Dear Friends,
Many of us were unable to gather this past Sunday morning and a few of those who gathered requested a copy of the sermon. So below is a freshly-edited version copy of the Rally Day sermon. While the sermon touches on the grief we are all experiencing as our religious institutions and communities change, I hope that you are able to hear within this grief an invitation to live fully and love wastefully—both as individuals and as a congregation.
Peace and love,
Rob
One of my favorite public theologians passed into God’s love earlier this month. John Shelby Spong was an Episcopal bishop who made waves in the 1990s with his piercing questions about the meaning of Christianity, the ways in which spiritual metaphors had become literalized, and his radical embrace of an expanded community—including lesbian and gay ministers before this was a common conversation.
Bishop Spong once said: “I assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be.”
His writings invited me to be less religious and worry a little less about following the rules of Christianity and so I wanted to use a reading from his first major splash into the public consciousness as a starting point for our reflection today.
The following reading is from the conclusion of his 1998 book Why Christianity Must Change or Die. The book is an examination of some of the major tenets of Christianity.
He writes:
The God who is the Ground of Being cannot be so owned. God is a universal presence undergirding all of life. God does not bless and curse individuals according to an imposed prescription of conduct. God, the source of life, calls us all to live fully. God, the source of love, calls us all to love wastefully. God, the Ground of Being, calls us all to have the courage to be ourselves. So when we live, love, and have the courage to be, we are engaged in worship, we are expanding our humanity, we are breaking out of our barriers.
That is the call of the God who lives beyond the exile. It is that God to whom or to which all religious institutions must point. It is the call of this God that will carry us into a living worship in the postmodern world. That will be the basis of the faith that will sustain me as I live in my postmodern world.
Those who think that Christianity consists of a supernatural deity who invades the world periodically, who works through a virgin birth, a physical resuscitation, and a cosmic ascension, will find all that I say a threat to their faith. Those who believe that creeds are literally true, Bibles are inerrant, or popes are infallible will find me a challenge to their presuppositions. Those who have made the consensus of yesterday their only understanding of truth will call this heresy. Those who cannot think of God outside the categories of theism will call me an a-theist. I expect to hear such charges as these more than once.
But that religious understanding is doomed to die, no matter how frantically or hysterically people seek to defend it. It will not survive. For countless numbers who live in the Christian world, it ceased long ago to be compelling. I write for those for whom it has died already. I write to call those who are in exile from the ancient understandings of faith into some new possibilities. If they can hear the call, respond to it, claim it anew, and walk as believers beyond the exile, then my purpose will have been achieved.
There are so many times in which I feel like a believer in exile. People of faith in Texas making laws to control women’s bodies makes me feel like a believer in exile. Christians refusing to get vaccinated, supposedly putting their faith in God’s providence instead of the miraculous God-given creativity of scientists and doctors makes me feel like a believer in exile. Christians demanding their religious freedom to treat their LGBTQ neighbors, Muslim, and other marginalized neighbors as second-class citizens make me feel like a believer in exile.
But it’s not just about politics. It’s not just about conservatives versus liberals.
I have been to progressive churches, LGBTQ-embracing churches, social justice-loving churches and heard people echo this idea that humanity is somehow intrinsically flawed, intrinsically inclined towards sin. I hear this theology and I feel like a believer in exile.
I go to American Baptists gatherings—this denomination that I love, this denomination that I claim as my spiritual home—and I hear people talk about a God who is all-powerful, controlling each and every moment. And I feel like a believer in exile.
I have never experienced God in this way.
Like all of us, I am a child of a post-enlightenment, post-modern, and honestly, a post-Christendom world. I have never experienced a God who is in control—the countless tragedies of the past hundred years shattered that idea. I have never experienced myself as only debased and sinful.
This doesn’t mean, though, that I haven’t experienced the Holy and it doesn’t mean that I haven’t experienced God as a saving presence in my life. I have and I do. I experience ongoing salvation in my Christian faith.
I honestly believe that when Bishop Spong spoke of believers in exile, he was speaking about most of us post-enlightenment, post-modern, and post-Christendom citizens of the world. He was naming the glaring truth that if Christianity is to offer any meaning in our lives, it has to be based on our honest experience and not the literalized metaphors of two thousand years ago, the rituals of a thousand years ago, and the customs and traditions of a hundred years ago.
And we are seeing this all around us.
As a congregation, we are having hard and honest conversations about our decreased membership, recognizing that we are a part of a much, much larger cultural shift. We are one of the thousands of congregations with less than forty members gathered in a space meant to seat hundreds. I am afraid that Bishop Spong’s prophetic words have come true. In the eyes of most people, Christianity has failed to change and we are now dying.
If ever there was a time to rally, it’s right now.
One of the gifts of the past year and a half has been that Christian communities were forced to re-evaluate and rethink what it means to be a community. We were forced to think about what it means to worship, what it means to re-enact these rituals and traditions in a new way. And here is what many of us discovered:
While we longed for human touch and human contact and we longed for embodied community, the touchstones of our traditions were a lot more malleable than we expected. Two hymns, an offering, and a fifteen-minute sermon wasn’t the only way to worship.
So many individual communities rallied. They found ways to keep true to their convictions while being a community in a totally new way.
Bishop Spong called for the Church Universal to rally—to keep true to our conviction that we live in a God-soaked world and that the Sacred is constantly being incarnated in our lives while discovering and using new metaphors, new rituals, new traditions that speak to the world today.
Bishop Spong invited us to approach our faith like little children, eyes full of wonder and little expectations about how things are supposed to be or how things are supposed to work. To rally in this sense is to embrace a child-like curiosity and sense of adventure.
“Let the little children unto me,” Jesus said.
To do this, we have to let go of the idea that to rally—to be restored—is to be returned to the way that you used to be. I think of a marathon runner rallying for those last two miles. They do not have the same capacity, the same level of strength, the same mental attitude that they had at mile one, but they do have a new type of strength and a new mental vision that will allow them to finish the race.
In my work as a chaplain, there is always a part of me that cringes when I hear the families of critically ill patients hoping and praying that their loved one is going to rally. So often their hope is that life “as it used to be” is going to be restored instead of a deeper and more authentic restoration—a restoration that respects the way things used to be, recognizes the ways things really and truly are now, and honors truth that death is a part of life.
Sometimes rallying means letting go.
It’s time for our faith tradition to rally. Its time to let go of things that no longer allow to live fully, to embrace our current reality, and to discover with child-like joy new ways of naming the Holy presence in our midst and new ways of naming the Christ experience.
It is time for The Community Church of Wilmette to rally—to embrace the gift of this moment, the opportunities we have to care for our sisters and brothers and siblings right now, and to be brutally honest about which rituals and traditions and customs speak life into this community and which ones we need to let go of. Where do we need to invent new rituals and new traditions?
And beloved, it is time for each of us individually to rally. It’s been a hard, hard two years. So much has changed and is continuing to change. The phrase “the new normal” feels outdated. As an individual, as a mother, a father, a friend, a spouse, as a person of faith—a Christian—what is giving you life right now. What are you holding on to for no real good reason, except habit and following the past of least resistance?
Beloved, what is empowering you to live fully and love wastefully?
Amen.
Stumbling Upon the House of God
Thanks to everyone who has sent me pictures and videos of the places where they’ve stumbled upon the house of God. Here are a few of the places where members of our community have seen a glimpse of the Holy here and now.
Hope Brown at Freedom Farm for Vets. She describes the farm as “quiet and peaceful and just a beautiful place to go and contemplate.”
Monica Geocaris in her happy place.
Members of the CCW Community leading practice interviews with young people at Family Matters. We will be partnering again this year with Family Matters as they expand their programming at Family Matters.
Join Us In Person For Worship
Please remember that beginning last week, weekly in-person worship services have resumed on Sunday morning. This week, we are reflecting together on Jesus’ famous words: “Whoever isn’t against us is for us.” Who are our allies in living into God’s new heaven and earth here and now? How are we called to build stronger relationships with our mission partners?
Music will be led by CCW Music Director Winifred Brown, Judy Smith, and Adelaide Leonard. John Jacobs will be serving as our worship leader and Betty Jacobs will be hosting coffee hour.
We are continuing to request that everyone wears a mask in the sanctuary during worship. To watch the service live online via Zoom, please click on the button below or go to our website at www.ccwilmette.org and follow the link at the top of the homepage.
Living and Serving Together
Interested in Joining a Covenant Group?
Anyone interested in joining or forming a Covenant Group is invited to meet with the Deacons on Sunday, October 17th after worship. We have a couple of active Covenant Groups that could expand to include a few more members or we could form a new Covenant Group so that everyone who would like to participate is able.
CCW Book Group
Pastoral Intern Anna Piela is currently coordinating a new gathering of the CCW Book Group. The first book we are going to read and discuss is Matt Haig’s memoir Reason to Stay Alive. The book is available in print, as an ebook, and as an audiobook from online sellers. If you are interested in participating, please email Anna this week at apiela@ccwilmette.org to let her know dates and times that work best.