Returning to the church where they worshipped while living at the
White House, the Clintons reunited today with the old friends and
neighbors at the Foundry United Methodist Church which celebrated its
bicentennial.
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (2nd R) with her
husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) and their daughter
Chelsea attend the Foundry United Methodist Church's bicentennial
service in Washington September 13, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (C) stands between
former U.S. President Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea as they
attend the Foundry United Methodist Church's bicentennial service in
Washington September 13, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (2nd L) with former
U.S. President Bill Clinton (C) and their daughter Chelsea (L) attend
the Foundry United Methodist Church's bicentennial service in Washington
September 13, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves as she leaves
with Senior Pastor Ginger Gaines-Cirelli after the Foundry United
Methodist Church's bicentennial service in Washington September 13,
2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton smiles as she leaves
after the Foundry United Methodist Church's bicentennial service in
Washington September 13, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Foundry
United Methodist Church's bicentennial service in Washington September
13, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (2nd L) with former
U.S. President Bill Clinton (C) and their daughter Chelsea (L) attend
the Foundry United Methodist Church's bicentennial service in Washington
September 13, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
U.S.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures to former
U.S. President Bill Clinton to take a seat first at the Foundry United
Methodist Church's bicentennial service in Washington September 13,
2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, her daughter Chelsea,
second from left, and husband, former President Bill Clinton, attend the
Foundry United Methodist Church for their Bicentennial Homecoming
Celebration, in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During President
Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons worshipped and participated
regularly at Foundry. Also pictured in front of the choir are Rev.
Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, left, and Rev. Dawn M. Hand, right. (AP
Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, her daughter Chelsea,
second from left, and husband, former President Bill Clinton, sing while
attending the Foundry United Methodist Church for their Bicentennial
Homecoming Celebration, in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During
Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons worshipped and participated
regularly at Foundry. Also pictured is Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, left.
(AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks while attending
the Foundry United Methodist Church for their Bicentennial Homecoming
Celebration, in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. (AP Photo/Molly
Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, with Rev. Dawn M. Hand,
left, greets church attendees at the Foundry United Methodist Church for
their Bicentennial Homecoming Celebration, in Washington, Sunday, Sept.
13, 2015. During President Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons
worshipped and participated regularly at Foundry. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, with Rev. Dawn M. Hand,
left, greets church attendees at the Foundry United Methodist Church, in
Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During President Bill Clinton's
presidency, the Clintons worshipped and participated regularly at
Foundry. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton greets church attendees
at the Foundry United Methodist Church, in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13,
2015. During President Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons
worshipped and participated regularly at Foundry. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Chelsea
Clinton, daughter of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham
Clinton, speaks while attending the Foundry United Methodist Church for
their Bicentennial Homecoming Celebration, in Washington, Sunday, Sept.
13, 2015. During President Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons
worshipped and participated regularly at Foundry. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter,
Chelsea, greet congregants after attending the Foundry United Methodist
Church for their Bicentennial Homecoming Celebration, in Washington,
Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During President Bill Clinton's presidency, the
Clintons worshipped and participated regularly at Foundry. The Revs.
Dawn M. Hand and Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, with hands outstretched, stand
by, dressed in robes. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, and her daughter,
Chelsea, center, greet attendees at the Foundry United Methodist
Church, in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During President Bill
Clinton's presidency, the Clintons worshipped and participated regularly
at Foundry. Rev. Dawn M. Hand, wearing glasses, stands with the
Clintons. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, and her daughter,
Chelsea, attend the Foundry United Methodist Church for their
Bicentennial Homecoming Celebration, in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13,
2015. During President Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons
worshipped and participated regularly at Foundry. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, center right, her
daughter, Chelsea, second from left, and former President Bill Clinton
attend the Foundry United Methodist Church for their Bicentennial
Homecoming Celebration, in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During
Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons worshipped and participated
regularly at Foundry. Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli stands at left. (AP
Photo/Molly Riley)
Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, and her daughter,
Chelsea, greet congregants after attending the Foundry United Methodist
Church for their Bicentennial Homecoming Celebration, in Washington,
Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During President Bill Clinton's presidency, the
Clintons worshipped and participated regularly at Foundry. (AP
Photo/Molly Riley)
Chelsea
Clinton, center right, kisses her mother, Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, as they attend service at Foundry
United Methodist Church for their Bicentennial Homecoming Celebration,
in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015. During President Bill Clinton's
presidency, the Clintons worshipped and participated regularly at
Foundry. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
No matter your religion or whether you even practice one, there are important messages here. Thank you, Hillary, for sharing this.
“We all have different gifts”
On Sunday, September 13th, Hillary delivered a sermon at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.
Good
morning. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad
in it. And especially for this occasion, a remarkable event that we are
celebrating together. I am so glad that Chelsea and I could be part of
it. I thank you for that invitation.
I
was thinking, as Chelsea was speaking, how unpredictable, even
serendipitous it turned out to be that we ended up at Foundry. Some of
you may remember it was not too long after the inauguration. It was a
Sunday. We were already getting kind of stir-crazy, and so we thought,
“Let’s go to church.” Now, this was a long time ago — 1993. There had
been a big storm in Washington. The drifting snow was stacked in the
streets and on the sides. We had the idea that we would find a Methodist
church and walk from the White House. I don’t know who was there that
day. Some of you were very, very kind in bringing us in. This was the
time before metal detectors and all of the hyper-security that we live
with today. We just walked out of the White House followed by some
bewildered Secret Service agents and made our way to church. And from
that moment until this, we have always felt so welcome.
Chelsea
has just described how much Foundry meant to her, and I can only echo
that as her mother who saw how embraced she felt here in this
congregation. This community — because indeed that’s what it is — was a
place where we could worship, study, contemplate, be of service, get
some good pastoral advice, and step outside all the commotion of life in
the White House and Washington. That was very, very precious to us.
Here we were, not “the First Family” — we were just our family. And we
relished and cherished that time. We always have felt part of the
Foundry family. …
As I was listening to
Chelsea and remembering those early weeks and months here in Washington
for us, and how thrilled I was that she found so much support here, I of
course thought about my own Methodist church growing up in Park Ridge,
Illinois, where I had the same kind of experience.
I
am a Methodist both by birth and by choice. I was born into a Methodist
family — parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, claiming to go all
the way back to the coalfields hearing the Wesleys preach. Now, as with
so much inherited family lore, I am sure the press will dive on that and
try to figure it out. All I can tell you is what my grandparents told
me.
And that church really opened my
eyes, my mind, and my heart — especially my youth minister, who forced
us out of our comfort zone, who made us have to really live in what John
Wesley called “his parish,” meaning the world, in ways that were a
little bit discomforting, to be fair. This was a youth minister who said
no, you can’t just be sitting satisfied in your own church in a suburb
of Chicago that was all white. We’re going into the inner city of
Chicago. We’re going to go into church basements and have fellowship
with youth from African American churches and Hispanic churches. We’re
going to sit and we’re going to talk about our lives. And we did.
A
youth minister said one day, “I’m going to go see Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., speak in Chicago. If your parents will let you go, I will
take you.” My parents let me go; not every parent did. And we got in
that church van and we went down to Orchestra Hall and we heard Dr.
King. And I remember standing in that long line just to shake his hand
after hearing one of his famous sermons, “Remaining Awake Through A
Great Revolution.” I’ve read that many times since, trying to absorb
even more than the first impression that I felt so strongly. I left that
hall a different person thanks to my church.
When
I went to college, I looked for a church and I found a Methodist church
that once again I felt could be part of my new experience, my own
journey. And in place after place after place, the Methodist church and
my fellow Methodists have been a source of support, of honest
reflection, of candid critique.
I
got some advice from Dr. Wogamon just earlier this morning. Which I
promise I will put into effect. He basically said, “You know, if you’re
going to read and listen to Romans 12, you’ve got to be nicer to the
press.” So, to my friends in the press, I will certainly take that to
heart.
Now, I attribute not only my
church relationship to my father’s family, because that’s where it came
down to me, but to my mother. She taught Sunday school. She said later
she did it to make sure my brothers would show up. She was very focused
on the lessons of John Wesley.
She used to like to quote, “Do
all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you
can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the
people you can, as long as ever you can.”
I
thought that was good advice then. It’s not always easy to implement,
but it’s a great reminder that I carry around with me to try to get me
back focused when life and its vicissitudes sometimes knock you off the
path.
I’ve
come to see how important it is that we always be asking ourselves how
we do translate our faith into actions. We heard from Meaghan one of my
favorite verses in Romans 12. “We all have different gifts, according to
the grace given to each of us.” Another lesson I learned from my
mother. Abandoned and mistreated by her own family, sent by her parents
to live with grandparents; rejected by them. She was on her own by the
age of 14, working as a housemaid. I didn’t know any of this when I was a
little girl and we would go off to church on Sunday or we would do
something around the house or at school. I just knew she was a great
mom.
Years later, I asked: How did you
keep going in the face of abandonment and rejection? How did you not
give in completely to bitterness and despair? How did you keep your
faith in the goodness of people and a future that could be better than
the past? And here’s what she said. She said along the way, someone
showed her kindness. Someone showed her that they believed she mattered.
The
first grade teacher who saw she had nothing to eat at lunch, and after a
few days, without embarrassing her or calling attention to her, walked
over and knelt down and said, “You know, Dorothy, I just brought too
much food today. Would you like my extra food?” And years later, my
mother realized that her teacher fed her every day.
Or
even the woman whose house she was cleaning at the age of 14, who
realized that my mother desperately wanted to go to high school. And
this woman said to her, “If you get your work done, you can go to high
school. You can leave in the morning and come right back.” Now, to some
that might sound harsh for a 14-year-old, but for my mother it was a
great gift. So every day she would get up early, she would do her work,
and she would literally run to high school, and then after it was over
she would run back.
Because people
believed in her, she was able to believe in herself and believe in me
and others whose lives she touched, like my husband and my daughter. And
she was able to give us the great gift of believing in others.
The
longer I live, the more places I go and people I meet, the more certain
I am that everyone has gifts to be recognized and celebrated. No matter
who you are, where you come from, what your income, your race, your
religion, your gender, your age, your ability — you have value. You have
dignity. You have something to offer God and the world.
Now,
we don’t all have the same gifts and blessings, but that’s okay. In
fact, it’s good. That’s Paul’s message in Romans 12. Because together,
our contributions add up to something greater than anything we could
offer on our own. And isn’t that the goal of a community or a
congregation? The meaning of what I used to call “a village.” It takes a
village, it takes a community, it takes a congregation to lift us all
up and to empower us to do our part.
The
Apostle Paul is pretty clear that we can’t just celebrate our gifts,
we’ve got to use them, especially in service of others and in service of
a better, fairer and more peaceful world. We should be — in Paul’s
words — generous and diligent and cheerful in our service. That’s how we
honor God, who gave us these gifts in the first place.
I
think again of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who once preached, “God
gave all of us something significant, and we must pray every day, asking
God to help us accept ourselves. That means everything. If it falls
your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like
Michelangelo painted pictures; like Handel and Beethoven composed music;
like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Be the best of whatever you are.”
In
that way, Dr. King said, we learn to love ourselves. “Love your
neighbor as yourself” doesn’t mean much unless you love yourself first.
We aspire to use our gifts to the fullest, and that’s what gives us the
grace and strength to truly love and serve God and one another.
I
see a second challenge in Paul’s letter to the Romans, and I think it’s
particularly relevant today — for our nation, and for this church as it
enters its third century. It’s not enough to just use our gifts. We
also have to make it possible for other people to discover and use their
gifts too. The truth is there are so many people in this community, in
our country, in our world, who have so much to offer — but never get the
chance to live up to their God-given potential. Talent is universal,
but opportunity is not yet.
Too many
people are held back by economic pressures and social barriers. It’s
still too hard for too many to find a good job that pays enough to
support a middle-class life. Too many children don’t get the education
they need to succeed, and too many families find that no matter how hard
they work, they just can’t get ahead. And as we’ve been reminded again
and again recently, there are still hard truths to face about race,
gender, and sexual orientation in America.
Now,
too many people want to let their light shine, but they can’t quite get
out from under that bushel basket. It is way too heavy to lift alone,
and that’s where the village comes in. Together, as a church, a
community, and yes, a country, we can open doors that are still closed.
We
can lift each other up and leave no one behind. We can unlock the
potential of every American. And when we do that, we will unlock the
potential of America itself.
Foundry
has helped people for the past 200 years discover their gifts every day
through worship, hospitality, community outreach, interfaith dialogues,
the youth ministry, and millions of other expressions of love, faith,
and service to this community and around the world.
“Love
God, love each other, change the world.” — that’s the Foundry way. Now,
it also says elsewhere in the New Testament, in James, that, “Faith
without works is dead.” But we know that grace and salvation are
unmerited gifts from God. The question is what we do with those
gifts — to use that gift of grace wisely, to reflect the love of God and
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to the greater good of God’s beloved
community.
So thank you, Foundry. Our
family is just one of so many over the past 200 years that this church
has inspired. We are proud and grateful to be members of this community.
We hope that in the years ahead, Foundry’s mission just grows deeper
and stronger. That many more people will feel the embrace, the support,
the love and acceptance.
Shortly after
we came to Foundry, this church became a reconciling congregation, which
only added to our joy of being part of it. The movement for reconciling
goes on. The movement for healing, for reaching out, for loving and
serving will never end. In addition to this being a special day for
Foundry, it’s a special day for my family because we have been given so
much — to the church we walked into on that snowy day so many years ago.
And of course, it doesn’t get any better than the fact that today is
also Grandparents Day. So this is just a winner all the way around.
But
let us rejoice in this day that, yes, the Lord has made, and 200 years
of hard work has built a congregation, a church in our capital city that
serves as a kind of reminder, if you will, every single day of what we
truly are called to do. Let us remember that and let us go forward with
the hope and commitment to make this church the living example of how to
live as described by Paul in Romans 12.
Hillary Clinton 
