Sermon by Brian Ellison | October 1, 2023 | Fourth Presbyterian Church

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
World Communion Sunday
October 1, 2023

Who Do You Think You Are?

Brian Ellison
Executive Director, Covenant Network of Presbyterians

Psalm 25:1–9
Philippians 2:1–13

World Communion Sunday began ninety years ago today.

Not, as you might think — at some international conference in the halls of the World Council of Churches (which didn’t exist yet); not peopled by bishops and patriarchs from around the globe. It began in a large, nationally known Presbyterian church (not this one!): Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. It was the idea of pastor Hugh Thomson Kerr, who a few years before, in 1930, had traveled the country as Moderator of the General Assembly. Out of his experience of the American church in the Depression and the global turmoil of that interwar period, he conceived of an annual celebration of the ritual that he believed spoke most deeply of what holds the whole church together, everywhere and always (“World Communion Sunday,” presbyterianmission.org).

Now, we might wonder about the boldness of taking an observance celebrated by a handful of white, English-speaking, Northeastern Protestants and calling it “World Communion Sunday,” but the idea stuck, and spread, and today we are celebrating with churches all around the world, a reminder still of this Table’s purpose to anchor us, to identify us with one another, sharing one cup even in turbulent times.

Of course, Fourth Church is another nationally known church that has long been a place where we have seen visual signs of the church coming together, significantly including the founding of the organization for which I now serve as executive director, the Covenant Network of Presbyterians. Since 1997, when your former moderator of the General Assembly, Pastor Emeritus John Buchanan, joined with other leaders across the denomination to commit themselves to building a church that would one day fully affirm LGBTQIA+ people (like me) and our gifts for ministry and our place partaking and serving and presiding at this Table, Fourth Church has supported and sustained a national conversation through turbulent times. You hosted many national and regional events, including just yesterday our Covenant Conversation for the Presbytery of Chicago, plumbing the depths of what it means to work for the liberation and equity of all people, including queer people of color, who experience intersecting oppressions, marginalization among the marginalized. Here yesterday we were challenged again to get beyond words and mere welcome to an authentic community and true belonging. To be a place where all of us, in the fullness of our identity, come together as who we truly are. (That event, “Covenant Conversation: Chicago,” included a keynote address by the Reverend Jamie Frazier, pastor of Lighthouse Church in Chicago. Video and other materials from that conference will be posted at covnetpres.org).

The communion Table still speaks of that kind of community. And for me, that was never more true than the first time I met a young man named Keith.

It was some years ago at another of our national conferences. We had offered scholarships to half a dozen seminarians. They could come free of charge to share in fellowship and learn together. And one of the seminarians was Keith. He was young, from a conservative church and family, and just in the process of acknowledging to himself — if not yet to most of his family and friends — that he was gay. It was a source of torment for him, because while his sense of call to ministry was strong, he had never known an openly gay minister or even seen one at work.

It would be years later that I would talk at length with Keith about that conference. About the conversations he had that began to give him hope. And about how when Keith sat in the closing worship service and watched as an out gay minister — who happened to be me, though it could have been any of the growing number of us who were finally able to serve openly — watched as I officiated Communion, the first time Keith had seen such a thing, it was a life-changing moment. Taking the bread and the cup, he knew that one day it could and would be him.

And today it is. Keith is an ordained minister. I don’t see Keith as often as I used to now that he’s completed a full term on the board of directors of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, but I can see him in my mind’s eye this morning, presiding at a Table at the church he pastors in Virginia, a Table not so different from this one, in the fullness of who he is.

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So who are we, in our fullness? Who do you think you are?

Maybe the Apostle Paul can help. His letter to the Philippians is a tidy Christian message, its four chapters repeatedly offering gratitude and affirmation and an invitation to joy in common life, even if we do read between the lines that this corner of the Roman Empire knew its share of turbulent times.

At the heart of the chapter we read today is this poem, this song, sometimes known as the kenosis hymn — the “emptying” hymn — for what it says about Jesus emptying himself of his God-ness. The verses were probably around before Paul wrote this. We might think he’s quoting them to tell us something about Jesus, a little theology lesson plopped in the middle of a thank-you-and-by-the-way-please-keep-sending-those-donations letter. (Stewardship season is a universal experience.)

But I think he’s actually doing something more. Paul offers this little reflection not just to teach the Philippians something about Jesus but to teach them something about themselves. About how they could be of the most service. About how to live.

He asks the community to “make his joy complete” by being of the same mind, the same love. To be of one mind. He asks them to put others before self. He asks them to show humility. And Jesus is served up as an example: Jesus, who empties himself at the cross. Paul asks them to consider the fullness of who Jesus was — God incarnate — and then consider how he expressed that by suffering and going to the cross. And then … Paul asks them to consider the reality of who Jesus was then — a crucified criminal — and see how God raised him up.

And he says to them, says to us, Be like Jesus. Think about who Jesus was and how he defied expectations about his identity. About how in the end Jesus was not what people thought he was, or thought he should be, but who God had made Jesus to be.
And when Paul asks them to have the same mind as Jesus, he’s asking of them something not so different from what we are asked over and over when we’re invited to this Table, bringing our selves to receive Jesus’ self. Coming together in this world, in this community, in these turbulent times — just who do we think we are? Who are we?

History is full of moments where people have gotten the answer wrong. Like when people who enjoyed authority and privilege have thought of themselves more highly than they ought, puffed up by power, and causing great harm, selfishly squandering resources, leaving destruction in their wake.

History is just as full of moments where people who have been oppressed, who have suffered injustice, have been taught to think of themselves not highly enough, especially because of the race or their gender identity or their sexual orientation, were expected to submit to their own oppression and exclusion, missing opportunities and depriving the world of hope and solutions and new beginnings.
But which Jesus are we supposed to be like? The divine one who empties himself, or the broken one who gets lifted up? Are you called to a Christ-like swell of humility and submission and sacrifice or rather to an embrace of the dignity and honor and praiseworthiness that is your God-given gift?

I have come to believe that struggling to answer that question is the journey of faith that Paul is writing about when he tells us here to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It is a journey of self-reflection on identity — who we have been and who we have become and who we are called to be. It is a piercing assessment of even what parts of ourselves are in tension with each other that make us up in fullness. It is asking Who do we think we are?

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I love the parts of my ministry with the Covenant Network that involve coming to places like Fourth Presbyterian Church for events and conversation. My eleven years doing this work have been a rewarding time of seeing the whole church’s progress in becoming more inclusive of LGBTQIA+ people, winning votes, changing policies, seeing new leaders emerge.

But at times, I’ve got to tell you, this work is also heart-wrenching. The hardest parts of this work usually start with a phone call or an email from a person whose life is in a crisis. Sometimes it’s a very public crisis, and sometimes the crisis is known only to them. But almost always it is a crisis that involves their identity. It is a crisis about who they think they are.

There is the pastor in the middle of a long-term successful pastorate who, though presenting to the world as a man, has for years understood herself to be a woman, but cannot imagine a scenario where they could share that honestly with the people of their church, even though those people are wonderful and loving.

There is pastor who, though a man in a faithful monogamous marriage to a woman, acknowledged to colleagues and youth group parents that he was bisexual and whose ministry was over in that place within six months in a flurry of false rumors and misunderstanding.

There is the elder in a church who, upon telling her pastor that she identified as female and coming to church wearing a dress, received a visit from the pastor and his wife, who prayed over her — without her consent — for what they called healing.

All of these just in the last few years — after the Presbyterian church changed its policies to theoretically be more inclusive, more welcoming of all. Over and over, the church has the opportunity to help people understand who they are — as children of God, as people made by God, as they are.

And over and over, we as society and as church struggle to do this right. On the one hand, we understand more than ever about how elements of our identity shape us. How our racial and ethnic background shapes us, how our innate sexual orientation and gender identity go beyond our choosing or preference, how cultural constructs have a hold on how we see ourselves and find our place in the world.

Yet every week the lives of people are afflicted by the painful realities of our day. Dismissive talk of “identity politics” that minimizes real pain and downplays authentic struggle. Communities that find themselves unable to speak up in their own defense. Elbowed out of their place at the table, even in so-called progressive churches, made to settle for crumbs, but not bread. Water, not wine.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

But for it to stop, all of us — including those of who are not L or G or B or T or Q or Black or Indigenous or Spanish-speaking or neurodiverse or living with a disability — all of us have to do our own wrestling with our identity, with who we are. For it to stop, we must all ask what to do with these selves that we are, all of our selves, in our fullness. It is a question of how to honor what has been entrusted to us in these bodies and these spirits.

Only when we fully understand who we are do we know what needs to be emptied. Only when we know our mind can we let it be the same one that was in Christ.

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What in your identity is it time to empty?

What in your identity is it time to lift up?

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

That seems like it might be a lot to ask. But really, I believe it is our first step to liberation, to freedom, to resurrection.

Where do you think of yourself most highly? We might ask ourselves Is it more highly than we should? Are we considering our power something to be grasped, our abilities something to be exploited, our faith a point of pride, our accomplishments something we deserve?

And if we emptied some of that, if gave up our seat at one or more of the tables we occupy, if we devoted those energies to something that brought us no gain but instead benefited another, if in the quiet of prayer or the noise of the assembly we humbled ourselves even for a moment and listened rather than spoke, who else might be lifted up?

Or where do you find yourself bent and broken? Which of your yearnings and self-understandings have already left you empty? Where have you become enslaved by other people’s definitions of you? What refrain that plays in your head each day is crucifying you? What part of your identity is in need of being raised up and celebrated and given a new and honored name?

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In a moment, at that Table, I will speak the words “Great is the mystery of faith.” And at other tables at almost exactly the same time, Keith will say those words, too. So will the pastor who is bi and serving a new congregation. So will the pastor whose congregation does not know her gender identity. And churches large and small, in the north and the south and the east and the west, will sing in response, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”

May the same mind that was in Christ be in us.

May our arrogance and independence die.

May our hope and confidence in who God has made us rise.

And by God’s Spirit, may we know exactly who we are. Again and again. And always. Amen.