A Community of Christ

Acts 16:16-34; John 17:20-26
May 20, 2007
The gospel reading this morning is part of what I’ve always thought of as “I Am the Walrus” Christology: I am you and you are me and we are all together, coo coo cachoo. Sure, there’s a good deal of mystical imagination here that has provided fodder for 2,000 years of theological reflection, and you all know that I’m usually happy to dive right in to the deep end of such reflection. But this morning, continuing the theme of this Easter season of reflections on the kind of community we are called to be, the mystical Jesus of John’s gospel is leaving me a bit cold.
So I want to introduce a third text, in the form of this song by Bryan Sirchio, a UCC pastor in Wisconsin. It goes like this:
I met this preacher from Australia
He read the Bible searching for its dominant themes
And he counted 87 times when Jesus said... "Follow me."
Well you know that got me thinking
Maybe that's the bottom line of what "Christian" means
'Cause "I follow Jesus" is deeper than "I believe"
'Cause it don't take much to mentally agree
With a set of beliefs written down in some creed
Now don't get me wrong,
we need to know what we believe
But lately I've been wondering...

(Chorus)
Am I following Jesus, or just believing in Christ
'Cause I can believe and not change a thing
But following will change my whole life
He never said, come, acknowledge my existence
Or believe in me I'm the 2nd person of the Trinity
But 87 time he said... Follow me

But if I'm a follower of Jesus,
Then why am I such a good life insurance risk?
And why, when I do my giving,
do I still keep so much when so much hunger exists?
And if I follow Jesus, then why do I have so many friends
among the affluent, and so few among the poor?
And if I follow Jesus,
why do missiles and guns make me feel more secure?
And it don't take much to mentally assent
To a statement of faith we can confirm and forget
But following will change our lifestyle if we get it and
more and more I'm wondering...
(Chorus)
(Bridge)
Yes, we need to know what we believe,
to follow the Jesus who's real
God save us from the Christ's we create in our image
(you know what I mean...)
The Jesus who's as left wing or right wing as we
The one who baptizes our cherished ideologies
The one who always seems to favor our side
against some enemy

Now I don't mean to sound self-righteous
God knows I've got more questions than answers to proclaim
But its been over 20 years now since Jesus called my name
So forgive me if I'm mistaken
But there's something wrong with a lot of churches
in America these days
And I think the Spirit's trying to tell us
There's a question that the churches need to raise...
(Chorus)
Are we following Jesus? Or just believing in Christ?
'Cause we can believe, and not change a thing
But following will change our whole life
He never said, come, acknowledge my existence
Or believe in me, I'm your first class ticket to eternity...
But 87 times he said... Follow me.

The word of the Lord, thanks be to God, I say to myself whenever I listen to that song.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that this song – or any other, for that matter – merits canonization. But the problem with a closed canon is that we tend to dismiss too easily such provocative words from faithful followers of Jesus and instead spend countless hours trying to figure out such passages as “the glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
It’s like all of the “I am” statements in John. You recall them: “I am the way, the truth and the life”; “I am the vine and you are the branches”; “I am the good shepherd”; “I am the gate”; and so on. Sure, the author of John no doubt had in mind the name of God as revealed to Moses, “I am that I am, I will be what I will be.” But when I read John I find mystery in which to dwell more often than I find foundation on which to build.
That’s not a negative comment by any means – dwelling in the mystery of God is certainly a central aspect of spiritual life and the gospel of John is an excellent text for such reflection. But if we are focusing on what it might mean to be a community of Christ, then John’s word is but a part of it and perhaps not the greater part – at least for beginning.
The beginning is, of course, what is recounted in Acts, and our passage this morning might seem to contradict everything I’ve just said. After all, the jailer asks Paul and Silas what he must do to be saved and Paul answers, “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
It seems, at first blush, that he can believe and not change a thing. There seems nothing of following, of discipleship, of creating a community of Christ in this episode.
But upon closer reading a couple of points poke through. First, the Greek word so often translated as “believe” in English, might better be rendered “trust.”
Whenever I consider “trust” my mind wonders to Star Wars – a wonderful theological treasure trove, I assure you. Han Solo constantly asks those around him to “trust me,” and he never means “acknowledge my existence” or “intellectually assent to some propositional statement about my ontological condition.” No. Of course not. He means, “follow me.” Now, the example ends right there, because following Han Solo leads us on entirely different adventures than following Jesus!
Paul is not telling the jailer to have a new intellectual understanding of God, he is telling him to follow Jesus. Out of the experience of following Jesus will grow new understandings of God and of the community of followers.
Now this is no promise of unending happiness. Christian community is not easy. I was at an event yesterday with Parker Palmer and he shared two great learners about community: first – community is that place where the person you least want to live with lives; second – when that person leaves the community someone else will take his or her place. Christian community is not for the faint of heart!
The second point from the text follows on the first: trusting Jesus leads directly, inescapably to acting. Indeed, it is indistinguishable from it. To believe, to trust, to follow, to live – these are the interchangeable aspects of life in the community of Christ. Paul, Silas and the jailer go forth immediately and engage in fundamental activities of Christian community: they share good news, they live sacramentally, they break bread together, they create community that is coherent – that is to say, meaningful and understandable – because it is based on this common trust in the one who came that we might have life and have it abundantly.
The purpose of Christian community – that is to say, the purpose of the church itself – is not that we might gather together and feel good about ourselves because we have the answer to life’s pop quiz of final judgment – our first class ticket to eternity. The purpose of Christian community is life abundant, full of grace and wonder and awe and love – and brokenness and messiness and suffering and humanity in all its incredible diversities – and passion and compassion and joy and laughter and justice and peace – life abundant that is not possible on our own as isolated individuals struggling in an impersonal world of overwhelming forces.
As Wendell Berry puts it, “Only the purpose of a coherent community, fully alive both in the world and in the minds of its members, can carry us beyond fragmentation, contradiction, and negativity, teaching us to preserve, not in opposition but in affirmation and affection, all things needful to make us glad to live.”
For those who would call themselves Christian, for those who would be people of the way, the way to live in such community is simple – though seldom easy: following Jesus. That is the bottom line of what it means to be coherent community of Christians. May it be said of us: “there is a community of Christ.” Amen.

A Community at Risk

May 13, 2007
Did you see the story in the Post last week about the enormous and unstable star that could explode in our neighborhood? You can provide your own Tom Cruise punchline here, but I’m talking about a real star in our galactic neighborhood that could go supernova imminently. Imminently could be in galactic time – you know, like the time that the federal government moves or the Presbyterian Church makes changes. I’m not sure.
In any case, when the star explodes it could spew radioactive stardust in our direction. I read that notice to the family over breakfast and Cheryl said, “well, it will save George Bush some work.” That line got me to thinking about relative risk and what we have to worry about.
We don’t typically associate “church” and risk, especially in mainline Protestant circles where we’ve long-since stopped talking about the risk of going to hell if you don’t have the correct beliefs or don’t attend the right church. The queen’s recent visit to Jamestown reminded me of the rules they had for church attendance in the early years of the settlement: if you missed worship once you lost your rations for a week; two times and you were flogged. I think it eventually became a hanging offense at some point. Those folks learned to associate church and risk, I’m sure.
Looking at if from a different perspective, it is said in theological circles that the church is one generation away from extinction. Then again, that has always been the case. In our day it’s no different in this respect than it was for the church in Acts. They were one generation from going out of business and so are we. If they didn’t share the gospel story with a new generation, it would cease to be shared. If we don’t share the gospel story with a new generation, it will cease to be shared.
The gospel itself is always at risk, and therefore the community defined by that good news is also always at risk.
That risk feels particularly acute in our time. Declining attendance and membership in mainline churches underscores the risk. Here at Clarendon, the fact that we have for too long lived with a deficit budget certainly makes clear the risk that the church in this little corner of the world could die.
The risk is real; it is imminent. Now I don’t know if that is imminent in galactic time or some other time. I hope that it is in God’s time, and I have faith that in God’s eyes the church in this place is worth saving.
But the risk is real, and it raises some critical questions for us. If we were in the insurance business we would talk about risk and reward; in the life of the church it will be more faithful to think in terms of call and response.
We’re pretty clear about the particular calling to and identity of this community. Through much discernment by congregation, by session, by pastoral nominating committee, through redeveloping and mission discernment, we are clear that Clarendon Presbyterian Church has a distinctive calling to be a community of progressive Christian witness marked by prophetic leadership in the broader community, Christian hospitality and radical welcome to people long excluded by the church and society, and Christ-centered community shaped and informed by the simple commandment that we love one another as Christ has loved us.
There is no question about who we are, the only question is how shall we be the people we have been called to be? That is a question of risk.
The church is at risk if we do not live into our callings here, and, in a profound way, our souls are at risk as well.
I suppose this is the point at which, in a different sort of congregation, the preacher might start warning about hell. And, well, if hell means alienation from our true selves and the divine source of our lives, then hell is precisely what we’re talking about now. That is always the risk of not living into our callings.
So, how shall we be the people we have been called to be?
Look at the stories from scripture this morning. What’s going on in them? Radically risk taking. Jesus is healing when he has no business healing. It’s difficult for us to imagine how culturally inappropriate Jesus’ actions were, given that not only is every hospital but also every 7-11 and most everything in between open on whatever day any religious tradition might consider the Sabbath. Suffice it to say, his actions broke with tradition in provocative ways. Likewise, in Acts, Paul is empowering one whom he has no business empowering – a woman, for God’s sake. Boundaries are being broken here. The gospel is breaking down the barriers: the gospel of love. The simple message that you are loved by God knows no borders or barriers; it is for everyone at all times and all places. No human rules or marks of exclusion can stand against the power of love.
Our calling is to take that message with us everywhere. In particular, as church, to take it into communities at risk of not hearing it. For example, in the coming weeks, we have the opportunity to take that message to the streets of DC in the Pride Parade – it’s simple, it’s fun, and more to the point, it is what we are called to do. Likewise, that same week, we have the opportunity to take that message into interfaith worship down in Alexandria as a sponsoring congregation of the first Northern Virginia Pride worship service. It’s simple, it’s fun, and more to the point, it is what we are called to do.
On a somewhat grander scale, we are developing a mission initiative named CALL: the Center for the Advancement of Lifelong Leadership. At the heart of CALL is the same simple gospel conviction: that we are loved, and called to live out of that love.
All around us in the Metro corridor are thousands of people who have not heard and do not know that simple good news, and they live in hells of the culture’s creation because we have failed to share that gospel message.
In particular, in our ministry context in highly educated, affluent Arlington County, the hell of the culture’s creation is perhaps best named in Henry Thoreau’s evocative phrase: “lives of quiet desperation.” As his friend Emerson put, “things are in the saddle riding humankind.” We live in a community of material wealth and spiritual poverty, rich in things but poor in meaning and destitute of community.
In the Presbyterian Church, being decent and orderly in all things, we have a process for preparation for ministry, and if you are seriously considering ordained ministry of word and sacrament you will quickly find yourself meeting with a Presbytery committee on preparation for ministry. I vividly recall my first such meeting, about a dozen years ago, in the library of Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Ky. There was a minister-member of that committee named Dick, who had taken it upon himself to give ever inquirer a good grilling. He was the gate keeper.
I will never forget his question to me: what drives you? I reacted against the question in ways that I’m sure Dick did not expect or understand. You see, this was Lexington in the mid 90s. The town was dominated by the figure of Rick Pitino, the basketball coach at UK. In Kentucky, the UK hoops coach sits at the right hand of God, or higher in a good year. Pitino was the most driven person I’ve ever seen, and I really couldn’t stand him. I did not want to think of myself as driven in any way shape or form. I could not answer Dick’s question, because it felt like he was asking, “in what way are you like Rick Pitino?”
While obviously I navigated the process successfully in time, it saddens me to think back on that moment because it underscored the deeply impoverished language of call and discernment that plagues the church still and even more so the culture at large. We do not know how to speak to one another of our callings, of our vocation, of listening for the still small voice and discerning those thin places where our deepest joy intersects with the world’s deep need.
I know now that Dick was only trying to help. I also know now, after a dozen years of study, experience, and discernment exactly what drives me – although I seldom, if ever, use that word still. I’d rather talk about passion, or about what is sacred to me. But, with a nod to a now-retired colleague whose question has haunted me for more than a decade, let me declare to you what drives me. I am driven by the desire to journey with others through the spirit-filled and wondrous path of discerning vocation, and I am convinced that that this community – the congregation of Clarendon Presbyterian Church – is uniquely equipped to give birth to an institutional capacity to help dozens, then hundreds and eventually thousands of people discern their own call to the work of justice, compassion and community restoration.
Because I feel driven, I can go on about this at length. There is so much to say about the need in our community, about our own capacities and gifts in this area, about the work of discernment that has led us to this moment, about processes and programs, about finances and support. Moreover, as this is a sermon, there is so clearly so much that can be said about call and vocation related to the stories of scripture – including quite clearly the ones we’ve read this morning.
But I want to hear your thoughts and your questions, so I’ll close by circling back round to the beginning. The risks before us do not include a large likelihood of being turned to stardust in a blast of gamma rays, but they do include a significant likelihood of being reduced to memory if we do not live more fully into our calling to be the church progressive, inclusive and diverse at Clarendon. The time of discerning call is rapidly being fulfilled, and the time of fulfilling our calling is upon us. Let’s live into it together. Amen.

A Community Without Walls

Texts: Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35
We’ve listened to some wonderful words from the text of holy scripture this morning. Now I want to share some words from a different text. This was a message left on the church answering machine this week: “Good morning, reverend. This is a national call to prayer among Christians that our government will declare Christianity the official religion of the US; that the Christian religion will be taught in the public schools. Do not contact your congressman or senator on this issue; do not put this message in writing but pass it along only verbally. Pray unto the lord that he will do his perfect will. Have a good day.”
I don’t know why I get these calls. You would think an outgoing message that declares “You have reached Clarendon Presbyterian Church, a progressive, inclusive, diverse community …” would be enough to discourage such things.
Still, they come now and again, along with similar stuff in the mail. Most of the time I hit the delete key or take aim at the recycling bin, but this one stood in such perfect contrast to the message from scripture and what I was already planning to preach on that I had to stop and wonder, yet again, how it is that the message of Jesus gets so tangled up in the strangeness that calls itself religious conviction.
Those are my words, of course, but I bet Peter wondered something similar in his day as he was called to reconsider the deepest convictions of his own religious faith.
This might be a good moment for an etymological “time out” to consider the word religion. It has some fascinating, if tangled roots, relating back to a pair of Latin words: lige and lege. Lige, whose echo we can hear in our word, ligament, means “to bind or to tie.” If you trace religion back to that root you come to understand religion as “binding back,” as in being bound back to a particular tradition. On the other hand, lege, whose echo we can hear in legible, means “to read.” If you trace religion back to that root you come to understand it as “rereading.” Both are important and instructive, and both were at stake for Peter and the early Christian community.
They were bound back to their Jewish roots, to Torah and the tradition of the law of Moses. Yet they found themselves called into a broader, largely Gentile world that was not bound at all to the traditions of Israel. The more they welcomed that community, the more they would be rejected by their own tradition.
They faced a decisive early choice: be bound back to a tradition or reread its sacred texts. Remarkably, they chose a third way: a way of binding and rereading. In other words, they inaugurated a community marked by a particular story or tradition and by the constant rereading of that story such that the very boundaries or definitions of the community formed by an ancient story are constantly at stake and in question by the rereading of that story.
At its best, the Christian community today retains both impulses. At its worst, it rejects any rereading and attempts to impose its present reading on the world.
The dear sweet lady who left that message on my phone last week represent that impulse, which so easily gives itself over to imperial designs and manipulations.
It’s an impulse that says, in effect, “I know exactly what it means to be Christian, to be an insider, to be acceptable, and I’m building a wall around that to keep out anyone who doesn’t see things the same way that I do.” It’s an impulse far too common in our age, and there are walls going up around the world in evidence.
Here at Clarendon we are working to build a community without such walls. Just as Peter discovered in Acts, we have found God to be continuously revealing more of God’s self and intention in the world in our time. What God has made clean we do not try to make unclean, and what God has made clean is, precisely, humankind – human beings: men, women, young, old, straight, gay, rich, poor, of every race and tribe and nation. What God has pronounced good we will not label “outsider.” What God has called “beloved” we cannot reject.
The problem with a community without walls, though, comes in defining it. If it has no walls how do you know you are in it? Well, the community without walls is not a community without a center. Indeed, the center of the community is Jesus Christ, and the rule of the community – that which determines whether or not one is in it – comes in Jesus’ own words: “love one another just as I have loved you. By this they will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
That’s it. That’s the simple rule at the center of the community without walls. That’s how we are defined: by how we love. As was said of the first Christians in Acts, so may it be said of us, “see how they love one another.”
The challenge from the inside, interestingly enough, is the same as the one from the outside: there are no walls. That is to say, there are no walls on the love we are called to share with the world. There are no outsiders to this love. Just as the community without walls does not exclude anyone on account of any of the characteristics that have historically and continue to be in some cases used to exclude some from its membership, neither does the community without walls exclude anyone from the love it shares with the world.
In his Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer expresses it this way, in words that, despite their dated terms of reference, still ring powerfully:
the commandment of love for our neighbour also does not imply a law which restricts our responsibility solely to our neighbour in terms of space, to the man whom I encounter socially, professionally or in my family. My neighbour may well be one who is extremely remote from me, and one who is extremely remote from me may well be my neighbour. By a terrible miscarriage of justice in the United States in 1831 nine young negroes, whose guilt could not be proved, were sentenced to death for the rape of a white girle of doubtful reputation. There arose a storm of indignation which found expression in open letters from some of the most authoritative public figures in Europe. A Christian who was perturbed by this affair asked a prominent cleric in Germany whether he, too, ought not to raise his voice in this matter, and on the grounds of the “Lutheran” idea of vocation, that is to say, on the grounds of the limitation of his responsibility, the clergyman refused. In the event the protests which came in from all parts of the world led to a revision of the judgement. Here perhaps it is from the point of view of the call of Jesus Christ that we may understand the saying of Nietzsche: “My brothers, I do not counsel you to love your neighbour; I counsel you to love him who is furthest from you.” We do not say this in order to pass judgement in the particular case to which we have just referred. We say it in order to keep open the boundary.
It is always a question of boundaries, isn’t it? Who’s in; who’s out? To whom must we extend compassion and love? Whom may we pass by on the other side?
The boundaries are not fixed; there are no immutable rules. The community has no walls.
Nevertheless, at the center of the community stands one who commands, “love one another just as I have loved you.”
When that commands seems burdensome, we gather as a community, and as we gather there is a table set in our midst with the bread of life and the cup of salvation to strengthen us for love.
Come, then, from wherever you dwell – no matter how near or how distant you may feel at this moment from the one who stands in our midst calling. Come and be welcomed. Come and be fed. Come and be loved.