Lectionary: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35; Psalm 27; Phillipians 3:17-4:1
As we read through the lectionary passages today did you catch any of the similarities? Sometimes I’m at a loss to connect the passages, and I’m the pastor. I’m supposed to know the connections. Mark will often ask me what the lectionary is about this week. How do you summarize four Bible passages into a word or two? It ain’t easy. Each week I do an in-depth study, time permitting, of the passages to get a better understanding of how they may be related before I select which ones I will preach on and what I will say.
This week the connection is all too obvious. Jesus is facing the facts about what staying the course to achieve his destiny will cost him. Abraham has been promised by God that certain things will happen and that he must persist in his trust in the faithfulness of God that they will in fact happen, even if it appears that he should make other choices in the meantime. Psalm 27 was written by someone in obvious trouble who is choosing to hang on to the promises of God for protection and blessings. In Philippians Paul tells us to hang on and preserver in our commitment to serve God and others to achieve the promised New Community of God.
This should be comforting to those of us in the LGBT community, because we have a vision of a future that is radically inclusive, it’s not yet a reality, but it is a reality that we believe God has promised us and that God will eventually achieve in us and through us as we work to promote our beliefs and educate our nation and the world. But it won’t be easy. It hasn’t been easy. Many have sacrificed much to get us to a point where we can hopefully stand up and say: I’m a gay man. I’m a lesbian woman. I’m transgender. I’m bi-sexual. Stand up and say it without fear of harassment, hostility, or being excluded. We’ve made much progress, but we still have much to do to make the vision a reality. The fact of the matter is though that we must remember at all times, even when there are setbacks, and there will be setbacks, that God is in this with us and God will be present and faithful to us all the way, just like God was with Jesus, Abraham, and Paul.
When we hear that God has promised Abraham that he will become the father of a natural child by his own wife and that Abraham will not have to adopt a heir, or have a child with another woman to fulfill the promise, it may in fact rankle us a little bit. Many of us will never father or mother natural children. Some of us will have to adopt children to have families of our own. Despite the fact that we who are Queer seem to be left out of this promise to Abraham, we have to understand that Queer people weren’t an obvious part of that ancient society or even of human understanding. God’s promise was one of family and a home. In Abraham’s world children represented the future, without children you had no future. Without land you had no home. God promised Abraham both: children, that is a future, and land, that is a home.
I grew up in the 50’s and early 60’s. My grandparents still owned a family farm. They had six children over twenty years. My dad was the oldest and at age 11 was forced to drop out of school in order to help on the farm. They couldn’t afford to hire help. Your children were the help you needed to make a living. The farm was our home. I remember growing up and saying to my friends, “I am going home for the summer.” To which my friends would say, “You are home.” But to my family home wasn’t where we were currently living in Chicago. Home was the farm that we came from and to which we hoped to return someday. Home was family and home was a place where that family lived. That was what God was promising Abraham, a family and a home for that family.
At one point in Abraham’s life God comes to him and basically tells him to leave behind his current family and his current home and to start the journey to a new home, a new land that God will give to him. Abraham was to all ancient customs already an extremely successful farmer and herder, but God comes to him and says, “You think this is something? Why its nothing compared to what I’m going to give you.” And without knowing where he is going, Abraham pulls up roots and takes off on a journey with God leaving behind his family and his home for the promise of a new family and a new home.
Now, doesn’t that sound like the same type of journey that many of us have been on since coming out about our sexuality or our gender orientation? For many people coming out means that we must leave behind the family and home that we knew, and loved, for a different kind of family and a different kind of home. It isn’t easy to do. It is damn hard. It was filled with troubles and disappointments as well as the realization that it is a journey we must make to achieve the hoped for life and future that we desire for ourselves and for others like ourselves. There is a line in the Psalm that we read today: “Even if my own parents threw me out, you’d still be there for me God.” Many of us have literally experienced being thrown out of our homes by family when we announced that we were gay or lesbian or transgender. Even if they didn’t physically throw us out on to the street, we were thrown out of our families emotionally and socially.
It’s a very common experience among our community that when you do come out family members cut you off socially, refuse to include you or invite you to family events. One of the first things that happened to me when I came out was a phone call from my younger brother telling me to not come to his son’s wedding. They were afraid I’d use the event as an opportunity to promote my gay life style. What did they mean? They meant that they were afraid I’d show up with Mark at the wedding. Being the pastor of a fundamentalist church in Tennessee, my brother didn’t want to have to explain to his congregation why his older brother, also an ordained Baptist minister, was with another man instead of a woman.
We all face trials and tribulations when we chose to follow God’s will and God’s way for our lives. Abraham did. Jesus did. Paul did. I do. And so do you. Some of the worst opposition comes from those who we thought shared our own religious understandings. I grew up in a family and part of congregations at churches my family attended that taught me that God loves everyone: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Nice song. Good message. I got it. The problem was that the people teaching me that song and that message didn’t get it.
We’re in the middle of Black History month and sometimes, Gil, I feel it is my history, too. I lived through the upheavals of society in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember fountains and bathrooms that had signs over them saying, “White Only. No Blacks Allowed.” I remember dear friends having to enter through the back door of a restaurant when I could walk in the front door. I remember friends who had to sit in the balcony of the theatre while I could sit anywhere I wanted to sit. I remember the difference between my school building and their school building and the fact that society had the audacity to tell us that separate was equal when I was using new textbooks and they were using thirty year old textbooks. I remember all too well the superiority my own family exhibited over those who were of a different skin tone or a different language group or a different culture than my own. I was told to fear what was different and stick to my own kind at the same time that I was taught how to sing, Jesus loves me, and Jesus loves all the children of the world. My family was okay with loving all the children of the world as long as those children stayed in their own lands with their own kind. The problem was that I believed what the Bible said and what the songs told me and I thank God that even though my family didn’t believe those things that they had enough faith to teach me the truth of the Bible even if they didn’t get it themselves. Thank God, that I got it.
Society is very different than it was before the 1960’s. Thank God for that. But it wasn’t a change that was easy. It was a hard fought change and there were many martyrs along the way, people who gave all they had and were to achieve the world we now live in. It still isn’t a perfect world. There is still much to do in the cause of equality for all people. Though the laws have changed, there are still hearts and minds that have to do a lot of changing.
Our own Metropolitan Community Churches began because there were no open, affirming, inclusive churches back in the late 60’s. Or there were churches you could attend as long as you didn’t disclose that you were gay or lesbian or, heaven forbid, transgendered. You could go to church as long as you stayed in the closet about your sexuality or gender, or at least didn’t talk about it, didn’t bring up the topic for discussion. They could ignore the obvious truth about you as long as you didn’t make it an issue. Just be a good gay they would say and don’t rock the boat. In the same way they told my black friends to stop rocking the boat.
Troy Perry, who went through his own dark night of the soul, claimed the vision God gave him of a church where gay and lesbian and transgendered persons could find a family and a home where they could worship a God of radical love and acceptance. There have been many times over the last 42 years that we have feared and wondered if the effort was worth all the trouble and tears. But all throughout those long years of struggle and hope God kept coming to us one by one and as a denomination and telling us like God told Abraham, “Do not fear.” God has been with us and God is with us today.
We have much to do as a congregation to achieve the vision of the future that God has given to us. We want to be a congregation where all persons as welcome and included no matter who they are. We want to be a part of the ecumenical community and join with other churches to make sure that all of them know that we are here and that we are Queer. Why? Because we want to be a part of God’s family and we want that family to know that God loves us exactly the same way that God loves them. Our mere presence in such projects as the University District Ecumenical Campus Feasibility Study tells people in ways that cannot be told any other way that we share their love of God and we want to be a part of expressing that love to this city in such a way that every straight, gay, lesbian, transgendered person knows he or she is included, welcomed, and has a home and a family that they can count on to help them out when they need a little help from us.
We met this past week to talk about the kind of building we hope to erect in the University District and the kinds of social service programs that we hope will occupy that building with us. Shelters for homeless men and women, daily meals for those who are homeless or can’t afford food, senior activity center, needle exchange program, health services, and more. But Lee and Dan and I, your representatives to the UDECC board will keep advocating for the Queer Community and for full exclusion in things as simple as restrooms where transgendered people feel safe and comfortable to the question of where does a gay man, a lesbian woman, or a transgendered person go when he or she is without a place to call home. We have much to do with the UDEEC project, but we have much to do ourselves.
I get phone calls every single week asking where gay men and transgender folk can find a homeless shelter where they safe and won’t be harassed. Where can committed Queer couples go and get to stay together as a family in a homeless shelter? Where does a Queer person with a child go for help? Currently there aren’t any homeless shelters who can consistently say that they provide such services to the city. Even those facilities that say they are inclusive can’t guarantee the safety of someone who is different in sexual orientation or gender. Those who do go are often taken aside and told by the staff that they won’t be safe if they do stay and that the staff cannot guarantee their safety. How does that make a person feel to have the administrative staff tell them that this isn’t a place they should count on staying at very long for fear of violence? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?
More Queer teens are on the streets than any other group of teens. Queer youth are often the victims of sexual exploitation and violence. Queer youth are often thrown out of their own homes by their so-called loving parents for no other reason than that they are Queer. Where do these young people go? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?
I don’t know how we will do it, but I am beginning to see that MCC Seattle has a purpose beyond merely providing worship services on Sunday mornings. We may be the very ones that God is calling to provide social services for our own Queer community and fill the gaps that aren’t being filled even though we live in the great gay Emerald city of Seattle. We tend to think that because this is Seattle that all of the problems we might encounter as Queer people have already been overcome, but that just isn’t true.
Jesus wept and then described how he wanted to gather in the people of Jerusalem like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her protective wings at night. This harkens to the Old Testament promise that God will gather in all the peoples of the world into God’s New Community, all the outcasts, all the rejects, all the persons on the edges of society. God will not leave anyone out of God’s family. God will create a home for everyone.
Some miss a very important part of the Genesis passage that we read this morning. To seal the covenant, the promise, between them, Abram prepares a sacrifice. The ancient way of sealing a promise was for each party to go amongst the sacrifice and each one to ignite portions of the sacrifice to signify that they were eternally bound to keep the promise made to each other. This promise was even binding upon their descendants.
But something interesting happens in the story we read today. Did any of you catch it? Just as Abram finishes preparing the sacrifice, God causes a deep sleep to come upon him. Then God passes through the sacrifice and ignites the sacrifice. Do you understand what this means? God will keep God’s promise to Abram even if Abram doesn’t keep the promise to God. God will be forever faithful to Abram. God’s faithfulness does not depend upon what Abram will or won’t do for God. God’s faithfulness depends only upon God. And so it is with you and me. When God makes us a promise, God will keep that promise regardless of whether you and I live up to the promise ourselves.
We have a God who comes to us and tells us to not fear the future because God is present with us, working powerfully to make sure that our God-given vision of the future will come into reality. We have a God who looks upon us with weeping eyes and gathers us under her loving protective wings giving us a new family and a new home, a place where we can safely celebrate exactly who God created us to be.
You and I have been together as pastor and congregation for a full year now…an amazing year of growth and change. Mark and I want to thank you for becoming our family and for giving us a new home among you.
As your pastor, let me leave you with a challenge: Will we, MCC Seattle, accept the Apostle Paul’s challenge from Philippians to become the very persons who God will use to achieve God’s New Community? Will we offer family and a home to anyone God sends our way? If we accept God’s challenge to us, then here is the promise that God gives to you and me: God who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Have no fear! You can count on it! God will be forever faithful!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Ash Wednesday: Put Down the Ducky!
(Read Isaiah 58:1-12)
Lent is often thought of as a time to give up certain things from chocolate to a favorite TV show, to even more important things, in an effort to free ourselves to focus on God and our relationship with God. The truth is that for many LGBT persons we’ve been giving up a lot about who we are and who we love in order to fit into other people’s ideas of what it means to be Christian that we often haven’t realized how much their demands upon us have kept us from being and becoming what God wants us to be, in fact, what God created us to be. Perhaps there ought to be more to Lent for us than just giving up something. Perhaps we ought to begin to focus on what we need to do to become authentic believers of God and give up all the entrapments with which others want to tie us down.
In this week’s commentary from “Out in Scripture” from the HRC website, Rev. Kharma Amos, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia in Fairfax suggests, "If lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies want to give up something for Lent, perhaps we should consider relinquishing shame about our sexual orientation or gender identity, or letting go of guilt about the loving relationships that bring us joy, or emerging from the closets that keep us from living our lives openly, authentically and abundantly."
Perhaps we should think of Lent as the time to prepare for Holy week and let our imaginations take us on a journey with Jesus and the disciples as they travel to Jerusalem going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does. We may want to look at what repentance really means, turning away from habits and activities that lead us toward death and depression and instead turn toward the life-giving uplifting ways of Jesus Christ. Instead of emphasizing things we should give up, as I said last Sunday morning, perhaps we should look for new ways to practice discipleship.
I raised four children on Sesame Street, both the TV show and its songs. I have seven grandchildren who watch and listen to the same shows and songs now. So what’s that got to do with Lent and Ash Wednesday? Well, perhaps more than you’d like to think. In one episode Ernie wants to learn how to play the saxophone, but to do so he will have to put down his beloved rubber ducky. He must let the ducky wait while he learns something new. The ducky will still be there when he finishes. We too, must find ways to free ourselves and allow ourselves to learn new ways to be Queer Christians. We might find that when we free ourselves from life as we know it that we will find entirely new ways to be what God is calling us to become.
Isaiah 58:1-12 gives many suggestions for how we might add some new practices to our lives of discipleship this Lenten Season from feeding the hungry, finding homes for the homeless, giving clothing to those who have none. If we do these things then the Prophet says “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom become like the noonday.” The Prophet encourages us to repair the brokenness in the world and become restorers of life. This is the kind of “fasting” that God truly desires of us during Lent.
Perhaps we all need to rethink what Lent means to us, what it is suppose to accomplish in us. It’s at least something to think about.
Lent is often thought of as a time to give up certain things from chocolate to a favorite TV show, to even more important things, in an effort to free ourselves to focus on God and our relationship with God. The truth is that for many LGBT persons we’ve been giving up a lot about who we are and who we love in order to fit into other people’s ideas of what it means to be Christian that we often haven’t realized how much their demands upon us have kept us from being and becoming what God wants us to be, in fact, what God created us to be. Perhaps there ought to be more to Lent for us than just giving up something. Perhaps we ought to begin to focus on what we need to do to become authentic believers of God and give up all the entrapments with which others want to tie us down.
In this week’s commentary from “Out in Scripture” from the HRC website, Rev. Kharma Amos, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia in Fairfax suggests, "If lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies want to give up something for Lent, perhaps we should consider relinquishing shame about our sexual orientation or gender identity, or letting go of guilt about the loving relationships that bring us joy, or emerging from the closets that keep us from living our lives openly, authentically and abundantly."
Perhaps we should think of Lent as the time to prepare for Holy week and let our imaginations take us on a journey with Jesus and the disciples as they travel to Jerusalem going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does. We may want to look at what repentance really means, turning away from habits and activities that lead us toward death and depression and instead turn toward the life-giving uplifting ways of Jesus Christ. Instead of emphasizing things we should give up, as I said last Sunday morning, perhaps we should look for new ways to practice discipleship.
I raised four children on Sesame Street, both the TV show and its songs. I have seven grandchildren who watch and listen to the same shows and songs now. So what’s that got to do with Lent and Ash Wednesday? Well, perhaps more than you’d like to think. In one episode Ernie wants to learn how to play the saxophone, but to do so he will have to put down his beloved rubber ducky. He must let the ducky wait while he learns something new. The ducky will still be there when he finishes. We too, must find ways to free ourselves and allow ourselves to learn new ways to be Queer Christians. We might find that when we free ourselves from life as we know it that we will find entirely new ways to be what God is calling us to become.
Isaiah 58:1-12 gives many suggestions for how we might add some new practices to our lives of discipleship this Lenten Season from feeding the hungry, finding homes for the homeless, giving clothing to those who have none. If we do these things then the Prophet says “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom become like the noonday.” The Prophet encourages us to repair the brokenness in the world and become restorers of life. This is the kind of “fasting” that God truly desires of us during Lent.
Perhaps we all need to rethink what Lent means to us, what it is suppose to accomplish in us. It’s at least something to think about.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Reflecting Jesus: Luke 9:28-43
We begin Lent this week, a time of reflection on Jesus’ life as he journeys toward Jerusalem and his death on the cross. Traditionally it has been a season of thoughtful introspection, often sad and depressing, but it needn’t be. Many Christians have traditionally given up something for Lent to remind themselves of the sacrifices that Jesus made in order to fulfill his destiny and bring all men and women into a loving, affirming, life-giving relationship with God. Some have more recently decided that in order to reflect the true light of Christ in their lives that they will instead add something to their lives during Lent by volunteering at a homeless shelter, or a food bank, or going to a nursing home to visit the lonely persons there who have often been abandoned by family and friends.
The story is told at the very end of Herman Wouk’s two book long series the Winds of War and War & Remembrance of a young mother, Natalie, reunited with her child, Louis, after their terrible ordeal in a concentration camp. The child has refused to speak while separated from his mother, but when she returns to him cradles him and begins to sing a soft lullaby to him; the child begins to slowly sing along with his mother. The two men watching this scene unfold before them “each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light.” They were looking at transcendent beauty that forced them to cover their eyes. That is the kind of light that emanated forth from Jesus that morning up on the mountaintop with his disciples.
We think of Transfiguration as a very supernatural kind of thing that only happened back in Biblical times, not something that could happen to you and I in our modern lives today. Oh, back then, we tell ourselves, God suspended the very laws of nature and physics to make really important statements…but, we also tell ourselves…God doesn’t act that way now.
But is that really true? Or are we misunderstanding and misinterpreting, as we are often prone to do, the very real spiritual experience that did happen to Jesus and the disciples? Do we do the same thing in our own lives today, ignore the truly spiritual moments of transformation and transfiguration that God wants us to experience?
As we begin this Lenten Journey with Jesus let us remember that we do so at the invitation of Jesus just as he invited Peter, James and John to go with him to pray on the mountain Jesus invites us to go with Him on a journey to Jerusalem. Like the disciples we are being called during Lent to go where Jesus goes and to do what Jesus does. And, like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to do this in community with one another, not alone, but together.
Just before they go up the mountain they have had a conversation about who Jesus was. Jesus asks all of the disciples to tell him what the buzz about him is among the people? They answer that some think he must be John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the other prophets come back from God. But that isn’t what Jesus really wants to know. So he asks them again, “Okay, guys, that’s what everyone else may be saying about me, but who do you say that I really am?” Its one thing to tell about what others think and believe about Jesus, about God, but it’s something else when we have to explain what we truly believe about who God is in Jesus Christ. It makes it very personal and very spiritual. Peter, the first one to speak, responds immediately, “You are the Messiah of God.”
You’d think that Jesus would have given Peter an A for his response to the question, but instead Jesus tells the disciples to not share that information with anyone because things are going to get very rough for him and for those who follow him. He says he’s going to suffer and die and on the third day be raised again. Anyone who wants to be his follower must be willing to lay down their own life, too. As we have talked about frequently before, the disciples don’t seem to understand.
And like the disciples we are often going to be less than understanding of what Jesus is telling us and showing us than perhaps we think we do. Jesus has just told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will face troubles and death but they don’t really believe him because they have a different outcome in mind than that which Jesus is trying to tell them about. They want a taste of victory and liberation from the despised Romans. Death and suffering is not what they had in mind; glory sounded so much better to them. How often do you and I ignore the obvious spiritual lessons that God wants to teach to us because those lessons don’t correspond to how we want to live our lives?
Oh, they get a big taste of glory up on the mountain that morning, but it wasn’t what they thought they were going to get, and the truth of the moment exceeds their understanding according to the text. Like Moses up on the mountain seeing and talking with God, Peter, James and John get a real taste of glory. As usual they aren’t able to pray with Jesus and stay awake. Suddenly they are brought out of their sleepiness by the sight of Jesus, whose body and clothing are now glowing with an unnatural brightness, is seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the tradition of the Law and Elijah the traditions of the prophets. Joined together with Jesus, the author of Luke, is telling us that Jesus is the natural successor of these two traditions and in fact unites them into one spiritual wholeness.
Here we are in the middle of this holy moment Peter, like Peter often does, interrupts saying something to which he hasn’t given much thought. “Oh, wow, this is really something, Jesus. Let’s build three houses here. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah so we can preserve this moment forever. We can live right up here on the mountain for the rest of our lives.”
All over the world there have been monuments and churches built to preserve such holy miraculous moments for all of rest of history. Frozen moments in time to which we can return and remind ourselves how wonderful it was or might have been for those who were present when it happened. Sure, those moments are important, but I don’t think that God intends for us to freeze those moments in history and stay up on the mountaintop. I believe instead that God wants us to use such moments to be the motivation and the reason for us to accomplish God’s hopes and plans for us and others through us. We have to take the miracle with us back down the mountain to where we live our daily lives.
And so out of the divine cloud that surrounds them God speaks almost as if to tell Peter to shut up. God, who spoke to Jesus at his baptism and told him that he was God’s beloved child, now says to those with Jesus that this is God’s chosen one, God’s beloved and only child, and suggests that they listen to him.” Maybe God was annoyed with Peter for interrupting this holy experience. As one commentator wrote, “If Moses was told up on that mountain that he couldn’t see God and live, perhaps Peter should have been told that he couldn’t see God and talk so much.” Perhaps God was also saying to the mostly Jewish audience that Luke was writing to, “Yes, Moses and Elijah had a lot to say that you need to pay attention to, but you need to pay even more attention to what Jesus has to say because he is my chosen one.”
Peter is just like you and me. We often try to talk our way into understanding. We want to process the experience so we can come to understand it and make our understanding a part of who we are. But more often we want to, like Peter, carve that moment in stone by building a monument or by hardening our own traditions and interpretations of scripture to say, “This is what we believe. We’ve always believed this way. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve always said it this way.” We want to take the experience and make it into something that we can hold on to, something that won’t change, and best of all, something that really won’t change us…or not that much, hopefully.
But Jesus wouldn’t let them preserve the moment. Jesus takes them back down the mountain and back into the world where they meet a man with a sick child. The man had approached the disciples to heal his son, but they couldn’t help, even though they had been up on the mountaintop with Jesus. So he calls upon Jesus to heal his beloved only child, echoing the words of God about Jesus up on the mountain. And Jesus responds with the loving-kindness of God and heals the boy.
My four grandsons love transformer toys. They are always showing me a toy that looks like one thing but with a few twists and turns becomes something else entirely. When I don’t know what else to give them, I can always purchase a transformer toy and know that they will be delighted with it, for at least a moment or two. That’s usually what we want to do with transformational experiences in our own lives. Hold on to them for a moment or two, but not long enough to let them really change us into what God wants us to become.
We are truly afraid of being changed. Because when we allow God to change us, we aren’t in control of the outcome any longer. And that scares us. I don’t understand why, but it does. Because the one thing that we do know is that God loves us and wants the very best for us, so why are we afraid to let God change us to become the best that we can become?
The word transfiguration is different from the word transformation. Transfiguration is about change, but it emphasizes a dramatic change in appearance, and it especially means a change that glorifies or exalts someone, which truly works well for today’s scripture reading about what happened to Jesus. But transformation also means the “changed state that results from this change in appearance.”
And that works well for us as we come to the end of another season of Epiphany. During Epiphany we have turned our hearts and minds and opened our eyes and ears to the ways that God is showing forth God’s self in the world around us. Here at the edge of Lent, as we set out with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the mount of Calvary, we pause on another mountain for one of those “mountaintop experiences,” one of those thrilling moments when we truly glimpse glory, a bright flash of light, an indescribable moment when everything seems to change not just in appearance, but becomes forever different for us.
Oh, we may not be up on a mountaintop this morning, but the experience this past year of watching this congregation grow in so many different ways, not just in the number of persons, but in heart and soul of each person, as we have deepened our spiritual growth and our relationships with God and with each other, yes, that is a mountaintop experience all by itself.
The stories of your lives are the stories of people who have found their way to God and to us, people who thought that there was no church home for them anywhere, no spiritual community that would welcome them and their faith walk, no place that would be grateful and celebrate their presence. But here you are today. Your personal stories make my heart fill with wonder and awe and I am transfigured by the changes I see in you, changes you never thought you would experience, that I have to put my hands over my eyes because you move me to transcendence with your faith and your hope and your presence here this morning. You are a miracle that I cannot ignore nor explain away.
Metropolitan Community Church Seattle is a different church than we were a year ago. Together we have begun a journey toward heaven. Soon we will receive more new members, persons who have already told me that they are committing to joining us on this journey. Their stories will be joined with ours and we must not expect them to do things the way we have always done them or to believe the way we have always believed. We won’t put up pup tents nor will we carve anything in stone. We will instead, stand still for our moment of glory and then we will go back down the mountain and continue the work we have been given as we journey with Jesus everyday of our lives…together.
The true work of discipleship isn’t up on the mountain; it’s out there in the world. We take the church, this church, to the world when we leave here this morning, transfiguring lives as we go.
The story is told by a surgeon about a young couple. The doctor had to perform a disfiguring surgery on a young woman so that she could live. As a result of the surgery she would never be able to smile on one side of her face again. The surgeon felt very bad about this outcome and watched with a heavy heart as her partner went into her room and saw her for the first time, her mouth drawn permanently downward on one side. Her partner reached out and touched her face and said, “I think it’s kind of cute; your crooked little smile,” and kissed her gently. The doctor said he had to look away from these two young people, as if the light of their love were too bright for him to bear.
Where is God? All of the earth, all of creation, broken and yet beautiful, is full of the presence of God. We don’t have to climb a mountain to find God, although we probably should turn off our cell phones, computers, and television sets long enough to notice…like our ancestor Jacob, who said, “God is in this place, and I wasn’t aware of it.”
God is in the beauty of nature. God is in those moments of unconditional, tender love. God is there, between the lines of our lives, when we share our stories and our, oh, so fragile hopes. God is there in our suffering and in every moment of rescue, restoration, and resurrection. But be careful, my dearest friends, because the light may be so very bright that you will need to cover your eyes.
You and I don’t need to climb mountains or even look for miracles in order to be transfigured and changed for always. Every time we experience love, forgiveness, healing, God’s grace in our lives, we are changed forever. Every time we have a glimpse of God’s presence in our lives…a presence that is everywhere and with everyone all of the time…we are changed forever. The love that we show to one another and the love that we offer the world, the peace and justice and healing we work for, the forgiveness and reconciliation we seek, the hope we offer to those we meet, no matter who they are, no matter how we may feel about them, this is the kind of love that can change the world, change the way it looks, and feels, and the way it is, not just today, but in all the days ahead, for all of us: all God’s children, beloved and blessed by God.
Lent lies ahead of us, my sisters and brothers in Christ. The road to Jerusalem is waiting for us. Let the light of Christ shine forth from us as we walk that road with together.
The story is told at the very end of Herman Wouk’s two book long series the Winds of War and War & Remembrance of a young mother, Natalie, reunited with her child, Louis, after their terrible ordeal in a concentration camp. The child has refused to speak while separated from his mother, but when she returns to him cradles him and begins to sing a soft lullaby to him; the child begins to slowly sing along with his mother. The two men watching this scene unfold before them “each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light.” They were looking at transcendent beauty that forced them to cover their eyes. That is the kind of light that emanated forth from Jesus that morning up on the mountaintop with his disciples.
We think of Transfiguration as a very supernatural kind of thing that only happened back in Biblical times, not something that could happen to you and I in our modern lives today. Oh, back then, we tell ourselves, God suspended the very laws of nature and physics to make really important statements…but, we also tell ourselves…God doesn’t act that way now.
But is that really true? Or are we misunderstanding and misinterpreting, as we are often prone to do, the very real spiritual experience that did happen to Jesus and the disciples? Do we do the same thing in our own lives today, ignore the truly spiritual moments of transformation and transfiguration that God wants us to experience?
As we begin this Lenten Journey with Jesus let us remember that we do so at the invitation of Jesus just as he invited Peter, James and John to go with him to pray on the mountain Jesus invites us to go with Him on a journey to Jerusalem. Like the disciples we are being called during Lent to go where Jesus goes and to do what Jesus does. And, like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to do this in community with one another, not alone, but together.
Just before they go up the mountain they have had a conversation about who Jesus was. Jesus asks all of the disciples to tell him what the buzz about him is among the people? They answer that some think he must be John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the other prophets come back from God. But that isn’t what Jesus really wants to know. So he asks them again, “Okay, guys, that’s what everyone else may be saying about me, but who do you say that I really am?” Its one thing to tell about what others think and believe about Jesus, about God, but it’s something else when we have to explain what we truly believe about who God is in Jesus Christ. It makes it very personal and very spiritual. Peter, the first one to speak, responds immediately, “You are the Messiah of God.”
You’d think that Jesus would have given Peter an A for his response to the question, but instead Jesus tells the disciples to not share that information with anyone because things are going to get very rough for him and for those who follow him. He says he’s going to suffer and die and on the third day be raised again. Anyone who wants to be his follower must be willing to lay down their own life, too. As we have talked about frequently before, the disciples don’t seem to understand.
And like the disciples we are often going to be less than understanding of what Jesus is telling us and showing us than perhaps we think we do. Jesus has just told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will face troubles and death but they don’t really believe him because they have a different outcome in mind than that which Jesus is trying to tell them about. They want a taste of victory and liberation from the despised Romans. Death and suffering is not what they had in mind; glory sounded so much better to them. How often do you and I ignore the obvious spiritual lessons that God wants to teach to us because those lessons don’t correspond to how we want to live our lives?
Oh, they get a big taste of glory up on the mountain that morning, but it wasn’t what they thought they were going to get, and the truth of the moment exceeds their understanding according to the text. Like Moses up on the mountain seeing and talking with God, Peter, James and John get a real taste of glory. As usual they aren’t able to pray with Jesus and stay awake. Suddenly they are brought out of their sleepiness by the sight of Jesus, whose body and clothing are now glowing with an unnatural brightness, is seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the tradition of the Law and Elijah the traditions of the prophets. Joined together with Jesus, the author of Luke, is telling us that Jesus is the natural successor of these two traditions and in fact unites them into one spiritual wholeness.
Here we are in the middle of this holy moment Peter, like Peter often does, interrupts saying something to which he hasn’t given much thought. “Oh, wow, this is really something, Jesus. Let’s build three houses here. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah so we can preserve this moment forever. We can live right up here on the mountain for the rest of our lives.”
All over the world there have been monuments and churches built to preserve such holy miraculous moments for all of rest of history. Frozen moments in time to which we can return and remind ourselves how wonderful it was or might have been for those who were present when it happened. Sure, those moments are important, but I don’t think that God intends for us to freeze those moments in history and stay up on the mountaintop. I believe instead that God wants us to use such moments to be the motivation and the reason for us to accomplish God’s hopes and plans for us and others through us. We have to take the miracle with us back down the mountain to where we live our daily lives.
And so out of the divine cloud that surrounds them God speaks almost as if to tell Peter to shut up. God, who spoke to Jesus at his baptism and told him that he was God’s beloved child, now says to those with Jesus that this is God’s chosen one, God’s beloved and only child, and suggests that they listen to him.” Maybe God was annoyed with Peter for interrupting this holy experience. As one commentator wrote, “If Moses was told up on that mountain that he couldn’t see God and live, perhaps Peter should have been told that he couldn’t see God and talk so much.” Perhaps God was also saying to the mostly Jewish audience that Luke was writing to, “Yes, Moses and Elijah had a lot to say that you need to pay attention to, but you need to pay even more attention to what Jesus has to say because he is my chosen one.”
Peter is just like you and me. We often try to talk our way into understanding. We want to process the experience so we can come to understand it and make our understanding a part of who we are. But more often we want to, like Peter, carve that moment in stone by building a monument or by hardening our own traditions and interpretations of scripture to say, “This is what we believe. We’ve always believed this way. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve always said it this way.” We want to take the experience and make it into something that we can hold on to, something that won’t change, and best of all, something that really won’t change us…or not that much, hopefully.
But Jesus wouldn’t let them preserve the moment. Jesus takes them back down the mountain and back into the world where they meet a man with a sick child. The man had approached the disciples to heal his son, but they couldn’t help, even though they had been up on the mountaintop with Jesus. So he calls upon Jesus to heal his beloved only child, echoing the words of God about Jesus up on the mountain. And Jesus responds with the loving-kindness of God and heals the boy.
My four grandsons love transformer toys. They are always showing me a toy that looks like one thing but with a few twists and turns becomes something else entirely. When I don’t know what else to give them, I can always purchase a transformer toy and know that they will be delighted with it, for at least a moment or two. That’s usually what we want to do with transformational experiences in our own lives. Hold on to them for a moment or two, but not long enough to let them really change us into what God wants us to become.
We are truly afraid of being changed. Because when we allow God to change us, we aren’t in control of the outcome any longer. And that scares us. I don’t understand why, but it does. Because the one thing that we do know is that God loves us and wants the very best for us, so why are we afraid to let God change us to become the best that we can become?
The word transfiguration is different from the word transformation. Transfiguration is about change, but it emphasizes a dramatic change in appearance, and it especially means a change that glorifies or exalts someone, which truly works well for today’s scripture reading about what happened to Jesus. But transformation also means the “changed state that results from this change in appearance.”
And that works well for us as we come to the end of another season of Epiphany. During Epiphany we have turned our hearts and minds and opened our eyes and ears to the ways that God is showing forth God’s self in the world around us. Here at the edge of Lent, as we set out with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the mount of Calvary, we pause on another mountain for one of those “mountaintop experiences,” one of those thrilling moments when we truly glimpse glory, a bright flash of light, an indescribable moment when everything seems to change not just in appearance, but becomes forever different for us.
Oh, we may not be up on a mountaintop this morning, but the experience this past year of watching this congregation grow in so many different ways, not just in the number of persons, but in heart and soul of each person, as we have deepened our spiritual growth and our relationships with God and with each other, yes, that is a mountaintop experience all by itself.
The stories of your lives are the stories of people who have found their way to God and to us, people who thought that there was no church home for them anywhere, no spiritual community that would welcome them and their faith walk, no place that would be grateful and celebrate their presence. But here you are today. Your personal stories make my heart fill with wonder and awe and I am transfigured by the changes I see in you, changes you never thought you would experience, that I have to put my hands over my eyes because you move me to transcendence with your faith and your hope and your presence here this morning. You are a miracle that I cannot ignore nor explain away.
Metropolitan Community Church Seattle is a different church than we were a year ago. Together we have begun a journey toward heaven. Soon we will receive more new members, persons who have already told me that they are committing to joining us on this journey. Their stories will be joined with ours and we must not expect them to do things the way we have always done them or to believe the way we have always believed. We won’t put up pup tents nor will we carve anything in stone. We will instead, stand still for our moment of glory and then we will go back down the mountain and continue the work we have been given as we journey with Jesus everyday of our lives…together.
The true work of discipleship isn’t up on the mountain; it’s out there in the world. We take the church, this church, to the world when we leave here this morning, transfiguring lives as we go.
The story is told by a surgeon about a young couple. The doctor had to perform a disfiguring surgery on a young woman so that she could live. As a result of the surgery she would never be able to smile on one side of her face again. The surgeon felt very bad about this outcome and watched with a heavy heart as her partner went into her room and saw her for the first time, her mouth drawn permanently downward on one side. Her partner reached out and touched her face and said, “I think it’s kind of cute; your crooked little smile,” and kissed her gently. The doctor said he had to look away from these two young people, as if the light of their love were too bright for him to bear.
Where is God? All of the earth, all of creation, broken and yet beautiful, is full of the presence of God. We don’t have to climb a mountain to find God, although we probably should turn off our cell phones, computers, and television sets long enough to notice…like our ancestor Jacob, who said, “God is in this place, and I wasn’t aware of it.”
God is in the beauty of nature. God is in those moments of unconditional, tender love. God is there, between the lines of our lives, when we share our stories and our, oh, so fragile hopes. God is there in our suffering and in every moment of rescue, restoration, and resurrection. But be careful, my dearest friends, because the light may be so very bright that you will need to cover your eyes.
You and I don’t need to climb mountains or even look for miracles in order to be transfigured and changed for always. Every time we experience love, forgiveness, healing, God’s grace in our lives, we are changed forever. Every time we have a glimpse of God’s presence in our lives…a presence that is everywhere and with everyone all of the time…we are changed forever. The love that we show to one another and the love that we offer the world, the peace and justice and healing we work for, the forgiveness and reconciliation we seek, the hope we offer to those we meet, no matter who they are, no matter how we may feel about them, this is the kind of love that can change the world, change the way it looks, and feels, and the way it is, not just today, but in all the days ahead, for all of us: all God’s children, beloved and blessed by God.
Lent lies ahead of us, my sisters and brothers in Christ. The road to Jerusalem is waiting for us. Let the light of Christ shine forth from us as we walk that road with together.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Leaving It All Behind
Scriptures: Luke 5:1-11 and Isaiah 6:1-8
You are on the beach cleaning your nets and hanging them up to dry. You’ve fished all night long with no results. You’ve been at this occupation for many long years and you know what you are doing. But, still no fish last night. While you are cleaning your gear and hanging out your nets to dry, a popular teacher draws a crowd of people to the beach nearby. The excited people have now almost pushed him out right out into the water. He asks if you can’t let him use your boat as his pulpit and speak to the crowds on the beach that have come to hear him. His voice will carry better over the water to them from your boat. You agree and you launch your boat back into the shallow water.
You listen to his teaching. This isn’t the first time you have met Jesus. You have heard him speak before and you have been impressed by what he says. When he’s finished teaching he challenges you to go fishing one more time. You protest, “We’ve done this all night long with no good results.” He encourages you anyway with his laughing eyes and his gentle, but firm suggestion, “Launch out into the deep water this time.” You sigh and you and your men collect your nets from shore and following his request you launch out in the direction of the deepest part of the waters.
You guide the boat to the location he has pointed out, just to humor him, knowing the results will be no different this time as they had been during the night. You know this water, you know the way the fish live in these waters, and there isn’t anything about this situation that is new to you. Nothing will change, you tell yourself, why it isn’t even the right time of day to be doing this kind of fishing, but you follow his directions anyway, mostly so you can later point out how little he knows about fishing, and how much you do know.
You glance over at him sitting there so relaxed and comfortable, and he winks back at you waving you on toward the deepest part of the waters. You nod your head at him, but you do not smile back. You don’t want to encourage him any further with his ludicrous ideas. Just what does a teacher like him know about fishing? You are the professional. He’s just an amateur. Soon he will understand. You’ll all laugh and then you can go home and get some much needed sleep.
Then something twists within your heart and you think to yourself, “But what if he is right? What if he knows something I don’t know? What if there were fish to catch here? Maybe this won’t be a wasted effort after all. Maybe we won’t go home empty handed. Maybe we’ll have something to sell at the Fish Market today anyway.” For a moment a glimmer of hope captures you, but then long years of experience, and reason and knowledge return and you tell yourself, “No, nothing will change today. Nothing will be different.”
“This is the place,” he finally says to you and so you drop your anchor. “Throw your nets out one more time,” he says smiling and then sits back to watch you work. You go through the same tasks you’ve gone through so many times before, thinking how ridiculous this is and you ask yourself, “Why are we throwing out the nets we just cleaned. It will take us hours to clean them up again and for what? Just to humor the Teacher?” And finally, for no other reason than the fact that the Teacher asked you to do it, you cast your nets into the water one more time.
Surprise! Something’s different this time. Something has changed! Immediately your nets are filled to capacity and beyond, to the point of bursting with teeming schools of fish. You and your workers cannot bring in the haul. Your boat is in imminent danger of capsizing from the overabundance of fish weighing down the net and your boat. You call for another boat nearby to help. The catch is too large even for two boats and both of your boats begin to take on water with the enormous weight of the catch that is far, far greater than you ever thought possible or could have ever dreamed about in your wildest imagination. This will be a fisherman’s story that no one will believe.
You look over at the smiling Teacher. Who is this man, you ask yourself? Exactly how has he caused all of this to happen? There is no question about it. This Jesus must be more than just a Teacher, he must be a holy messenger from God. That is the only explanation your mind can come up with. You may even be in the presence of God. Now you feel so unworthy, so sinful, so out of place with this kind of miracle working power calling into question everything you thought you knew and believed. “Leave me alone, Teacher,” you cry as you fall down before him, “I am not worthy to even be near to you.” Truly a miracle has just happened.
“Don’t be afraid,” the teacher says to you and your two best friends who were in the other boat, “You think two boatloads of fish was a miracle? Why that is nothing compared to what is going to happen! From now on, if you follow me, you’ll be bringing in boatloads of people to the New Community of God.”
Then, comes the second miracle of the day, you and your two friends leave your expensive fishing boats behind, and all of your costly gear and nets, everything that defines you as a professional fisherman, and you go off with the Teacher to become Fishers of Men and Women, growing the New Community of God.
What, you all are asking yourselves? How could they leave behind everything they’ve worked for, everything they’ve accumulated, everything they’ve sacrificed to attain and hold on to all these years. What’s the point of working so hard to provide for yourself if God come into your life one day and ask you to give it all up and begin a new life?
Many of you aren’t any different than Simon Peter. You know what to expect from your life. You have been living life the same way for far too many years. We tend to just keep on doing things the same old way, feeling the same old feelings, complaining about the same old disappointments, arguing the same arguments, missing out on the same opportunities to change, over and over again. We often do very little to change those things about our lives that we don’t like and could change if we wanted to. We become complacent and hopeless that anything about our existence will ever change. To put it bluntly, we end up living in a rut And you know what a rut is don’t you? It’s a grave that’s open on both ends.
And then along comes Jesus. Jesus who smiles and laughs and who wants to stir things up in your life, to get you moving again, to get you thinking and hoping and believing that perhaps your life could be better, or at least different.
We don’t know what Jesus preached about to the people that morning on the beach. But we can surmise something of the lesson by what he did that day. Jesus often taught a principle and then demonstrated that same teaching by what he did. Here we have a demonstration of the abundant blessings that God will and can pour out on God’s people, a boat-sinking abundance of fish where there had been no fish earlier. Perhaps Jesus had been teaching the people about God’s abundant love and grace and how God will have mercy upon everyone, even those that they don’t feel deserve God’s love. But the miracle of fish demonstrates to Peter and James and John that even if you feel unworthy of God’s blessings, God will still pour out those blessings upon you.
Peter is struck by his own unworthiness to receive such a blessing. Peter feels that God has made a mistake by giving this miracle to him, not unlike many of you who don’t believe you deserve God’s blessings in your life for whatever reason you have selected to believe makes you unworthy. But Jesus says to Peter, “Don’t be afraid.” Jesus gives Peter the reassurance that God hasn’t made a mistake, that God has deliberately selected Peter for this honor and this work. It is the kind of reassurance that makes Peter and hopefully you and I willing to listen to what Jesus has to say next. Jesus tells Peter, “That? You think that was a miracle? Just wait until you see what God can do with you if you will walk with God in your life. You won’t believe the miracles that you and God can work together.”
The truth is that you and I often concentrate on the past, on what has been, on what we have done wrong…usually failing to see all the right things we have done right…it’s as if one wrong thing, one sinful decision in our lives, outweighs everything else in our lives and therefore makes us unworthy and unable to follow God or do God’s will.
Let me give you some advice. Get over it! Leave all those feelings behind. Move on. God isn’t concerned about the mistakes you have made in the past. God has already forgiven you for those mistakes. God wants to put God’s power and God’s presence to work in your life today, but you have to be a willing partner in this. You have to decide that you are going to allow God to let you and God make a difference in your life and in the lives of others that you will come into contact with.
The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God when he went to worship in the Temple on the death of his relative the king. Everything seemed hopeless to him. The threat of war, the nasty internal politics of the palace and Temple, the failing economics of the day weighed him down and made him give up hope for the future of himself and his country. But the power and presence of God awed him, much like Jesus awed Peter that day in the boat with a miracle. Isaiah felt inadequate and powerless, sinful and unable to be the kind of servant that God wanted. But God was still there powerful and mighty, holy and present just as God had always been. The facts of human tragedy all around Isaiah made absolutely no difference to the power and presence of God. God demonstrated to Isaiah that the prophet was the exactly the very one God wanted to use and when God said, “Who shall I send and who will go for me?” Isaiah got over himself and forgot about his problems and Isaiah answered God in the affirmative, “Here am I, send me.”
It does you no good to hang on to the past, especially if it negative. God is all about the future. God knows all about your past. God has used it to make you who you are today. Stop dwelling on those things that you’ve done wrong or simply think you’ve done wrong. Quit psychologically kicking yourself in your proverbial ass. God forgives your past. God wants you to claim the miracles that God has waiting for you.
Sure there will still be disappointments from time to time. Sure things won’t always go your way. We live in a world where other people can and do mess things up for us by their own decisions against what God wants, even when we are choosing to go with God. It’s just the kind of world we live in. Jesus had to deal with that, so did Peter, so did Isaiah, so do you and I.
But when you decide to move forward in your life claiming the power and presence that God wants to give to you, you have a resource that others don’t have, that others usually fail to rely upon. Go with God and wait and watch for the miracles to happen, for the open doors of possibilities, for the answers to your questions, for the hope and help that you need to accomplish God’s will and way in your life.
The truth is that when Jesus comes into our lives we need to open ourselves up to the possibility of life-changing, life-shaking miracles, awe-inspiring miracles! When Jesus calls us to become Fishers of Men and Women we may be truly amazed at what God does to cause our small faith community to grow beyond what we ever imagined possible.
When I was a child, people kept telling me that one day I would be a great missionary. Even then, I think they saw something different about me, and not being able to exactly name it…That boy is certainly different…they decided that being different, being QUEER, meant I must be special to God. Well, I’ve got news for them! They were right! I was special to God because I was QUEER! They kept telling that they believed that God had called me and if I would respond that God would send me to some foreign land to preach the good news about Jesus Christ to people who had never heard about Jesus or God.
Isn’t that just like us American Christians? If anyone is to do a great work, then they must do that great work someplace else, as if no great works of God can ever be done where we already live, where we already are. Mother Teresa sent her life serving the poor in India. She once spoke to an American audience saying that Americans are always saying that they wanted to leave their lives here and go to work in India with her. “Stay here, right where you are,” she told them that night, “Love the people God has given you to love. Care for people right where you are.”
Jesus is calling MCC Seattle to throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy to those who live and work around us. We are called to share God’s love in all its overflowing, boat-sinking abundance with the QUEER people all around us. There is more than enough forgiveness, more than enough healing, more than enough grace to go around for everyone.
When we partner with God, you and I aren’t responsible for the results, but we are responsible for finding ways to throw out the nets of Love that will bring in those that God has desires to be a part of our growing community. We may have to work in ways that we have never even considered before, unconventional ways of being the church and doing the work of God. We may have to change. We may have to think very differently about what it means to be a church to our Queer Community. It might not end up looking like anything we’ve ever been a part of previously. It might be something new, something miraculous.
We have to strike out into the deep waters, even when we’re tired, even when we’re sure it won’t work. We have to find ways to share God’s love by making the right kinds of choices in our votes, in the giving of our money to causes and organizations that support the creation of God’s new community. We have to r build coalitions of hope and compassion with others to consider the needs of the poor, the homeless, the emotionally disturbed, the elderly, those living with HIv/AIDS. We can’t take care of everyone, but we can take care of someone. And by joining forces with other congregations and groups we can make a real difference in our city and beyond.
Maybe the deep waters also speak of the places we would rather not go, places of discomfort and unfamiliarity where we might get in over our heads. What if you and I were to actually forgive those who has hurt us in the past. What if we were to give up those feelings of being put down and rejected and actually offer to those persons the same kind of forgiveness that God has given to us? What if you and I actually took a clear-headed view of our own personal talents and abilities and stepped forward with excitement and eagerly volunteered to begin to use our skills to help others and to build this New Community of God into the miracle working place that I believe God wants us to become? There is much that needs to be done, but those things won’t happen until more of us decide we are the ones through whom God will make it happen.
This is the season of Epiphany; when we are suppose to be especially aware of the many different ways that God is at work in the world. Hopefully, we will be like Peter and decide that we can’t just go back to our ordinary nets and our ordinary lives trying to deny that this story is about us, and this calling from Christ to be fishers of men and women isn’t our calling. Renita Weems says that the last thing those tired fisherman were expecting was a showing of God’s awesome power right there, at the end of their workday. When Jesus shows up and surprises us with miracles, the next thing you know, our lives will be changed forever. Hopefully, like Peter, we will allow God to transform our lives right where we are. Hopefully, we will begin to make a difference to the lives of those we know and love and live with.
All of us have had life changing experiences with God at one point or another in our lives, some kind of spiritual experience that caused us to realize that God was there and God was with us. What would happen if we let God give us that kind of life-changing experience as a community of faith today? What if we started sharing this life-changing power and presence of God in our lives with our co-workers during coffee breaks this week, over lunch or dinner with friends, or speaking a kind word to a stranger in need on the street? That’s exactly what we should be doing, telling others the good news about what God has done in our lives in such a way that they might find some hope to hold onto that God could do the same thing in their lives for them.
Wait, you say, we already did that. Why we’ve worked at it for almost 38 years with no good results. But the Teacher is calling us to go out into the deep waters of this community one more time and throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy one more time. You know I can’t help but I wonder what will happen this time?
You are on the beach cleaning your nets and hanging them up to dry. You’ve fished all night long with no results. You’ve been at this occupation for many long years and you know what you are doing. But, still no fish last night. While you are cleaning your gear and hanging out your nets to dry, a popular teacher draws a crowd of people to the beach nearby. The excited people have now almost pushed him out right out into the water. He asks if you can’t let him use your boat as his pulpit and speak to the crowds on the beach that have come to hear him. His voice will carry better over the water to them from your boat. You agree and you launch your boat back into the shallow water.
You listen to his teaching. This isn’t the first time you have met Jesus. You have heard him speak before and you have been impressed by what he says. When he’s finished teaching he challenges you to go fishing one more time. You protest, “We’ve done this all night long with no good results.” He encourages you anyway with his laughing eyes and his gentle, but firm suggestion, “Launch out into the deep water this time.” You sigh and you and your men collect your nets from shore and following his request you launch out in the direction of the deepest part of the waters.
You guide the boat to the location he has pointed out, just to humor him, knowing the results will be no different this time as they had been during the night. You know this water, you know the way the fish live in these waters, and there isn’t anything about this situation that is new to you. Nothing will change, you tell yourself, why it isn’t even the right time of day to be doing this kind of fishing, but you follow his directions anyway, mostly so you can later point out how little he knows about fishing, and how much you do know.
You glance over at him sitting there so relaxed and comfortable, and he winks back at you waving you on toward the deepest part of the waters. You nod your head at him, but you do not smile back. You don’t want to encourage him any further with his ludicrous ideas. Just what does a teacher like him know about fishing? You are the professional. He’s just an amateur. Soon he will understand. You’ll all laugh and then you can go home and get some much needed sleep.
Then something twists within your heart and you think to yourself, “But what if he is right? What if he knows something I don’t know? What if there were fish to catch here? Maybe this won’t be a wasted effort after all. Maybe we won’t go home empty handed. Maybe we’ll have something to sell at the Fish Market today anyway.” For a moment a glimmer of hope captures you, but then long years of experience, and reason and knowledge return and you tell yourself, “No, nothing will change today. Nothing will be different.”
“This is the place,” he finally says to you and so you drop your anchor. “Throw your nets out one more time,” he says smiling and then sits back to watch you work. You go through the same tasks you’ve gone through so many times before, thinking how ridiculous this is and you ask yourself, “Why are we throwing out the nets we just cleaned. It will take us hours to clean them up again and for what? Just to humor the Teacher?” And finally, for no other reason than the fact that the Teacher asked you to do it, you cast your nets into the water one more time.
Surprise! Something’s different this time. Something has changed! Immediately your nets are filled to capacity and beyond, to the point of bursting with teeming schools of fish. You and your workers cannot bring in the haul. Your boat is in imminent danger of capsizing from the overabundance of fish weighing down the net and your boat. You call for another boat nearby to help. The catch is too large even for two boats and both of your boats begin to take on water with the enormous weight of the catch that is far, far greater than you ever thought possible or could have ever dreamed about in your wildest imagination. This will be a fisherman’s story that no one will believe.
You look over at the smiling Teacher. Who is this man, you ask yourself? Exactly how has he caused all of this to happen? There is no question about it. This Jesus must be more than just a Teacher, he must be a holy messenger from God. That is the only explanation your mind can come up with. You may even be in the presence of God. Now you feel so unworthy, so sinful, so out of place with this kind of miracle working power calling into question everything you thought you knew and believed. “Leave me alone, Teacher,” you cry as you fall down before him, “I am not worthy to even be near to you.” Truly a miracle has just happened.
“Don’t be afraid,” the teacher says to you and your two best friends who were in the other boat, “You think two boatloads of fish was a miracle? Why that is nothing compared to what is going to happen! From now on, if you follow me, you’ll be bringing in boatloads of people to the New Community of God.”
Then, comes the second miracle of the day, you and your two friends leave your expensive fishing boats behind, and all of your costly gear and nets, everything that defines you as a professional fisherman, and you go off with the Teacher to become Fishers of Men and Women, growing the New Community of God.
What, you all are asking yourselves? How could they leave behind everything they’ve worked for, everything they’ve accumulated, everything they’ve sacrificed to attain and hold on to all these years. What’s the point of working so hard to provide for yourself if God come into your life one day and ask you to give it all up and begin a new life?
Many of you aren’t any different than Simon Peter. You know what to expect from your life. You have been living life the same way for far too many years. We tend to just keep on doing things the same old way, feeling the same old feelings, complaining about the same old disappointments, arguing the same arguments, missing out on the same opportunities to change, over and over again. We often do very little to change those things about our lives that we don’t like and could change if we wanted to. We become complacent and hopeless that anything about our existence will ever change. To put it bluntly, we end up living in a rut And you know what a rut is don’t you? It’s a grave that’s open on both ends.
And then along comes Jesus. Jesus who smiles and laughs and who wants to stir things up in your life, to get you moving again, to get you thinking and hoping and believing that perhaps your life could be better, or at least different.
We don’t know what Jesus preached about to the people that morning on the beach. But we can surmise something of the lesson by what he did that day. Jesus often taught a principle and then demonstrated that same teaching by what he did. Here we have a demonstration of the abundant blessings that God will and can pour out on God’s people, a boat-sinking abundance of fish where there had been no fish earlier. Perhaps Jesus had been teaching the people about God’s abundant love and grace and how God will have mercy upon everyone, even those that they don’t feel deserve God’s love. But the miracle of fish demonstrates to Peter and James and John that even if you feel unworthy of God’s blessings, God will still pour out those blessings upon you.
Peter is struck by his own unworthiness to receive such a blessing. Peter feels that God has made a mistake by giving this miracle to him, not unlike many of you who don’t believe you deserve God’s blessings in your life for whatever reason you have selected to believe makes you unworthy. But Jesus says to Peter, “Don’t be afraid.” Jesus gives Peter the reassurance that God hasn’t made a mistake, that God has deliberately selected Peter for this honor and this work. It is the kind of reassurance that makes Peter and hopefully you and I willing to listen to what Jesus has to say next. Jesus tells Peter, “That? You think that was a miracle? Just wait until you see what God can do with you if you will walk with God in your life. You won’t believe the miracles that you and God can work together.”
The truth is that you and I often concentrate on the past, on what has been, on what we have done wrong…usually failing to see all the right things we have done right…it’s as if one wrong thing, one sinful decision in our lives, outweighs everything else in our lives and therefore makes us unworthy and unable to follow God or do God’s will.
Let me give you some advice. Get over it! Leave all those feelings behind. Move on. God isn’t concerned about the mistakes you have made in the past. God has already forgiven you for those mistakes. God wants to put God’s power and God’s presence to work in your life today, but you have to be a willing partner in this. You have to decide that you are going to allow God to let you and God make a difference in your life and in the lives of others that you will come into contact with.
The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God when he went to worship in the Temple on the death of his relative the king. Everything seemed hopeless to him. The threat of war, the nasty internal politics of the palace and Temple, the failing economics of the day weighed him down and made him give up hope for the future of himself and his country. But the power and presence of God awed him, much like Jesus awed Peter that day in the boat with a miracle. Isaiah felt inadequate and powerless, sinful and unable to be the kind of servant that God wanted. But God was still there powerful and mighty, holy and present just as God had always been. The facts of human tragedy all around Isaiah made absolutely no difference to the power and presence of God. God demonstrated to Isaiah that the prophet was the exactly the very one God wanted to use and when God said, “Who shall I send and who will go for me?” Isaiah got over himself and forgot about his problems and Isaiah answered God in the affirmative, “Here am I, send me.”
It does you no good to hang on to the past, especially if it negative. God is all about the future. God knows all about your past. God has used it to make you who you are today. Stop dwelling on those things that you’ve done wrong or simply think you’ve done wrong. Quit psychologically kicking yourself in your proverbial ass. God forgives your past. God wants you to claim the miracles that God has waiting for you.
Sure there will still be disappointments from time to time. Sure things won’t always go your way. We live in a world where other people can and do mess things up for us by their own decisions against what God wants, even when we are choosing to go with God. It’s just the kind of world we live in. Jesus had to deal with that, so did Peter, so did Isaiah, so do you and I.
But when you decide to move forward in your life claiming the power and presence that God wants to give to you, you have a resource that others don’t have, that others usually fail to rely upon. Go with God and wait and watch for the miracles to happen, for the open doors of possibilities, for the answers to your questions, for the hope and help that you need to accomplish God’s will and way in your life.
The truth is that when Jesus comes into our lives we need to open ourselves up to the possibility of life-changing, life-shaking miracles, awe-inspiring miracles! When Jesus calls us to become Fishers of Men and Women we may be truly amazed at what God does to cause our small faith community to grow beyond what we ever imagined possible.
When I was a child, people kept telling me that one day I would be a great missionary. Even then, I think they saw something different about me, and not being able to exactly name it…That boy is certainly different…they decided that being different, being QUEER, meant I must be special to God. Well, I’ve got news for them! They were right! I was special to God because I was QUEER! They kept telling that they believed that God had called me and if I would respond that God would send me to some foreign land to preach the good news about Jesus Christ to people who had never heard about Jesus or God.
Isn’t that just like us American Christians? If anyone is to do a great work, then they must do that great work someplace else, as if no great works of God can ever be done where we already live, where we already are. Mother Teresa sent her life serving the poor in India. She once spoke to an American audience saying that Americans are always saying that they wanted to leave their lives here and go to work in India with her. “Stay here, right where you are,” she told them that night, “Love the people God has given you to love. Care for people right where you are.”
Jesus is calling MCC Seattle to throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy to those who live and work around us. We are called to share God’s love in all its overflowing, boat-sinking abundance with the QUEER people all around us. There is more than enough forgiveness, more than enough healing, more than enough grace to go around for everyone.
When we partner with God, you and I aren’t responsible for the results, but we are responsible for finding ways to throw out the nets of Love that will bring in those that God has desires to be a part of our growing community. We may have to work in ways that we have never even considered before, unconventional ways of being the church and doing the work of God. We may have to change. We may have to think very differently about what it means to be a church to our Queer Community. It might not end up looking like anything we’ve ever been a part of previously. It might be something new, something miraculous.
We have to strike out into the deep waters, even when we’re tired, even when we’re sure it won’t work. We have to find ways to share God’s love by making the right kinds of choices in our votes, in the giving of our money to causes and organizations that support the creation of God’s new community. We have to r build coalitions of hope and compassion with others to consider the needs of the poor, the homeless, the emotionally disturbed, the elderly, those living with HIv/AIDS. We can’t take care of everyone, but we can take care of someone. And by joining forces with other congregations and groups we can make a real difference in our city and beyond.
Maybe the deep waters also speak of the places we would rather not go, places of discomfort and unfamiliarity where we might get in over our heads. What if you and I were to actually forgive those who has hurt us in the past. What if we were to give up those feelings of being put down and rejected and actually offer to those persons the same kind of forgiveness that God has given to us? What if you and I actually took a clear-headed view of our own personal talents and abilities and stepped forward with excitement and eagerly volunteered to begin to use our skills to help others and to build this New Community of God into the miracle working place that I believe God wants us to become? There is much that needs to be done, but those things won’t happen until more of us decide we are the ones through whom God will make it happen.
This is the season of Epiphany; when we are suppose to be especially aware of the many different ways that God is at work in the world. Hopefully, we will be like Peter and decide that we can’t just go back to our ordinary nets and our ordinary lives trying to deny that this story is about us, and this calling from Christ to be fishers of men and women isn’t our calling. Renita Weems says that the last thing those tired fisherman were expecting was a showing of God’s awesome power right there, at the end of their workday. When Jesus shows up and surprises us with miracles, the next thing you know, our lives will be changed forever. Hopefully, like Peter, we will allow God to transform our lives right where we are. Hopefully, we will begin to make a difference to the lives of those we know and love and live with.
All of us have had life changing experiences with God at one point or another in our lives, some kind of spiritual experience that caused us to realize that God was there and God was with us. What would happen if we let God give us that kind of life-changing experience as a community of faith today? What if we started sharing this life-changing power and presence of God in our lives with our co-workers during coffee breaks this week, over lunch or dinner with friends, or speaking a kind word to a stranger in need on the street? That’s exactly what we should be doing, telling others the good news about what God has done in our lives in such a way that they might find some hope to hold onto that God could do the same thing in their lives for them.
Wait, you say, we already did that. Why we’ve worked at it for almost 38 years with no good results. But the Teacher is calling us to go out into the deep waters of this community one more time and throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy one more time. You know I can’t help but I wonder what will happen this time?
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