The Wesley Foundation at UVA

Dinner @ 6pm, followed by forum @ 7pm. Check the “Thursday Nights” tab for specific weekly topics.

“What Kind of Christian Are You?”
I Corinthians 1: 10-18

Late last fall I spent a morning at Planned Parenthood.  The Charlottesville Planned Parenthood has two departments – healthcare and advocacy – and there is a group of Clergy Friends who work with the advocacy department to help support the organization and the women who come seeking healthcare.

That particular morning the Clergy Friends were there to hold a press conference to highlight a letter we wrote together.  It’s an open letter to women who are faced with making decisions about how to proceed with or discontinue their pregnancies.  In the letter we express compassion and support and we offer our pastoral services to anyone who would like to call on us.

There were supposed to be two components to our morning.  First we were planning to hold a press conference and then we were going to walk outside to the edge of the property along Hydraulic Road to meet the protestors.  At that time there was a month long campaign by a national group that mobilized local Christians to protest Planned Parenthood for providing abortions as one of their healthcare options.  Sometime before I joined this group it had been decided that, following the press conference, we would walk outside and offer doughnuts and coffee to the protestors.

My first reaction to this plan was distaste.  I did not really care to hang out with the protestors and I did not want to be part of whatever argument could ensue from “crossing the lines” and heading outside.  Clearly, both groups were there for different reasons and weren’t going to be able to talk or get along.

I also thought that our offering of refreshments was a little on the showy side.  How convenient that the press was going to be with us to see how gracious our side was!  I anticipated the paper the next day, picturing someone in a clerical collar beatifically smiling and holding out coffee to cold and angry protestors.  I didn’t like the set up.

As it turns out, the local press never showed up to cover the press conference so this mental picture never made it to the front page.  But as it also turns out, the Clergy Friends were genuine in their desire to reach out not just to women facing pregnancies but also to those protesting some of the decisions those women make.  After regrouping and planning other opportunities for connecting with the press, we got our coats and gloves on and headed outside with our offerings.

No one was deterred by the lack of press.  No one suggested that we wait and do that part another day, too.  I was still uncomfortable.

When I had arrived at the office earlier that morning, I noticed the protestors out at the road and wondered what it must be like to drive past displays like that on your way to work each day.  I wondered what it had been like before the court rulings that protestors must remain out on the road, on public property.

When I got to the door and couldn’t open it, I noticed the sign directing visitors to press the intercom to be let in to the building.  I wondered again about what it would be like to work in that environment every day.  Once I was let into the building, I still could not go anywhere; I was in between several sets of locked doors and a receptionist sat behind a glass window with a another intercom to help us talk to one another.  She had to buzz me through the correct set of doors.  By the time I got to our meeting room I was pondering the commitment of the staff.

Let me say that this sermon is not about my personal take on the abortion controversy.  Though I would be happy to discuss the issues with any of you, that is not the point here.  This sermon is about the kind of Christians we are called to be.

I have to say that I was not a good example of this kind of Christian that day at Planned Parenthood.  My first impulse was disdain for the protesters.  It’s true that I wasn’t anxious for us clergy to display our extremely gracious nature out in the streets, but frankly that was more about avoiding conflict and hanging out with the like-minded than it was about openness to other Christian points of view.

That day I was exactly the kind of Christian Paul was writing to at Corinth:  one defined more by cultural sensibilities and opinions than by Christian identity.  If the only choices are called “pro-choice” and “pro-life” then I side with the pro-choice.  But they are not truly the only choices and regardless of the ways I have been formed by Roe vs. Wade and the era in which I grew up, my most important formation is supposed to be my identity as a Christian.

A good friend of mine likes to say that God gives us siblings so that we are forced to hang out with people we would never otherwise know.  He means this in terms of blood family brothers and sisters but it works pretty well for our Christian family, too.  We don’t choose to be part of this clan.  It’s God who chooses us and claims us in baptism and forms a motley crew of a family out of this bunch of sinners.

Paul uses the words “brothers and sisters” 38 times in I Corinthians.  This is more than twice the number of times he says this in any other letter (New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Vol X, p. 773).  Do you think maybe he was trying to make a point?

It can be hard to follow ancient controversies but what seems clear about this group at Corinth was that their community had disintegrated to the point that the way they “one-upped” each other was to claim either Paul or Apollos or Cephas.  Depending on who baptized you, you might say something like, “I belong to Paul” to show your importance or rank or true discipleship (I Cor. 1: 12).  Paul wouldn’t have any of it.  Without an ounce of ego he writes, “Has Christ been divided?  Was Paul crucified for you?  Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (v.13). Then he goes on to name the very few he did baptize, just to set the record straight and de-mystify the lore.

Has Christ been divided?  I love the way he lets that one just hang there!  How else can you answer that except,  No!  Of course not!  Well then, if Christ has not been divided choosing any one “part” of him does not make any sense.  If Christ has not been divided then trying to rank Christian attributes does not make any sense.   Ah, but the cross of Christ always seems a bit foolish in the eyes of the world, doesn’t it? (v. 18)

What makes this group different from any other group in Corinth at the time?  What makes a group of Christians stand out – as we are called to do – over and against the way of the world?

What kind of Christian are you?  There should be only one answer to this question but, if you’re like me, when you saw the title What Kind of Christian Are You? a few “kinds” probably starting going through your mind.  Evangelical, progressive, conservative, God-fearing, activist…Any of these sound familiar?  How about Christians who are hawks or doves, republicans or democrats, pro- or anti-gun, environmentalists or oil barons?  And closer to home, right here in worship, contemporary or traditionalist?

You have heard me talk about “incarnational theology” before, how important it is to take seriously our bodies and physical surroundings when thinking theologically.  If a human body was a fitting place for God to be born and live, then human bodies and lives can all be instruments of the holy and places of God’s continual revelation.  So it follows that it matters whether or not we are men or women, gay or straight, black or white, old or young….These things matter in how we receive and approach the world, how we conceive of things, and how we relate to others.

They matter, but for us as Christians they can not be the most important markers of our identity.  They must serve as expression of our Christian identity, not the other way around.  When we identify first and foremost as anything other than God’s children, followers of Christ, we choose something less important over the one and only thing that makes us who we are.

Ok, fine.  But how do we do this?  How do we become family with people we would rather hate or at the very least, vilify?  How do we move toward the unity that is our birthright and our calling as Christians?

I had three initial ideas:  listen, pray, and practice love.

Listen because what we more often do is wait to hear the things we want to disagree with.  It’s a very different thing to sit with someone who holds a radically different view from your own and seek to really hear what they say, without retort or debate, but just open ears.

Pray because without that not much else is possible.  And I mean this mainly because – whatever else it does for others and for the world at large – prayer changes the pray-er.  And we all have hearts in need of change and a larger capacity for love.

And I said practice love because we think too often of love as a state of being or something we feel or receive.  The practice of love is like any other practice – law, piano, basketball – it requires that we make a routine of it.  In order to become proficient we have to keep submitting ourselves to the discipline.

I don’t know if you have read or heard of the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  It’s a spiritual awakening quest story and mostly a good read.  It’s made quite a splash on the bestseller list and the title has a great cadence:  Eat, Pray, Love.  So there I was with my sermon notes and my list of how to move toward unity:  listen, pray, practice love.  Immediately the book title came to me and I noticed how similar they were.  If only I could find a way to fit “eat” into a sermon…

Maybe eat, pray, love is a better list.  It’s the eating.  Because this table it the one where we practice behaving as family – no matter what.

When I see protestors at Clinics on TV, they are angry and sometimes violent.  I had let those images seep in too much.  Do you know who was out on the sidewalk that day last fall?  Grandmothers and church ladies.  Little old women, mostly Catholic, some Baptist, who were proud to tell us which congregations they belong to.  And though one or two were suspicious of us at first, they graciously accepted hot drinks and sweet treats from us.

As we stood there in the cold at the edge of the road with cars zooming past, I was ashamed for my earlier disdain.  I was ashamed that I had had no interest in seeking out these sisters of ours.  I was ashamed that though I had willingly wondered what type of commitment the staff makes every day, I had not wondered or cared much about the commitment of these sisters who stood on the sidewalk praying for the people inside.  I was humbled by this and by those brothers and sisters in the clergy who seemed to have gotten it way before I did.  I don’t agree with my sisters at the road on a lot of things.  But, from a Christian point of view, the one thing that matters is that we are family, united in Christ.

Has Christ been divided?  Not divided, but broken.  On our own, we have no power to make family of one another.  On our own, we get caught up in the causes and themes of the moment and lose sight sometimes of what it means to live with the assurance of eternal life.  On our own, we can barely say a civil word to each other sometimes.  But with our undivided, broken Savior, we have the power to be foolish saints.

When we gather around this table it is Christ’s Spirit who unites us, who heals broken hearts and mends broken lives.  In the broken bread we are made whole.  When we gather here it is the Spirit of Christ who calls us home for a meal around the family table.

Thanks be to God!

© Deborah Lewis 2008

Worship tonight @ 6pm.

Join us for worship each Sunday night in the dining room at the Wesley Foundation. Dress is casual and friends are welcome.

This is a student-led service, with musical worship team and weekly Communion. Come listen for God’s Word and your call.

Come as you are…leave a bit more.

The board meets this morning from 8:30-11:30am.

Dinner @ 6pm, followed by forum @ 7pm. Check the “Thursday Nights” tab for specific weekly topics.

Come and See
John 1: 29-42

Several years ago I took a seminar class at Wesley Seminary in Washington, DC.  It was an evangelism class that I was required to take in order to be ordained.  Though I’d graduated from seminary seven years previously, evangelism had not been a required class at that time and, as I was fond of saying, “Why would I take that if it weren’t required?”

I wasn’t the only one with this opinion in the class.  There were several people (whom I immediately befriended) who were also taking the class solely as a requirement and with not a little trepidation.  As I later found out, that single class contained the campus’s absolute most radical students in either direction.  In terms of evangelism, it contained people who had come to know Christ and turned their lives around due to someone else’s witness and it also contained those who had been driven to the very edges of the church by others who “witnessed” that Jesus didn’t want them – at least not as they were.

As you may surmise, this was a class ready to blow.  Thank God we had one of the best professors of my entire seminary career leading this class.  He was brand spanking new, from Iowa, teaching a class that had gone unmanned and which many would have love to see remain that way.  If memory serves, his background was in Wesleyan studies.  Certainly related to evangelism, but not always cobbled into one professorial job description.  So I’m not sure if he was even teaching what he initially came there to teach – but he had passion!

Through serendipity or studiousness or silly chance, Scott Kisker was passionate about evangelism.  Most of the people I’ve met with a real burning passion for evangelism tend to speak a certain language that can sound like code to the rest of us.  Before that class, most of what I’d heard described as evangelism seemed forced, formulaic, and even archaic (especially when it came to relations between different cultures around the world).  But Scott Kisker didn’t come off this way to me and he walked the talk.  Starting with our class assignments.

On the very first day he informed us – a group mostly intending to be ordained pastors – that each class we would spend 20 minutes at the start listening to two students give their testimonies.  Immediately, half of the class was elated, knowing just what they’d say and just where the high points were, and eager to get to the sign up sheet.

Then there was my half of the class.  We weren’t personally familiar with this practice and had given up on that word, “testimony.”  In fact, I wasn’t even sure I knew what to include in a testimony.  Because the only kind I’d ever heard always involved drug abuse and other “rock bottom” moments, I wasn’t sure I had a suitable one to give.  There we were, perfectly respectable seminarians and soon-to-be-pastors who would rather be any place else than standing up in front of a group of people – even other pastors – giving our testimonies.  And yes, we could see the irony in the situation.

This is where I think Scott Kisker was particularly brilliant.  He absolutely insisted on this assignment and he absolutely insisted that everyone had something to say when asked to give reason for the hope within us (I Peter 3: 15).  He also insisted that we were not to give our call stories.  This exercise wasn’t about why we were called to be ordained but simply about why we were called in the first place.

I thought of that class again this week reading John.  This is the gospel with that great opening evocative of Genesis:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).  And though this is the gospel where we are told in chapter one, verse one, that Christ has been with God since the beginning of all beginnings, still Jesus does not actually show up until verse 29, the first verse we read today.  And even then, Jesus stays on the sidelines and doesn’t say anything until verse 38 (New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Vol. IX, p. 528).  It’s as if Jesus knows how important testimony is.  John’s witness is important enough for Jesus to wait 29 verses to appear and then 9 more before he says anything.  He wants John to have his say first.

There are a lot of pithy sayings meant to demonstrate the importance of evangelism, testimony, witness.  “Preach the gospel at all times.  Use words if necessary” is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.  A more recent one says, “You may be the only Bible some people ever read.”  Pithy, but they do hit on something central to the truth of Christianity:  it takes a witness.

In this week’s Christian Century magazine writer Kathleen Norris tells the story of an Islamic scholar who, while she was studying in Paris, found the lives of Islamic Africans (her fellow students) to be so fascinating that she was drawn to her conversion.  Though she was raised Christian, “what she witnessed” as the Africans endured daily assaults “astonished” her.  They endured it all with grace and “without bitterness [and] attributed their perseverance under pressure to their Muslim faith, and that caused her to take a closer look” (The Christian Century, 1/15/08, p. 22).

Norris also describes a Benedictine monk’s exchange experience with a Japanese Buddhist:  “[The Benedictine] said that after the Buddhist had been in the monastery for about a month, he had only one question.  It seemed to him that the monks did not live very well.  They worked hard, their food was neither good nor plentiful, and they did not get enough sleep. ‘Yet they are joyful,’ he said, ‘and I want to know:  from where does this joy come?’” (Christian Century, 1/15/08, p. 22).

From where does this joy come?  What is the reason for the hope within them?

Can I get a witness?

There is something mighty and powerful about seeing someone’s convictions shine through the sometimes dull moments of daily life.

That’s what I love about Jesus’ words here:  “Come and see” (John 1: 39).  They are not didactic or preachy or even much of an explanation.  Jesus wouldn’t be picked for the debate team with these words – not enough of an argument.  But aren’t they more persuasive than a treatise or a theorem or legal argument?  “Come and see.”

Wouldn’t you rather receive an invitation than a critique?  Aren’t you curious what you’ll see if you just come on and follow?  “Come and see.”  They are playful words.  Hopeful words.  Imaginative words.

My friend Scott McReynolds directs the Housing Development Alliance where we are volunteering during spring break.  We were emailing last week about the “war on poverty” begun in Appalachia in the 1960s and how we haven’t fought that war well.  Scott commented that he has come to see lack of hope as one of the biggest obstacles to conquer in this fight.  He listened to a speaker recently who said that imagination and art use the same part of our brains.  Scott wondered to me, “So, by cutting art education funding are we limiting our children’s ability to imagine a better future?”

Jesus was right at home in the world of imagination and hope.    Maybe that’s why he spoke so often in parable.  When John’s disciples ask Jesus where he’s staying he doesn’t answer the question.  He says, “Come and see.”  He lets the disciples explore his life with him.  Rather than answering all their questions for them, he invites them on a journey where they can discover the answers (NIB, p. 531).  Maybe he knew that we just listen better – with our whole lives – to an imaginative invitation.

What is the future to which Christ beckons us?  How will our lives be different in 5 years because we want to live like Christians?  Come and see.

What is the reason for the hope within you?  Why do you live like you do?  Why do you believe what you believe?  Why do you make those commitments?  What peace do you know?  Come and see.

And when others ask you about your life…When a Scott Kisker comes in and forces you to give your testimony…Or when you face the every day choices between living in or out of synch with your beliefs…What will you do?  Will you struggle to cross every “t” and dot every “i” with explanative detail?  Will you draw a diagram about your faith?  Or will you welcome your brother or sister with a warm invitation:  Come and see.

Thanks be to God!

© Deborah Lewis 2008

Please join us from 10am - 2pm today for a workshop commemorating Martin Luther King Day and honoring the Rev. Jim McDonald. This event is free and open to the public.  Full details are on our home page.

Worship tonight @ 6pm.

Join us for worship each Sunday night in the dining room at the Wesley Foundation. Dress is casual and friends are welcome.

This is a student-led service, with musical worship team and weekly Communion. Come listen for God’s Word and your call.

Come as you are…leave a bit more.

Dinner @ 6pm, followed by forum @ 7pm. Check the “Thursday Nights” tab for specific weekly topics.

How Faith Helps Us Approach Our Differences:

“The Ministers’ Manifesto on Racial Beliefs” of 1957 and

What It Can Teach Us Today

A Workshop Commemorating Martin Luther King Day & Honoring the Rev. Jim McDonald

Sponsored by: The Wesley Foundation at the University of Virginia &

Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church

10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

January 21, 2008

It often seems that religion plays a divisive rather than a unifying role in contemporary life. In public—and especially political—discourse, matters of faith more often define differences than establish common ground. But that need not be the case.

This workshop will focus on a successful and historic effort to use religious conviction as the basis for resolving strong differences of belief and opinion. We seek to learn what this approach has to teach us and to identify some of the most crucial areas in which it might be applied today.

Issued by 80 Georgia ministers, “The Ministers’ Manifesto” offered a Christian perspective on race relations. It has been praised as “an example of the kind of influence and impact that the church should have” in public affairs. We will begin with a detailed examination of the manifesto and a consideration of its historical and theological context. In the second part of the workshop, we will discuss what we can learn from the manifesto and how we can use faith to approach our differences today.