there’s a wideness in god’s mercy: a cotv vision

Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost ● October 13, 2024

Rev. Alexis Lillie © 2024

You can view the full worship video recording at:

https://youtu.be/F0EIJoiAG78

Scripture Readings: 

Micah 6:6-8 (The Inclusive Bible)

The texts of the readings are in the worship bulletin linked here.

Before we can even start casting a vision for the future of our community, we have to name who we are and crucial to that work is understanding where we've been. Some of the images we just saw in this slideshow may bring those things to mind, if you've been here through it all, or show others of us the journey we've been on as a community over many years. These are the composite experiences, individuals, histories, that make up who we are.

It’s kind of like the Kamala Harris quote that people gave her a hard time about where she quoted her mom as saying, "You think you fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live, and what came before you." In other words, there is no me, without you, without this, without all the spaces that inform and contribute to who we are. We have to get a handle on that (as best we can) before we think about looking forward.

I’m watching this show on Netflix called Dark Winds, about a Native community in the 70’s, and there’s one storyline about a young native mother who was raised on the Reservation, but without a lot of the traditions of her clan. She’s now raising her own baby and an older native friend of hers is continually emphasizing the importance of teaching the baby the "old stories" so that baby grows up with a sense of rootedness in its history.

I didn't have a lot of rootedness, as many of you know. A number of years ago, shortly after became a mom, I went through phase where I was obsessed with trees and roots – and the roots in these images were portrayed as bigger than the tree sometimes! I even went so far as to get an interpretation of the Tree of Life tattooed on my arm.

Junia and I joke that I am the "keeper of the ritual" for us. I make sure she and I maintain relationships and habits and routines that ground us in who we are. All of these things connect us to meaningful histories and experiences, and it's also about situating our individual stories and routines and memories in a larger story whether that be tribal, familial, communal.

For us as a faith community, I think about how where we've been and where we are now situate us within our own religious history. This brings us back to the passage in Micah we just heard, back to Hebrew scriptures. (I know, you probably didn't expect that when we said we would "unpack our vision and mission statement" I'd be rewinding it back thousands of years! Or maybe you know me pretty well and you totally expected that!)

We chose to anchor this series in this Micah text because through the prophet Micah, the divine is casting a vision for people of faith. Here's an example of what we talked about last week, where the arc of scripture telling a larger story: bending things toward an expansive vision of justice and equity. This passage acknowledges – and then contradicts – typical ancient practice that would have been understood to show devotion. It's not about offerings, gifts, bulls, etc. Rather it’s about doing, being, and becoming in just, merciful, and loving ways.

When we talk about casting a vision that understands who we are and where we've been, this is the vision that Micah casts for living in the way of the divine commonwealth. These are the broad strokes: justice, and mercy, and love.

How it's implemented, how it's lived out, how it's brought into the present and even the future, looks different age to age, even moment to moment.

For us at Church of the Village, a big piece that both roots us to our past and helps us cast a vision for our future, in our context, is in our tag line: “We seek to be a radically inclusive community.”

I want to spend some time here. In the coming weeks, will be unpacking different aspects of vision statement specifically, but this one felt foundational to all of them, we even see it woven throughout in phrases like:

"We are open to spiritual seekers within and beyond Christianity …"

"We aim to create a radically inclusive space …"

"We testify to an expansive ... God …"

It's this last one that I think is particularly important for the "why" of our emphasis on radical inclusivity as a guiding principle. We want to be a community of radical welcome because we believe in something bigger than ourselves that invites us into this work. Looking back at where we've been ... and then all the way back to some of the foundational principles wrapped in in being people of faith ... we understand that to include this call for justice, and mercy, and love is lived out in drawing the circle wide.

We reflect what we have been called to in a God that is already expansive. We reflect the wideness in God's mercy. How are folks supposed to grow into their own development, to be challenged and convicted and accompanied on their own journey toward justice, mercy, and love, if they aren't welcomed into a space that will accompany them??

The wideness, the expansiveness, the welcome undergirds it all. It is the soil in which all these other beautiful flowers and plants and seeds of our vision grow.

I want to end by highlighting the final phrase in the statement:

"We live out our mission through re-imagined traditions and rituals that celebrate the movement of God for our time."

Our Mission and Vision statement captures where we are and what we're looking ahead to, for *this iteration of our community. At the beginning of the sermon, we saw pictures – and we all have our own memories – of past iterations of this community. I, for example, can't remember what this space was like when we had pews or even rows!

Our new ways of being are not an arrival. Hopefully none of us would say that yes, this physical configuration, or the people who make up our congregation, or the beliefs we hold are the final iteration.

What will this space look like in two years? Or four years? What will you all be like? How will your ways of growth and becoming ripple out into this ever-evolving organism that we call COTV and give birth to different traditions and rituals?

This version of our community is not it's an arrival, and thus our vision statement is not an arrival. Integral to who we are as COTV is that there are certain places we can't quite put our finger on who we are. This is intentional! Our vision statement is not an end point. It is, hopefully, a faithful encapsulation of who we are, informed by where we've been, and looking forward to where we're going.

In that, it is expansive! It is always open to our faithful being and becoming -- for ourselves, as a community, and as part of a larger context.