Coloring OUTside of the Lines

Coloring Outside of the Lines

When my four children were very little, I remember how they would try to color in their coloring books. They would often be more intent on filling the page with a beautiful rainbow of colors in their own creative pattern than they were in coloring within the lines of the illustration they were supposed to be completing. Other people would try to help them and those people usually encouraged them to color only within the lines.

I was, however, an enlightened Dad, and encouraged my kids to exert their freedom of expression and to color their picture anyway they wanted to. Luckily for me my kids caught the hidden meaning of my encouragement and all of them became very creative individuals who often color outside of the lines in their chosen professional fields.

In Mark 9:38-50 and in Numbers 11 we meet some folks who are coloring outside of the lines, living life and doing ministry outside of the accepted limits that others had established for the purpose of maintaining control of who got to do ministry in the name of God.

The disciples haven’t had a wonderful time on this journey with Jesus that we have been taking through the book of Mark in recent weeks. They have frequently misunderstood what Jesus was trying to teach them, even having to stay after school, so to speak, in order to repeat lessons he has already taught them. As we shared with you last week the disciples had recently failed to be able to heal an epileptic boy. The disciples ask Jesus, “Why couldn’t we heal the boy?” Jesus tells them that this kind of healing can only be done if one is praying.”

The implication here is that the disciples were acting in pride and not with humility. They were more concerned with the human glory they were receiving as miracle working followers of Jesus, than they were in truly serving others in the name of God. They failed to recognize that the power for miracles came from God and not from them. This is evidenced by the argument they were having as they walked along the way about who would be the greatest in Jesus’ government when he establishes his new rule in Jerusalem.

Jesus has told them that he will be a suffering servant and undergo abuse and even death, but they are stuck on thinking about the Messiah, the Christ, as a military and religious leader who will reestablish King David’s Throne in a new earthly Kingdom.

No matter how many times he explains to them that this isn’t the way things are going to happen, they seem to persist in thinking that Jesus has got it all wrong. Things can’t possibly go the way Jesus is telling us. It just isn’t logical to them. They know better than Jesus! The fact is that they are stuck on seeking and enjoying the human glory and the power and authority they believe they will be exercising on Jesus’ behalf in the new Kingdom.

Obviously with no understanding of what he has just said, and with their own recent failure of being unable to heal the epileptic boy the disciples encounter a man who is healing others in the name of Jesus and doing so quite successfully. However the disciples aren’t interested in the poor and the sick persons he is healing. Instead of celebrating his ministry they have a big problem with this man’s ministry because he isn’t one of their inner circle. They put it this way when they run tattle-telling to Jesus, “He isn’t following us.” Notice that they don’t say, “He isn’t following you, Jesus.” They say, “He isn’t following us.”

They don’t call the man by name which probably means that he may not even be anyone they know or have ever met before. The fact is pretty obvious to me, but apparently not to them, that the Good News about Jesus is reaching far beyond their small group. Other people are believing in Jesus, who he is, in the one who sent him and what he can do.

The disciples should have been jumping up and down for joy at this happy realization that their work in telling the Good News is spreading far beyond their small circle, but instead they are beset with feelings of jealousy and they want to stop him from doing ministry in the name of Jesus. “In the name of Jesus” means doing something in the power and authority of Jesus. The disciples believe it is they who get to determine who is orthodox and who isn’t, who is acceptable to God and who isn’t. Just like Joshua in the story from Moses they aren’t concerned about the ministry this man is doing, they are more concerned with their position of power. And if you don’t think that is true, then exactly why do they want to silence him? Why did Joshua want to silence the two elders? Because the offenders weren’t following the recognized lines of authority, they were in fact coloring outside of the lines.

Want to know why there are so many different Christian denominations and so many different churches of the same denomination in the same community? Because we still have the disciples’ problem. We want to be in charge of the keys of the kingdom. We want to determine who is and who isn’t acceptable to God, who gets to go to heaven. But God keeps right on giving God’s blessing to those people we don’t believe should receive God’s blessing because they worship differently, believe differently, think differently, live differently than we do. We can’t conceive of anyone being blessed by God when they are so different from us, when they are outside of the boundaries of acceptability we have drawn around our own lives and our own faith system.
Metropolitan Community Church Seattle and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches were originally created because we as LGBT persons were excluded by other Christians as being outside of the boundaries, outside of Christian acceptability.

Even today some Christians wonder and often ask us exactly how could God bless us if since we are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or god-forbid transsexual? It didn’t make sense to them 41 years ago and it still doesn’t make sense to many so-called Christians today. When I came out publicly as a proud, gay man, less than six years ago the first question my former friends who were fundamentalist Christian friends asked me was, “Are you sure you are saved? Are you sure you are a Christian?” Why was this the first question out of their mouths? Because they couldn’t conceive of my being gay and also being a Christian. To them those were incompatible facts.

But thank God for people like Rev. Elder Troy Perry who persisted in believing that God had no such boundaries, that God believed in coloring a rainbow outside of the lines of acceptability of others. We, you and I, hold forth hope for persons just like ourselves when we say to our city, to society and the world that God’s love knows no boundaries. God colors outside of the lines. God’s kind of love goes far beyond the boundaries of human acceptability and includes even those we don’t want to include in our inner circle.

The motto of MCC churches is: “Tearing down walls; building up hope.” We are bringing down the walls of separation people have built up to keep us and others out. We are building up hope for new life in an innovative community that celebrates God’s love for all of God’s rainbow creation.

Some folks may stand on corners with signs that say “God hates faggots.” We can say that they are extremists and nobody really listens to them. But from my short seven months in Seattle I have found that every day in our city, queer people are being condemned by Christians from other churches who tell us that we are sinful and we won’t go to heaven because we are gay, which means that we are being told we will go to hell because we are differently gendered, differently sexually oriented, that we are different than them. They will tell you that they love you, but that they hate your sin, which means they really do hate you because the so-called sin they are condemning is the way that God created you and the way that God loves you.

They are so intent upon everyone believing and experiencing God exactly the same way that they do, that they overlook the fact that God can bring God’s presence into anyone’s life anyway that God wants to do it. They deny the power and authority of God to act by saying that God wouldn’t…couldn’t…shouldn’t…do it that way because it doesn’t make any sense to them. Well, that’s exactly the same argument that the disciples brought to Jesus and what did Jesus do with their argument? He blew it out of the water.

Jesus tells them that whoever helps another person in his name is in fact working with them for the same purpose that they are, even if that person does something as simple as giving a thirsty person a cup of cold water in his name.

He goes on to tell them their thinking is so wrong they might be in danger of hell themselves. I love this passage because it is something even the most literally minded fundamentalist Christians have trouble explaining. Does Jesus really mean that we are to mutilate and maim ourselves because our hand or foot or eye offends God?

Should I get out the surgical steel blades and saws? Who wants to volunteer for a literal demonstration of these verses? No takers. No surprise! This verse isn’t meant to be taken literally, no differently than most other verses in the Bible. Look at the context to find the meaning.

Jesus is telling us that if what we do, what we say, where we go, how we act is preventing others from coming into a full relationship with the Loving Creator of the Universe then we ought to stop doing it, because we have become a stumbling block to them, a ‘scandalon,’ from which we get our word scandalous.

We are to instead become the seasoning that brings marvelous wonderful flavor to the world around us. We are to be the paint brushes God uses to bring forth the beautiful rainbow colors that God wants to use to color outside of the lines to bring a new community of love and acceptance into existence, a community where everyone finds a place of empowerment, a place where we truly do become servants one to another in the name of Jesus.

No longer can we claim to be the only ones who have a corner on the market on Jesus. God is calling us to color outside of the lines by joining with other Christians, other churches to create a brand new way of being the Body of Christ. It’s time for us to stop being afraid of joining with other Christians, other churches, and declare we are in the same business that they are: bringing hope and God’s love to everyone.

The choice is yours today. Will you color outside of the lines with God? Or will we keep on trying to color inside the lines? Has that worked very well for you? Isn’t it time to make a decision to move in an entirely new way of being the new community of God?

When God told Abraham to go to the Promised Land, God just said “start moving, Abe, and I’ll tell you when you get there. I’ll tell you when you’ve arrived.” Abraham did exactly that! God led Abraham to a new place and a new way of being a servant of God. Nobody else had ever done it before. Abraham was first.

We’ve got a choice to make today: Will we take a journey with Jesus even if we don’t understand what it might mean for us, even when we don’t know exactly where we’ll end up, just knowing that Jesus is leading us forward toward a future full of hope and beauty? Or will we turn away from Jesus and tell God we’d rather keep on coloring inside the lines, rather keep on doing what we already know and are comfortable with, even if it hasn’t been working out very well for us.

Want to know what I believe? Look again at our denominational motto: Tearing Down Walls; Building Up Hope! under the sermon title. Let’s make that statement our reality today.

Going to the End of the Line for God

Note: I am the pastor of a small church in Seattle that is going through a revitalization. Once it was a larger church. Now it isn't. But why that happened isn't important. What is important is what we are going to do for God now and in the future.)

To the members and friends of my church: As a church we are much like an infant in the womb, a developing fetus with lots of potential, waiting to be born into a new and wonderful world full of hope and promise. We are blessed with a good foundation of history, bylaws, standard operating procedures, a great location to worship, a building fund that most small churches don’t have, and a new residential pastor who is getting to be known in our city. Yet we cannot deny that we are a very small group struggling to move forward toward the God-given vision of a future Metropolitan Community Church Seattle.

It is a glorious vision that centers on being the New Community of God which welcomes and includes the many different persons within the metropolitan region of Seattle. That vision also encompasses our finding ways to be a servants to fulfill the needs of persons living with inequality, injustice, illness, poverty, homelessness, and all the other challenges that they encounter in their attempts to become authentic individuals living God-blessed lives. It’s a pretty big vision, and we’re a pretty small group.

Some would say that it is an impossible vision. But there are many human endeavors that began with the vision of one person and grew into great institutions and world-wide movements. We have several persons sharing the hope of a single vision together, praying together, encouraging each other, sharing the burdens and the work together and so our potential is even greater than those groups that began with only one person’s vision.

What will it take to accomplish the vision that we share? It will take you and me sharing the vision with others that we know and that we come into contact with through our efforts to be the New Community of God. It will not happen if we simply wait for folks we don’t know to show up and join with us. It will take you and me inviting our own friends and co-workers, relatives and ‘chosen family members’ to come and join us in this endeavor to serve and worship God.

You must become excited and enthusiastic…just like Demi is when she greets you on Sunday afternoons as you enter worship and makes you feel like she has only been waiting for you!

You must become full of hope and faith…just like Lee is when she gets up and prays “God is good, She hasn’t let us down,” and then thanks God for the financial blessings MCC Seattle enjoys, even when we know we are far short of what we would like to have. Lee’s vision is to see beyond the facts of the moment into the reality of the future God is preparing for us to enjoy!

You must become joyful and persistent…just like Gil who has been a very important part of MCC Seattle for 37 years never failing to stop believing that God had a plan for us whether the church was growing or going through difficulties.

You must become one who freely shares your God-given talents and gifts…just like Rev. Chett and Dan do in so many behind the scenes ways that most of us do not even know about, but which result in so many positive things for all of us. It isn’t about the glory for yourself, but the glory we can give to God.

You must become a servant to others…just like Selena and Dilo who give us the blessing of a fellowship and snack time prepared and ready when we complete worship. Never once have I heard them complain about the work involved.

You must become caring and encouraging…just like Rev. Michelle and Rev. Gloria who with loving words and keen observation give to all of us such wonderful personal attention.

You must become full of praise, calling others to honor God…just like Erin and Mark do when they lead us in our worship music to glorify God.

You must become one who depends upon prayer and who trusts God to work everything for our good…just like Rev. Brian and Rev. Hugh.

You must become willing to be a ‘team player’ who isn’t concerned with personal glory or honor ...just like Colin, Tom, Dale, Mark, Sara, and others.

You must become loving and forgiving…just like Jesus who taught us how to live!

In this week’s Lectionary Reading from Mark 9 Jesus tells the disciples that “Whoever wants to become first must go to the end of the line and become a servant to others.” What kind of a church would we be blessed to enjoy if we all tried to become servants to each other. For when we care for, love and encourage others Jesus tells us that we are doing it to him.

Grad hold of the vision! Grab hold of God! Grab hold of each other! We are on a fabulous journey together with Jesus the Christ! I’m ready to take the journey with Jesus! Are you ready to join us? Then, please, go to the end of the line!

Cross Bearing is Hard Work

Gosh, has it been an interesting morning! I am often amazed at how quickly my plans go awry because of the needs of others. I plan my mornings out determining what I will be able to accomplish as the part-time pastor of my small church (I work a full time retail job in the afternoon and evenings). Then the phone starts ringing, or the email brings me a need, or there is a knock on the door. This morning all three things happened at the same moment while two persons were sitting in my living room already! All were situations demanding my immediate attention!

I am reminded of the pastor who once complained to his office administrator that if it weren’t for all the people interrupting his work he could get something done. She peered over her glasses at him and said, “I thought those people were your work!” And she was right! Pastors and other people in helping professions often forget who they are suppose to be helping, and what they are suppose to be doing, when they get caught up in the lesser important aspects of their profession.

How do I encourage those committed leaders of my small but struggling congregation who are encountering difficulties with the very people they want to help but who are not cooperating with them to achieve the best help that can be given? How do I counsel those who come to me because the world has rejected them again and again, leaving them with no hope, feeling totally powerless in the face of overwhelming red-tape and reluctant gate-keepers in their quest for equality and justice in their lives? How do I bring together those who would rather not work together, nor be in the same worship service with each other, because of personal problems and issues in the relationship? Only by the power and presence of Christ living in my life can I even begin to attempt to deal with each person and situation.

Thankfully I am discovering resources that can provide some answers and helpful persons who can tackle some of the issues for me. If I had to do it all by myself then I’d really be up the proverbial creek my father used to talk about when life got difficult for him. That phrase was more meaningful in a rural farm culture than it is in a big city like Seattle. Sometimes it does seem like I’m in a dead end situation with no way out when I begin to help others figure out what God wants them to do with their life today and in the future. Then, as I struggle with the situation I begin to see glimmers of light, beams of hope, possibilities where there previously seemed to be none, resources that I didn’t even know existed until I began asking for advice.

I am so thankful for Rev. Michelle Carmody, my associate pastor, for the musical talents of our worship leaders, Erin and Mark, for the very effective members of my pastoral ministry team, and for the wisdom and efforts of our board of directors. Without the help and encouragement of each one of these committed and gifted persons I would not be able to function effectively as the part-time pastor of a church that is going through revitalization and renewal!

In this week’s Gospel passage from Mark 8:27-38 the disciples misunderstand what kind of ministry Jesus is going to have. They still want a political leader who will drive out the Romans and take over the Temple. They want to be in charge of the new community that they believe Jesus will establish. But the kind of community Jesus wants to build is very different from what they hope it will be like.

So it is with growing the new community of God here in Seattle. We get all mixed up about what we want church to be and forget to ask what God wants. When things don’t turn out like we had planned, we ask what went wrong, what didn’t we do right, how can we correct the situation? The truth is that sometimes we are just doing the wrong thing, going in the wrong direction and we should stop and ask ourselves what this seeming failure is telling us about what God truly desires from us. If we do that prayerfully, filled with confidence and hope in God, we may begin to see some glimmers of hope and some signs pointing toward what we are to do and become.

As Jesus told the disciples, it’s time we take up our cross and carry it forward toward the future God wants to give to us. Bearing up under a cross is hard work, frustrating and extremely difficult. But it can be done and the glory that is waiting is incredible. Remember that a cross came before the Resurrection! But what a Sunday morning that was!
It’s at least something to think about!

Besting Jesus

There are those who tell us that God only accepts those who they believe comply with their own understanding of the scriptures. They use their understanding to exclude, reject, and condemn anyone who is different from them, accusing others of being so sinful and so out of God’s will as to have absolutely no hope of ever having a relationship with God.

When I was growing up my family and church leaders kept warning me about other people who they perceived as evil: the Catholic and Orthodox majority of the population where we lived were constantly being referred to as non-Christian and therefore sinful. There were others: anyone who drank alcohol, anyone who danced, anyone who went to the movie theatre, unless it was to see a Disney cartoon movie. Even that was attacked if the movie had ‘magic’ in it as magic was seen as evil evidence of Satan’s presence even in a children’s cartoon.

As I grew up and entered adulthood I began to realize that some of those “evil folks” were actually pretty good people. Yes, they might have a drink or two when they were out with friends, or a beer when they were watching a movie or game on TV, but they weren’t all that different from me or my family in their thinking, feeling, how they lived and worked, or even in their worship and spiritual practices.

The fact of the matter was that I was living under the cloud of a modern day “Purity and Holiness” code that said if anyone acted in a certain way then they had to be evil, had to be out of God’s will, not just in this one thing they were doing, but in everything in their lives. The warning was that evil would sneak into my life anyway it could if I didn’t keep a spiritual fence around myself by refusing to do certain things, and making sure I did other things that were considered spiritual and by doing those things I would assure that I would stay in the good graces of God.

I grew up in a predominantly Catholic and Orthodox neighborhood. My fundamentalist church condemned every single one of them as sinful and non-Christian. Another group that was condemned by my spiritual leaders were gay and lesbian people. Now this was a big concern for me because I had known from at least age ten that I was gay, that I loved and wanted to be loved by other guys. I soon learned to keep that a secret because, according to my spiritual leaders, that meant I was extremely evil, so evil as to have no hope of ever going to heaven. One pastor, to my horror, as a young teen, said “Every single gay person is going to hell. No exceptions!” Was I that evil?

Thankfully I began to examine how I could have a relationship with God and still be gay. Was I truly so evil that God hated me and excluded me from God’s promises and presence? It didn’t make much sense to me because I knew God was present with me, living in and through me, helping me, encouraging me, and telling me that God loved me. Eventually I came to realize that God knew I was gay before I had known I was gay. Why? Because God created me that way and God pronounced me to be a part of God’s good creation. I was blessed! I was accepted! The Purity and Holiness codes created by men and women had nothing to do with me.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been preaching on the Gospel of Mark and how Jesus is confronting the Pharisees and religious lawyers of his time about their “Holiness and Purity Codes” and how they were using those codes against people that God loves. Jesus very clearly set aside the codes and deliberately cared for, healed, and welcomed into fellowship with him exactly those people that the Pharisees and religious lawyers thought were outside of God’s Love and acceptance.

In this week’s Lectionary (the scripture passages we read on Sundays) passage from Mark 7, Jesus heals the daughter of a Gentile woman and restores the ability to hear and speak to a Gentile man. These were pagan people that didn’t even know or understand the Jewish faith, may not have even known about God, but Jesus clearly demonstrates that they are loved by God and by him, he even allows the woman to touch him (unthinkable behavior) and touches the Gentile man in order to heal him (thus making himself unclean in both situations).

Who in your own life do you want to exclude, condemn, and reject as being outside of God’s love and acceptance. Come on, now, you know that you’ve got at least one person that drives you absolutely crazy and that you wouldn’t mind sending to hell for at least a few minutes.

Who in your life makes you feel unclean when you are around them? You know, those people that you can’t even stand to hear speaking, especially speaking to you. Who do you avoid? Who do you go out of your way to avoid? Have you made a list? You might be surprised by who you would put on that list.

The fact of the matter is that we will always have trouble living up to the example of Jesus by accepting other people as beloved by God. It’s not something we can achieve over night. It’s something we will always be working on until the day we die.

Interestingly enough, Jesus had the same problem, too. When the Gentile woman bowed down before him and grabbed at his feet to beg for healing for her epileptic daughter Jesus spoke in a riddle and told her that “the bread” was only for the ‘children’, that is, his own people, the Jews, and not for the ‘dogs’, a clear racial putdown of the Gentiles. The woman argued that ‘the dogs under the table eat the crumbs that the children drop.’ This is the only time in the Gospels that any person bested Jesus in an argument. Jesus agrees that she is right and he heals her daughter.

If even Jesus, who was raised in an isolationist culture that condemned and excluded all other peoples but Jews from God’s blessings, can learn to broaden his own understanding of who God loves and accepts, then I guess there is hope for you and me to learn the same lesson.

At least it is something to think about!