Scripture: Romans 12
The title of this sermon, “What We Expect”, does not mean that this is a sermon about what we expect to take place in the coming year. I’m not peering into any crystal balls today. And I haven’t talked to God about what we are to expect. I heard somewhere recently that Pat Robertson said he had talked to God, or rather that God had talked to him, about what we should expect in the coming year. Not that Pat Robertson has any credibility as far as being a good channeler for the voice of God. But we don’t need to go there this morning. This is also not a sermon about Pat Robertson.
It is a sermon about what we expect of ourselves—as individuals, as Christians, as Sojourners—what we expect of ourselves as a group of gathered Christians and spiritual seekers—what we expect of one another. That’s a lot for a sermon to be about, but sometimes it’s important to stop and ask yourself questions that are so basic that they are unanswerable in any short period of time. The New Year is always a convenient time to do that, and the whole business of New Year’s resolutions is a way of asking ourselves just that question: What do we expect of ourselves? What do we hope for from ourselves in the year ahead? Of course the kinds of things people usually resolve are usually not very good answers to the question of what we expect from ourselves. I might resolve to exercise more, but although that would be a good thing, it doesn’t begin to get at what I really deep down expect or hope for from myself. I expect more from myself than exercise. What I hope for from myself are better things than that. Still, the idea of resolutions at least nudges us in the direction of asking what we expect from ourselves, and the New Year is one of the things that has nudged me in that direction this morning.
I also know that David Gallup preached last week on the idea of covenant, maybe of renewing the covenant we have with each other as one year turns to the next and 2006 becomes 2007. I don’t know specifically yet what David said, but just the idea of it, which he described to me, got me thinking along those lines. What does our covenant consist of at Sojourners? What do we expect of each other? What do we promise each other when we participate in this community? Those kinds of questions. David may have spoken to this some last week. I trust that what I have to say will not clash too much with anything he might have said. I think that’s unlikely since we tend to have compatible thoughts on most things of any importance. At the same time, since we are different people it’s unlikely my approach would be so similar to his that it would sound like a repeat of what he had to say. In any case, the little I know about what David was going to talk about last week also nudged me in the direction I’m going this morning.
And then there is the fact that we’ll be receiving new members this morning. I don’t want to make this into something very complicated. Receiving new members is always a joyful time and basically one where we give thanks for the fact that people want to be part of this hard-to-describe group of God’s people and where we close in on them with a kind of prayerful embrace of welcome. But behind this simple, joyful act of people saying they want to be part of this community and the community saying we’re glad, there are some questions lurking in the background, the same kinds of questions I’ve already mentioned. What kind of promises are implied in the act of joining the church, this church? What do we expect of ourselves as members, new members or long time members, or friends for that matter, what do we expect of ourselves as participants in the life of this community? On one level there are some relatively easy, practical answers to those questions. It’s pretty safe to say, for instance, that we expect of ourselves and one another that we will share, as we are able, in the work that needs to be done and the money that needs to be raised. That’s not a hard thought to come up with, but it’s also not the only thought there is to be had. It’s just that the other thoughts may not come so quickly to mind. What do we expect of each other? And of course the prior question, the first question, is always what do I expect of myself?
If you looked just at our ceremony of membership you might say, “Not much”. That is, we don’t ask much of ourselves as members of the church, don’t expect much, don’t require much, or ask people to promise very much. In fact, in a formal way, there is none of that when people join the church here. People join the church no questions asked. There is no test of belief or standard of Christian commitment we are asked to say yes to. And all that may leave the impression that we have this kind of easy going, almost an anything goes attitude toward our life together, which may be partly true but which I don’t think is completely true. I think there are some things, mostly unspoken and mostly not so easily spoken, that we can or do expect of each other that are what our covenant here is about, that make us a community, rather than a collection of individuals. I have just a couple of thoughts for today. We’ll see whether I have other thoughts later on that I feel I need to come back to on coming Sundays.
The first thought for today actually takes a cue from comments that one of our new members, Wally McKeel, has made on a couple of occasions. I’m going to have to paraphrase, and I hope I’m doing that accurately, and I also hope Wally doesn’t mind my repeating this. What I have heard Wally say at different times is that Sojourners is not a place where you can just slip in and out of church on a Sunday morning quietly and anonymously. That’s not just an accurate description of a certain quality about life at Sojourners. It’s a statement really of one of our core values. It’s not just an interesting quirk in our collective personality that we are like this. It’s something we work at, know we need to work at, hold ourselves accountable for, and expect from each other. And there are several different ways to state it and several implications if we follow through on it.
We covenant with one another not to remain anonymous. It is probably possible for people to remain pretty much anonymous for short periods of time, but not only is that not so easy over longer periods of time, but we covenant with one another not to remain anonymous. And so we arrange our chairs so more of us can see more faces and fewer backs of heads. And during our membership ceremony we don’t ask questions which establish that a person is similar to lots of other people (Do you affirm your faith in God? Yes, I affirm my faith) but that says nothing about what that person’s faith in God means to him or her, but we do spend some time saying a few words about who this specific person is.
Let me put it another way. We covenant with one another not to lose ourselves or hide ourselves from one another. I expect of myself that I will not hide from you the struggles or issues I may have with the Christian faith, and I expect you to expect me to share those parts of myself with you. And I say that as your minister who is supposed to stand up here and give sermons most Sundays, but I also say it as a church member. We expect of each other that we will share ourselves, our faith and our faith struggles, with each other. We will not hide those things from each other and treat them as just our private thoughts. And if we are not so sure about certain portions of Christian belief, we do not have to hide that, in fact we covenant not to hide it, not because we’re broad-minded and willing to let all kinds of heretics in our doors, but because we need all the struggles with faith that are present here to be part of our common struggle toward faith. We covenant not just to allow a diversity of belief and unbelief but to value it and not to keep those things to ourselves but to find ways to share our journeys of faith, and not to remain anonymous from each other in that way either, in that way especially.
Or in other ways as well, of course. We covenant with each other that we do not need to hide our sexual or affectional orientation when we walk through the doors of the church, and again this is not just a matter of tolerating differences. It is a matter of valuing differences. We covenant with each other not to remain anonymous. We covenant to create safe space where people will not need to remain anonymous. Whatever our differences we covenant to value them, not tolerate them. Whatever our gifts, which are part and parcel of who we are, we covenant to find ways to bring those gifts, over time and in ways that are appropriate to who we are, but we covenant to find ways to offer those gifts to the community, not as a matter of filling slots on an organizational chart, but as a matter of contributing who we are to the life of the community, not remaining anonymous. I’m not sure Paul would be agreeing with everything I have been saying here, but I think the spirit of what he says in Romans 12 and in other places is in keeping with what I have been saying here. We are parts of a body, the body of Christ in Paul’s language, and we are needed as parts of that body, not just as another body but precisely because of who we each, non-anonymously, are.
One more thing about not being anonymous. We covenant with each other not to lose ourselves and not to lose each other, to hold each other faithfully in care and in prayer. Surely we expect that too of each other. Surely that too is part of not being anonymous. In this, as in all the rest I have been talking about, to say that we covenant in these ways does not mean that we necessarily succeed. Clearly we fall short over and over again. Nevertheless, I remind myself of what I expect from myself, and suggest some things I think we may expect of each other.
One more thing, for today, that I would suggest is an implicit covenant we have with each other at Sojourners. We expect ourselves not to be committed to the church. That may sound like sort of a blunt way of putting it, maybe designed to be a bit of an attention-getter. And I’ll confess to some of that. But it’s also, I believe, accurate. We expect ourselves not to be committed to the church.
A less attention-getting way of saying that would be to say that we covenant to see our commitments to the church in a larger context, to make sure that there is a larger context, that it’s the good of the world and the good of God’s people that we’re about here, not the good of the church. That seems like a kind of an obvious thing to say, not always so easy to carry out. So it doesn’t hurt to say that expectation out loud as often as we can.
Nor does it hurt to say it in a more direct way. We expect ourselves not to be committed to the church. When we gather here, we are not expressing our commitment to Sojourners. We are expressing our commitment to doing justice, to loving and embodying mercy in our living, and to seeking in humble ways to walk with God. The church is a mere tool, and a very imperfect one at that, for those kinds of goals. We covenant with one another, we expect of one another that any words we may have about the church not being the object of its own affection, that those words be not just words, that whether we are talking about seeking racial justice, or acting on our open and affirming commitments, or devoting ourselves to the deepening of our spiritual lives that we show ourselves to be serious about such things in the ways we live out the Christian faith in the life of this congregation.
This is one of the ways I understand communion too. It is a kind of renewing of our covenant every time we share communion. And it is not about the church and who is in and who is out and who is a Christian and who isn’t and who is saved and who isn’t. It is also not about Jesus, not really. It is about what Jesus was about. It points us to the reign of God that Jesus prayed for, and invited us to pray for: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth…” It reminds us that when we gather, we are called to set our hearts on things that really have little to do with church: seeking justice, living mercy, walking with God. May we expect such things of one another. And may we each know the promise of communion as well: that God will be with us along the way. Amen.
Jim Bundy
January 7, 2007