Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12
Reading: “The Work of Christmas” by Howard Thurman
So let’s see, where were we? Whenever I go away—even though I’m not really away, and even though it’s not for very long—I feel a little disoriented when I come back, like I need to look around and ask myself, where was I? Where were we? It seems like an appropriate question to ask too at the end of a holiday season and the beginning of a new year. After the dust settles, or as Howard Thurman puts it more poetically, after the songs of the angels are stilled and the star in the sky is gone, O.K., where were we?
The Biblical stories lead us in the direction of that question as well. The Christmas story in Luke ends with the shepherds returning to their fields. The story in Matthew ends with the magi returning to their homes. The two stories of Christ’s birth we have in the Bible both end with people presumably picking up where they left off, asking in a sense, o.k. now where were we? They returned, in a way, to their same old tasks, their same old lives, but of course it wasn’t just the same old same old either. They presumably had a different way of thinking about what they were returning to, a different way of talking about it, a different way of seeing things. And for us too, for me, the combination of Christmas and the New Year causes me not so much to think about all the ways the new year is going to be different from the past year (which usually turn out to be delusional) but to reflect on what it is I am doing, to return not to the same old, same old but to the basics. For me to ask “where was I?” or “where were we?” is not to try to get back in touch with my to do list but to get back in touch with what I really think I’m doing or ought to be or hope to be doing?
I have always found one way of answering that question, of getting at the basics of it, in the verse from Micah that I used to open our worship today. Some of you know that it’s one of my favorites, not just because of the sentiments it expresses but because in the church of my childhood there was a minister who didn’t know he was encouraging me to go into the ministry, who at the time I certainly didn’t know was encouraging me to go into the ministry, but who in retrospect was having a powerful influence in that direction. In any case, he opened worship every week by quoting these verses from Micah: “and what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” (In those days even Unitarians quoted sometimes from the King James Version of the Bible.)
Anyway, it’s not just that I like the sound of it, or agree with the thought. It has some deep associations, associations that make it natural for me to respond, when I ask myself the question, “Where was I?, make it natural for me to answer: Oh, I think was trying to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with my God. That’s where I have always hoped to find myself anyway. If that’s not where I was, then where was I? And although I can’t say how anyone else might choose to answer the question, I do think it can apply to Sojourners. That verse appears fairly regularly after the statement in our bulletin that summarizes what we are about. Let’s see now, where were we? Before the vacation, the travel, the visiting, the too-much-food, the partying, the sickness, the turn of a new year, and whatever else may have intervened recently, where were we? I think we were trying to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. I hope that’s where we are returning to, as we try to pick up where we briefly left off.
Where were we? Doing justice, I hope. Well, no. Not doing justice, I hope. Doing justice, period. That’s where we were when we left off. That’s not something I hope we were doing because it’s something any Christian congregation really ought to be involved in and you hope that as a Christian congregation that’s one of the things you do is care about justice. It’s not that it’s just in general part of the Christian package. For Sojourners it’s more than that, more real than that. Not just an assumed part of who we are, but an intentional part of who we are. Not a part of the mix, but a defining characteristic.
That’s one of the things I say when people who have never heard of us or don’t know much at all about us ask me about us, about Sojourners. Well, I say, we are a congregation that focuses a lot on social justice concerns. I don’t know if people understand what I mean when I say that. I’m not always sure that I understand exactly what I mean when I say that, but I do mean something. I may not be able to describe it in every aspect, but there is a commitment to having matters of social justice be part of our prayer life, our worship life, our committee life, and the way we present ourselves to others, our public persona in the community, and that is not nothing, and it is not just words, and it is frankly not something that is present in too many other churches. It is one of those things that make us who we are and which, if we somehow lost it, we would have lost our soul, our identity. So when I describe us that way to other people, I do so maybe not with a lot of clarity about what that means but nevertheless with conviction.
I also say it with some—I’m not sure of what word to use here—but with some hesitation, with an unwillingness to claim too much on our own behalf. I want to say to people that in very real ways and in ways different from many or most Christian churches Sojourners’ life is all wrapped up in matters of social justice. But in practically the same breath I want to say that the fact that this emphasis on social justice is not a sham does not mean that we have gone very far down this road at all. We have not really been tested yet. We haven’t tested ourselves very much yet. We are just plain too young as a congregation to know where the doing of justice may lead us, where we are willing to be lead and how far we are willing to go. We don’t know yet whether over time we will become more courageous and creative or less, whether we will be willing to take more risks or whether in the process of becoming more successful we will lose the justice edge. We don’t know how well we will be able to balance the need to speak with a clear voice on important issues but to respect different voices and honest differences that may exist among us. We don’t know yet how well we will support one another, those whose heart is most of all in this issue or that, or whose hearts are not really most of all in matters of social justice at all. We don’t know how well we will do at joining matters of justice with matters of the spirit. There are just lots of things we don’t know, including a lot about ourselves. Where were we? We were engaged in doing justice, and also in just beginning to learn how to do justice.
Where were we? Doing justice and loving mercy too, but again I say that with both confidence and a certain shyness, an unwillingness to take it very far. In fact I’ve decided not to say much today about the quality of mercy and whether that is a good description of where we were and are. It’s not that there’s nothing to say. It’s that there’s too much to say. I’ll have to come back to it. Even the translators of scripture can’t agree even on what word to use here. Mercy, which I happen to like best, was the choice of the King James translators and has been used by a few modern versions. Others, including the Revised Standard, say kindness: “What does the Lord require but to do justice and love kindness…” Others suggest that we engage in loving kindness, or that we engage in constant love, or that we love tenderly. Each phrase with a slightly different meaning to my ears, leading me to think in various directions, to think of mercy as forgiveness, or maybe as a non-judgmental spirit (a slightly different thing, seeing less that is in need of being forgiven), a yielding spirit, willing to put others needs first, a willingness not just to tolerate people we find to be difficult but, at least as a first option, to see them as a blessing. That to me would be mercy too. So too would be the willingness, again as a first option, to find the truth in someone else’s words before defending the truth in your own. It all comes under the quality of mercy for me, and more, lots more. So where were we? Without a doubt engaged in loving mercy, because were we not, there would be no Sojourners, mercy being as essential to our organizational life as it is to our personal lives. But also in many ways I’m sure, I know for myself, just beginning to love mercy. We haven’t, I suspect, gone very far in exploring all the things that mercy might mean in our lives, much less gone very far in the practice of them. Nevertheless, where was I? Where were we? Learning, I pray, to practice mercy.
And to walk humbly with our God. Again, something which from one perspective anyway Sojourners can probably claim to be pretty good at. We are pretty good around here, I would say, at avoiding theological rigidity. We have said more or less officially, in that it appears in writing in various Sojourners documents, that we consider ourselves to be in a moving, changing relationship to God. A moving and changing relationship to God probably doesn’t leave much room for pride because you’d best not be proud of where you are because it’s about to change. We are pretty clear around here that being Christian doesn’t make a person closer to God, put a person in possession of a greater or deeper truth, confer any spiritual privileges, grant any immunities, make a person holier.
In some ways we can be proud, can’t we, that we at Sojourners believe in walking humbly with God. But there’s a problem there, isn’t there? Somehow walking humbly with God can’t mean that we are proud to be the ones who walk humbly with God in contrast to all those who are proud and confidant of their close relationship to God. It’s surely not that we are walking humbly because we can see clearly that others are not and so we can be proud that we are not like them. Somehow that’s not what it means, and somehow part of what it does mean I think is not being so sure that we know what it means to walk humbly with our God. It has lots of ins and outs, this business of walking humbly with God, and we do well not to be so sure that we’re good at it. Like doing justice and loving mercy, we’re learning. That’s about all we can say. It’s something we’re learning day by day, if we’re willing. It’s something we need to practice, in the sense of working on it so we improve, like a musician or an athlete, but also practice as in live, as in not just talking about it. And I might add that humility is not the only problem here. There is also the “with God” part. For some of us the issue is not whether we can walk humbly with God but whether our lived daily walk is with God at all.
Where were we? We were in the process of learning, one way or another, we were learning how to walk humbly, with God. And it will be best if we hold hands while we’re doing it. Not in the sense of having one show another the way, but in the sense of being friends to one another while we walk, offering the strength of support and the squeeze of encouragement while we learn, each finally in our own way, what it means to walk humbly with our God.
Where were we? We were just beginning to learn to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Let’s get back to it. Amen.
Jim Bundy
January 4, 2004