Sermons

“Embodying the Call, Embodying the Invitation”

Psalm 20:1-5; I Corinthians 11:20-29, 12:12-13, 26-27 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – September 22, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that our hearts and our lives might be opened to the fullness of the body of Christ.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

First, a word about timing.  Every fall, the congregations I have led, along with many other Disciples churches, have taken two weeks to focus on the work of Reconciliation Ministry. Reconciliation was started in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in part as a response to the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a way for the Disciples of Christ to be more intentional about our calling to dismantle racism within our society.  Two Sundays were designated for our congregations to focus on the issues involved and receive a special offering to fund the work.

Now, if you look closely at the flyer in your bulletin, you will see that the two Sundays listed there don’t exactly match up to the two Sundays we are focusing on Reconciliation here at VLM.  We’re starting and finishing a week early, using September 22^ndand 29^th, rather than September 29^thand October 6^th.  Why?  Well, for starters, I would suggest that whoever picked these dates didn’t have a good understanding of the practical logistics of communication in congregations that use monthly newsletters.  Breaking this up over two months is just silly

But more importantly, there is something else happening on October 6^th, and every first Sunday of October – what I’ve often referred to as a Disciples “high holy day” – namely, World Communion Sunday.  It has always been my contention that Reconciliation deserves its two weeks and World Communion Sunday deserves its own Sunday as well, without having to share the spotlight with one another.  I had long assumed this scheduling conflict was merely an unfortunate oversight; maybe I’m just getting cynical in mid-life, but it occurred to me this year to wonder if the folks who launched this thought that asking for two Sundays was overly optimistic, so they decided to make it overlap with World Communion Sunday, when Disciples were already prone to talking about unity across lines of culture and color, hoping to at least get one and sort of a half Sundays for addressing racism.  Perhaps someday I’ll do some research and see if anyone remembers how the dates were chosen.

But for now, as you’ve probably already guessed, we will continue to start Reconciliation a week early, giving it our attention for full two Sundays.  As Disciples, there is nothing within our tradition that insists that I preach on a particular subject at any given time.  But given the insidious nature of racism, it has always seemed spiritually prudent to me to treat the Reconciliation focus as a mandate, to use the occasion as a discipline to ensure we talk about hard things we might otherwise prefer to avoid.  My preaching for Reconciliation has evolved over time, as my congregations have become less monochromatic and the conversations more nuanced.  In recent years, I’ve also become more committed to having us hear from a multiplicity of voices, and have begun sharing the preaching with others, like in previous years when we heard from Tim and Lace, and next week when we’ll hear from Mandy.  In truth, such conversations will not be adequate until all of us are sharing our perspectives, confessing our limitations, and listening deeply to those most impacted by the racism that permeates our society.  It is always my hope that these annual sermons are not stand-alone addresses, but the beginnings of conversations that reverberate through the following weeks and months.

Another word about timing: now that we’ve clarified that Reconciliation comes around every year at more or less the same time, we can recognize and lament the fact that the denominational scheduling may not have been obvious.  A casual observer could just as easily have assumed that the preacher chose to preach about racism because of current events – because there’s always something, isn’t there.  The August of 2009 was the height of vitriolic birtherism nonsense.  In August of 2014 Michael Brown was shot by police and left to die on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.  And less than two weeks ago, cheerleaders from Lincoln High School here in San Diego were subjected to horrible, racist taunts while attending a football game at San Clemente High in Orange County.

It’s always something.  But merely reacting to the news isn’t usually the best way to engender substantive dialogue. That’s why I’m so grateful to Reconciliation Ministry for providing us with a scriptural theme every year, so we can remember that the work of identifying and interrogating and dismantling racism is an integral part of our calling as followers of Jesus.  This year’s theme is “Embodying the Call” and it’s really just drawn from the last two verses I read just now from First Corinthians.  But it brings me to another, final, ironic word about timing:  pulling the theme from this section of First Corinthians led me in a direction that sort of makes me wish I was giving this sermon on World Communion Sunday. Because communion is a wonderful context in which to situate this conversation.  But also, because if we’re talking about communion, as Disciples, we have to recognize that everything we’re saying is just as much about the whole of our identity as Christians.

So let’s talk about communion, and the Body, and the Call, and our identity as followers of Jesus, and what was going on in Corinth, and the racism that is present in our own lives and society, and how we do the work of dismantling it together.

If you have ever served as a Deacon, or even just watched closely while other serve as Deacons, you are probably acutely aware that the primary preoccupation of those serving communion is making sure that everyone is served.  Sometimes that means reaching farther into a row than is comfortable, or walking around to the other side, or even having a whispered conversation with a first-time visitor, trying to make sure they know they’re welcome to partake without pressuring them into doing so before they’re ready.  The point is that we really, really don’t want to leave anyone out.

That is not what was happening in Corinth.  As Paul says, when the church there got together for a meal, it wasn’t really the Lord’s Supper, because they would all just go ahead with their own thing, and some ended up hungry, while others got drunk.  The meal cannot be called the Lord’s Supper if it isn’t shared, Paul insisted.  As Disciples of Christ, Christians who place the Lord’s Supper at the center of our shared faith, we know that the point is both about the sharing the bread and the cup, and also much larger than that. The point is that we are responsible for one another’s well-being.  “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”  That is the call we are asked to embody.  Now, it’s one thing to answer a call, but a deeper thing entirely to embody it.  We are asked to experience the suffering of others as if it is our own.  We are asked to recognize that when we ignore the suffering of another of God’s children, we are, in truth, ignoring symptoms of pain from our own body.

Sometimes we talk about the Body of Christ like it’s a wonderful, joyous experience of unity. But we all have bodies, so we ought to know better.  Show me a body without pain, and I’ll show you a coordinated seven-year-old having an especially good day.  Why would we think being part of the Body of Christ would be any less painful than our own experience of having bodies?  When we apply what we know about how the Body of Christ works to the question of racism in our society, we need to expect that we will experience pain from multiple different body parts, and those of us who didn’t realize we were suffering need to share in that pain, so it can be properly diagnosed and treated.

This isn’t simply an issue of loving our neighbors as ourselves, though that ought to be enough to get us there.  This is a question of our very identity as followers of Jesus.  If we are to love as Jesus loved, we must cultivate an embodied solidarity with those who are suffering.  Just as God, in Jesus, joined with humanity in flesh and blood, we must feel the suffering of our fellow body members in our own flesh and blood.  If we’re not feeling that pain, it’s hard to argue we’re really connected to the body.  We need to hear that story about the cheerleaders at Lincoln High as if it happened to our own children, the product of our own flesh.  We need to share in their fear and anxiety and anger, because in diminishing them, those hurling insults were attacking the body of Christ through which God so loves the world.  It isn’t just about what we do; it’s about who we are.  It’s about who we’ve asked God to transform us into.

As Disciples of Christ, we find our clearest definition of identity at the Table.  No one is left out.  All are welcome and embraced and fed.  But the lessons we learn there don’t stay there.  They are definitive for how we live out our whole lives.  We are called to invite people to grow beyond tribalisms and nationalisms and comfort zones and language barriers.  We are called to venture out where confession offers the soul restoration and mercy flows in all directions, offering hope to the broken-hearted and opening the eyes of the blind.  If we will not be the Body together – opening ourselves to the pain of members whose lives have been ravaged by racism – we will never really celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  If we eat the bread and share the cup, “without discerning the body” as Paul says – that is, without sharing in the suffering and the joys of our fellow members of the body – we eat judgment against ourselves.  So how do we embody the invitation to the Lord’s Supper?  How do we embody the call to truly become the Body of Christ?  On this Reconciliation Sunday, we need to name that one of the essential parts of this spiritual practice is committing ourselves to eradicating racism, within our own hearts, within our congregation, within our wider church, and within the structures and systems that shape our society.  No one of us can do it alone.  And those of us less personally affected must begin by listening to and sharing in the suffering of those directly impacted by the violence racism enacts upon people of color.  As we listen, we must not get puffed up thinking we’re particularly virtuous people for dedicating ourselves to hearing another’s suffering.  Rather, we must confess that we’ve been hobbling along, pretending that we didn’t know our leg was broken, letting the wounds fester into more and more dangerous states.  We have been ignoring the wounded parts of the body, and it’s well past time to hear about that pain, whether it’s expressed in ways we’re ready for or not.  “Discerning the body” is not a pain-free process, but it’s essential if we want to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Let us ask God to grant us the grace to embody the call. Let us ask God to grant us the courage to embody the invitation.  Alleluia and Amen.