Chicago Theological Seminary is located just south of the Midway Plaisance in Hyde Park. Many of you probably know that this stretch of green space, stretching more than a mile from Jackson Park and Lake Michigan on the east to Washington Park on the west, was created as part of the World’s Fair, the Colombian Exposition, held in 1893 and attracting some 27 million visitors.

One of the most amazing events that was convened as part of the Exposition was the first World’s Parliament of Religions. This was the first formal gathering of Eastern and Western spiritual and religious leaders and we recognize it as the beginning of interfaith dialogue. Hindus, Buddhists, Bahais, Jains, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Unitarians, and adherents of the Shinto and Zoroastrian traditions gathered for the first time ever in one place.

This history continues to amaze me. I can’t imagine the logistics ... in 1893 ... of creating, organizing, and implementing an event so large and so far-reaching. I admit to a lack of imagination here but seriously ... invitations had to cross oceans by boat! No one was arriving on frequent flyer miles and plans couldn’t be confirmed via email accessible on smart phones. I confess, this simply astounds me.

Often on my lunch hour, I will walk over to the Midway and contemplate that history and its legacy. I think of the audacity, the courage, and the vision of those who convened the Parliament in particular. The whole idea of it is incredulous and must have been met with skepticism in some circles and ridicule in others. Think about it. This had never happened before. Imagine the concerns about bringing together this mixed bag of religious leaders. Imagine the hand wringing and the naysayers. The “we’ve never done this before” attitudes. The worries that the difference is too much, the world views too disparate. And yet ... Here we are some 125 years later and the Parliament of the World’s Religions has its global offices here in Chicago, we continue to have a rich multiplicity of religious and faith communities, we have more theological schools than any other place in the world except Vatican City, we are the headquarters of the Interfaith Youth Core, and honestly, every time we step on the CTA, it’s an interfaith experience. I suspect that we owe this incredible religious diversity to that audacity, courage, and vision.

I’ve been asked to share with you some of my thoughts on doing congregational ministry in the religious diversity of our city and our time. And I think, in order to do that, we have to hold that legacy and history in our minds. I also think I need to share with you a little bit of my own story and how I’ve come to this work.

I’m truly an unlikely candidate for leading an interfaith project. I grew up in a household that was entirely non-religious. I can’t say we were atheist. We just weren’t anything. I suppose I could say we were trend-setters. I’m old enough that my public elementary school sent students to “Wednesday school” every week after lunch. At the beginning of the school year, families had to select which church they wanted their child to attend for that weekly program. My Jewish friend, Shoshana, and I were the “Nones” of our day, hanging back to help teachers organize classrooms or work on special art projects while all our other classmates headed off for a mid-week dose of religious instruction. So with today’s headlines proclaiming and sometimes fretting over the rise of the “nones,” I’m here as a reminder that we’ve always had nones in our midst.

In any case, my adolescence, college and young adult years are an interfaith journey of their own as my then “Spiritual but not religious” self sought out a community in which to make meaning and wrestle with those “meaning of life” age-old questions that kept me awake at night from my youngest memories.

I fell into a UCC church when my children were young and attending a co-op preschool housed in the church. The signs on the wall intrigued me. And the community welcomed and nurtured me, giving me space to question, think, and be authentic. Eventually the pastor invited me to lead the youth program. When I reminded him I didn’t own a Bible and certainly couldn’t believe Jesus was the only way to God, he told me the youth didn’t need pat answers, they needed someone to make space for their questions and accompany them on their journeys. And he gave me my first Bible. I found that though I didn’t have answers, I could make space for questions and journeys. And I did. And as I did, my own questions grew and my own journey deepened and eventually, in a wonderfully surprising way, I was led to the classrooms of CTS for my MDiv and then a second master’s of sacred theology degree.

And to ordination in this denomination that has always made space for my questions, accompanied me on my journey, and never offered me pat answers.

Throughout my work in youth ministry and my seminary studies, I was drawn and committed to interfaith engagement. Sharing Seders with a Jewish community every Passover, building Habitat for Humanity homes with youth and leaders from the local Muslim community center, spending time at the Lakeshore Interfaith Center where we encountered Eastern traditions, native traditions, healing traditions. I interned with an interfaith community organizing group, building interfaith coalitions to address issues including early childhood education, access to housing, and food security in local communities.

I worked with Jewish and Muslim youth groups on a play called Children of Abraham, where we shared our tellings of the stories of Isaac and Ishmael as a way to see our shared roots.

After graduation, I first worked at CTS as the Director of Admission, taking special care to recruit and welcome non-Christian students. I helped to facilitate a cohort program of religiously diverse students and gave workshops on college campuses, at IFYC events, at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. I blogged, and posted on social media, and marched with my arms joined with a myriad of friends from all kinds of traditions. Not just the usual suspects but also Jains, Pagans, ecowarriors, queer Muslims, indigenous leaders, and of course, the Nones.

I share this litany not so much to highlight what I did but to demonstrate my commitment to this work. How I believed in the power of interfaith work, of dialoguing, of building bridges across lines of difference, of creating coalitions to address injustice.

In December of 2016 I was speaking on a panel at CTS. One of my Muslim friends who works at IFYC was also on the panel. We each gave our usual spiel about the importance of interfaith work. And after the panel, when we were munching on hummus (because the mark of interfaith work is always hummus), we found ourselves having an honest conversation. A heartbreaking, challenging, honest conversation.

You see, the rhetoric of the 2016 election, the rise of hate crimes against Muslims, the overt religious bigotry evident in proposed legislation and policies, a rabid nationalism couched in a version of Christianity so far from the gospel it makes me wretch ... it was affecting me. And it was affecting my friend.

With tears in her eyes, she said, “Honestly, Lisa, what’s the point? We’ve been doing this work, sharing on these panels, we’ve eaten so much hummus together ...” Unable to finish her sentence, I completed it for her, “...and it feels like we’re moving backward. It feels like we haven’t made a difference.” We didn’t say much after that. We hugged goodbye shortly afterward, a wistful look in her eye as she walked out the door.

Don’t get me wrong here. It’s not that the things my IFYC friend and I were doing for those many years were wrong. Not at all. I think we need to keep doing all that and do more of it. It’s just that, alone, those efforts are not enough, they haven’t been effective in creating the kind of solidarity that insists on religious pluralism and refuses bigotry, hate speech, and violence.

The tiki torches in Charlottesville show me that we haven’t been effective. The targeted surveillance of mosques tells me we haven’t been effective. My Iranian-born, green-card holding friend Sarvin coming home from a visit to Australia, detained for four days in the first Muslim travel ban tells me we haven’t been effective.

The question becomes, how do we create and discover new and deepened ways of truly being in community in solidarity? How do we as Christians create partnerships and alliances that help to change public opinion and policy, moving us to a lived ethic of religious pluralism? Where there is truly space for a multiplicity of religious and non- religious identities? As I consider these questions, I think what’s required is something with the kind of audacity, courage, and vision that the creators of that first Parliament had. I think we need to be bold, to push beyond existing models and frameworks, to not only stay in tried and true models and methods.

In fact, if I can be so bold, I think, for us as Christians, we need to bring more of the Gospel to our interfaith work. And by this I don’t mean we need to proselytize or seek to convert anyone. Truly, I don’t think that’s the intention of the Gospel. I believe the power of the Gospel lies in the ability to go beyond what seems possible, to imagine and live in ways that truly counter reality. And I think perhaps that’s where the audacious vision might arise.

I’d like to tell you I have this all figured out but, once again, pat answers aren’t at hand, instead I’m inviting you to question, explore, and to journey with me. And I do have some thoughts about at least part of what we might envision.

First, I think we need to intentionally move from coalitions to community. Pulling from a gospel framework, I don’t think Jesus gathered people simply to address issues or inequities of his time. I think he gathered people, people who were radically different, who shouldn’t have been at the table together, who didn’t belong ... he gathered for the sake of being community, of being whole, of being healed. He demonstrated that if even one is left out, one sheep, one coin, we are not complete. I think a gospel-ized interfaith movement cannot be content with coalition building.

Second, I think we have work to do to move us from tolerance to beloved. Too often our interfaith efforts end with religious communities moving from animosity to tolerance. From saying, “I don’t want a mosque in my backyard” to saying, “Fine; I’m okay with a mosque being here,” and again... this is good ... but not enough and certainly not what I think our faith calls us to. What would it take for us to insist that our Muslim, our humanist, our Jewish neighbors belong, not as tolerated groups, but as beloved, affirmed, welcomed, members of our society? Not that we’re simply okay with their presence but that we are incomplete without each other. Where a Muslim citizen could of course run for and be elected to president of this nation. What does that even look like? I’m not sure I know yet.

Third, we have to see our religious identities as part of our overall complicated, messy, intersectional identities. Race matters in this work. Gender matters. Sexuality matters. Class matters. First language matters. National identity matters. Age matters. Ability matters. We can’t imagine that when we engage in interfaith work, we leave those other identities on the doorstep. And we shouldn’t imagine that our religious identities are as clear and delineated as we might like to think. I doubt there is one definition of Christian that would fit everyone in this room. And yet, too often in our interfaith work, we as Christians assume Muslims, or Jews, or even the Nones are definable groups, all on the same page. I think we need an audacious vision that says we can make space for all our authentic, messy, complicated identities. I think we need courage because bringing all that into the room means there will be conflict but perhaps authenticity is more important than a false sense of peace that requires us to silence or stifle parts of ourselves.

And last, I think for us in this moment, we need to have courage. Faced with trends that show declines in church attendance, the rise of the nones, and aging congregations, it’s easy to turn inward and to pour our energy into maintaining what feels comfortable and familiar. But nothing about the Gospel is comfortable or familiar. And we risk isolating ourselves into oblivion. With audacious courage, let’s engage with the nones, with the spiritual but not religious, with those of a multitude of faiths, building community, being beloved, opening ourselves authentically to receive one another ... not in hopes that they will join our traditions or fill our pews and not to simply build bridges across our differences but truly to become beloved community to one another.

We are here in Chicago, the birthplace of interfaith work, standing on a legacy of audacity, courage, and vision, living in a community steeped in diversity, where we don’t have to go far to encounter the other. And we are here in Chicago as people of faith, a faith that reminds us God is already doing a new thing, and that urges us to have the kind of audacity in being assured of things we have not yet seen.

Theologian Marjorie Suchocki writes, “In our newly small earth, where we are forced to know one another or die, could we be experiencing a new direction from God toward human community through the affirmation of many who remain many and yet are as one? If that were the case, and if we responded, we might know something of the kingdom of God on earth.”

This my friends, is where I believe our ministry is called. I believe God is already doing a new thing, and I have conviction that though we have not yet seen it, living as beloved, as members of God’s kin-dom on earth, is indeed possible. May our audacity, courage, and vision take us there.

Amen.