A House for All Peoples!

On the 41st Anniversary of the founding of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.

Jesus calls us to include people rather than exclude them as a matter of justice. Jesus saw his mission as inviting people into an intimate, trusting relationship with God. He made it his purpose to include all peoples in God's circle of love, and not to exclude anyone. Mark 11:15-18, often referred to as Jesus cleansing the temple, is a dramatic story of Jesus taking action to put his words into force.

MARK 11:15-18: “When they arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began to drive out those who were selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who were selling doves, and he would not allow anyone to use the temple court as a thoroughfare for carrying goods. Then Jesus taught them, saying, "Does not Scripture say: My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the peoples? But you have turned it into a den of robbers! The chief priests and the scribes heard this and began looking for a way to do away with Jesus. They were afraid of him because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching."

I learned from my mother that the story of Jesus' cleansing of the temple is often used to illustrate that it is okay to get angry if it is a righteous anger. She used a little of that righteous anger on me every once in awhile. But that kind of interpretation of the story takes the focus off of what was really going on.

This story is really about the abuse of religion to benefit a few insiders while excluding others in the name of God. First-century Hebrews were not the first to use religion to exclude others. Christianity, itself, has a sorry record in this regard too, from accepting and even defending institutionalized slavery, to excluding women from leadership and ministry, and more recently excluding LGBT persons. All Christian religious institutions and leaders need to be held accountable for meeting the standards that Jesus set for all of us: The inclusion of every person in the New Community of God.To understand this Gospel story, we must ask ourselves: why were there people selling and buying in the Temple courtyard? And who were these money-changers?

Keep in mind that worship in the temple was essentially sacrificial worship. Animals such as goats, sheep, and doves were offered to God in burnt sacrifices. Because the sacrificial animals and birds had to be top quality, it would not do to just bring a few of your own from home, especially if one had to travel any distance to get to Jerusalem. The animals might not fare well on the journey. So there were animals and birds rated as perfect for sacrifices on sale in the temple courtyard. It was suppose to be a matter of convenience, created to help you worship God properly. And who could fault the priestly aristocracy which ran the temple and administered the market place if they made a suitable profit on the sale of sacrificial birds and animals.

The money-changers were needed because there were so many different monetary systems in the surrounding areas where Jewish people lived. According to temple law and custom only one kind of silver coin could be offered in the Temple as your required tithes to God. For a fee the money-changers would give worshipers the right kind of coins in exchange for whatever kind of money they had. And who would complain if the temple priestly administration got a substantial kickback from the enterprise. It was just how things were done and had been done for a very long time.

All of this was legitimate business practices mean to enable the kind of sacrificial worship which one was required to do in the temple. Though Jesus never challenged the style of worship, he was upset that this religious commercial business was being done inside the temple court.The Temple itself was very ordered in its construction and in its exclusion of those it considered to less than worthy. The outer court of the temple was called the Court of the Gentiles. Inside that was the Court of Women where Jewish women could go to pray. Inside that was the Court of Israel where only Jewish men could go to pray, and inside that was the Holy of Holies where only the priests could go.

The outer court, the Court of the Gentiles, was the only area in the temple complex where Gentiles or non-Jews could come to worship the Hebrew God. Any non-Jews who felt drawn to the Jewish religion or God could come to this court, but no further. It was in this outer court that all the buying and selling was going on.

And since the temple was centrally located, why not use the Court of Gentiles as a short-cut to get to the other side of town? Foot traffic ran right through the court. So in effect there was no place for Gentiles to come to worship God.

Objecting to all of this activity that prevented true worship of God, Jesus says: "Does not Scripture say that my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the peoples, for all the nations?"

Here Jesus is quoting a prophecy from the Hebrew Scriptures, from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 56 which turned accepted thinking upside down and says that those excluded from the original Hebrew covenant will instead be included by God. Let's look at this prophecy itself:

ISAIAH 56:1-8: Thus says the Living God: "Keep justice, and do what is right, for my deliverance is close at hand, and my saving justice will soon be revealed.Blessed is anyone who does this, anyone who holds it fast, who observes the Sabbath, not profaning it."The foreigners who have joined themselves to God should not say, "God will surely exclude us from God's people." And the eunuch should not say, "I am nothing but a barren tree." For thus says the Living God: "To the eunuchs who observe my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give in my house and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name, a name which shall not be forgotten. And the foreigners who join themselves to me, to minister to me, to love my name, and to be my servants, all who observe the Sabbath and do not profane it,and who hold fast to my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain, and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. For my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples."Thus says the Sovereign God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, "I will gather in yet others besides those already gathered."

Previously the Hebrew community, suffering through exile in the Babylonian captivity and afterwards trying to establish their new country, their new community, in their former homeland, struggle with the tension between being holy and pure and excluding all other peoples except their own in that new community, and the idea that God will welcome into the new community all of the outcasts of society, even the foreigner and the sexually different and handicapped persons who had no place in the worship of God.

You might say, that this is God changing God’s mind about what God has previously said in the scripture. On the order of when Jesus says, “You have heard it said, but I say unto you…”

For LGBT persons this is a significant prophecy for it includes you and me in its vision of the New Community of God. Not only does this prophecy promise to give the foreigners, the Gentiles, a place within the New Community it also promises those who are sexually different, the eunuchs, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. Those who couldn’t have descendants will now have a holy legacy. Those who have been excluded for not fitting the sexual norms of society or for reasons of race or nationality will now be included by God within God’s New Community. Jesus draws attention to this prophecy as he clears the temple area of religious abuse and racial exclusivism.We have jumped far ahead of the story of Jesus and the disciples we have been following through the Gospel of Mark. Throughout the journey Jesus has been turning people’s understanding of who is acceptable to God upside down. He keeps expanding the disciples understanding of who they will be sharing the New Community with. It makes them very nervous and it makes the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious lawyers extremely angry, to the point of wanting to get rid of him.

Let’s follow Jesus' example. Let's be inclusive of other people in our speech and in our actions.
Metropolitan Community Churches have followed the example of Jesus by opening ourselves up to all of the Rainbow variety of God’s human creation. Troy Perry, divorced and permanently separated from the children he loved, twice defrocked and rejected by his own denominations for being gay, going through the breakup of his first long term relationship with another man, seriously depressed and following a suicide attempt, receives a vision from God about a church that is open to all of God’s people, but especially to those rejected by Christians and Christian Churches because they are sexually different, begins church services in his own living room.

Told by others that it won’t work, that he should stop before he even begins, Troy Perry welcomes 12 into that first service in a suburban home in Los Angeles. From that small beginning has grown a world-wide movement and a Christian denomination that encompasses some 230 worshipping congregations in 30 countries.

Troy Perry began with nothing more than a vision from God and for 41 years Troy and others, who came to share that vision with him, have faithfully ministered in the example set by Jesus to be inclusive of others in speech and action.
It hasn’t always been so easy.

There have been many difficulties. Many of our MCC churches have been torched, set on fire and destroyed. Let me tell you the story of New Orleans MCC. On June 24, 1973 a gay bar in New Orleans was firebombed. Thirty-two people died, most of who were MCC Church members along with their pastor had gathered in the Upstairs Lounge to celebrate gay pride. Though they tried to escape they died horrible deaths trapped in an old building without many exits.Some families, when discovering that their family member had died at a gay bar, never claimed their bodies. Churches, at the urging of their denominational leadership, refused to allow the funeral services to be held in their facilities for those persons…because they were gay. Three bodies were never identified. Courageous people, courageous priests and pastors, held a memorial service anyway to which more than 200 came.

You would think that things would have changed by now. But doing research for this sermon I went online and found a very popular Christian Right website that reports on churches and pastors, rates them as to whether they are faithful to fundamentalist beliefs and teachings, but also lists those churches which it considers to be apostate, that is who go against their interpretation of the Bible, and therefore against their understanding of God and what God wants. They list MCC churches as apostate and they state we are leading others into hell with our wicked beliefs.

In the same article they talk about unity in the bond of love within the Body of Christ, but they see no apparent inconsistency in their rejection of us while at the same time teaching that Jesus reached out to and included all kinds of people in his ministry and his vision of the New Community of God he had come to establish on earth…not in heaven after we die, but on earth, in the here and now.

Jesus tried to teach that the Kingdom of God, the New Community of God, was being created in the here and now, not in some far distant future…but right now. Jesus advocated for changes in society and relationships between people immediately. It was okay to talk about a pie-in-the-sky time to come when the eunuchs and the gentiles would also worship God in the same place and in the same way as the Hebrews, but it was not okay for him to advocate for a change in public policy right now, today.

Here in the state of Washington we are coming up on a very significant vote in November 2009 in which we are trying to preserve a law that passed our state legislature and that was signed into law by our governor giving you and me and our legally registered life-partners the right to all of the benefits within the state of Washington given to those who are married. That law was called into question by Referendum 71 by those who hold to an old way of thinking which excludes you and me from full participation in our society as persons with equal rights to everyone else. Now we must go to the polls to vote to approve Referendum 71 to preserve the law that was passed. If it is not approved then the law will be cancelled and our partnerships will not be recognized with the same rights as married individuals. Let me encourage you to get registered to vote!

MCC is about bringing the new community of God into existence today. Through the efforts of folks like Troy Perry, and our moderator Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson who have been and are on the frontlines of equality issues for our community, we have formed a church that is going to all parts of the world where we are now known as the human rights church, not just the gay and lesbian, transgender and bisexual church, but the Human Rights Church.

Like Isaiah did in chapter 56 we are bringing a new word of hope to the world. We may be turning the world upside down from the world’s perspective, but we are turning it right side up from God’s perspective. Let’s begin now to make our church “A House for all Peoples!”