Scriptures: Deuteronomy 32:1-4, 10-13 and Ephesians 3:14-21
I hope my words this morning don’t seem simplistic. They seem a little that way to me, but what I have to say is what I have to say. It’s not really part of the discussion that will follow worship, but related to it in the sense of trying to put it in perspective at least for myself, and offering that perspective for you, of course, to do with what you will.
I was having a bit of a problem choosing which of several possible sermon titles to settle on for this morning, so rather than choose one I chose three, which accounts for the non-title I came up with for the bulletin. I suppose three sermon titles implies three sermons, and I do remember that we have other things to do this morning, I will keep each of my three sermons very succinct. I promise.
The first sermon is entitled: “Taking a Deep Breath”
That phrase has several meanings for me this morning. You take a deep breath when you are about to embark on something. And I think we are. And I don’t mean a building project. The question of having a place of our own, whether or not it’s a good idea now or somewhat later or much later, where it might be, what it might be, what purpose it might serve—those are all questions that have been involved in small group meetings we’ve had over the summer, questions that are involved in what we will be considering today, and questions we will need to talk about in the future. And hopefully we’re in the process of arriving at some fresh approaches to dealing with those questions.
But that’s not all that I’m thinking about, or even primarily what I’m thinking about when I say that I have the sense of embarking on something new. One of the recurring themes of meetings we held about location matters over the summer was that location matters shouldn’t be the only thing on our agenda as a congregation. Some felt that there are aspects of our congregational life that really need to be strengthened before we can plunge into any kind of building project. Others didn’t feel that way but did feel that not having a space of our own should not prevent us from fully exploring all the possibilities of our present situation, that we can’t put our congregational life on hold while we look for a permanent place. Growth, as we all know, is not just a matter of numbers, and whatever we do with questions about space and buildings and the like, we have some growing to do. Taking a collective deep breath means readying ourselves for that growing.
Also, when a doctor puts a stethoscope to your body to get a better idea of what’s going on inside, she or he often asks you to take a deep breath. One of the things that is on the horizon for us is a diagnostic tool (if you’ll forgive all the medical metaphors) that will help us look at ourselves, the internal life of Sojourners, from various perspectives. An anti-racism audit has been developed by the Anti-racism task force of the conference, and what is proposed is that we adapt and expand it to include other concerns of importance to us: gender, sexual orientation and identity, ability and accessibility, and so forth. This audit is part of our growing. It requires of us the courage to look honestly at ourselves, to do that without becoming self-absorbed, and it requires a kind of deep breath.
Finally, the Hebrew word for breath also means spirit, which says to me that what we hope to fill ourselves with when we take these deep breaths is not just air, but spirit. The image of taking a deep breath suggests to me a prayer: that all the deep breaths we take remind us that this is a spiritual journey we are making together, only secondarily and in a relatively small way an organizational one.
The second sermon title is: The Story We Find Ourselves In
In the midst of moving, packing and unpacking, sorting through all sorts of things, making decisions about whether to keep this or throw that away, I ran across a book title in a magazine called The Story We Find Ourselves In. I know nothing about this book, but the title caught my attention because it offered a way to think about the life of Sojourners.
We are, of course, in the middle of writing our own story here at Sojourners, writing it by living it, making up the story of Sojourners as we go along. Some writers of stories I think begin with the ending. They know where they want to end up and figure out how they are going to get there. Others start with characters and the general idea of what the story is about and let that lead them wherever it will go. We are more like the latter, it seems to me. We are, we trust, still early in our story. There’s a lot more to come. But we have at least decided, and have known from the start, what this story is about.
It is about—to paraphrase words I think I first saw on a poster in the ‘sixties—a church that in some ways is like every other church, that in some ways is like some other churches, and in some ways is like no other church. Like every other church, we are a church that wants to hold worship services, help our children mature spiritually as well as in other ways, share some meals now and then, hold an occasional meeting when we have to, and do good things in the community. In many ways we are not exceptional, and certainly our needs are not exceptional.
Like some other churches, we are trying, and succeeding at least somewhat, in being diverse and inclusive in ways that are not all that common. We want to be a safe and welcoming environment, as our mission statement says, for people who have too often not been welcome or have been discriminated against in the church. We want to be a place where people meet on respectful and equal footing regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, or the settled or unsettled nature of one’s religious belief. On top of this we are trying, and succeeding somewhat, but have a long way to go, in seeking peace and justice in the world around us and for whom being Christian in our identity also means being anti-racist in our identity and anti-homophobic in our identity, and where being Christian in our identity does not mean claiming possession of the Truth with a capital T, the exclusive means of salvation, or spiritual superiority of any kind. In all of this we are like some, too few, but some other churches.
The story we find ourselves in, the story we are making up as we live it, is the story of a congregation trying to do those things I just mentioned. Exactly how we do that is the way in which we are like no other church. It is not the story of a congregation trying to establish itself, get big and strong enough to have a building of its own, so that Charlottesville can have one more church. It is the story of a congregation being meaningfully inclusive, seeking justice in ways that push the envelope a little for churches, and nurturing a faith that doesn’t depend on putting down people of other faiths and no faith. And if you want to know how the story is coming along, this story we find ourselves in, we have to ask how we are doing at those things.
Sermon title 3: “I Gotta Home In-a That Rock”
Beverly and I were coordinating choir pieces and worship themes and when she told me that “I Gotta Home In-a That Rock” was one the choir would be singing, I said it would fit in well today, the idea being that whatever we all collectively decide about building or wherever we end up, we gotta home in-a that rock. My thought being that any building we may now or one day occupy will be a house for this congregation, but not really a home. For a church, and especially for this church, home needs to be somewhere else, somewhere we are on the way to maybe, but the image of the rock is also suggestive.
Again the image has more than one meaning, at least two just in the reading from Deuteronomy. On the one hand the rock is God. “The Rock…a faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is God.” And although it may be just a little nebulous what it means exactly to say that God is our home, I doubt that you’re going to argue the point either. Sojourners we are, by nature not just in name, on the earth with a home nowhere really but in God. To say, or sing, that we gotta home in-a that rock is to imply without having to say it that there are no real homes to be had anywhere else. She is the One we return to. He sustains us in desert lands. She, like an eagle with her pinions, bears us up. He shields and cares and guards and guides. We may want some day, need some day, have the ability some day to have a building. But it will just be a house. Our home will be elsewhere.
A rock is also a hard place. An uncomfortable place, if you will. Comfort, I’m thinking, is the undoing of many a church, and would certainly be the undoing of Sojourners. In this sense we gotta home in that rock too. Our home, where we belong, the place we keep coming back to needs to be, in a spiritual sense, uncomfortable. Uncomfortable because we are in a growing, changing relationship to God. Uncomfortable because we are speaking words, seeking justice in ways that may be uncomfortable for others, but that more to the point may also be uncomfortable for us. Uncomfortable because a church is never something you want to settle in to.
Our home is in God. Maybe one other way to say that is to say, as Ephesians does, that we are to be rooted and grounded in love. But another way to say that is to say that we are to seek out uncomfortable places to be, that that is part of what it means to have a home in God. And if that sounds a little bit joyless…well, it shouldn’t. Because scripture reminds us that sometimes life-giving water gushes forth out of that rock which was once just some hard place. In fact, scripture reminds us, and drawing on scripture so does a singing group whose songs the choir has sung often—sometimes we may even find that there is sweet honey in that rock.
God grant that it may be so for every one of God’s people, and that means for this particular band of God’s people too. Amen.
Jim Bundy
November 9, 2003