Arlington Presbyterian Church
April 15, 2018
Easter 3B, 1
John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36b-48
It’s funny
how setting your mind on something brings it up in your life in lots of places.
As we’ve selected at theme of the beloved community for the next few weeks,
I’ve been wrestling with what it means to be engaged in community. I’ve been
part of a number of communities in my life.
In
undergrad, I was part of the community of the Presbyterian Student Association
at Clemson University. We gathered each Sunday evening for dinner and to
wrestle with what it means to be Christian in the world around us.
It was that
community that led me to spend a summer in an intentional Christian community
called Jubilee partners, located in the small town of Comer, Georgia. There, they
worked to resettle refugees from around the world. They taught English as a
second language and living skills for their eventual placement in homes in
Atlanta. It is there that I learned about the struggles for justice against the
death penalty, against homelessness, against violence.
I was part
of another intentional Christian community in Cleveland, OH, as a young adult
volunteer in mission. We each worked in some area of ministry in the community.
We gathered each evening for dinner together, and we wrestled together with
what it meant to be community…with struggles of mental illness and alcoholism
and indifference. We wrestled with how to create healthy boundaries with one
another, how to ask for what we needed, and how to give one another space.
In New York,
I was a part of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, where I prepared for seminary.
After a difficult break-up, I wondered if I would still have any community or
if everyone would choose my former partners. I was pleasantly surprised to
still have friends.
And at Union
theological seminary, I was part of a short-lived community of folks who
wrestled with how to live in resistance to racism in our country. We explored
how different people of different races are taught differently about race. We
explored the ways that race is defined in our country and tries to define us in
certain ways. We wrestled with how to break out of those definitions and to
grow spiritually in order to live in resistance to that powerful construct in
our society.
And while
I’ve been part of those communities throughout the years, I’ve also been a bit
of a nomad. I haven’t deeply committed myself to one particular community to
call home. I think part of that has to do with my childhood and my mother. We
moved a lot until I was in the 3rd grade and we settled in
Charleston, SC. But my mother never considered Charleston home. West Virginia
was home—where her mother was, where she was raised, where generations of her
family lived.
But she was
also afraid to get close to people. She had friends, but never really any close
friends. She was always afraid of how they would judge her. And the sad thing
is that it keeps her from experiencing God’s overwhelming love in the context
of community. I will note that as we have gotten older, my family has gotten
closer and closer and there have been lots of opportunities for us to share
that love with one another.
The beloved
community that Martin Luther King talks about is the result of working through
non-violent methods to restore relationships between God’s children so that
justice prevails. It takes a deep engagement in community. And I fear that I
have kept community at arm’s length in order to avoid the vulnerability it
takes to show up.
Sometimes, I
feel like the disciples. Bewildered and confused, unsure about how to move
forward. As they are sitting there listing to the two disciples who have
encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus just shows up offering them
peace. He offers them his hands to see his flesh. He sits and eats with them at
the table.
And what
does he do with them, he shines light on the scriptures so that they can
understand why things went the way that they did. And he invites them to be a
witness to these things—actually, he doesn’t invite them. He says that they are
witnesses to these things. And as followers of Christ, we to are witnesses to
these things.
In a
commentary I read, Caroline Lewis argues that we witness in our very being.
It’s not about what we say or what we do. It’s about who we are as children of
God, as followers of Christ.
She writes,
I suspect that for many of us, hearing that we are witnesses
is not necessarily good news. We remember how often have we declined our
identity. We remember how often we have deferred testimony to others. We
remember how often we have determined that our witness wouldn’t make a
difference anyway, so why bother? But, in doing so, we deny the truth of who we
are and who Jesus needs us to be. We give up avowals about God that not enough
people get to hear or experience. And we forgo the fact that we are never NOT
giving witness to God.[1]
For me that’s
the rub. But as I buy a house and start to put down some roots here in DC, I
wonder what it might look like to lean in a little more to claim this city as
my home. What does it mean for a place to be home?
The 1 John
passage claims that we are all children of God. It’s a little black and white
in its articulation of who is with and without sin. But it illustrates
dramatically the tension between grounding one’s witness in the resurrection
and grounding one’s witness in the world. The purpose of the book is to urge
the community to be unified in bearing witness to the resurrection of Jesus,
the messiah. It calls the community to know God’s love and to share it with one
another. In the next chapter, there is the famous text, Beloved, let us love
one another because love is of God and everyone who loves, is born of God and
knows God. And anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is
love.
In his
speech in Memphis at Mason Temple Church of God in Christ, addressing the
sanitation workers and the community in Memphis, he also says that we are all
children of God and that the movement is not one of divisiveness and hate, but
a movement grounded in love seeking to ensure that all of God’s children live
in security, are able to eat 3 meals a day, and able to live with dignity. In
King’s beloved community, people who are divided by race engage conflicts in
loving, non-violent ways that lead to justice. This way when the conflicts are
over, the people can live together peacefully in a spirit of love.
This is the
hard work. It has ramifications with the way I engage my neighbors in my new
neighborhood. It has ramifications for how I engage in the political process.
It has ramifications for how and with whom I spend my time. And where I put my
energies. It has ramifications with the way I show up as a witness to the
gospel of Jesus Christ—one who sought a holistic reconciliation between God and
humankind.
I don’t
really have any answers I suppose. In some ways I’m being hard on myself. I
have showed up many times in real ways in the communities which I have been a
part.
At the same time, we all have growing edges.
It’s not the
same for all of us here. Maybe your story is like mine. Or maybe it’s
completely different. But where are your growing edges? How might your witness
be more aligned with the Kingdom of God? Where might you be holding back just a
little thinking that someone else would do it better? Or that you’re not ready?
Or that you’re too busy? Or overwhelmed or scared or tired?
The good
news is that we don’t have to be perfect. In my yoga class yesterday, I was
reminded of this. I kept falling in the flower pose. And the instructor said,
don’t worry, you’re just finding your edges. It’s ok to fall.
We have this
amazing witness to God’s love for us in the scriptures. We too can turn to the
scriptures to find better understanding as Jesus did with the disciples in that
room when he showed up out of nowhere. We too can gather together to read and
discuss. It’s an opportunity not only to know God better, but to understand
ourselves as children of god. So that we might go into the world being the best
witness to the gospel that we can.
Thanks be to
God.
Amen.
[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5126
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