Holy Currencies: Truth
Luke 17:11-17; Ephesians 4:14-16
October 9, 2022
Emmanuel Baptist Church: Rev. Kathy Donley
Image: The Healing of the Ten Lepers, James Tissot
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/HfHmy5Y20U4
There’s a conversation that has been cycling through this congregation for the last few years. Even before the pandemic, we were seeking to discern God’s call on us, God’s mission for us in this time. And now we do so with a new sense of urgency. This month, I am using the concepts from Eric Law’s book Holy Currencies as a tool to help that conversation.
I appreciate Law’s definition of missional. He says that a missional church is a community of people who look outward and are able to connect with other people who are not already members of another church.[1] A missional church is a community – which implies that there is a group which has formed, a group with its own internal life. But, he says, that it’s focus is more outward than inward. A missional church does not exist for self-preservation, but it is always seeking deeper connections with those beyond, those who may not yet have a community in which to share the good news of Jesus.
Law describes 6 currencies, six things which sustain the life of healthy missional churches. We are attending to these currencies this month for two reasons. The first reason is that October is usually the month when we lift up stewardship. Stewardship is that churchy word which means the ways that we share and manage our time, energy and resources. The second reason is that all of these currencies become part of the conversation about how to understand and join God’s mission for us.
Last Sunday, we focused on the currency of relationship. Law defines that as the mutually respectful connections that church members and leaders have inside and outside the church.
Today we explore the currency of truth. The currency of truth is the ability to articulate wholistic truth internally and externally. Internally, this currency recognizes that different individuals and groups within the church may have different experiences and understandings of what life and what matters. Externally, this currency values the knowledge and experiences of different individuals or groups in the neighborhood or the city in the nation or across the world.
One more point about this model. Law describes a cycle of blessings in which the currencies flow and circulate in ways that support and enhance each other. For example, healthy relationships often support truth telling because the persons within that relationship have enough trust to share experiences that are differ from the dominant narrative. And, in reverse, that truthful sharing may deepen the existing relationship.
Luke chapter 17 contains a story that is familiar to many of us. This text is a reading on Thanksgiving. It is usually lifted up as a story about gratitude or ingratitude. It is often read as if those are the only two possible experiences of the people within the story. Today, we have with us 10 people who suffered from leprosy until they encountered Jesus that day. They each have their own story to tell. I invite you to listen for the truth that each of them shares.
Note: At this point, ten readers from the congregation stepped forward and read through Maren Tirabassi’s script “Reader’s Theatre for the Ten People Healed of Leprosy” which may be found here https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2019/10/07/readers-theatre-for-the-story-of-the-ten-people-healed-from-leprosy-luke-17-11-19/
Many of us learned this as a story about the nine and the one. Many of us were taught the story in such a way that it seemed like 9 people had the same experience and 1 person had a different experience. Our friends have reminded us that it probably was more complicated than that.
None of us has complete knowledge or the whole unvarnished truth. We all see through the lens of our experiences or within the narrative we have been taught. But when the currency of truth is circulating well, we recognize that a complex truth emergences as we seek to understand many different points of view.
I notice that there are not just two stories here. Not just the story of one thankful outsider and nine unthankful insiders. It is more nuanced than that even though the narrator doesn’t relay those details. But I also notice that Jesus elevates the voice and experience of the outsider.
Jesus encountered ten people with leprosy and sent them to the priest. Jesus was healing them, but the priest was the one with the authority to pronounce them contagion-free. It didn’t count until they got the clean bill of health from that authority. They all had leprosy, but the Samaritan was in a category by himself. He couldn’t present himself to a Jewish priest. He would have to go to Samaria and find a Samaritan priest. We might think of him as a Protestant seeking absolution from a Catholic priest. It doesn’t work like that. Or to move to a health care metaphor, he might be someone who is not insured or whose insurance is not accepted outside of network. He is outside the dominant system. Part of his truth is that the system that works for the other nine doesn’t work for him. Perhaps it is because of that, perhaps it is something else, that puts him in a different place from the others and enables him to come back to Jesus. It is his voice, his truth, that Jesus amplifies.
We do not have the whole truth unless we also listen to and seek to understand the experiences of those whose experience is different from ours, especially we need to hear the truth that comes from beyond the dominant view.
The way we share and receive truth is significant to our life and identity as individuals and as a congregation. The author of Ephesians writes of telling the truth in love as a mark of mature faith.
Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati discovered an unwelcome truth about itself.[2] The pastor heard rumors that a major gift given to the church 100 years earlier had some nefarious strings attached, so he and the church leadership went into their archives to find the truth.
They were dismayed to discover that a church member had left a major gift in her will on the condition that it would be used “for the white race only, to build a church for the white race only.” It was a gift of $22,000 which would be about $250,000 in today’s dollars. Not only did the church accept the money at that time with those restrictions explicitly stated, they used it to help them build the building in which that congregation continues to worship. When the church understood the truth of this history, they also realized that the present-day congregation continues to benefit from the wealth that they were given in this gift. They named it as structural racism which they stopped to confess and lament.
And then the leadership committed the church to a new racial justice ministry that has three components – listening, learning and action. They added $50,000 to the church’s annual operating budget to support the work of racial justice, which they are just beginning. The pastor said “It was our feeling if we tried to make this payment a one-time commitment, we might fall into the trap of saying, ‘OK, we did this, so we’re not racist anymore,’
They chose to make an annual budgetary commitment as a way of continuing to deal with the truth of their own complicity and their active engagement to dismantle it.
I’ve been told about a significant truth-telling that happened a few decades back in this church. As I understand it, it was a valued member of the choir who spoke his truth. He shared that the church at large and this church in particular was not advocating for the full inclusion of GLBTQ persons. He spoke from his own experience and he spoke from within a context of relationships. The currency of truth and the currency of relationships flowed together and from exchange came a new justice concern in this congregation. His speaking of truth ultimately led Emmanuel to take a public stand articulating our convictions that all persons of all gender identities and sexual orientations are made in God’s image and loved by God and therefore welcome and loved in this place.
Friends, the currency of truth is strong here. One important opportunity to lean into that strength will happen in our work with Joy Skjegstad, the consultant who is meeting with us at the end of this month. Please sign up for one of those slots. Come to speak your own truth and to listen to the experiences of others. Let us continue to speak the truth in love as we carry out the mission of God in this place. Amen.
[1] Eric H.F. Law, Holy Currencies: Six Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2013), p.1
[2] https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/buried-in-the-church-columbarium/