Home Page > Announcement Index > March 2, 2008

“Our Beloved Community”

Wilton Presbyterian and Grace Baptist Churches

March 2, 2008

Let me get right to the point.

We’ve some work to do. We’ve got some work to do.

There were three things that I noticed this past week that prompt me to say this.

I remembered a saying splash painted on a wall in the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C.: “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” I remembered this saying as I was doing one of the most faceless jobs in helping the hungry, homeless, and working poor--sorting cans, jars and packaged food into big anonymous bins for later delivery by Food Bank trucks to soup kitchens around the metro area. The job was necessary—boring, but necessary; the saying stuck. That’s the first thing.

The second thing. Did you, by any chance, see the program “American Masters” on PBS on Wednesday evening? The program focused on folk singer, Pete Seeger, and traced his life and career from the late-forties/early fifties through the 1960’s on up until the day the program was taped. His music I remember at the head of a folk-song movement that began sweeping the country in a resurgence of pride in this country’s roots in its common people. I remember his music; I bet many of you do as well: “Where have all the flowers gone?” “If I had a hammer,””This land is your land,” and ”Little boxes,” to name just a few of his songs of social justice. But that’s not the most important thing about Seeger. It was also his passionate commitment to freedom: the freedom to hold and exercise your own personal convictions at sometimes great cost…the public browbeating by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and his being blacklisting by the entertainment industry. No doubt, this commitment to freedom—not just for himself but for others—fueled his commitment to music as an instrument of social change through the 1960’s up till today. In the last forty years, I found myself wondering, “Where have all the flowers gone?”

And the third thing. As I was watching that program on Wednesday evening, I recalled two days before The Pew Center for I-can-remember-what had released a study on religion in America. Some of the news was unsurprising: we mainline Protestant denominations are continuing to decline, perhaps a bit more slowly, but nonetheless declining. But there was another indicator in this study that was surprising: the number of so-called “unaffiliated” people in this beloved community of ours has almost doubled within a relatively short time to better than 16%. Now, 16% may not sound like a big number; but, brothers and sisters, that’s one out of every six people you meet, they’re ”unaffiliated.” Unaffiliated, as in unconnected. Unaffiliated, as in uncommitted. Unaffiliated, as in drifting, lukewarm on everything.

At least one of these six people, a girl named Sue Cunningham once wrote, “you see…everyday, everywhere, aimlessly wandering, be it down your street, through your mind, in and out of your activities—sitting but never standing, walking but never running, staring but never seeing, listening but never hearing, hoping but never doing…They are the nothing people; the deadweight freeloaders; the sin-of-omission kids; the neither-good-nor-bad and therefore-worse. Because the good, at least, keep busy trying and the bad try just as hard. Both have that character that comes from caring, action, and conviction.” One out of six people you know, you meet, you go to school with, you work with, play with: they are unaffiliated.

So, dearly beloved, we’ve got some work to do.

But it won’t be easy work…not even for us. Because there is this temptation in American religion that says that the major concern of Christianity is the salvation of my own individual, personal, and immortal soul. As in, the primary concern of the God and Father of Jesus Christ is me and my salvation. As if religion exists to serve me.

Well, brothers and sisters, the New Testament lesson this morning has news for you and for me. For the truth is that the God of heaven and earth—of this and all other worlds—this God has a great deal more on his mind that is far more important than my soul, or your soul, or anybody’s else’s. And painful as this might be, the message of Scripture is crystal clear at this point: God does not exist for my or for your benefit. Rather, we exist for his. Throughout the Bible the central thrust of God’s concern is always God’s kingdom—not my salvation.

This is not to say that my salvation isn’t important. Because it is important (certainly for me). But this is to say that there are things far more important than this to God!—like God’s kingdom and glory—and that if I am saved, then it’s because I am part of God’s Kingdom, whose coming is what matters most of all.

Remember how people latched on that one phrase—just one phrase—in John Kennedy’s inaugural address. Folk were touched by it—even challenged and inspired by it—as though it were something new they’d never heard or seriously considered before. ‘Ask not,” he said, ‘what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

The point is that this order of political priority should have held no surprise for any disciple of Jesus Christ. For in each person’s life, the question is essentially this one: Is the purpose for my life to serve, or to be served? Does life, ultimately, focus on me? Does God, the government, my job, family, husband or wife, parents of children—do these exist for me and my benefit? Or does life for me find its focus somewhere else—and I exist for them?

Which brings us, of course, around to Jesus.

Jesus lived under no illusions about what sort of self-centered priorities are at work in human life. When he asked his disciples when they were at table with him, “Which is the greater, the one who sits at table or the one who serves?” He also provided the answer which they and the world around them already knew: “Is it not the one who sits at table?”

But then, immediately over against this, he added: “But I am among you as one who serves.” Now, the fact that he is among his disciples as one who serves does not mean (as some misconstrue) that his disciples are privileged to sit there as those who are served. But rather that they, like him, are also to serve.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said much of the same thing better than forty years ago.

“If you want to be important,” he said, “wonderful.

“If you want to be recognized, wonderful.

If you want to be great, wonderful.

But recognize that he who is greatest shall be your servant. That’s the new definition of grace. And this morning what I like about it is that, by giving this definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have the subject and verb agree to be great. You don’t have to read Plato and Aristotle to be great. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity, to be great….You only need have a heart full, a soul inspired by grace. You can be that servant.” (Martin Luther King, Jr. from King Center website)

But such service, of course, assumes that you and I don’t alive alone, that this nation does not live alone. It assumes that you and I are not just you and I, but we. And it’s time once again, isn’t it, that we recognized and honored and celebrated not just the rugged individual but the beloved community, that we once again become aware of the we in you and I. It’s time that we believe that we live and move and have our being, that we sing and pray and work and do everything that we do not just for ourselves and our own narrow, selfish interests…but to serve others in the name of a spiritual grace and moral power greater than ourselves.

There are changes coming to this nation and in this world. And there are people who will be tempted to sleep through these changes, to close their eyes and their ears, to harden their hearts, to clench their fists and dig in their heels to these changes, and to narrow their souls to the transformations that are aborning. They—these one in six people you know--will sit on the sidelines…unaffiliated, unconnected, removed from the changes the coming Kingdom of God will bring.

But not us—not Wilton Presbyterians nor Grace Baptists. Not we who gather at the Lord’s table this morning as the friends/disciples of Jesus. There is a love this Christ has shown us that, if this world is to journey toward its destiny as a world-wide, interracial, interfaith brother/sisterhood, a love this Christ has shown us that destines us to share His love and justice and freedom with others. For either we either learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we preach our self-centered faith as fools.

We’ve work to do, brothers and sisters. And it starts here, as it started around a table with a small gaggle of Jesus’ friends.

It starts with a scrap of bread as His body and a sip of juice as His blood.

So, as disciples of Jesus we’ve got some work to do, brothers and sisters. Work to take whatever scrap of love, whatever sip of justice you receive this morning in this worship service out into the world to share this week with one of those six unaffiliated people.

”Where have all the flowers gone?” We’ve got an answer to that question…in an old Baptist hymn Pete Seeger so often led others to sing in reply. May we all stand—black and white, young and old, South Norwalk and Wilton—hold another’s hand gently, firmly and sing with renewed determination to bring positive, loving change in this world. You know the song. The song we need to sing once again. Not the I song, nor the you song, but the we song. Not just the song of days gone by, but the song of days yet to come. Not the song of nothing people, but the song of committed people in the service of Jesus Christ.

“We shall overcome. We shall overcome.

We shall overcome someday.

Deep in my heart, I do believe

That we shall overcome someday.

We’ll walk hand in hand. We’ll walk hand in hand,

We’ll walk hand in hand some day.

Oh, deep in my heart I do believe

That we shall overcome someday.

We are not afraid, we are not afraid,

We are not afraid today.

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe

That we shall overcome someday.

We shall live in peace. We shall live in peace,

We shall live in peace someday.

Oh, deep in my heart I do believe

That we shall overcome someday.”