Scripture: John 21:15-19.
The sermon title has a double meaning. It refers, on the one hand, to the fact that later on in the service we will have some people joining the church, which is always a happy thing. It quite frankly makes me feel good, probably makes all of us feel good, when people come along who in effect say, “Yes, this is a group I want to be part of”. By coming forward at the appropriate time the people joining will be saying yes to this community, and we get to say yes back, in effect: yes, we are not only glad but really grateful that you are here. Until new people come along, you didn’t know there was that empty spot in the community, but when they do we realize that the people who are here are the people we have been waiting for all this time. We all get to say yes this morning.
However, I should also say that I’m not going to give our new members a chance to say yes to anything out loud this morning, which is to say that I’m not going to ask them any questions to which they would need to answer yes or no. Not even as a formality am I going to do that. Especially not as a formality.
I always enjoy explaining this to potential new members—that I am not going to ask them any questions when they join—because it gives me a chance to try to say out loud what some of the things are that are important to me about Sojourners.
I know in one sense my way of saying things is just my way of saying things. One of the values of Sojourners is that we all do have our voice and of course we commit ourselves to letting our different voices be heard when we disagree about something. But we are also committed to letting our different voices be heard, even if we are all saying essentially the same thing. So I know that being the pastor means that I get to say more things than the rest of you do, but I don’t necessarily speak for everyone when I do. But sometimes I need to try to speak on behalf of the community and trust that if I say something out of line, I’ll hear about it.
Saying yes to something always means saying no to something else. And I admit that I often think of Sojourners in terms of what I think we are saying “no” to here.
Orthodoxy, for instance. Right belief. We say “no” at Sojourners not just to this right belief or that right belief, not just to other people’s orthodoxies, but to the very idea of orthodoxy. Sometimes religious groups can be pretty rigid and unsubtle about their insistence on being orthodox. Some are unapologetic, make no bones about it. Here is what we believe. You don’t believe what we do, go somewhere else. Some are a little more laid back and have more the attitude that we recognize not everyone is at the same place so we’ll accept you knowing that eventually, after you travel a little further down the Christian road, you’ll come to understand and accept the truths of the Christian faith. There is an orthodoxy but it may take some people a while to get to it.
My sense, my hope is that at Sojourners we are not even trying to end up at the same place. It’s not that we are all trying in our own ways to get to a single goal. We not only recognize that we are all at different places in our spiritual journey; we recognize that we are going to end up in different places. Our differences of religious belief are not just things we temporarily tolerate. They are a part of our life that is positively valuable and that we cannot do without. Our no is to a church that has some standard of right belief, which maybe they insist on from the start or maybe they allow people some time to grow into, but which has that standard. Our yes is to a congregation that offers space for belief and faith to be explored, experienced, expressed, and lived in each person’s own way. Not having any questions, any tests of faith, is a way of saying we’re serious about that.
There’s something else too—related but slightly different—which I know I have spoken of before at Sojourners but which I feel deeply. There is a danger in church life in general, and I may feel it deeply because I think ministers are most susceptible to it, of speaking casually about God. Of bandying about the name of God as though we knew exactly what we are saying. That is one way that I think we take the name of God in vain.
Of course in some ways we do know something about what we are saying when we speak of God. There is a certain sense in which we are familiar with the ways of God, however unsearchable or inscrutable they are, to use Paul’s words. We do have some sense of what God’s will is, even if it is not revealed to us in striking detail. In certain gifted moments we have known what must be nothing other than the love of God, or the grace of God. And so we do speak of these things in church because they are not entirely foreign to us. Not to speak would be to ignore important parts of our experience. Still it is so easy to say the word God as though there were nothing fearsome or troubling or hesitant or uncertain about it. And when we do, we are not being faithful. We may not be able to completely avoid speaking in casual ways about God, but we do need to recognize the tendency to do so, and the danger. So, for me anyway, not asking questions about religious belief of new members is also a way of saying no to cheap talk about God. That’s another thing I think Sojourners is about, and thus another thing that new members are implicitly saying yes to when they join.
But I referred to a double meaning of the sermon title. Saying yes has to do with people saying yes to being part of this community. It also has the meaning in my mind of the need for all of us to be working at turning our noes into yes’s.
This scripture that I’ve been stuck on—this is the fourth week now—this scripture is very much about that movement from denial to affirmation, in this case as represented by Peter. Peter of course is the one who at the Last Supper swore up and down that he would never deny Jesus—oh, no, I would never do that!—and then he did. As Jesus foresaw, Peter refused to admit even knowing Jesus and did it three times. Here in this scripture Jesus gives Peter a chance to affirm him three times. He keeps asking Peter, “Do you love me?” Peter seems impatient, but it’s almost as if Jesus intentionally repeats the question so that for every time Peter had said no, he now gets a chance to say yes.
So I was thinking in general about our saying no and saying yes. Sometimes it’s easier to say no than it is to say yes. I know this is not true for many of us when someone asks us to do something, serve on a committee, be the chair of this or that. Some people have trouble saying no to such things. But there are some areas of our lives where it is easier to just say no, or to think in terms of what we don’t want or don’t believe, as opposed to what we do.
I said at the beginning that I often think of Sojourners in terms of what we are saying no to, and to some degree I think that’s appropriate and even important for all of us. Sometimes the Christian church has been, and is, oppressive, with regard to religious dogma, for instance, or with regard to who has been welcomed and excluded, openly or in subtle even unintentional ways. That has been such a large part of the Christian church in general, that it is important to name the ways in which we are trying to be different, the ways in which we are trying not to be oppressive, the things we are saying no to.
But it is also important for us as a church to be defined not just by what we don’t want to be but by what we do want to be. Seems like sort of an obvious thing to say but it’s a challenge, and I mean this not in a critical but a hopeful way, but I do think we have some work ahead of us in this area.
Just to use the examples I have been using this morning: It’s a good thing to try not to speak in a casual way about God, as people often do in churches. It’s a good thing to try not to act as though God were familiar to us, someone we know all about. Those are good things but they aren’t enough. I do believe it’s true that Christians need to question their presumed familiarity with God, but if that’s all we did the message might seem to be that God is distant, foreign, unknowable, and irrelevant. If we don’t want to speak of God in a casual, thoughtless, overly familiar manner, how do we want to speak of God…and to God? How do we foster among ourselves a faith that will sustain us through times of personal distress and that will keep us from growing discouraged in our struggles for justice and the reign of God?
It’s not our job only to sort of make space for each other and then leave one another to wrestle with our faith on our own as best we can. I do believe that our journeys of faith are not meant to be made alone. If they were we wouldn’t need communities of faith. We are meant to seek ways lovingly to foster the spirit in one another, not only to respect doubts but to nurture belief, to help each find the yes’s in our lives, to discover and cherish and hold on to those things in our lives that move us to tears and rejoicing, to discover what it is not that we might do but that we must do, to discover not so much something that we might have, like an opinion, but that we are possessed by, to discover that something of God that is already in us.
As respectful as we may be, or hope to be, or try to be of one another’s space and difference, we do have commitments to each other. And every time someone joins this congregation, we not only profess our commitments to those people but renew our commitments to each other.
This is a sacred journey. We are embarked on it together. May we help each other to say yes in whatever ways we are able. Amen.
Jim Bundy
May 20, 2001