Scripture: Luke 24:13-35
I am not giving a sermon today. I am offering a meditation. What I mean by a meditation is something shorter than a sermon and probably less organized, more like a collection of loosely connected thoughts, rather than any systematic or sustained discussion on some topic. The shorter part seemed appropriate since we have a couple of important things to do at the end of the service today—baptizing and receiving new members. And those events always lead me to reflect in some ways, though I wasn’t sure I could turn them into a “sermon”. Thus meditation.
I want to begin though with a thought or two about carpooling. Given the fact that we are receiving new members this morning, Katie’s idea about asking people to carpool to church, which I know was intended to direct our attention to some environmental concerns, took on some meaning for me that I’m sure she did not intend, but that may not be totally discontinuous from what we talked about earlier either.
A simple thing like people coming to church together, made me reflect (meditate) on traveling together as faith journeyers as well as getters to church. Individualism is really built into us at just about every level of our lives. We assume that our goal as individuals is to take care of ourselves, take responsibility for ourselves. We assume everyone has her or his own life to lead. We assume we are supposed to mind our own business, stay out of other people’s business and not be a burden by asking someone else to mind our business. And so forth. All of which means that it comes naturally to us, given our general attitudes and values about such things, to get ourselves to church as best we can, usually by getting in the car and driving. And it is certainly not true of everyone, but has been true of the large majority of people I have known who for one reason or another needed a ride to church, that they were very hesitant to ask. It would mean interfering with the way someone else is leading her or his own life.
Now as to faith journeying, we assume here too, don’t we, that everyone has their own life to lead, their own path to follow. In fact, I would say it is one of our core values at Sojourners to respect those individual paths that have brought us here and whatever paths may be ours in the future. We don’t expect that any person’s path will look like any other person’s path. We don’t try to fit people into religious molds. We don’t insist that people express their beliefs with the same words. We want to honor who each person is, religiously as well as in every other way.
And the reason this is important is not only that we value diversity here, not only that we want this to be a place of acceptance and safety, but that the religious life is by its nature, deeply personal. Prayer, in its purest form, is always something intimate that takes place between a person and God. Faith in any form is not something someone else can do for us. It comes from someplace inside that is unavailable to anyone else. At their core, our faith journeys are not shared, cannot be shared, even by those people who are closest to us.
And yet…and yet, they do not have to be made in complete isolation either. I always tell people that it is possible to be fully a part of this community without actually being members. There are very few things you can’t do here if you are not a member, and chances are most people will be able to make it through life pretty well without those things. And we want people to be here who maybe aren’t sure about God or Jesus, or aren’t sure about the church, or aren’t sure about Sojourners, and for whom these things get in the way of joining the church. And so we always want to be clear that we welcome people hanging around the church without necessarily joining.
And yet, when people do join the church, it is always an important time for me. It gives me a chance to say again, along with all the rest of us that we do not intend to make our various journeys of faith in isolation from one another, that in matters of faith as in matters of transportation, we do not need to travel by ourselves. And this is not just a matter of sitting next to one another in worship, or in a meeting, but that we will do our best to break through the dividing walls, as scripture says, not only as people of color and white people, or as gay people and straight people, things we also try to do, but that we will try to let the walls between us as individuals come crumbling down, so that you become part of my search for God and I become part of yours.
I also always reflect, when people join this congregation, on the different and often winding pathways that have led people here. I always think of it as a kind of a miracle, or at least a holy gift, when people find their way here. And you do have to find your way here, or be led here. This is not a place you just happen on, not a place you attach yourself to if you’re looking for a sort of generic Christian church that’s close to home, let’s say. We’re too young to have any second generation Sojourners. A person’s spiritual journey in some way has to lead them here, and people have to encounter Sojourners at a time when who we are and are trying to become seems to fit with who that person is and is trying to become. There is no single way in which people arrive here. But some miracle, and I can’t help but think of it that way, some miracle has brought us all here together. Our distinct, very separate paths that we have traveled have, at least for the moment, converged in this place and we become somehow more than the individuals we were.
Another reflection: what we are doing on this road that we are traveling together is trying in our various individual ways and in a communal way to answer the question that was asked of us last Sunday. I say asked of us, although some people seem to think that because I was standing in the center of the room at the time that the question was asked of me. You remember what the young man asked. My memory is that his exact words were: “How do you become a Christian?”
As you may recall, I didn’t answer the question at the time. Which I don’t apologize for since any answer I would have given would have been off the top of my head and essentially thought-less, and the question deserves a better answer than that. But since several people have suggested to me that they are waiting for my answer, I will address myself to the question in May, sometime after the jazz service, though I will do so continuing to point out that the question might be addressed to anyone, and certainly could be answered by anyone, not just the guy in the funny costume.
And I am pointing out this morning that even if we are not asking the question, we are in the process of giving an answer—all of us, all the time, living out the Christian faith in one way or another, answering not with words so much (though with words too) but in the ways we try to live together and live out into the community, answering the question, “How do you become a Christian?”
We are in fact about to give one very specific answer. How do you become a Christian? Basil will show us in a few moments. You are baptized and received officially into the Christian community. That’s certainly one way to become a Christian. But as we all know, it’s just the beginning. Just the beginning because we are all involved in that process, of becoming Christian. I don’t know anyone who can say he’s arrived. Don’t know any sojourner, don’t know any pilgrim, don’t know any Christian who is not still becoming a Christian.
And thank God we have people to travel with, and today some additions to the traveling band. I hope the road we travel with Basil, with Donna and Debbie and Andy and Emma will be a long one. I picked the scripture about the disciples walking on the road to Emmaus just because it was the first one that occurred to me that was a walking scripture. There is a place in Paul’s letters where he refers to the race we are running as people of faith. But with all due respect to Paul, I don’t feel it as a race. We are on a long walk together. Racers cannot hold hands. They’re too out of breath to sing songs. Racers don’t engage in conversation. Racers don’t have time to listen for the voices speaking to their hearts, or tell one another about those voices. Racers don’t take time out to break bread learn who it is who’s traveling with them, or who has just joined them along the way. As I was saying with regard to being joined today in our sojourning and our journeying by Basil and Donna and Andy and Debbie and Emma: May our traveling together be long, and may it be blessed. Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 28, 2002