play consumerism against God. So we discipline ourselves, even lately lentenly with prayer and fasting, so we can do what pleases the God we "fear and love."

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• C-R-O is for Church and Retail Operations
  I wanted to ask my friend Jim about consumerism. We had met when I was one of his pastors, and he was the theologically sharp Sunday school teacher of the 9th grade. He even spent two months teaching them church history. Jim is also owner of a local hardware store.

• S-S is for Sales Strategy
  "'Consumerism' sounds self-centered," he replied. So he quickly moved to his own way of understanding. "We provide products and information in exchange for a check that will clear the bank (I hope)." Buyers have choices because retailers can take different approaches, emphasizing price or service or quality. "Choose any two; that's your sales strategy. We emphasize service first, then quality. The service is the fun part, where there is interaction with the customers. Also, our store has historically been known for that."

• I is for Image
  Such a tradition is important. "Perception is a lot in retail. Just look at the 'décor.' Home Depot and Lowe's have pallets of goods stacked on racks up to the ceiling. The customer sees that and thinks 'bigger = better = lower prices.'

• N-G is for Need for the Gospel
  Then I asked him what "the church and consumerism" brought to mind. "I tend to see the Gospel as a product-after all, I sell products all day long! You can't sell a product without a need for it. That is why the Law needs to be said. And you can go too far either way, just need or just benefit. You need a healthy balance for people to 'buy it.'"

• S is for Substance
  "Instead, the churches have to make the Gospel something that appeals to people. That is building for the long haul. Churches need to have something to say worth listening to."

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• C-R-O-S-S-I-N-G-S is for Christ's resurrection Overcoming Serious Sickness IN a Great Shift
  Richard Lyon, dentist and ordained theologian, was a long-time friend of Crossings and of Bob Bertram, its founder. On January 6, 2002, only weeks before Richard died, mutual friend David Heyen brought him and his wife Dottie to the home of Bob and Thelda Bertram for a private worship service. The group sang Canticle 13 in the Lutheran Book of Worship: "Keep in Mind that Jesus Christ has Died for Us."