This is my second to last sermon as a pastor. Last week I explored the bigness of God and why we must not shrink from what I call the “heretical imperative”—that is, the freedom to break the dead chains of orthodoxy when they hold us captive to lesser views and impoverished experiences of God. Next week, July 31, 2022, I’ll preach my final sermon and explore the future of Christianity.

In this current sermon, preached at Davis Community Church on July 24, 2022, I meditate on the truth of our common and sacred humanity, its relation to the tradition of the Incarnation, and how, in the immortal words of Victor Hugo (Les Miserables), “to love another person is to see the face of God.”

The sermon is based on 1 John 4.7-12 and was preached on July 24, 2022. The video of the sermon can be found here.

Last week, I spoke with you about what I was looking for when I came among you in March 2015. This week, I want to spend some time reflecting on the key lessons I’ve learned among you. Next week, for my final sermon among you, I’ll explore what I sense we must become if we are to survive as a species and try to thrive. I’ll explore what it means to allow religious faith and spirituality to shape a way of being human that helps us live benevolently and cooperatively on the earth.

After next Sunday, I will no longer serve as a pastor, but I still believe that religion—the stories, rituals, symbols, and practices of religion—are immensely relevant. If religious ways of life can be re-imagined for the centuries ahead, religion will help humanity turn from the ways of life that harm both us and the planet around us. I still believe that religion can help us become a benevolent presence on the planet rather than malevolent presence, a cooperative species rather than competitive species. And I remain hopeful that religious communities like this one can point the way. I believe that if the religions of the world do not renew themselves and evolve, humanity will face the turbulence of the future without the ballast of religion’s spiritual and psychological wisdom that can help humanity create a sustainable, flourishing future.

I’ll say a lot more about the future next week. Today, I want to focus my sermon on what I’ve learned among you these last seven and a half years.

My first Sunday among you was Palm Sunday, the first Sunday of Holy Week, 2015. Someone on the pastor search committee had suggested that Easter Sunday would’ve been a great day to start my ministry. “You know,” they said, “having our new pastor start on Easter would be great way to boost attendance.”

“I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” I said. “People might think I’ve got an overblown ego. You know, Jesus rises in glory and so does the new pastor?”

Easter didn’t seem appropriate. “How about Palm Sunday then?” I asked. And so, we settled on the beginning of Holy Week, not its end.

But I realized that starting on Palm Sunday wasn’t much better. Think of the imagery: I stride into the sanctuary for the first time at the moment we’re all remembering the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It’s a collision of imagery that could go to a pastor’s head.

Of course, neither Palm Sunday nor Easter are about the pastor, but it’s not hard for pastors to think too highly about themselves. Pastors are leaders and, like so many who presume to take on the mantel of leadership, pastors can have big egos. But big egos, while they can provide a certain kind of strength for leadership, are ruinous to the communities leaders serve.

And don’t we already have too many examples of big-ego’ed leaders today? Aren’t we all too aware of the harm their hubris does in our world?

But you were clear from my first experiences among you that humility, not hubris, is what matters most to you.

It was December of 2014. I’d driven up to Davis from Fresno to meet with the pastoral search committee. They’d offered me the job and we were exploring next steps. Toward the end of that meeting, Joe Yun, the chair of the committee asked me if I had any other questions. “Well, yeah, I do,” I said. “I’d kinda like to know why you chose me. You know, you had around 120 applicants, but you chose me. Can you talk a little about what about me seems right for DCC?”

Joe Y, Barbara G, Marian D, Joe B, James H, Deborah L, and Mike C were all in the room that evening. They looked at each other for awhile. I was expecting them to say something like: “Well, it’s clear you’re a proven administrator.” Or, “You’re a good preacher.” Or, “Your references are outstanding.” I figured their answers would have to do with skills and aptitudes and experience. But after a thoughtful silence, one of them blurted out, “We chose you because you’re so, well, human.” And they all nodded.

That was their sole answer. It was my humanity that mattered most to them. And since then, I’ve found it’s what matters to most of you.

“Humanity” comes from the same language source as our word, “humility.” And “humility” comes from the same source as our word, “humus,” which, in Latin, refers to “soil.”

Soil. Dirt. Mud. Ground. Earth.

“Humus” is formed when microorganisms in the soil interact with leaves and other organic materials: working to decompose them, helping to create the fertile stuff from which new life can spring.

At the beginning of my ministry I learned that what most of you wanted most wasn’t hubris but humus—the raw, earthy stuff of our ordinary human lives. And that’s been true ever since. Most of you want to know that your humanness matters, that the raw, earthy, authentic stuff of your life is somehow sacred. Most of you are suspicious of power and pretension, perfection and performance.

“We chose you because you’re so, well, human.”

Do you have any idea how liberating that was to me?

It was then that I knew I was in the right place. It was that statement that made me know that I’d found a community that wants to live the central tenant of Christianity. You are a community that lives out the truth that the Incarnation—God as a human being—means that our humanity is sacred. The Incarnation—divinity hidden in our humanity—means that the goal of human life isn’t some flight out of our bodies into a disembodied, pure, spiritual state of enlightened glory. The Incarnation shows us that we are loved not because we’re perfect but because we are “well, so human.” The Incarnation teaches us that the goal of human life is to experience divinity by living more fully into our humanity.

Saint Irenaeus, an early church theologian, put this truth this way: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

Do you realize how liberating that truth can be to us all?

“What did I find among you, here at Davis Community Church?”

Among you, I’ve found the sacred gift of our humanity. Together, you and I have learned to live from the humus of our lives, the fertile soil of our authentic selves.

We’ve learned to be more vulnerable, to allow mistakes, to heal the hurts that haunt us, to transform our pain so that we don’t transmit it, to recognize the ways our fears too often waste our lives, and to live with more wonder, curiosity, playfulness, and courage so that our lives will not be weakened by remorse and regret—so that we will live well until our last breath.

Because of what I’ve found among you, the sacred gift of our humanity, I’ve worked to massage these values into the deep tissue of our congregational culture.

Every spring I meet with the group of volunteers who make up our Nominating Committee. This year’s committee is made up of Wendy Haws, Alf Brandt, Vickie Ito, Marti Abbott, Amanda Kimball, Maria Cartwright, and Roger Kingston. Their job is to look at DCC members and discern who to invite into leadership on our church board, our council of elders we call our “Session.” The principal leaders of this church are not the pastors or the professional staff. DCC’s leaders are the council of our elders who listen together for the voice of the Spirit, who seek together the way of the Spirit, and who work together to manifest the desire of the Spirit.

As your pastor, it’s not my job to influence that committee. I don’t tell them who should or should not serve. I only tell them what kind of persons will serve us best, what qualities and characteristics will keep us healthy.

There are six qualities I offer the committee as they consider the leaders who will guide DCC into the future. The qualities are not hierarchical. They work organically, like the microorganisms that interact to create the fertile soil, the humus, from which new life always springs forth.

I hope you’ll remember them, because when I’m gone you’ll need to tend the humanity of this church; you’ll need to help keep it healthy and keep it holy by cultivating at least these six qualities that have shaped the life of this congregation for many years, characteristics that make you who you are—that produce the resiliency and optimism and creativity that are the genius of this congregation:

Humility

Vulnerability

Curiosity

Wonder

Mirth

And courage

Remember them. Cherish them. Practice them. Desire them from your elders, volunteers, professional staff, and pastors.

But they’re not easy to cultivate.

So much in our lives and in our world rejects them; so much in our experience and our training denies their value. Much of human life is shaped by their opposites:

Hubris rather than humility

Security rather than vulnerability

Suspicion rather than curiosity

Indifference rather than wonder

Seriousness rather than mirth

Violence rather than courage

Avoid them. Resist them. Don’t let them take root in your life together.

Find a better way.

It was a few months after my first Sunday, Palm Sunday 2015. Julie Herdt in the church office had set up a dozen or so small group gatherings for me in people’s homes—a way for me to get acquainted face to face with nearly a hundred of you and you with me. I told you about myself, what was important to me, where I was coming from, what I hoped for at DCC. And I asked you questions. One of those questions was: “What do you need from me as your pastor?” It was an important question, not just for me, but for you. It gave me a chance to get a sense of what was expected and needed of me. It gave a number of you a chance to reflect on what you needed from a pastor.

At Holy Happy Hour this last Thursday, Vickie Ito, one of our ordained elders reminded me of those small groups. I’d forgotten them.

Vickie gave me permission to share her story.

“Chris, I remember that first small group meeting in someone’s home. I can’t remember where we were but I can remember the question you asked us. I’d never been asked that question. And I remember the answer I gave. At the time, I thought my answer was too simple. But now, all these years later, I realize how important it was and how you’ve done just what I said I needed from my pastor.”

“I can’t remember that, Vickie,” I said. “What did you tell me?”

“You asked me what I needed from my pastor and I said, ‘I need you to fall in love with us.’ And I remember you smiled and said, ‘Vickie, I already am.’ Love has been what your ministry is all about and I’m grateful for that.”

Love, as our scripture reading today declares, is what makes the humus of our humanity fertile, it’s what being human is all about because it’s what God is all about. “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. For God is love.”

When we love, when we are loved, we can risk being human. When we love, when are are loved, we create a community where we don’t have to be afraid; when we love, when are are loved, we create a community where humility, vulnerability, curiosity, wonder, mirth, and courage thrive, and from that something good and beautiful is born.

“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.”

I end with a visual prayer, one I prayed here on the day of Pentecost in May of 2017. Things were rough then in our nation and world. But not as rough as they have been since then. Recently, Travis Reed, the acclaimed filmmaker, turned it into a visual prayer.

As the words and images and sounds move across the screen and fill this space, pray with me that the Holy Spirit will breathe and blow and move among us in such a way that we will all find and cherish the gift of our sacred humanity. Pray with me that we will learn to love more deeply. And pray with me that God will so animate the humus of your lives that something new and good and beautiful will be born in the days and weeks and months and years to come through the ministry of your shared and sacred humanity.

Let us pray . . . [find the video prayer here]