Scripture: Exodus 6:1-9, 1Peter 2:9-10.
In these first few sermons I have been reflecting on some themes that I have been thinking about as I begin my ministry with you. Today I want to begin with a few comments about consensus. That may not sound like a very “spiritual” topic, but I’ll try to explain why it is to me.
I said last week that I was attracted to this congregation partly because of the name. I was also attracted when I found out that you were committed to consensus, not just as a procedural matter but as a way of being as a church. Of course I knew then and know even more now that there are many ways to understand consensus, different ways to interpret what it means for a congregation, and that sometimes the meaning can get a little fuzzy. It is not my purpose to try to settle those issues this morning. It is my purpose to try to tell you what my understandings of consensus were and are, and why this was a positive word to me when I saw it in your church profile.
It has to do first of all with those many voices of truth that I spoke of last week. To me, what consensus says is that we are committed to having every voice heard in this congregation. Heard, listened to, and taken seriously. We do not simply move the previous question, take a vote, and move on. We want every voice to be heard not just because it is the polite or right thing to do, not even because it is the respectful thing to do, but because we assume (this is my interpretation now), we assume that for our own soul’s good we all need to hear those voices that come to us from somewhere else, from another person’s soul.
I am sensing this as a kind of bedrock value around here. I am sensing that this is a major part of the reason for the concerns and anxieties about growth that have been expressed in direct questions to me and that I have overheard in other conversations in the short time I have been here. It’s not just that a certain sense of closeness or intimacy might be lost. It’s also that, theoretically at least, we might grow to the point where it is no longer realistically possible for every voice to be heard, and if that were to happen that we gradually lost that ability and then gradually stopped even making the effort, then we would have lost a big chunk out of the heart of the congregation.
As I have said to several people, it seems to me we have not crossed that bridge yet, that we are not even walking on that bridge, but we may be coming around a bend in the road where if we lean over a little, and squint a little, we can see that bridge. For now it would seem that being aware of the problem is enough, but there may come a time when we will need some answers, not just an awareness of the problem.
Anyway that’s one important meaning consensus had for me: the kind of deep-seated commitment to the bringing forth of many voices…and to listening.
The word listening leads me to some more difficult, mystical kinds of thoughts. There are, after all, several levels of listening. We listen not only to the words people speak. We sometimes are called to listen behind the words, beneath the words for what is being said but not spoken, for the thoughts and feelings that give rise to the words but that may not be the same as the words that are actually spoken.
We all know how tricky this can be. When we try to read between the lines, or listen beneath the words, we can easily be mistaken. We can read in things that aren’t there. We can read in our own thoughts or make false assumptions about what a person may really think or mean. We all know how tricky it can be to try to listen beneath the words. But we also know how absolutely crucial it can sometimes be as well.
And then we are also called to listen at a different level still. To listen for the will of God. Or should I say listen for the will of God. I don’t know whether I need to whisper such a phrase here. I do know that for me listening for the will of God is part of what consensus is all about and part of what being the people of God is all about.
I know there may be problems with the very idea of the will of God. I imagine there are people here this morning who have had “the Will of God” presented to them in ways that were offensive. I have heard the “will of God” used many times in ways which were offensive to me. I suspect we are all suspicious of people who think they are in possession of the will of God, who just somehow know what it is that God wants and what Jesus would do.
I know the “will of God” is a tricky thing. We can distort it and misuse it and twist it around all over the place. But I also believe that we are not here (I mean on the earth, but I also mean here—this people, this time, this place) just to do whatever we want. I do not believe that our agenda, whatever one might construct for ourselves out of all sorts of motives, I do not believe that our agenda is the only one that counts. I do believe there is a way things are supposed to be. I believe there is a way we are intended to be together, we humans. I believe there is a way we are supposed to live in relation to the earth. I believe there is a way things are supposed to be, and I believe that there is some kind of an agenda for us that is not, strictly speaking, our own. And I call all of this the will of God.
And for me, consensus has something to do with all of this. It is not just the commitment to hear each other out, though that would be enough. It is also a process which at its best I believe forces us to search not for some compromise that doesn’t offend anyone too much, not for some way to avoid conflict, not for some least common denominator that everyone can agree on but no one is enthusiastic about, but a process which over and over again forces us to ask ourselves the question that God asked Elijah. “What are you doing here?” For me, consensus connotes a process which forces us to try to discern, even while knowing how spiritually dangerous this really is, to try to discern what is the will of God, and that not just in some broad global sense, but in the sense of the will of God for me, for us, here, now.
We are not just sojourners. We are sojourners both by name as a congregation and in a spiritual sense. But we are not just sojourners. We are also people of God. “Once you were no people,” 1Peter says, “but now you are God’s people.” He also says that God is the one who calls us out of darkness and into light. The picture that is being painted here is not one of God’s light shining on each person individually. (Maybe some are old enough to remember Jimmy Durante walking off the stage in that solo spotlight.) That is not what God has in mind. God’s light shines not on God’s individual persons (one by one) but on God’s people. We are a people, and we are marching in the light of God.
That corresponds with the first meaning I attach to consensus—again, not that we want to be nice and kind and considerate of each other, though we do, but that we absolutely need the voices and the spirits of other people. We need to receive them into ourselves in order to be ourselves. We need to receive them into ourselves in order to be the people of God.
And then there is the of God part. We are the people of God. The Exodus passage speaks I think of what it means to be of God. For those who may be wondering how we are supposed to know the will of God, the book of Exodus, and this passage among others, points the way. “I am Yahweh, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and…I will take you as my people.”
It is God’s work, it is God’s intention, it is God’s will to bring us out of slavery (whatever your slavery or mine may be) to deliver us from our slavery and bring us to freedom. And if we are of God, it is to be our work too—though there are still a lot of questions about what that means and how we do it and so forth. Still we are not totally in the dark about this. There is light from God about this, and we are marching in the light of God.
Do you remember the ending of the Exodus passage? It is very sad, almost heartbreaking. God has told Moses to tell the people: “I will take you as my people.” I will take you as my people. And then the last verse says: “…but they would not listen, because of their broken spirit.” Because of their broken spirit, people are unable to hear when God says to them: You are my people. You are of me.
Here is my interpretation of that. It is not just that the people had heavy loads to bear. I am reminded of the story of a person who was visiting someone who had many troubles and many health problems and felt that he just wasn’t being useful. The first person asked the other what he felt his heaviest burden was, and the other one said, “My heaviest burden is that I have nothing to carry.”
In the same manner, the broken spirit of the Hebrews may not have been the difficulty of the labor they were asked to perform. It may be that their broken spirit was because they were being forced to do the work of Pharoah rather than God. It was not so much, or at least not only, the presence of Pharaoh’s work but the absence of God’s work that had broken their spirit’s. Our spirits are broken not by the presence of difficulty but by the absence of meaning in our lives.
We will continue to question ourselves and to be unsure of exactly what God’s will is for us or anyone else. We will do well to be unsure of God’s will. But we will also continue to seek the will of God. We will take the time to seek consensus, to listen, to pray, and to discern. Then knowing that we can never be sure of ourselves or of God, we will go forward in faith, trying in the best way we know how, to do the will of God. For we are a people. We are people of God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
February 27, 2000