All Things to All People

By Sharon Nearhoof May
1 Corinthians 9:19-23
Scottsdale, Arizona

There is a man who lives near Nashville, Tennessee, by the name of Will Campbell. There's nothing much special about him — even he would tell you so — he's just an old southern Baptist boy who preached his first sermon at the age of seventeen, got himself ordained by the elders of the church, headed off to nab a degree from Yale Divinity School, and came back to the South he calls home to preach the Word and try to live it. In the 50's, young and full of idealism, Will Campbell tried to live the Word by joining the Civil Rights Movement and eventually counted among his friends luminaries like Andrew Young, John Lewis, and Martin Luther King, Jr. He attended marches, he drove the bumpy back roads of the south meeting people and preaching. He was one of three white ministers who walked beside Elizabeth Eckford as she and eight other black teenagers braved the mobs in Little Rock as they tried to enroll in an all-white school. He befriended many young leaders in the Movement and watched them defy the wrath of the most brutal South as they traveled from town to town. He was inspired by the courage of it all, the bravery and righteousness of it, but he was also disturbed. As much as he thought that the South and the entire nation should be confronted with the sins of its history, he became acutely aware that, in his words "Mr. Jesus died for the bigots as well."

This epiphany led Will Campbell to do something amazing — something unbelievable and, to some, unforgivable. Will Campbell started visiting the 'other side'. He began mingling with Klansmen and racists. In the years that followed, Will could be just as easily be found praying with a condemned Klansman on the night before he went off to prison as he could be found sitting in strategy sessions with Martin Luther King, Jr. Now I don't know about you, but the very thought of that makes my head spin. Martin Luther King . . . Klansman . . . How in the world can a person — one person — walk both sides of THAT line? How could a person look Martin Luther King in the eyes with any sense of integrity, any sense of dignity knowing that in just a few hours he was going to be sitting on the front porch of a Klansman. How could any person convinced of the evil of racism, active in the movement to end it, sit on the front porch of a Ku Klux Klansman and talk about anything except sin with any integrity at all? To this day, I don't know how Will Campbell did it. He didn't stop with racism, though. He went on to become one of the nation's leading opponents of the death penalty — visiting death row prisoners, testifying against it wherever he could — including during the sentencing phase at the trial of the man convicted of killing one of his own friends. He is a writer, a Yale Divinity School graduate, and he can use more four-letter words in one sentence than most of us could list in a lifetime. Somehow Will Campbell can fit in anywhere, talk to anyone, and still be fully who he is.

According to Will — it all has to do with Jesus — with the fact that, as he says, "we are all bastards but God loves us anyway. God has forgiven us, and if we can somehow manage to get hold of that fact, we can find the power to go and do likewise. Go and hate no more. Go and kill no more . . . " It's not the 'we're all okay' of modern pop-psychology, that's for sure, but there is power in such a statement — it is a Word that can go anywhere and speak to anyone, regardless of their position in society, their political convictions, or their past. God loves us anyway. God loves us all.

I've been thinking about Will all week — which gives me the same feeling of discomfort and nervous anticipation that reading the apostle Paul often does. They are a lot alike, I suspect. At least the songs they sing sound strangely alike. Consider this little ditty by Paul: "When I am with the Jews, I become one of them so that I can bring them to Christ. When I am with those who follow the Jewish laws, I do the same, even though I'm not subject to the law, so that I can bring them to Christ. When I am with the Gentiles who do not have the Jewish law, I fit in with them as much as I can. In this way I gain their confidence and bring them to Christ." Will Campbell couldn't have said it or lived it better.

Now, truth be told, most of us know a little of what it means to be 'all things to all people". Most of us can shift smoothly between our professional and personal lives. Most of us know that there are certain things you don't talk to Aunt Bertha about and that you have to take your shoes off at Cousin Bob's house but not at Cousin Frank's. On a small scale, we each change our behavior and monitor our tongues as we move from scene to scene throughout our day. But that's where it stops for most of us. How many of us are willing to go hang out in a seedy bar, shelling peanuts and inhaling second-hand smoke, so that we might speak the gospel of Christ to someone who needs it? If a homeless person walked in here right now, dirty, smelly, how many of us would take her out to lunch so she could eat and then home with us so she could get a shower? How many of us can even stand to go hang out with people who oppose us on a particular belief or issue? How many people from Womaen's Caucus go hang out with folks from the BRF and vice versa? How many people are even willing to adapt to folks coming to church in shorts and a t-shirt or singing Christian rock music for hymns or having a different order of worship or a different kind of sermon? We divide our the people in our world into categories — conservatives, liberals, do-gooders, derelicts, homeless, home-owners, drug addicts, clean, racists, righteous, sinners, saints. And fairly early, we discover which categories we belong in and once we're in — boy, there's no getting us out.

I suppose that's why both Will Campbell and Paul make me so nervous. Because on the one hand, I really want to know how they did it. I want to know what it is about their relationship with Jesus that gives them the courage and the patience and the tolerance and the strength to get out of the categories — to be all things to all people — to sit with racists and civil rights workers, to eat with Gentiles and Jews, to testify on behalf of killers and victims. I want to know how they reach people because an article in the Arizona Republic yesterday reported that the number of adults in America who say they subscribe to no religion jumped to 29.4 million people this year — nearly doubling the number who answered that way a decade ago. And that doesn't count the folks who show up in church a couple of times a year, or for whom God and faith are not a central part of their lives. On the one hand, I want to know what Paul and Will Campbell know about God, or about themselves, that gives them the Power to reach such people. And on the other hand, I'm not so sure I really want to know — in part because I'm not sure that I'm ready to go and do likewise. I like my life a little too much, I reckon. Maybe I like my idols — my categories — a little too much, too. That's usually what it comes down to in the end — for all of us.

Will Campbell nailed it when he said that there is this God — this amazing God who loves us each completely — regardless of what we've done (for evil or for good), regardless of what we will do. God loves all of us completely just because we are. And if we really understood that — if we really believed that, then we wouldn't need all those categories — all those idols to keep us feeling safe and righteous and accepted. We wouldn't need to judge ourselves and each other on the basis of things like wealth, race, class, sexual orientation, gender, disease. We wouldn't worship at the altar of fashion, commerce, or greed. Nor would we worship at the altar of "but that's the way it's always been" or "we've never done it that way before" or "but church has to be 'this' way!". We would not be captive to our insecurities and our fears and our desires. Nor would we buy in to the social caste system of categories that keep 'good' people feeling 'good' about themselves and 'bad' people feeling 'bad' about themselves. If we really believe that God loves each of us completely, then the categories dissolve and we can cross those imaginary boundaries without losing anything of ourselves. Why not sing new songs or try new ways to worship if it helps some in our midst connect with God? Why not go hang out in that seedy bar in the wild hope that we can convince one person in there that God loves them completely, too. It's not as if something is going to 'rub off' on us. Why not plead for the life of a killer? Why not walk the streets at night with bags of food for the homeless? What's the worst thing that can happen? Maybe we get mocked or looked down on. Maybe we get misunderstood. Maybe we get dragged before the religious or political authorities to answer for our unusual actions. Maybe we get beaten. Maybe we get killed. Hmmm . . . maybe this is all about Jesus, after all.

When Will Campbell says that "Mr. Jesus died for the bigots as well" he could just as easily have said Jesus was born for them, lived for them, loved them, chose to die instead of renounce them, and was resurrected because God's love for them was deeper than even death. And if Jesus believed in and lived out God's love for every person — regardless of that person's beliefs, actions, inactions, hopes, fears, mistakes, preferences, insecurities, expectations, cultural assumptions, etc. — well then maybe we can find the power to go and do likewise. Maybe we can tap into God's power to love everyone — really love them in the bothersome flesh.

And maybe we can discover that God truly loves us, just as we are. God doesn't need us to be anything special, anything in particular. God just wants us to be authentically who we are. One of the most disturbing things about being 'all things to all people' is that we think we can't do it with any integrity. If we think we're holy, how could we possibly get down and dirty with people we think are sinners. If we think the Old Rugged Cross is the only faithful type of music for worship, how could we sing along with the rock & roll praise band or vice versa? If we think we know what's right, how could we possibly go pray with people we think are wrong and have any integrity left at all. We know that it's hard to be who we 'are' with any integrity if we're always shifting who we 'are' to suit a different setting.

I suspect that the real problem is that few of us know who we really are. Too many of us in this world are raised to believe that we are whatever social categories we fit into. We are wealthy, we are important, we are losers, we are helpless, we are worthy, we are not worth a thing. So when we really encounter Jesus — this radical God-man who is just as much in love with tax collectors and harlots, with rock musicians and WWF wrestling fans, as with the 'holy' people — something in us cracks and shatters . . . and if we dare to follow Jesus, if we dare to hang out with the 'unlovable' in our world, then God comes alive in us . . . and often in them. And soon, we are no longer who we thought we were — and that is gospel. For we lose the illusion that we are any different from anyone else. We learn that we are each a complicated mix of saint and sinner and any categories we set up to convince ourselves otherwise are just lies we choose to live in. And while it hurts to lose the lies we mistake for the truth about ourselves, it also heals us and makes us free. Who in this world is as free as Will Campbell — who can say what he thinks and love more kinds of people than most of us are willing to know? Who was more whole than Mother Theresa, who spent her days visiting lepers and Presidents? Who was more alive than Paul — who truly understood that in Christ there is no male or female, no Greek or Jew, no 'saints' and 'sinners', no derelicts and do-gooders. In Christ there is only you and me and everyone else God loves.

So maybe moving between cultures, being all things to all people, is a rather simple matter of knowing who we really are as individuals and as a church — We are beloved of God. Loved by God. It's that simple. We are the children of God and Christ lived and died and rose again to help us understand and believe that God loves us all — no matter what — no 'excepts' or 'but ifs . . . '. God loves us all. There is no risk to our 'selves', no risk to our true lives in Christ, no risk at all in sharing the truth that God loves us all with anyone and everyone we meet in any place we can meet them in any way they can understand so that they can know, too, who they really are — beloved of God, no matter what. Those are saving words that both a Klansman and a Civil Rights Leader need to hear, that both the convicted killer on death row and the family of his victim need to hear, that an elderly man making his way through retirement and a Generation X woman making her way in the world need to hear, that the strong and the weak and the powerful and the unimportant need to hear. We are beloved, loved completely, all of us and that is who we are in any place, in any situation. No matter what we do. No matter what we sing. No matter what we say. No matter how wrong or right we are. No matter where we go. The churches that are growing — both in numbers and in faith — seem to have found that this Good News is worth sharing by any and all means necessary. That's something we could do, don't you think??

Sharon Nearhoof May
Scottsdale, Arizona