Scripture: Romans 12:1-15
I’m thinking today about this congregation. I’m exercising the luxury of doing that since it’s the day of our congregational meeting, and it seems appropriate to think of the congregation on such a day. But I’m also thinking it is a luxury and one that I don’t want to exercise very often, because we don’t gather here on Sunday morning, we don’t gather anywhere, anytime—hopefully—in order to think about ourselves. That’s not what we come together for.
But this morning I am thinking about “us”. I’m also wondering how we do that and what we’re supposed to think when we think about ourselves. Because of course there are different ways of looking at ourselves. I look out at this congregation on a Sunday morning and I see, as the call to worship said, familiar faces, faces of people I have come to know, faces of friends I have been fortunate enough to make in the short time I have been at Sojourners. I see faces of people who I know have known each other and supported each other and worked together through the whole history of Sojourners, and some people who have been friends and have been supporting each other since long before there was a Sojourners.
I also look out and see faces of people I hardly know, people who are new to the community, or people who (although we are not a church of thousands) I have just not had a chance yet to talk with at that level. We share a space with each other on Sunday mornings—we do more than that: we share the spirit that is present when we come together—but we don’t necessarily know each other very well yet. And then there is the deeper reality that even people who are familiar and trusted and known to a significant degree may not be people we know deeply and intimately. Many people in our lives are both known and unknown to us at the same time; we are both known and unknown to others. And of course that’s o.k., but there is a kind of double vision with which we often see each other, and perhaps need to see each other. Even as we come to know each other perhaps quite well, we remain in all but a very few cases both friends and strangers to one another. There is also a kind of double vision in what we might envision for ourselves as a faith community. Sojourners has been committed to and characterized by a significant sharing of and in each other’s lives. We try to create times and places where we will share stories and sadnesses, hopes and laughter with each other, and we mean to continue doing that. At the same time we remain distinct from one another and need to protect for one another the option of privacy and value those parts of ourselves that are to be shared only with difficulty and only rarely, or not at all.
In a similar way there is a kind of double vision in how we look at ourselves in other ways as well. I look out on a Sunday morning and I see an active, vital, changing, growing faith community that is concerned about the community and the world we live in, that is diverse in many ways—and I also see a community that is not as diverse as we would like it to be, that can never take its diversity for granted, that is and needs to be restless about the things we are not doing, that is conscious both of how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. There is always a fine line we walk between being proud of who we are and prideful about who we are. There is a fine line between being enthusiastic about who we are and who we are trying to be, but not self-congratulatory. There is purpose in being not dissatisfied but unsatisfied. There is always a good purpose in constantly asking ourselves: “What are the next steps we need to take in order to be who we want to be and to grow in the ways that matter most?”…
Part Two
So as I think about “us” this morning I am thinking of next steps, and I am particularly thinking about what the next steps may be with regard to our leading concerns of racial injustice in Charlottesville.
In a way this is an ending that I left off of last week’s sermon. I was suggesting then that in order to be truly effective at combatting racial injustice and racism in all of its subtle forms, it needs to be not just something we do but a deeply rooted part of who we are. The question that I didn’t ask explicitly last Sunday but that I was thinking about then and am thinking about now is: how does this apply to us at Sojourners? How do we as a community help anti-racism to become ever more a part of who we are as individuals, and how do we make it more and more a part of who we are as a congregation? I’m not sure that I have any answers to that question this morning, or that I would want to say what they are if I did. I do want to say though that to ask the question of what our next steps ought to be with regard to our leading concern is not just a matter of asking who the next speaker ought to be at an adult forum or to be aware of how the court watching is going or to see if there are other actions or programs we can take. All that is also necessary. But I am thinking that we at least need to be asking the question of how to build in the dismantling of racism as part of who we are as congregation?
I want to acknowledge a legitimate concern about this. We are a Christian congregation. The figure of Jesus, the person of Jesus, the words of Jesus, the spirit of Jesus is and ought to be central to “who we are”. We are not “Sojourners Church of the Leading Concern”. We are Sojourners United Church of Christ, although we are not very rigid about what the “of Christ” means, since we joyfully embrace believers and seekers and explorers and questioners and followers, and friends of all of the above, and recognize ourselves to be partly all of the above. Still we are of Christ and to suggest that dismantling racism become part of who we are may suggest to some that we are straying away from our proper identity.
So it’s important to be clear in our vision. But the vision of Sojourners as I understand it and have experienced it is that we also do not want to be “Sojourners Church of Jesus Christ the Nebulous” or “Sojourners Church of Jesus Christ the Otherworldly” or “Sojourners Church of Jesus Christ the Nice Guy”. It is our vision, I believe, to be a community of people who are the body of Christ in specific, meaningful ways. One way for us is to work at an identity that is rooted in the effort to dismantle racism…
Part Three
It’s important to be clear in our vision too as we move into a new stage of our congregational life. We will hear in a few minutes that our financial situation is such that we ought to be able to be free of denominational support this year. This allows us to think even more seriously about where we want to be in the future and how we will want to be wherever we will be.
But it’s easy to get lost in all the details that inevitably go along with such an effort. It’s easy to get lost in the mere idea of having a building. It’s not our vision to be “Sojourners Church of Jesus Christ the Nebulous”. It’s also not our vision to be “Sojourners Church of Jesus Christ That Has a Building”. It is our vision…pardon me for being so bold as to say what our vision is…it is only partly up to me to say what our vision is…and what I say will not be definitive or exhaustive…but it is up to all of us to say what our version of the vision is, so that we continually give voice to the vision and remind ourselves of what it is and refine what it is and remind ourselves of how important it is…
It is our vision
…to be a diverse community of people trying to follow Jesus, seeking the reign of God Jesus lived and preached about, but being clear that Jesus is not the only pathway that leads to God,
…committed to providing a safe and caring environment in which people may know and be known for all of who they are
…committed to racial diversity and racial justice,
…committed to being open and affirming and seeking justice for gay and lesbian people in our society,
…committed to inclusiveness in the language we use,
…inclusion of children in the life of the church,
…inclusion of people with differing abilities,
… a collaborative style within the church and in relation to people outside the church,
…and committed to seeking personal spiritual growth and wholeness not apart from but in full recognition of the woundedness of the world we live in…
(Sermon concludes with words from laity that are not recorded.)
Jim Bundy
January 20, 2002