Prepare ye the way. But what is the way now?

The following is a sermon I delivered at Bethesda UCC on Sunday, 24 November 2024. The readings were Isaiah 40:3-5 and Acts 2:42-3:8.

Several weeks ago, before Pastor Jill asked me if I’d be willing to sub for her today, I had a dream. I was leading a service and fumbling all over the place. Forgetting which hymn was next, not finding it in the hymnbook, and forgetting what to say. All the things that you can imagine going wrong when trying to lead a service. Eventually, the congregation left the sanctuary for the fellowship hall. When I realized they were gone and tracked them down, they were having great conversations and enjoying some wonderful desserts. I remember seeing strawberries and whipped cream, but I can’t be sure what else was there. It looked good and unhealthy, as desserts should.

I used my outside voice to get their attention. You’ve heard me do this when letting you know we’re about to start the annual meeting. I intended to scold them for leaving in the middle of the service. After all, that’s why they were there, right?

Up to this point, this could have been any minister’s nightmare.

But after I got their attention, I realized that they were doing the best thing they could: communing over a common meal. They were having meaningful conversations in a joy-filled space, building and maintaining relationships that could support them through the coming week rather than sitting quietly while someone up front worked through a ritual.

They understood why they were there, unlike me, who thought I was why they were there.

We’re not here because of me, Pastor Jill, or anyone else who might stand up here and talk. We’re here because of what we need this morning. We are here because we are a community trying to make a shared sense of the world around us, a common cause, and perhaps a common action.

I don’t know about you, but I am energized. I’m also afraid, angry, motivated, and preparing for the coming years. Some days, I feel burnt out, like anything I do will never be enough, so why even try? But I fight that feeling because anything we can do to help will be good. 

Some of this may be what the Europeans felt at their first Thanksgiving. They had a harvest and a winter ahead. They knew challenges were coming, but they had each other and even the Americans who joined them for that feast. There was some level of camaraderie, some level of a common understanding of what lay ahead, and no fear of the other that kept them apart or kept them from helping each other.

This doesn’t mean that the Europeans and Americans thought alike. They were worlds apart. Europeans tended to be hierarchical: both the state and the church were organized such that power flowed from the top down. Everyone reported to someone. We see this in many of today’s corporate cultures. You know what it’s like. You report to someone, and they report to someone else. Everyone has to be supervised because no one can be trusted. Always the fear that you could be laid off, fired, or the cost of living outpace your pay. Or maybe you have people reporting to you, and you fear that they aren’t doing their job or that when you delegate to them, they won’t come through for you. In both cases, we are driven by fear rather than trust.

The Americans, at least in the northeast of the present US, were more heterarchical: peer-to-peer relationships. Power was through persuasion, discussion, and dissent rather than the threat of violence and ownership. Much of what we call the Enlightenment was Europe grappling with the newly encountered American political forms.

The UCC is a product of this clash. As a church, we are more American than European. We make local decisions based on local needs through discussion and persuasion. We don’t look to someone to tell us what to do. We take the initiative based on the needs we see around us. This also means we don’t need to wait for things to happen or for a new pastor to be called. If we lift our eyes, we can see what’s on the horizon and prepare now.

When a storm is coming, we can prepare. We can buy supplies, board the windows, and batten the hatches. And if, by some luck, the storm changes direction and doesn’t hit us, then we just have some extra food on hand and some extra lumber for a craft project.

I chose the Isaiah reading because my world has changed. What I thought was a mountain in my way has been brought down, and what I thought was a valley to trip me up has been filled. What I thought were my priorities are different now. It is time to prepare because, in a few months, it may be too late.

Maybe a gospel reading would have been more obvious. A rich man came to Jesus asking what he must do to gain eternal life, and Jesus answered that if he were to be perfect, he should sell everything he had and give it to the poor. In other words, he needed to rethink his priorities. And you know what he did? He went away sad because he didn’t want to change anything. What are we willing to change or let go of in the coming months so that we can make the world a better place for those less fortunate?

Years ago, when I was at Texas A&M University, a member of the LGBTQ+ community ended up being the vice president of research. I’ll call her Karen because I think that was her name, not because she was a “Karen.” It’s been a while, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. 

At breakfast one day, Karen said that she hoped to be fired. She wanted to take risks that would upset the board of regents. She was tenured, so getting fired meant she just had to return to teaching—not much personal risk. She would even get to keep the pay bump from being a vice president.

I’m risking y’all “firing” me today, and this being the last sermon I give here because I feel the risk is worth what is on my heart. If I can’t move you to action today, then I have failed and don’t have much more to offer.

The thing that makes having breakfast with Karen less extraordinary is understanding how the LGBTQ+ community worked at Texas A&M. We called it the “gay mafia” sometimes because we used our network to get things done. The head of the research center that hosted the breakfasts was gay. Jim and I had known each other for quite some time. He even served on my thesis committee. When I took a position in the dean’s office, working for Steve, another member of the “gay mafia,” Jim offered a spare office across the hall from the center’s parlor where they held events. So, even though I wasn’t part of the center, I got to participate in all the breakfasts. 

That part of Texas is different from here. We had to find each other and look out for each other. Share where it was safe and where it wasn’t. The university wanted to put cameras in the restrooms to keep people from doing anything the administration didn’t like. Our friends Mike and Tom found arrows shot into their front door one day. James Byrd Jr., a Black man living in east Texas, was chained to the back of a truck and dragged down the highway until he died. 

The university insisted on civil discourse, but it only works if everyone does it in good faith. The university didn’t. In conversations with the administration, they told us what they would need to do to know how their policies impacted the LGBTQ+ community so they could know how to change their policies to be more equitable. Sounds reasonable, right? When asked if they would do it, they simply said, “No.” 

That’s the environment we lived in. This is the storm I see on the horizon that we need to prepare for. We need to listen to and learn from the experiences of the LGBTQ+, Black, Latino, Jewish, and other communities who have had to deal with oppression for decades. If we see a storm coming, but it’s still all sunshine and rainbows for us, know that someone else is already living through the darkest part of it.

The national rhetoric we’ve been seeing for years now might not hurt most of us beyond our feelings, but it normalizes behavior that can. Stories of young men, teenagers even, telling women, “Your body, my choice,” are pushing the boundaries and normalizing something that we don’t want normalized. Even if the people spouting this rhetoric don’t believe it, there are those who do. 

And today’s empty rhetoric becomes tomorrow’s truth.

So, I want to talk about how church might work differently—or maybe the same. We already do some things that might count as church that aren’t Sunday morning worship. These include Seekers, the women’s spirituality group, and the LGBTQ+ potlucks. But we can do more.

Looking back at the early Christian church, before official recognition, back in the first century of the common era, we see people meeting in homes. We see this today in countries that restrict religious freedom, such as China and Cuba. I imagine that the church gatherings were probably more like our potlucks or the first Thanksgiving than centered on ritual. In the early years, they were still figuring out what would work.

How did people find the early church? They didn’t have nice buildings and signs at busy intersections to let people know that the Christians met nearby. The homes weren’t magically filled with people. It was through family connections, friendships, colleagues, and random encounters. Relationships filled the homes with people, just as the relationships helped the LGBTQ+ community navigate a hostile environment in Texas.

Of course, since then, the Christian church, as practiced by Rome, took on many of the religious trappings of the empire. The pontifex maximus is the Roman state chief priest, the bridge builder between the people and the gods. Romans believed that rituals had to be done just so if they were to be effective. Saints took the place of the minor gods people relied on. People didn’t really change their religious practices. What they had been doing for centuries worked well enough. They just changed some of the names and symbols.

We can mold our church practices to serve our needs, too. We do that when we say “Our mother/father” or “Our creator” rather than “Our father.” We have gluten and gluten-free options at communion. I can’t tell you how much of a conflict my childhood church had about the crusts on or off the bread for communion. Or if the elements should be covered or not when not doing communion.

When it comes right down to it, a lot of things don’t matter, and yet people can get so worked up about them. We need to figure out what really matters and focus on that.

This past week, November 20th was Transgender Day of Remembrance. A time to remember those who have died because people got hung up on something that doesn’t affect them. It doesn’t matter what our gender is or how we express it as long as we are comfortable with it. We should all be comfortable with who we are. We should all be able to get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and see ourselves rather than someone society insists we must be.

Ten years ago, when we were redoing the church website before the current redo, we contacted a company that advertised that they built websites for churches. That was their mission. They said we weren’t the kind of church they would work with. Their content policy at the time stipulated that we couldn’t publish anything that contradicted the positions of the National Association of Evangelicals. We didn’t change who we were. We went with a different company. We wanted to see ourselves when we looked in the mirror, or at least when we looked at our website.

I’m not here to bring comfort today. We don’t get to be comfortable right now. We are privileged. Many of us are retired or semi-retired and don’t have to worry about losing our jobs or our income if we make some people unhappy. Most of us are cis and white. We have never had to deal with the trouble that trans, non-straight, and non-white people have had to deal with. And if you’re a white, cis, straight man, then the world was made for you, just as scissors and fountain pens are made for right-handed people. 

I bet you didn’t know that fountain pens were handed, did you? I didn’t until just recently when someone mentioned it in passing. I’m right-handed. Of course, fountain pens just work for me. Why would I suspect there was a handedness bias? That’s how privilege works for those who have it. It’s invisible until you don’t have it.

While I might not bring comfort, I can bring hope. I can bring hope and some ways forward. We don’t have to have all the answers right now. As John Scalzi writes in his space opera, The Consuming Fire, “Confidence isn’t about knowing you’re right. Confidence is about knowing you can make it right.”

The reading from Acts talks about the members of the nascent Christian community helping each other through a form of mutual aid. It wasn’t about the rituals and worship. It was about a change in their priorities. Those with wealth gave to those who had a need, unlike the man who came to Jesus, which I mentioned earlier. Don’t worry. I’m not going to suggest anything quite that radical for us today. But what happened outside of the home was just as important. 

It tells of Peter and John going to the temple to pray. On the way, they encountered a lame man begging at the temple entrance. Instead of Peter giving him money, Peter healed him. Being able to walk was more valuable than a bit of cash. The cure was better than symptomatic relief. Advocating for policies that don’t leave people on the streets is better, in the long run, than giving people a place to sleep for the night. Anyone could have given the lame man some money, but Peter and John were among the few who could heal him. They did what others couldn’t do. The first step to what’s next might be to discover what we can do that others can’t do.

If Peter and John had stayed in the home having fellowship with their fellow believers, they would never have encountered the lame man and brought hope to his life. He would have remained at the temple, begging for money to survive.

I like to think of church as a gym for our souls. Working out at the gym doesn’t prepare me to do back squats on the street corner or chest presses in the grocery store. It helps me lift the 25-pound bag of dog food onto the cart, empty the 80-pound bag of cement into the mixer, and not throw out my back carrying a pile of books to the library. The focused work in the gym prepares me for life outside the gym. The time we spend here prepares us for the time we aren’t here.

How many people are waiting for us to encounter them? But we won’t if we stay here, isolating ourselves within the walls of this sanctuary. Looking around, you’ll see that there aren’t many marginalized people here today. We must carry our hope into the world where it can heal those less fortunate than us. Our work is out there, not in here. By being out there and making a difference, we can find like-minded people, and perhaps some of them will want to join us on our faith journey. 

We’re too small to do everything by ourselves. Rather than trying to form groups of only BUCC congregants, we need to get involved in and support local groups and share what we find in case someone else here wants to join the same effort. We should be reaching out to like-minded congregations to find ways to work together on shared goals. We should be looking for force multipliers.

Do you know someone who wants to make a difference in the world? Who wants to help make the world a better place? Invite them to join us. Maybe they aren’t into religion. That’s okay. We don’t need religion to help people, even if we individually might find religion helpful in navigating our way through life. I don’t need God in my life to avoid killing random people. I already do all the random killing I want to do, which is none.

We need to be prepared to respond to emergent needs. We need connections with others ready to go before the need arises so we can respond quickly. We might not have the luxury of waiting for a Sunday to announce something or have weeks to prepare. This is why our communications are critical. We’ve had mixed success using Slack this year. Over the next few weeks, while we still have time to prepare, we might need to add other mechanisms, such as Signal.

We can form small groups around particular interests: a salon model where people get together at convenient times and places to discuss what’s happening and what they might do. Maybe dinner on a weekday or brunch on a Saturday. Or maybe over Zoom so we can be more inclusive of people who aren’t physically here. Not groups with a set agenda, but groups that get together and have deep conversations that aren’t possible after church in the parlor. Conversations that let us know that we are not alone when wrestling with current events or other issues.

Whatever we decide, we must find ways to bring down the mountains and fill the valleys. If we are getting burned out, figure out why and change something; make the paths straighter and reduce the friction we feel. Because if we don’t change anything, nothing will change, and we will remain burned out. And when we are burned out, we can’t help those in need. 

In the coming years, church for us might be less of this, coming on Sunday morning to observe and participate in ritual and more of community and mutual aid. This can be a space for sharing our experiences and supporting each other in the work outside these walls. Even if we don’t get out into the community and do things, we can still take actions that shield those who do. We can create noise so those who might otherwise be targeted don’t stand out. We need to normalize the behaviors that we want to protect.

We don’t need to worry about national politics right now. Yes, it can impact us, especially those in the DC area with its large number of federal employees, but caring for the less fortunate, those on the margins that will be most impacted by policy changes, happens locally. 

We aren’t alone in dealing with this rearrangement. We have each other. We need to have meaningful conversations in a joy-filled space, building and maintaining relationships that can support each other through the coming weeks rather than sitting quietly while someone up front walks through a ritual. We can respond to each other, watch out for each other, and help each other here to be who we need to be out there.

I will close with what an immigrant to Austria shared the day after our election:

In the earthquakes to come, please remember that fascist authoritarianism is the opposite of love.

Loving someone in a practical, detailed, gentle way disproves the basic tenets of fascism. It shows that all bodies are alive and are worthy of love and care.

Doing the slow, difficult, messy work of loving is resistance. Care work is anti-fascist work.

Turn off the screaming. Care for yourself. Care for others. Understand this to be radical.