DANCE!
Sermon for Glade Church
Scripture: Deuteronomy 10:12-24; Psalm 146; Luke 9:57-62
You know sometimes strange things pop into your head. I was trying to think what I was going to call this sermon—this was earlier in the week and I already had some ideas about what I wanted to say, but I was still in need of a title to send off for the bulletin—when this image came into my mind. I know I’m dating myself but some of you may know what I’m talking about. In the cowboy movies in the old days sometimes a bad guy or a bully would pick on some helpless person, would point a gun at them and humiliate them by telling them to dance—shooting bullets at their feet so that they would have to jump up and down in order to keep from getting shot. Now why on earth would I suddenly think of that when I am trying to think up a sermon title? I wasn’t exactly sure I knew why, but I did have a feeling that maybe this wasn’t an accident that this image came to me. So I decided to go with it as a sermon title. Dance! I’ll get back to that.
It’s good to be here. One reason it’s good to be here is that this is the beginning of a week of vacation for me and Ava. Another reason is that there happen to be personal ties between our two churches. Family members and friends connect us. I’ve been wanting to visit the church that is also an art gallery. As I’ve gotten to know Kelly a little and heard presentations by members I’ve felt connected to Glade in other ways as well, felt that we share a similar spirit and some basic commitments. And of course I’m glad to be here because you’ve decided to step into the circle called the United Church of Christ, and I guess my visit today is part of that process. Some of what I have to say today relates to that, but let me begin by speaking personally.
I also consider myself an immigrant to the United Church of Christ, even though I have been an ordained minister in the U.C.C. for 33 years. I come from a line of Methodist ministers reaching back to Civil War times. The Methodist ministry is in my blood, but I’m pretty sure it has been sufficiently diluted over time not to pose any serious threat. My parents had grown sufficiently uncomfortable with Methodism that they joined the Unitarians, which is the group that nurtured my religious sensibilities. I have always been grateful for my Unitarian upbringing on a number of levels but I also felt as though I never quite belonged. I don’t know quite how this happened, but I felt myself, without any apparent cause to feel this way, to be somehow Christian in a way that I knew Unitarians were not.
At the same time I sensed that I was Christian in a way that most Christians were not. Not better. Just different. In fact I had to struggle with whether my own religious feelings and beliefs qualified me to consider myself a Christian. I was in my own mind neither here nor there, neither authentically not Christian nor authentically Christian. It took me some years to work that through on both an intellectual and emotional level, in order for me to come to the point where I was willing to say yes, I am a Christian.
I stepped into the circle—way in, I guess, deciding to become not only Christian but a Christian minister. At one level I’ve long since settled the question of whether I identify myself as a Christian. But at another level, there’s always a question, even to this day. “Christian” is never a comfortable designation, for a lot of reasons, never has been for me, probably shouldn’t be for anyone. Nothing seems more out of the spirit of Christianity, in fact, than the proud and confident proclamation of one’s Christian-ness. And when I come to the communion table there is always the voice in me that asks whether I believe what I’m supposed to believe, or whether I am who I am supposed to be, in order to come to this table. I always come in a way unsure of myself, because I don’t know how else to come, but I’ve been coming anyway as a symbolic action, saying to myself: yes, I am, or I’m trying to be, or intending to be, or hoping to be, or growing into being a Christian along with all my sisters and brothers who are, or are trying to be, or intending to be, or hoping to be, or growing into being Christian.
But as I ministered productively, I think, and lovingly I hope, for thirty years, all that time I always felt somehow alien at the same time—alien to the churches I served, alien to the United Church of Christ, alien to the Christian church even. I needed to find Sojourners because I needed to find a place of exile and a place that welcomed exiles, including me. I wanted to be someplace where I did not have to pass for someone I was not.
And of course I wanted to be in a place where no one else had to pass either. Didn’t have to pass for white. Didn’t have to pass for straight. Didn’t have to pass for an orthodox Christian believer. I was aware, of course, that the hurt that some—we have to say a great many—Christian churches have inflicted upon people is much deeper than anything I experienced directly. No voice in the church had ever said to me that my sexual orientation was sinful. No subtle signal had ever said to me that someone of my color was not entirely welcome. No one had ever debated whether someone of my gender could serve as pastor of the church. No one had ever suggested that because my baby was born within wedlock, she should not be baptized in the church. No one had ever decided that it was just too expensive to make the church building accessible to me. No voice of the church had ever assaulted me directly in such ways.
I am aware that the church, people who represent the church, voices from within the church, have assaulted and abused people, have turned them off and turned them away and forced them into exile. Sojourners from the start set out to be a place that would extend a special welcome to people who had been exiled from the church of Jesus Christ. That’s how we came by our name. I wasn’t here when that happened, but people tell me that there was a long search for a name and nothing seemed right until someone suggested Sojourners and consensus was then quickly arrived at. Sojourners is a place, we try to be a place, that receives exiles. I know some people actually find Sojourners to be a place just like churches they have known and felt at home in and have felt very much at home when arriving here. But for some, maybe, Sojourners is not a church at all. Others may not recognize us as a church. Some of us may not particularly aspire to be a church. It doesn’t matter. We are a place, church or not church, where exiles may find, if not a home, then a place to be.
My understanding of Glade is, and I don’t know you well, but my understanding is that you also have exile built in to who you are. Clearly you have decided I take it that you are in exile from the Southern Baptists, because of both choices they have made and you have made. I believe you intend to be, like Sojourners, a place that welcomes people who may have been exiled from other places.
And so I want to say to you, as one who was invited to be here as I guess in some sense a representative of the United Church of Christ, that I am really happy about your coming into the Shenandoah Association, happy for a lot of reasons, and I hope you will be warmly received and that we for our part will do what we can to help you feel at home in the U.C.C.
But I also hope that you will not feel at home in the U.C.C. Because Christians are not supposed to feel at home. Not in their denomination, not in their household of faith, not even the Christian household, not in the culture, not in the world. For those of us, individuals or congregations, who seem to have just a bit of trouble finding someplace where we truly belong, there is a word for us from scripture. This place of not belonging is where you are called to be. It is where Jesus lived all the time, as he reminds us in saying that even the creatures have places they can call home. Foxes have dens. Birds of the air have their nests. But he has nowhere to lay his head. He is without that home.
Deuteronomy encourages, admonishes people to love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Let me paraphrase that and change the meaning just slightly. I hear Deuteronomy say to me: Love the stranger in yourself, for somewhere down deep we are all strangers. And if we feel that gnawing sense of not belonging anywhere, if we feel that sense of being an outsider, though that is not a comforting or comfortable feeling, still know that if you are feeling those things, you are where you belong. When we feel those things we are where God calls us to be. We sometimes want to escape that feeling, but in point of fact it may be important for us to hold on to it and to stay committed to being outsiders.
Which I think is why that image of dancing may have occurred to me. It’s not a favorite image of mine, not even the positive kind of dancing. I don’t dance, except under duress. You can tell by looking at me that I’m not especially light on my feet. I don’t have any right to tell anyone else to dance. But the image of someone doing their best not to let their feet touch the ground maybe said to me that that’s how Christians ought to be, with feet firmly planted in mid-air as they say, not comfortable, not settled, not established, not tied down. Also maybe the muse planted it in my mind because the dancing of the old westerns was a painful image, though dancing can also be a joyful image. Just so, our sense of being in exile, or of not belonging, can be a painful one and can have some deeply painful memories attached to it. But we are called not just to dwell with those painful memories but to transform them so that the way of being unsettled, of not belonging, can become a way of life that includes the pain but that is also filled with joy.
We are called to lives that are not well-adjusted. We are called to lives that are restless, restless on behalf of the reign of God. And this is who Jesus is for me: someone who draws me pictures of what the reign of God is like, who acts out what the reign of God is like, someone who not so much asks me to focus my spiritual life on him, but who in asking me to remember him at the very same time invites me to envision a new world, a new creation where people have come back together and no one is kept out. Jesus is One who brings this vision to life for me, and thereby brings me to life, because what a joyful, life-giving vision that is.
And so when I now look at the communion table and squint and see things, what I see is not Jesus and the disciples at the last supper only, not Christians gathered around the table for a family meal, but a vision of the banquet table at which all are welcome. Because I think that is what Jesus wanted me to see here. My soul tells me that this is what Jesus wants me to see here. And it is not a vision just of Christians. I have slowly come to believe that this table is not about religion. It is not about Christians coming together to do this thing they do. It is not about this ceremony that will bring us Christians closer to God and bring us into a kind of relationship to God that others don’t have. This table is about the dream of human beings sitting again at a table together. Human beings. Not Christian human beings. Yes, I know in a certain sense this is a Christian ceremony, but it also points beyond itself, as Jesus did, to what is more than Christian, what transcends religion, to what will bring us together again as God’s people. And that means that communion is not just open to any Christian, but open to any human being who for any reason wants to come. And that also means paradoxically again being open to those who for any reason don’t want to come, and there may be a whole lot of reasons for people not to want to come because of various images that are attached to it.
But what a liberating thing it would be, what a liberating, joyful, life-giving thing it would be for all of us if no one had to look in vain for their place at the table, and if no one had to struggle to protect a place of privilege, if no one had to struggle to break in to the circle and no one had to struggle to keep others out. What a wonderful, liberating, joyful, life-giving thing it would be if there were a place at the table for all people, truly all people. That, I have come slowly to believe, is what this table is all about. There is a promise here. And until that promise is fulfilled, this table will always remind us that we cannot be at rest or allow ourselves to feel fully at home. At the same time, there is a vision here, a vision that if we take it to heart, will give us life, restless, uncomfortable, joyful life. And that is why when we receive bread from this table it will come to us as “the bread of life”. Amen.
Jim Bundy
August 4, 2002