An Appropriate Ending

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As I end my YAV year, I had the chance to come and speak to my home congregation. Below is the sermon I gave this morning: I cut out some of it due to length.

For the next two years, I'll be heading to Union Theological Seminary pursuing an Masters of Arts in Ecumenical and Interfaith Theologies. This year has been extremely formative in my decision to go to Union. I hope to stay in contact with you all in some way, and am throwing around different ideas about how best to do that.

Thank you all for your support this year. It meant the world to work each day knowing that I have others supporting me and have made this year possible. I take much away from this year. Much of it lies in skills and new knowledge. Organizing in churches, and the work that I have documented here is something that I am extremely interested in doing. Through your support I was able to have the year of wonderful opportunities that I had.

I leave you with these final thoughts.


Peace,
Aaron



A week ago, I sat in the only all vegetarian, local food restaurant in San Antonio. The other institutional organizer, Lila, liked the place. She is from the Bay area of California, went to a good school in Pennsylvania, and came to San Antonio a couple of years later. Young and Iranian, Lila, is straightforward, friendly, and polite. Skinny, tall and with black hair, she makes for an impressive figure as an organizer. So when asked where I would like to go for my last meal in San Antonio as an intern organizer, I suggested Green, the vegetarian restaurant. Lila is very healthy, too. Large wood tables filled with Texans litter the place, the walls are plastered with southwestern pictures from deserts far away, and loud country music is usually playing: it is a busy place. I had just returned from a week-long training in Southern California: it was the national training for the Industrial Areas Foundation, or the IAF. During this past year, I have functioned, through the Young Adult Volunteer program, as an IAF intern institutional organizer. As Lila, and I ate our vegetarian lunches, we talked niceties and subtleties. Changing the subject, Lila asked about the training, and what all of this year has meant to me. Personal reflection and personal development are pivotal in organizing: simply, institutional organizing is about developing people and institutions, without self-reflection this is a very hard task to accomplish.
What did you learn about yourself this year?, Lila, asked me. She leaned her elbows on the table. It was asked with an intensity that caused me to put my fork down, lean back from my vegetarian rice and beans and think.

Thoughts raced through my head as I thought about the entire year. I thought about the first couple of months there, and the process of becoming familiar with San Antonio as a city, and working as an organizer: Then, my work consisted of coordinating block walks for the election. With materials packed up, walking kits made, I would drive across the city to meet a group of ready walkers. My first experience block-walking, was on the South side of San Antonio. In the span of 2 hours, a member of Divine Providence Catholic church and I walked several blocks. We had conversations with neighbors, left some fliers and took some names and numbers for those who were interested in joining. You see, our block walking wasn’t tailored for a specific candidate, but rather it centered around that neighborhood’s issues. We wanted to know what peoples’ concerns were. Sometimes, this was hard for people to understand. Confused looks came across their faces through screen doors as we explained we were not there to evangelize, but we are members of a church; that we were there to ask them to vote, but not for any specific party. This sort of activity seemed to occur outside of peoples’ realms of experience. At the end of the walk, the group gathered together and collectively reflected upon the walk: What went well, what could have been improved, how we all felt about our experiences. Together, as members of a church, we went through the experience again.

Still in Green, and as my vegetarian food got a bit colder, I continued thinking. I thought about this past spring, where several institutions I worked with underwent a process called institutional development. When explaining this process to people, I talk about how this is a process that helps the church be the church, it focuses on inward development versus outward; in order for a church to reach outward, to serve its community, it helps if it knows its self a bit more. In some abstract sense of the phrase, if a church doesn’t love itself, then it can’t love others. So intentional small group meetings, called House Meetings, were held. Where individual members, collectively expressed their concerns about their community and their church. These groups are times where people are given the space to voice their needs. To talk about the failing schools, the problems with gangs; to talk about the difficulty of working two jobs and still having problems financially because the jobs they’re work aren’t paying livable wages. All of these things are happening in our cities across our country, the main question, is where are people given the space to voice these concerns?

More important than simply voicing these concerns, however, is the opportunity for each individual to then act on these concerns, and talk to more people. House Meetings ask people to reflect personally upon their lives, and share their difficulties, and establish relationships with others in the group who are experiencing similar difficulties. Because that is a truth: we are never alone in our struggles. But there are very few spaces in our communities where people come and share their struggles. Again and again, in meetings with individuals I would ask them where they are talking about their difficulties. The vast majority said they don’t have these conversations outside of the kitchen table. Institutional Development is about bringing people together to create a stronger community, to reflect upon where the community is, and where it wants to go.

During one series of House Meetings, I opened up the session by recounting a statement by Ray Suarez. Mr. Suarez is a journalist for PBS, and he came to speak in San Antonio a couple of months back. He spoke about churches and communities in the United States today. Insightful and timely, he said that, “The churches we build are emblematic of the communities we desire to create.” There is a truth in this statement that has yet to truly manifest itself. Church is the place where we gather for support; it provides us with religious guidance, some social identity and certainly friendship. It is, and should be the place where we come to collectively voice our individual familial and communitarian needs.

But again, this struggle is not done alone. And that is what I shared with Lila. I told her how my story, the story of a white, middle class, male, born in Michigan, raised in small-town Kansas coincides with a poor Hispanic female on the south side of San Antonio. I told her how my years of working with Hispanic communities through mission trips, and in college all led me to the realization that what is needed is more relationships, not band-aid programs. During the training in California, a white Jewish rabbi reflected how often those who are from “Power” classes feel as if they don’t have a story, or some sort of struggle that connects them with the romanticized communitarian: you know, the Cesar Chavez Hispanic immigrant story, or the Martin Luther King Jr. story of overcoming racism. The rabbi continued, however, in saying that the difficulty is legitimizing our own experiences and struggles. For her, the realization came in understanding her institution had a stake in others’ well-being. That the Jewish synagogue has a stake in the life of the Hispanic immigrants’ story.

That is what today’s story out of Genesis tells us. It speaks of the church’s responsibility to fight for our own well-being and blessing; to struggle with God and with others for a better life. The difference, however, between Jacob and First Presbyterian Church of Iola, is that this struggle isn’t just left for the Pastor, or the elders or the session: it is left for all of us, individually and collectively.

Recently, I have been reflecting upon why I believe my faith calls me to join Jacob in this struggle. I’ve told the story about how I took multiple mission trips when I was younger, through this church. Those trips where the first point where I came into contact with tangible poverty and a faith that bolstered and supported peoples’ lives. I’ve told stories about taking Discipleship classes here, about youth groups, about pot-lucks and about volunteering here. It is surprising to me, the influence this church has played in my life. It is an institution that raised and formed me. Whether you all realize it or not, this is a church that fought for my well-being and blessing.

This is what I have learned throughout this past year as a Young Adult Volunteer: the role our churches have in our communities. It is a formative institution that can and should guide and develop people: old and young. Jacob wrestled with God and humanity because he believed he deserved the blessing. This blessing wasn’t for him alone, but for his family that crossed the river before him. Our churches can and should be strong institutions in our communities. Our churches should advocate and develop our children in their schools, in their public life and in their families. Now, I’m not calling for a repeal of church and state, but I am calling for the realization that churches can and should be teaching institutions. Like Jacob, we should see our membership to our churches as a responsibility to develop people. Like the first block walk, our faith calls us to meet people where they are and how they are. Like those house meetings, the churches we create lie in the relationships we have with others.
Now there is much to be said about this struggle for God’s blessing. Define it how you will, know the blessing will never come easy. But we don’t walk this path alone: we fight it as an institution with the belief that our faith is this story. Our faith calls us to be active in our communities, our faith calls us to meet others where they are and to create relationships that involve knowing others’ struggles. Our birthright, the story of our Christianity is littered with this truth of struggling for God’s blessing. We struggle because we believe our churches and communities deserve it.

Now, I want you all to know that I’ve been bragging about Iola, while in San Antonio. I talk about this small town in a distinctive and familiar sort of way. It is a town that is closely knit; simply by being the size that it is. I tell the story about how when I got in my first car accident, my mom knew and called me before the police could get to my car. I talk about how I would go running through this town and people would recognize me. People know each other here. This fact, however, is fading in our society. People are becoming more individualistic, more removed and isolated. Church is one of the few places where people still come together weekly. Bonded by faith and community, we have a responsibility to building a church family that knows its members anxieties, to recognize our call to struggle for others and ourselves and to do this together. It is branded in our Christianity: because Jacob believed his family and his own self were worth the dignity of God’s blessing. We should too.

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