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.