Scripture: 1Corinthians 2:1-13
I have just a few things I want to say today occasioned partly by some of what John Thomas, the president of the United Church of Christ, said during his visit to the area last Sunday and Monday, partly by our forum after church today, partly by a sentence in a magazine article that came back to me, and then by the scripture that I was led to in connection with what I was thinking about where Paul speaks about searching the depths of God.
First the remarks of John Thomas who I heard speak, formally and informally, in several settings over a few days. Here is what I took away from the various things he said in my presence.
He said that he sees the United Church of Christ as a kind of alternative movement within the broad spectrum of Christian churches. (I don’t recall that he used exactly that language. This is my paraphrase of what he was saying.) That we are an alternative not just to the religious right but to the Christian mainstream, that we have a distinctive flavor and personality to offer that is partly the result of who we are and what we have done historically, but that is also based in who we hope to be, and that we shouldn’t back off from any of this but need to be even more resolute in our alternativeness.
He said that the television spots that have received a good deal of attention over the last six months of course were intended to communicate something of who we are to people who don’t know much about the United Church of Christ, but that they also have a message for U.C.C. people. Or a question, several questions. Is this who we are? Or is it at least what we aspire to? Can we live up to and into the image of being a church that is truly inclusive and welcoming? Do we mean it? Maybe from a certain perspective these ads are directed more pointedly at ourselves than at anyone else. It’s me, O Lord, it’s us, standin’ in the need of prayer.
Do we mean it? That’s a good question for a denomination that includes a great many churches that see themselves very much in the mainstream of Christianity, who would be very unlikely to describe themselves as alternative, who may find that term even a bit scary or offensive, and who have been offended by some of the things the UCC has done that has given it its public persona: actions on behalf of racial justice, positions taken on international issues, and the inclusion of openly gay and lesbian people in the life of the church and seeking justice for sexual minorities in the culture generally. Can the United Church of Christ authentically claim to be any kind of Christian alternative movement when so many of us clearly do not see ourselves that way? Do we—the United Church of Christ—really mean it? He didn’t ask the question quite in so many words, but he implied it, and it’s a good question, and the jury is still out on that question.
That’s also a good question though for us here at Sojourners where the idea of being alternative probably is not offensive at all, where we’re more apt to even take a little bit of pride in our alternativeness, enough so that it’s something to be careful about and guard against in ourselves, where I’m making an educated guess that a great many of us, regardless of how we appear on the outside, on the inside feel pretty alternative, as individuals, feel like we are people who spiritually, religiously, just don’t quite fit in, and have come to Sojourners in part because it’s a place where people who don’t quite fit in can at least feel safe and know that there are others who also, for various reasons, don’t fit in. We might feel, many of us at Sojourners, pretty comfortable thinking of ourselves, individually and collectively, as alternative, out of the mainstream, off the beaten path, or just plain off, but the question remains for us too, maybe even more for us, do we really mean it?
I recall reading, not too long ago, an article that was reviewing and commenting on several books all of which argued in one way or another that there have always been widely different movements in Christianity, that Christianity has never been all one thing, and that the effort to define what real, true, or orthodox Christianity is and to limit Christianity to one way of thinking has been essentially authoritarian, illegitimate, and destructive. The books also at least implied that we in our own time should learn something from our history, that the vitality of the church has always depended on its variety, that the effort to define precisely what being Christian is and to exclude sincere but alternative ways of thinking or being faithful, that this whole effort to establish clear standards of what it means to be a Christian is still authoritarian, illegitimate, and destructive and that the church needs to grow more comfortable with lots of notions and variations on how one goes about being a Christian.
The author of the article, however, though doing his best to describe what the books were saying, was clearly uncomfortable with this argument. He was concerned that the Christian faith could become just any old thing people want it to be and although people have a right to believe what they want, they don’t necessarily have a right to call what they believe Christian. And his last sentence was something to this effect. We do not need more kinds of Christianity. What we need is to explore more deeply the one we have.
I was put off by that statement. I in fact surprised myself by how strong a negative reaction I had to it. But reflecting on it, I think I know why I had such a strong reaction. Because I am tired of having Christianity defined by someone whose idea of what it means to be a Christian is very different from mine. Because I object to the identification of Christianity with attitudes I don’t hold to be Christian. Because I am tired of having my faith defined for me by other Christians or by media portrayals. So I read a statement like the one I referred to and I have a visceral reaction. Here’s just one more person who thinks he knows what this Christianity we already have is and is willing to dismiss people who have some different understanding. I was ready to dismiss him.
Except that I didn’t. I remembered that brief comment and have thought some about it in light of what I thought John Thomas was saying about the UCC, and on further reflection I think he has a point. Not that we should aim at doing away with alternative expressions of Christianity. I continue to feel that that is precisely what we do need at the moment, lots of different expressions of Christianity, a kind of creative chaos in the Christian family, and not where everyone thinks their version is best or true and fights it out with everyone else to see who’s going to win, but where we see ourselves as offering truly alternative approaches to faithful Christian living. But that said, the challenge to explore our faith more deeply, which I hear not only from some unknown magazine writer but also from scripture, is also not something I can ignore. Let me give just a few quick examples.
One of the things we are committed to here at Sojourners is the use of inclusive language, not just when we are talking about human beings, but also when we are speaking of and to God. I say we are committed. I know we do not use inclusive language 100% of the time. I know we do not all agree on whether it is extremely important to use inclusive language 100% of the time, nor do we agree on what it would look like or sound like if we did. Being human and diverse, we are not of one mind on this and our practice is not perfectly consistent. But I believe we are committed to working at the use of inclusive language, not just treating those concerns as though they were nothing or letting them evaporate into thin air. We care about inclusive language. I care about inclusive language. And so if I were to refer to God as “she” in the middle of a sermon, as I sometimes do, and if someone who was visiting were to hear me do that without having any prior knowledge or context for where that was coming from, they might say to themselves, “Well, that’s different…that’s…alternative.” And they might be put off by it or they might welcome it, and if it said nothing more about us than that we were willing to be different and to have a kind of experimental attitude about worship, then that would be ok as far as it goes.
But of course there are important issues involved here other than whether we are willing to be a bit different. If one of the reasons to use or to care about inclusive language is that it challenges and expands our ways of thinking about God, that it guards against our God-talk becoming rote and thoughtless, that it reminds us that our words can never capture the fullness of God, that it unsettles our notions of God just enough to allow for some new possibilities, that it may even plunge us into a deeper relationship to God, then the question “do we mean it?” becomes appropriate. Is the use of inclusive language, however imperfect it may be, part of and indicative of our seeking together a deeper, somehow truer, living relationship with God. If it is not, then the using inclusive language becomes just sort of an eccentricity, charming to some, offensive to others, but just eccentric. If it leads us into a deeper exploration of our faith, then it’s much more important than an alternative that may appeal to some and not appeal to others. Do we really mean it? I would suggest that although we may think we know the answer to that question, we can never really think we have answered it once and for all. For each of us individually, and for us as a community, it is a question that needs to stay on the table.
Just one more example. We have a forum coming up after worship and because it is connected with our leading concern of addressing issues of racial justice and injustice in our community, I want to say just a few things about that. I’m thinking that these days most churches and most Christians if asked whether Christians should be in favor of racial justice and opposed to bigotry would say “yes”. Our decision 4 or 5 years ago to adopt a leading concern of addressing “racial injustice in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area” was not just an effort to focus our social concern energies in a certain area to help us be more effective, though it was that. It was also an effort, as I understood it then and continue to understand it now, to say that being concerned about racial justice, in our version of Christianity, is not an opinion Christians hold, not one of the options we may choose to lift up once in a while in some safe way or say a prayer about, but is to be thought of and felt physically as being part of the very core of who we are. It is not optional. It is not incidental. And it requires of us more than what is standard practice for churches in these matters. It has led us in the past to go to people, for instance, in the school divisions of Albemarle and Charlottesville and ask various people “do you mean it?”. If you say you believe in racial equity and justice, do you mean it? We have essentially asked that question to a fair number of people in our communities.
But it also involves asking ourselves, “Do we mean it?” Are we willing to ask hard questions of ourselves about how we carry out our church life? Are we willing to ask hard questions of ourselves about the hundreds of subtle ways racism is within us as individuals? Is being anti-racist part of our Christian identity, as individuals and as a congregation? Paul didn’t say this exactly but I believe these questions too are part of exploring the depths of God. Again we cannot assume we know the answer to these questions. The question “do we mean it?” is particularly pointed for us because we have said this is who we want to be. This is the version, the vision of Christianity we have. Though we aim to go beyond what is conventional, though we hope to be alternative in this regard, the real question for us is not how different are we interested in being but how deep are we willing to go in exploring this particular vision of Christianity, which is not at all the only legitimate vision, but that is the vision we have put out for ourselves. Do we mean it? The forum today will not answer that question. It is part of an ongoing process, and the question “do we mean it?” needs to remain always an open question for us as a congregation.
It is of course an open question for us as individuals as well. In what ways is our faith, in what ways is my faith, more than conventional? Does my sense of being different or alternative lead me to define myself just as being different—not this, not that—or does it lead me to a deeper exploration of the things of God. But those will have to be questions for another time. For now, I will just express the hope that as a congregation, and as individuals, we may seek ways to turn our differentness into faithfulness. Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 24, 2005