The Last Word

October 23, 2011
Matthew 22:34-40
For the past several Sundays we’ve been following the lectionary cycle of readings through the latter part of the gospel of Matthew. While we haven’t dwelled on it – or, really, even mentioned it – the stories we’ve read this month all come from Matthew’s account of Holy Week.
I haven’t raised that until now because doing so felt, to me, like making this a bit of a “word out of season.” I lift up this context now, still clearly out of season in terms of the liturgical calendar, primarily to underscore the stakes.
Jesus has been engaged in a running argument with the religious authorities over such questions as the source of Jesus’ teaching authority, whether or not it is lawful to pay taxes to Rome, and who gets to marry whom in resurrection life. In each case, Jesus has resisted being pinned down to an easily dismissible – and arrestable – response.
Finally the authorities pose what turns out to be their last question: “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Like all of the rest of the questions, this is a trick and a trap, though it doesn’t seem so to our 21st-century Christian eyes or ears. But one of the reigning Jewish legal theories of Jesus’ day held that all of the laws – all 600-some of them – were of equal weight and importance. To lift one above the rest was impertinent, at the least, and blasphemous at the worst.
After all, who was Jesus to say which law mattered most? He was not in the learned class of the Pharisees, and he was certainly not qualified to speak decisively on God’s law – to, in effect, speak for God on which law mattered most to God.
And yet, that is precisely what he sets out to do.
What’s the most important law? Jesus offers the last word; the word to end the debating; the word on which to hang everything that has been at stake from the very beginning for Jesus.
The word is love.
You shall love the Lord your God with … with everything that you have, and, at the same time, you shall love your neighbor.
On this, Jesus says, hangs all of the law and the prophets. That phrase is crucial in the text. It echoes the phrase that inaugurates Jesus’ ministry in Matthew. At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, back in the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus utters its parallel – “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
Now, as his teaching draws to a close, he gives the final word, the word that fulfills the law and the prophets: love God and love neighbor.
Simple enough, except that Jesus has spent his entire teaching ministry deepening our ideas about love and complicating our ideas of “neighbor.” By this point in the story it’s clear that, as Douglas John Hall puts it, “really to love others is far more demanding than just ‘doing good deeds’ or ‘being nice.’ For most of us, to be honest, it means that we have to stop loving ourselves so much, putting ourselves first; and that is a transformation neither easily nor quickly achieved.”
By this point, moreover, it’s clear that Jesus not only includes pretty much everyone in the definition of neighbor but also that he puts clear priority on the neighbor who is poor, who is vulnerable, who is powerless, who has been cast out and looked down upon. What’s more, he has also included enemies within the circle of neighborliness. In other words, “neighbor” includes a lot of folks who seem to ruin the neighborhood.
Thus, “love God and love neighbor,” means a bit more than piously affirming one’s position in the pew, one’s rank in the hierarchy of the temple, one’s standing in the sanctuary. Indeed, Jesus doesn’t seem the least bit interested in any of that. He seems a lot more interested in hanging out with folks in the streets.
In the streets, loving God and loving neighbors becomes a matter of life and death, and of grace and forgiveness.
In his book Choosing Against War, John Roth tells of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that many credit with averting the bloodbath that was widely expected in the aftermath of the collapse of apartheid.
Roth tells of an elderly woman whose son and husband had been murdered by white policemen, who had burned the bodies and celebrated around the flames. In 1994, the woman faced the leader, Mr. Van de Broek, in court. Roth writes:
Those involved had confessed their guilt, and the Commission turned to the woman for a final statement regarding her desire for an appropriate punishment.
“I want three things,” the woman said calmly. “I want Mr. Van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband’s body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial.
“Second, Mr. Van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot to give. Twice a month, I would like him to come to the ghetto and spend the day with me so I can be a mother to him.
“Third, I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know he is forgiven by God and that I forgive him, too. And, I would like someone to come and lead me by the hand to where Mr. Van de Broek is so that I can embrace him and he can know my forgiveness is real.”
I think that’s what Jesus would do. I think that’s what Jesus what have us do. I think that’s what it means to love God and love neighbor.
Of course, it’s incredibly complicated, and never easy. “Love God and love neighbor” may fit neatly on a sign, but it’s hardly a political program. If you raise it up – “love God and love neighbor” – then critics, the realists, will complain that you’re not offering any real solutions, that it’s not clear what you want. If, like Jesus – especially since he’d just turned over the moneychangers’ tables – you say it in the context of pressing for social changes, critics will insist that you’re just creating a public spectacle without offering a program or a plan to address people’s problems.
And, of course, the critics would be right.
Jesus does not offer a program or a plan. Instead, he articulates a core conviction by which all programs and plans are to be judged.
You have a plan to reduce the nation’ budget deficit? OK. Does it stand first on the side of the poor, who are my neighbors?
You have some detailed thoughts on national security? Fine. Do they reflect, truly and authentically, love for those whom we have called enemies, whom I now call my neighbors?
You have some proposals for financial reform? Great! Do they serve first the interests of the least of these, my neighbors, my sisters and brothers and only then trickle up?
You have a plan for feeding and housing the least of these? Fantastic! Does it reflect real love for them even with all of their messy and broken lives?
Love, Jesus insists, must be the true and final measure of all that we do. Love of God and love of neighbor.
In the end, Jesus suggests, it’s the same thing: to love neighbor – fully and authentically – is to love God; to love God – fully and authentically – is to love neighbor.
That’s the last word. Amen.

Occupied Exegesis

Matthew 24:15-22
October 16, 2011
I spent some time last week with the folks, mostly young folks, who are occupying K Street at the moment. As the old Crosby, Stills and Nash song put it, “there’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.”
Clear or not, there is something happening here, and through it I think the spirit is trying to say something to the church.
Last April, as the Arab Spring was in full flower, I had a fascinating conversation with our eldest, who’s a junior at Mary Washington this year. He was closely following the news – watching Al Jazeera streaming on line because they were covering what U.S. media was largely ignoring. He was also creating a video game to simulate the situation.
I was incredibly amused at the dichotomy: Arab kids in the street, American kid turning the experience into a video game, so I asked him why his cohort, who are shouldering so many of the worst burdens of the Great Recession, weren’t following the lead of the Arab youth and taking to the streets here.
Now I know the answer: they were getting ready.
As of last week, there were Occupy Together Meet Up groups in more than 1,400 cities and towns across the United States. There were roughly 120 active occupations in American cities. There were related demonstrations in Europe, Asia and Africa over the weekend.
While not everyone I met at the K Street occupation was younger than 30, the vast majority are, and that seems to be holding true across the country. Whatever is happening, it’s happening among young people.
More to the point, this widespread social unrest is happening precisely among the generation of Americans who feel abandoned by or failed by all of the major social systems that previous generations of Americans have come to take for granted.
Consider:
• For more than 30 years – the lifetimes of the young adults we’re talking about – American education has been a failing system. To be sure, not every aspect of it, not every classroom, not every teacher. But the system as a whole, from preschool to graduate school, is broken.
• For those same 30 years, American politics has been broken. Outside of the well-connected, it is increasingly difficult to find anyone who believes their elected leaders hear them or care what they say. If citizens no longer believe in democracy, then it’s broken.
• The failure of our politics is not unrelated to a far bigger systemic failure that young adults, statistically speaking, pay far more attention to than their elders: the failure of the environment, and, in particular, our inability and unwillingness to come to grips with the looming disaster of global climate change.
• As this cohort comes of age, the American economy has been broken as well. The unemployment rate for 18-24 year olds is double the rate for all workers. The average young adult graduates from college with $20,000 in student loan debt, and almost half of them spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. A generation ago, fewer than 20 percent of 25-34 year olds spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent.
This litany goes on and on, but the bottom line is this: most Americans now believe that the current generation of young adults will be the first in American history to be economically worse off than their parents.
And what is the generation least likely to show up in a church, mosque or synagogue for worship?
Whatever is happening, it’s happening precisely among the people whose absence is lamented in American houses of worship.
None of this is particularly new or startling, but it has occurred to me for a while that if young adults are not going to come to church – and, let’s be utterly honest with ourselves, they are not about to – then perhaps church should go to them. And not go to them asking, “why don’t you come to us?” but, rather, go to them and ask, “what’s going on in your life?” “what are you most concerned about?” “what makes your soul sing?” “what breaks your heart?” and, with respect to all of the huge issues that hang like a multi-bladed sword of Damocles over the futures of an entire generation, “what would you like to hear the church say right now?”
So I went down to the demonstration … not to get my fair share of abuse, because, even in my clerical collar, to a person, the young adults with whom I spoke were happy to engage in respectful conversation with a representative of the church even as many of them offered sharply worded harsh criticism of the church.
Indeed, they have sharp criticisms. Not surprising or novel criticisms, to be sure, but sharp ones.
Megan, a young woman from Richmond, a military vet, decried the church’s hypocrisy about sex, and especially the way the church has condemned gays and lesbians.
Megan’s friend, Mary, nodded in agreement, and wondered why the church condemned people of other faiths.
Will, a young man who grew up Lutheran in suburban Maryland, said that it is hard to take seriously an institution that takes its ancient scriptures literally, especially when it comes to questions that are answered definitively by science. He said, “you’d be better off if you stuck to the parts of the Bible that are written in the red letters.”
Ah, yes, the red letters, the parts that are attributed to Jesus. The things like, “blessed are the poor,” or “love your enemies,” or “I came that you might have life.”
The folks I spoke with at the occupation certainly do not want to hear anybody tell them, “believe the orthodox creeds about Jesus or you’re going to hell.” That makes no sense to them whatsoever.
But they do find Jesus to be a powerful and attractive figure. The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount makes sense to them. If the church reflected that Jesus, then they might find something attractive in it, as well.
Of course, that Jesus is the one whose own religious leaders sought to trap and, eventually, to have executed. That Jesus did not spend much time huddled behind stained glass windows. That Jesus did not surround himself with only the most respectable types. That Jesus did not care overly much for institutionalized religion. That Jesus was constantly on the move, and he was clearly much more interested in building a movement than in cultivating an institution. That Jesus was in the streets.
That Jesus was occupying Israel. And from that midst of that occupied zone he offered up the most creative readings of his own ancient texts.
He went up on a mountainside – outside, occupying open space – and he said, at least the way my southern ears hear it, “y’all have heard the religious authorities teach you about what these ancient texts mean, but from where I stand – here, amidst people struggling in an unjust economic system with failing religious institutions – from where I stand those texts say something different. You have heard, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but from where I stand that just leaves the whole world blind. So I say, ‘do not return evil for evil. Pray for those who persecute you.’ That’ll confuse the hell out of them!”
Jesus offered up what I’ll call “occupied exegesis.” That is to say, he did his reading of sacred scripture not in the confines of the temple but out in the street where the theological rubber hits the road of life.
That’s where he found himself confronted by the thorny question of taxes. Funny thing about that question: it turns out controversies over taxes are nothing new under the sun, and under the autumn sun shining down on the occupied zones in my part of the world this weekend you could find a lot of folks complaining about taxes – about who pays and who doesn’t, about who owes what to whom. When the powers that be confronted Jesus on the question of taxes he knew that if he said, “yes, pay them,” he would be capitulating to Rome whose taxes were a constant reminder of the hated occupation. On the other hand, if he said, “no, don’t pay them,” he would be executed immediately as a revolutionary insurgent.
Jesus’ response to the question about taxes – “render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar’s and to God the things that belong to God” – satisfied neither side, and it is not going to solve the problems that are at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement, either.
Nevertheless, his words are particularly instructive for the church if we want to have anything at all to say to the present moment.
Writing in Sojourners years ago, Jim Wallis said of this passage, “Jesus didn't give a clear and direct answer to the specific question being asked. Rather, he put it in a larger framework of worship, idolatry, and ultimate loyalty. The issue at stake here is: what do we owe to whom?” (Jim Wallis, Sojourners, May, 1983).
In a way, I think that the occupation of our cities is doing the same thing. If there’s one thing I heard over and over again from McPherson Square, it was a deep desire to move beyond the political logjam of Left and Right, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, and the related accusation against the church for being too politically aligned with the Republican Party in particular. While that accusation is clearly not accurate for churches such as the one I serve, it’s abundantly clear that the loudest part of American Christianity for the past 30 years has been the conservative segment.
In pushing beyond that either/or, I believe the occupation is pressing us all to ask one basic question: “what do we owe to whom?”
Critics have been complaining that there’s no clear agenda to the occupation, no set of demands, that nobody really knows what these folks want. I think what they want is for all of us to sort out what belongs to whom, and to figure out together how we return it.
As it turns out, according to Walter Brueggemann, that is the Biblical definition of justice. Justice amounts to sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it to them.
The church has history and insight with this question, and now the youth of our time are insisting that this question be front and center in our national conversation.
Could this be, against all odds, our time?

Guess Who’s Coming to the Unpower Banquet?

October 9, 2011
Guess who’s coming to dinner? Well, if we take the gospel to heart the answer is: not the ones you thought.
That simple observation raises all kinds of questions, and, in particular, questions that ought to press in on us here as we live through the fascinating challenges of the present moment. If part of what we’re doing here is asking fundamental questions of ourselves about the very nature of “church,” then one of those fundamental questions is going to be, “who is included?”
And if we ask those fundamental questions about church, pretty soon we’re going to find ourselves confronted by equally foundational questions about who is included in all kinds of other social arrangements from family, to neighborhood, to citizenship, to economy, to political power.
Clearly, I don’t think Jesus was just talking about a dinner party.
But before getting too far along this morning, it’s worth our time to understand just a bit of the cultural context of the parable. Matthew is writing to a community that has experienced the destruction of Jerusalem a generation after Jesus. Matthew’s retelling of Jesus’ parable includes a morality play that understands the destruction of Jerusalem as punishment for a lack of faithfulness.
There was yet another article in the Post this week reporting that worship attendance in Christian, Jewish and Muslim houses of worship in the United States has decreased by more than 15 percent over the past decade. At the same time, the news is full of stories from occupied Wall Street, from debt-crushed Greece, from tea partying conservatives, to a still war torn Afghanistan.
Toss in earthquakes and hurricanes for a bit of dramatic background and Matthew’s moralism might suggest that God is punishing all of us for a lack of faithfulness.
I hold that reading out there not because I think it’s true, but rather to indicate the inherent dangers of using ancient texts to interpret our times. After all, the ancient texts don’t agree with each other about their own time, why should we expect that they would offer clarity about our own?
For example, Luke’s version of the same parable does not go the route of easy moralism, but, instead simply notes that "the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame," accept an invitation to the party after others better off have made their excuses for not coming.
For our present circumstances, I find Luke’s telling more helpful. If we stick only with Matthew’s account we might find ourselves stuck in asking “who’s responsible” for the current situation. Trying to place blame, as Matthew seems to do, is the perfect recipe for getting stuck in the past.
That does not mean that we avoid accountability and responsibility when codes and rules and laws have been clearly violated, but it does mean we don’t get stuck there because our larger challenges have arisen through an incredibly complex mix of social and cultural shifts that we have yet to fully comprehend.
Take just the church, for starters. Lots of folks have turned down the invitation to have dinner with Jesus’ friends. Look around. The powerful community leaders who used to fill pews in Mainline Protestant congregations are mostly absent now.
So, guess who’s coming to dinner now that the better classes have declined. To figure out who might be on the revised guest list let’s ask ourselves what would happen if we did take the gospel seriously. What would happen here if we invited in the 25 percent of Arlingtonians who speak Spanish as a first language? What would happen here if we truly invited in the thousands of Arlingtonians who receive a handout at AFAC or from A-SPAN? What would happen here if we invited in our African-American sisters and brothers? What would happen if we invited in the kids occupying K Street?
By these questions what I really mean to ask is, what do we have to change about ourselves in order to make such invitations authentic? For more than my entire lifetime it has been true that 11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in American life. It is segregated not just by race, but also by economic status, political persuasion, language, and almost every other category by which we can wall ourselves off from each other.
If we believe, and we say that we do, that the church is somehow and in some small way a provisional expression of the kingdom of God on earth, then what are we saying about that kingdom? Well, let’s start with concerns about the patriarchal language of kingdom. When we use that language, which we’ve inherited from the tradition, we immediately set up a hierarchy and hierarchies are all about exclusion. Is that what heaven is all about? And if we’re building a bit of it here and now, are we building it inside of high walls and locked doors and stained glass barriers?
It’s worth noting in passing that our passage this morning from Paul’s letter to the Philippians ignores one critical traditional hierarchy. When Paul writes about Euodia and Syntiche he is writing about women who have worked alongside him for the sake of the gospel. So the tradition itself provides some of the tools and some of the history that we need for rereading that very tradition, and for reading the signs of our own time.
But let’s not fool ourselves for a moment into thinking that we are not also inheritors of the most difficult aspects of our tradition, and all of the hierarchies it sets up. The tradition having set them up, we recapitulate them in all kinds of subtle and not so subtle ways. Male over female. Straight over gay. Rich over poor. Majority over minority. Well educated over less educated. “High” culture over “low” culture, and so on and on to degrees that vary by location but in a pattern that is long-established and often simply left unquestioned. Even in communities such as ours.
But in this quirky little parable about the banquet, Jesus, the messiah, the savior, the lord, the king, says, “no” to all that.
How does he do that? He insists that God is among the lowly, always, and from the beginning; and this gospel insistence on the lowliness of God raises questions for us about the entire way we think about God. What if, instead of reaching for a “higher power,” Jesus is, instead, pointing in the opposite direction? What if God – the God who chose to be made known through the life of a baby born in an animal stall who grew into an outcast crucified on a barbaric instrument of state execution – what if that God is the essence of powerlessness, calling us to let go of all pretensions to power, such that we really do look at one another as fundamentally equal beings?
The guy I handed soup and sandwiches to last week in the soup line down in Rosslyn? The one who didn’t smell so good because he hasn’t had a shower in while? That one. Fundamentally, in every way that matters to God, my equal. That woman next to him? The one who was talking to herself? Same thing. The auto mechanic who wrecked my car after changing my tire? In every way that matters to God, my equal. The kids currently occupying Wall Street and K Street? Fundamentally equal to the investment bankers and lobbyists who look down upon them from their corner suites. How about the guy who stole my Macbook a couple of years ago? Fundamentally equal to Steve Jobs, and to me.
None of this means that we allow people to abuse others, but it does mean that we are called to live together differently and thus to think anew about accountability, responsibility, punishment and forgiveness, to name just a few constructs that we still rarely get right because we have not begun to learn to live together differently in the way that Jesus calls us to.
We are called to live together differently as church. We are called to live together differently as families. We are called to live together differently as schools. We are called to live together differently as neighbors, as colleagues, as citizens.
When we begin to consider such changes to basic patterns of life, the metaphor of a great banquet in a single room gives way. We can’t sit still; we can’t even stand in one place. We don’t have a lot of solid ground for building any great banquet halls these days. Indeed, in many ways, we are less like builders of banquet halls and more like small craft tossed about on a mighty and stormy sea.
It is quite clear that we are living through an age of massive cultural, economic and political change. Many have noted that the church is ripe for another reformation, and that Christianity has lived through historic shifts roughly every 500 years since the time of Jesus.
It is naïve in the extreme to imagine that massive shifts touching almost every aspect of contemporary life would somehow leave a little church in Arlington untouched.
It is impossible, in the middle of a sea change, to see the shape of the shore toward which we sail.
Moreover, Jesus never promised his followers smooth sailing. Instead, he promised to be with us in the boat when the storm is raging.
His life shows us a way to live together in the midst of stormy seas, and one thing seems abundantly clear even through the fog of uncertainty: we’re all in the same boat now.
So let’s acknowledge that reality, and sail forward with two key commitments. First, we can celebrate where we’ve been and remember it fondly, but let’s not let the past be an anchor dragging us back toward a time that will never be again. And second, let’s get rid of the imagined hierarchies with all the barriers that come with them. We don’t have first class and steerage on this boat. We really are all in it together: one human family, bound together lightly and subject to only one power – the power of love. Let love guide the way. Amen.

Bread and Darkness

Psalm 27; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46
October 2, 2011
I like to ask people God questions: When do you feel God’s presence, and how would you describe that? What does God feel like to you? What times or places or circumstances open you to the presence of God? What are thin places for you, places where the luminous presence of the divine shines through?
More than one person has described to me those moments of pure contentment when they have felt fully alive and when, in their words, “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.”
Sometimes, in the same manner as Eric Liddell from Chariots of Fire fame, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure” even if God did not make me particularly fast. Sometimes, when I’m standing on a mountaintop or at the edge of the ocean watching the inexorable tide roll in, I know myself as a spirit open to the thrust of grace, and I feel that grace wash over me.
I get that, and it makes good sense to me that when we feel most fully alive, most fully the creatures we were created to be that, at such moments, we would feel particularly connected to the one who created us.
But what about in the darkness? I don’t mean literal darkness – like caves or the middle of the night, though sometimes there and then. I mean figurative and emotional darkness. I mean depression. I mean grief. I mean failure. I mean loss. I mean death.
I’ve found that the wisdom of Psalm 27 lies in its final lines, “wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.” For, when I wait through the darkness, the light comes. Even, sometimes especially, in the midst of the darkness, when God feels most like an absence, I feel even that absence as compassion. It is as if God is suffering too, alongside me, letting me know that though the pain is real and the darkness thick and there is no clear end of it in sight, that I am not alone in it, and that it will, in the end, simply be all right.
Why meditate on the darkness on this World Communion Sunday, this Peacemaking Sunday? Well surely the weather for the past month in these parts would bring on thoughts of darkness to all but the most passionate lovers of London fog or Seattle rain. But it’s not been the weather, nor even the state of the world that’s got me connecting with the patient suffering of the psalmist.
I blame it on the Bible. Scripture is filled with the stories of people who find God most fully present in the midst of their deepest valleys. In the times of trial God is present.
This could begin to sound like little more than Hallmark card sentimentality if we leave it at that, but scripture is not a greeting card, and the New Testament passages in the lectionary this morning insist that we think more deeply about profoundly difficult circumstances.
Paul, in writing to the Philippians, claims and confesses his own troubled, dark history. Born to all the privileges of empire and having achieved rank and authority in the religious institution of his people, Paul comes to a stark realization on the road to Damascus: the institutions which have given him life and to which he has given his life are dying. The movement of Jesus is calling forth new life, and Paul has been utterly transformed, such that he is giving his all, even his life, to that resurrection movement.
The gospel passage, the strange parable of the tenant farmers who kill the master’s slaves and then his son when he sends them to collect the harvest, speaks directly to the dire condition of the religious institutions of the time. Jesus’ listeners would have recognized, in the economic relationships that the parable describes, the role that the religiously powerful played in their lives, and would have heard Jesus calling for the death of the religious institution that dominated those lives.
In other words, both the gospel reading and the reading from Paul center on the end of particular faith communities, and as we sit here this morning in a small, struggling congregation that is part of a much larger, struggling denomination, that is part of a tradition that is fast losing its hold on an entire generation of North Americans and has already forfeited its position across the entire continent that was home to its greatest glories, I cannot help wondering if there is a word from God for us in these passages.
Session met for several hours yesterday morning to consider the congregation’s budget for 2012, and we are contemplating major changes that may include the end, the death really, of some longstanding ministries. That’s ministries, not ministers. That said, while we certainly aren’t planning for any physical deaths, we are also contemplating some major changes in staffing patterns.
Our texts this morning insist on the necessity of change, but they do not pull punches in pretending that change is simple, without pain, without loss and letting go, without the experience of mourning and grief, without time in the darkness.
I’m not saying any of this to scare you or despair you, but rather to invite you into the process and the conversation through the rest of this month as we head toward presenting a preliminary budget to you at the end of the month.
By dent of circumstance – or grace – this evening Cindy Bolbach, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), will be with us for unchurch. Cindy is an incredibly wise and intelligent woman who, through her travels as moderator, has a far broader perspective on church than any of us. Come tonight and listen, and ask her questions.
For the next three Sundays of unchurch, again by circumstance or by grace, two of the initially planned guests have had to postpone and we’d intended an open forum for the third already. So, we have now three scheduled evenings that we will use for an open conversation on the future of Clarendon Presbyterian Church.
Why now? Last spring we celebrated together the passage of amendment 10-A, the change in our denomination’s form of government that, frankly, catches the rest of the church up to where we’ve been for almost 20 years – ordaining gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender church officers and empowering them to leadership in the church. Thanks be to God.
Over those 20 years this small congregation has played out outsized role in changing the Presbyterian Church, and we’ve also played a significant role in shifting the culture. When I came here a bit more than eight years ago, Clarendon was one of a tiny handful of Presbyterian congregations in National Capital Presbytery with openly partnered gay or lesbian elders serving on its session. We were one of 17 churches in the entire denomination on the “watchlist” of the conservative Presbyterian Layman. The Layman doesn’t even keep such a list anymore because it just got too long to keep track of. Thanks be to God.
When I came here eight years ago, Clarendon was one of a tiny handful of congregations – of any denomination – in the metro area where a same-gender couple could walk in for the first time and no one in the sanctuary would think anything other than, “hm, new folks. Nice.” Today, there are dozens and dozens of congregations – Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, even Baptist – where that is true. Thanks be to God.
When I came here eight years ago, the Commonwealth of Virginia was preparing to pass an amendment to its constitution to ban same-gender marriage. In the face of the passage of that amendment, we were in the news across the country for the stand that we took on marriage equality. Today that amendment would not pass the popular vote in the Commonwealth, and our own policy is no longer particularly noteworthy. Thanks be to God.
We have so much to be thankful for in the parts that we have been able to play in helping to bend the arc of the moral universe a bit closer to justice over these past two decades. Thanks be to God.
We have run the race with perseverance, and we have fulfilled our calling. With have lived fully into our ordination. Thanks be to God.
If this were a movie, we could roll the credits, collect a few Oscars, and gather at the wine bar to celebrate.
But this is not a movie. A central part of why we existed has, plain and simple, changed dramatically and, frankly, far more quickly than most of us dared to dream even five years ago.
And all of that, which is to be celebrated wildly, also leaves us in a far different cultural and even ecclesiastical context than we were in eight years ago. It leaves us facing, as a community and as individual leaders within it, the fundamental questions of ordination.
If our ordination – our calling to help transform church and culture – has been fulfilled, do we have a new calling?
If the answer is “no,” then how do we move with faithfulness, to a grace-filled ending of this ministry.
If yes – if we have a new ordination, a new calling – what is it precisely, and how do we begin to live into it with grace, and with excitement, transformative passion, energy, imagination and love?
Friends, I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know three things:
First, we must ask them now, or time and circumstance will answer them for us in ways that we will not like.
Second, this is a grace-filled community in which love reigns and we will ask the questions well and hang together as we do.
Finally, and most essentially, God is with us as we ask these questions and will be with us we live into the answers no matter what those answers are.
At the beginning of this sermon, I asked “why raise this stuff on World Communion Sunday?” Well, what better day to think about the ordination of the congregation than the day when we celebrate the fact that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, that we are part of something much larger than ourselves, and that we do this work of the people as a people fed always on the bread of life and the cup of salvation.
Let us pray.
O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, grant us the wisdom and the courage for the living of these days. Amen.