A Chance to Be A Community Called

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

May 20, 2012

Have you ever found yourself agitated by a nagging feeling that something in your life needed to change? Ever felt as if there was something more that you needed to do or to explore or to try or, perhaps, to quit doing or trying? Ever had a still, small, internal voice whispering, “there is more to life than what you’re doing with yours”? Ever found some variation on this question running round and round your brain: “what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”

What does it mean to be called?

Well, part of it surely comes in having the experience of a sense of purpose that goes beyond the narrow confines of your own life. That would be a “higher calling.”

There are other, lower callings, as well.

Last week I read a quote from a billionaire who said, “that has always been the main focus of my life and my energies — to make money.” Clearly, as the pirates of the Caribbean might say, “the gold called to him.”

Actually, that was one of the saddest things I’ve read in a long while, and it left me thinking, “what an incredibly impoverished life this rich man has led.”

What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

The Rev. Fred Rogers, better known simply as Mr. Rogers, once said, “the meaning of life is service.” Another way of putting it, that I’m pretty sure he would have embraced, would be “the main focus of my life and energies has been to serve others, in particular, children.” What an incredibly rich life he lived.

What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

Or, to use the frame of the billionaire’s quote: what comes after the dash for you? In other words, how do you complete the phrase, “that has always been the main focus of my life and my energies”?

Some of you may have seen Friday morning that I “crowd-sourced” this section of this morning’s sermon by asking Facebook friends what comes after the dash for them. As you’d expect, some of the answers were elegant statements of faith: “do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with my God”; “follow Christ.” Others were a bit less orthodox: “live a good story, mine and no one else's.” Some were silly, “make David Ensign giggle.”

So, how ‘bout for you? Can you name, in a phrase, what has been the main focus of your life and your energy?

*****

Personally, I have a hard time with the question because I don’t think I have ever had a singular focus. I have always felt, to borrow the title from a little book one of my seminary profs wrote 25 years ago, that I had “several callings.” I think many of us do, and those callings are shaped by season and circumstance.

For example, for most of the past two decades, the central calling of my life has been to be father to my children. Obviously, I have also been called to serve as pastor of this congregation and a couple of others before. I’ve also felt called to the work of systemic change in the church around ordination issues, and change in the culture around GLBT equality and civil rights.

The discerning in these several callings has never been of the lightning bolt variety, but rather the still, small voice, calling in the night with a persistence like that of water dripping on stone and gradually reshaping it over the years.

In the midst of a few decisions I have been tempted to use the methodology that Acts seems to recommend.

The strange little story from Acts is one of the more enigmatic “call stories” in all of scripture. The call of Matthias to join the disciples is accomplished by the roll of the dice.

We’re having a congregational meeting in a couple of weeks. We could change the by-laws and adopt dice-rolling as our Biblically based method of electing ruling elders! I rush to add that I am not recommending that – just saying that it would be based on the Bible and on the earliest tradition of the church.

No, the calling of Matthias is not instructive to the church, as a body, or to us as individuals in our discerning at least not if we look to it for guidance on methodology. On the other hand, this story does remind us that discerning call is a matter of circumstance, of context, and of chance – at least insofar as we use chance to name things that we simply have no way of knowing with any degree of certainty.

Let me put that just a little differently. I am pretty sure that I was called to be a professional basketball player, but the matter of chance DNA left me swimming in the shallow end of the athletic gene pool.

Sometimes calling is like that. Your gifts, your capacities, your history of choices along the line and the choices others have made for you bring you, at various points in your life, either face-to-face with opportunities or they don’t. Sometimes it is just a roll of the dice – figuratively speaking.

Faith in the midst of the rolling dice is not a matter of trusting that God has weighted the dice in advance; rather, faith in the midst of the rolling comes in trusting that God will be there no matter what numbers turn up, and that God can work in and through our lives to redeem whatever moment chance has brought us to.

That trust is fundamental to our identify as a community called to a particular way of life. We are a community called, and the calling has enough specificity to guide our decision-making along the way as we determine how to focus our common life and energy.

In other words, we have come to helpful clarity when it comes to saying what we are doing with this one wild and precious life.

We have declared, as a congregation, that the focus of our common life and energies is welcoming people to this table, to be richly nourished in breaking bread and sharing cup, and to be sent into the world following the way of Jesus to nourish all our neighbors in body, mind and spirit.

We are, therefore, a community called. We have a common vocation. What are we going to do with the one wild and precious life that we have been given as a congregation? We’re going to feed people; we’re going to exhibit to the world a kind of hospitality that breaks down barriers and builds new community; we going to try together to live like Jesus out in the world feeding people, creating spaces of welcome wherever we are.

That’s why, for example, later this week one of our elders, Travis Reindl, will make an eloquent case for marriage equality before our sisters and brothers in National Capital Presbytery. That why, for example, tomorrow evening some of us will sit down to dinner with the volunteer coordination from the Arlington Food Assistance Center to talk about what’s next in our relationship with them. That’s why, for example, we are in the midst of a life-giving round of dinner groups, sitting down with one another to break bread and build relationships. That’s why, for example, we’ve got a green and growing garden out in the yard. That’s why, for example, we’ll be distributing bag meals for A-SPAN again next month.

We are a community called, and as we live into new models of ministry, our common calling binds us even as our way of living into that calling changes with time and circumstance.

This is true for us as congregation, and it is true for us as individuals. It is always immensely helpful to have some sense of specificity when asked about “main focus” and “where your energy will be spent.” That’s why we’ve worked and re-worked the congregation’s mission statement. It’s a fine practice for each of us to engage from time to time as individuals, as well.

What are you doing with this one wild and precious life?

You might not be able to say with perfect and predictive clarity. Sometimes, after all, it’s a roll of the dice. However, you always have the chance to answer, quite simply, this: I’m going to live, so God can use me, anytime, anywhere.

You and I, each of us and all of us together, no matter how the die may be cast – are called to that wild and precious way of living. Amen.

A Community of the Table

May 6, 2012

Acts 8:26-40

As we’re doing often these days, I want to begin with a question – another deceptively simple-sounding one: outside of Sunday-morning worship, what do we do together, as Clarendon Presbyterian, that feels like church to you?

*****

Last week we talked about the centrality of love in defining the community of the church. I bring that up here – and will do so regularly until Pentecost – to underscore that while many aspects of this thing we call “church” are negotiable and maybe even up for grabs, that one is not. We are, we must be, known for how we love one another.

That was the identity of the people of the way in Acts. They were first noticed by outsiders who said, simply, “see how they love one another.”

It’s important to remind ourselves of that, because so much else is up for grabs, and I don’t mean just at Clarendon. So much is up for grabs in the broader church, and so much is up for grabs in the culture at large. To see how everything is up for grabs you need look no further than the questions that have pressed in on our own denomination for the past several decades: the authority of scripture; Christology; ordination; marriage. Some of these same questions press in on the broader culture, and other similar ones – known collectively, and deceptively, as “social issues” – all getting at essentially the same thing: who is an insider and who is an outsider. The boundaries and borders that seemed settled and secure to our forebears are anything but in our age.

Critics of the liberal church often accuse us of accommodating the culture, of giving in to popular fads instead of standing fast and holding tight to eternal verities. Not to put too fine a spin on it, but the same charge was leveled at Jesus and his followers, and at the early church in Acts, so whether or not we’re right in the positions we’ve taken at least we’re in good company.

The strange little story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch is instructive here. Many versions of the Bible subhead this episode as “the conversion of the eunuch,” but one commentator I read last week suggested that the passage might better be called “the conversion of Phillip.”

Take that suggestion a step further, and we’re talking about the conversion of the church, itself. Like the institutional church as it struggles to relate well with those beyond its membership, Phillip no doubt encountered the eunuch with all kinds of preconceived notions about who this person was, what his status could be within the community of faith, and what rules or traditions marked out the boundaries of that community. But before the episode ends all of that will be turned on its head.

Contrary to what Phillip likely assumed, the eunuch knew scripture even if, like most of us, he didn’t fully comprehend it. If he’s reading Isaiah, as the story tells us, he’s almost undoubtedly also familiar with the Torah, the law, and, in that familiarity, he probably knows himself as an outsider. Specifically, I’m willing to bet that he knew Deuteronomy 23:1—“No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.”

He knew that just like young gay and lesbian kids today know the word “abomination.” If you are marginalized or belittled you know the proof texts that are used to keep you down.

But the Spirit calls Phillip to sit with this man, this outsider, and just talk.

Have you heard of the “Out to Dinner” campaign? It’s a project started by Zach Wahls, the 20-year-old son of two moms whose testimony before the Iowa legislature was a viral sensation a while back. He’s asking people to do what the Spirit asked of Phillip: get together and talk, and do it over a shared meal.

Conversation is the beginning of conversion, and conversation over the breaking of bread is the best birthplace for such transformation. At our very best, as church, we model this. We gather around this table, we share the bread and cup, we talk with each other about the places in our lives that seem most up in the air, we love one another even when we don’t see those up-in-the-air things in the exact same way, and, in time, the Spirit works its transforming way with us.

There are a lot of communities of faith across the country and around the world right now who are turning the tables and the traditions, who are refining and redefining what it means to be church in a postmodern age. I think that in many of these places contemporary Phillips are encountering Ethiopian eunuchs of our age and a whole lot of converting and transformation and table turning and tradition tipping is going on.

None of them offer “off-the-shelf” models that we can simply employ in our context. In fact, paying particular attention to cultural context is one of the most important marks of emerging churches. In fact, that attention to context distinguishes the emerging church from the mid-20^th-century model of the Mainline Protestant church in America in which congregations were often seen as branch offices or franchise locations of the mother church.

There’s a little gathering in Brooklyn called St. Lydia’s. It’s only a couple of dozen folks most of the time, but they are experiencing transformation and expressing it with a reach that far exceeds their number. Their worship – the way they “do church” – involves gathering for a meal that they make together and share over Eucharistic prayers, songs, and conversation. That’s it. That’s church in their context, and folks are traveling to Brooklyn from all over the place just to see it.

We’ve talked about new models of ministry for years, we even named “being church for the new millennium” as a particular call of this congregation. We’ve actually been doing church in new ways – the ways you named as we began – for quite a while, but we’ve been trying to fit new wine into old wine skins, and now that skin is showing the strain.

Whatever model of ministry, of being church, we embrace in the next season of our life here, there are a couple of things that are clear, and that this story from Acts, along with the word from 1^st John remind us of: we will center our common life on this table, convinced that here we are fed, and from here we are sent out to feed others; we will understand that this table does not belong to us, it belongs to the one who welcomes us and who welcomes all, and so we will be like Phillip and embrace even those whom our own tradition has labeled outsider; and we will love one another, because love is from God and everyone – everyone – who loves is born of God and knows God.

Beloved, let us love one another. Let us come to Christ’s table in love.

A Community of Love

Acts 4:5-12

April 29, 2012

I want to begin this morning with a simple definition, and a deceptive question.

The definition is of the word “resurrection.” We hear that word today, inevitably, with the weight of two thousand years of Christian history and it is almost impossible to hear it as anything other than a essentially Christian word with associated theological concepts, constructs and orthodoxies attached to it. But in the New Testament Greek it’s just a common verb meaning “rise up” or, in the passive tense that is used in the Easter stories, “raised up.” One could properly use the word to speak of getting out of bed in the morning. It is an ordinary word.

That is the simple definition. Now for the deceptive – and not rhetorical – question: where in your life have you witnessed resurrection?

*****

A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call at about two minutes past five o’clock in the afternoon here at church. My first inclination was to let the answering machine pick up because I was just about to head out the door. My second thought was, “it’s somebody trying to sell us something.” I checked the caller ID and it wasn’t an 800 number. In fact, it was a Falls Church number, which led instantly to my third thought: “it’s somebody asking for money which we don’t have.”

So, with the perfect pastoral predisposition of mild irritation (because I was ready to go home) and deep suspicion (because I’ve answered too many calls from people wanting nothing but money), I answered the phone.

Irritation and suspicion are emotional symptoms of scarcity. When we are afraid that we have too little time, we resent any perceived imposition on that time. When we are afraid that we have too little money, we suspect any perceived solicitation of that money.

While time and money are among the precious commodities that we guard most dearly, our sense of scarcity is, of course and alas, not limited to them.

Within many institutional systems – workplace, schools, churches, families – we act as if power is scarce and so if we happen to have it we hold on tightly and never share lest we wind up powerless. Ever been in a classroom when the teacher’s power was threatened? Ever worked in an office with a supervisor who could not bear to share power? No matter the setting, it’s never a pretty sight.

It’s also incredibly counterproductive – and entirely unnecessary because power in any institutional setting is always a renewable resource.

Sometimes we act as if love is a fossil fuel – a scarce non-renewable resource – and thus make fossils of our hearts.

What does any of that have to do with this story from Acts, or with the lessons from the Johanine literature?

The book of Acts opens with the apostles gathered together in a room. You can read the scene in many ways: are they organizing to continue the work or are they hiding out in fear? Have they decided that their present gathering – a small group devoted to praying – is just fine or do they want to engage the wider world? None of that is certain. But one thing is clear, they were far from powerful, far from mainstream, far from established.

The future was cloudy and their personal track record wasn’t that great either. One of their inner circle had betrayed their teacher and turned him over to be crucified. At that teacher’s most difficult hour, when all he asked was that they pray with him, they’d all fallen asleep. And Peter, the rock upon whom that teacher wanted to build the new community – had turned tail and denied even knowing Jesus.

Talk about dwelling in scarcity! Trust is scarce when there’s been betrayal. Confidence is scarce when there’s been failure. Courage is scarce when there’s been denial.

That’s how the story of Acts begins, and the story of Acts is the story of the beginning of the church. More than that – and we’ll explore this over the course of the next several weeks – the story of the church in Acts has a great deal to teach us about the variety of ways that we could think about being church today, and, in fact, it is teaching a lot of folks in small places around the world today about ways to be church.

So how can it be that a story that begins in suspicion, doubt and fear in chapter one finds Peter preaching eloquently before the powers that be by chapter four?

Liturgically we remain in the season of Eastertide and before the day of Pentecost. Perhaps we remain in that season as church.

We have witnessed resurrection – in all kinds of ways. We began with some conversation about resurrection experiences.

We have experienced resurrection as church. Often, in fact. And so we know that resurrection brings new life. Just yesterday we helped give new life to a beaten down house. Our steadfast witness around the ordination of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Presbyterians has helped give new life to a beaten down denomination. Our deep commitment to the fellowship of the table has helped give new life to beaten down neighbors.

All of that is remarkable, grace-filled, amazing. Yet we seem to find ourselves often in the position of the disciples after Easter: gathered together, saying our prayers, in one room – decently and in order, so quiet that we don’t disturb a soul.

What happened to Peter that pushed him into the public square to preach?

Most of us know the Pentecost story, and we’ll recall it with drama next month, but I’ll be damned if I can actually answer my own question. What happened to Peter? Wind and fire happened to Peter.

Those are rich and powerful images, metaphors in fact. But what happened to Peter?

I could answer that question with reference to a long history of theological reflection, and it might be mildly interesting, albeit entirely theoretically so. I could answer it speculatively with reference to that same long history.

But instead I’ll answer it personally, because I think that will dance closer to the truth, and when one is talking about wind and fire one ought first to admit that to do more than dance close to wind-driven flame is pretty foolish, and even that is risky and imprecise.

What happened to Peter?

Love happened to Peter. The love that is at the heart of the passages from John and 1^st John that we read earlier happened to Peter. The love of God that is not diminished by our failures, our doubts, our fears, happened to Peter. The love of God that is so inexhaustible that it defied and defeated the powers of death happened to Peter. The love of God that swept through a gathered community and danced around their heads and shoulders as if to set them all aflame, happened to Peter.

I know.  I am a witness. It has happened to me. More than once. More than I can count. It has happened in this very place.

It happened again just the other day. For reasons that I really couldn’t explain but that are not, I promise you, reducible to duty and responsibility, I picked up the phone and listened as a young Latina woman shared her story of fear and desperation and asked only that someone pray with her. There was, I’m sure, a bit of training and preparation involved in the technique of listening, but my own experience of the moment so utterly transgressed and transcended those notions or techniques. I was just a partner in a dance that was moved by wind and fire. Love happened, and, I promise you, it was not my love.

I was tired, ready to go home, suspicious and leery. Nevertheless, love happened.

All I could possibly say for myself was that I was willing, barely, to pick up the phone and say, “hello,” and that I was prepared to give an account of the hope that is within me.

What if that’s all it actually takes to build, to become, to be “a more vibrant congregation”? What if all it takes is the barely willing gesture of saying, “hello”? What if all it takes is the willingness to share our stories when those stories can help a friend or a stranger in need?

What if all it takes really is the willingness to bear one another’s burdens, to bind one another up, to love one another? What if it really is all that simple? What if all we are ever called to be is a community of love?

Amen.