Scripture Text: Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16, 23-26
Preached at Combined Service of College UMC and North Oxnard UMC
October 1, 2017
Prayer – “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.”
Last Sunday’s Doonesbury cartoon reminded me of my age once again. In the cartoon the mother, Boopsie, walks in and her husband tells her, “You know what Sam just told me, Boopsie? She’s not a feminist.”
And Sam replies, “What’s the big deal? Most of my friends aren’t.”
To which the mother replies, “Oh really. So what do you think feminism is, Sam?”
“Simple,” says Sam “It’s the belief that women are superior to men.”
“Wrong.” Says the mother “It’s the belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men.”
“Are you sure, Mom? Why would there be a whole movement about something that obvious?”
Walking away the Mom says, “She’ll be fine” as the daughter says, “You might as well defend gravity.”
The reason that cartoon made me feel my age is that each generation thinks that the battles fought by their parents were won long ago.
The battles over Civil Rights for African Americans were fought in the ‘60s. There can’t be discrimination and bigotry today. The battles of Feminism were fought in the ‘70s. There can’t be any discrimination against women in the workplace today.
Of course those battles for the rights of blacks and women were not the battles of a previous generation to me. They were the battles of my generation. And I know that those battles were not won then and still need to be fought today.
I am a white, middle-class, middle-aged, male. I am aware that that status gives me privileges in our society that I completely take for granted. I cannot remember a single time in my entire life when I was told I could not do something because of my race or my gender. When I have privileges it is easy to assume that everyone else in the society shares those privileges.
The fact that I have privileges that are routinely denied to women was made very clear to me in the fall of 1973. That is when I entered Seminary – an institution that was previously a uniquely-male bastion.
But a third to a half of my Seminary entering class were women – by far the largest percentage in the school’s history up to that time. And they were not shy, retiring women. They made their presence known.
Every Wednesday there was a Chapel service on campus. An outside pastor was invited to preach and that preacher was invited to attend the preaching class and share his (they were all men of course) his view of the art of crafting a sermon. They expected questions about the use of Scripture in the sermon – about how you structure a sermon – about whether you should memorize a sermon or use a manuscript.
They expected that these up-and-coming preachers wanted to benefit from their years of experience.
But what they expected was not what they got. What they got were questions like, “Why did you say ‘man’ when you meant ‘humanity?’” “Why did you call God ‘he’ when the quality of God you were describing is usually considered feminine in our society?” “Why did you assume that all pastors would be male?”
I sat there being very thankful that I was not the one having to answer those questions because they were questions I had not even thought about – much less had answers for. I quickly learned to use inclusive language – not because it mattered to me – but because I learned it mattered deeply to others.
I learned to stop selecting certain hymns – some of which had great personal attachment for me – because of their language.
The hymn, “Rise Up, O Men of God,” has great memories for me. It was sung in my home church every year on “Layman’s Sunday” and William Schaffer – a man of my parents’ age that I knew nothing else about – would always accompany the hymn on his trombone. It was thrilling.
But I stopped using it in deference to the women who make up more than half our congregations.
And I stopped choosing “The Church’s One Foundation,” because the hymn considers the church to be female and calls the Church “she” throughout.
And I was not alone in the Church. By the 1990s inclusive language was well accepted in the church – particularly in the United Methodist Church. The version of the Bible that we commonly use – the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible – attempts to use inclusive language throughout. And the current hymnal, which was published in 1996, tries to strike a balance.
For one thing, the hymnal committee brought in a distinguished professor of preaching and worship – Laurence Hull Stookey – to rewrite many of the prayers to be more inclusive.
And a number of hymns were either dropped or modified.
Rise Up, O Men of God is still there (although a footnote suggests that you might want to sing “Rise Up Ye Saints of God.”)
And The Church’s One Foundation is still there, completely unchanged. But they did something very interesting in that case.
I invite you to pick up a hymnal and turn to #545 – The Church’s One Foundation. If you look across the page, you will find #546 – The Church’s One Foundation – printed without music – just the words.
This version is that same great hymn but reworked by that same Dr. Stookey to be more inclusive in its language. I think Dr. Stookey did a masterful job in crafting a hymn that we can all sing together.
But the new version does something else. And that something else reveals the real reason why I think that inclusive language is so important.
The original hymn – written by Samuel Stone in 1866 – speaks beautifully about the relationship of Jesus Christ to the Church.
Just look at the first verse:
The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is his new creation, by water and the Word,
From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride
With his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.
Powerful stuff set to great music. It’s a joy to sing.
But look now at Dr. Stookey’s reworking of the hymn. That same verse in the new version reads:
The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord.
We are his new creation by water and the Word
From heaven he came and sought us that we might ever be
His living servant people, by his own death set free.
By moving from the third person pronouns – she, her – to first person pronouns – we, us – Dr. Stookey does successfully get rid of the gender specific language of the original hymn. But he does something much more.
He reminds us – or maybe teaches us for the first time – that the Church is not a “she” – it is not even a “he” or much less an “it.”
The Church is not something out there to be viewed from afar.
No, the Church is us. Jesus did not come to seek the Church – Jesus came to seek us. Jesus was not looking for a bride but rather for a people – a living servant people in Dr. Stookey’s words.
That is the beauty of inclusive language. It does not separate us by nationality or by race or by social status or by gender. No, in the words of Paul there is neither Jew nor Greek – neither slave nor free – neither male nor female – but all are one in Christ Jesus.
Our use of inclusive language is not about being fair to women or to blacks or to anyone else. Inclusive language is not about the other. Inclusive language is about me. It is about you. It is about us.
It is not about the Church out there which we are called to join. It is about us – being called to follow Jesus and when I follow Jesus I will find myself in harmony and fellowship with other followers of Jesus Christ and together we will be Christ’s living servant people made free in Jesus Christ.
In the final verse of this hymn are words that, as a kid, I had no idea what they meant. The last verse begins:
Yet she on earth hath union with God the Three in One
And mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won.
It was the three words at the beginning of the second line that confused me. First of all I had no idea what “mystic” meant. “Sweet” just meant how much better anything tasted when you added sugar to it. And communion meant that little cube of bread and thimbleful of juice that we ate in Church some Sundays.
How to put those three words together made no sense to me.
But look at how Dr. Stookey has reworked them:
We now on earth have union with God the Three in One,
And share – through faith – communion with those whose rest is won.
We share communion – through our common faith and faithfulness – through our discipleship – with other followers of Jesus both those still living and those who have preceded us.
Today is World Communion Sunday and when we say that we usually think of the holy act that we celebrate together. Holy Communion – the Eucharist – the Lord’s Supper. Whatever we call it this act of coming together and sharing in a ritual meal has bound the followers of Jesus Christ together for two thousand years and throughout the world.
And this common act is so central to who we are as Christians that we sometimes forget that the word communion has a meaning that has nothing to do with this ritual act.
The primary meaning of the word communion – a meaning going back to the Latin of Jesus’ time – is a sharing together. Our communion as followers of Jesus Christ may be symbolized powerfully in our gathering to eat bread and drink from a common cup.
But our real communion – our real sharing together – is walking side by side and working for a common goal. It is sharing together being faithful disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
The Psalm that we heard read this morning harkens back to the experience of the people of God in the wilderness. The experience of the people who, by the grace of God, were free of the oppression in Egypt but were now in the wilderness seeking a new home.
But they were not alone in the wilderness. They were united in a common purpose and were endeavoring to follow together where God was leading them. They were always led by God – in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
They were led and they were nourished by God. Nourished by their communion with one another – their communion with God – and nourished by the bread – the manna – and the water which God supplied.
We are disciples of Jesus Christ. We seek to be – in Dr. Stookey’s words – God’s living servant people. We live in communion – sharing together the life that we find in Jesus Christ. And we celebrate that communion by sharing in this act of communion this morning – and in the act of communion in worshipping along side our brothers and sisters from another congregation – and in the act of communion as we gather for food and fellowship around tables when this time of worship is concluded.
We live in communion because when we leave this place we endeavor to faithfully follow Jesus Christ. When we leave this place, we will leave with the prayer of our closing hymn on our lips, “Guide us, O Thou Great Jehovah, pilgrims through a barren land. We are weak but you are mighty, hold us with your powerful hand. Bread of Heaven – Bread of heaven – feed us till we want no more – feed us till we want no more.”
The table is prepared. God invites us to come. Let us be in Communion together.
Amen.
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