Scripture: Exodus 3:1-14.
Several conversations have led to the worship service this morning, and specifically to the words you are about to hear from me and Pam and Bob and Cathie. It did not take me long at Sojourners to figure out that many people here care about words, about how we express ourselves and how we say things in our common life. Inevitably when people care about words there is always the possibility of overdoing it, and ending up arguing over words in ways that seem needless and trivial. But mostly I think it’s a good thing—to try to say what we mean, not to throw words around carelessly—and I think it’s especially a good thing when it comes to the words we use in worship, and specifically the words we use when speaking about, or to, God.
Let me say personally that this is one of the areas where I feel tremendously grateful and liberated, coming into the Sojourners community. Up until now I have served churches where let’s just say inclusive language was not one of the top priorities and where every week I would scour the hymnals we were using trying, hoping, to find one hymn that maybe I had overlooked not even that used inclusive language but that was not too heavily masculine in its language. Sojourners is a different environment, and one which I am grateful for. To be in a place where people will challenge me to be more committed or committed in different ways to inclusive language is an enormous joy for me. You do not know how welcome that is to me.
At the same time I know from other conversations and from public usage that we are not all in the same place on this issue. As freeing as Sojourners is for me, I am also aware that there are still some things we need to work on and work out amongst ourselves. And so maybe there is need for some open, straightforward discussion of attitudes about inclusive language and its role in our church life, particularly our worship life. And I want to begin today’s discussion with both a personal word and a professional word.
I trace my own awareness of the issue of inclusive language to a time more than 30 years ago, when, as a newly ordained minister, I had been asked to do a wedding ceremony with some people I knew pretty well. It was the night of the rehearsal, and we were coming to the end and I said and then I will pronounce you man and wife…at which point the woman said, kindly but firmly: Don’t you mean “husband and wife” or if you want you could pronounce us man and woman, but I don’t think we need that, but man and wife doesn’t work. I frankly had never thought of the issue before and probably at that time didn’t think it was a very big deal, but if she wanted me to say husband and wife, I had no problem saying it.
This event happened in a professional setting, but it turned out to be of great personal importance. At first it came to me as a request to be more sensitive to how my words affected others. But eventually it caused me to begin to rethink how the words I used affected me, and that is a process I am still engaged in.
It is not a matter of mastering the rules of inclusive language the way you might master the rules of English grammar, understanding when we should say who or whom. It is not a matter of being proper. For me, questioning the language I use about God, has been a source of enormous spiritual growth. It has changed my ideas about God. It has changed and deepened my feelings about God. It has deepened my relationship to God. I wanted this morning simply to make that personal testimony.
Now let me speak for just a moment more in a professional capacity. That is, I want to just say a few things, very briefly, about how I am hoping we can deal with this issue at Sojourners.
First, I want to say, that I am committed to inclusive language, both in the sense of correcting the male bias of our language in general and of our language about God in particular, and in the sense of seeking richer and more varied ways to speak of and to God. I hope you will keep calling me to that task and engaging me in conversation about it.
I hope that somehow we can come to an understanding amongst ourselves that we are, as a community, working on this—working on making our language about God less habitual, working on making it more inclusive and more varied in all ways. I hope we can affirm together that we want to work on building a world, starting with ourselves, where God is not necessarily male—or white—or straight.
And I hope that our manner of pursuing this goal is to encourage one another along this road, not to be critical of one another, that we can speak without being threatening and listen without being threatened, and I hope that gradually we can come together in our understandings, not simply avoid the issues because we know there are disagreements among us.
To the end of furthering a broader discussion among us, I’m going to quit talking and turn the floor over to our next speaker for the day.
Jim Bundy
October 15, 2000