[Sermon] The Right Kind of People

Dr. Kempton Hewitt

May 31, 2026 + The Holy Trinity

Guest preacher Dr. Kempton Hewitt opens with a provocation: he's heard it said that "not all the people are the right kind of people." Trinity Sunday, he argues, is precisely the right day to push back. Drawing on Paul's closing benediction to the Corinthians and Jesus' commission to "all nations," Hewitt grounds the church's radical welcome not in sentiment but in theology — we are in God's tent, not our own, and we did nothing to earn our place in it. The great theologian Paul Tillich puts it plainly: all we did was accept the fact that we are accepted, and that acceptance is the only credential anyone needs. On the first Sunday of the long green season, Hewitt calls the congregation back to the basics: sitting together, eating together, and holding each other as the daily practice of a people shaped by Trinity's love.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

My name is Kempton Hewitt, and I was born into a huge immigrant Norwegian family in Everett, which meant that I grew up with — after the marriages and everything — probably about 15 to 18 overseers, parents, Norwegian parents, most of whom had severe doubts that I would survive into adulthood without ending in somebody's basement. Two of my Norwegian uncles married Danish women, and one of them was one of the great blessings in my life. Her name was Irene Gagmar, and she was the only one of the aunties and uncles who didn't have severe doubts about me. I often went and stayed with her and spent time with her, and she watched my progress from childhood right on through seminary. One day, at the very end of seminary, I went to visit her and she said to me, "Now listen, I have something to tell you. Here's what I want you to know. Don't be these other pastors and preachers who are always talking about doctrine and what to believe." She said, "Campy" — oh, I let it slip, didn't I? I'm Campy to those aunties. She said, "It's about people. It's about people. Don't forget — be about people."

Now, perhaps she even thought that I was disparaging of that, or somehow had gone beyond it, but I did not. The fact of it is, I remember exactly what she said to me those many years ago, and I agreed with her.

This place is about people — the people of God. Out there in those collectives of strangers we all are in, as we despair about some aspects of the way things have evolved for us as a people of this country, we have many across the spectrum who either say or believe that not all the people are the right kind of people. I want to repeat that. It's a quote from somebody — I forget who — but recently it struck in my mind: not all the people are the right kind of people.

And today, at the beginning of this season of greening and growth — Trinity tide — that brings us into a season of both seeking to go further in our own discipleship and to disciple others, as will come up in the membership in this time, it's good. It's a good day to get back to the basics.

And the basic is this: when we enter here, or wherever we gather as the people of God, we are in a big tent. And it's not our tent. It's God's tent. And we did nothing to earn a right to be in this tent. As the great theologian Paul Tillich said, all we did was to accept the fact that we are accepted. Did you hear that? All we did was to accept the fact that we are accepted. And once we enter that tent, there are no distinctions. There is no case in which somebody here is not the right kind of person. Let that sink in.

We forget.

Now listen, Paul — you're not going to do this — but if you want to really get discouraged, just go home, find an easy translation of this whole book of Second Corinthians, sit down, don't try to understand, just read it through. And at the end you are going to shake your head and say, "What a loopy bunch of people."

It's right. Just because we're all in a big tent, just because we did nothing to come here and we're all under that wonderful sense of being accepted by God — it doesn't mean we leave who we are at the door.

One of the rich periods of my time, I was a dean in a Roman Catholic seminary just after the Second Vatican Council. As a part of that, I was invited to be a part of a lay academy, because finally Catholic lay people were being invited to study the Bible. It was a great sense of liberation, and so many hundreds of lay people responded that they had to rent out a Baptist Bible college one day a week to run all the classes. I was on the faculty, and of course at a certain point I went into the men's room. I was somewhat surprised to find that even in a Baptist Bible college, you will find graffiti in men's bathrooms.

And one of the wonderful pieces of graffiti I saw there was this: a born-again jerk is still a jerk.

I don't know how I can make Paul's point any better.

Which is why Paul speaks the way he does at the very end of this attempt — by rhetoric and mail — to help people see the problems of the fact that even though we're under this big tent of God's love, we don't park who we are at the door.

Could I have the first slide, please?

By the way, I spent probably a couple of weeks just living with this text, which is why I offered my own translation from the Greek. And here's how Paul starts: Use your heads and get your act together. And he doesn't say maybe God will get you all fixed. He says use your heads. We have an obligation to study together, consult together, plan together, execute together.

Second slide, please.

And then he goes on with these exhortations: Make yourselves whole. Now, the old-fashioned word here is "perfect," but that gives a wrong impression, because it suggests that somehow you're supposed to be made special or holy. It really means all of these pieces that represent who we are need to be brought together in a unity of purpose, a unity of heart and mind, a unity of intention — even if we disagree in the process of getting there, or even after getting there. We make ourselves whole, and we have to work at it.

Next slide, please.

Keep the peace amongst yourselves. Now, it doesn't say make peace. It means guard peace. Make that peace a practice. Make it what you do. Attend to it. Care for it. Nurture it in every possible way you can.

At one point, when I was heading up an ecumenical institute, I invited the dean of the Lutheran Seminary in Minnesota to come offer a course, and it was a course on recruitment and evangelism. I said, "Well, what set you on the path to be interested in this?" He said, "I'll tell you a story. While I was a student in Chicago, the bishop assigned me to a failing white Lutheran church on the south side of Chicago that was being surrounded by a growing Black population. And the bishop said, 'See what you can do.' As a student, I didn't know what I would do, but I had grown up with potluck suppers. So what I did was I started going door-to-door in the Black community, and then talking to the white folks in the Lutheran church — who were only a few — and I said, 'Would you be willing to sit down and have a meal with some of your new neighbors?' And to my surprise, some of the Black folks came and the white folks came. I was smart enough to make it a dinner. And they sat down, and after they had eaten for a while, they began talking. And then the grandparents — white and Black — began describing how their grandchildren were making the bad decisions they were making, and what it was like to try to shop in South Chicago. And we became a totally revived, integrated Lutheran congregation. We made peace — we maintained the peace — by sitting together and talking."

And we experienced this here during Lent, at these wonderful table talks we had, and it lifted my spirit. We sat across from each other and we were challenged with ideas and thoughts. As we began to talk, I began to understand other people in the congregation better. And as I told some of my story, perhaps they saw me as something other than a professor or a clergy, but as a real person with a history.

Maintaining the peace means we sit, we eat, we visit, we talk, we hold each other's hand. And one of the reasons — 15, 16 years ago — why we decided to be a part of this congregation rather than others is because my wife had a knee replacement. I hadn't been here very long, but somebody picked up on it, and people from this congregation came to our little condo with a prayer shawl and communion. And we said, "Trinity is a place for us. People are here together for each other."

Next slide, please.

Embrace one another with sacred signs. Now, that really reads "with a holy kiss," but culture varies, and I don't think I kiss people here in the aisle. But what it really means is this: hold each other in every way — verbally, with support, with a wonderment about how their last visit to the doctor went, with a hand on a shoulder, with a sideways hug, something that means something.

Now, this is the day I'll turn off my phone, because Hector made me. I have an iPhone. And hearing aids. And Hector said, "You have 15 minutes."

And my hearing aids just played the Notre Dame fight song.

But that's good. There you have it. We come together at the beginning of this long green season. It's a season of sanctification. It's a season of growing. It's the season of seeking the depths of our own discipleship. It's our season of accepting, as these new members will — in anticipation of the mission we take as holy obligation. God bless us. God bless you. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.