Scripture: Psalm 77
As I was writing my words about feminism and the church last week, I was thinking about a couple of things that I decided not to pursue then but want to pursue a little bit today. Having feminism as a sermon topic may be something that wouldn’t phase most Sojourners and at Sojourners probably doesn’t require an explanation—so I didn’t give one—but the exact nature of that connection between feminism and faith may not be immediately obvious, even to everyone at Sojourners, much less to, let’s say, a hypothetical visitor unsuspectingly walking through our doors. That hypothetical visitor might hear people talking up here about Sojourners being a feminist group and how we can more fully live up to our best feminist intentions and wonder whether Sojourners’ main goal is to be Christian or to be feminist. At least that was one thought flitting around in my head as I was trying to put my words together last weekend.
It raises the question of what our identity is and how deeply and explicitly Christian we are or want to be (and there’s a lot that needs to be said on that question). It also raises the related question of when the worldly concerns that are so freely and frequently expressed at Sojourners become spiritual concerns as well. Granted that we take for granted that worldly affairs have some place in church, is there any time, any sense in which worldly affairs are just worldly affairs and don’t have anything much to do with church? To put it bluntly, is there any difference between a public affairs discussion group and a service of worship? (There is a lot to be said about that as well.)
I’m just going to say a little this morning. This is one of those questions I find myself wrestling with as I go through the season of Lent this year and that I’ve been referring to as temptations, again not temptation in the sense of being enticed into doing something bad, but temptation in the sense of being drawn to something that might be good, or might not, depending, and that therefore needs some wrestling with. In this case, it’s the question of whether there isn’t at least some danger of losing our soul in the midst of our concern about social issues. The story says that the devil suggested to Jesus in the wilderness that he turn stones into bread, and he refused saying that people don’t live by bread alone. But they do live by bread; it’s just that there is something missing if bread is all you care about. Maybe this is the same kind of thing.
In any case, I think not just me, but we together at Sojourners wrestle with this question in various ways. Much of my preaching, I think, I hope, is about social justice. Although many of our prayer concerns express human personal concerns for individuals, many of our prayer concerns also have to do with social issues. When does all that become too much? When does it crowd out the spirit, or does it ever? I think we are aware that this is something we need to wrestle with.
Now I should quickly say that by far the greater danger of churches losing their souls is when, in the name of being spiritual, churches pretend that religion is just all about God and not at all about social justice. Churches are never more unspiritual than when they think they are devoting themselves to being completely spiritual. But that is not our issue. We know that we are called to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly. We know that religion is about how we live together, not only about how we live with God. We believe that God’s desire is for a reign of shalom for all people, not just to usher believers one by one up the stairway to heaven.
Still, there’s more to the story. I have been told by numbers of people over the years, people who devote their lives professionally or on a volunteer basis to social service or social justice work, that they don’t need to come to church to be reminded that there is still more to be done. They need something different than that from church. And I doubt that any of us come to church, whatever our reasons for coming may be, and they are most likely a combination of things that we may or may not be able to express very coherently—I doubt that any of us come to church in order to find out when the next peace march is or to hear a litany of the world’s needs. Not that those things don’t belong; they absolutely do. It’s just that what brings us here, whether we have the right words for it or not, is more than that, not entirely separate from that, but more than that.
As I was thinking these kinds of thoughts over the past week or so, I found myself remembering back some forty years ago to the time when I was deciding to go to seminary, remembering as best I can now what my reasons for doing that were then. They were not clear cut. The decision to go to divinity school was not a choice of profession. I did not go in order to become a minister. I had a vague sense that maybe I would end up teaching, but that wasn’t all it either. It was something else too.
I had spent some of my spare hours while I was in college being a social activist, dabbling in various kinds of protests and having my consciousness raised in all sorts of ways. When I graduated I decided I wanted to do that full time for a while before I went on to whatever was next. After I did social change full time for about six months, I decided I didn’t want to do that full time much longer. I applied to seminary, for lots of specific reasons I could talk about easily—people who influenced me and so forth—but also for some not so specific reasons that I knew were there, but that I didn’t have very good words for at the time, and that I have only a little better words for now.
I needed a context for what I had been doing, a grounding, some place for my soul to reside. Karl Marx wasn’t it. the Port Huron statement—does anyone know what that was?—anyway, the Port Huron statement wasn’t it. I wasn’t sure what was “it”. I went to seminary. Other people might find better ways, or at least less drastic ways, to deal with the situation. I went to seminary.
What I was looking for, as I think back on that time, may have something to do with the issues I have been raising this morning. We do all sorts of things as individuals and as a community in the way of seeking social justice. We do it not because any given cause or project is more important than being Christian but because being Christian means, for many of us, being anti-racist and feminist and open and affirming. Those are not things we are in addition to being Christian but things we are as a part of being Christian.
So we seek justice in lots of ways without feeling that we need to attach the name of God to everything we say or do in order to make it ok. In fact, we do it, I hope and trust, knowing that not everything we do is the will of God, knowing that not every position I take, or we take together, is God’s position. This doing of justice that we do, though we know we are called to it by God, is still a very human thing. We do it because it would be unfaithful not to do it, and we do it the best we can. But it would not be quite right, in my mind, to say that it is God’s work. What I am willing to say is that all the while we are engaged in this very human, very imperfect seeking for justice, we are also seeking something else, looking within this very human activity, looking within all our human activity, for something that is sacred, something that is holy.
I would not claim to speak for other Sojourners. I do know better than that. I can hardly speak for myself on this issue. But I believe what I was looking for many years ago as I decided to go to seminary is what I am still looking for and that may be what others are looking for as we come together as a community of faith. My words for it will not be the same as yours, and they may not be the same words I will choose on another occasion. I am looking for a sense that there is something holy in my seeking of justice and in my sadness and anger and discouragement over injustice, something holy too in my loving and in my loneliness, something holy in all our daily comings and goings, something holy in our living and in our dying.
I am looking for the face of God. Not so much the will of God, though sometimes I look for that too. So not so much the hand of God that manipulates events, or somehow works within events to bring about some desired result. That’s nice when you can sense that something beyond your own will has worked to make things happen in a certain way, a way that is meant to be or that God wanted them to be. It’s nice when we have that sense. But what I’m talking about today is not that either. Not so much the hand of God but just…the face of God.
In a world that is so often and so deeply profane, it is not always easy to see the face of God. But we keep looking…and looking. All the while that we go about the living of our lives, all the while that we are trying in our own ever so fallible ways to do justice, and love mercy and walk humbly with God, we are looking too for the face of God. Looking for something that says there is a deeper truth than all the profanities of our lives, looking for the holiness that dwells somehow in the midst of those profanities, hoping to be able to stand in wonder before it all…and ultimately in thanksgiving. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 21, 2004