Scripture: Matthew 12:1-14
I feel like I need to explain myself this morning. There are actually quite a few Sundays where I feel like I need to explain myself, explain where I’m coming from in a sermon, explain why it is or how it came to be that I’m talking about whatever it is that I’m talking about that week. And there are probably quite a few Sundays where I fail, and I’m grateful that when that happens you have been very kind and have humored me along, putting up with my preaching even though on any given Sunday it may not seem to have any particular rhyme or reason behind it, though it just about always does at least in my own mind.
The context for this morning: I have been wrestling in my preaching most of this fall with the Christian-ness of this community of faith. Sojourners United Church of Christ. In what ways are we or are we not, in what ways do we want or not want to be, Christian? It may seem like a strange question to even be asking given that our name is Sojourners United Church…of Christ. Nevertheless, it has seemed to me an important question to ask ourselves for several reasons.
For one thing, taking our Christian-ness for granted is one sure way to make it mean not very much. If an unexamined life, as Socrates is supposed to have said, is not worth living, an unexamined Christianity is probably not worth claiming. It’s hard to be something if you’ve never thought to ask yourself what it is you’re trying to be. On general principles it’s good for Christians to ask themselves what being Christian is all about.
At Sojourners there is a particular pointedness to the question. We are, I think most of us would agree, an alternative presence in the Christian community. Many of us find many beliefs often associated with Christianity to be at best not too meaningful. Some of us are not so sure about even very basic beliefs most people would assume Christians would hold. We are a Christian church that welcomes and values the presence of people who don’t feel very Christian. We don’t share the attitudes of people who seem to be the most vocal proponents of Christianity in our culture or who attract the most media attention. We may find it a lot easier to say what kind of Christian we are not than to say what kind of a Christian we are here at Sojourners. There are certainly voices out there in our culture who give off the message that Christianity is something quite different from who we are at Sojourners and who, if they knew about us, would challenge the right of Sojourners to call itself Christian. Some of those voices may even work their way into our own heads, causing us to wonder ourselves whether we really are Christian—whether we really are Christian ourselves or whether Sojourners, given how undemanding and diverse we are, whether we are a Christian community in any very deep way, or whether we even want to be.
Given all that, I thought it was important for us to be talking to each other about some of the major themes of Christian spirituality that gave rise to the conversations on Christianity and the sermons related to the topics we were having conversations around. Behind all of that has been this concern about to what extent our identity here is a Christian identity and a concern to work on developing an alternative but positive Christian voice, not just one that expresses who we are not, but that expresses who we are.
That is not such an easy task, I think. Because we are very diverse in our religious thoughts, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and approaches, just as we are in many other ways and we value being that way and we don’t want people to have to adhere to some public version of Christianity while keeping their own thoughts and questions to themselves because they are in some way unacceptable. So it’s sort of hard to have any sort of unified alternative Christian voice, because we are not unified. But maybe we can work at being Christian in a way that is honest and has integrity for us by at least being in conversation about basic Christian themes and beliefs. That has been my thinking about having such a thing as the conversations on Christianity and the sermons that have gone with them, and I tell you quite openly that my own hope in all of this is that we strengthen our identity as an alternative Christian community, not as a community of sort of a random, free-floating spirituality. I do believe Christianity needs us to be Christian, and we should not give in to the voices who might want to say we are not, and we need to be Christian as a community, even if we are very clear about welcoming people who are not so sure about being Christian.
That much I think I have been saying in one way or another all this fall. I’ve said it directly and it’s been implied in much of my preaching for this last month or so. I’ve also known all along, however, that when I came to the end of this round of sermons, which is today, I would have to say something else too. Here is that something else…
That when you get right down to it, at the most basic level of our lives, when all is said and done, being Christian is not all that important. Being Christian may be a good thing to try to be. Being Christian may be an important thing in the lives of some of us, and important part of who we are. But in the end it is something that needs to be transcended, something we need to let go of. At the end of our journeys, or in the midst of them for that matter, we do not come to God wearing our Christianity proudly or prominently. I don’t present myself before God at any time or in any way as “Hi, God. Christian Jim Bundy here,” any more than I would present myself before God saying, “Here I am, God, European-American Jim Bundy,” any more than Archie would say, “Here I am, Archie Thornton, African American.” Those may be important parts of who we are, inseparable from who we are: Jim Bundy, Christian and European American, Archie Thornton, Christian and African American, but in the end we are none of that but just Jim Bundy, child of God, Archie Thornton, child of God.
That may seem like a thoroughly simple, thoroughly obvious thought, I don’t know. For some Christians though it seems to me that it must not seem so obvious to them. Sometimes the assumption seems to be that being a human being is something you are on the way to being a Christian human being, which is a higher order of being, rather than being Christian being something you are on the way to being fully human. From the perspective of some Christians it seems that being human is ok, maybe, kinda, sorta, but that being Christian is better, and so we strive to become Christian ourselves and would like everyone else in the world to be Christian too, so that we would all be better human beings, more enlightened human beings, closer to God human beings, saved human beings. But what I am wanting to say is that that is not the point, to make everyone Christian. It’s not even really the point to make myself Christian. What we are trying to do, even in coming to this Christian church, is to know ourselves to be and to live up to the high calling of being, a child of God.
I have known for quite a while that I would want to be saying something like that this morning. Thus the title for the sermon, Beyond Being Christian, because being Christian, though it may be very important to some of us, is also in some ways incidental. It is not the end we seek. It is not where we are trying to get to but just a means of getting there. And so there certainly is something beyond being Christian, something more we aspire to than our Christianity. And however simple a thought it may seem to be to some, we need to say it clearly as Christians.
Sometime though after the bulletin had gone to print and it was too late to change the title, I realized that maybe this wasn’t quite what I wanted to say after all. Beyond Being Christian implies maybe that there is some higher level of consciousness beyond being Christian, that Christianity is something that someone with a higher degree of spiritual development or maturity could leave behind, should leave behind. And that is not what I mean to say. What I mean to say is not that Christianity is something that is to be grown out of or moved away from. It is that the deeper we go into being Christian, the more we explore the many ways there are of being Christian, the more we devote ourselves to becoming Christian in whatever the best sense of that word is for us, the less important being Christian will seem to be. That may seem strange or contradictory or paradoxical, and it probably is all of those things. Nevertheless, I believe that it is in the nature of Christianity as I experience it to lead us along a path where being Christian becomes less and less important, but in the process we are moving not beyond being Christian or away from it but more deeply into it. The more Christian we are, the less important it becomes that we are Christian.
I chose the scripture this morning because it offers an illustration of what I’m trying to say. It’s one of those passages in the gospels where Jesus directly disobeys or ignores one of the rules or laws that an observant Jew was supposed to abide by, in this case the laws about observing the Sabbath. A typical way of interpreting this story is to say that Jesus came along and showed how he had moved beyond the legalism of Judaism and how he was replacing the laws of Judaism with the gospel of love. This is of course a Christian interpretation, and so one of the points usually is, even though it may not be said in quite so many words, that Christianity is superior to Judaism. Christianity has moved beyond Judaism and replaced it, the implication being that those who remain in Judaism are unfortunately stuck in a lower stage of spiritual development.
There’s another way to read this though, I believe a better way. There was, of course, no Christianity at the time. You could assume, I suppose, that what Jesus was about all along was starting the Christian church, which would then supercede Judaism as a preferred religion. I don’t think that is what Jesus was about all along. He was himself Jewish. In this passage where he does clearly say that there are more important things than Sabbath observance and more important things than the temple, he refers to and quotes passages from the Old Testatment, or I should say the Hebrew scriptures since there was no New Testament and thus no Old Testament. As I read this passage, Jesus is not telling people then or now that Judaism is an inferior form of spirituality and that we need to move beyond that into the brighter, wiser ways of Christianity. He is much more saying that if the Jewish people had explored the depths of their own faith and the resources that were available to them within their tradition, they would have come to the conclusion that following the laws, which is a sort of tribal activity, is much less important than such things as mercy and justice and love—not because he told them so but because their own traditions told them so.
Mercy, justice, and love do not wear sectarian names whether the names be Jewish, Christian, or anything else. Jesus was telling the Jews that the more Jewish they become, the less important it will seem. It is essentially the same thing I believe he would say to the Christian community that formed around him. The more Christian you become, the less important it will seem.
And so when we come to the communion table, I believe we do not do so particularly as Christians, though many have seen this and continue to see this as a tribal celebration, recalling the last supper and Jesus’ words to his disciples, a ritual that binds Christians together as the body of Christ. I have come to see it in quite a different way, not so much as a celebration of being Christian but an anticipation of the day when all will sit at the welcome table and it will not matter one whit whether those who have gathered are Christian or not. As Christians we look forward to that day. As Christians we pray for that day. As Christians we labor for that day. As Christians we live for that day when we will sit at the welcome table, and we will look around, and as we look at the people we are breaking bread with, the only thing that will matter will be that each one is a child of God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
November 6, 2005