Scripture: 1Corinthians 12: 1, 4-13, 27-31
In a few minutes we will be coming forward to sign our names—each of us signing our name to one of the nine proposed social justice/outreach groups that are being proposed as a way to organize our efforts in this area. Every time I have said or written a sentence like the one I have just said, I have stumbled over it a bit, spent too much time worrying over it, and in the end felt like I wasn’t saying it quite right. Even a sentence as apparently simple as that contains some words that I think may be somewhat misleading so far as what we are about in doing this. Maybe some of my dissatisfaction in finding the right words to talk about this will become apparent as I say a few things in preparation for this signing ceremony, if you will. Doing that has frankly been more on my mind this week than preparing a sermon in the usual sense, but I do want to say a few things about what I am thinking of as a covenanting ceremony today, even though I preached on this general subject three weeks ago. Some of what I want to say will be sort of nitty gritty comments about how this is supposed to work. Some will be more reflective. Some of what I say I have probably said before, either in sermons or in writing or in some other setting, so if some things I say this morning sound repetitive, if it sounds like you have heard them before, I ask for your forgiveness and forbearance.
A few specific comments to start with. There are brief descriptions of each group on an insert in your bulletin. Those descriptions have been on display over the last several weeks as well and have been sent out in emails on several occasions. Because we have tried to put something in print and make it available in lots of ways, these descriptions may seem more definite than they are intended to be. They are really only tentative descriptions, giving a sense of the group might do. What the group will in fact do, how it will understand its mission, where it will choose to concentrate its efforts, what it will do first, and so forth will be a decision of those who sign up for that group. This means, among others things, that if you think you might be interested, for instance, in the Clark School group, but you don’t see your own particular ideas or interests reflected in the description that has been in print, don’t let that deter you. When you sign up, you are not buying in to some pre-determined agenda. That agenda is yet to be determined and is meant to be shaped by the participants.
Secondly, signing up for whatever group does not mean that you are imprisoned within that group. For one thing, you can always change your mind. If several months down the road you are feeling called, for whatever reason, to shift your focus and your involvement, that’s of course perfectly fine. And even if you don’t switch, being active in one group does not mean you can’t contribute to any other group. We are asking everyone to sign up for just one group today, but if you find you have the desire, time, and energy to participate in more than one group, of course gifts of time and energy are always welcome, and the way to do that is simply to make your interest known to whoever is convening the other group at the time.
However, it is also the idea here that we do not need to be personally responsible for doing everything. We may think that three or five or all nine of the groups are doing something that is important to us, but we are choosing one, trusting that other Sojourners will attend to the rest. We are making a covenant with each other in this sense. And so while it is possible to participate in more groups than the one you sign up for, and of course we would welcome that extra involvement, I encourage everyone, including myself, as we go forward to be aware of not spreading ourselves too thin, which was part of the reason for our talking about this in the first place.
My next thought follows from this I think. It is true that if one or two or three of the proposed groups does not receive enough people signing up to make it a viable group, we may decide (we meaning the church council in consultation with those who have signed up) to put that group aside for the time being. It would not be fair or productive, for instance, to pick on the Clark School group again, to have the work of that group fall to two or three people, though maybe the decision would be some important function could be served by having two or three people involved in that group. Those kinds of decisions will need to be made later. So after the sign ups are complete we will assess the situation and make a judgment on whether all the groups have sufficient involvement to allow them to be productive. But…
This is not a contest. In signing up for these groups, we are not voting for which one we think is the most important. There are several assumptions here. It is assumed that all groups are important and that all are related in one way or another. This is not a way of dividing us up into nine different groups who will be working in isolation from each other and in competition with each other. Concerns may overlap and groups may need to work together. We are not intending to do nine different things; it may be more like one thing in nine different ways. In any case, we are not voting on which issues are most important, only where we intend to make our contribution for the time being, where we are willing to commit our energy, thoughtfulness, and prayerfulness for the time being, recognizing again that all of it is important, but that we have sisters and brothers who will be attending to the other things we know to be important besides what we have committed ourselves to. And again, this is our covenant with each other.
I also want to say a few words about the make-up of the Sojourners community as it relates to what we hoping to do. What I think of as the Sojourners community is an always changing group of people with rather fluid boundaries. That’s true of many churches, but it’s true of Sojourners more than most, I think, because we are intentional about being that way—in this sense:
At any given time the Sojourners community is made up of people who have all different levels of commitment and involvement. There are some, of course, who have chosen to be members and who have made a formal commitment to this church. There are some who feel the commitment, and who are deeply involved in the life of the church, but who for various reasons have not become members of the church. There are some, members and non-members (friends), who have a strong commitment but because of personal circumstance may be here only for a relatively short time. And there are those, often a significant number, whose relationship to the Sojourners community is more tentative, who are not so sure. Not so sure maybe of their beliefs and whether they even think of themselves as Christian. Not so sure maybe about organized, institutional religion and whether they want to get too close to this thing called “the church”. Not so sure maybe about Sojourners, because of not being here for very long and needing to learn more about us, not being sure yet whether this is the right place for them, and so forth. We want all these people. It is part of our mission that we be inclusive precisely of people who live in an uneasy relationship to Christianity or to the church or even to Sojourners.
We are intentional that Sojourners be a place, a safe place, a welcoming place for all who live in an uneasy relationship to the church. I personally want Sojourners to be, and as I understand Sojourners, it is part of our mission to be a church that lives in uneasy relation to the church. And we want to be a place that makes a place for people and that may even feel like home to people to whatever extent they may need and for as long as they may need. And when we come together here on a Sunday morning, we are a group made up of all those people I have just referred to, people of quite varied levels of commitment and involvement, and we hope that especially during our times of worship those distinctions will as much as possible fade away.
In that spirit, the signing up we are doing today should in no way be thought of as restricted to members. It is true that as of today being a part of one of these groups becomes part of the meaning of membership at Sojourners, one of the things we are asking of all current members and one of the things that will be asked of all new members as they join the church in the future. For those who want to make that membership commitment, this is a specific thing they will be committing themselves to in connection with their membership at Sojourners.
But this is not all about membership. It is about the Sojourners community as a whole. It is a way of our expressing together who we are. And so if you are not a member, but feel yourself to be part of this family of faith, the hope is that you will sign up for one of the groups, making the mutual commitment or covenant along with those who are formally members. And if your relationship to Sojourners is not so clear in you own mind and heart, if it is not so clear to you whether you are or will ever be a Sojourner, nevertheless you are invited, and I hope you will consider, making a commitment to one of these groups. It may be a way of living into this body of Christians and helping us to live out our faith.
And a thought in a similar vein. Some people may feel that they are just not in a place in their lives where changing the world is what they need to be about. Not only are people at different places so far as their relationship to the church goes. People are in different places so far as their spiritual and personal lives are concerned. And although the commitment to social justice may be seen as a spiritual matter at Sojourners, for some maybe this talk about social justice and outreach just doesn’t resonate very well with where they are in their lives right at this moment.
Sojourners is a congregation that is committed to social justice. But that doesn’t mean that we are one dimensional about that. It doesn’t mean that there is no place for people who just don’t see social justice and outreach as a high priority in their own lives at the moment. And I have a couple of things to say in connection with this. This whole idea of having the different groups that people will sign up for as an expression of their participation in this community of faith, this whole idea is not exactly about changing the world, or at least not only that, not even only about changing a little tiny piece of the world.
There is always the danger of arrogance when people think they know how to go out and make the world a better place. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, but there is always that danger of arrogance. That danger can be reduced somewhat if we know that it is not just the world that needs to be changed but also we ourselves, and sometimes it is we who benefit in expected and unexpected ways from our various, sometimes clumsy efforts to do good. We have referred to the groups mostly as social justice/outreach groups, but that is an inexact way of referring to them. They may be as much inreach as outreach. We may direct our efforts at ourselves as persons or ourselves as the church as much as we direct our attention to the outside world. And it is almost trite to say it but also true that when we think we are helping someone else, we often are gaining more that we are giving.
At any given time some among us will feel that they are most in need of exploring spiritual practices and deepening their relationship to God. At any given time there will be some among us who have all they can do just to make it through the day and then the next and the next. Some among us may be dealing with pain on a daily basis, or needing to focus on physical healing, or attending to family concerns, or making necessary changes in their personal lives. That all needs to be understood. Our adopting this approach to social justice, which places it as central to the life of this community, does not mean that everyone fits into one mold or that if this is not at the top of some people’s priority list right now that they shouldn’t sign up. For some it may be that sometimes what you can do is say a prayer and that’s about it. I was going to say that sometimes all a person can do is say a prayer, but that makes it sound like saying a prayer is not all that important. Of course it is important for Christians as a whole to do more than pray. That much we are affirming today, that prayer without accompanying action and witness can be blasphemous. But in the personal lives of people sometimes, it may be that prayer is what a person can do and that is not to be discounted.
Not only is it not to be discounted. For all of us, what we embark on in a little bit of a new way today, as is true of anything worth doing in the life of the church, needs to be accompanied, surrounded, supported, sustained by prayer. What we do today I believe we need to do in a spirit of prayer. In that spirit may we come forward in just a few minutes to express our covenant with each other, taking the next steps in this community’s journey of faith. Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 20, 2008