Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:1-12
This is one of those Sundays when I have been imagining myself, and now observing myself, getting up to preach and my out-of-body self looks at my preaching self and says something like: What does he think he’s doing? Actually, that’s part of my preaching experience to some degree every Sunday. After all, preaching is always kind of a questionable activity, so there’s always that lingering question about just what it is I think I’m doing up here. But then when the topic I’ve chosen seems so large that it would take a month of Sundays to begin to make a dent in it, then I feel even more nervy, or sheepish, or crazy to be doing this than I normally do. That’s the case this morning.
In fact (I’ve been preparing myself for this and figure I ought to warn you as well), most of this fall I will be preaching on topics that are ridiculously and impossibly large. I’ve decided to preach each week in the morning on the general topic that will be under discussion in the evening at the Conversations on Christianity session. So for instance the topic next week is “God”. I’m feeling sheepish about that already. I console myself with the thought that just because you can’t say everything about some subject matter, just because you can’t say very much of anything, just because it’s hard to talk about at all, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say anything. I also console myself with the thought that I’m not pretending to cover any of the topics coming up, just adding a few words to the conversation. So, in that spirit…
The topic for this morning, the impossibly large topic for this morning, is…well it’s a bit hard to even describe but it has to do with our Christian identity—yours, mine, Sojourners’. How important is it to you, me, to this congregation that we think of ourselves as Christian? How deeply Christian are we—you, me, all of us together? Among all the things we are—man, woman, spouse, single, parent, friend, person of African descent, or European descent, straight person, gay person, teacher, student, nurse, builder, etc.—among all the things we are, where does being a Christian fit in, and how important is that to who we are? Or how important is it that we aspire to be Christian?
I’m not after all asking these questions because we’re in church and we all know that the right answer is that being Christian is the most important thing, and that if it isn’t already the most important thing we know it ought to be and therefore by golly I’m going to leave here today and go out and do better about making my Christian identity more important in my life. I’m not raising these questions about our Christian identity just to give myself an opportunity to lecture you on how important it is to make Christianity central to who you are. I’m asking these questions sincerely, and I think it’s important that we give honest answers, not canned ones. I’m asking among other things how do we feel about being Christian, if in fact we do feel ourselves to be Christian, and where do those feelings come from? Are we happy to announce we are Christian? Proud to be Christian? Or are we, at least in some situations, hesitant, reluctant, shy about identifying ourselves as Christian, or maybe willing to identify ourselves as Christian but only if we have the opportunity to say what kind of Christian we are or are not, maybe more willing to say that we are Sojourners than to say we are Christian in some broad general sense?
These are the kinds of questions that are on my mind this morning. I don’t know, maybe they sound a bit abstract or theoretical to you, maybe not. They definitely are not theoretical to me. There is a lifetime of experiences here for me, which is another reason this topic seems so large. So let me speak personally.
A few minutes ago I put on this robe in preparation for worship. It is something I have done just about every Sunday for the past 35 years. At first I think probably I put it on just because it seemed like that’s what ministers did, ministers in churches I had been a part of anyway. Besides the church gave me a robe for my ordination, so it seemed like I ought to wear it. But somewhere early on this became more of a conscious choice, even if a robe was customary dress for ministers in churches I was serving. Here at Sojourners when I arrived, some people asked me if I was going to wear a robe—apparently it had been an issue in some way. And sometimes people have asked me why I wear a robe, and especially have suggested that I really don’t have to wear a robe on days when the air conditioning didn’t quite do the trick, that I was making other people feel hot just by wearing this thing. Mostly when the issue has come up, I give a non-answer—yeah, I know I don’t have to wear it, just habit I guess, not really so hot, and so forth. But let me try to give a real answer, not because the issue of wearing robes is at all important but because it has to do for me with this whole matter of Christian identity.
I wear a robe because it reminds me that I am a Christian. For me, it has less to do with being a minister than it does with being a Christian. If I somehow thought that wearing a robe had something to do with ministerial status or authority, at Sojourners I’d be in trouble. You’d set me straight very quickly. It has to do with being a minister in the sense that the person leading worship is a kind of symbol of the fact that we are engaged in Christian worship and is kind of an official representative of Christianity. The rest of you may or may not consider yourselves Christian, may or may not feel particularly Christian this morning, may or may not feel very spiritual this morning. None of that is required. We are very clear at Sojourners, I hope, that we want this to be a safe and welcoming place for the believing, the doubting, the questioning, the seeking, the curious, for Christians, non-Christians, sometimes Christians, and not-so-sure-about-the-whole-thing Christians. This Christian community is enriched by spiritual stances of all kinds, but it is still a Christian community. And I, when I am performing this ministerial function on Sunday morning, I don’t feel I have quite the same options as everyone else. It is not ok for me to psychologically excuse myself from the Christian community as I prepare for worship. It is not ok for me to separate myself from the scriptures, from the whole history of Christianity in all its vast and bewildering array, from other Christian human beings down the road, downtown, or in distant places, no matter how different their version of Christianity may seem from mine. I put the robe on on Sunday mornings to remind myself of all those unavoidable connections. And it’s just heavy enough to make me aware of its presence, to keep on reminding me of my Christianness as long as I have it on.
And that means, frankly, all those unavoidable connections mean, that it is not always easy to put the robe on—and, for me, all the more important to do so when it is not easy. It was not easy for me in the first place to decide that I was a Christian. As many of you know, I did not grow up in a Christian church, did not think of myself as a Christian. My parents, for reasons I only partly know, found Christianity to be something they needed to escape from. I, for reasons I only partly understand, found myself as a young adult being drawn back toward Christianity. But there were lots of hurdles to overcome. Beliefs that I could learn to appreciate and maybe with some effort say that I subscribed to but that I knew I didn’t whole heartedly embrace. A whole history painted with crusades and pogroms and inquisitions and colonialism. Attitudes toward people of other faiths and no particular faith that I could not accept. Militaristic attitudes. Anti-scientific attitudes. Bigotry. Judgmentalism. And questions, all sorts of questions, that I might every so often get insights about but never any final answers. I just wasn’t sure that I wanted to take on all the baggage that in my mind went along with being Christian.
It was not an easy decision for me to become a Christian. And the un-easiness did not stop once I made the decision. As just one small example, I am remembering this morning an uncle of mine who was gay and who was definitely not a church person, and it always seemed to me that his attitude toward me changed once I became a Christian and then became a kind of professional Christian, a minister, to boot. There was a kind of chilliness that I sensed in our relationship, as though he were accusing me of having joined up with the enemy. Or maybe it was me who changed. Maybe it was me who just was not very proud to be a Christian in my uncle’s presence, embarrassed for a church that especially 30 years ago was not receptive to the presence of gay or lesbian people in the world really, much less in the church, embarrassed too that I never found a way to break through the silence that I felt separated us.
I’m remembering this morning, for some reason, a funeral that took place some years ago. The wife of a member of the church I was serving had died at a relatively young age. She was a member of different church and so the funeral was held there, and a bunch of us went. It was a very sad occasion. Or should have been. In his eulogy, the priest commended the woman for having been such a faithful member of the parish, but he then seized the day and launched into a finger-shaking diatribe about how this was a lesson to all of us that if we weren’t right with the Lord and in the good graces of the church that we would not enjoy the blessings of heaven, or maybe he threatened us with hell. The message was objectionable on so many levels that I honestly don’t remember if hell was part of it. And of course equally objectionable was what was not said. No mention of the loss many of us felt, or the grief of a man who had lost his life partner. I wanted to jump up and say, “wait, this is not the message of Christianity”, but of course I didn’t. I just sat there feeling helpless and sorry that at least some people would probably have left that day feeling as though that was the message of Christianity, a faith I had chosen to identify with.
I don’t know why those two memories particularly come back to me today. There are lots of them that might have occurred to me and that would make the same point. All those things that made it hard for me to decide to be a Christian in the first place—they didn’t go away. It’s not just things you might read about in a history book, though they don’t go away either. It’s been part of my daily experience every day that I have been a Christian—to be confronted with Christian beliefs and attitudes that I need to struggle with. And I hardly need to tell you, it continues to be part of my daily experience today. There are things said and done every day by Christians in the name of Christ that make me uneasy about being a Christian. I hesitate to assume that I know how other people feel, but my guess is that that is true for many of you too.
In any case, for me, it is no small matter to put my robe on every Sunday. It is my way of renewing my decision to be a Christian, which for some of you may be one of the things that worship is about without the robe. But I feel like I need to renew that decision every week because the issues don’t go away and because there is something very important involved in that choice. There was 40 years ago and there is today.
From where I sit, discomfort or uneasiness with being a Christian goes with the territory these days, maybe always has at least for some people. If a minister is supposed to be a cheer leader for Christianity, if a minister is supposed to be an unequivocal defender of the faith, then I am probably falling somewhat short in doing my job—not that I have no positive feelings about being Christian, but just that I can’t help but have, and be honest about, my struggles with this issue. In fact the way to avoid having such feelings is to give up on Christianity. Then one would never have to be embarrassed by it. You could just dismiss it and chalk it up to those crazy Christians.
But every time a person renews the choice to be a Christian, even if it is done with some reservation or trepidation, he or she is refusing to do that. Of course it does not mean that we have to accept or agree with everything that is done by other Christians. Nor does it mean we have to be silent about things said or done by other Christians. As you know I feel perfectly free to talk back to the Bible, to question Christian beliefs, and to challenge what some other Christians put forward as the Christian message. When I do, and when you do as a Christian, we are doing it not just in the manner of being negative, saying I don’t like this, object to this, don’t agree with that. We are registering our dissent in the name of something positive, some vision or understanding of what being a Christian is all about that attracted us in the first place, that for me made it possible to overcome all those difficulties I had and continue to have. If we make or renew the decision to be Christian we are saying that in spite of everything, there is something of very great value here, in being Christian, that I don’t want to give up on, can’t give up on. I’m reminded of the saying (not sure where it comes from) that the teachings of Jesus are not something that has been tried and failed; they are teachings that haven’t been tried. In a like manner Christianity is not something that’s been tried and failed, but something always waiting to be tried. That something continues to summon me.
And when it does, when I renew my decision to be Christian, it means that for me the failings of Christianity are not someone else’s failings. They are mine too. Not that I have to take responsibility for every bad thing ever done by a Christian, but that history is my history, and that current reality is my current reality, and I do need to take responsibility for my own failings. The failings of Christianity are partly my own.
The reading from 2 Corinthians talks about the treasure we have in earthen vessels. I take the earthen vessels to refer to real life, often all too earthly, Christians and to the real life, often all too earthly, Christian church, which in both cases includes us, those of us who do think of ourselves as Christians and this particular Christian church. We fail all the time, others do and we do, at being Christian and at being the church. But if we keep at it, this project of being Christian, we do it because we believe there is a treasure there that we are called to, that it is our hope to catch sight of, to speak about, and finally to live.
And because I have barely begun to speak in this positive way about being Christian, this sermon is…to be continued, and I will end with a very open-ended…Amen.
Jim Bundy
September 18, 2005