Something to think about...

Hushpuppies from Heaven Matthew 15:21-28

2011-08-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

My family is from the southern United States. Fried cat fish dinners were often a part of our family celebrations. But there was one particular dish served that no one could resist. It was essentially a corn meal dough with spices and onions that was formed into round shapes about the size of a donut hole and deep fried until golden brown. Add fried potatoes to the meal and you had a triple whammy guaranteed to raise your cholesterol level into the heart-attack zone.

Now the name of the corn meal side dish is very interesting. The story goes that in early American history trappers and travelers would cook up a batch of the delicious dish along the trail. Usually accompanied by their dogs that would start to howl and bark at the smell of the hot food cooking, begging for a bite, the weary traveler would toss one or more in the direction of an unruly dog and say, “Hush, puppy!” So the delicious morsels came to be known as ‘Hushpuppies.” I guess that was better than calling them, “Shut up, dogs.”

In today’s scripture passage Jesus has traveled away from the typical Jewish territory and entered an area where Gentiles predominated: SyroPhonecia. It is interesting to note that in the passages just before this story he has fed the 5,000 in the wilderness. He has instructed them on what it means to be clean and unclean, telling them that it isn’t what they put into their mouths that makes then unclean, but what comes out of their mouth in terms of speech that makes them clean or unclean. Now the author of Matthew will give us a practical lesson in what it means to be clean and unclean.

Here in Tyre and Sidon Jesus and the disciples are in the midst of what some would have called an unclean community filled with non-Jewish person, strangers, foreigners, Greeks and Romans. The differences were not just cultural and religious, but economic as well. The more affluent residents of Tyre and Sidon would have had the economic power to buy up the wheat harvest and literally take the bread out of the mouths of Jewish citizens.

A woman appears, which scripture has identified variously as a Cannanite woman or a Syro-Phonecian woman. Saying she was a Cannanite was an ancient way of identifying the people that surrounded the people of Israel as foreign, as different, as unacceptable, as unclean. It was a derogatory term, not unlike the N word in our own culture. However, calling someone a Cannanite would also be like calling someone from New York a New Amsterdamer instead of a New Yorker. We know that New York was once called New Amsterdam but we don’t use that name any longer. In short, to call someone a Cannanite was to demean them, to call them unacceptable and not a part of your tribe. The woman was probably an educated woman, maybe even a merchant herself, not the typical woman that Jesus and his disciples would have encountered in their own home territory.

Many think that Jesus has gone to this region to escape his popularity and rest and relax. But even here his reputation precedes him having even been broadcast even those who do not share his religion or beliefs. But hope is based on something more than religion, belief, and culture.

The woman filled with hope that Jesus could cure her daughter’s affliction comes and asks for him to heal the child. She cries out, Kyrie Elison, Lord have mercy! We sing those words in worship and say them before communion ourselves. Her cry is the same cry we speak when we are desparate and desire God’s help and guidance, “God have mercy!”

But Jesus ignores her. Not all that unusual when you remember that a man in Jesus’ own community didn’t speak to a woman he might encounter on the street. But even Jesus has broken taboo’s and spoke to women in public before. However, the taboo is double in this situation because this is a foreign woman, not someone from his own community. Isn’t it interesting to note, however, that Jesus who has been the first one to see, really see, the man born blind and others in obvious need that he and the disciples encounter on their journeys, to see and respond to the need of the person he points out to the disciples, instead on this occasion ignores the woman. Here need is obvious for she is crying out for him to heal her daughter. What’s going on here that Jesus turns a deaf ear upon the real cry of a needy person. It doesn’t make sense. Jesus ignoring a need in a person who is calling out for help?

The woman persists and the disciples come to Jesus, basically saying, “Make her shut up and go away. She’s bothering us.” Leave it to the disciples to be the bouncers at the Jesus Club, the ones who check everyone’s ID’s and keep out the riff-raff.

In Jesus’ response to the disciples I hear a human weariness. He has been under enormous stress trying to get people to understand his mission and his meaning. Maybe in his misery he has turned off his listening ear and tried to isolate himself from the demands of the world around him. I’ve been there, so have you. Sometimes we just want to cry out, “Leave me alone. Let me be. I don’t have anything left to give to you. I’m exhausted. I’m tired. I can’t give anymore than I’ve already given.” Sometimes we forget that Jesus was completely human, and just like you and me Jesus could get tired and worn out and even forget what he was suppose to know and do. Does that bother you? Does it make Jesus any less than who he was? For me, it makes him even more than what he was suppose to be. To me it means that Jesus went beyond his humanness to seek and find the divine that was within him. When we are stuck or tired or find it hard to move forward, let us remember that we have the divine spark of Jesus within us to carry us forward when we don’t think we have enough to even take one more step into our future.

Jesus responds, “I was sent to the lost sheep of Israel.” Jesus has seen his mission as one that concentrated on the so-called People of God, the descendants of Abraham, the Children of Israel. He was focused on his mission as he understood it. Within that context he has tried to help others see that it included even those on the edges of their community: widows, tax collectors, the ill and the handicapped, the lepers and the blind, all those who had been treated as unacceptable. You would think that Jesus of all people who have responded immediately to this woman’s pleas. But he doesn’t.

So Jesus snaps back at the woman’s pleas, “I wasn’t sent to take care of your kind. I was only sent to my kind of people.” Who is it that we define as our kind of people, as belonging to our own community? Who doesn’t belong to our community? Who can we legitimately ignore and leave out of our mission and ministry?

I’ve told this story before: family in Abingdon.
“They don’t belong here. Why don’t they find a church where they would feel more at home?”

Do we do that to people when they come to us?
Do we make people feel like they don’t belong in our community of faith? Have you ever felt rejected because of your own difference from a community of people? How did that make you feel?

But this woman is a desperate mother who loves her child and sees in Jesus the only chance for healing her daughter has. She comes and kneels on the ground in front of him and respectfully begs: “Jesus, help me.”

If you don’t think that Jesus was completely human then you haven’t really looked at how he responds to this woman. He responds with a common folk saying of the time, “It’s not right to take food out of the children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs.” Personally I can’t imagine a more derogatory thing for Jesus to say to this woman. He has called her a dog, an extremely negative name that Jesus’ community reserved for Gentiles and those who were not Jewish, for people who didn’t belong to their community. It has all kinds of implications.

We know how powerfully dismissive such a term is for we use a similar term today. The term used here is diminutive, feminine; some would say it is the word puppies. I would say that it is the word, “Bitch.” No do you begin to see how horrible and derogatory this was for Jesus to say to this woman?

Think about it for a moment: This woman is rejected by the one person that should have been willing to see her, to accept her, to help her, but he refuses. Yet this woman won’t give up even in the face of such a derogatory term and response. She says to Jesus, “Even the puppies under the table eat the scraps that are left.” This echoes Jesus’ own ministry that just preceded this episode in the book of Matthew. Jesus fed the 5,000 and when everyone had had their fill, there were 12 baskets of leftover food collected. There had been plenty for everyone.

Out of the midst of his weariness, Jesus is brought to full attention and sees the woman and her faith.
“Oh, woman, your faith is something else. What you want is what you get!” This woman is singled out as having great faith. This woman is the only person in all of scripture to ever best Jesus in a debate. Her daughter is healed. But maybe more importantly, and I know this will be hard for some of you to hear, so too was Jesus healed of his limited vision of what the meaning of his own mission was: He was called to all the Children of God, and not just the Children of Israel. No wonder he said that this woman’s faith was so great. She demonstrated enough faith to move him to enlarge his vision far beyond what even he had considered it to be before this chance encounter. Even Jesus could learn a lesson in faith from such a woman.

As we move forward in faith, celebrating our 39th anniversary as a church next week, let’s take the example of the Syro-Phonecian woman and let her inspire us. She wasn’t content to remain in her assigned place in society as a woman, even as a Syro-Phonecian citizen. She crossed the boundaries of sexuality and citizenship and demanded her right to all that God could provide for her, including the healing of her daughter. By claiming her dignity and her faith this woman, perhaps, changed the entire focus of Jesus’ ministry and mission.

We next find him in the Gentile cities of Decapolis, literally ‘the ten cities,’ where he feed 4,000 Gentiles. The miracle of food in the wilderness is carried beyond a blessing for the Children of Israel to the Children of the World. Even Jesus declares in Mark 13:10, “The good news must first be proclaimed to all the nations.” Jesus begins crossing all the boundaries teaching all people for all times that there is indeed nothing that separates anyone from the love of God.

In a chaplaincy training class one student shared a thought with his other minister classmates: Imagine a choir where every note and voice is perfect, but still there is something missing. It is an octave that if it were present would change the performance from good to spectacular, from ordinary into extraordinary. Imagine a choir where every voice is heard, including the voice that is missing, but very much needed. Imagine that we are that choir. What voice is missing? What octave would we have to include in order to transform our congregation and it’s ministry from just good to spectacular, from just ordinary to extraordinary?

Who is missing from our congregation that we need to include? How are we going to find them and include them? What boundaries of religion and society, race and gender, nationality and culture are we going to boldly cross to bring the Good News about Jesus to everyone? How are we, like Jesus, going to change our vision of our mission and ministry so that we see that in crossing the boundaries we can extend our faith to build community and communion with others who are different from us?

Advice for Living From God: Part 3 "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" John 6:25-69

2011-07-17T08:41:00.001-07:00

Though many people followed Jesus,
as he moved closer to the end of his time on earth his teachings became more intense
and harder for people to accept.

The people who followed him
into the wilderness in chapter 15
know that there is something unusual about him, but they opt
to believe that he is just a normal human being.
This will become clear later.
For example when he heals the sick
and then feeds them in the wilderness
they want to proclaim him as their earthly King,
but he disappears
for he does not yet want
to confront the political and religious powers.
The disciples leave by boat to cross the lake
and the people walk around the shore
to get to where they are going,
they are aware that Jesus
was not with the disciples in the boat.
When they do find Jesus on the other side
they ask him not “How did you get here”
but instead “When did you arrive?”
which implies no understanding
that he is more than human.

Jesus doesn’t answer their question.
Instead he tells them that they are looking for him
not because of the signs he performed, demonstrating God’s life-giving power,
but because they got free food
that they didn’t have to work for.

Sure these people worked hard
to provide daily bread for themselves.
However, finding a miraculous source of food
that doesn’t require hard work is certainly amazing and they don’t want to turn loose
of the opportunity that presents:
Give us more of the same!

Jesus, though,
wants to redirect their attention to God.
He reminds them that the manna
that the Children of Israel
received in the wilderness
came not from the human Moses
but from the Divine God.
He reminds them that the manna spoiled quickly. So will this physical food that I have given to you. Instead you should desire something more lasting. Seek the Bread of Life,
food that will endure into the eternal life,
food that nourishes your spirit.

The people then ask him a question
that modern people like you and I often ask:
What must we do to do the work of God?
In other words, how can I make sure
by what I do that I will
inherit eternal life?

Jesus tells them that it isn’t about works,
It’s about belief. They need to believe
In the One that God has sent.
In other words, believe in Jesus!

You and I can be pretty stubborn
when we want to be, especially when it concerns our relationship with God.
How often have you pleaded with God
to show you a sign that what you want to do
is the right thing to do?
We’ve all done it.

Those following Jesus were no different
and they ask him to show them a sign
to prove that he is from God.
That in itself is pretty amazing,
given the fact that they have recently witnessed Jesus heal the sick and feed thousands of people
in the wilderness
but those miracles weren’t good enough for them. They want even more sensational miracles,
not to prove who Jesus is,
but because, they, like us enjoyed fireworks
and awe-inspiring acrobatic performances
for the sheer entertainment
that such things provide.
They are really saying: Entertain us, Jesus!
We want a supernatural performance!
Make sure it involves a miracle or two
and please don’t forget the snacks!

They demand more manna telling Jesus
that Moses gave the people bread from heaven.
They haven’t gotten the message yet,
so Jesus reminds them that it wasn’t Moses
who gave their ancestors bread in the wilderness,
but it was God.
He keeps trying to direct their attention
to the divine, but like you and me,
they insist on sticking to the concrete things of life.

He tells them that the Bread of Life from Heaven
will give them eternal life.
They ask for the bread to be given to them,
showing again that they are totally missing
what he is trying to tell them.

Jesus explains his relationship with God:
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Their reaction is basically to ask,
“Who does this guy think that he is?
We know his father and mother.
We know where he comes from.
He isn’t anything special.
And since they know his family
they can’t believe he actually came from heaven.

Let me ask you a question this morning:
Who do you know that could be God in disguise?
Several movies and TV shows over the years
have cast normal human beings
in the role of God. I
t’s always interesting
to see who they give the role to:
an eight year old girl,
a 90 year old man with a cigar.
Let me ask you another question,
Who do you know that you believe
couldn’t possibly ever represent God?
Who would you have trouble accepting
if he or she was God in human form?
A Transperson? A gay guy? A lesbian?
A straight person? A child? A physically challenged person? Who would you reject? Who would you accept?

Jesus explains that he is the Bread of Life from God and that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life with God.
You have to understand that ancient people
often talked this way, especially politicians,
by saying such things as
‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’
meaning to agree with me
and join me in my effort.
However, what Jesus says is an affront to those
who eat Kosher food.
You don’t mix bread and blood.
This was extremely offensive talk.
Centuries of eucharistic theology
give us a way to understand these words,
but at the time they were more than puzzling -- they probably were downright offensive.
Rightly reading the mood,
Jesus says, "Does this offend you?"
The idea of eating human flesh
or drinking human blood
still offends us today.

Like us, they probably missed his real meaning
with their perceived offense
of his breaking dietary laws.
It was too much to take and
many walk away from Jesus.
Left alone with his most intimate disciples
and friends he asks them,
“Do you, too, want to leave me?”

Jesus’ question echoes down the ages,
“What about you, do you, too want to leave me?” Are the teachings of Jesus too tough for us
to understand and follow in our personal lives?
Is it out of the question
for us to become the New Community of God?

Jesus was asking his followers
to make some very foundational changes
in their lives.
They wanted their lives to remain the same,
with just a few miracles included
every now and then to keep things exciting.
They wanted to experience the sensational things God could do for them
without experiencing the sensational changes
God wanted to make inside of them,
in their thinking and in their behaviors.
Basically they were saying,
“Jesus, as long as you make us feel good
and perform more miracles,
hey, we’re there with you.
But when you start meddling in our lives
and asking us to change how we relate to God
and others, that’s just too much to take.”

Where are you with Jesus today?
Are you praying for a miracle
to be worked in your life:
a job, winning the lottery,
physical healing, or something else?
What if God does work the miracle
and proves to your personal satisfaction
that God does care about you…
which is really something
that you don’t have to worry about…
because God has loved you
and cared for you from long before the moment that God created you inside your mother’s womb. If you do get your miracle
will you then try to really follow Christ?
What if Jesus asks you to do something
that is really tough?
Will you hang in there with Jesus
and do what it takes
to become the kind of person
that God wants you to be
or will you bail out on Jesus?
Or what if there is no miracle?
Will you follow God anyway?

Doing what God wants takes guts.
My family used to say,
“When the going gets tough,
the tough get going.”
It takes courage to become the person
or the church God desires us to become
especially in our relationships with others.
We seem to forget that Jesus’ ministry
was based on something
that is really very difficult
for most of us to do
…relationship building.
Jesus wants to connect us with God
and with others.
Most importantly Jesus wanted his followers
to expand their definition
of what community meant
and to include within their New Community
all the different varieties of humanity
that then existed.

Living up to the expectations of God
means that even when the going gets tough
and the rest of the world
doesn’t understand what we are doing
and chooses to not come along with us
that we have to keep on working
toward achieving Christ’s vision of the future,
of the full inclusion of all humanity.

We need to concentrate on who Jesus Christ is, what Jesus Christ did,
apply the lessons that he taught.
Jesus is our best textbook
for becoming the New Community of God.
When I don’t know what to do as a pastor
I ask myself, “What would Jesus do?”
And I often get a very different answer
than the one I had thought about
before I asked myself that question.
How can I break down the walls
that separate people from each other?
How can I cross the barriers
that society has erected to keep people apart?
How can I, through what I do and say,
build up hope for others,
for myself, for my church?

Emerald City MCC Seattle is on a journey
to tear down walls and build up hope.
We are searching for what we believe
God wants us to become.
Some have decided to abandon the journey
and have left us,
others, however, have renewed themselves
and joined in the effort with us.
God has blessed uswith a vision
of the future of our church that is incredible!
We can become the New Community of God
built upon faith and hope and caring
…a community that Jesus will be proud of
and says represents exactly
what he was talking about.
Yes, it will be tough.
Yes, it will not happen overnight,
but if we keep our eyes on that vision
of the future God has planted within us,
we will get there, together with God.

Stanley Jones tells of a missionary
who got lost in an African jungle,
nothing around him but bush
and a few cleared places.
He found a native hut and asked the native
if he could get him out.
The native said he could.

"All right," said the missionary,
"show me the way."

The native said, "Walk,"
so they walked and hacked their way
through unmarked jungle
for more than an hour.

The missionary got worried.
"Are you quite sure this is the way?
Where is the path?"

The native said, "Bwana, in this place
there is no path.
I am the path."

I think that it is here that Peter
has one of his more honest and real moments.
His guard was down
because so many people were leaving Jesus.
They were leaving because, quite frankly,
things were getting a little too tough.
So, Jesus asks the twelve,
are you going to leave me as well?
"Lord, to whom shall we go?" Peter replied,
"You have the words of eternal life.
You are the Holy One of God."
Peter speaks for us all.
Because in this world there is no path.
Peter, you are right.
Jesus is the Path!

What about you, will you desert Christ, too,
now that the going is tough?
Like Peter I pray and hope your answer is:
“Christ, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life. 69
We have come to believe
and to know that you
are the Holy One of God.”

Living Life on God's Terms Romans 8:1-5

2011-07-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

Life has a way of changing, sometimes so rapidly that it’s hard for us to keep up. Did you ever wonder as society and culture bring enormous changes economically and socially change into our lives just what your faith response is supposed to be? Where is my place in all of this change? Where is God in all of this? How do we hang on to the important spiritual aspects of our faith but allow almost overwhelming changes to enter in our lives without destroying our faith? What can we do or not do to assure our relationship with God is a good one?

I'm sure the First Century Christians in Rome had many of the same questions that you and I do today. Society was rapidly changing for them, too. Then they get a letter from Preacher Paul that tells them that we all, even Paul, are confused about what is God's will for our lives and that we often fall far short of achieving anything near our goal in faithful matters or actions.

"Good news," Paul says. We don't have to do anything to make sure that we are all right with God, because God has already done that for us through Jesus, God's Child, who came into the world to share with us God's incredible Love and Acceptance.

Listen carefully! Whenever you are down on yourself because you think you have failed God or family or friends or yourself, stop and read what Paul says in the first verse of chapter 8: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!"

Get it? You don't have to feel guilty or depressed because you couldn't live up to the expectations you thought God, friends, family, or you had for yourself. God loves and accepts you exactly the way that you are...warts and all. God loves you and me so much that God forgives us, forgets what we've done to keep God away, embraces us and includes us in God's family giving us the same inheritance as our Big Brother Jesus.

The fact is that though we don’t want to sin, that is do those things that separate us from God, we still do them. We then feel guilty because we couldn’t stop ourselves. In chapter 8 of Romans Paul describes the Christian life as feeling stuck between knowing what to do and not being able to do it. Sometimes it is very difficult to choose the right thing to do, knowing that others will have very strong opinions about our choices and may in fact accuse us of sinning because we did in fact choose the right thing which in their opinion was the wrong thing. You ever ask yourself that question, “How can I be right and still be wrong?” Life is very confusing.

Then in the midst of our confusion along comes Preacher Paul and tells us: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” Did you hear that? No condemnation! None! Not now! Not in the future! Not ever! Why? Because God loves you enough to forgive you, to restore you to a full loving relationship with God just like the Father welcomed back the Prodigal Son when he came back home.

That, Paul says, is exactly why Jesus came into our world. Not to show us how we must live in order to receive God’s love. Not to satisfy some weird sense of ancient justice that makes it possible for God to love us only if Christ’s blood is shed. And most definitely not to demand that Jesus be tortured and brutalized so that you and I can feel both guilty and grateful for his sacrifice.

No Jesus came to show us through his life and love how much God already loves us. His example was so extremely out of step with what his ancient society thought was right that they killed him. But through his resurrection we found out that God’s love is more powerful than anything, more powerful than death, more powerful than our sin, more powerful than our confusion and guilt.

That last part is probably the toughest for us to understand and accept: No matter how many times we are told that we’re forgiven, no matter how bravely we act, I believe it’d be a good bet that we all live quiet lives of desperation. What is it about your own life that your regret? What happened to you that you can’t quiet seem to get over? What did you do years ago that you still kick yourself about? Are you and another person at odds with each other? Maybe it’s an old lover, a parent, a sibling, a co-worker?

When I talk with people as their pastor there always seems to be one thing in their life that they regret happening and can’t seem to bring themselves to forgive themselves for, or to move forward in their life because of that past. Even when I’ve worked with someone for months, sometimes years, and I think that they have made progress toward forgiving themselves and moving on, I discover that they are still hurting and haven’t yet found a way to forgive themselves or another.

You’ve got two blank pieces of paper in your bulletin this morning. I want you to use one of those papers to write down that one regret, that one bitter moment, that one broken relationship, that failed attempt in your life to get right with God or another. What is it that keeps you from claiming God’s promises in your life? Take just a moment and write something down.

Now I want you to hear Paul’s words one more time: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Get it? No matter what you have done, no matter what others may have told you previously, no matter what you think you believed before today, GOD IS NOT ANGRY WITH YOU! God loves you, forgives you, accepts you just as you are and sets you free to live a life of meaning, purpose, grace and gratitude.

During communion this morning. I want you to take that piece of paper and toss it into this garbage pail. Throw away your regrets, toss out your failures, get rid of all the ancient history that keeps you from claiming God’s love and acceptance for you. I don’t care what it is, God doesn’t care what it is, just get rid of it. Stop letting it have control over your life. Stop wearing your shame and confusion like some snail shell you have to carry around with you everywhere you go. Take it off. Take it all off! Do your own strip-tease this morning and get rid of anything and everything that keeps you from having a real and right relationship with God. As you throw that piece of paper away this morning say to yourself: “There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”

Let’s practice saying it together, There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Now you say it: “There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”

When you have finished communion, go back to your seat and take out the second piece of paper and write down what it is that you are now free to do or become because you no longer have that threat of inadequacy and condemnation, of shame and regret hanging over you. What might you dare to do? What challenge will you accept? What act of courage or generosity might you attempt because you know that you are beloved by God whether you succeed or fail?

Then I want you to put that piece of paper in your wallet or your purse and take it with you this week as a living remembrance of God’s promise to be with you and to empower you with God’s Spirit to share God’s love with others you come into contact with at home, at work, at play.

One pastor reports that a neighbor has a sign on his front door that reads: “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.” My question to you today is this: “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life now that there is no condemnation. What will you do now that you are free? What will you do with all the love and grace that God can give you? What will you do….?”

Burning Out or Living Joyfully? Matthew 11:16-19, 28-30

2011-07-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

Matthew 11:16-19, 28-30
16 “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
17 “‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew begins the story recorded in chapter 11 with John the Baptist in jail. John sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the messiah: “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for or will another come?”

John is suffering. He’s been imprisoned for his confrontation with the king. He’s facing the death penalty. No doubt he’s depressed and dismayed, especially about Jesus, who he announced to all as the messiah they had been waiting for who would bring scorching justice to the world and turn the world upside down making things radically right. But Jesus has come with a different sense of justice and of what life means in the New Community of God that doesn’t include the blazing actions of justice that John expected.

What do you do when God doesn’t answer your prayers the way you think God should answer them? Do you despair and give up hope? That’s what’s happened to John, I think.

Jesus says to John’s disciples. Reassure John, God is at work just as you expected. "Go back and tell John what's going on: The blind see, The lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side. If that is what you were expecting? Then count yourselves most blessed!"

Jesus goes on to praise John as the prophet foretold in the scriptures who would blaze a pathway for the messiah. People followed John out into the desert to hear his preaching and to repent of their sins and turn their lives back toward God. John came with a message and a manner that caused many to think of him as simply a wild-man, a joke, someone who was too strict and too limited in his outlook on life. He called people to fast and to give up their wealth and ease and get serious about living life as God’s word ordered. Seemingly there is little joy in John’s outlook.

Then Jesus says that the people are being very childish as opposed to childlike. Yes, we all need to have faith like a child in God, but none of us need to act like a selfish child in carrying out our faithful words and actions. Both Jesus and John are criticized by the people and the religious leaders. John is said to be too restraining, Jesus too liberal.

So Jesus tells the parable of the children. Children in that society, like our own, would make the celebrative situations of their society into play-games, especially make-believe weddings and funerals. Some see here gender differences as well as children’s behavior. The boys would play the flute and dance as men were expected to do at weddings in their society. The girls would play at weeping and screaming in grief like women did at funerals. But when the boys wanted to play wedding the girls wanted to play funeral. When the girls wanted to play funeral, the boys refused and wanted to play wedding. Nobody could agree on what to play. And so there was little joy.

Jesus says that the people couldn’t accept his style of ministry anymore than they could accept John’s. They say that Jesus drank too much wine. He eats too much. He goes to too many parties. He hangs out with the wrong kind of people. He doesn’t break the rules, but he stretches those rules so near to the breaking point they might as well be broken. Such was the criticism of Jesus. John’s interpretation of scripture was too strict. Jesus too liberal. John wanted everyone to weep and repent and give up all the luxuries of life. Jesus wanted people to celebrate God with joy! Both Jesus and John were rejected by society. No one therefore gave either of them or their message the real consideration demanded.

Jesus identifies his ministry and message with John’s, but there are important differences. Where John’s restrictive style belongs to the waiting period before the messiah comes, Jesus’ celebrative style belongs to the time of fulfillment when the messiah has already arrived. The time for the funeral is over. It’s time to celebrate. Let’s have a wedding, a party of joy and hope! Enjoy the life that God has blessed you with! Enjoy God’s presence in your life! Celebrate God’s power and activity in your life! Look for the good. See the blessings! Take a new perspective on life!

Jesus isn’t just fond of dinner parties, he employs the concept of the final dinner party when all the world’s people come to celebrate with God in the great dinner party that will usher in God’s New Community. No one will be left out of that party. So, Jesus says, let’s begin the party now! Why? Because God is here now! Emmanuel. God with us! The Messiah has come to be with all people. Why weep any longer?

Jesus even employs the dinner party of joy and celebration when he institutes what we call the Eucharist, what we usually refer to as communion. The word Eucharist means “Thanksgiving” and needs to retain the grand sense of joy which then makes sense of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Too often we approach communion as if we are at a funeral remembering the life and death of a dear beloved family member who will no longer be with us. We like playing funeral. We think it should be quiet and reflective and we frown at those who make unnecessary noise and talk during communion. But is that what Jesus really wanted us to do? Wasn’t it supposed to be more like a celebration of the resurrection, of the return to life of the beloved child of God? “Remember me” he said to them. But are we to remember him dead and gone, or alive and present with us now? Crucified or resurrected? I submit to you that for far too many years most of us have concentrated on the death and we have forgotten the resurrection. We remember Jesus dead and on the cross instead of alive and living, present with us even today as the living spirit of God among us. It’s time to stop playing funeral and start the celebration! Emmanuel! God is with us!

Jesus is a realist. He understands that it is hard for us to live the life of God’s New Community with the kind of joy we should when we face so much that brings us down in life. He criticizes the Pharisees and religious lawyers for making the law too oppressive and restrictive. They think he is abusing the law because he doesn’t approach it with the same so-called honor and respect that they believe they give it. Instead Jesus is saying the evidence of God’s law is not seen in the keeping of the rules, but is seen in the compassion and mercy that one practices which results in life improvements for all people and not just a few. When he condemns the cities he has visited in his ministry in this passage, Jesus cannot believe that people are missing the significance of the miracles of life that are happening all around them and are instead concentrating on the strict interpretation of the law. Open your eyes and see. Open your ears and hear! You are missing what God is doing!

Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious lawyers have come up with 613 separate rules that everyone has to keep in order to prove that he or she is really a child of God. If you don’t keep all 613 rules exactly as they say you should keep them, then they believe you are not accepted by God. It’s an oppressive viewpoint and totally misses the point of why God instituted such laws to start with. The law was to be a guide to life, not an end unto itself.

Jesus says that they have made the law so oppressive that it has become an unbearable weight dragging people down to death instead of helping them live life with joy. Jesus then tells us that his burden is light and his yoke is easy.

Most of us don’t know what a yoke is. It was a neck piece made of wood hung around the neck of a animal or slave to which cords or rope were strung allowing one to pull a load more easily. It was an instrument of work, that could become oppressive if the load you had to pull was too heavy.

However, Jesus invites us to share his yoke. What does that mean? When you had a new young ox it didn’t know how to pull a load automatically. You had to train it. One of the best ways to train a young ox was to yoke it with a double yoke next to an experienced and older oxen. The yoke would look real funny, one side enormous for the older ox, the other side small for the younger ox. The older ox would do most of the work, the younger ox would help pull the load, and while pulling alongside the older ox would learn when to move and how to move to make the best use of the yoke and their combined strength. Jesus is saying, come alongside of me, wear the training yoke, learn how I move as I move, learn how I talk as I talk, learn how I walk through life as you walk with me. Do it with me. You are not alone. I will share my strength and my wisdom with you and you will find the burden to not be so terrible, but to be one we can share together and celebrate the accomplishments we achieve together.

If you study the scriptures you will realize that this portion of Matthew is actually a discourse on wisdom. Jesus is contrasting the viewpoint that keeping the law is not all demand and restriction, but a lightness of being, like the wise woman in Proverbs 8 and 9 who invites people to come to her free feast, or Isaiah 55 with its call to share free food. It’s a call to learn a new way of relating to God and applying what you learn to living life as it should be. God’s law was seen as peacemaking, as relieving the thirst and feeding hungry souls.

In the following passages from Matthew we see Jesus confronting the issue of how to keep the Sabbath. Can you heal a person on the Sabbath? Can you pick a handful of wheat and eat it on the Sabbath as you walk through a wheat field? Jesus tells us that the Sabbath, like the law, was made for people, and not the other way around. It is the person who is most important, and not the law. The law is to help us live faithfully, not to cause us to stumble and fall.

Jesus always interprets the law by focusing on compassion and mercy. Hosea 6:6 says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” The promise is not heaven some day, but real joy today, real rest and assurance today, not in the time to come. With such a sense of rest we can turn our attention toward that which really matters: people.

Listen to me. It's summer time! We've had a whirlwind time at PRIDE! Some of us are exhausted and worn out. We've kept ourselves so busy getting ready for PRIDE and doing PRIDE that some of us forgot to have fun at PRIDE! Too many of us are on the verge of 'burn-out.' We've given and given and given until we have little left to give. That makes us critical about others who we think should be more involved than they are and who we believe should be willing to give more time and effort than they do. "Why can't they be more like us," we wonder. But do we really want them to feel the same way that we do? Burned out and negative?

As your pastor, I want you to get some rest, to enjoy some time-off from church responsibilities for the next few weeks. Take a walk in the park, smell the roses. Oh, I still want to see you in worship, of course! I want us to keep up our friendships and community going full-speed with each other. But most importantly, I want you to enjoy just being you and doing the things that give you refreshment and renewal in your life. I want you to get all charged up and energized for the exciting future that God has placed ahead of us as a community of faith.

Remember today’s scripture. Let me read it to you from The Message: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30)

It's good advice from Jesus. Let's all try to follow it! I suggest you try following it this week.

The Strip Tease: Take It Off! Take It All Off! Living Without Shame! John 8:1-11

2011-06-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is the 4th Sermon of PRIDE 2011. I preached it at my church on June 19. It will also be preached at the Seattle PRIDE Community Worship Service on Saturday, June 25.

(Pink shirt and blue breast cancer tie hanging on front of pulpit)

This is my shirt of shame. It’s a gorgeous pink cotton dress shirt that I used to get particular pleasure out of wearing. I bought it a couple of years ago for Easter and have also used it to wear on days when I want to support women who have or who have survived breast cancer. I used to think I looked great in pink! I even got this nice Breast Cancer tie with the little pink ribbons across the blue background to wear with it.

A couple of months ago I wore the shirt to my retail job at Penney’s in Bellevue Square to celebrate my own sister’s 18th year of breast cancer survival. It turned out to not be a great day. One of the other employees decided to be difficult. Thought I tried to be patient and understanding and reflect Christ’s treatment of others in my supervisory capacity after repeated incidents with her, I had had enough and I spoke rather harshly to her. Now, I really don’t need this microphone, my voice booms out across rooms and people literally jerk their heads around to see whose talking. It used to be very useful when I needed to quiet down an auditorium of noisy children in public school. So, of course, everyone heard me tell the young lady that I was in charge and we would do things my way.

A customer who this saleslady was helping, but who had not heard what my co-worker had repeatedly said to me, only what I said to her, decided to come to the young lady’s defense and confront me in front of everyone present. In short, she said that she was tired of men attacking women verbally and that she wanted me to know that she was particularly displeased with my behavior. That would have been okay. I wasn’t very proud of myself. But then she finished, “You are nothing but a fat old man in a gay pink shirt!” I turned to her and said, “Cheap shot, lady.” To which she responded, “Yeah, well, you’re still nothing but a fat old man in a gay pink shirt.”

The rest of the evening I found myself wondering, is that the way everyone is seeing me: Just a fat old man in a gay pink shirt? It really didn’t do any good for others that evening to tell me how much they appreciated my wearing the pink shirt and tie to support those with breast cancer. All that I could think about was other people looking at me wearing a pink shirt and snickering because I was gay. It shouldn’t have bothered me: I am totally out at work, and everywhere else in life, about my being gay and my partner works at the same store. It’s not like my being gay is a secret.

But the confrontation with this woman psychologically took me back to my middle school and high school years when other students ridiculed me for being gay. It made me remember being threatened with physical violence just because I was gay. It reminded me of the times so-called Christian authorities had tried to tell me how unacceptable I was to God because I was gay. I spent a sleepless night reliving the incident over and over again. It was so traumatic for me that I stopped wearing my gorgeous pink shirt. I haven’t worn it to work since then.

My humiliation that day pales in comparison to what happened to the woman in the scripture passage I read to you. She is dragged before Jesus and thrown down in the Temple Court where he is teaching, charged with adultery, caught red-handed in the very act. They demand that Jesus make a judgment on the woman based on the Law of Moses which said that persons caught in such situations should be killed. They even have the stones ready to carry out the sentence upon his ruling.

At my church we have “Talk Back Time” during my sermons during which I ask people for their opinions and thoughts. So let me ask you today, “What’s wrong with the situation in today’s scripture?”

(The man she committed adultery with is missing.)

Yes, where is the man? You can’t commit adultery without a sexual partner.

Do you have any thoughts on why they didn’t bring the man for judgment and condemn him, too?

(Congregation offers thoughts.)

Some have suggested that the situation was a set up both for the woman and for Jesus. They conspired together to trap the woman in a questionable situation so that they could in turn trap Jesus into doing or saying something that they could use against him.

It’s the classic no-win situation for Jesus.
If he says that the woman is guilty and should be killed according to the law then they can make charges against him to the Roman authorities who were in charge of the law and government of the land since the Roman government only could condemn anyone to death. But if Jesus didn’t condemn her then they could incite a riot against him with the people because he refused to uphold their own Religious Law. They reasoned that they had Jesus over a barrel and there was not much he could do about it.

However, they were looking at things the way most of us look at things: right or wrong, yes or no, as if there were only two options Jesus could take. But Jesus, in the creative love of God, surprises them by taking a totally unexpected option. He doesn’t answer them. Even though they have set him up as judge over the woman he turns the question upon them.

Jesus bends down and writes something in the dust. While he is writing they keep shouting and demanding that he answer them. Listen, friend, when things get rough and people start yelling and screaming at you the best response is to attempt to slow the situation down and help people think things through calmly. That’s what Jesus does. I can’t help but wonder what he wrote. Some think he wrote a list of sins the men might have committed. I think he probably wrote the very law of Moses regarding the situation from Leviticus.
Which is where they misquoted their charges against the woman. For there it says that both the man and the woman should be killed.

They have set this up like a court, so Jesus the judge of this court, calls for witnesses when he says “Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.” From what I understand, it is the one who witnessed the crime and reported it to the authorities that should throw the first stone. So who witnessed this crime? Well, I submit it was the person who set the situation up to trap the poor lady. To admit that you were present while the crime was being committed was essentially to say that you were the male figure who sinned along with the woman. Which is to say that you also deserved to be killed.

The concern of the legal experts and the Phraisees is not for the woman caught in sin, nor even for Jesus. It is to uphold their own understanding of their scriptures which Jesus is turning upside down by ministering to and accepting people they thought were outside of God’s love. Jesus the friend of the leper, the widows, the orphans, the hated tax-collector, the handicapped and ill, is hanging out with all the people they think are unloved and unwanted by God.

This poor woman is probably a widow, may have had children she was responsible for providing food and life. In that society a widow had no rights, could own no property, and if she did not have family that would take her in she was left to fend for herself and her children out on the street. Essentially she was homeless, living off of the handouts of others.

Forced into prostitution to provide for herself and her children she was the perfect foil for the Pharisees and lawyers to use to trap Jesus. They had no problem with heaping shame upon her and using her as a weapon against Jesus because they thought her beneath them for she was already condemned by God for her sinfulness or she wouldn’t be a widow and she wouldn’t be out on the street. God had already pronounced God’s rejection of her according to their way of thinking. Why not use her just like others had used her, for their own purposes and desires. And they thought they were men of God.

After issuing his demand that the ones who witnessed the crime should be the ones who throw the first stone, Jesus writes in the dust again. By now they have read whatever it was he wrote first and they have begun to understand that in responding to his question they may be convicting themselves.

What did Jesus write next? I would like to think that he wrote from Deuteronomy which says that you should not bear false witness against another. If the situation was a set up in which they have trapped this poor lady then they would be bearing false witness against her and according to the scripture they would be condemned with the death penalty also. Oops, perhaps they forgot about that one.

There is something else going on here that many people miss. Jesus is making a statement about who he is and with what authority he is speaking. Jewish tradition and the scripture says that God wrote the Law given to Moses with God’s own finger in the stone. So Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, writes with his finger the same law in the dust of the ground. I believe that would have infuriated the legal experts even more, leaving them beside themselves and enraged with anger, but unable to respond to the very situation they had set up, but which Jesus now owns completely.

One by one the men leave beginning with the oldest, also significant in their law because it is the oldest, the elders of the community, who were charged with carrying out the punishment of any crime. The wiser and older men see that the trap they set for Jesus has now been sprung on them and they depart before they can be implicated and accused as bearing false witness or worse.

Soon, Jesus is left with the woman to whom he says, “Where are those who condemned you?”

She responds, “There is no one who condemns me.” And she was right. There was no one left to condemn her. The only one left with her was Jesus, Jesus who did not condemn her, but who wanted her to live life without shame or condemnation. So he says to her, “Go and do not sin.” He does not list rules for her to follow. He does not extract a promise from her to never sin again. He does not tell her that she should avoid prostitution in the future, nor does he give her any particular advice about how to live her life. He just says, “do not sin,” which means to me to not do anything that separates you from the love of God.

You and I have a problem. We let other people and our own circumstances separate us from the love of God in Christ. We let the shame we feel about the way other people tell us we should live, act, talk, and walk and believe take control of our lives and paralyze us from being the person God created us to be.

The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

It’s time that you and I realize that we need to get rid of the shame that controls our lives and live in the love of God in Christ. It’s time to take it off, take it all off!

(Bawdy music begins. Strip Tease. Remove Coat, Tie, and shirt.)

(Music stops as I pick up pink shirt and blue tie. Put shirt and tie back on as sermon continues.)

I told you that I had been unable to wear this gorgeous pink shirt because of what the woman said to me and the shame I felt at what she said. Well, I’m getting rid of the shame today and putting on my gay pink shirt. I can’t do much about the fat old man part, but I can be proud of who I am, of who God created me to be and put back on the shirt I had been proud to wear, proud to declare my support of women who suffered from cancer, proud to be OUT about who I am and not afraid for all the world to know.

When other people twist the words of the Bible to condemn you and make you feel unworthy of God’s love and acceptance you remember this story in which Jesus gave a woman back her pride in herself and let her know that she was not a reject, for God in Christ loved her and lifted her up to begin again.

God can do the same thing for you if you will do your own strip tease today, get rid of the shame, take it off, take it all off, and begin to live in the love of God. There is nothing that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

It's Not About the Rules Mark 7:1-23 PRIDE WEEK 3

2011-06-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

“It’s Not About the Rules” by Rev. Ray Neal

This is one of four sermons being preached this year during PRIDE in Seattle. The first three are 'repeats' of PRIDE sermons from previous years rewritted and updated. The fourth will be an original and new sermon just for PRIDE 2011.

Have you seen the announcement that Fred Phelps and his congregation will be protesting the PRIDE Parade here in Seattle on June 26? You do know who they are don’t you? I won’t go into a long description of their beliefs or their past history, but they have caused much distress and dissention due to their frequent protests at anything they believe supports or defends homosexual behavior. You may remember seeing their signs in news reports: God hates Fags! But, do remember, Fred Phelps and his family see themselves as the good guys, as on the side of God.

With that thought in mind, I want to start off by saying that there are no bad guys in Mark 7:1-24. The Pharisees and the Lawyers that confront Jesus about the behavior of his disciples do so from the stand point of their own deep belief in God and their desire to live godly lives according to their own history and traditions. They don’t know anything different than what they have learned and been taught. They haven’t had their minds and hearts opened to the revelation that perhaps there is more to being a godly person than they have ever imagined.

It is truly frustrating to work with fundamentalist type religious persons, especially when it comes to interpreting scripture and applying scripture to the way we live and worship today. I doubt it was any different for Jesus in his day.

A fundamentalist will tell you that there is only one way to interpret a particular passage of scripture…his or her way, of course…and that their own interpretation is based on a literal reading of the scripture passage in question and 2,000 years of Christian practice and application…though they offer no research as to how they came to that conclusion.

They make it sound like they have all the answers and that anyone that questions how Christianity has, in their viewpoint, historically interpreted scripture and believed about God and what God desires all of us to do—that anyone that questions that so-called ‘historical’ truth, must therefore be evil and in direct league with Satan or so seduced by evil that they don’t even know they are wrong. As I related to you last week, I’ve been accused of being demon possessed more than once because I had a different opinion from what I was told was the standard, operating procedure for all Christians, including me, whether I believed it or not. Of course, that always means that they think I must believe it their way.

When one points out to them that Christian history is full of many different ways of believing and interpreting, hence our different denominations, they will tell you that they, uniquely, are the only ones with the absolute truth as revealed to them by God. Everyone else is out of the will of God. The same thing the Pharisees felt about themselves compared to Jesus.

The most frustrating thing about dealing with these fundamentalist types is that they aren’t open to examining the scriptures any differently than they have already decided, nor in discussing any options in interpretation except for their own. They are not interested in your helping them to discover any new revelation about their own set of beliefs and applications of those beliefs to how they live, or more importantly to how they think you should live. In their way of thinking anyone who opposes them or offers a different interpretation of the scriptures must be in league with the devil and therefore they don’t have to respect you, or listen to you, or do much of anything with you, except to condemn you, because in their way of thinking, you are not even a Christian.

As an example of this kind of thinking let me introduce you to pastor Steven L. Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist church in Tempe, AZ, who said from his own pulpit less in July 2009, “The biggest hypocrite in the world is the person who believes in the death penalty for murderers and not for homosexuals. The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals - sodomites, queers! That’s what it was instituted for, okay? That’s God, he hasn’t changed. Oh, God doesn’t feel that way in the New Testament … God never “felt” anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed.”

And that’s just one example; there are plenty more.

Over the years I have found that it isn’t worth my time or effort to argue with such persons. You won’t be able to change their opinion or their interpretations of scripture. I am willing to tell them what I believe, how I read and interpret the same passage of scripture, but I will only discuss it politely and respectfully and lovingly with then, and when they start arguing with me, or condemning me to hell and calling me a demon…because of my different way of thinking from them…then the conversation is over. I will turn my attention toward those who are willing to investigate a different way of thinking and believing. Jesus takes this same approach in dealing with the Pharisees.

These Pharisees from the local synagogues in Galilee where Jesus has his ministry headquarters are very interested in what Jesus has to say and how he and his disciples are living their lives. So they have been following them around, suspiciously listening to what Jesus teaches, seeing the miracles Jesus performs, and seeking evidence for whether he is from God by how he and his disciples conduct their everyday living.

They think that if Jesus is truly from God then the evidence of that will be reflected in how the disciples live. And they are right about that. The evidence of whether you are truly a child of God will be reflected in the way you live your life, the way you speak to other people and care for them. It’s that simple.

However, there are problems with the assumption that we reflect our godliness in our behavior. The Pharisees and lawyers are only looking for the evidence of outward behavior that is consistent with their own belief system and traditions which tell them that people who believe in and serve God will only act in particular ways, and that they will do certain things at certain times in certain ways, and if they don’t, then they conclude that those aren’t very godly persons.

That’s well and good if everyone agrees on what those things are. But as we have seen in our own time not everyone agrees. Some of us believe very differently about what it means to love God and live according to God’s Will and Way.

Hence here in Washington State we faced Referendum 71 in the last election year which was designed to cancel the law passed by the legislature and signed by the governor that gave domestic partners all the rights and responsibilities of marriage without the name. Why? Because there were those who believed that God demands that they call you and me evil because of who we love and they did not believe we need what they called ‘special rights’ and what you and I call ‘equal rights.’ Luckily, we won that political battle at the polls and the Domestic Partner Law was retained as it was written. We don’t have equality regarding marriage rights in Washington, but we do have equity. And that is a step in the right direction.

On this particular day in the scripture story the Pharisees are joined by religious lawyers from Jerusalem, probably also belonging to the Pharisees. Jesus is a threat to their power and their influence which they believe comes directly from God through the traditions and scriptures handed down to them from their ancestor Moses. Remember: They see themselves as the good guys on the side of God.

They attack Jesus’ disciples because the boys did not follow the traditions of preparing and eating a meal correctly, nor did they wash their hands in the ritual manner that was required by tradition in order to reflect the truth of God’s presence in your life. Moses said that God is holy and therefore we should be holy. To the Pharisees, that meant doing things in very particular ways and order so that you could honor God the proper way. They had a whole list of things, more than 600 rules, that they had decided people had to keep and do to build a protective fence around their lives that would remind them that God was holy and that God demanded that they be holy also.

Some of these rituals were quite complex. Some were extremely expensive to carry out. The requirements to wash your hands, to prepare food in a certain way, to only use certain kinds of pots and pans and other utensils, which also had to be washed and prepared in particular ways, were more than most poor people could afford.

Many of the disciples and most of the crowds that surrounded Jesus are from what would we would call the lower economic class of their time and therefore they couldn’t afford to follow the prescriptions for holiness that the Pharisees do. Hence, according to the Pharisees, who don’t make any allowance for your financial ability to follow their traditions, the disciples are not holy or pure, and therefore they are not godly persons. It’s only logical to reach that conclusion if you are a Pharisee or a religious lawyer. There thinking goes something like this: Isn’t it obvious to everyone? What is there to argue about? The evidence is clear. They broke the law. There can be no other interpretation.

That’s when they get surprised by the answer Jesus gives. For Jesus sees things quite differently than they do. He begins by telling them what the prophet Isaiah said: ‘These people mouth all the right words, but their hearts aren’t in it. Their worship is just one big charade. They invent rules to suit themselves and then teach those human made rules as the word of God.’

The issue Jesus is attacking is this long list of rules that the religious leaders have added to the Torah, their scripture. Think of this way: Our church has a set of bylaws that govern our way of operating. There are lots of things stated in the bylaws, but often those bylaws are open to wide variations in interpretation and application. So our church has established a set of SOPs: Standard Operating Procedures which tell us how to apply those bylaws to governing ourselves as a congregation. Those are our traditions. The traditions of the Jewish people are their SOPs for following and applying the Torah.

Jesus is saying that sometimes those 600+ SOPs aren’t really consistent with the Torah and may in fact be contrary to the real truth that God wanted them to know and do. In fact they have taken some of those SOPs and made them of higher authority than the scriptures they were meant to interpret and apply.

In verses 9-12 of chapter 7 of Mark’s gospel Jesus brings up how they interpret and apply the Torah’s commandment to love your parents. The Torah clearly commands that you to care for your elderly parents out of your own wealth and income when they are no longer able to provide for themselves. But the SOPs said that if you pledged your wealth to the Temple, which is to God, in other words, you wrote a will that said when you died all your wealth would go to the Temple, then you were no longer obligated to use your wealth and income to care for your elderly parents. Your parents and your responsibilities to them could be religiously and legally ignored.

This is why Jesus says: “At the end of the day, you are more concerned about your own rules and traditions than you are about what God actually wants of people.”

What does God want of us? Well the scripture passage from James 1:17-27 (from today’s lectionary) gave us a good understanding of that. The author of James was telling us how to be and live as Christians.

Jesus elaborated on that many times. In Matthew 23 he told the Pharisees and Lawyers: “You have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced these, without neglecting the rest.”

Jesus is referring to Zechariah 7 which reads, “This is what God Almighty says, ‘Administer true justice, show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.’”

Jesus often used these SOP’s, the Holiness and Purity Codes, for shock effect. When Jesus told his followers that they had to ‘eat his body and drink his blood’ it was extremely offensive to them for those two items to be in the same sentence much less the idea of having both items together in a meal. That was completely against their holiness and purity codes, especially those that dealt with kosher eating.

Jesus knows how important the kosher rules were and he uses those rules now to teach his lesson. He doesn’t argue with the Pharisees and lawyers. He knows he isn’t going to change their understanding or opinions. So he turns away from them and to the crowd gathered around him, full of the widows and the orphans of society, those people living on the edge of respectability and acceptability. The great ‘unwashed’ as some have said, those people that the Pharisees and lawyers would not hang around with for fear of the filth rubbing off on them from the people they considered beneath them and outside of God’s love and acceptance.

Jesus says, not so politely, “The things that really pollute people are not the things they put into their mouths, but the muck that spews out from within them. If you are looking for the cause of evil, look inside of yourselves. Evil intentions are conceived in the human heart, every one of them.”

Mind you, you could read another four-letter word for excrement in place of muck if you wanted to and you would be closer to the way Jesus said it that day in his own language.

Using the idea of the kosher food laws he tells them that it isn’t what they put into themselves that keeps them holy, but what proceeds from their very hearts, from their souls, that is the proof of their godliness. The presence of God living within them will be proven by what they do, and what they say, especially in regard to how they relate to other people, even those that they consider to be out of God’s grace and blessing, the poor, the widow, the outcast, the prostitute, the sick.

Jesus keeps proving to the Pharisees and the religious lawyers exactly what he is talking about through the miracles he performs and the people he cares for.

They bring him a prostitute they expect him to condemn to death according their rules and laws, but instead they find him giving her forgiveness and shaming them. He heals the blind and the handicapped, the sick and the lepers, all of whom they believe are the way they are because of sinfulness and evil in their lives. But Jesus tells them that they are wrong about that and by healing these people Jesus proves that there is no sin in their lives, nothing that keeps them from the blessings of God. The holiness code said you can’t touch a dead body, but Jesus resurrects a young girl by touching her body and becoming unclean himself as he resurrects her to new life. These are amazing sermons in action!

Jesus is constantly calling into question the Holiness and Purity Codes and telling everyone that it isn’t the rules that are important, but how much they love God, and how much they demonstrate that love by loving others.

Why are the fundamentalists so upset with us today regarding marriage equality? Because we are calling into question their interpretation of modern day holiness and purity codes. They are trying to uphold their understanding of what it means to be a godly person, a godly society. And so are we!

They say that we can’t possibly be holy because we are so far out of line with what they believe a person who is a Christian could be like that we must be demon possessed to even believe we are Christian. We are not living up to their ideal of what their holiness and purity code tells them a Christian is supposed to be. According to them we are defiled and filthy because of whom we love and how we love them. In this way of thinking they aren’t much different than the Pharisees and the religious lawyers of Jesus’ day.

During this month when we celebrate our PRIDE in who we are and how we were created, I proudly say, “I am a Christian. I am gay. I am deeply in love with my partner Mark. God is blessing our relationship. There is nothing about our relationship that is evil or sinful. I will not be shamed by anyone who believes otherwise. I will work for justice and equality for all persons regardless of what anyone else believes.”

As Queer Christians we must stand up for what we believe in--not just about marriage equality, but about all the justice and mercy issues that cause people to be pushed to the edges of our society.

Homelessness is a problem. Many in our own congregations have experienced homelessness or are currently living in transitional housing. Some of us live with the threat of returning to homelessness. What are we as a churches doing about homelessness? Are we blaming the victim for their circumstances he or she is in, or are we helping people to new life and hope? I had the vision when I came to be your pastor and learned about the critical homeless problem for our LGBTQ community here in Seattle, but what would happen if we found the funds through grants and donations to open homes for homeless gay and lesbian and transgender persons where they could live without fear of hatred or misunderstanding or violence? Could we help people get off the streets and into good jobs and their own homes by teaching them the skills they need to get jobs, by providing them with social service help to wind their way through the red tape governmental agencies seem to use to prevent them from getting the help they need?

Believe me when I say that I am exhausted and frustrated with trying to get through all the red tape to simply find out how to help someone in our current system dealing with homelessness. How do you think the homeless person feels about having to navigate this seemingly hopeless system? A very large number of those living on the streets are LGBT persons. 40% or more of homeless youth are known to be LGBT youth in the Seattle area alone. Where do we begin to help with this problem?

What about those living with AIDS and HIV? What can we do to make sure that our modern day society does not treat such persons like the lepers of Jesus day were treated? How can our church get involved in ongoing projects and actions that call society to act to treat and heal this disease? Tom will tell you about how he is involved with Shanti anytime you want to ask him.

What about the Transgender? How can we help ourselves and our society understand Transgender persons and come to love and accept them as just another normal variation of the beautiful human Rainbow Creation God has created? Let’s start by going to the Gender Odyssey conference in September here in Seattle and sharing our presence at our information table. Will you volunteer to sit at the table with me and talk about our church to Trans persons?

Perhaps you have your own problems with accepting people that you believe are outside of God’s holiness and purity. Who would that be? Who is it that calls into question for you the issues of whether they are or aren’t in relationship with God because of who they are or what they do, or how they think, or what language they speak, or what religion they profess, or what political party or persuasion they belong to? We all have people we think fall outside of God’s grace and holiness.

The question we have to ask ourselves today is what are we going to do about it? Are we going to reexamine our thinking and our beliefs like Jesus challenged the Pharisees and the lawyers to do in order to get ourselves closer to what God wants, or are we going to ignore Christ’s challenge and stay put behind the fence we have erected to protect our own thinking, our own beliefs, our own way of living regardless of what God wants from us?

Listen to me, while I lovingly tell you that this is especially true about life within our own congregation. Look around you! Who is it that you don’t want to be a part of our community life in this church? Who do you have trouble relating to because of his or her being so very different from you? We cannot become the Body of Christ if we are divided and angry and upset with each other.

I started this sermon off by saying that the Pharisees weren’t the bad guys. There are also no bad guys or gals in your church, unless you’re talking about a very different subject than what I am this morning. Mother Teresa put it this way: “Keep in mind that our community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore let us be extremely patient with each other's faults and failures.”

We have to learn how to love each other. We have to learn how to have mercy towards each other. We have to learn how to forgive each other and move away from the past and into the future that God wants to give to you and me and to our church. We can’t get there together if we can’t become the loving, forgiving, welcoming, inclusive Body of Christ that I know God wants us to become.

If we were enrolled in God’s own Holiness College this Fall I think we’d all have to take Christianity 101. Taught by Jesus Christ himself the course guide summarizes the class this way: “Learn how to Love God, Love yourself, and Love each other.” What grade would you like to get this semester? What grade will you get?

"Am I the Older Brother?" Luke 15:11-32

2011-06-04T09:43:00.001-07:00

This is the second of four PRIDE sermons for the month of June:

When I went to seminary to prepare for the ministry I looked at all those charming young men and women and decided that if I had been God there were several of them that I wouldn't have called to be ministers under any circumstances. Two years later when I was graduating I shared that memory with a graduating friend who told me, "Yes, Ray, I had the same thoughts, and you were one of the people that I wouldn't have called to be a minister."

His statement shocked me. I had thought I was one of the in-crowd as far as God was concerned. But now another person was telling me that perhaps I shouldn't be so sure, that maybe I could be mistaken about God wanting me to be a Christian minister. However, I was sure that my intentions were in line with God's desires for my life, regardless of what anyone else had to say about the matter.

A man overheard me speaking to a friend at the West Towne Knoxville Mall one day about a sermon I was to give that weekend at Metropolitan Community Church of Knoxville. "So you are a minister?" he asked. "Yes," I answered, in part regretting the beginning of a conversation I knew was probably going to be difficult because I had already pegged him as a right wing fundamentalist Christian. You’ve heard of gaydar. I’ve got fundamentalist radar. He asked what church I belonged to and I told him, which brought up the question of denominational beliefs. I told him that MCC was part of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, founded in 1968 by the Rev. Elder Troy Perry, to minister primarily to the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, and Transgendered community.

Soon we were involved in a discussion of whether or not Queer Persons could even be Christians, since in his viewpoint we were all living lives of sinfulness contrary to the design God had ordered, and of course what the relevant Biblical passages meant, or should I say the seven Biblical passages used to bash you and me.

I must say that I was able to defend my understanding of scriptures, and my work with the GLBT community as a Christian minister, to the admiration of a supportive Christian friend who worked with me and who stood beside me to interfere if the situation turned hostile. An audience of onlookers walking by suddenly circled around us to listen in. However, the other man, declaring that he was a professional Christian evangelist, embarrassed everyone present with his detailed and extremely offensive description of what he believed happened sexually between two men in order to explain how unnatural this was to him. When the crowd showed its displeasure with his statements he then ended his accusation by saying that the only reason he could think of for me not believing exactly the same way that he did was that I was demon possessed, and most, therefore, again, obviously not a Christian, even if the demon had deluded me into believing that I was one.

I’d like to tell you that when I came out to my family that they didn’t believe the very same things this man professed, but I would be lying. When I shared my decision to come out with my sister, who had been raised Southern Baptist, but now a converted and devout Catholic, she burst into tears declaring that she would not see me in heaven when I died. In other words, according to my sister I was no longer a Christian destined for heaven because I was gay. My youngest brother, a fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor, was so appalled by the news that he uninvited me to my nephew's wedding lest, he said, I would use it as an opportunity to promote the so-called gay agenda. I suppose he was afraid I would bring my boyfriend with me to the wedding and he would have to somehow explain that to his congregation.

Did you know that the only gay agenda you can find on the internet is one that Christian Fundamentalists wrote about what they thought our agenda would be if we were to ever write such an agenda? In other words, the so-called Gay Agenda is a fundamentalist Christian lie about us. My brother later asked me to not contact him at all with news about my gay lifestyle, my gay church, or my gay friends. He said all he wanted to hear from me was news about my children, his nieces and nephew. I suppose this was his way of shunning me, a so-called Christian technique of tough love that is anything but loving toward the person to which it is directed.

Even though my father had told others in our familyothers about his dismay at my coming out, when I talked with him he had two important things to say. One was that the only thing I ever did to surprise him was to marry a woman after I graduated from college. In other words, my father already knew I was gay when I was a teenager and a college student. Secondly, he said that he only wanted agape love, God’s kind of love, between the two of us, and that everything else was unimportant. So far my father has kept his word about what he wanted from our relationship.
Yes, much of this family conflict on coming out as a gay man was extremely distressing, but I had the advantage of knowing that my belief in God in Christ was sure and real and that God loved me just the way I was because God had made created me exactly the way I was. I had worked through the theology for myself over many years. That doesn't mean it was easy, just that I had a firm foundation of faith upon which to build my new life as a totally out gay man.

I know the agony that others go through when they have come out to their Christian families and churches and have been met with hostility and rejection. I was privileged to hear Justin Ryan a young gay Christian musician in concert at MCC Knoxville a few years ago. Justin related how, at the age of seventeen, he had been thrown out of his home by his parents when he told them that he was gay. Justin ended up on the street, but thankfully, in his small town of Paducah, KY, there is a Metropolitan Community Church which cared for Justin and gave him a place to stay and helped him to rebuild his life. He also had the influence of some amazing musical personalities that didn’t care whether he was gay or not. They loved Ryan just the way he was, just the way God created him.

Throwing out your child is another form of the so-called tough love that some fundamentalist Christians suggest parents of teenagers and young adults should take. I think it’s pure and simple child abuse. I personally can't understand tossing my own child out on to the street with no means of financial support at such a young age to face exploitation and physical abuse. I find no justification for such parental action anywhere in the New Testament. In fact, given the story of the Prodigal Son, perhaps we should re-title it the story of the Prodigal Father, because this dad does an extremely extravagant loving thing in welcoming home his wayward child and giving him back all the family rights he enjoyed before he ran away.

There is a crisis of homelessness among gay teens and young adults because of this kind of tough love which leaves vulnerable boys and girls out on the streets where they become victims of crime, drugs, and exploitation by unscrupulous men and women. Gay and lesbian and trans youth make up 4 to 10% of the population nationally but they are 20% or more of the homeless youth in our nation. In Seattle that is often as high as 40% or more according to those I talk to who work with homeless youth here in our city. There is also an epidemic of suicide among Queer and Questioning teens as we have witnessed this past year and which resulted in the “It Gets Better” Campaign.

I have witnessed churches tell young people that they cannot sing in a choir, be part of a youth group, serve on the drama team, usher, help with the children’s programming, or be part of a youth Bible study, not because they admitted they were gay or lesbian, but because they appeared to be gay or lesbian by the way they talked, or acted, or by the clothing they wore. If you don’t fit into their narrow definition of acceptability then you must be outside of God’s will for your life, a dangerous influence that must be eliminated.

If you don’t think that happens, if you think I may be exaggerating the situation, then I’ve got some distressing news for you. I have sat on church boards and pastored churches where those exact discussions took place, “Pastor Ray, we’ve got to eliminate this dangerous influence to our youth!” That meant they would shun the young person they thought to be the dangerous influence, when they should have been reaching out in love and mercy to care for that troubled child, not heap more stress and cruelty upon him or her. If you know my personal story, then you know I got up one day in the middle of one of those kind of meetings and walked away from the senior pastorate of a church. I could not be a part of a congregation that treated people like throwaway containers, worthless and hopeless.

I have witnessed adults being told that they could not serve in any leadership position in the church because they were out about being gay. The message that comes across is, “If you are gay, then just don’t talk about it. As long as you are in the closet you can continue to be a leader in our church or a minister in our denomination.” However that kind of logic is contrary to the teachings of the church about truthfulness, honesty, and accepting others with Christ’s kind of love, especially the outcast and the stranger? Where is so-called Christian hospitality when people are refused communion, refused membership, or refused the ability to minister to others in Lay or Ordained positions just because they are gay or lesbian or transgendered.

That kind of behavior can only be compared to that of the older brother in the story Jesus told about the "Prodigal Son" in Luke 15:11-32. The younger brother asks for his inheritance while his father is still alive, sort of like telling your father that you wish he were dead. But this father unbelievably gives his son the cash and the boy goes off to live life in a far away city. Like most young people he makes some pretty big mistakes. His money runs out and he is left homeless and ends up working on a pig farm, eating what the pigs eat to stay alive. This was the most disgusting job Jesus could have cast him in to make the point of his story. Coming to his senses he decides to go back home and ask his father for a job knowing that his father's workers are treated far better than he is being treated as a hired hand.

But when he is still a long way off, his father, who has been watching for his son to return, sees him and runs to him, embracing him. Even before the young man can say much of anything to his father, the father welcomes him home, not as a worker on his farm, but as his child with all the rights and privileges that go with being the child of the owner, yes, and even full inheritance rights. Nobody hearing the story when Jesus originally told it would have missed that important fact. All of those gifts represented the father’s complete and total acceptance of his son back into the family with all rights and privileges. This is a complete and full welcome home by the father with no reservations and no regrets. The father even orders a celebration so everyone else can rejoice in the return of his son.

However, the older brother finds out about the return of his younger sibling and he refuses to come into the party. Just like he did for the younger son, the father goes out to talk to him to bring him into the party. The older brother states how loyal he has been, how hard he has worked and how his father has never thrown a party for him. Notice the slur against his father when he says, “You didn’t even barbeque a goat for me and my friends.” The father is overjoyed at the return of the lost son, but the older brother doesn't get it. He's more concerned with the fact that though he has remained faithful, as he understands faithfulness, but that he hasn't gotten rewarded for it. The father says to this son, who is being just as stubborn and disappointing in his own way as his younger brother had been previously, “Everything I have is yours.” Jesus doesn't finish the story, but I've always wondered if the older brother stayed outside or decided to go into the party. How do you think Jesus’ story turned out: Talk Back Time.

Our fundamentalist Christian families and friends cannot believe that God loves us the same way God loves them: just as we are. They cannot believe that we get full inheritance rights equal to our brother Jesus and them. We will be in the same heaven that they will be in throughout all of eternity. To God it doesn't matter if you are Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Inter-Sexed, non-sexual, or straight. God already knows what your sexual orientation is because God created you exactly the way you are.

God isn't surprised because you grew up to be gay, lesbian, trans or bi-sexual, or straight. That fact never was a secret to God because God created you the way you are and loved you from before you were in your mother’s womb according to the Bible. And your being queer never was a reason for God to keep you out of a relationship with God. God has established no borders and no boundaries to keep some out and let some in. The Bible clearly tells us that everyone is invited and that the only thing that keeps anyone out of God’s community is their own personal refusal to come in to the banquet.

I saw this past week that the current president of Focus on the Family said in an interview that he believes the fundamentalist right has lost the battle on marriage. The polls are changing in our favor. More and more people accept the idea that marriage equality is for all people. Our laws may lag far behind public opinion, but those laws will ultimately change, too.

James Dobson, Pat Robertson, my brother and sister, and all the others who claim to have a special knowledge from God about gays and lesbians are all like the older brother in the story of Prodigal Son. They can't believe that God welcomes us into God's family and they keep trying to tell us that God wouldn't act that way. And because they can't understand how God could act that way, then they claim that ministries like Metropolitan Community Churches must be demon possessed. It's the only explanation they can come up for why God is acting far differently than they thought God could or would act…running right past them and welcoming you and I into God’s welcome home party.

But now the question is put to us, will we accept that God's house is broader and bigger than we thought it could be? Is there enough room in God's house for me, my Queer brothers and sisters, and for our fundamentalist right-wing brothers and sisters? Will we welcome them into God's house, or will we also be like the older brother in the story and stay outside pouting while the celebration is going on?

It's easy for me to accuse those who condemn me for being gay as modern day Pharisees. I could call them names as easily as they seem to want to call me names. I could condemn them for their non-loving ways as easily as they condemn me for my sexuality. I could refuse to commune with them and refuse to share God's love with them just as easily as they refuse to allow me in their churches or to share Communion with them. But at some point I have to ask myself exactly what is being accomplished by my acting just like them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I Peter 3:15-16 says, “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is within you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

God wants me to speak to those who are opposed to my being gay and Christian in love - not in anger. When, like the man who spoke to me in the Mall, I can dialogue honestly with them about my beliefs and my understanding of God's love for everyone, maybe we will make some headway in coming to a point where both sides are more willing to at least listen respectfully to the other side. They may never change the way they believe, but the evidence is that a lot of people are changing the way they think and feel about you and me. I'll never know if I don't try. And I'll never try if I refuse to join the party because they are there.

"Coming Out to God" Exodus 3:1-12

2011-06-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

This is the first in four PRIDE sermons for the month of June:

LGBT people are making a difference in our nation and in our world as we actively strive for acceptance, for justice and social changes that mean we are included in all of the privileges society has to offer any other person regardless of sexuality, race, color, ethnicity, creed or religion. We are truly coming out.
Have you ever stopped, though, to notice that the Bible is a book about coming out? The Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3 is a story about coming out of innocence and shame to enjoy our bodies and sexual pleasure which is a radically different way of looking at the story than focusing on sin and punishment.
Joseph and his coat of many colors is the coming out of a dreamer, a person with a special gift. We who are gay or queer have special gifts to share with our communities. Joseph’s very special coat of many colors, a rainbow robe, if you will, is a promise that our differences are not wrong.

Coming out to love is reflected in the biblical story of David and Jonathan’s passionate devotion to each other, and in the story of Ruth and Naomi’s loyalty and devotion to each other. Their relationships may not have been sexual, but what justifies any relationship isn’t the sex but the love that is involved.
Coming out of privilege is the story of Esther, a beautiful queen who is secretly Jewish in a Persian culture. Esther comes out of her privilege to identify with her people in order to save them from a decree of death. She asks her people to fast in solidarity with her as she risks her life before the king, mirroring queer people who can pass as heterosexuals and yet give up their privilege in society and come out boldly.

Jonah, the reluctant preacher, who comes out of anger and learns the hard way what God intends for him to do after running away the first time. Jonah is called to preach repentance to the Ninevites—the very people oppressing Jonah’s people. When the Ninevites repent, Jonah becomes angry because they received the same mercy and grace as the Israelites however Jonah didn’t want to share this with his oppressors. It will do us all good to remember that God is even the God of our oppressors The same God in whose image we are created as LGBT people is the same God of the Christian Coalition, of Focus on the Family, who actively persecute us today. We must not forget to offer our oppressors opportunities to turn from their shameful ways and receive God’s mercy and grace.

Coming out of “traditional family values,” at the age of 12 Jesus ignored his family’s departure from Jerusalem to go and sit in the temple, his “Father’s House;” He left his family, he never married, and as far as we know he never had any children; he called his disciples away from their families and told them he had no home, claiming his message would set family members against one another. Jesus was hardly the supporter of so-called traditional family values—meaning one man, one woman and some children. Instead Jesus extended the meaning of family by calling anyone who does the will of God his brothers, sisters and mother. Jesus defended the eunuchs—traditionally outcasts—by drawing a circle of love and acceptance that included them.

The story of the Samaritan Woman is a story about coming out as ourselves. Jesus’ conversation with her at the well is just one example of the way Jesus did not follow traditional society’s norms for religion, race, gender, or morality—he spoke to a Samaritan woman who had five husbands and who wasn’t married to her current partner. He offered her living water—acceptance and hope for a new way of living—and she was transformed. Jesus’ encounter with this woman illustrates the call to a right relationship with God. When we seek transformation of ourselves we find Jesus calling out to us, repeating: “God loves you, God loves you, God loves you.”

The biggest coming out in all of history is the exodus from Egypt. Their experience parallels our own coming out experience, our own joyous release from the captivity of heterosexism. But then we are faced with possible death in the wilderness, no real home, no road map to follow. We may even want to go back to our former life of captivity, the closet, where at least we felt safely hidden and had food to eat.
Leaving the wilderness Moses and the Israelites got close to the promised land but they did not think that they could conquer those who were living there, so they stayed by an oasis in the desert, deciding to settle for far less. As LGBT Christians we are often told to wait and be patient for full inclusion, but waiting will not prompt the changes that need to take place. It is agitation and discomfort, not complacency that brings about the necessary changes. It is hard being out of the closet and working for change.

Exodus is a story about transformation. God tells Moses in Exodus 19: 3-6
3-6 As Moses went up to meet God, GOD called down to him from the mountain: "Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: 'You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to me. If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you'll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you're special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.'

MCC’s Rev. Dr. Mona West says that the haibru in the ancient East were known as the aliens, the strangers, the marginalized. She points out that word is related etymologically and sociologically by Walter Bruggemann to the biblical term Hebrew, coming from the root word abar, meaning ‘to cross over.” The Hebrews were those who crossed over boundaries, who had no respect for imperial boundaries, someone who is not confined by boundaries of others but crosses over them in a desperate search for the necessities of life. It is these people who were transformed into the nation of Israel.

Bernhard Anderson says that Exodus is the crucial event by which Israel became a historically self-aware community. It is a coming out story of a people.
That identity did not happen the moment that they came out of their closets in Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. It was through their wilderness journey and their conquest of the Promised Land, as they faced trials and rebelled against God that they were able to discover more fully what it meant to be a holy nation. Even once they attained the Promised Land they found that this journey to self-discovery had not ended. They faced new oppression and enslavement and were challenged to live fully as God’s people who embraced a new identity.

In today’s scripture passage from Exodus, Moses is out tending his flock. He believes he has covered up his previous life and would not be bothered by memories of his privileged existence in Pharaoh’s court, nor the suffering of his own people in their slavery. He has escaped a potential death penalty put upon him when in a fit of anger he kills one of the oppressors of his people. While trying to find grazing space for his flock, he encounters God in the form of a bush that burns but is not consumed by the fire and is introduced to God who calls Godself “I am the I am,” or I am who I am. God came out to Moses and in so doing God calls Moses to accept himself. God encourages Moses to be all that God had created Moses to be.
The Bible teaches us that we are made in the very image of God. Just like Moses, we sometimes try to argue with God: Surely, you wouldn’t pick me? Why, God, I’m not worthy. We make excuses about why God couldn’t or wouldn’t choose us and why we can’t be or do what God is calling us to be and do. But God keeps right on calling us, refusing to accept our excuses or our reluctance, moving us forward toward the promised future God wants us to inhabit.

When I was much younger I didn’t understand this urging by God to move me out of my former life and into a new existence that God had waiting for me. I didn’t know other possibilities existed for me than what society and family told me that they expected of me. Knowing I was different and not understanding that difference I believed what my church told me was about its so-called traditional beliefs about same sex love and what it believed was the only acceptable relationship between two people: marriage between a man and woman. I forced myself into the mold of complacency and tradition when I married my former wife.

Don’t misunderstand. I did love my wife. She was my best friend for many years. We formed a loving family that was blessed with four children of whom I am very proud and who I love more than life itself. But throughout those four years of dating and 32 years of married life I couldn’t help but think that there was something I was missing, something that my heart and soul longed for. For many of those years I was miserable and depressed as I tried to put down the real, true me and live a closeted life of acceptance by society.

Seven and a half years ago my life changed. My wife, for her own reasons, decided to end the marriage. I have to tell you that though I was upset and angry with her decision, I was also relieved. Throughout the years I had the God-given privilege of dealing with the question of whether or not God loved me just as I was, just as God had created me. I had prayed for God to change me, to make me straight, to take away my desire to be with another man, but the same answer kept coming back to me, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

In other words, God kept telling me that God loved me just the way God had created me and that God wasn’t going to change me.

So forced out of an unhappy marriage, I had to deal with the question of what did God want me to do now? It was late in 1993 and we had moved back to Knoxville, I tried going back to the same church that had ordained me to the Gospel ministry more than twenty years earlier. I was accepted, even asked to preach, to join a committee whose purpose was to plant another Southern Baptist Church in the area. Because I had previously founded a church that grew rapidly into a major congregation, I was even asked to pastor the new church. They could accept my being divorced, after all it was a fairly liberal church, but I knew that if I revealed my true self to them that their invitations to be involved would evaporate, or at least raise some significant questions about my suitability in those new roles.

So I left that church and began attending the Gay Men’s Discussion group. I found a group of men who shared my feelings and who supported one another in the questions life was handing us to answer. I found Christian men who were gay and who invited me to attend MCC Knoxville where I found a community that accepted me and loved me just as God had created me. There were many ups and downs I had to face as the marriage was dissolved and I built a new life for myself, but I found a supportive community that helped me to negotiate all the hurdles I had to overcome.
God had called me to be a Christian minister. My sexuality and major conflict with others over what our stance as a church should be concerning ministry to the marginalized persons of society, had caused me to leave the active ministry several years before. But at MCC Knoxville, a place of restitution I found grace and mercy and came to realize that God had not changed God’s desire for me to be in Christian ministry. That church acknowledged my history and my calling and eventually made a place for me to renew my vows as a minister and serve them and God. I will always thank God for the wonderful people at MCC Knoxville, for Pastor Bob Galloway and for all who gave me the love and care, mercy and grace that I needed to move forward with God into a new future of possibilities.

God changed Moses. Moses learned to accept himself as God had created him and gifted him. Moses discovered that God didn’t care about the same things that other people cared about.

Listen carefully, God is not calling you or me to become someone different than we are. God is calling you and me to become all that God created us to be…to be ourselves.

People often thank me for my gifts of ministry, for my ministry to them and to this church. That seems strange to me, because all I have done while I have been with you is to be myself. When I try to be different than the person God created me to be I don’t seem to be able to do much of anything. It is only when I allow myself to be my self that real ministry seems to get done.

Previously, during all of my life I was told that I wasn’t good enough for God, that I had to change myself and change my life to make myself acceptable to God. Boy, oh, boy, was that a great big ole lie. God didn’t ever want me to change myself; God wanted me to accept myself, to love myself exactly as God had created me.
God, the I am who I am God, the I will be who I will be God, wanted me to finally stand up and say to the world Hey, I am who I am. I will be who I will be. I am exactly the way God wants me to be. God loves me just the way I am. I do not have to change to be loved by God. By the way, world, I am a gay Christian minister.
Like Moses or Esther, there are people in our world who have lived the great “I Am”—the assurance that who they are matters and that their self worth is not built on definitions others provide.

Born in 1924, black feminist poet Audre Lorde grew up in Harlem and spent her life teaching and writing; her honest free verse gave a powerful witness about a black woman who loved women. When faced with breast cancer, Lorde reevaluated her life and become even more determined to have her words and speeches match her life. Writing of her mortality in her essay, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, “she says she regretted her silences most, “My silence had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.” She believed that culture had silenced women, blacks and lesbians specifically, but that all people could be silenced for one reason or another. Being silent about your truth in life will not protect you, even though it may feel safer. Coming out and being true to one’s self—who one was created to be—energizes one’s work and brings more life to all those around you.
Speaking the truth about her life, Lorde’s words and life inspired many women, lesbians and straight alike, to honor the truth of their lives and name themselves rather than letting society use derogatory labels. Rather than choosing to live an invisible life in the closet, Lorde claimed her God-given identity.

In his inaugural speech as the first black president of South Africa in May 1994, Nelson Mandela, who had spent 27 years in prison resisting apartheid in his country, said “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. You were born to manifest the Glory of God within.”
The Rev. Jay E. Johnson, Programming and Development Director, for the Pacific School of Religion’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, says the following:
“There is a price to pay for telling the truth, just as there is a price for remaining silent. Of course, there’s more to human thriving than truthful speech—but there can’t be less. Speaking the truth won’t guarantee we’ll live authentically—but there’s no hope of doing so if we lie or keep silent. Nearly twenty years ago, AIDS activists reminded us that silence equals death. Not long after that they flipped the coin over and reminded us that action equals life.
“Breaking silence by speaking the truth is a form of action for the sake of life. Speech is action insofar as speaking the truth changes people—it changes both those who speak and those who listen. The words conversations and conversion come from the same root. The truth about the ways things are and about who we are tends to do that—it changes quite a lot.”

No Pecking Order in God's New Community, Luke 14:1,7-14

2010-08-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

Preached August 29, 2010
Luke 14:1,7-14

What position of importance do you think you deserve? At home? At work? With your friends and family? At church? Jesus has much to teach us in this week's gospel lesson from Luke about what it means to honor others and be honored by them. Jesus was a people watcher. We have talked several times recently about how Jesus has an uncanny ability to see people that others are overlooking, and to see people as they really are. . .warts and all.

Remember that Jesus and the disciples are on their way to Jerusalem. This summer and into the fall we will be following Jesus on this journey as he teaches his disciples what it means to be a follower of Christ. He has been telling them what the New Community of God will be like when it comes into existence and this passage is also about that New Community. He has just finished a discourse on the Banquet that God will give when the New Community comes into existence. People from all parts of the world will stream into the banquet, even those that the Jewish nation at that time felt were beyond God’s love and acceptance. I’ve asked this question before: Who is it that you don’t expect to see, or don’t want to see seated at the same table in God’s New Community for that Great Banquet? I believe you will be surprised by who God seats next to you!

One of the things that Luke does in his creative writing of the life of Christ is to repeat events, just so that the reader will not miss the warning or truth Luke is trying to express through the words and actions of Jesus. We don’t get to read all of the passages between one week and another, or even all of the verses of a passage on any particular week, so we often miss these repeated stories as they are left out of the weekly lectionary choices.

Between verses one and seven in today’s lectionary, verses we didn’t read, Jesus is at a banquet on the Sabbath at a Pharisee’s home. Luke wants us to know that this isn’t an ordinary banquet, because today, on the menu is a theological discussion about God’s presence in our lives and what that means in the way we respond to the needs of others. Luke tells us that everyone is watching Jesus, but the English doesn’t get at the Greek undertones which actually say that they were watching him ominously, expecting him to do something that was against their rules and regulations. This is probably the real reason behind his being invited to the banquet. And Jesus doesn’t disappoint them.

On this particular day there is a man with dropsy in need of healing and Jesus not being one to wait when he sees someone in great need, and repeating the lesson we had from last week when he healed a woman on the Sabbath in the Synagogue, Jesus asks his host and those gathered if it is allowed to heal on the Sabbath. No one answers him. Remember what happened last week when the Synagogue leader objected to Jesus healing on the Sabbath. They are probably thinking they don’t want to be the object of Jesus’ verbal response.

Now you need to know that dropsy is a disease where your arms and legs swell grossly. It was a disease associated by rabbinical thought with immorality and un-cleanliness. Don’t miss the important fact here that when Jesus heals someone he is also pronouncing forgiveness upon them. The rabbi’s thought that no healing could come to anyone unless God forgave that person of the sin they believed caused the illness. This is one of the things they have against Jesus, he is pronouncing people healed, and something which they believe only God can do. But the evidence of God’s forgiveness is seen in the healing of the persons Jesus touches. So knowing what they are thinking, Jesus heals the man.

Though they say nothing Jesus more or less knows exactly what they are thinking, how can he heal, that is do work on the Sabbath? They were probably upset because healing implied that the man was pronounced forgiven for any sins he had, which they believed were the cause of his affliction in the first place. But that's for another discussion.
Please understand that the Pharisees aren’t the bad guys. They are faithful believers in God and they are trying to apply the wisdom of the scriptures to their lives. Yes, they have created 614 rules they have to keep in order to be faithful and they get all caught up in whether a person is or isn’t keeping all 614 rules…because if you don’t then they believe you aren’t faithful. They have become so trapped in their thinking that they have forgotten all about God’s compassion and love, forgiveness and acceptance, and they fail to apply those overriding principles to their own treatment of others.

Jesus argues with their unasked questions, again, as was typical of rabbis, from a lesser situation to the greater situation. He reminds them that if their ox or a child falls into a ditch or a well on the Sabbath that they will quickly work to get the ox or the child out of the ditch without compromising the Sabbath Laws. How much more important is a person in great need of healing than an ox in the ditch?

I rather think that Jesus knows that his followers and the Pharisees at this banquet are missing the real lessons he is trying to teach them about what it means to be a disciple. False pride and social status have nothing to do with being a true disciple of Christ.

Jesus was a people watcher. Do you like to go the mall and sit on a bench and just watch people as they go by? Lots of interesting things happen. You can learn a lot about someone just by watching how they talk and act in public. Jesus, as we know, from other passages was a great lover of people watching. This day he observes how those in attendance try to take the most important positions of honor at the table as they arrive. The seating was on couches arranged in a U with two to four persons reclining on each couch, and with the host seated at the base of the U and honored guests seated immediately to his left and right with the most honored position being the seat immediately to his right. Simply put, the closer you were seated to the host, the higher up in the pecking order you were. Some, who take seats beyond their social position, may have to be told by their host that they have to give up their seat so that a more important person can have it. The Greek here implies a long slow agonizing walk to the couch at the end of the table, knowing all the way that everyone is watching as you are put in your place in the lowest seat in the social pecking order. How embarrassing as you are hurt more with every step you take. Jesus tells them that it would be better to take seats of lesser importance and then have the host escort them to more important seats of honor.

Jesus’ point is that honor is not something we grab with gusto for ourselves, but something that is bestowed upon us as an honor. How much different for the guest to take the last seat at the beginning of the banquet, and then have the host tell this humble quest that he or she will be ushered to a greater seat of honor. In fact Jesus uses the term “glory” to characterize the honor that results. “For everyone who exalts (our glories) himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (gloried).” It is a theme about the New Community of God that Jesus repeats often in Luke’s gospel often and it is a reversal of the usual thinking of his contemporaries.

Jesus is not against giving honor to those who deserve honor, he is, however, against the use of power and prestige to puff yourself up. God honors the humble person and the door to the New Community of God is through humility. We are truly humble when we recognize our great need for God in our lives, and not any so-called rights to God’s blessings.

Jesus expands on this thought by observing who has been invited to this banquet and sees that they apparently all have the ability to return the favor and in fact according to custom and society are expected to return the invitation by inviting the host to their home for dinner. This kind of payback hospitality is not what should exist in the New Community of God.

How much better, Jesus tells them, would it be if they invited those to dinner those who had no ability to repay them and from whom they never expected to get an invitation to dinner in return: the poor, the powerless, the sick and invalid, the homeless and, shall I say it, even unlawful immigrants. He tells them to invite the outcasts of society, those people that would normally not be welcomed into their homes. Such a dinner would be a true reflection of the Banquet of the New Community of God that Jesus says will take place when God's ways are truly able to be put into practice on a daily basis in our lives. We will do for others without expecting to get something back from them. We will care for others in a loving manner that doesn’t reflect our hopes for a return favor someday…not even an expression of appreciation. How often have you said something like, “They didn’t even thank me for my kindness?” I think Jesus would ask us, “Did you do it because you expected them to thank you? Did you do it because you wanted to be appreciated and lifted up into a more honorable position in society or in relationship to this person? Or did you care for them because you really wanted to help them? If the latter, then you don’t need to expect a thank you, just appreciate your own good behavior and the fact that you have helped someone in need.”

The story continues with Jesus telling another parable about a man who invites high society guests to his banquet but everyone turns him down so he sends his servants out to bring in all those who would never get an invitation to such a banquet: the poor, the lame, the blind and the maimed. But there is still room even after they come so the host sends his servants out to bring in total strangers and even foreigners by bringing back all those on the highways and the hedges, an illusion to the Gentiles, those that most rabbis thought were far beyond God’s love and acceptance.

There is a warning here, that those who feel they deserve the blessings of God may not experience those blessings if they turn away from God and away from God’s New Community because they do not want to associate with those very same persons that God loves and accepts, forgives and includes, even when those persons are not normally accepted into human society for one reason or another.

Let’s get to the crux of the matter: Do you expect to get something back from others when you do something nice for them? Or do you simply do the nice thing for others because that is what God expects from us all of the time: truly caring for the needs of others in compassionate and loving ways?

There are no exceptions to being compassionate and loving in the Bible and if you do think you have discovered a passage that gives you the right to exclude and ignore any other person then perhaps you haven't studied the Bible enough and need to go back to really reading the Bible in its entirety and stop just picking out favorite verses and ignoring the rest of what it has to say.

So will you join in the banquet in the new community of God today, or will you refuse God’s invitation to join God and all of those that God includes in God’s New Community? It’s up to you, stay on the outside, or come inside to experience God’s love and hope and peace.

Set Free to Be…, Luke 13:10-17, 38th Anniversary ECMCCS

2010-08-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

Preached August 22, 2010
Luke 13:10-17:
When I was young I believed that being a good Christian, a follower of Christ, was all about following the rules: They taught me that if I wanted to go to heaven I had to keep all of the rules. They would tell us that once you became a Christian you could never lose your salvation. But they also taught me that if you were breaking the rules, then you probably never had really become a Christian anyway and you were going to hell unless you decided to ask God to forgive you, pledge your life to God and start keeping all the rules.

Here is a short list of some of the rules I grew up with:
Read one chapter of the Bible every day. Memorize a verse of the Bible every week. Attend Sunday school and worship every Sunday morning. Attend evening Sunday School and worship every Sunday. Go to church for mission study and worship and prayer meeting every Wednesday. Attend youth group devotions every Friday night. Add to that the following: You can’t smoke if you are a Christian. You can’t drink alcoholic beverages if you are a Christian. You can’t dance or go to a school dance if you are a Christian. You can’t go to movies if you are a Christian. You have to be in church every time there is a worship service, bible study, or other event, even if it happens at the same time as a school or community event. You have to show you are loyal to God by not letting anything else interfere with your going to church! Church was more important than school homework. If I had a research paper due in school but there was a full evening of events at church, then I was not allowed to do the research paper since it would take me away from church if I went to the library. No arguments. I used to ask my parents to let me stay home one Sunday evening a year to see the Wizard of Oz movie on TV. It only came on once a year, always on a Sunday night. But my parents always said, “No. Missing church is a sin. You will go to church.”

I’ve come to understand that for many so-called Christians it is following the rules that make them believe they are leading a successful Christian life, the life that God wants them to live.

But I know, regardless of what anyone says, that there is absolutely no way that anyone of us can keep all of the rules that the Bible states one should follow. How many of you eat shrimp? Sorry, that’s an abomination. You are going to hell. How many of you right now have an article of clothing or shoes on that was made out of more than one kind of fabric? Why that would be everyone of us since all of us are wearing shoes and all shoes are made out of more than one kind of fabric or material. Sorry. Abomination. You broke the rules, you are going to hell.

Living by the rules is a horrible way to live! Because sometime, somewhere you will fail to follow one of the rules. It’s human nature. At the time of Jesus’ ministry they had codified over 600 rules that one had to follow if one wanted to say you were a good Jew serving God. One of those rules was that you had to keep the Sabbath holy by not doing any kind of work on the Sabbath.

Living by the rules means that I am mostly concerned with myself and keeping myself under control all of the time. Living by the rules means I have little time to be concerned about other people and their problems or situation. Living by the rules means that I spend all of my time looking at me and have no time left to look at other people, to really see them and to realize that I am part of a greater community.

One of the things I’ve taken to heart over the years are the words of Henri Nouwen, "love Jesus and love (others) the way Jesus loved." Today’s scripture lesson is an example of how Jesus loved.
On this particular Sabbath Jesus is teaching in the Synagogue. Suddenly he stops his teaching. He has seen a woman bent over suffering from what many believe to be scoliosis a developmental deformation of the spine. She has had this affliction for eighteen years. By now she is crippled, probably can’t stand up straight, probably has a twisted and hunched appearance, may not be able to look up any longer, only down at the ground. But like a faithful woman of her time she is at church with her family and friends. Maybe she has heard about this rabbi, maybe this is the first time she has met him. But no one is clamoring for her healing because she has always been this way and her family and friends have stopped noticing her horrible situation. But Jesus sees her, really sees her and Jesus calls her to come to him. Jesus sees her as a captive to her disease and Jesus is going to set her free to be all that God wants her to become.

He places his hands upon her in the sign of a blessing and he pronounces her healed, set free from her ailment. Jesus recognizes within her something holy and divine and with his touch he pronounces her to be a beloved child of God. The scripture says that she stood up straight and began praising God. Can you imagine her joy at being set free?

But there were the rule followers there that day and they weren’t happy with the situation. Healing someone on the Sabbath was considered to be work. You could take care of a sick person on the Sabbath, but they couldn’t get better or you would be accused of working if you helped them. I remember staying home from school as a child, faking my illness, and then being so upset when later in the day I wanted to play but my parents kept telling me that I was sick and had to stay in bed.

So the leader of the synagogue lets everyone know that this isn’t following the rules. “Come back on Monday, after the Sabbath, that’s the time for healing. You should not expect healing on the Sabbath, because the Sabbath is a holy day set aside for worshipping God.” His message was clear: Jesus has broken the rules. Jesus has put the welfare of a crippled woman over the religious obligation to following the rules. Now isn’t the time for healing. Wait! Come back another day!

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He is teaching his disciples what it means to be a follower of Christ and what it means to be a citizen of the New Community of God. Jesus isn’t going to let anything, even religious rules, keep anyone out of God’s New Community, nor allow anyone to be abused or rejected or ignored in this New Community.

Jesus spends a lot of time in conflict with the religious leaders of his day about what the Sabbath was supposed to be. Remember that in last week’s scripture lesson from Luke Jesus said following him would result in division among people as people realized that doing things God’s way meant doing things differently than they have ever done them before. Following Jesus means changing and no one likes to change. I believe that Jesus was attempting to teach people that he believed that the Sabbath should be an example of what the New Community of God was to be like, a little-bit-of-heaven on earth. And Jesus wasn’t going to wait until a more favorable day if there was a need today. Jesus by his act of healing on the Sabbath demonstrated to the people exactly what the New Community of God was like, and then he went on to talk about it, too, in the following verses. These weren’t just empty words. Jesus knew that actions were the concrete demonstration of your words and your beliefs. Put your words into action! It’s easy to say a word of blessing to another person, it isn’t always so easy to put those words into action, to take your hands and make something happen that will really bless another person’s life.
I’m sure that the Synagogue leader, probably a Pharisee, didn’t really have a problem with Jesus healing this woman, it was a matter of timing. It was a problem of when it happened, not to whom or by whom it happened or how it was accomplished. Just go away today and come back tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day when healing can happen. Tomorrow you won’t be breaking the rules. Just wait a little longer. We in the Queer Community are used to hearing these kinds of words. Just wait a little longer until everyone can agree that marriage equality is the right thing to do, then you can get married. Just wait a little longer until everyone in congress and the Senate can agree and then we’ll put an end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Wait until we can get everyone on board and then we’ll pass laws that say that gay and lesbian and transgender persons can’t be harassed and fired from their jobs.

There is a tension in the story between Jesus and the leader of the Synagogue. You can feel it as you read the story. Here are two faithful Jewish men who are both struggling with what it means to be faithful to God. I don’t think the Synagogue leader is a bad man; he’s pressing the case for obedient faithfulness to God. But so is Jesus! They both want to keep the Sabbath holy, they just disagree about how to do that. Jesus says the time for salvation, for healing, for being set free isn’t tomorrow, it’s right now, today, no matter what day it is. In fact, Jesus is saying, that the Sabbath is the perfect day for healing, the perfect day to be set free from whatever binds and cripples you in your life.

If we are called to love Jesus and love others the way Jesus loved, then its very clear to me that this story gives to us a model of what it means to be the church—to be the body of Christ—not just on Sunday, but every day of the week. Jesus is the model for us…for all of us…in our daily lives…in our homes…at our places of work…out in the community that surrounds us.

Look around you at the people in this place today. Who is the bent over woman you have stopped seeing? Do you really see these people? Do you know the troubles and tear-jerking problems that many of them are facing? Have you taken the time to get to know them, really know them? Or do you just see them as they appear to you in church on Sunday and think that is all there is to them? Who in this room have you blessed with your presence in their lives? Who has felt your hand of blessing and healing upon them? Will you love each other like Jesus loves you?

As you walk through this city this week who is the bent over woman and will you open your eyes and see, really see the people around you? Can you love them like Jesus loves them?

The bent over woman we have stopped seeing could be our neighbors of color. We can be proud of the progress we have made in our society. But there is still much progress to yet be made. Take for instance the plight of the African American whose house is up for sale and who asks their real estate agent if they should remove their family pictures from the walls of the house so no prospective buyer will know they are black? Is their question unreasonable?

The bent over woman we have stopped seeing could be the homeless on the streets we walk by without feeling compassion for and from whom we avert our eyes and avoid speaking to lest they ask us for help. Why don’t we decide to do something for the folks living in the Nicklesville tent city one block up the street? If nothing else we could take sandwiches and nourishing drinks to them once a week.

The bent over woman we have stopped seeing could be the Queer teenager that has been kicked out of his or her home by their so-called tough loving parents to fend for themselves on the streets and face exploitation and harm as well as disease and discomfort. It is estimated that 40-60% of youth on the streets are LGBT. Many of them have attempted to take their own lives, many have succeeded just because they are gay. We could volunteer to help those teens right here every single night of the week in the ROOTS program housed in this very building.

The bent over woman could be one of our own who has trouble understanding his or her own sexuality or gender identity and has not yet come to understand that he or she is a beautiful and beloved child of God who doesn’t have to do anything or change anything to receive God’s acceptance or ours. We have a mission as a church to speak to the needs of those in the Queer community in clear, strong voices that counter the message of hate and revulsion that is broadcast so loudly by the fundamentalist Christian right. It is our heritage as the oldest LGBT congregation in the Pacific Northwest and it is a heritage that we must live up to and live into.

When we stop seeing the bent over women and men of our day, when we stop believing that it is part of our responsibility to touch them, to bless them, to set them free then we have stopped being the church that God called us into being 38 years ago. When we stop seeing and stop loving and stop caring and going and doing for others, then we stop being the New Community of God.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year. We have a new place of worship. We have new friends in the University District Ecumenical Parish and Campus projects. We have a new opportunity to become a growing, caring, loving church. Nothing stands in our way of achieving the vision that God has implanted in us except we ourselves. Let us renew our commitment to seeing and doing, to loving and touching, to blessing and freeing others to be all that God wants them to be.

United & Divided or Jesus & Family Values, Luke 12:46-59

2010-08-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

Preached Sunday, August 15, 2010
Luke 12:46-59

This isn’t an easy text to preach on, or even to understand. We just don’t like for Jesus to say things like we read in this passage. This isn’t the Jesus we usually think we know. This is a very different Jesus. Jesus uses the idea of fire as a symbol of judgment. But it is important to remember that though Jesus uses the language of judgment and social violence, that he never resorted to any violent actions, and never was suggesting that violence should become a part of our lives in disagreements with others.

We want a Jesus that talks about harmony and peace, not one that talks about conflicts between people. And then he goes even further and says that he will be the cause of such conflicts. In short Jesus is saying, “Follow me and you can expect there will be trouble and misunderstandings. It’s a given fact. Don’t think life will be comfortable and easy if you follow me.”

(From Out in Scripture) “But this passage begs the question of why Jesus would want to use such violent imagery when he was peaceable. One reason is to remind us that a life as a follower of Christ will inevitably lead to conflict. Jesus is certainly the "Prince of Peace," but that is far different from peace at any cost. The peace that Jesus sought to bring is first and foremost a peace with God. Such a peace will lead to peace among humanity, but we must remember the direction in which godly peace flows. It flows first from a life lived in communion and obedience to God and then outward to the world around us. What Jesus is reminding us is that such a peace is not always welcome and is often met with violent resistance. Jesus' words are cautionary for those who take a life of discipleship too lightly”

Jesus’ disciples have continually misunderstood what he has been telling them about the New Community of God he will usher into existence. They think it will be an earthly kingdom and them will be the officials in charge of everything, enjoying the honor and prestige of their new positions next to him, their new King. But Jesus keeps telling them that’s not the kind of community he will create. He is facing a time of turmoil that will ultimately lead to his death. He is not so much being a prophet of his own future as he is being a good interpreter of the signs all around him. He knows he is on a collision course with the powers and authorities of his day and that they will use all the necessary violence and perversion of the law they can muster to get rid of him because to allow his teachings to take hold on their society would mean that they would be out of power. That’s something that they won’t let happen.

Jesus isn’t satisfied with the status quo. Greek stoicism taught that there was a certain order to everything, even human society and that everyone had a place and should stay in their place. Change was not something you desired for your society because that would mean adjustments and adjustments often mean somebody loses and someone else wins, somebody suffers and some one else reaps a reward. But Jesus isn’t buying into that kind of thinking, because Jesus knows that change must happen in a society if the poor and the outcast, the widow and the orphan, the lame and sick, the eunuch and leper are to be included in the community, too. And Jesus will not tolerate a future where anyone is rejected or cast out of God’s new community.

Many fundamentalist Christian leaders talk abundantly about how Jesus supports their interpretation of Family Values. But that isn’t what we read in the gospels about what Jesus is actually saying. Respect your parents? When Mary comes to Jesus with his brothers to take him home because they think he’s gone off his rocker, he refuses to speak to them and tells his disciples that his mother and brothers, his family, are those who obey his teachings. Pretty harsh stuff from a guy who is held up as the icon of Christian Family Values.

Think about it for a minute. Jesus never did what was expected of a male in his society. He did not have what we would call a home, though many do think he probably had a house in Capernaum. He did not have a regular trade to make a living at, instead he roamed the country as an itinerant preacher, hardly a wealth producing occupation. He did not have a wife or children, something someone of his age would have been expected to do. And he apparently encouraged a whole lot of men to leave behind those same expectations of their society and follow along after him from place to place, living off of the wealth of the women who supported Jesus’ ministry with their money. That’s what the scriptures tell us. I’m not making any of this up. He was not a stand up macho man living up to society’s expectation of who and what a man should be. He was in fact a very Queer person and he called his followers to become Queer persons too, people who were outside of the expected norm of that society. That’s what Queer really means.

The patriarchal society of the time, that means that the father was the primary person in the family structure, was modeled after the Roman Empire with the most powerful father of them all being the Roman Emperor. Christian fundamentalists will still tell you that they believe the best family structure is that of the superior father with an inferior mother and their children living a life together with the father having the last word on everything and everyone else obeying him peacefully without disagreement or turmoil. Sounds like a great way of living if you are the father of the family. But what if you aren’t the father. What rights do you have? None, if Dad chooses not to give them to you.

Jesus said that his real family was those who followed after him, those who took his teaching seriously and applied it to their lives and to their relationships with others. He modeled for them what that meant by how he cared for other people. I’ve pointed it out before Jesus had great eyesight. He saw the person in trouble before anyone else could see them. Jesus saw people just as they were, not as they wanted to be seen by society. He looked at them and he really saw them, and then he spoke to them and cared for them in ways that demonstrated to them that he was seeing them and he was caring for them. The blind man who was rejected from his Synagogue because Jesus had healed him: Jesus heard about what had happened to him and went to find him and care for him. The woman on the street who had been bleeding for years and touched the hem of his robe believing that if she did so she would be healed. And when she did, and was healed, Jesus stopped the crowd and found her and cared for her. He restored her to society, a society that had rejected her because she had something different about her that she couldn’t change and so society rejected her and cast her out and refused to associate with her, calling her unclean and unfit for human society. But Jesus brought her into the New Community of God he was creating.

In the Queer community we talk about our chosen family, those who we have built a family relationship with because often we have been rejected by our own families of birth because of who we love or because of our gender identity. You are my chosen family. In many ways you are more important to me than any natural family member I have, except perhaps my children and grandchildren. But then, you are my family who I am in contact with every single day of my life, unlike my children who live on the other side of the continent.

Plus, some of my natural family members don’t want to associate with me. They think I’m sinful and unclean because of who I love.

I’ve been pissed off all week about the kinds of rejection and isolation that members of our church family have gotten from their own natural family members. I have been told about parents that reject their own children because they are gay or trans or lesbian. Parents who tell their children that he or she must change and be just like everyone else if they are to receive the love of their parents. Sometimes it is subtle, and sometimes it isn’t. One parent told her child this past week that the blessings he was enjoying in his life which he attributed to God, were not from God because God wouldn’t and couldn’t bless anyone who lived the kind of lifestyle that he did. That’s blatantly telling her own child that he is going to hell because he is gay, something he can’t change about himself because that is who God created him to be and how God created him to live his life, in love with another person of the same sex. That’s pretty damn cruel for any parent to say to his or her child.

I wasn’t going to preach this way today. I was going to preach differently, but the stories you told me in person and over the phone kept adding up and it made me mad. Then on Thursday I got up and turned my computer on, giving up the idea that I would preach a sermon this way, and there on my facebook page was a question from a complete stranger, a young lady in her twenties who is a friend of someone who came to our church. Her question: do you promote homosexuality?

I sent her a message asking: Who are you and why would you ask me this question?

She replied: Just wondering because the Bible says it is wrong.

Thus began a conversation. One which I almost didn’t have with her because I wasn’t really in the right mindset. But I prayed and asked God to help me help her see how wrong she was and hopefully open up her heart and her mind to begin to see things differently than she had been taught by others. Listen friends, whoever you are, when you feel that the Bible gives you the right to reject another person or cut them out of your life or out of the New Community of God, then you aren’t reading the same Bible that I am reading and you aren’t acting like a follower of Jesus.

Here is the usual thinking of our fundamentalist friends: If you are homosexual then you are a sinner in need of forgiveness for your abominable sinfulness. They equate homosexuality as a more horrible crime in their thinking than even murder. You don’t think I’m right? I’ve been in churches where members were excommunicated because they were gay though they weren’t in a sexual relationship with anyone else, just gay. And that same church welcomed into its membership and eventually ordained and called to their staff a person who had committed murder during a robbery. Another church kicked a young man off its drama team because he appeared to be gay by how he spoke and used his hands when speaking, while allowing a young straight man to return to singing in their choir after he had an affair with a married women in the church and agreed to attended two counseling sessions with the pastor as penance. Penance if you are straight. No penance if you are gay. And you think I’m exaggerating. Wish that were true, but it’s not.

Jesus is saying that “Peace at all costs” has no place in the New Community of God. We must stand up for ourselves and for anyone else who is rejected from human society because they are simply different. I use the term Queer to refer to anyone who is different, not just sexually or gender wise.

This conflict will take its most horrible toll within our own families. Jesus knew that the family was where most of the turmoil would occur as individuals accepted and followed his teachings. Jesus was dethroning the family from its absolute claim over its members and freeing them to become what God created them to be and do what God was calling them to do. Jesus’ warning is not an invitation to the kind of religious fanaticism we often witness in ultra conservative or fringe groups like the Phelps family or Focus on the Family. Instead it is a passion that springs from the heart of our human condition. It is a passion for love, for change for the better, for justice for all, for a renewal of society so that no one is rejected and all are included. These are not the fanatical tenets of a cult leader, but they are the foundations of hope for the world.

The young lady who contacted me was named Michelle. We talked throughout the day on Thursday exchanging emails. I refused to discuss her questions about the Bible because she had already made up her mind about scripture. I did tell her that there were many passages in Leviticus that she obviously didn’t obey when she quoted me the Leviticus passage that says two men who have sex should be stoned to death. She responded by telling me that Jesus had freed her from the law and she wasn’t under any obligation to adhere or follow the Levite rules any longer, but she still persisted in using those same passages to tell me that I was under the law because I was a homosexual person.

The usual thinking goes this way: You are gay and you are a sinner in need of salvation. If you think you are a Christian then you need to think again, because you can’t be a Christian and gay at the same time. Therefore you must not be a Christian, so you are going to hell. When I persist that I am a Christian in these conversations I am told that I am a false teacher and as such I will enjoy an even more horrible experience in hell than I would have if I had simply been gay.

Sometimes they will allow that I can be gay and Christian and am therefore only in need of healing for my sickness. When I insist that I’m not sick and don’t need healing, then I am told I am possessed by an evil spirit and need to have it exorcised because it is keeping me seeing the truth. When I say that I am not possessed and that I am thinking very clearly then I am told that I am so far out of God’s will that God is going to give up on me and I can never receive forgiveness in this lifetime or the next.

When I point out to them that they are judging me, they tell me that they are only repeating to me what the scripture says and that they are responsible for saving me from a life in hell, even though they know nothing about me except that I am the pastor of this Queer congregation. It’s a circular argument, with many points in contradiction of other points, but it seems to be logical to them, even if it isn’t logical to me.

When I ask them why they would want to pick me out from the facebook pages or the phone book and contact me to tell me I am an abomination they usually tell me that it is because they love me but hate my sin. You’ve heard it as ‘hate the sin but love the sinner.” When I tell them I’m not sinning, in fact, I am living with my beloved partner in a committed relationship not unlike the one they enjoy with their own partner in life, they go back to telling me that I’m lost and headed for hell. I can’t seem to win this argument.

Now remember they say they love me and hate my sin. So I want to know what it is about me that they love, because love usually comes out of a relationship lived with another person. And as far as I know I didn’t ever have a relationship with these persons before they contacted me to condemn me. So I took a different approach with Michelle and began to tell her about my life, about my children, about my grandchildren, about my daughter that died five years ago, about my youngest daughter that was in a car accident this summer, about Mark and our life together, about this church and how we are growing and caring for people that other churches have rejected. I wanted Michelle to get to know me as more than just a gay pastor she read about on the internet. I am happy to tell you that her last two posts to me demonstrate that she made a change in her perception of me and began to see me as a real person. Her last post was an apology and a statement that she was sorry to hear about my daughters.

It may not happen for you. You may not get that person who has decided to confront you about your sexuality or gender and condemn you to ever see you as a real person, to begin to have a real relationship with you based on love and respect. But don’t stop advocating for yourself. Don’t stop trying to get them to see you as a beloved child of God created in the image of God and a beautiful follower of Jesus Christ. Sexuality and gender have nothing to do with following Jesus, no more so than the color of your skin, or the origin of your ancestors. It may take the rest of the world a long time to accept those facts, but those facts are true and you need to accept them for yourself.

(From Out in Scripture) “Even we in the LGBT community have remarkable freedom to worship as we see fit despite being cut off from larger faith communities. It is important for us to recognize that despite our difficulties, we have the ability to live our lives with a level of openness and security that many LGBT people in other parts of the world can't even imagine. Even when denied many of the same rights our fellow citizens enjoy, there are LGBT people around the world who would accept the level of freedom we have without complaint.

“The point is not to accept what we have, but to recognize that as we advocate for our equality we should not be surprised when we meet resistance. (Jesus met great resistance, even violence for his beliefs. As followers of Jesus should we expect anything less than the same thing?) Our encounter with God affirms our full humanity and it is from that place that we must speak out. As we speak from this place, we will meet resistance from those unwilling to hear God's voice as it relates to us. We also must not be so concerned with our own rights that we neglect to advocate for others around the world who live in fear and oppression.

Let me leave you with these words from another of today’s scripture passages: (Psalm 82:3-4)."Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked"

Installing a New Operating System, Luke 12:32-40, Proper 14C

2010-08-30T18:36:00.000-07:00

Preached Sunday August 8, 2010
Luke 12:32-40

Have you ever been in a situation where two people seem to be talking to each other, but neither side is really listening to the other? Such is the situation that Isaiah describes to us today. God has told the people of Israel what God wants from them, but they haven’t heard and obeyed, therefore God says to them that God will no longer hear or respond to their prayers until such time as they do listen. Nothing is as frustrating as trying to talk to someone and not having that person understand you, or respond in such a way that clearly shows they have totally misunderstood you.

The people of Israel have settled into their worship routines in the Temple to such an extent that they have forgotten why they are doing what they are doing. They are suppose to be worshipping God, but they have become so focused on the pattern of worship, on the specific steps and formulas they were suppose to follow that they have completely failed to honor God with a deep awe and respect, to live lives free from evil actions, and to take care of the vulnerable in society, that is what worship is truly suppose to be. You cannot love God and hate your neighbor, or even ignore your neighbor.
I’ve been in churches where people have fought with each other over what kinds of songs and hymns will be sung. One side wanted worship and praise music because that is what they liked best. The other side wanted hymns and songs from their own worship traditions because that is what they liked best. Neither side would acknowledge the other side’s needs as being legitimate, and therefore neither side in those churches got to experience real worship because every worship service turned into a war. They forgot to worship God and instead focused on what they thought was the right style of music needed for a proper worship service. I’m afraid that like the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time that God gave up listening to the prayers of either side in those worship wars.

It is interesting to note that Isaiah has God referring to the people as worse than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah whose cities were destroyed because of their great sinfulness. You have heard a lot of preachers talk about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah and usually with much vengeance against our Queer Community as they misinterpret and downright lie about why the ancient writers of Genesis tells us those cities were destroyed. It wasn’t because of their sexual orientation or even because of their sexual behaviors, it was because they failed to recognize God as God and failed to recognize and treat their fellow human beings as worthy of respect, love, and care. Those are the evils recorded in numerous places in the Bible, including by Jesus himself. And that’s exactly what Isaiah tells the people of Israel that they have also failed at doing.

We have celebrated this week the Federal Judge’s ruling that California Proposition 8 was unconstitutional and that Queer Persons have the right to marry just like heterosexual persons. To deny us the that right is to put us into a different and lesser class than everyone else. Our fundamentalist Christian friends may cry foul and try to get a higher court to throw out this ruling on the basis of their own morality and so-called Biblical beliefs, but the judge clearly said that their moral beliefs alone could not be the deciding issue.

Furthermore, their characterization of our sexuality as somehow being sinful and against God and humanity is twisted and though they believe their view is supported by so-called historical interpretations of the scriptures, it is abundantly clear to me and others that those interpretations are based on hate, and on a failure to apply the basic principles of love and acceptance of others valued by God throughout the entire Bible and taught to us by Jesus. When we have to put down another person in order to claim our rights over their rights I do not think that God celebrates that kind of behavior or thinking. It is only when we hold up our love for God and our love for each other as well as God’s love for all of the varieties of humanity that we can truly say that we are living in the New Community of God that Jesus ushered in with his own life and example.
Jesus comes compassionately to teach his disciples and others exactly what it means to follow him, to become new citizens in God’s New Community. We are on a journey with Jesus and his followers as he leads the way to Jerusalem through our scripture readings from the book of Luke. This journey will take us through October. Exactly what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus. Today we learn that it means that we must take care to keep our hearts focused on God and God’s way instead of upon the things the world tells us is important.

Jesus opens this week’s lesson by saying tenderly: “Do not be afraid, little flock,” and then goes straight into the words that strike more fear into Christians than anything else Jesus ever said, “Sell your possessions, and give away your money to the poor.”

Terrifying words. Horrible words to hear. I’m afraid of it because I’m scared that maybe we are supposed to take it literally, that maybe we are supposed to give away all that we own. All of it. Afraid that maybe everything I buy, every meal I eat in a restaurant, every little luxury I purchase for myself, is a sign of my lack of faith in God, of my unwillingness to give it all away and trust God to supply what I need for life.

I can wriggle out of my discomfort to some extent. Clearly it says it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, therefore we should sell and give. It doesn’t say sell and give in order that you might receive the kingdom. And while that’s literally true that doesn’t entirely make me feel any better.

I’ll have a big problem trying to explain myself out of obeying these verses, because one sixth of all the things the Bible records Jesus as having said are about our relationship to money and material possessions. He speaks more about this than he does about love, about prayer or about forgiveness. Especially in the Gospel of Luke.

Why does Jesus speak so much about money and material possessions? He gives the answer right here, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And perhaps there is nothing else that can lead us away from the things that really matter faster than money, and certainly if we added sex and power we’d probably just have all the reasons we stray away from God’s will and purpose in our lives. Mark Twain : Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute, but they all worship money.

Now we could wrestle here with how we might go about being more faithful with our money, or how to learn to live more simply and give more generously, and that would be a perfectly appropriate thing to do with this passage, but I think there is another question that underlies our fear of Jesus talking about money, and if we don’t address that question, we’ll probably be wasting our time pooling our thoughts on the money question.

You see I believe that underneath this is a question about the place that Christian faith occupies in our lives. In fact the very wording I just used is probably symptomatic of the issue. Does Christianity just occupy a portion of our lives, just a small defined place in our lives, perhaps only a couple of hours on Sunday mornings, and if so what is it doing making claims on other areas of our lives? Like our money for example. Or do we ourselves occupy a place in the New Community of God which should and will affect everything we believe, think, say and do?

You will often encounter people visiting a church like ours, or any other church for that matter, as part of their search for the right church for them. Now I have no objection to this - I think it is important to find a church that is right for you - but I think all too often we actually have a similar approach to Christian faith as a whole. We look around for a version of church that sits comfortably with us. We don’t hand ourselves over to Jesus and say, “Whatever, wherever, whenever.” We want meaning, we want purpose, we want spiritual growth, we want fullness of life, but we want it to fit in comfortably with our chosen careers and lifestyles and interests, and most importantly within our preferred time schedule. We want a Christianity that will be the icing on the cake, not something that will trash the cake and force us to rebake the cake from scratch. Or for those of you who now speak computer language, we want a Christianity that is a user-friendly, platform compatible add-on, not a Christianity that overrides our current life-operating system and installs a radically different version.

This of course is no surprise. We live in a culture that trains us early to approach everything that way. “What does this have to offer me and from which I could benefit? What is available here that would make a welcome addition to my life?” For every possible desire there is a vendor offering it to those who seek it. Do I need a break, some time out? There’s the travel agent with a rock bottom price for a week on the Islands. Do I need to unravel my complicated feelings about my relationship with my mother? There’s a psychologist offering an appointment on Tuesday. Do I need to get lost in a good story? There’s the cinema offering the latest movie at 7 pm. Do I need to appease my hunger or spirit or strengthen my sense of connection with the mysteries of life? There’s a church where I can pick up this week’s worship and sermon session at 11:00 AM.

The church becomes just one more vendor supplying another product in response to consumer demand. Our Christian faith and spirituality becomes just one more product in the market place. Pick some up whenever you feel the need. Evangelism of course becomes the advertising and marketing strategy for the product or the particular supplier, encouraging people to pick some up a bit more often.

And why should it be any different we might ask. Why should the church and Christian faith be exempted from competing in the market place like everything else? I’m actually not suggesting that it should be exempted from competing like everything else, but that we should wake up and realize what it is competing for. To revert to computer language for a moment it is not competing against the other aps and add-on modules, it is competing against the resident operating platforms. If you are buying a home computer you first have to choose whether to have a Windows platform or a Macintosh platform. Whichever way you choose, that basic decision will then limit what programs you can run with it. You can’t run Word for Windows on a Mac.

If you want to install Christianity 1.0 on the hard disk of your life, you will have to uninstall the previous operating system. You can’t run it on top of Consumer 98 or Money Sex & Power 7. Contrary to Focus on the Family you can’t even run it on top of Traditional Family Values 55. Christianity is not an add-on nor is it even a general application. It is an integrated operating system, incompatible with all other operating systems, and it dictates what else can be run with it.

Those of you who use computers a lot already know that sometimes an incompatibility doesn’t show up straight away. Sometimes it just starts corrupting things and causing seemingly random malfunctions until eventually the whole system crashes. So it is with attempting to retain incompatible applications with your new Christianity 1.0 operating system.

Career Path 2.0 might have been running smoothly with your old operating system, and at first it may seem to have no problems with Christianity 1.0. Your Growing Share Stock Portfolio Add-on and your favorite pastime Casino 1.2 might initially seem to be OK too. But after a while if you’re noticing things starting to react strangely and malfunction so that you may have to do a careful search, a prayerful search in fact, for the incompatibility problem. If nothing in your life has ever caused a significant compatibility problem with your Christianity, then can I suggest in all seriousness that you haven’t installed Christianity 1.0 at all, you’ve just got the icon sitting benignly on your desktop while you continue to run your old system.

Let me illustrate again completely differently for those of you who aren’t into computers. When I first became a Dad, my oldest daughter just turned 36 this week, I went through a lot of anxiety firstly about whether I wanted to be a dad, and then once that decision became irrelevant, about whether I could cope with being a dad. And one of the main reasons for that anxiety was that I knew that I couldn’t just treat my child as a one more addition to my life. In becoming a dad I knew that I had to be willing to reassess the appropriateness of everything else in my life, I had to let go of my life as I knew it and wait to see what things were compatible with my new life as a dad. Now there is no doubt that there are plenty of parents who treat their children as simply add-ons or aps to their lives and change little else. You’ve probably met plenty of them and heard things like, “We’ve got the house, our careers are established and progressing well, it’s time to have children.” The children are just expected to fit in around their parents’ lifestyle choices. They are just treated as items to be ticked off on a list of goals. “By the time I’m forty I want a townhouse, a beach house at Rye, a partnership in the firm, a blue chip share portfolio, a classy spouse, two children, and a BMW sports convertible.” And they set about ticking off the goals and collecting the trophies.

And I don’t know about you, but my observation is that the people who’ve managed to accumulate all those trophies don’t seem to me to be any less anxious or any more at peace in their hearts than the people who are having to decide what to go without this week - toilet paper or milk. They’re anxious about different things most of the time, but just as anxious. And every now and then something pulls the rug out and calls them to put things back in perspective. I read an interview with Ringo Starr, the drummer from the Beatles. He spoke about how when his daughter was diagnosed as having a brain tumor he suddenly realized that in the face of some things all the fame and fortune is not worth a thing.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” The good news is that new life in Jesus Christ is still a free gift. Meaning, purpose, hope, peace, fullness of life - all are a free gift from the God who loves you and longs to bless you more richly than you could ever imagine. It is a free gift to everyone who will accept it. I could hand out free copies of the newest Windows operating system but unless you installed it properly on your computer it’s a pretty useless gift. I suppose you could use the disks as beer coasters or something. I could hand out free Bibles but only those who read them and thoughtfully apply the lessons will benefit.

When we come to this table in a moment you will be offered a free gift - a piece of broken bread. Not something that is of much value outside of this worship space. But if you will allow yourself to hear the words “Take, eat, this is my body,” and recognize the presence of Jesus Christ you will be at a moment of decision. You can take and eat, accept the broken Christ who gives himself to you and say, “I am no longer my own, but yours, Christ. Help me to become what you will, rank me with whom you will; Put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you; exalted for you or brought low for you; let me be full for you or emptied out; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your holy pleasure and divine will.”

Or you can just eat the bread and walk away, perhaps enjoy the ritual we repeat each week, the sense of mystery, the links with an ancient tradition. Perhaps you will even be stirred by the prayers and the song and sense of sharing a special moment with others. Perhaps even value your friendships with those you come to the table with and appreciate the sense of belonging and community. Or you can just walk away, close the spiritual compartment of your life for another week and go on living your life unaffected by it all with the different part of your life continuing to spin in all directions perhaps even tearing you apart.

You can file a few Christian values and experiences in a little spiritual compartment of your life, or you can open up everything and receive the free gift of the New Community of God. “Do not be afraid, little flock; it is your Parent’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”

Sure living that way can be scarier, but if your life is invested in the one who breathes life into the universe, it will also be far richer, deeper, and more integrated. Wading in the shallows is not really swimming. If you can still touch the bottom safely, you’re not really living. It’s time to jump into the deep water of faith. The choice is yours. “Take, eat, this is my body.”

Take it Off. Take it All Off. Luke 12:13-21, Colossians 3:1-11

2010-08-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

Preached Sunday August 1, 2010
Luke 12:13-21

John Selby Spong writes in his monograph, This Rabbi Lord, “The key…I believe is our ability to distinguish between Jesus and the Christ. They are not the same. Jesus was a person; Christ is a title, a theological principle. Jesus was of history. Christ is beyond history. Jesus was human, finite, limited; Christ is power that is divine, infinite, unlimited. Jesus had a mother and a father, an ancestry, a human heritage. He was born. He died. Christ is a principle beyond the capacity of the mind to embrace or human origins to explain. The name of our Lord was not Jesus Christ, as so many of us suppose. He was Jesus of Nazareth about whom people made the startling and revolutionary claim: “You are the Christ!”

Spong goes one: “In Jesus of Nazareth, men and women saw the fullness of life being lived, the depth of love being shared, the courage to be being revealed. To them Jesus made known the full meaning of life, and love and being. He revealed God, and whenever God was seen in human life, that power is called Christ. “Your are the Christ, Jesus!” That was the claim. “You are the Christ, for in your life, we have seen the meaning of all life. In your love we have seen the source of all love. In your being we have seen the ground of all being.”

In a lighter vein, Rev. Bill Wall, from the United Church of Canada said in April: “What makes Christian’s distinct? One word: Jesus....But that answer is just the start of the debate. A friend told me recently, “My Jesus and my sister’s Jesus aren’t even distant cousins.”

We know that the Jesus we talk about in our church is very different from the Jesus that James Dobson and Focus on the Family talk about. Their Jesus doesn’t like you and me. I do hope that our Jesus likes them, though. I’d like to think that the Jesus you and I are in relationship with would want to be in relationship with them also.

People often come to Jesus thinking that they already know him and that they can therefore expect from Jesus just what they want out of him. It was no different in Biblical times. So today’s passage from Luke begins with a man coming to Jesus to settle a family feud. In that time it wasn’t uncommon for those in the midst of a feud to turn to a respected rabbi who would listen to both parties involved in the disagreement and then render a wise decision on how to handle the problem. Perhaps it would have been wiser of this man to have selected a different rabbi.

Jesus appeared ready to turn ordinary situations into teaching moments. He took the stuff that life is made of, human interactions, human relationships, and turned those events into lessons of great importance.

I have a feeling that the crowds gathered around Jesus would have been very earthy, very human crowds, with lots of teasing and joking going on, not at all like a worship service. Being earthy isn’t sinful. Lots of earthly things are needed and important. Jesus was a very earthy kind of man and his stories reflect his earthiness and his humanness.

Inheritance usually involved the handing down of real estate to one child in the family, usually the eldest son, so that the entire family farm would stay in the family and not be divided up into smaller lots. I heard in the news two weeks ago about tribes of people in Asia where several brothers marry one woman in order to keep the family farm intact and in the family. In Jesus’ day one might pay off your siblings financially to buy out any interest they might have in the property. But you never sold the family farm. Instead of answering the man, Jesus tells a story that goes to the real heart of the matter: greed.

He tells the story of the Rich Fool as the Parable has come to be known. At first glance the man doesn’t seem to be much of a fool. He is running a successful farming business and has ample barns to store up his produce to sell off during the year to bring in a constant stream of money. He’s not a bad guy. In fact, he has done such a good job of managing his business that with the blessing of good weather and abundant rain at just the right time he has reaped a bumper crop this year. With far too much product on hand he decides to tear down his barns which aren’t big enough to hold the harvest and build bigger, newer barns in which to store his grain.

This decision on his part would have brought to mind in Jesus’ hearer’s the story of Joseph from the Old Testament who interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream about 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine. The Pharaoh ordered storage facilities to be built and the grain to be stored during the 7 years of abundance so it would be available in the 7 years of famine to feed the people. Joseph was appointed the overseer of this project and was able to save his own family from the famine. So this seems to be a wise and prudent decision on the part of the farmer.

But did you notice that in this man’s discussion with himself he never refers to anyone else, not even to God. Jesus’ audience that day would have noticed this, and they would have noticed some things that Jesus’ story doesn’t mention, but which were part of the social and religious customs of the day.

First of all, implied within Jesus’ story is the concept that this man should have first thanked God for the blessings that have been bestowed upon him and taken an offering of the first fruits of his labor to the Temple and given it to God. But that’s not what he did.

Secondly, as we see in so many of the parables of Jesus the expected action when sudden abundance comes upon you is to gather your family and friends and hold a celebration feast so that together they could all give thanks to God for God’s blessings and share in your joy. But that’s not what he did.

Thirdly, out of his abundance he should have set aside some of it to give to the poor, the needy, the widows and the orphans as the religious law required. But that’s not what he did.

He only thinks about himself. Nowhere do we read of any actions or statements about his relationships with God and others. Instead he decides that he will eat and drink and be merry for his own good fortune. But as Jesus puts it, he doesn’t get a chance to enjoy his lonely celebration because his number comes up and his life is over. What about his great fortune now? If he had no family, as this story implies, it now belongs to the tax collectors.

In contrast to this we have the story about a revolutionary war hero General Lafayette who after the war in America went back to his home in France where he had a large estate. One year his estate has a bumper crop of grain while the country as a whole has a crop failure. His advisors tell him that because of the scarcity of grain he should raise his prices and reap a financial reward. Lafayette instead told his advisors it wasn’t the time to sell, but time to give away his bounty to others in need.

Jesus is trying to tell us that being greedy, trying to get things for ourselves and only for ourselves, is not the way that we should think and act as citizens of the New Community of God. Instead we should be building up treasures for ourselves in heaven. What does that mean?

Building up treasurers for yourselves in heaven doesn’t mean that some day when you do get to heaven there’s going to be a big house full of lots of goodies waiting for you, all of the things that you didn’t get in this life. As the old spiritual song says when you get to heaven you won’t get beautiful clothing to wear, wings on your back, shoes on your feet, rings on your finger, nor will you get a crown encrusted with jewels to put on your head. My relatives used to say when they did an especially nice thing for someone else, “I guess I just got a diamond in my crown.” That’s pretty simplistic, child-like, literal thinking. It’s time we grew up and really paid attention to what Jesus is trying to teach us.

Jesus is telling us in so many different ways and demonstrating by his actions what he means: caring for the weak, the poor, the ill, the widows, the orphans, the rejected and ejected, the down and out, and even for the up and out like the farmer in the story. We need to pay attention to the relationships we have with other persons and make sure that we are honoring those relationships in healthy, life-giving ways. That’s what the apostle Paul is talking about in the Colossians passage this morning.

Max Lucado tells the story of Bob, who was born into the land of coats! His mother loved the color blue and made Bob's first cost a lovely shade of blue. Every time she noticed her son in his lovely blue coat, she cheered, "Yes, Bob!" He felt good in his blue coat, but Bob had to grow up and go to work. So he put on his best blue coat and slipped out of the house, going to his new job.

The people on the street saw him and began to yell, "Yuk, Yuk!" Their coats were yellow and they hated blue. Into a store ducked Bob and bought a yellow coat, put it over his blue coat and continued on his way to work. The people cheered, "Yea! Bob!" Bob felt good in his yellow coat over his blue coat.

He stepped into his boss’ office to get his assignment for that first day, who came in, looked at him and yelled, "Yuk!" So Bob jumped up, took off the yellow coat and stood waiting for approval in his blue coat. The boss yelled, "Double Yuk! Bob. Here at work we wear green coats!" With that, Bob slipped back on the yellow coat, over the blue coat and put the green coat on top. "Yea! Bob!" said the boss. As he left for work, Bob felt good.

After work, Bob slipped off the green coat, put it under the yellow coat and walked proudly home. He opened the door, went inside, as his mother looked at him with a "Yuk" on her lips. Bob quickly changed coats, putting the lovely blue one on top. Mom whispered, "Yea! Bob!"

Bob got so good at changing coats until he became a popular man around town. He changed coats so swiftly until he had folks fooled into believing that whatever coat they had on, he had it on too. Bob loved hearing the crowd say, "Yea! Bob!" He couldn't stand hearing "Yuk" Bob was elected mayor of the Town of Coats and had a faithful constituency.

One day he heard a noise outside of his window and then heard a pounding on his door. The Yellow Coats brought in a man wearing no coat. "Kill him!" they cried, "he doesn't fit in!" In his yellow coat, Bob said, "Leave him to me."

"Man, where is your coat?" he asked. The man said, "I wear no coat." Bob replied, "everybody wears a coat. What color do you choose?" The man responded the second time, "I wear no coat."

By then the Green Coats had gathered under Bob's window. Running to the window, his green coat on top, Bob yelled down to them, "I have it under control." The Green Coats shouted, "Kill him!"

At this time his mother entered into the room, and Bob slipped his blue coat on top. "Bob, where is his blue coat?" Mother asked, The Man replied, "I don't wear a coat." "Kill him," said Mother as she left Bob and the man alone.

"Man”, said Bob, “you have to wear a coat or they are going to kill you." "Bob," said the man, "you need to decide to stop wearing your different coats. Take them off, take them all off and let the world see who you truly are." "Take them off? Take them all off?" asked an incredulous Bob. The man said again, "Bob, you have to make a choice."

As the crowd kept crying, "Kill him!" Bob washed his hands, opened the door and marched the man toward sure death. The man looked at Bob, with one final word, "Choose." Bob was left alone with his three coats and the questions ringing in his mind, "Take them off? Take them all off?"

We’ve got to stop worrying about what coat we should put on and instead worry about what kind of relationships we are building with God and with others in our lives.

Paul writes to the people of Colossia from the letter to the Colossians. Apparently, they are wrestling with theological questions and philosophical debates around the centrality of Jesus. Was this Jesus just a wonderful human teacher, or was he truly the Divine Son of God or some combination of the two? That is still a question we ask ourselves today. False teachings, trying to combine human intellect, Greek wisdom, and strains of Judaism with Christian truth, have all embroiled the Christian Church in arguments over this issue for two thousand years.

So, Paul writes to deal with the divinity, death and resurrection of Jesus, and explains how the world's teachings are empty when compared with God's plan for us in Jesus Christ. Then, he moves into describing how Christians ought to think and behave because of our relationship with God.
Let me reread a portion of the scripture from Collosians to you from Petersons translation The Message:

You are done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom made by the Creator. It has the ultimate Designer label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, inside and outsider, civilized and uncouth, slave and free mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ. Everyone is included in Christ. So, dressed by God for this new life of love, put on the wardrobe God picked out for you."

Paul is telling us to "Take off all the old and put on the new." It's about taking off the politically correct, the socially right, and morally expedient coats we have been wearing and standing naked before Christ in order to be fitted with the appropriate Christian garb. It's time to stand up for Jesus Christ.

This passage says that deceiving ourselves and trying to fool others is not sufficient for life in the New Community of God. This passage comes and declares that there are some things we can no longer do and call ourselves Christ-like. We have to take off that quick anger and that filthy temper. We have to take off that meanness which allows us to do three snaps when someone insults us, or a flip of the third finger, when someone cuts us off on the highway. We have to take off that dirty language that just slips out. We have to take off telling those nasty jokes which make fun of God's people who don't look or act like us. We have to take off lying, which we claim like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar, "everybody does it." All of those things belong to the outdated, outmoded wardrobe of our lives Before Christ!

When Christ comes into our lives there is a difference. When Christ comes into our lives there is a newness. When Christ comes into our lives we will change. We can stand naked before the One who knows us intimately and who loves us just the same.

Tell me, what color coat are you wearing right now? Most of us, like Bob, keep changing coats, which are dependent upon where we happen to be and who we happen to be with because we can't stand to hear other people say, "Yuk!"

Jesus speaks one word for all of us today--choose! Choose by making the decision for Christ today. No more coat changing for me. I choose to stand naked before Christ and to allow him to dress me with his own Ultimate Designer Label clothing. All that I have comes from God. God loves me just as I am! God sent Jesus into my life so that I might rise up above all the turmoil and strife and live the resurrected life in Christ. I don’t have to wait until some day in the distant future to enjoy heaven, for the real heaven, the New Community of God exists already in the here and now. You and I are living in that New Community right now.

The call is clear. No more blue politically correct coats. "Yuk!" No more yellow socially acceptable coats. "Yuk!" No more green morally expedient coats. "Double yuk!"

When we give our lives to Jesus, we can stand naked and ready to be used by God, knowing that we are loved and accepted exactly as we are. We recognize that Jesus, our Savior, came and stood naked before all the world. He lived a transparent life and allowed the disciples to see him at his best and even at his worst. He was completely human. He allowed himself to be vulnerable and let the world watch him die a victim's death.

But God said, that’s not the end of this story and clothed in majesty and victory, Christ rose with a new wardrobe in his hands for you and me. He rose to dress us with right living, with compassion for others, and with the power to live in victory over anything that keeps us away from God.

I have decided to let Jesus come into my life and redesign it for me. I'm taking it off. I'm taking it all off. I want to be dressed by the One who is the Ultimate Designer for me. Today, dear friends, I also invite you to choose Jesus as your own Ultimate Designer!

Choosing the Best Dish, Luke 10:38-42, Proper 11C

2010-08-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

Preached Sunday, July 18, 2010
Luke 10: 38-42

........On their way to Jerusalem, Jesus and his followers passed through a certain village and accepted the invitation of a woman named Martha to share a meal in her home. Martha had a sister named Mary, who sat on the floor the moment Jesus arrived and hung on every word he said. Martha, on the other hand, was trying to prepare an elaborate meal for her guests and was getting more and more disturbed about it. She came in and said to Jesus, “Lord, doesn’t it bother you that my sister has left all the work to me? Tell her to get up off her butt and give me a hand.”
........But Jesus answered, “Martha, my dear Martha, you are preparing so many elaborate dishes when only one dish of food is really needed for our nourishment. Mary has chosen the right ‘dish’ and it is not going to be taken away from her.”

When I was growing up I often spent summer vacations on my grandparents’ farm in western Tennessee. It was a fabulous change of pace for me from life in metropolitan Chicago. It was sort of like leaving civilization and returning to the days of the pioneers because my grandparents still did much of the work of the farm the same way it had been done for hundreds of years before the advent of mechanical farming. That also meant that there were many social expectations that were 'taught' to me. One of those was: The men always eat first.

When it was time to eat the men would rush in from the fields where they had been working and crowd around the table while the women, even those who had worked in the same fields as the men, would serve them, get their drinks and deserts, and clean up after them. Even the little boys got to eat before the little girls. It was only when the men had finished eating the women sit down to eat themselves, sometimes not even getting the same food if the men had consumed all of what had been prepared. It was just the way things were done and for many years nobody seemed to question why there might be any reason to change it.

On quiet evenings when few others were around I did question my grandmother as to why she would still let the men eat first and the women second. I could understand the big middle of the day meals when lots of people were working together to plant or harvest the fields, but not the evenings at home with just family. She said that was the way it had always been done.

Now, you need to know that I was just as bossy as a child as I am as an adult. So I started telling my grandmother to sit down and eat while I waited on her. Not too long after that other family members began giving her the same honor...even at the mid-day meals on work days. She had earned a place of honor at the table with the men. I’m glad to report to you that after not too many years a new tradition was established in my family. Those who were the oldest men and women in the family were honored by being fed first at family gatherings, even on work days.

One of the problems we have in interpreting and understanding gospel stories like the one today is that we tend to read them alone, ripped away from their context, from the surrounding stories the author of the gospel has deliberately placed together for a purpose. This story is one of several where Jesus teaches his disciples about hospitality, about welcoming others into the New Community of God. Today’s gospel story speaks about the kinds of social expectations that Jesus’ own society had about men and women, about hospitality, and about eating together and enjoying each other’s company, especially enjoying time with a friend named Jesus.

We know from other gospel stories that Mary and Martha are sisters who live with their brother Lazarus in Bethany, just outside of the city walls of Jerusalem in the town of Bethany. Luke gives us none of those details in this story. Seemingly this story is way out of place geographically as Jesus and the disciples have just left Samaria and are not yet close to Jerusalem. Do remember, however, that the gospel writers weren’t necessarily reporting to us a day by day description of Jesus’ movements, nor where they especially knowledgeable or accurate about the geography of the Holy Land in their story telling. They were collecting stories about Jesus’ ministry and teaching and then putting those stories together based on themes within their gospels for particular purposes related to why they wrote the gospels and for the specific communities they were writing for, communities who also had special needs the authors wanted to address. So, it really doesn’t matter that we know that Jesus couldn’t be anywhere near Bethany since this is the beginning of his journey toward Jerusalem. What is important is the purpose that Luke has in telling us this story at this particular point in his gospel.

Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus are a Queer family indeed. An unmarried man, or at least his wife is never referred to, and his two unwed sisters who certainly appear to be of marriageable ages present us with a very unconventional family for this time. Some have identified Lazarus as the Beloved Disciple that the author of the gospel of John refers to several times. Given the fact that Jesus apparently likes to hang out with these three siblings whenever he’s in the vicinity of Jerusalem, makes them look even queerer.

Some have gone so far as to suggest that Mary or her sister Martha might have been married to Jesus and this would account for his frequent visits to their home. Such thoughts bother some people, but not me. The thought that Jesus was a complete human being with love interests and perhaps a wife or a lover just doesn’t faze me like it might have many years ago when I was a young teenager still stuck in a fundamentalist religious community.

Jesus was well known as a man who enjoyed good food and good drink and the company of those that the social elite of his day would have been horrified to welcome into their homes. Jesus apparently knew how to have a good time or at least that’s what his adversaries kept accusing him of doing. Perhaps they were jealous of his popularity and had to come up with some reason why they shouldn’t be a part of the celebrations Jesus seemed to usher into existence just by his presence.

Normally in the gospels we would be told that Jesus had come into the home of a leading male citizen of the community for a dinner. However, on this day, Luke tells us that Jesus has come to the home of Martha. Identifying Martha as the main host for this occasion is very queer indeed and we probably need to ask ourselves why Luke does this.

Some of our sister theologians believe that this story is preserved by Luke, for it isn’t told by any of the other gospel writers, because it is a story that women who were followers of Jesus handed down to each other. Why might that be so?

This week the Catholic Church announced revisions in its laws pertaining to sexual abuse of minors by priests listing it as a moral crime and at the same time listed the ordination of women of women as one of the most serious crimes of sacrament against Church law. That they would list both in the same document, almost equating them as equally bad, has caused quite a stir among Catholics and others worldwide for it seemed to put the two crimes on equal footing. The Catholic Church has been quick to say that isn’t what it meant, but that the ordination of women is still a crime because Jesus didn’t have any female disciples. While it is true that we don’t have any women listed in any of the gospels or the book of Acts as being ‘official’ disciples of Jesus, we do know that Jesus was accompanied by a rather large group of women when he was traveling with his male disciples, and when the men are mentioned it is not unusual for the gospel writer to also list women who were present. From recent scriptures we have focused on we know that these women gave financial support to Jesus’ ministry out of their own wealth.

Given the social expectations of that historical time, it shouldn’t be surprising that even if there had been any official lady disciples that their names aren’t recorded in those listings, especially given the fact that all of the gospel writers we know about were apparently male. But, isn’t it interesting that we have this particular story about Mary and Martha as well as several other stories about women in the life of Jesus? Remember that all of the gospel stories were passed down from one generation to the next, from person to person, until they were finally written down as collections of the teachings of Jesus in what we now call the four gospels. Perhaps this is a story about two of the female disciples of Jesus.

We read that Jesus sent the 12 disciples ahead of him to make preparations for his journey through Samaria, a region known for its hate of Jews, and for being hated in return by Jews. Then we learned that Jesus sent out 70 of his followers with instructions to take a blessing of peace to Samaria and accept the peaceful hospitality of the Samaritans when it is given back to them. If that wasn’t lesson enough for everyone about the kind of hospitality that Jesus wanted his disciples to practice, Luke then has Jesus tell a story about a hated Samaritan who acts more like a neighbor to a man who has been beaten and robbed than a priest or a Levite, two of the most righteous men in all of the country.

This week's gospel story has Jesus and his followers descending upon the home of Mary and Martha who welcome him and the men with great hospitality. One commentary I read took the numbers of followers literally and said that Martha has opened her home up to over 83 men and the women traveling with them. If you showed up at my house with more than 80 of your friends and expected Mark and I to feed you and put you up for the night, I think I might freak out too. The probability is that Jesus a few friends came by that day, far less than 80.

Martha does the socially expected thing of a woman in her society as the oldest woman of the household and arranges a meal for Jesus and his followers, however many there might have been with him. Apparently Martha is an ancient version of Martha Steward and soon is organizing a meal, and the household to take care of her guests. She just forgets one thing, to be present with her guests, to enjoy their company, especially that of Jesus.

She is apparently a very competent woman and greatly respected for her abilities in giving hospitality as it would have been expected of her under the circumstances. However while she is dashing around the house, Martha apparently notices that something isn’t quite right with the situation because her younger sister, Mary, isn’t helping her. Instead Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus with the men listening to him teach. That was not an action women normally took in that society. Women were not taught to read, write, nor invited to take part in scholarly discussions, at least not in public where they would be seen.

I for one think that this is one of the reasons this story probably proved so durable and was most likely told by women to women to support their being seen as full and complete disciples of Jesus, equal to any man. If Jesus had a reason to reject women from being a disciple or taking part in his teaching, he could have done it right at this point and believe me, if he had, the men who preserved these stories for us to read would have reported it just that way. But Jesus didn’t reject Mary or Martha. In fact, Jesus apparently was delighted that Mary was learning at his feet just like one of the men and he wasn’t going to take that away from her.

Now before we go further into the story about Mary and Martha, let me take just a moment and tell you about Claude…not his real name, but this is about a real person. Claude came into my church as a man of many talents. He was a very creative person who could organize large dinner parties for the church for special occasions complete with elaborate color coordination of flowers, table arrangements, table cloths, wall decorations, and even lighting.

To attend a feast that had been planned and executed by Claude was to partake of a fabulous celebration of color and sights and taste. He did such a great job that we asked him to be the church host and coordinate all the dinners and special events for the church.

Now when Claude was just volunteering his time and talents he was content and happy and everyone appreciated his work and applauded him and patted him on the back and told him how wonderful he was and Claude loved it. But when Claude took on the responsibility of coordinating the monthly potlucks and other events involving food Claude became a very different person. Claude began complaining that no one helped him, or at least not enough people helped him and those that did help didn’t help in the right way. Claude would overspend his budget and then complain when the church couldn’t reimburse him for expenses he hadn’t asked for approval before he bought his supplies.

One day when he had worked very hard, ignoring the help that others offered him because they just didn’t do things the right way, or at least not the way Claude would have done it, he overheard someone say that the mashed potatoes weren’t warm enough and he burst into angry tears and abruptly left the church without even saying goodbye. The rest of us had been having a great time enjoying the food and the fellowship and it took several hours to piece together the reason for Claude’s sudden disappearance.

Instead of enjoying the fellowship and the food that had been brought in by everyone, Claude had focused instead on some of the minor issues of the day, like how hot the potatoes were after they’d been sitting on the table for several minutes, not something that was that important, in fact, the person who complained took his plate and put in the microwave until his potatoes were warm enough for him to eat them. Claude would have probably been offended at that if he’d stayed around long enough to be offended by it.

After one more such event at a later potluck dinner, we decided that coordinating the dinners for the church wasn’t something that Claude could do with any reasonable pleasure and joy because his attitude was all wrong. So we went for months with no one in the position and guess what? I hate to say it, but even without the marvelous decorations and flower arrangements, we all enjoyed the dinners a whole lot more than we had when Claude took over and demonstrated his displeasure with all of the rest of us.

I suspect that Martha was a lot like Claude. Martha becomes perplexed that she has to direct all of the work herself...a considerable amount given the number of men who were possibly present and who were probably not helping with the meal. The Greek language used indicates that she is preparing a very elaborate meal probably consisting of many dishes, the ancient equivalent of a six or seven course dinner. Ostensibly she is doing this to honor Jesus as a guest in her home.

Before the dinner is served, however, Mary goes to Jesus to complain that Mary isn't helping her do the work. This in itself is not a hospitable thing for Martha to do; it is a huge break in etiquette. One does not burden one’s honored guest with family disputes, nor does one usurp the authority of the guest to get your own way. Martha apparently thinks that she knows Jesus well enough that she can expect him to agree with her complaint and that Jesus will therefore order Mary to get up and go and help Martha finish the meal preparations. There is so much wrong with what Martha does. But Martha is in for a surprise.

Let me pause for a moment and explain that many have misused this scripture to say that Jesus prefers those who lead contemplative lives of quiet reflection and study over those who lead lives of active service to others in the name of Jesus. People have created hierarchies in which Mary is the one to be honored for her devotion to Jesus and Martha is to be put down for her service oriented ways. But that isn’t what this story is about and never was. The church needs both those who are contemplative and those who give themselves in Christian service to others. Try to do church without either one and you don’t have much of a church. As I’ve said many times before to you, the problem is with Martha’s attitude, not with what she is doing. Attitude is everything!

Jesus answers: "Martha, my dear, Martha. You are worried about preparing an elaborate meal for me, when only one dish of food is necessary to satisfy our hunger. Mary has chosen the better 'dish' and I will not take it away from her." Jesus was not scolding Martha. He was using extreme terms of endearment in talking to her. I imagine him addressing her like I do one of my beloved grandchildren, with tenderness and total acceptance and absolute love. I believe Jesus was inviting Martha to sit down and enjoy some time with him, too, by listening to him and talking with him.

Given her bad attitude she apparently needed a big lesson on loving others with the right attitude. Spending time with Jesus was more important than fulfilling anyone’s social expectations of what a woman should do or even what a host should do. The most important guest in all of history was present in her home and she needed to stop and smell the flowers instead of worrying about which flowers to put in which vases to convey the best message of hospitality. In worrying about hospitality, Martha forgot to give hospitality to everyone, including to her sister Mary, or even to Jesus.

Being present with Jesus was the most important 'dish' of choice on the menu for the evening. Jesus doesn't restrict anyone from following him. God welcomes both women and men fully into a mutually meaningful relationship. Normal social expectations about gender roles are blown wide open in the New Community of God. Women can sit at the feet of Jesus and learn to be his followers, the same as men. Women can be pastors and priests and music directors and theologians and seminary professors, as well as deacons or lay leaders in the church. For that matter, men can be great cooks and hosts, or teach children, too, and do so in response to Jesus' call to his follower. When society tells us we have to live up to its social expectations about our gender, remember, those things aren't important neither to Jesus nor in God's New Community. Are you being too busy to spend time with Jesus this week?

When you can’t practice Christian hospitality, or when you don’t feel like giving Christian hospitality to another person, then you need to remove yourself from the situation and let someone else help that person. You may even need to call upon others to do for that person what you cannot do for him or her yourself. When your attitude about serving Christ and serving others in Christ’s name is not what it should be, then you need to stop and get your attitude readjusted. Doing the right thing may not be the right thing to do if your attitude is all wrong.

We treat life and others the wrong way. We usually want to know what we are going to get out of anything we might attend or anyone we might be with. Perhaps we need to start by asking ourselves what is it that we can give to others, what is it that others need from us? When we begin with the focus on ourselves, we fail to see the other people that God wants us to see, really see, and really care about.
As churches grow the members usually become more and more concerned about what the church is going to do for them, how is the church going to help them in life instead of how is the church going to care for its surrounding community and reach out to those who do not know what it might mean for them to be a part of the New Community of God. When we take our eyes and our hearts focus off of the surrounding community and we begin to focus only on our own needs and wants we might as well put up a sign at the door that says: No one else needed. No one else wanted. We’re too busy taking care of ourselves.

Martha was so busy taking care of those things that Martha thought was important that Martha forgot about being a friend to Jesus, about being a caring sister to Mary, and even about proper decorum be trying to involve Jesus in a family dispute to get her own way. As we continue to grow as a church there will be many choices before us, a whole smorgasbord of options, but it is my fervent hope that you and I will choose the best dish, that we will keep our eyes and our hearts focused on the best dish: being friends of Jesus, friends to each other, and friends to the world around us. Yes, we might need to take care of ourselves at times, but in taking care of ourselves, let us not lose our focus on the people around us, for that is who God sees and that is who God wants us to see. When Jesus saw someone in need, Jesus stopped what he was doing and cared for them. Jesus became their friend. He did that for Martha. It’s that simple: See a need and help. Be a friend to everyone…but with the right attitude.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? Luke 10:25-37 Proper 10C

2010-07-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

As we shared with you last week that we are beginning a journey with Jesus who has now determined to go to Jerusalem to confront the religious, political, and economic oligarchs of his day with his message of peace, hope, mercy, generosity, and love. Jesus is going to Jerusalem to face his destiny, whatever that might be and on the way he uses the journey to teach his followers what it means to be his disciple.

The journey began with Jesus going through Samaria, a region inhabited by half-breed Jews who worship on Mountain in Samaria instead of Jerusalem where they once had a temple of their own until the Jews destroyed it, and who hold holy the same books of Moses as their neighbors the Jews, but who interpret them differently. Over centuries of hateful and violent actions the Samaritans don’t trust the Jews and the Jews don’t trust the Samaritans. Jews passing through Samaria are seen as troublemakers who are up to no good. Jews think of the Samaritans as unholy abominations and they refuse any real community with them.

Last week we read that Jesus sent the 12 ahead of him to prepare the way for his journey through Samaria and that when John and James are met with opposition they want to demand that God rain fire upon the troublesome village that rejected them, but Jesus tells them that hatred for hatred and violence for violence is not his way.

We are not reading it this year, but in the next passage from Luke, Jesus next sends out 70 of his followers to the surrounding Samaritan villages and cities and tells them that their mission is one of peace. They are to offer the blessing of peace to all of the villages and accept the peaceful responses they hopefully will receive. If they are met with opposition they are to leave that village and go on without confrontation or negative actions or words. If they are received peacefully then they are not to take advantage of their hosts but accept whatever gifts of hospitality and food are extended to them. When the 70 return to Jesus they celebrate the great peaceful reception that they have been given and they praise God. There is no question about it, Jesus’ way of peace works.

Then we come to today’s reading in which a scribe, that is a lawyer, an expert of the Jewish scriptures and an interpreter of the law asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. We are not given the location of this story, but we can assume that Jesus has now entered Jewish territory and he may be at someone’s home or even in a synagogue. Karl Allen Kuhn says that the lawyer is engaging Jesus in a common form of public debate known as the ‘challenge-response’ the intent of which I suspect was to show Jesus to be just an unlearned country bumpkin whose knowledge of the scriptures was inadequate and thus he may have hoped to embarrass Jesus in front of those gathered together. From the subtext of the words used we can probably assume that the lawyer already thinks he knows the correct answer to his questions. It was not a test to see if Jesus knew the right answer, but to see if Jesus could match the skills of the lawyer who was trained and proficient in this debating style.

Jesus doesn’t answer the lawyer but instead asks the lawyer what the scripture says. The lawyer answers Jesus’ question and appears to have the upper hand since Jesus chose not to quote the law himself. His answer repeats the Levitical Code found in Deut. 6:4-5 spelled out that our supreme commandments are to Love of God and to love of our neighbor as ourselves. Whereupon Jesus, adding nothing to the debate, simply affirms the man’s response and tells him to “do this and you will live.”

But lawyer is not satisfied so he presses Jesus with another question: “And, pray tell me, just who is my neighbor?” You see the Law also addressed who a neighbor is and how a neighbor should be treated. But this man wants to know what the limits are to who a neighbor might be that is consistent to the teaching of the law.

Simply asking such a question is setting up the answer to be one that will be full of boundaries and limitations. Within the Levitical code reasons are given which allow one to ignore and even demean others who are unclean according to the law because of something they have done or simply because of whom they are. Sick or injured people are unclean and they can safely be ignored because the literal interpretation of scriptures seems to assume that they must have deliberately done something wrong which has resulted in their punishment, or, their parents have done something wrong and they are being punished for their parent’s sins.

Simply put, some folk are your neighbors and some folk are not your neighbors. If loving God and loving my neighbor are evidence of my being in a good relationship with God and thus promised eternal life, then I must make sure that I take care of those who the Scriptures define as a neighbor, therefore I must know who my neighbor is and surely I also need to know who isn’t my neighbor. In other words, who do I need to love and who can I reasonably ignore without losing eternal life; that is losing my relationship with God? There must be limits to who I must love. Surely God doesn’t expect me to love everyone in the entire world? The Law clearly lays out who is clean and who is unclean. I know I must love those who are clean, but surely I don’t have to love the unclean in the world, do I? These are the hidden questions within the question the lawyer is asking.

But Jesus doesn’t engage the lawyer in debating the finer points of the law contained in the scriptures, instead, as was often his way, he simply tells a story and leaves us to figure out the answer for ourselves.

Jesus begins the story by telling about a man, we can reasonably assume he is Jewish so that his audience can identify with the man, who is on a journey to Jerusalem and he must go down through Samaria. Going through Samaria is bad enough all on its own with the animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews that have raged for centuries about the proper place to worship God and the correct scriptures to use and how to interpret those scriptures. We often argue the most with those who share our fundamental faith, but who differ from us in minor ways. The audacity of anyone who agrees with us only partially but not totally galls us to the point that we consider them to be our very worst enemies. We tend to think that our fundamentalist Christian friends are hypocrites who can’t see how hateful they are being toward us while at the same time they are preaching love and acceptance of others on behalf of Christ; and at the same time they think that we are horrible sinners because we don’t agree with their interpretations of the very same scriptures we both use. Guess you could say that things haven’t changed much over thousands of years.

But the trip through Samaria is much worse because of the geographical situation. The road rises some 3,000 feet over 20 miles making it extremely steep and very physically challenging. The road went through a rocky landscape filled with many caves where bandits could wait and pounce upon unsuspecting travelers. It rightly earned it’s name in ancient times as the “Bloody Pass.” No one in his or her right mind would travel this road alone, but that is the story Jesus tells us.

The man is attacked and stripped and beaten and left half dead lying in the road. Understand that because his clothing has been taken away from him there are no longer any identifying marks to tell you who he is or where he might be from. To anyone looking he’s just a bloody body lying in the ditch.

Along the road comes one who is thought of as one of the most righteous persons in all of Israel, a priest on his way to Jerusalem to take part in his assigned duties at the Temple which are rotated among the Priests. The Law tells us that to touch a dead body that doesn’t belong to a relative would make you ceremonially unclean and therefore the Priest would not be able to perform his expected functions in the Temple until he had gone through an elaborate process of becoming clean again, and he would therefore miss his assigned duties in the Temple and have to possibly wait another year for the privilege of serving again. Actually, just touching blood would have made him unclean even if the man were still alive. But, hey, why take the chance of missing my assigned duties in the Temple. This is my time to shine in front of family and friends and all of Israel! But then, if the man has been attacked by robbers, maybe they are still nearby and will attack me, too, if I stop and help him, so the Priest passes by without helping the man.

The next person to come along the road is also from a group renowned throughout Israel as righteous, one who follows the Law of God to the letter, a Levite, also an officer of the Temple. The Levites served the priests, led the singing of the psalms and did all of the construction work within the Temple, while performing many other tasks. They, too, had rotations of service in the Temple and this man was also most likely on his way to the Temple to serve in his assigned tasks. Jesus’ listeners would have known these things, so Jesus didn’t have to delineate their responsibilities as I am doing for you. Rather than risking becoming unclean by the blood or a dead body, or attacked by the robbers, the Levite also passes by the injured man without offering help.

Both the priest and the Levite seem to be asking the question of themselves: What will happen to me if I stop to help this man? How often do we walk by persons in obvious need and indifferently go on our way without even thinking about how we could help them? Take a walk through the University District, Capitol Hill, or downtown, early in the morning and you can see many who have spent the night sleeping on the street. But do you really see them and if you could would you ever help them? Or do you avoid looking them in the eye for fear they will talk to you or ask you for something as you scurry on your way to your place of service and duty?

Just as we have our expected characters in certain story situations like the Joke I told earlier, so, too did the stories told by people at this time. Everyone is expecting Jesus to fill the formula for the story by telling them that the next person to pass by is a simple Israelite, a humble person like themselves who ends up doing the right thing that the Priest and Levite wouldn’t do.

But not so in Jesus’ story. Instead of a humble Israelite, Jesus says that the next person to come along the road is a hated and despised Samaritan. After centuries of retelling this story in more modern contexts you and I think of the man as the Good Samaritan, the one who does the right thing, but that is not how those who heard the story from Jesus would have thought of the man.

In the original setting, when this story was first told by Jesus, to a Jewish scribe and Jewish listeners, a Samaritan would have been the exact opposite of a hero, he would have been the infamous "bad boy". That is an important emotion-laden element for us to remember as we proceed through this parable. The hero is a bad guy. In the lore of our own Western cowboy tales, the Samaritan was the one wearing a black hat. Ethnically and culturally speaking the Samaritan is the very last person Jesus’ audience would have expected Jesus to hail as an commendable neighbor.

This would have been not only extremely shocking but also greatly offensive to everyone hearing the story that day. How dare Jesus tell the story this way! How could he take a hated person like a Samaritan and make him out to be the hero in the story? Impossible! Ridiculous! Absurd!

But that’s exactly what Jesus does and he portrays the hated and assumed hate-filled Samaritan as taking extensive care and giving immense mercy and all-embracing kindness to the poor traveler even going out of his way by promising to pay extra for his care when he returns from his travels to check on him. It is the Samaritan who asks a different question of himself: What will become of the man left for dead if I walk on by and don’t stop to help him?

The Samaritan didn’t worry about the robbers coming back when he stopped to help the man. He gave up worry about his own safety and about completing his own responsibilities elsewhere. He had mercy and compassion upon the man and he did more than could have ever been expected of him in such a situation. He not only helped the man by cleaning him up and helping him to get to a helpful, hopeful place, he goes beyond the expectations and gives out of his own wealth and promises to give even more if needed.

Remember, throughout this journey with Jesus to Jerusalem we will be taking over the next few months, I will be reminding you that the New Community of God that Jesus keeps talking about is not something that will come upon us some day in the far distant future, but it is a reality that already exists in the here and now. The Samaritan knows this truth already in his life and lives it out by what he chooses to do for the man he discovers lying in the road. Instead of passing by, the Samaritan brings the man into his own neighborhood, into the New Community of God. The Samaritan does what a good neighbor should do for others: he cared and he took action that reflected his caring.

The priest and the Levite felt that to touch the hurt and bleeding man would somehow make them unclean and therefore unholy. The priest would not have been able to go into the Holy of Holies. The Samaritan’s actions tell us that touching those who are wounded by the world is an act of holiness. To touch the brokenness of another person is to enter the Holy of Holies.

As members of the Queer community we cannot let the issues of HIV & AIDS fall off the scale of importance in our communities just because there is an economic problem. Reducing the funding for HIV & AIDS, especially for insurance and medication, is to cause untold agony for thousands upon thousands whose lives might have been saved and extended. The same is true for the health issues of women and children as well as men. Cut other programs, but do not cut programs that give and sustain holy lives.

Let’s make it personal: Jesus' reply not only challenges the premise (of who is my neighbor) but brings a shocking surprise: each of us is to be a neighbor whenever we are needed and (we must) realize that neighbors can come from surprising places.

When Jesus finishes the story he asks the lawyer, “Who was a neighbor to the man?” Finding it impossible to say “the Samaritan” the lawyer simply answers “the one who showed him mercy,” that is the one who put his compassion into action.”

His reply is correct, and Jesus simply says, "Go and do likewise." Put your compassion into action! Jesus' point is: Simply be a neighbor. Do not rule out anyone as your neighbor. Jesus makes the point by emphatically providing a model from a group of people that the lawyer would have excluded from his own description of neighborhood. Samaritans were unclean according to the lawyers interpretation of scriptures.

Jesus’ parable has turned the whole question around. The lawyer asks who is his neighbor, in the hope that there will be some appropriate restrictions on whom he should include in his neighborhood. Jesus, however, replies that in order to determine who your neighbor is; you must become a neighbor to everyone, even to those who you would rather not include in your neighborhood.

To love God means to show mercy to those in need, to put your compassion into action. An authentic follower of Christ is one who loves God and who cares for others. This is a central tenet of discipleship. Men and women fulfill their created role--to love God supremely means being a neighbor to others by meeting their needs.

Neighbors are not determined by race, ethnicity, religious creed, political persuasion, economic or social position, sexual orientation, or gender identity; neighbors consist of anyone made in the image of God who has a need. The world cries out to us: Would you be my neighbor! And we answer them by our words and by our actions on their behalf. Will you be a neighbor today? Will you become holy by touching someone’s brokenness?

Counting the Costs of Following Jesus, Proper 8C

2010-07-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

Scripture: Luke 9:51-62

When we begin to talk about discipleship, about following the way of Jesus Christ, we tend to fall back upon what we have learned in our religious training as youngsters and youth. That may be good, or that may be bad. We have this system of belief that tells us what a disciple of Christ is and what a disciple is suppose to be and do. The problem is that what we have been told and what we have come to believe might not be very consistent with what Christ was trying to explain to us through his teaching and his example about what a follower of Christ really is.

We tend to believe what we have been told by others even when the evidence of the scripture is otherwise. Perhaps we should begin our discussion today of what it means to be a follower of Jesus by looking at what Jesus said to his followers.

One of the mistakes we make in looking at Jesus and his followers is trying to separate historically false teachings and misunderstandings from what Christ appears to have actually said that is recorded in the four Gospels. Again, we think we know what it says, but when we in fact go back and read the text as it has been handed down to us, we may often find that there are differences between the words reported and the understandings we have developed.

In today’s passage Jesus has determined that he will go to Jerusalem and confront the political and religious and social injustices of his day. From now through October we focus our attention on a very unique collection of stories about the life of Jesus which include some of the most familiar parables and teachings he gives to his disciples as recorded by Luke. All of these teachings and stories focus on what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In this section of Luke, Jesus is preparing his followers for what they will face and what they will have to do after he is no longer with them. He is teaching them what it means to be his follower, his disciple, and he is also teaching them that there are attitudes and actions that they cannot take when they represent him to the world. As we move through these stories and parables you and I ourselves will be on a journey with Jesus to Jerusalem.

Jesus will leave Galilee and the surrounding territory which have up to now been the primary focus of his ministry and go to Judea and the capital city of Jerusalem. It is in Jerusalem that he will confront the political, social, and religious authorities of his day and attempt to further his revolutionary teachings. We understand this kind of thinking. The only way to truly change our society is through the political process. When elected officials agree upon something, things change, things get done. Jesus wants to take his movement to the next level and that means going to Jerusalem.

There is only one problem. To get to Jerusalem you have to go through Samaria. Samaria is part of the region that originally belonged to what Bible historians call the Northern Kingdom. This area was overwhelmed by the Assyrians and the people were forced to intermarry with their conquerors. Their offspring are half-breeds and therefore considered to be aliens, outsiders, not part of the promise God has given to Israel. The Samaritans do honor the Law, the five books of Moses called the Pentateuch. They believe that Moses was given the law and they had their own temple on a mountain in Samaria until the Jews destroyed it as a sacrilege against the God that they worshipped. God couldn’t possibly be the God of both Samaria and Israel. That kind of thinking was as impossible for them to wrap their minds around as it is for fundamentalist Christians to accept that you and I can be gay and Christian. Things haven’t changed so much in 2,000 years. You could tell this story and replace Samaritan and Jew with Palestinian and Jew, Indian and Pakistani, or American and Taliban. Both sides in the conflict were so suspicious of the other that peaceful existence wasn’t likely.

Jesus sends his disciples ahead of him to prepare the way. There weren’t hotels, motels, or bed and breakfast inns, restaurants, or convenience stores along the way. So Jesus sends some of his followers ahead of him to arrange for their accommodations along the way. I think he may have also wanted them to prepare the Samaritans to hear what he wanted to teach them.

Jesus knows that the job will be difficult for them, given the fact that they are hated Jews traveling through Samaria. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the disciples encounter some problems and are rejected. James and John, referring to and incident in which the ancient prophet Elijah’s encounters with the soldiers of the King of this same area, want to call down fire from heaven and destroy the offending villagers, just like Elijah called down fire from heaven to destroy the soldiers sent to confront him. But Jesus says that such violence is not his way.

Jesus is likened to Elijah the prophet throughout the book of Luke and we will see that comparison again in a few moments. That Jesus does things differently than Elijah did in similar situations is not to say that Jesus is superior to Elijah, just that the way Jesus works is vastly different from what his followers have come to understand about their faith and how their faith works according to their interpretation of their scriptures and the stories of how their ancestors encountered God.

On at least one occasion Jesus says, “You have heard it said, but now I say to you…” Jesus is saying to his followers, “I don’t care what you think is the right way to believe or act in this situation, I’ve got a different way of doing things. My way honors God and honors our relationships with others at the same time.”

That’s a lesson you and I need to take to heart. We need to think about it before we take actions or before we speak to others, especially when we are trying to be followers of Jesus, representatives of God to the people around us, the persons we are in relationship with. We need to do and say what Jesus would do and say and not what we have come to believe is the right thing to do because of what we have been taught or seen others do. We’ve got to do some thinking and reflecting on what it truly means to be a follower of Jesus and not act out of some rote memory routine.

The Samaritans wouldn’t share hospitality with Jesus and his followers because of what their history and their belief system told them about the Jews. They were wrong. The disciples wanted to return hostility for hostility because of what their own history and belief system told them about Samaritans. Hate for hate, hostility for hostility, violence for violence. That’s the way they had been taught and that’s the only way they knew to act. But that wasn’t the way Jesus would act. When you and I want to return hate for hate, hostility for hostility, and violence for violence we are wrong, too. There is a better way. There is the way of Jesus.

How do you feel about Fundamentalist Christians who tell you that your beliefs are wrong or that you are an abomination, that you are sinful because of who you love, or that God as they understand God rejects you and I for whatever reason they state? What should we do when we come into contact with such persons?

As I walked down the street last Sunday morning I noticed a woman standing close to the parade route. A pleasant looking woman in her forties standing there with a sign that said, “I love you, but I hate your sin.” I didn’t have to ask her what sin she was talking about. I knew. She was trying to tell me that she thought that she loved me, the person I was, but that she hated the fact that I was a gay man who loved another man. I have to tell you that you can’t separate the parts of me and accept some of me and reject the rest of me. I am a whole person. I am gay but I am also a proud Christian man. However, this woman couldn’t or wouldn’t accept me as a whole person and had to divide me into parts she could accept and parts she had to reject. But if you reject any part of me, then you are rejecting all of me.. To her being gay and Christian are an oxymoron, impossible words and concepts to put together in the same sentence.

I was surprised at my reaction. Years ago I would have wanted to take her statements and impaired logic to task; I would have wanted to confront her to explain to her how abhorrent to the Christ I know her thinking and behavior were. But I simply looked at her with compassion and love, yes, love, recognizing that she is trapped in teachings and thinking that she can’t escape from without some love and prayer. I waved at her and I held up one finger…not the one you are thinking…but this one, the sign of Christ, meaning Jesus is one way to a relationship with God. I was trying to indicate to her that I believe that I am a beloved child of God and not a sinner because of who I love. Oh, I know I am a sinner, that I fail God in many ways, and every one of those failures is a sin, meaning it is something that separates me from God’s love, but my loving Mark is not one of those failures. My loving Mark is one of God’s gifts to me, just like anyone else’s relationship with their spouse is, and I will celebrate my love for Mark boldly by walking in Pride parades no matter who wants to stand in judgment of me. And I will return their hatred with love and their rejection with acceptance. It is the Christ-like way. It is the only way for me to be a follower of Jesus.

In the journey to Jerusalem Jesus next encounters several persons who want to become his followers. Here, too, I believe we have often been wrong in our interpretation of these passages. In the first one Jesus responds to the request by saying that life on the road with him won’t be easy because there will not be a safe place to stay along the way, perhaps not even a permanent home to return to from time to time.

I can relate to this passage. Several times in my life I have given up house and home to journey to a distant place of to become the pastor of a congregation or to go to seminary where I wasn’t sure I’d have any place to house myself or my family, where I wasn’t sure that the I was going to have enough income to live on much less get a house to live in. My decisions to follow Jesus in those circumstances were not what I would call logical or based on any economic assurance that the rest of the world would call appropriate before deciding to move across the country. But those decisions were always exactly what I felt God wanted me to do at that moment and I could not delay my following Christ.

Mark and I had to give a lot of thought to coming to Seattle from Tennessee in early 2009. Much of that thought and prayer time was given over to thinking about accommodations. Miraculously God worked on our behalf and directed us to townhouse we now live in. However, I must say that the places I have ended up on such previous journeys weren’t always as nice or as comfortable as our current home, but they were always warm and dry and my family and I were glad to have those places to call home. Just so you know, there have also been times in my life when following Jesus left me homeless.

The journey with Jesus isn’t always easy and we aren’t promised that all of our problems will miraculously be solved if we put Jesus first. In fact, putting Jesus first in our lives may in fact create bigger problems for us than we would have had had we not followed Christ. There is only one thing sure about following Jesus; wherever we end up there we will be with Jesus. Jesus promises to always be with us and to never leave us alone. We have God’s power and presence in our lives if we will follow Jesus. And that gives me a lot of comfort and hope.

Jesus then calls another person to follow him, but the person gives a unique request: Let me first go home and bury my parents, then I will follow you.” Sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it. Why wouldn’t Jesus agree to such a request? Doesn’t Jesus teach us about family values and respecting our parents? As strange as it may sound to you, no, Jesus doesn’t teach about family values as we have come to think about them in our society, nor does he teach about respecting our parents like we might think he would.

Jesus bent the rules of his society and he bent them in favor of God and right relationships with others. He bent them when it was clear that keeping society’s expectations would result in something less than God being honored. Jesus always put God in first place in his life and he expected others to do the same. When his mother and brothers became concerned because he was acting and talking so strangely and came to take him home, he refused to see them and said, “My mother and brothers are those who obey my commands.” Now that wasn’t very family friendly. Sometimes to be true to Christ may mean that we have to do that which seems like dishonoring our own families. It’s difficult, but sometimes it must be done.

We don’t know the situation in this verse. But we do know much about the expectations of the society Jesus lived in. People were expected to care for their elderly parents and to provide for them until they died. The assumption in this verse, according to some scholars, is that this man’s parents are still alive and he is telling Jesus that he must go back and out of obligation to his parents provide a home for them until the day they die and he can bury them. Then he will be free to follow Jesus.

But Jesus rejects this obligation as a rejection of his call to follow him in the here and now. When Jesus calls us we don’t get to say when it will be a good time for us to respond. Jesus calls us in the here and now. Jesus expects us to answer him in the here and now. No matter what our social obligations might be, Jesus wants an answer today. There is urgency in his call to us. Jesus puts obligations to God and following him above any obligations to one’s family or society.

Let me queer this passage for you. Many in our Queer Community put off coming out of the closet with family and friends and co-workers for one reason or another. It isn’t uncommon for me to hear that someone plans to come out about his or her sexuality after his or her parents have died, or when his or her children are grown, or when he or she finally retires from their job. I fully understand what it means to put off doing something important for reasons of family or society. Such decisions can cause us a great deal of agony and distress, especially when our secrets get told before we want them to be told.

Living a life of honesty and integrity is, I believe, a part of being a follower of Christ. I can’t live my life completely if I have to live part of it in secrecy. I tried to come out slowly. I tried to tell just one person at a time in the way I wanted them to be told. It was a good plan, or so it seemed to me at the time, but the first person I told decided to not keep my secret and instead told several other family members, so my story was out there before I knew who had been told or what they had been told. Same thing happened at work. With that history I gave up trying to keep a secret and just came out all at once to family, friends, church, and work. When I meet someone new I get my sexual orientation out in the open as soon as possible. And my life has been a lot better for that kind of honesty with myself and with others. Not having to keep a secret is a so much easier way to live my life.

Jesus isn’t saying disregard your family or society entirely. But he is saying that following him takes precedence over family and friends and church and work and any other obligations we might have.

That said, I must say that if the man had said yes to following Jesus he may have found Jesus telling him to go back home and take care of his parents and fulfill his obligations to them. Or not! I can only imagine. But what I do know from the teachings of Jesus is that when we become followers of Christ we become responsible for building right relationships with other persons in our lives, including our families, friends, and co-workers, and supervisors at work.

Jesus says to the next person, “Follow me,” and the man asks for leave to go home and tell his family goodbye. Reasonable. Sure. But not to Jesus. In fact this calls up the story of the prophet Elijah calling his successor Elisha. Elisha asked to go and tell his family goodbye and Elijah told him, “Yes.” Luke is telling us again, that Jesus is like the great prophet Elijah, but different. Where Elijah said Elisha could go home and tell his family goodbye, Jesus says that following him in the here and now is more important than even telling family and friends goodbye. Nothing is more important than following Jesus.

What is most important in your life? Is it following Jesus and doing those things that Jesus is asking of you or will something else take greater importance in your life and delay your decision to follow Christ? Following Christ means total commitment of everything that you are and will become and that may mean that other obligations and relationships will have to diminish in order for you to fulfill your obligation to Jesus.

When I was studying this passage this week. I thought of the song entitled, “Torn between two lovers.” Following Jesus is a lot like being torn between two loves, the love of God and the love for everything else in our lives. It’s hard to live up to both loves at the same time, as hard as it is to please two human lovers at the same time…though some of you have certain fantasies about that kind of a situation. The fact is that Jesus is saying God must come first. As a follower of Jesus are you willing to put God first in your life above everything and everyone else?

I love to procrastinate. I love to put off until tomorrow what I don’t want to do today. But Jesus is telling us that to be his followers we have to give up procrastination, we have to give up obligations to society and family if those obligations interfere with following him. Why is this so important to him?

Neil Elliot's comment on this text in the People's Bible (Fortress Press, 2008) is instructive: "All that Jesus teaches about justice, about the right use of wealth, about prayer and steadfastness in his cause, he teaches as he leads his followers toward a final confrontation in Jerusalem."

Jesus did not believe that God’s New Community would come into existence someday in the future, or after we die and go to heaven, whatever heaven might be. Jesus wasn’t talking about pie in the sky by and by as my southern family would put it. If the promised New Community of God is only in the future then it makes no difference if we follow Jesus today or tomorrow or next year. No, Jesus makes it very clear that the New Community of God exists today, in the here and now. It has already begun. It is not something we can only look forward to someday because it is something that already exists in the here and now.

You and I can become productive citizens of the New Community of God today, in the here and now, or we can reject Christ’s invitation and thus reject becoming citizens of that New Community of God.

Things will be different in God’s New Community. Society, family and work obligations will change and in fact will become even more important and even more radical than they were before we became followers of Jesus.

Being a follower of Jesus will change the way you think, the way you act, the way you speak. Becoming a follower of Jesus means that you will never ever be the same again. Are you ready to answer Jesus’ invitation to follow him? If you are, then get ready for a radical and outrageous journey with Jesus as citizens of the New Community of God. Better put those seat belts on because it might be a bumpy ride!

Thinking About PRIDE, proper 7C

2010-06-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

In this gospel passage from Luke 9 Jesus heals a mentally disturbed man and returns him to his community to share what has happened to him with others. The man is usually referred to as the demoniac, meaning that he has been possessed with many demons or evil spirits, which is how ancient people described various diseases and mental illnesses. It is interesting that the word used to describe healing is the same word also used for salvation. The man is healed by Jesus but he is also saved from a life that caused him to be rejected by others. As we have been seeing in the healings and resurrections we have been reading about these past few weeks when Jesus restores someone to health he is also restoring them to their community, giving them social and economic justice as well as healing their disease or condition.

I really struggle with this passage because it has been so often used against those of us who are Queer. So called fundamentalist Christian ‘friends’ have told me that I am Queer because I have been possessed by an evil spirit which need to be exorcised from me. Many fundamentalist Christians tell us that we are Queer because we have a mental disorder that needs healing, in other words we aren’t ‘normal’, that is heterosexual. Well, I've got news for folk who believe that way: Medical science says that being Queer is natural and normal within humanity and that I don't have a disease that needs healing. I am 100% okay exactly the way I am, exactly the way God created me. Therefore, there isn't within me an evil spirit of homosexuality that needs to be exorcised. And I am not in need of healing to repair my sexuality. In fact, Jesus is spiritually helping me to live my Queer life abundantly and joyfully!

It is worth noting that when the man is with his community that they chain him to prevent him from hurting himself or them. I, too, felt 'chained' by others about my sexuality and socially restricted by them before I came out about my sexuality. I had to hide in the closet, withholding the truth about myself from them because society told me that if I was Queer I would not be welcomed and that somehow I was a danger to them and a threat to myself because of my different sexuality.

When the man escaped the chains he went to live in a lonely graveyard. What a horrible place to live: alone, amongst putrid, rotting bodies, a place where no one else wanted to go. Throughout history society has forced Queer persons to isolate themselves from others by going into the 'graveyards' of society where no one else wanted to go to be with us. This is how the terms 'living in the closet' came about. Queer people developed their own safe spaces where they could be themselves apart from the rest of society and its condemnation.

When Jesus healed the man he sent the man back into his community and told him to tell everyone exactly what had happened to him. I don't imagine that was very easy for him to do, but he went empowered by Jesus. He no longer had to live a life isolated from others or restricted by them. He could finally be himself, whole, healthy, happy, complete, because of what Jesus did for him.

Do you feel incomplete, less than a whole person, unhealthy, and depressed? Then I've got some good news for you! That's what PRIDE is all about! PRIDE is about how we can live whole, healthy, happy, complete lives as Queer persons who are beloved by God exactly the way God created us!

Take off the chains during this month of PRIDE and be yourself. Come out of the closet and let others know that you are a beloved child of God! It might not be easy to convince everyone, but God has empowered us to proclaim the truth about ourselves to everyone right where we live and work! It's at least something to think about!

Gender Bending with Jesus, Luke 7:36 to 8:3, Proper 6C

2010-06-13T07:34:00.001-07:00

Jesus’ ministry was all about building the New Community of God usually referred to by him as the reign of God or the kingdom of God. A community where everyone was welcome and loved, respected and appreciated, wanted and included. His attempts to bring all of the people living on the edges of society into the Community he was building was one of the major sources of his conflict with the religious authorities of his day, and through them with the Roman officials who ruled over the known world at that time.

Jesus went about bending the accepted religious rules and expectations almost to the breaking point. His demonstration of acceptance of the lame, the widow, the orphans, the rejects of society, those cast out due to illness or injury, and those cast out due to their being perceived as unclean and sinful was more than the religious leaders of his day could stomach. The way that Jesus bent their carefully structured society which had been developed to keep out those who didn’t live up to the expectations of those religious leaders caused them to reject Jesus and eventually demand his death.

Today’s story may sound familiar to you. During Lent we read about how the sister of Lazarus, Mary, did exactly the same thing as the woman in this story does for Jesus. In fact, there are four very different versions in the gospels of women washing Jesus’ feet with their tears, drying his feet with their hair, and anointing him with expensive oil or perfume. Did these kinds of things happen to Jesus all the time, or is there something going on here that we need to think about? I have told you several times that these stories of Jesus are collections of remembrances that were finally written down a very long time after Jesus lived, some of them more than 60 years later, two or three or more generations after Jesus walked the earth. Each author of the gospels wrote his remembrances for a different community and for different reasons and therefore took the collections of stories and wrote them with a creative purpose to explain the meaning of Jesus’ life and teachings. These are not factual blow by blow descriptions of exactly what happened to Jesus as he traveled around the country from Nazareth to Galilee to Capernaum to Jerusalem. Three of the books cover less than a year in the life of Jesus sometimes as short as six months, the fourth gospel talks about three years of his ministry. That’s one of the reasons you can’t read these stories as literally true, even though they are very spiritually true. The stories were written to help us understand the truth about Christ and his teachings without being factually true themselves. That wasn’t a problem for those who first heard these stories, and it shouldn’t be a problem for us today.

In the case of the story of a woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and anoints him with precious oils we have four versions of what may have been only one event, but the event was so significant that it is told four different ways all of them emphasizing some aspect of the story that the other three do not.

Today’s reading is a very special case in point as we are introduced to a woman of the city, a phrase used to often refer to a prostitute, but could have been used to refer to any woman that was being forced by economics and social status into an undesirable kind of work, or work that others believed made her ritually unclean. It could have been being a midwife, especially a midwife that took care of Gentile women. That would have made her unclean because she would have come into contact with blood. It could have been that this woman has a job in a tanning firm handling dead animals or even as simple as dyeing clothing, also a job looked upon as somehow unclean. Whatever her situation, the fact is that she probably had no choice about what she was forced into doing. Perhaps she was a widow raising children who was forced into prostitution because it offered her the only way to economically take care of her children. Being crippled or having a disease or illness could also have been among the reasons for her being thought of as unclean. Whatever her situation the author of today’s passage tells us that the reasons for her being thought of as unclean were very numerous.

Last week we saw how Jesus restored economically and socially a widow whose only son had died. By bringing her son back to life Jesus gave her back her own life, too. Do you remember that the passage said that Jesus saw the woman and had compassion upon her? Throughout the gospel of Luke we observe Jesus often seeing persons that others overlook, and telling others to really look at each other with compassion and love, to really see the other as he or she is and stop looking at just their circumstances or their perceived sinfulness. Behind every circumstance is a reason or a story that needs to be told and understood in order to truthfully give the kind of help and hope that another needs in his or her life.

I’m privy to lots of information about other people that many of you will never know. People tell me about their lives and I have to keep that information private unless they allow me to share it with you in the form of a prayer request. Often you ask me what’s going on in another person’s life usually by asking me why that person hasn’t been in church. I usually respond by telling you to call them or email them and ask them yourself in the hopes that you will begin to build a caring, hopeful relationship with them. But the fact remains that many people aren’t in church today because of problems and circumstances in their own lives that prevent them from coming to church: illness, work, broken relationships, depression, lack of funds for gasoline for their car or a bus ticket, and many more reasons. We often fail to ‘really see’ those who are not in church because we haven’t gone out of our way to relate to them like Jesus wants us to relate to each other within this New Community of God we call Emerald City Metropolitan Community Church.

Don’t misunderstand me. Sometimes you and I do get it right. Sometimes we do see the other person just as God sees him or her and we give them our love and our help, our encouragement and hope and we change their lives for the better and they are thankful to us for that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will come back and worship with us. We don’t give love and care to others so that we will get something out of it. And that’s part of the main understanding we should get from today’s gospel story. We give love and care to others because that is who we are and what we do because of our relationship with God. Loving and caring for others is a natural outcome of our having received love and care from God.

On this particular day Jesus has accepted a dinner invitation to Simon’s home. They are reclining at the table with their feet pointed away from the table as was the custom of that day. Jesus is probably reclining next to Simon. Somehow, it isn’t explained, a woman of street comes into the dinner and stands or sits at Jesus’ feet whereupon she begins to cry profusely, uses her tears to wash his feet, then lets down her hair, something a married woman would never do in public, dries his feet with her hair perhaps because it was the only thing she had to do it with, and then taking the expensive perfume she has brought in an equally expensive bottle and begins to sensuously massage his feet. And all this time she is constantly kissing his feet. This is a very sexually charged picture even though no sex happens.

Simon, and probably all the male religious leaders present, are appalled and shocked at the inappropriateness of this woman’s actions. If Jesus were truly a prophet he would know that this woman is a sinner and he would not let her touch him and make him unclean with her un-cleanliness. Or that’s what they are thinking. Jesus knows this. Jesus is very tuned into his society and how people think. That’s what makes him such a good teacher, because he uses their own thoughts and feelings to teach them new lessons they might not learn any other way except by having their expectations and their rules and regulations called into question.

Jesus turns to Simon and tells him a parable about two debtors. One man owes almost two years worth of salary to the moneylender. The other owes about two months of his salary to the moneylender. Neither can pay the debt. The money lender has a choice. He can send the men to prison until their families pay off the debt for them or he can forgive them their debt. Unbelievably the money lender in the parable forgives their debts completely. They owe him nothing. They are no longer indebted to him. Then Jesus asks his host Simon which of the men would love the moneylender the most?

I was struck by the question when I first read it. What’s love got to do with it? I had to think about that for awhile. What is love? Appreciation of another that makes my life better than it would be without them. Thanksgiving for what the blessings the other brings to the relationship. Joy at how the other person relates to you and you to them. Appreciation, thanksgiving, and joy. Yeah, which of the two men loves the moneylender the most?

Can’t you just hear Simon reluctantly answering the question, sort of knowing where Jesus is going with this parable but not wanting to admit it, “Well, I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”

Right you are, Simon! But tell me Simon, do you really see this woman, do you know and understand who she is, what her life is like, why she has been forced into the life she has accepted which you find so objectionable?

Listen, dear friends, it makes all the difference in the world when you understand another person’s situation, how they got there, why they are still there, what they are trying to do to change that situation for the better. We’re too quick to condemn other people. We blame the victim instead of asking why society can’t change so that there are fewer victims. Jesus calls into question his society and how it treats such persons as this woman. Jesus is asking Simon to truly see this woman and her situation; especially why she is extravagantly pouring out an expression of love toward Jesus. Why is she doing what she is doing? Think about it Simon.

I’d like to think, that Jesus, lovingly and tenderly, begins to explain things to Simon. When he came into Simon’s home Simon refused to take upon himself the expected role of the male host and have Jesus’ feet washed, a customary gift of host to guest in their society. Simon could have had a servant do this, but he didn’t. Why? For the same reason we often refuse to shake another person’s hand when because we want them to know we don’t accept them. Have you ever avoided someone during our passing of the peace? You know, run around the other way so you didn’t have to shake their hand or heaven forbid hug them.

But that’s not all that Simon refused to do. Simon also refused to give Jesus the customary kiss of greeting that men in that society gave to each other. Much like you or I would refuse to give a kiss of greeting to someone at a family reunion because of a long held hostility toward them.

Not only that, but if an honored guest came to your home in that day you might have had a prayer said for them while their head was anointed with oil, much like we do for those who want anointing and a prayer for healing in our communion. Such was an extreme honor and told how very much you honored the other person.

But Simon refused to do all of those things for Jesus. Simon refused to take the role of a male host and give to Jesus what was due Jesus. Simon failed to live up to his gender role expectations.

But, there was someone who did do for Jesus that day what Simon refused to do. It was the woman from the city, the street lady, who did for Jesus what Simon refused to do, she washed his feet with her copious tears, dried them with her long hair thus transforming a sign of public inappropriateness into a sign of respect and love and care. But she didn’t stop there. She kissed his feet and according to the scripture didn’t stop kissing them. Simon refused to give Jesus an ordinary kiss of greeting, but this woman is profusely kissing him, greeting him, welcoming him into her life.

Simon refused to bless Jesus by anointing him with oil on his head, but this woman pours out an outrageously expensive bottle of perfume and deep massages it into Jesus’ feet, caring for him, blessing him, loving him, sacrificing for him.

This woman takes upon herself the role of a male host and transforms the evening for everyone into something unexpected and glorious if they would only just see it, really see her and what she was doing. Jesus sees it. The author of this gospel sees it. The people who first heard this story read to them saw it. The question is do we see it. More importantly do we understand it. Do we get the lesson that is being taught?

Jesus’ parable and his statements tell us that this woman’s outpouring of love toward Jesus is the result of her having already been forgiven of her many sins. Whatever those sins where, they no longer exist. Her life has been changed by God. She is not the same person that Simon thinks she still is. She is beloved by God and because of God’s love for her she is now abundantly pouring out love for Jesus.

We are often faced with situations in which we are called upon to demonstrate the kind of person we are, the kind of disciple to Christ that we are, the kind of lover of God that we are. What should we do in situations where there is a need, especially when there is something that we can do to help the other person.

Someone gave me a bag of muffins a couple of weeks ago. As I drove home thinking about the muffins and how good they would taste with a cup of coffee I stopped at a corner and there was a man who said, “Can you help me. Anything would help. Whatever you can do. I’m homeless. I have no money. I can’t find work even though I’m looking.” Suddenly I didn’t want the muffins anymore and I gave the man the muffins and the half of a sub sandwich I had just bought. I’ll never forget the smile on that man’s face as he walked away.

I never understood it as a youngster, but my father had a favorite saying in such situations, “If you have to stop and think about what you are going to do, then perhaps you aren’t really a Christian.” I now understand. God’s love and forgiveness to me, should overflow from my life with love and forgiveness, acceptance and welcome, inclusion and hope for others.

Jesus’ followers bent the gender rules of their day almost to the breaking point. Women left their expected gender roles in the home, caring for children, taking care of the family and went on the road with Jesus and the boys. Women were disciples of Christ. Women ministered to others in his name just like the boys did. Women supported the ministry of Jesus out of their own wealth. Women were often the only ones present at critical moments in Christ’s life: at the foot of the cross when the men ran away in fear for their own lives, and in lonely graveyard on a cold dark Easter morning. Jesus made a special resurrection appearance to a woman named Mary. Women were in the upper room when Christ appeared to all of them after his resurrection. Women were at Pentecost when thousands came to faith in a single day and believe me when I tell you that they also preached about their experience with Jesus just like the men did. They couldn’t have done anything else because the spirit of God had filled them to overflowing. Women preached and taught and cared and shared the love of Jesus with the world around them in amazing ways then and now. No matter what our fundamentalist religious friends tell us, women can do it all. In Christ there is no male nor female.

But, the boys bent the gender rules, too. Don’t forget that Christ washed the feet of his own disciples, often cooked for them and may have performed other so-called feminine role expectations in his relationship with them. Jesus and the boys didn’t live up to the gender expectations of their day. They didn’t marry, they didn’t have regular jobs, they took off on a journey of faith following an itinerant preacher around from village to village. Jesus and his followers were gender benders to the extreme in order to achieve the dream of a creating a New Community of Love and Hope of Welcome and Inclusion, of healing and recovery, of social and economic justice for all. In more ways than had ever occurred previously their little band was a society of equals and a place where gender didn’t matter so much as loving others because God first loved them.

The unnamed woman in today’s story demonstrated by her extravagant actions, by her sacrificial love, by her pouring out of an expensive perfume, the very same things that Jesus would do when he faced the threat of violence and refused to return violence but instead demonstrated by his peaceful, extravagant actions a sacrificial love by pouring out of his own life and love for all of us so that you and I might know that God loves us supremely and wants to fill us with God’s kind of love that freely overflows from our lives outward into the lives of everyone else we are in relationship with, no matter who they are. And to achieve that might mean that you and I have to bend the gender rules of our society, too, just like Jesus and his followers did so very long ago.

Will You Join the Parade or the Funeral Procession? Luke 7:11-17

2010-06-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

Luke 7:11-17

........Jesus went to a town called Nain. His closest followers and a large crowd followed him like he was leading a pride parade. When he arrived on the outskirts of the town, he ran into a funeral procession. The only begotten son of a widow had died and was being carried out to the graveyard, followed by his mother and a large crowd of the townsfolk. When Jesus saw the widow, he felt was deeply moved within himself because of her tragedy, and said to her, “Don’t weep.”
........Then he stepped forward and touched the cloth and wicker of the funeral bier they carried him in, and the bearers came to a halt. Jesus said, “Young man, listen to me. Rise up!”
........The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. Everybody was quaking in their boots and they were quick to credit God with what was going on. They were saying things like, “A great prophet has risen up among us!” and “God must be pleased with his people!”
........The news about Jesus spread like wildfire throughout the Jewish territory and all the surrounding areas.

We have in our gospel passage today an interesting choice: Will we join the PRIDE Parade that Jesus is leading, or will we join the funeral procession?

Our families often act as if we’re already dead when we come out about our sexuality and seem to want to have a funeral for us, instead of joining us in celebrating our honesty about ourselves. Let me put it this way: Have you ever felt as if you were dead to the world, or that you might as well be dead because those who you thought loved you and cared for you were acting as if you didn't exist or that they'd be better off if you were in fact dead?

That is a common feeling among Queer People (LGBTIQA). When we come out honestly about who we are and who we love we are often met with opposition, which is bad, or we are simply ignored and shunned, which is often worse. When I came out to my family my sister cried because she believed that meant I wouldn't be in heaven with her. One brother, also a Christian minister, refused to accept any communications from me, unless it was about my children, his nieces and nephews, because he didn't want to know anything about my 'gay lifestyle.' He even uninvited me to his son's wedding because he thought I might do something to advance the Gay Agenda...whatever that is. I never did figure out what he was afraid I might do other than drag my partner along with me to the ceremony. My father announced to the family that he had taught me better and that I knew what the Bible had to say about such sinful behavior as same-sex love. Friends I thought were close and caring suddenly became distant and shunned their relationship with me.

It is extremely hard for you and I to be honest with others about our sexuality, our love relationships, or lives with others when they might react in such negative ways. I can fully understand why many in our Queer Community would rather 'stay in the closet' at work or with family. It sure does make life easier at least in those particular relationships, but it sure does complicate the rest of your life when you aren't sure the secret will stay a secret. Secrets seem to get leaked all the time.

I remember talking to my sister about my coming out before I discussed it with anyone else in the family. She was responsive and accepting, or seemed to be on the phone. She told me that she would keep what I had shared confidential until I shared it with other members of the family. The next day my niece, her daughter contacted me to tell me she loved me and was glad I had come out about my sexuality. Confidential? I don't think so. In fact, as soon as she got off the phone with me, my sister had called my brothers to tell them what I'd said on the pretext of 'protecting our father.' Secrets get leaked, so why try to keep them?

Our church is going through some mighty big changes: a new name that more closely identifies us with our surrounding community, a new time of worship, and soon a new place of worship. What better time to examine the question about what kind of church do we want to become than during PRIDE month when we will meet more people than we do any other month of the year for the sole purpose of telling them about Emerald City Metropolitan Community Church Seattle? Exactly what kind of church, what kind of Christians do we want to become? I think these four simple verses from Luke’s gospel will give us a handle on answering that question.

Jesus, as usual was accompanied by a great crowd of people including his own disciples. We could compare it to a PRIDE Parade with Jesus leading the way. People were glad and proud to be a part of the Jesus Parade. Jesus was clearly an important person. Jesus was teaching them truth from their Holy Scriptures. Jesus was a prophet from God. And just like those of us today who go to parades to see the spectacles that we might witness nowhere else, people followed Jesus because they just might see him perform a miracle. And Jesus would do exactly that, but not to impress anyone, instead he would work a miracle in the life of a person who had come to the end of her rope and was desperate and defeated by life. Jesus would lift her up and give her the opportunity to begin again.

When I look out at you I see people who are at the end of their ropes, I see people who need to know that God can and will give you the opportunity to begin your life again. What has been, those things that have dragged you down into the depths of depression and despair can be wiped aside by God and you can celebrate a new life, a new hope, a new kind of existence unlike anything you have ever experienced before. God wants to do that for you. Hang in there. Good things are coming your way.

Two crowds meet. One joyful the other grieving. Who gives way. Did they have laws back then that said that when a Pride Parade met a funeral procession the Pride Parade had to halt until the funeral procession went by? Or maybe the funeral had to wait for the parade? Luckily, Jesus was in charge that day and unlike anyone else in his company, Jesus saw the situation and more importantly Jesus saw the woman. Often in the gospel it is reported to us that it is Jesus who sees the person in need before anyone else sees them.

Jesus sees this woman whose son has just died, her only begotten son. Jesus sees that she is a widow who has already suffered the death of her husband. And Jesus is very aware of the terrible situation she is now in. In that society no one was worse off than a widow without children or an orphan without parents. Neither had any hope for the future. Women could not own property, they were property. Women could not work outside the home, but only in their husband’s or son’s business. Without a husband, without a son, this widow was condemned to life on the street where she would be taken advantage of by any man that wanted to trouble her and make her life more miserable than it already was. Because of her situation she faced death herself sooner than she should.

Jesus sees, really sees this woman and the gospel tells us that he was deeply moved. The word used here says that his very gut was wrenched with pain or discomfort because of her plight. Have you ever been so moved by another person’s horrible situation that your very bowels did a flip flop within you? That’s how Jesus felt that day about this woman.

Jesus speaks to the woman, “Don’t weep.” This is a phrase used throughout the Scriptures by Prophets and Angels and now by Jesus. It means that you should hold your breath and have hope again because God is going to act on your behalf and God is going to do it right now. It is not a terrible masculine appeal for a woman to stop her inappropriate crying, or a father’s dismissal of a child’s hurt feelings. It is an acknowledgement of the terrible situation that the woman is in and a code-word in Jesus’ society that something wonderful is about to happen. I imagine she gasped in amazement and probably sobbed more so and loudly in the hope that this Rabbi, this teacher, this prophet of God would in fact be able to change her situation.

Jesus touches the basket they are carrying the man in and he halts the funeral procession. Jesus, this great and holy man of God, does the unthinkable. He risks becoming ritually unclean by touching the funeral bier of the dead man. Jesus is like that. Jesus keeps doing the unexpected and he gets trashed and criticized for it every time he does it. Jesus eats with a tax collector and sinners. Jesus touches and heals a leper and a crazy man. Jesus lets a prostitute, a lady of the streets, pour expensive perfume on his feet and massage them and wipe them with her long hair, a sign of her unsavory life. Time and time again Jesus goes out of his way to care for another person in a manner that upsets the proper folk of his day because he has chosen to lower himself to the level of those he cares about. Jesus comes into their lives as if he was one of them and that makes all the difference. The child of God who came into the world as a human being, actually lives among us, with us, like us. Jesus comes along side of us and shares our lives, our joys, our sorrows with us. Jesus is one of us.

Jesus speaks to the dead man. I can almost imagine Jesus whispering into the ear of the dead man in a compassionate way, “Arise, live again. Get up.” And the man sits up. Imagine the crowds reaction when he not only sits up but he speaks as well. Speaking and eating are signs that the dead person has really come to life again and there is no doubt about it. When Jesus visited the disciples after his resurrection we are told that he not only spoke to them but he ate with them. Only a living and breathing body could do such things. This is not a ghost. This is a real person who has come back to life.

Jesus gives the man back to his mother. We read rapidly over this sentence. It doesn’t make much sense to us in our day and age. But it meant a great deal in that society. Jesus who has raised this man from the dead is due a considerable return from him. You might say, “Jesus owns the man.” It’s not unusual in human history for this concept to become a part of a society, “I rescued you, I own you. I rescued you, you owe me.” But Jesus takes the man and gives him back to his mother. Jesus gives up any claim he has on this man’s life and releases him to return to his mother. In so doing Jesus gives her back her life also. She now has a place in that society. Her son is alive. Jesus restores her social position as well as her economic position in her world.

The people are filled with amazement and cry out that a great prophet has risen among the people. There are other stories from the Old Testament about Elijah and Elisha raising the dead sons of widows. That would have been something the people would have known and celebrated. God is doing again what God has done in the past. Here is a formula we know and recognize and it tells us that God is present with us and that God is working miracles for us because God loves us supremely. Jesus turned a funeral procession into a PRIDE Parade that celebrated the Love of God in the lives of all the people in the village of Nain that day.

We need to decide what kind of church, what kind of Christians we want to be. Will we be those who see others and realize deep within ourselves what they are experiencing? Will we speak loving words to them? Will we touch their lives with optimism and self-esteem? Will we do whatever is necessary to give them back their ability to live again in hope and joy? It might mean that we have to get down and dirty, that we have to do things differently than any other church has ever done God’s work before. Others might call into question our hanging around unclean people, but we must go where God is sending us and do what God is calling us to do. We really don’t have any other choice if we are to be Emerald City Metropolitan Community Church Seattle. We have a very special history, a very special calling, and we most certainly have a very special vision of our future in Seattle.

Listen dear friends, there is much more I’d like to say, but this sermon would be much too long. So let me finish by saying that Jesus can resurrect your life, no matter how dead you feel, no matter how dead others feel you are. Jesus wants to come to you today and whisper intimate words of life and love and joy and celebration about the restoration of dead relationships while giving you beautiful new relationships with this family of God. Jesus can even take the grief that our families feel at our coming out and replace that grief with joy and celebration that we are alive, healthy, happy and living life as we were created to live it in loving relationships with our same-sex partners. There is no shame in being who God created you to be!

Let Jesus come into your life during PRIDE month this year and resurrect you from your dead life and raise you up to live joyfully! Celebrate Life! Celebrate PRIDE! Celebrate God who loves you exactly the way God created you!

It's All About Relationships Easter 6C

2010-05-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

Read John 5:1-9 and Acts 16:9-15

Just before today’s passage from Acts we read these verses:

6Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.

Interesting isn’t it that though Paul and his friends were trying to do the work of God, taking the Good News about Jesus Christ to those who needed to know how very much God loves them, that they were stopped by the Holy Spirit from going into Asia. How do we know what is God’s will in our lives and how do we do it? How can we discern what it is that God wants us to do at any time in our lives individually or gathered together as the church in this place at this time?

These are questions we all struggle with. In fact, our church is struggling with a question of what to do about our location of worship and the time we will have worship services. We are talking with University Temple United Methodist Church about using their very nice chapel for our worship services. The chapel seats 160 persons in easily moved and very comfortable individual padded chairs. The chapel has both a piano and an organ. There is storage for our supplies. There are very nice fellowship and meeting facilities next to the chapel. There is plenty of free parking on Sundays. The church is on a busy bus route on 15th Ave across from the University of Washington. We could move our worship services from 1:00 PM to as early as 11:30 AM. The cost of leasing their facility would be the same as we currently pay here at Temple de Hirsch Sinai.

University Temple UMC desires to have a relationship with us. They want us to share their space with them and they have actively courted us by coming to us with this proposal. They see this as their way of helping us yet realize that it would also benefit them by providing additional income for their congregation. I have met with members of their facility usage committee and with their pastor, Rev. May Boyd, who is a friend. All of them want us to come and worship in their building. If we ever wanted it and could afford it they even have office space to lease to us. They want us to think about joint worship services during holy days at Advent and Christmas, and Lent and Easter. They have invited us to participate in their children’s Sunday School and in their adult education programs. They see this as a step toward them and us moving into joint worship facilities together if and when the University District Ecumenical Campus is built which would offer us a permanent base of operations and worship space. Even if the UDECC project is never built there is the possibility of this becoming a very long term relationship.

Many of you have expressed great concern about the late hour of our worship service and how you must often make a decision to not come to worship in order to go out to dinner with family and friends, or participate in another activity taking place on Sunday afternoon. Having the freedom to move worship services to an earlier time will help many of you not have to make the decision to choose between church and family and friends. You will be able to do both. Many of us would like to extend the fellowship time by going out to dinner together on a Sunday afternoon after worship. Moving our worship time earlier will allow us to the opportunity to build stronger fellowship ties with each other.

Pastor Michelle will meet with their facility committee this week to discuss any questions they might have as well as to share with them how we now use this building on Sundays. That committee will then take the matter to their board who will make a formal decision about inviting us to share their facility.

Our board will hold its next board meeting at U. Temple on May 23 so the board and anyone else can tour the chapel and fellowship space we would be using. On June 6 we will hold a forum discussion after fellowship time to listen to your opinions on this decision. At its next meeting on June 13 our board will make its decision about moving our worship services to U. Temple or staying at Temple de Hirsch. Please begin talking together about this opportunity and how you feel about it with each other and with our pastors and board members. This is a decision we all must participate in and hopefully we all will feel that God is leading us forward together to new opportunities and possibilities. Personally, I think this situation offers us great potential for increased attendance and participation by those who might not choose to come at 1:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon.

Some want us to stay in the Capitol Hill Neighborhood because it is the traditional Gayborhood. However, few of our current members and friends actually live in the Capitol Hill Neighborhood. The truth is that our people come from all over the metropolitan region with many driving 30 minutes or more to get here. They would still drive to get to worship services no matter where we choose to have worship. Those that use the buses would simply have to change routes. The one or two who walk may need for others of us to help them get to church. Our church isn’t linked to one and only one neighborhood: we must have a vision that includes all of metropolitan Seattle and surrounding communities.

The fact of the matter is that those who come to our church are more interested in relationships than they are in location. Think about it. Why did you come to church here? It’s seldom about the building or the location of the building. Most of you found out where this Queer Church was meeting and you came. You would have gone wherever it had been located because you came seeking relationships, seeking friendship, seeking to share a worship experience with like-minded persons.

Research has proven over and over again that the primary reason someone comes to church is to find friends, to build a caring community with others. We should be able to do that anywhere we decide to have worship services, mostly because what happens in a church isn’t only about what happens in the worship service, but also what happens beyond the worship service as we engage ourselves in each others’ lives and care for each other between worship services.

We must, like Paul and Silas, listen to the Spirit of God speaking in our hearts and chose to follow the guidance of the Spirit. Like us, Paul had other plans in mind but the Spirit of Christ stopped him from pursuing those plans and sent him in a different directions. Paul found the truth of this in the relationships he developed with other people who helped him discern the will of God for his life. We should do the same thing. Open ourselves up to the creative God who puts us into relationship with other people all the time. We must be ready for the unexpected gifts God wants to give to us when we enter into relationship with others.

Paul’s habit was to seek out those who worshipped in the Synagogues. In other words, Paul usually went to the Jews first, those who already worshipped God but might not yet know about the life of Jesus Christ. When they get to Philippi they find there isn’t a synagogue so they go to the river outside the gates of the city, a place of prayer, where they hope to find a group of belivers gathered together worshipping God and studying God’s Word. But what they find is the unexpected. They find a group of women praying together and studying the scriptures of their faith, but these aren’t Jewish women, these are women who are referred to in the scriptures as God-fearers, that is those who believe in the same God as the Jews and who are studying the Jewish scriptures. Very uncharacteristically, and very much against tradition and the idea of doing the right thing in the right way at the right time, Paul and Silas sit down with the women there on the banks of the river outside of the city.

Outside of the gates of the city, outside of the usual boundaries and places of worship they had expected to find, even outside of the usual gender group they had expected to connect to. Paul and Silas open themselves up to the leadership of the Spirit of God. We don’t know who most of these women were, but I might suspect that among them are widows, those who have been excluded and ignored by the rest of society because they no longer have a husband who can provide economically for them. Some might be other women of wealth and influence who know and follow the leadership of Lydia. Don’t miss the truth here that seeking out women would not have been something that Paul would normally have done, because as a devout Pharisee he would have been obligated to follow the law and avoid public conversation with women. For a man to talk to a woman he was not related to by blood or marriage was to assume that you were asking her to prostitute herself for a sexual relationship. Why else would you talk to a woman you weren’t related to? When we see how Paul is changing his behavior as he develops relationships with non-jews, with gentiles, we begin to see just how far Paul has come from his religious roots as he follows Jesus who broke down all the barriers between God and persons and between persons themselves, Jesus who always goes outside the gates of the city to those who live on the edges of society.

Among these women is a very prominent woman, Lydia, apparently a wealthy woman of some means who is also a maker and seller of purple fabric which only the upper class and rich were allowed to wear. She is the owner of her own business, a leader in the community. She is also a believer in God and she opens her heart up to the message Paul preaches and quickly becomes a believer in Jesus Christ. What is significant is that following her conversion to faith in God through Christ, her whole family follows her in professing faith in God through Christ, a very typical pattern of faith at this time. If she were married, then this verse implies that even her husband followed her leadership and became a Christian. It wouldn’t have been so unusual at this time for the father to converted and then the whole family converting. But in this situation we have the very unusual case of a woman setting the example and others from her household joining her in this new faith.

Lydia practices radical hospitality and she opens her home to Paul and his co-workers and they apparently go to stay with her despite the rules and regulations that say that a Jew cannot go into the home of a gentile person. Relationships change people and relationships change the traditional rules we thought we were suppose to follow blindly.

We know that her home becomes a house-church for Philippi and though we do not know if Lydia became a primary leader of the church in that city, though I suspect she was since it met in her home. We do know that later in this same chapter after Paul and his companions are arrested and put in jail, that upon their miraculous release through an earthquake that frees them, they return to Lydia’s home to rest up before resuming their journey. Lydia provides for Paul and his companions through her resources and through her relationships with others in her community. She is in fact the first European convert to the Christian faith, and the founder of a church for that city that worshipped in her home.

Today we celebrate Mother’s Day. We remember Lydia, but especially we remember the great women of faith who have cared for us in our own lives: Women who birthed us, who raised us, who gave us their love and care, who built loving relationships with us. Women who had enormous influence on our lives often because of the deep and abiding relationship they had with God.

I want you to honor all the women in your life today who helped you to become the person you are today, not just the woman who may have given birth to you, but all the women who had significant influence in your life because of their relationship with you, because of what they did to help you. I look around this room today and I see so many of you who do for me those things that my own mother, God rest her soul, can no longer do for me. I see Gloria who worries that I should be taking better care of myself. I see Lee who encourages me and lifts me up in so many different ways. I see Michelle who prays for me and who is honest with me always even when I don’t want her to be so honest. I see the ever-smiling Demi who I know will love me and hug me and affirm me and make me feel good about myself. I see the gentle, loving Deb who is so very willing to help me in so many wonderful ways.
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I am the person I am today because of the love, care, support, and encouragement of the people gathered in this room to worship today. You are my mothers, and fathers, and brothers, and sisters in the faith. You are the ones I seek out to build relationships with, to help me discern what God’s will is in my life and in the life of our church.

Paul and Silas did not know that there would be a Lydia when they got to Philippi, but thank God they found Lydia and her group of women on the bank of that river outside of the city that day. For through that chance meeting God grew a great church in the city of Philippi one that Paul later writes to by saying, “Rejoice, again I say rejoice,” and “make my joy complete.” Paul celebrated his relationship with these members and friends of the church in Philippi just like I celebrate my relationships with you, the members and friends of the church in Seattle. Very simply, I rejoice in you because you make my joy complete in so many amazing loving and caring actions and words. You are a miracle in my life and I thank God for you daily.

We have been taught over the years through other less than perfect relationships we have had that we might not be acceptable to God or at least to those who identify themselves to us as God’s people. I was raised in a fundamentalist religious home where I was taught that any Queer person who wasn’t heterosexual was an affront to God and considered a sinner worthy of eternal punishment in hell. That scared the dickens out of me because I knew I was gay and I also knew that there wasn’t anything I could do to change that fact about my life.

I internalized the homophobia of others and it literally condemned me to a life of depression and self-loathing. I tried to do the things I was told to do to change myself so that I would be acceptable to these so-called Christians and their crooked understanding of God. And when trying to do the so-called right thing, in the so-called right way, at the so-called right time didn’t result in any change in my life, I was made to feel that was also my fault because I just didn’t have enough faith in God. Listen to me, dear friends, those kinds of religious relationships are toxic, they are poison. Those kinds of religious relationship will literally kill you or cause you to take your own life. If you find yourself in those kinds of relationships, please, get out! Respect yourself. Love yourself. Leave the abuse behind and move into the future God wants to give you that is full of hope and joy.

Now, if you didn’t know this about me before now, please don’t gasp in amazement, but I’m a rather stubborn person. I will let others rule my life only for so long before I have to escape from their clutches and figure things out for myself. I had to come understand who I was and how I was suppose to live my own life in my own way by experiencing a relationship with God through Christ that was based on my own study of the life of Christ and what Christ taught. In other words, I couldn’t rely on anyone else’s relationship with God; I had to build my own relationship with God.

Luckily for me God did put some wonderful people in my life and through those remarkable relationships I discovered that God loved me exactly the way God made me: gay. My sexuality had nothing to do with my relationship with God. God already knew I was gay before God created me and if God knew that and accepted it and made me that way, then I should just accept that fact myself and listen to God who loves me and stop listening to all those other people who didn’t even know me, and kept telling me that they loved me but not the sin in my life (even though, between you and me, being gay isn’t a sin). I had to escape from those people who were misinterpreting the Bible and using their misinterpretations to condemn me because I was outside the gates, outside their personal boundaries of acceptability.

We are often taught that understanding God's will in our lives and doing it is a matter of following the rules, keeping tradition, doing the right thing (as defined for us by others) in the right way and at the right time. This has resulted in the rejection and condemnation of many who should be hearing from the church that God loves and accepts them exactly the way that God created them.

Few so-called fundamentalist Christians will come to the aid of those who they believe are outside of the will of God in their lives as defined by their own faulty interpretation of scriptures. Fundamentalist Christians will tell you that the scriptures have always been interpreted the same way, their way, and that you and I are out of God’s will when we say that there might be a different way of understanding the same scripture passage. This kind of reasoning in ancient times was used to condemn the handicapped and disabled persons because they must be that way because of some sin in their lives. We now know that kind of interpretation of scripture is not what God intended for us to understand. The same kind of misinterpretation of scripture has been used to support slavery, to keep women from assuming equality with men, to separate the races, to keep as many people as possible outside of the gates.

In John 5:1-9 Jesus encounters a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years. The tradition is that when the waters of the pool he is lying beside are troubled that those who are first to lower themselves into the water will receive healing. But the man is paralyzed and no one will help him get into the pool of water. He can't get healing because he can't do things in the right way at the right time.

Jesus comes into his life and Jesus tells him to forget about doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. Jesus offers him both a relationship and healing. Jesus helps the man by caring for the man, by healing him, by doing for him what he can do within his abilities. We should follow the example of Christ. We should care for others in loving, considerate ways that lift persons up out of their predicaments and gives to them the opportunity of a life full of rejoicing and hope. Rejoice again I say rejoice. Make my joy complete.

As I examine this passage from John and from our other lectionary passages this week I am impressed that knowing and following God's will has more to do with our relationships than with rules, regulations, or theologies. God leads us by giving us relationships with people who guide us with their wisdom, their care, their love and their kindness. God calls upon us to be and do the same for others.

We are spiritually healed, not according to the rules we have been taught to follow, but by trusting someone who stands beside us in love, just like Jesus stood beside the paralyzed man, just like Lydia stood beside Paul.

Who do you choose to stand beside today? Into whose life can you bring hope and joy? And while you are helping others, don’t forget to allow others to come into your life and bring to you the hope and joy that God wants you have through your relationship with them. You deserve it! Don’t take anything less.

Are You Wearing Your ID Badge? Easter 5C

2010-05-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

Scripture: Acts 11:1-18 and John 13:34-35

Who is a Christian? What are some significant traits of a Christian that would make you observe of another person that he or she is a Christian?
In other words, exactly what makes a Christian different from other people?

When I was growing up it seemed to me that people defined who a Christian was by what he or she didn’t do. My parents taught me that a Christian didn’t gamble, smoke, dance, or drink or go with girls or boys who did. We couldn’t go to movies, unless it was a Disney cartoon. In fact, we couldn’t play real cards, though Rook was okay. I remember my parents clipping the curtains together on our windows when we played Rook just so no one walking by might look inside and see that we were playing cards. Of course that person would have had to be ten feet tall to look into the windows of the home we lived in at that time.

Yes, there were some things that Christians did do that also defined them as being one of the followers of Christ. Let me remember, now. Oh, yeah, you went to church everytime the doors were open for any worship service, bible study, prayer group, or committee meeting. And, if you weren’t there, then everyone else prayed for you to get right with God, because you must have some kind of sin in your life that was keeping you away from God and the church. If it was your job then they would pray for God to get you a new job that allowed you to be a better Christian.

Christ gathered his disciples together on that final night with them to hold that last supper with them before he was arrested and crucified. Normally someone would greet you at the door, help you remove your shoes and then wash your dusty and dirty feet. It was a sign of hospitality and comfort when you entered the home of another. This was the duty of a servant, a slave in the household, to care for the grimy feet of the travelers who had come into the home from the dusty street. But not a single one of those disciples would lower himself to wash the feet of the others. That would have said to the world that the one doing the washing was inferior and that the other disciples were superior to them and to put it bluntly, none of them were going to go there. If you recall they had had already had disagreements about who was going to be the most important person in Christ’s new Community when he established it. Christ had told them that it wasn’t going to be that way in his new Community, that the first would be last and the last would be first, that they should be servants to each other and stop wanting the most important positions of authority for themselves. But they didn’t learn the lesson, because their hearts weren’t ready for the truth of what Christ was trying to explain to them and to demonstrate for them by his words and his actions.

So he gives them another lesson by what he does for them that evening. They won’t condescend to wash each other’s feet, so he takes off his outer garments and wraps a towel around his waist and taking a basin of water he goes to each one of them and washes their feet. Their Master Teacher becomes their servant taking care of their needs in a loving, kind action of comfort and care. Then he gets up and dresses himself and turns to them and says: “A New command I give to you. Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

How would you have felt had you been one of the disciples in that room that night when Jesus washed your feet and then said these words?

You have to be careful what you pray for. If you ask God to give you patience then don’t be too surprised when God finds ways to test your patience with other people just to see if you are using the resources God wants you to tap into to actually be a more patient person. And if you are a pastor writing a sermon on loving others then get ready to have everything you believe about loving others tested during that week. Perhaps God is saying, “Well, Ray, it’s pretty easy to write out what you should believe, what you should tell others they should believe, but maybe, Ray, just maybe, it’s better if you live out the lessons that you need to preach on, just to be sure that you’ve learned them well enough to teach them to others.” Don’t you just love God for being that way with us?

I’ve had my patience and my love tested this week by some pretty difficult people, no body any of you know, so relax, I’m talking about you. I work a retail job and interact with the public, most of whom are very loving and very kind toward retail clerks and salespeople. Now, most of the time I enjoy my retail sales work and I get to meet a lot of interesting people, however, every once and a while, someone comes in who tests my desire to be patient and kind and loving. God sent several of those to help me with this week’s sermon. I won’t bore you with the stories, but suffice it to say that God impressed upon me that love is more often an action I take, something I do, and not necessarily something I feel. The feeling may come later or never at all, but the loving action creates life and hope where it might not have existed before.

Love changes situations. Love changes people. Love changes the world. What kind of love actions did you take this past week that changed the world for someone else?

We pretty much know when someone else isn’t treating us in a loving manner, or at least we know when we aren’t feeling the love flowing from someone else toward us. But do we usually realize when we aren’t being loving toward another person, or do we excuse our unloving behavior toward others with logical reasoning that allows us to excuse ourselves from following this commandment of Christ to love others exactly in the same way as Christ loves us?

The first Christians had this kind of a problem. They thought they knew what it meant to love others, but they discovered that God’s kind of love, the very kind of love God wants us to share with others, went way beyond anything they had ever imagined for themselves.

They had been with Jesus when he walked on this earth and demonstrated for them just how wide God’s love was as he welcomed those who were outcasts from society into his life and cared for them in amazing ways: the handicapped, the diseased, the widows, the orphans, prostitutes, and even tax collectors who were in league with the Roman Empire to oppress the people, even healing the male servant, some would say lover, of a Roman commander, a non-jew, the very person in charge of making sure that the people stayed under the military rule of Rome. Jesus crossed every boundary line that you could imagine in taking God’s love directly to persons that others thought didn’t deserve any kind of love, much less acceptance by God. People knew who was in and who was out and how things worked in society until Jesus came along and turned their world upside down with his radical thinking, subversive speech, and his revolutionary actions. Jesus was upsetting the status-quo and it’s no wonder they set out to kill him as a danger to society.

600 years before Jesus their nation had been defeated in battle by a foreign power and their most educated and able people carried off to another country to become the servants and workers for their oppressors. They realized that they were going to be absorbed into that society until nothing was left of their own unique identity and so they made some changes in their religious law and practice. They formed the first synagogues bringing together as few as ten men or families to make a worshipping group. They made laws that said you couldn’t eat with anyone other than people like yourself from your own group and made more laws about what food you could eat and couldn’t eat. They made laws about who you could marry and couldn’t marry so that the bloodline of your family would be true and not contaminated. Keeping the laws became a sign of who you were and what you were and everyone knew you by what you did or didn’t do. These changes to the law and the religious life of the Jewish nation meant that they have survived as a separate, identifiable people throughout most of their history and into this day. The idea was there that the only person who could worship God and serve God was a Jew. No one else could do this, unless he or she first converted to being a Jew.

But when Jesus came that all began to change. Jesus opened up the idea of who was acceptable to God and Jesus demonstrated by caring for Jew and Gentile alike that God would no longer allow such arbitrary human rules to prevent God from taking care of God’s human creation, no matter who that might be, or where they might live, or how they might light live their lives. Jesus ended the divisions between people.

So you would think that after living with Jesus for three years, after listening to him teach, seeing him care for everyone without question, that the disciples were a group that opened their arms and hearts and welcomed everyone into their new little church? But you would be wrong. That’s not what happened. They continued to believe that the only persons who could truly worship God and serve God were Jews. And therefore only Jews could become Christians. Nobody else could be a Christian, a follower of Christ, unless he or she were a Jew or converted to being Jewish, abiding by all the rules and regulations of what it meant to be a complete Jew.

But God has a way of shaking up our misconceptions and attitudes. So God blesses Peter with a dream in which God sets food down all kinds of forbidden foods in front of Peter on a picnic blanket and says to Peter, “Take and eat.” But Peter, being the good Jewish boy who has learned all the lessons his parents had taught him says to God, “No, thank you. These are the foods I’ve been taught that we can’t eat. To eat such food would be a sin against you, God. I couldn’t do that. I love you too much God to sin against you by breaking the rules.” And God says, to Peter, “If I have made it acceptable, then you, Peter, have no business calling it unacceptable.” But Peter keeps refusing to take the food that God is giving to him.

Have you ever done that to God? Told God you knew better than God does what you need in your life, what you need God to do for you, what you want from God? We get very arrogant and self-inflated by ourselves to the point that we feel we have a right to tell God just how wrong God is and how it would be so much better for us and everyone else if God would just do things our way for a change. But God has an ingenious plan and a imaginative purpose for all of us. If we just get our selfish selves out of God’s way then God can bring about a miracle for others through us and even for us.

This isn’t so foreign to our experience now or over the last 50 years. I’m a child of the 50’s and 60’s who was taught to sing “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” I was taught that song by people who also thought it was wrong for those same little red, and yellow, black and white children to be in the same classroom or same church Sunday School room for fear that they might grow up and intermarry with each other. In other words, “Only good white children could really serve God.” Not so much different from Peter. And in many ways, it isn’t so much different today as we exclude those who don’t measure up to our standards from our churches and from our loving embrace. We make decisions about loving others every day: I’ll love her, but not him. I’ll accept him, but not her. Jesus didn’t leave the decision about who to love to you and me. Jesus just said, “Love each other like I have loved you.” No exceptions. No exclusions. Obey me. This is my commandment to you. Love each other.

After his vision, there comes a knock on his door and a messenger has been sent from Cornelius, a gentile, a non-jew, who wants to know how to become a Christian. An angel of God has told Cornelius to go and ask specifically for Peter. Peter, having been prepared by God with the vision of God’s definition of acceptability, goes with the men and preaches and teaches to them and low and behold they believe in God and become followers of Christ in the same way that Peter has seen Jewish persons become followers of Christ. There is no difference between them, for a follower of Christ isn’t defined by his or her ancestry or former religious background, but only by his or her relationship to God in Christ.

More specifically, a Christian, a follower of Christ, is defined by his or her ability to love others like Christ loved us. Peter learned to love others like Jesus loved them regardless of who they were, where they came from, or how they currently lived their lives. Peter learned how to cross the same boundaries that God crosses to claim God’s precious creation for God’s self. God will not allow anyone to be outside of God’s gracious love.

Margaret Guenther, director for the Center for Spirituality at General Theological Seminary says that like the rest of us in this age of required identification cards and badges she carries an ID card with her picture on it so she can be identified. Like you and I, without the ID card she can’t rent a video or cash a check. But she goes on to say, “As Christians we identify ourselves, too. We put crosses on our buildings or wear crosses on chains around our necks. Yet according to Jesus, we don’t need these emblems. We have a permanent, universally valid ID card (a badge if you will)—we can be spotted anywhere Christ people if we love one another.”

Do others see Jesus in you today? Are you wearing your ID Badge of love?

I See You, I Care for You, I Love You: Easter 4C

2010-04-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

Scriptures to read: Psalm 23, John 10: 22-30, Acts 9:36-43

I’ve been thinking and praying about you…and you…and you…well, frankly, about all of you. You are in my constant thoughts and my constant prayers. I see you. I care for you. I love you. You are my chosen family whom I love dearly. When you hurt, I hurt for you. When you cry, I can’t help but cry right along with you. When you are ill I worry about you. When you are out of work I am anxious for you to find employment as soon as possible. When you are depressed I hold out hope for you and try to give you reassurance. When you need to talk, I will make time in my schedule to listen to you.

I’ve taken some of you to the doctor’s office and sat with you while you waited to go in. I’ve gone to the hospital emergency room with some of you and waited while you received treatments and then took you home. I’ve been to the hospital when some of you have been ill and tried to lift your spirits and encourage your quick recovery.

We’ve helped some of you move out of old apartments and into new ones. In short, I’ve tried to be there when you needed someone to communicate to you that God is present with you and that God cares for you.

Many of you in this room have done the same thing for each other. You are truly tending to God’s sheep. You are truly feeding God’s lambs with the kindness and love that Christ calls us to give to others. Thank you.

Whether you’ve noticed it or not, there is a connection between the scripture passages we’ve been reading over the last several weeks. There is a very close connection between last week’s passage from the book of John and this week’s story about Peter from Acts. Does anyone remember what Jesus told Peter to do in last week’s scripture passage? Christ told him to “Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep.” Jesus also said to Peter and the others, “Just as God has sent me into the world to care for the world, now I am sending you to do the same thing.”

The fact that Jesus was going to leave the world to return to the Parent did not mean that Jesus was abandoning the world. Jesus breathed God’s spirit into the disciples when he appeared to them after the resurrection and empowered them to become care-givers to others, to tell the world about how very much God cares for every single person, no matter who he or she is, no matter what he or she has done, or hasn’t done. God loves everyone, exactly the way God created them. You and I don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love and acceptance. We don’t have to stop becoming one kind of person and try to become a different kind of person in order to be acceptable to God. That isn’t the message that Jesus taught and it surely shouldn’t be the message that we share with others.

I got several messages through Facebook this week from a young man in North Carolina who took issue with the fact that I am the pastor of a Queer congregation. He started off by telling me that when he saw my picture on Facebook an evil spirit came upon him and he just had to reach out over the internet and condemn me for leading all of you to hell. He believed that because you and I are Queer in our sexuality that we are condemned by God and that we have no hope for God’s grace and love in our lives.

I responded by telling him that I thought he was missing the truth of Jesus’ teachings that all persons are acceptable to God, something Jesus demonstrated during his time on earth by eating with so-called sinners that were unacceptable to the Pharisees, that is the Pharisees thought these people were such sinners that they were certainly condemned to hell and it was therefore obvious that Jesus was a sinner too because he hung out with sinners instead of the righteous stuck-up Pharisees. I told the young man that perhaps he needed to look at things differently, to really read what Jesus had said and try to make room in his life for God to speak to him about being a more loving kind of person, especially to those who are different from him.

He wrote back that I couldn’t change his mind. However, he then used that horrible phrase that so many of our so-called fundamentalist Christian critics use against us. He said, “I love the sinner, but I hate their sin.” Well, that really crawls all over me because that means that this young man gets to define me as a sinner because I don’t live up to his self-determined rules and regulations of what it means to be righteous, that is right with God. He wants to define my love for Mark and our life-time commitment to each other as a sin. The problem is that I don’t define my relationship with Mark that way. I define my relationship with Mark as one that is loving, blessed by God, and given to the two of us as a demonstration of God’s love and care for the two of us.

I sent him my final message asking him to re-read the story of the Prodigal Son and see how the Parent welcomed the son back home even before the boy asked for forgiveness. God loves us with a supreme love and runs to welcome us whenever we turn our thoughts and selves back to God…even before we can ask God to forgive us. However, there was another son in that story, the older brother who refused to come into the party that the parent had given to celebrate the return of the younger much loved, and sorely missed younger son. The older brother thought that the younger son shouldn’t be seen, shouldn’t be welcomed, shouldn’t be loved, shouldn’t receive any care or kindness from the parent, and so the older brother refused to come into the celebration himself. I asked the young man to reflect on the older brother and ask himself if he wasn’t being more like the older brother himself than anyone else in the story.

I could see that the conversation with this young man wasn’t going to go much of anywhere so I cut him off from being able to communicate with me. As I’ve told you before I will not argue with anyone. I will talk with anyone honestly about how I feel, about what I have read in the scriptures, about how I interpret those scriptures just as long as they will have an considerate, polite, and intelligent conversation with me and not try to abuse me or put me down for feeling that I am one of God’s beloved just the way that I am. A one-sided conversation isn’t a conversation at all.

Jesus didn’t tell Peter or the rest of the disciples to go out and care for only those who were acceptable to them, only those who dressed like them, talked like them, observed the same religious laws they did, ate the same kosher foods. Jesus told Peter and the others to go and love everyone and care for everyone just like he had cared for them, just like God cares for everyone. There would be no exceptions, even though the disciples in the book of Acts had to work through their own misunderstandings about who was acceptable to and loved by God. Every time they thought they had figured out who they could exclude, who they could ignore, who they could refuse to care for, God demonstrated for them that they were wrong, that God’s love included even those they thought were unloved and hated by God.

I went to the Northwest Preaching Conference this week here in Seattle at Pilgrim Church downtown where more than 200 pastors, seminary students, and other Christians gathered to hear some rather astounding preachers both preach and lecture on preaching to our society from a Progressive Christian viewpoint. I heard about pastors who were crossing the boundaries that had never been crossed in their church communities in order to care for and love all of God’s children.

One Pastor from Stone Mountain Georgia founded his predominantly black church more than 20 years ago when he was a very young man. The church grew rapidly to over 6,000 members and they built an amazing facility ending up with a huge mortgage that had to be paid off. A few years ago the pastor became convicted that homophobia was wrong and he began to preach and teach his beliefs. He then decided that pushing women to the sidelines was wrong and he opened the door for women in his very Southern Baptist Church to become deacons and pastors. He then decided that being a Southern Baptist Church wasn’t in line with who he and the church were any longer and he went first independent, then he led his church to align itself with the Disciples denomination. He tackled other issues of exclusion and taught his people that God was including everyone in God’s family. It was too much for many of them to take and more than 3,000 members of the church left. Faced with an inability to pay the mortgage and support the ministries of the church the board of directors of his congregation called him in and told him that he needed to cool it. He could have his own private theology and his own private opinions but that he should preach what the people wanted to hear on Sunday, what would keep them coming and giving. He told them that he couldn’t do that and be true to himself and to God. They asked him if he believed what he was saying enough to take a pay cut. He said that he did and they cut his pay, but they didn’t stop him from preaching the truth about God’s love for everyone. His church is thriving again and everyone that comes to that church knows that its pastor believes and practices exactly what he says about God’s love and care for everyone.

One of the amazing things about the Preaching conference was the large number of women in attendance and women as presenters and preachers and lecturers. It was thrilling to see how God is using both women and men to lead their churches and their denominations to question the status quo about the acceptance of same-sex loving persons, transgender persons, those of a different racial or ethnic group, and more. God’s Spirit is alive and moving throughout the church in America in very progressive ways. Yes, there are those churches who do not share our progressive spirit, but it is glorious indeed to find out how many others do share our concerns and our convictions. I heard one amazing sermon on homophobia that will stay with me forever. It was preached by a woman pastor who knew all too well that many of her own church members didn’t share her conviction, but she preached the sermon anyway in a powerful and loving way. To demonstrate how society excludes others who should be included she told about how widowed women have been abused and excluded throughout the centuries. She told the story of a very young child, a girl in India whose parents had married her off to an old man as part of a business deal. After the wedding the girl continued to live with her parents in their home until she would be old enough to consummate the marriage.

However one morning this eight year old girl’s parents woke her up and told her that her husband had died and that they were taking her to the temple where the widows lived and where she would have to stay from then on, rejected by her family and her society because the husband she had never even known had died. At the widows’ temple lived several other women all of whom were supported financially by one of their number, a younger woman who was prostituted out in order to bring in the money they needed to live on. They began to groom the little girl to take her role as their financial provider when she became old enough. Though the laws in India eventually did change, there are places where it isn’t that different even today.

The book of Acts tells us the story of Tabitha a woman of good report and probable wealth who is referred to as a disciple of Christ, the first and only use of the feminine form of the word disciple in the new testament. She must have been a pretty amazing woman. We know the life of widows and orphans was horrible in the early first century. In most of the ancient world women had no right to own property or even conduct business, but Tabitha has an obvious ministry to the widows in her city, offering them clothing that she makes for them herself. She is caring for others in the name of Jesus who others think don’t deserve their time, their attention, or their love. A widow had nothing and nowhere to go if her children turned her out or if she had no children. But here we see a disciple of Christ caring for those on the edge of acceptability to the rest of society, saying to the widows, “I see you. I care for you. I love you.”

When Tabitha becomes ill and dies those to whom she has ministered call for Peter who is nearby to come and comfort them. Peter arrives and the women show him the clothing that Tabitha has made for them and tell him about her amazing ministry to them.
Peter asks to be alone with her body and then says to her, “Tabitha arise.” She is revived and gets up and joins her friends.

Why does Luke tell us this story? In the gospel of Luke Jesus goes to Jarius’ home and says to his little daughter who has died, “Talitha arise” and she revives and Jesus presents her to her unbelievably thrilled parents. Luke is telling us that even though Jesus isn’t physically with us any longer, the power and love of God that Christ brought to us is just as alive and just as present and powerful as it ever was. You and I may not be able to bring someone back from the dead, but we can give them the very presence and power of God through the way we love and care for them. Are you a follower of Christ? Then feed his lambs. Care for his sheep.

Interestingly enough when Peter departs from Tabitha’s home he goes to stay with Simon the Tanner. Because of Simon’s trade as one who handles the dead bodies and skins of animals he would not have been a very acceptable person in society. He would have been considered unclean and outside the boundaries of acceptability, but we see Peter going to his home and staying there with him.

Let me leave you with a passage from the book of Revelation. *

* Revelation 7: 9-17
........I had a vision of an enormous crowd, bigger than anyone could ever count. It was made up of people from every nation; from all the different ethnic groups, cultural groups and language groups. They were all standing together before the throne and before the Lamb of God. They were dressed in white robes and were waving banners and throwing flowers in the air. Their voices rose as one — an enormous roar — saying:
........“The life into which we have been saved
........belongs to our God who is seated on the throne,
........and to the Lamb of our God.”
Around the throne stood the four awesome creatures, and around them stood the twenty four elders, and around them stood all the angels. All together they fell to their knees before the throne, with their faces to the ground, and worshipped God, singing:
........“So say all of us!
........May glory and wisdom
........and gratitude and honor
........and authority and strength
........and every good thing
........be given to our God,
........from now to forever!
........So say all of us!
........Then one of the elders came and spoke to me, saying, “What can you tell me about these people in white robes? Who are they, and where have they come from?”
........I replied, “I’m not sure, Sir, but you have the answers.”
........Then he said to me, “These are the people who have come through the ultimate atrocity. They have been cleansed by the Lamb.

........For this reason they now have the privilege
................of gathering before the throne of God,
........and there in the Temple they serve God, day and night,
................and the one who is seated on the throne
........................provides them refuge and safe shelter.

........Never again will they go hungry;
................never again will they go thirsty;
........never again will they be burned by the sun,
................or left exposed to any searing heat.

........The Lamb who is at the centre of the throne
................has guided them through the wilderness
........................and will now care for them forever.
........He will wipe every tear from their eyes
................and guide them to crystal clear springs
........................where the water of life bubbles up freely.”

©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

God is saying to each one of us today: I see you. I care for you. I love you. God wants to give you a River of Life springing up inside of you so that you can face the challenges that life will bring to you and so you can know that God loves you no matter how unacceptable you may feel , no matter how unacceptable others might tell you that you are. And when you’ve been filled from that non-stop fountain of hope, you can become God’s gift of love to those who need your care and your presence in their lives this week. And you will be able to say to them:
“I see you. I care for you. I love you.”

Fishing, Following, and Feeding John 21:1-19

2010-04-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Touching Others: Fishing, Feeding, Following

I’ve said it several times over the last couple of weeks: “The Jesus that the disciples saw after the Resurrection was the same Jesus they had known before the Crucifixion.” They knew him by the way he spoke their names, by the way he blessed and broke bread at a meal, and by the way he tenderly cared for them in very personally specific ways…just like he had done for them before he was crucified. There was no question in their minds or their hearts about who the Risen Christ was. He was the same person they had always known and loved.

When my children were still young they would often crawl on the couch beside me to watch TV ask me to rub their back just like I had rubbed their back when they were an infant who I was trying to get to go to sleep. It was a ‘touch’ of love that they remembered and they wanted to experience it again because it said to them that I cared about them and reminded them that I loved them. I remember how my mother brushed the hair out of my eyes, or patted me on the back, or held my hand when she was alive. She did it in such a special way that even if I didn’t see who was touching me, I knew that it was my mother. I always enjoyed those moments with her because she did those things in exactly the same manner each time telling me that she hadn’t changed the way she felt about me and that she never would.

The interesting thing about such events in our lives, that is, when we remember or realize that another person truly does love us, truly does want to encourage us, is that these events usually occur in the ordinary occasions of life. Your Mom serving you breakfast and then brushing the hair out of your sleepy eyes. Your Dad sitting on the couch watching TV when you sit down beside him. Simply walking past a person you know during the preparation of a family meal and having them reach out to pat your back or take a moment to caress your cheek, and smile at you tenderly. These are the ordinary moments of our lives when we know beyond any doubt that we are truly loved.

Jesus came to the disciples in the ordinary moments of their lives: Sharing a meal, a fishing trip, a walk along the highway home, a moment in the garden. Jesus brought to them miracles of love and hope by what he did that was so extraordinary: a touch, a word, a prayer, cooking a meal for them on the beach. They could not mistake the ‘touch’ of the Master’s hand upon them.

Last week we reflected on Jesus’ first appearance to his followers recorded here in the book of John. They were huddled behind a locked door for fear of their very lives when Jesus appears to them, tells them to stop being afraid because he is with them, and breathes the Holy Spirit of God into them with his own breath recalling the Creation story from Genesis when God intimately breathed God’s Living Spirit into Adam and Eve. Jesus tells them that he is sending them into the world to care for others in exactly the same way that God had sent him to them. You would have thought that they would have been so excited about Jesus’ being alive again that they’d run and tell everyone they knew. But that’s not what happened.

As the story unfolded in the gospel of John, a week later we found them still hiding out behind that same locked door when Jesus appeared to them a second time. Jesus again tells them to stop being afraid that he is with them. Did they get it this time? Did they begin to follow his instruction to take the good news about how much God loves the world to everyone? Nope.

In today’s lectionary we find that Peter and at least six other of the disciples have decided to go fishing. Is this just a little retreat from the stress or is this a return to their former occupations as fishermen? This story reminds us that it was in just such a situation that Jesus first encountered Peter, and John, and James who were professional fishermen when he called them to follow him and become fishers of men and women. Is this just an accidental occurrence, or is this the author of John trying to tell us something special about what it means to be a true follower of Jesus, a true fisher of men and women?

Many of us have gone to church hoping to find something different, something new, something hopeful and helpful. Over the years we may have frequently even volunteered our time and efforts, gotten involved in what seemed to be exciting opportunities of hope and love and community. But when problems came up, when other people didn’t act so Christian toward us or others, when difficulties became too stressful, we pulled out of the situation and we may have told God, “Well, God, that was certainly exciting while it lasted, but I didn’t get involved to be misunderstood and abused. Thanks for the good times, but I think I’m not the one you want for this job. So if you don’t mind, God, I’m going to go back to life as it used to be for me.”

Perhaps that was the feeling of these disciples: “That was sure an exciting ride, Jesus. Wow, did you ever surprise us with that resurrection thing! But it also scared us and we’re not so sure we want that kind of stress in our lives any longer. You can’t blame us. I mean look at what they did to you. Maybe they’ll do the same thing to us. Our lives aren’t safe anymore, not especially if we keep hanging on to what you told us and what you asked us to do. Sooner or later they’ll be coming after us and it wouldn’t do any good for us to get ourselves killed would it? So, if you don’t mind, we’re just going to go back to our fishing jobs, at least we know what to expect when we’re fishing.”

And so these fishermen, these former followers of Jesus, go back to what they knew before they met Jesus, they go back to fishing. Only there is a slight problem. These professional fishermen, these guys who know all about how to fish and all about the fish, work all night long throwing their nets out into the waters where the fish ought to be, but they find that their nets remained empty. Not even one small fish accidentally got caught in their nets. The author of the story is trying to tell us something: Something very important for us to understand. Without God in your life you can’t do much of anything, even those things you thought you were so good at doing. If God is absent from your life, then your life is empty and without purpose and without real affect.

It’s early morning when these former disciples decide to head back to shore, depressed at their failure to find fish, wondering what went wrong, what they did wrong, when a man on the shore calls out to them. “Throw your nets on the other side of the boat.” Who is this guy and what does he think he is doing? We’re professional fishermen. We know how to fish these waters. If we can’t catch any fish it’s because the fish went somewhere else. They’ll be back tomorrow night. But the man persists, “Throw out your nets on the other side of the boat.”

Finally, the disciples follow this man’s directives. We don’t know why. They’ve been at this task all night long. What would one more throw of the nets cost them? Not much. So they toss the nets out one more time and this time the nets are suddenly filled to overflowing, more than all of them together could pull into the boat.

Uh, Oh. Suddenly it dawns on them. The guy on the shore, the one who told them to try the other side of the boat, he’s not just anybody, he is somebody. He is Jesus. Peter realizes this and streamlines his clothing for swimming by tucking his shirt into his britches and he dives into the lake and swims for shore. The other disciples bring in the boat trailing the nets full of fish.

They find Jesus cooking them breakfast on the beach. He’s done quite a bit of preparation. He’s even baking them bread. He’s got some fish, too, baking on the coals of the fire. A charcoal fire, just like the one that Peter warmed himself beside on the night Jesus was arrested, the same night when Peter betrayed that he even knew Jesus three times.

Peter is suddenly full of strength and pulls the huge catch of fish in the nets onto the shore all by himself. Quite a feat when before all of the disciples together with Peter couldn’t pull the net into their boat. The net if full of whoppers, 153 fish in all, a number that is the same as all the known nations and governments of the world at that time. John is making a statement about God’s love for all the diversity of the world, not just for one small tribe, one small nation. God’s love is for all people everywhere. God’s intention is to bring all people to God through the efforts of those who are true followers of Christ.

They know this guy must be Jesus, but they are too afraid to ask him. And they don’t need to ask. He is doing for them what Jesus has always done for them. He is caring for their human needs by cooking and serving them breakfast, just like he had washed their feet, and served them a meal at the last supper before he was arrested. He breaks the bread the same way that he had done then. He asks God to bless the meal the same way he asked God to bless all the meals they had eaten together over the last three years. This is Jesus. Jesus is feeding them the same way Jesus has fed them many times before.

Jesus knows our hearts. And Jesus knows that Peter is hurting. Big time hurt. Peter can probably think of nothing right now except how he betrayed Jesus on the night he was arrested. How he denied he knew Jesus beside a charcoal fire just like this one with which Jesus has prepared their breakfast.

Jesus speaks to Peter: Simon, son of John, do you love me above anyone else?” And Peter answers, “Yes, Great One. You know that I love you.” And Jesus responds, “Then feed my lambs just like I’ve fed you.”

Then Jesus asks again, “Are you sure, Simon, son of John, do you really love me?” How it must have hurt to have Jesus ask him a second time if he loved him. I can imagine the tears welling in Peter’s eyes and the dryness that must have come to his throat, “Yes, Great One, you know that I love you.” And Jesus responds, “Well then, take care of my sheep just like I have taken care of you.”

Then Jesus asks him a third time, “Simon, son of John, do you truly love?”

The author of John’s gospel then tells us that Peter is hurt that Jesus keeps asking him the same question. Have you ever been in such a situation? Someone repeatedly keeps asking you the same question to really find out if you meant what you said. It’s easy to respond and tell someone what you think they want to hear, it’s something else when you really tell them what you think and feel yourself. Jesus wants to know what Peter is really thinking and feeling. Jesus wants an honest answer from Peter, not just the answer that Peter thinks he should give, but the answer that speaks from Peter’s heart and soul of Peter’s true feelings for Jesus and all that Jesus is asking Peter to do. That’s the kind of answer God wants from us when God puts a question mark in our hearts.

If I had been Peter, I would be weeping profusely by now, weeping tears of shame and grief at what I had done. But Jesus does not want Peter to be shamed nor grieved. Jesus wants Peter to experience resurrection within himself. Jesus wants Peter to begin living as a real Easter person on the right side of the Resurrection. Jesus wants Peter to come out of the grave just like Lazarus did and truly begin to live his life in the power and presence of God.

Peter answers for the third time, “Great One, you know all things and you know just how very much that I love you.”

Then Jesus tells him once more, “Feed my sheep just like I have fed you.”

That would be a great ending to this story. But Jesus goes on to tell Peter than Peter will face death. Peter has been afraid of what the future might hold for him if he follows Jesus, if he does what Jesus is asking him to do, “Feed my Sheep. Care for my followers just like I’ve cared for you.”

Jesus then says to Peter, the same thing he said to Peter three years earlier when they met on the beach beside the shores of Lake Galilee, “Follow me.”

One cannot follow Jesus until one understands that following Jesus might cost you your very life. Oh, we may not have to face martyrdom like Peter eventually did, we may not have to literally die for Christ, but then, there are many kinds of death: emotional and spiritual to name just two. Difficulties and stress go with being a follower of Christ. It’s not always going to be easy to do the right thing, sometimes it will take tears and loving confrontation before we do the right thing for God.

It is only when we have made a full and complete commitment of our own lives, our own hearts and souls to God through Jesus Christ, that we will be able to truly care for others in the name of Jesus. It is only when we have tuned our lives so completely to the power and presence of Jesus living within us that we will be able to feed his sheep, to touch others in the same way that Jesus touched them.

A blind man came to church a former church of mine one day and was greeted by the ushers and pastors who introduced themselves and shook his hands. He had been invited by a friend who was a member of our congregation. I introduced myself to him and shook his hand. Just then his friend came up to him and without saying a word to him took the blind man’s hand and gripped it firmly and then put his other hand on top of their two hands and patted gently. The blind man immediately smiled and said, “Hi, Marshall.” Later I asked the blind man how he had known that Marshall was the one shaking his hand when Marshall had said nothing to him. The man smiled at me and said, “It was the way he touched me. No one else touches me like Marshall does.”

Touch others in the name of Jesus because no one else can touch them exactly the way that you do

Full Text Sermon: Stop Being Afraid

2010-04-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

It’s very difficult to live life on the upbeat all the time. Some days we are exhausted and even trying to be upbeat is close to impossible. Some days we are so overwhelmed with grief or beaten down by illness or physical pain that we despair thinking that there will never come a day when we could even smile again. Many are dealing with the loss of jobs, the failure to find a job after months of looking, or the impossibility of trying to make meager financial sources stretch to cover current expenses, maybe even facing homelessness due to failure of adequate income. Some days we just want to go into our own room, lock the doors behind us so that no one can disturb us and suffer in silence.

That’s sort of the place the disciples found themselves after the death of Christ. They went to the house of one of their community in the area of Jerusalem and locked the doors behind them, afraid for their lives, despairing over the lost vision of the fantastic future they had imagined because their leader was now dead. Even when Mary came to bring the news that she had seen Christ alive they didn’t change their behavior much. They didn’t throw the door open wide and steam out into the city to declare him alive. Nope, they stayed right where they were, and probably tried to convince Mary she was just being hysterical.

Suddenly, despite the locked door, Jesus appears in the room with them and for the first time tells them, “Peace be still.” Then the author of the Gospel of John tells us that Christ breathes his holy spirit into them, telling them to go out into the world and love and care for others just like God had sent Christ. This is John’s Pentecost when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit of God, breathed into them, just like God had breathed into Adam and Eve at their Creation. Christ was giving them Christ’s presence and power to go out and take God’s love to a suffering world.

He also speaks about forgiveness, probably the hardest thing to talk about in any church, even harder than sex and money.

Thomas comes back to the room. He’s been out. Apparently he’s not afraid leave that locked room, but he is disappointed that Christ appeared to the rest of the followers of Jesus but not to him. Basically he says to them, ‘I won’t believe what you are telling me until I, too, can see him and touch him, and feel the wounds in his body.’

When we grieve we can get pretty particular about what we want in order to give up our grief. I’ve sat in hospital waiting rooms holding up faith and hope for others while a beloved person undergoes surgery following an accident or due to and illness. I’ve heard people say, “I won’t believe she is okay until I see her walk out of this hospital on her own. I won’t believe God can heal him until I can hug him and see that he is okay for myself.” When we grieve we can make some mighty big demands upon God and upon ourselves.

Do you notice something rather interesting about this story. What did those followers of Jesus do after Christ appears to them and breathes the Holy Spirit into them? Not much. Even Jesus appearing to them alive didn’t get them to budge out of that room. A week later we find them still hiding behind closed and locked doors, but this time Thomas is present. Jesus comes again. Jesus tells them once more “Peace be with you.” In other words, “Stop being afraid!”

Why do you think they are still afraid? I remember growing up and my mother saying to me when I had been rather disobedient, “Just wait until your father gets home, young man.” My father was a rather violent disciplinarian when I was little. He changed over the years and you would not know the gentle person he is today is even the same person who disciplined so violently as a child. Now, Pastor Ray, just what does that memory of yours got to do with the disciples in the upper room. Plenty.

They were afraid of being arrested and killed by the Sanhedrin and the Romans for being followers of the condemned man Jesus. Rightly so. I would have been, too. Why stop the killing with just Jesus? Why not go after the whole bunch of them and get rid of the insurrection with a mass arrest and a mass killing. It wouldn’t have been the first time the Romans acted in such a manner. I’m sure they had heard the news reports and the rumors.

Then Jesus appears to them alive again. As my grandmother would have said that must have scared the be-jesus right out of them. First of all, if the Romans didn’t get it right the first time they killed Jesus, perhaps they will come after Jesus again, and who among them is safe if it becomes known that Jesus has returned and has been in your home with you? But…that isn’t the most scary thing about this whole situation.

What’s really scary is thinking about what Jesus will do to you. Sure it’s a childish thought, be we all have them. If Jesus can command life into being even after dying, what kind of power does Christ have over you, over the very followers that professed to be loyal to him, but who deserted Jesus at the moment of his crisis?

Will Jesus punish Peter for betraying him, not once mind you, but three times? Will Jesus discipline the disciples for running away and hiding? Just what will this Risen Christ do to them? Remember they lived in a society where people believed that the gods of the world could and did come into your life and punish you for your misbehavior; in much the same fashion that a violent father will beat his children for disobedience.

We know now that is not how God works in our lives. We also know that when we read the stories in the Old Testament about a vengeful, wrathful God that those stories reflect more the immature reasoning of primitive people. From other more reasoned scriptures we know that God works with us in love and truth to give us opportunities for New Life, to give us a chance to start over again, without the failures of the past haunting us. Like a loving parent of a toddler learning how to walk, when we fall down God picks us up, puts us back on our feet, gently brushes the dust off our clothes and tells us to try again.

However, many of us still live our lives in fear of God like frightened children who have just been told, “You just wait until your Father comes home.” We believe that God will somehow be forced into punishing us for our misbehavior or our wrong decisions. People ask me all the time, “Why is God doing this to me? What have I done that is so bad that God would punish me this way?”

Listen to me, carefully, God doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t intentionally punish you for disobeying God. It may seem like that to you, but that is a childish immature reaction, and it is not based on the truth about how our God works with us. Instead the scriptures tell us that God loves us and wants to demonstrate that love for us by giving us God’s power and presence and another chance to start all over again even when we or others screw up our lives.

It’s hard to change our behavior, our thinking, and our mis-perceptions of life even when we are looking square into the face of a miracle. We linger in the past, hesitant to move on into the future, even when the future seems so bright and so full of hope.

I once asked a depressed friend why she kept herself hidden away in her home and refused to engage with those who loved her and wanted her to heal and return to a productive life again. She said, “I’m comfortable here. No one bothers me. No one is asking me to do anything or go anywhere. I like being left alone.” I also suspect she was afraid to face the unknown of life beyond her home where you never know what is going to happen to you. It’s safe living behind closed and locked doors, even if you have few opportunities for real living.

But just like the disciples, Jesus won’t leave us alone in our despair. Jesus keeps coming back into our lives again and again bringing hope and a vision for a future full of possibilities and life. Jesus wants to give us a New Life in God’s New Community with our New Chosen Family of Faithful Friends. Sometimes we feel Christ’s presence as no more than a nagging feeling to get up and unlock the door to our heart, unlock the door to our life and welcome Christ and friends back in to be with us. Sustained by their love and care we again are able to think about moving beyond the closed doors and back out into life.

The disciples took the challenge Christ gave them. They moved beyond the closed and locked doors and out into their city and eventually across the whole Roman Empire. Centuries later we are the living legacies to their faithful witness of Christ’s Love for all people everywhere.

Whatever overwhelms you this morning, know that God can and will come into the midst of your fear and say to you, “My Peace be with you. Don’t be afraid.”

Whatever doubts churn in your mind, whatever sins trouble your conscience, God can and will come into your life and say to you, “My Peace be with you. Don’t be afraid.”

Whatever pain and worries bind you up, whatever walls you have put up or doors you have locked securely, God comes into your life anyway, and says to you, “My Peace be with you. Don’t be afraid.”

Whatever hunger or need you feel deep in your soul, God wants to call us to this table today, to feed us well, and to send us out into a world to be God’s justice, God’s peace, God’s salt and light, God’s love and hope for the world.

We can do it! You know we can do it! But only if we keep our eye, and minds, and hearts open and willing to love others just as we have been overwhelmed by the love of God.

As God sent Jesus into the world, so God sends us this day. My Peace is with you. Don’t be afraid.

Why don’t you take the challenge this week: Unlock and open the doors to your life. Take the Peace that Christ offers. Stop being afraid! Begin to enjoy life again. Begin to move out into the world sharing the Love of Christ with all you meet.

Stop Being Afraid

2010-04-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

It’s very difficult to live life on the upbeat all the time. Some days we are exhausted and even trying to be upbeat is close to impossible. Some days we are so burdened with grief or beaten down by illness or physical pain that we despair their will ever come a day when we could even smile again. Many are dealing with the loss of jobs, the failure to find a job after months of looking, or the impossibility of trying to make meager financial sources stretch to cover expenses, maybe even facing homelessness due to failure of adequate income. Some days we just want to go into our own room, close and lock the doors and suffer in silence.

That’s sort of the place the disciples found themselves after the death of Christ (See John 20:19-31). They went to a house and closed and locked the doors afraid for their lives, despairing over the lost vision of a happy future with their now dead leader. Even when Mary came to bring the news that she had seen Christ alive they didn’t change their behavior much. Later in the day Jesus appears to them, even breathes his holy spirit into them, but what do they do after that experience? A week later we find them still hiding behind closed and locked doors when Jesus comes again. Jesus told them “Peace be with you.” In other words, “Stop being afraid!”

It’s hard to change our behavior and our perceptions of life even when we are looking square into the face of a miracle. We linger in the past, hesitant to move on into the future, even when the future seems so bright and full of hope. I once asked a depressed friend why she kept herself hidden away in her home and refused to engage with those who loved her and wanted her to heal and return to a productive life again. She said, “I’m comfortable here. No one bothers me. No one is asking me to do anything or go anywhere. I like being left alone.” I also suspect she was afraid to face the unknown of life beyond her home where you never know what is going to happen to you. It’s safe living behind closed and locked doors, even if you have few opportunities for real living.

But just like the disciples, Jesus won’t leave us alone in our despair. Jesus keeps coming back into our lives again and again bringing hope and a vision for a future full of possibilities and life. Jesus wants to give us a New Life in God’s New Community with our New Chosen Family of faithful friends. Sometimes we feel Christ’s presence as no more than a nagging feeling to get up and open the door to our heart, to our life and let others come back in to be with us. Sustained by their love and care we again are able to think about moving beyond the closed doors and back out into life.

The disciples took the challenge Christ gave them. They moved beyond the closed and locked doors and out into their city and eventually across the Roman Empire and ultimately we are the living witness to their faithful witness of Christ’s Love for all people everywhere.

Why don’t you take the challenge this week: Unlock and open the doors to your life. Stop being afraid. Take the Peace that Christ offers. Stop being afraid! Begin to enjoy life again. Begin to move out into the world sharing the Love of Christ with all you meet. It’s at least something to think about.

Easter Sunday Sermon 2010: "I Don't Think So!"

2010-04-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

Though I’m very glad to hear that our country’s armed forces will begin to deal with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in a new way, I can’t wait for the day when Queer People will be able to serve openly without fear of discovery in our military. Great changes are happening in our society for which I am thankful to God. However, this past week as I’ve read and listened to the news about the sexual abuse of children by priests, and the threat of death for Queer persons living in Uganda, I’ve been perplexed and vexed by many of the comments made by political leaders, elected officials, ordained ministers, Bishops of the Vatican, scape-goating the issues they are really facing by condemning members of the Queer Community or implying that the victims of crimes are the ones to blame for the embarrassment of the Catholic Church. The comments tell me that these leaders seem to feel that if persons like you and I didn’t exist then their lives wouldn’t be so difficult and the issues they have to deal with would be less complicated. The fact is, our absence wouldn’t make any difference in the issues or difficulties they face, they just can’t bring themselves to admit that and so instead of looking critically at their own selves, they choose to attack us instead. Jesus understood this kind of behavior and Jesus understood the way you and I feel when we are blamed and condemned simply for being who we are exactly the way God created us.

This is Holy Week when we focus on the Passion of Jesus and remember his Crucifixion and, more importantly, his Resurrection by God to new life. The religious and political leaders of his day thought that Jesus was the problem and that if they could just get rid of Jesus then they would not have to face the difficulties he confronted them with, nor the issues that he was pointing out to them through teaching and his hands-on-ministry to the people who lived on the edges of society, those people whom the religious authorities felt justified to ignore and exclude.

Jesus, however was a boundary crosser who made it dramatically clear that God loves everyone and excludes no one by eating with so-called sinners and outcasts, by healing the sick and radically pronouncing their sins forgiven. Jesus wouldn’t let the criticisms and threats of those in power stop him from proclaiming God’s Good News and the truth about God’s New Community. Jesus wasn’t preaching about a Heavenly Banquet that everyone would go to someday in some far distant future. They could have coped with that. The far distant future wasn’t a threat to them in the here and now. But Jesus had the audacity to preach about the establishment of a New Community of Hope and Joy in the here and now. That would mean that they would have to change and change wasn’t something they wanted to deal with. So they decided to get rid of Jesus.

One of the commentators I read this week said this: “I keep remembering a little poem called "Anyway": a man named Kent Keith wrote it, but they say that Mother Teresa had it framed on her wall, and she certainly was someone who knew something about suffering and faithfulness (and doubt, we have later come to understand) and, I suspect, resurrection and new life, too. Like Mother Teresa (probably the only way I resemble her!), I too have this poem framed on my office wall, and I really should get up out of my chair and read it more often. It says, for example, "People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway! The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway! Honesty makes you vulnerable. Be honest anyway! What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway! People really need help but may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway! If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway!" Kathryn Matthews Huey
Steward for Public Life Congregational Vitality and Discipleship Ministry Team Local Church Ministries UMC

Dear brothers and sisters, with Jesus as our example, we should never stop trying to bring about the New Community of God in our own time and place. Bold actions on our part are called for, just as bold action was Christ’s way of dealing with his critics.

The disciples had a choice when Jesus died. They could return to their lives as they were before they had met Jesus, before they learned that there was a different way to think about and relate to God than they had previously experienced. And when the news about Jesus’ resurrection began to be told, they still had a choice to ignore the truth as mere rumor and the imagination of grief stricken women or to act on the joy and hope of Christ’s resurrection and begin to bring about the New Community of God.

Yes, they could have remembered what Jesus said and how Jesus acted and they could have stopped right there…just a good old memory that could be taken out whenever you felt lonely or depressed like a modern day photo album. Or they could claim that the resurrected Jesus was the same Jesus speaking the same words of hope and love, the same Jesus touching lives with power and promise, as the Jesus who had walked along with them before the Crucifixion.

We sometimes concentrate on the differences that happened to Jesus with the resurrection, but this Easter I would like you to remember that the same Jesus that walked and talked and cared for disciples and strangers was exactly the same Jesus that rose from the grave and was seen and heard by his followers.

Jesus’ resurrection like his life was very intimate, very personal. Jesus had very special ways of talking and touching, of acting and caring that no one would mistake him for anyone else. Have you ever noticed how you can identify that a friend or co-worker is approaching by the unique click of their shoes on the tile of the floor? Or the way they breathe or cough or laugh? You know those who are close to you by the way they live, the way they act, the way they speak, they way they touch you physically and emotionally. So, too, did Jesus’ followers both men and women.

Mary is distraught with grief. She finds an empty tomb. She is so overwhelmed with sorrow that I don’t think she realized the guys in the tomb that spoke to her were angels. At least she doesn’t act that way and her questions to the man she thinks to be the gardener shows she is still on a quest to find Jesus’ body. If Jesus was really dead then it was very important to her to find the body. It had to lie in the tomb for at least a year until nothing was left but the bones. Then the bones were buried together so that they might take on new flesh at the resurrection at the end of time. If the body was moved or the bones disturbed then might be scattered and that just wasn’t something that was done.

Mary is intent on giving Jesus a nice burial and making sure that his bones aren’t disturbed. I get it. When my daughter died I kept getting phone calls from family and friends asking me when we were going to put the headstone in place on her grave. They didn’t like it that we didn’t erect the monument to her memory as fast as they thought that we should. Their memory of her was important to them and they wanted a place to go where they could pull out the mental photo albums and replay her life in their minds and in their hearts. That’s what Mary wanted to do, too. It’s part of how we deal with grief as human beings.

But Mary doesn’t need that kind of a place to go to remember Jesus. Mary hasn’t yet comprehended the fact that Jesus’ missing body is telling her a very different story than the one she has imagined as being the truth. Mary doesn’t even see that the man speaking to her is Jesus. Perhaps her eyes are so blurred with tears of grief that she can’t focus them and really see Jesus.

I understand that kind of grief. I’ve buried a parent a daughter and a daughter in law. I’ve grieved with four of my grandchildren at the deaths of their mothers. Grief makes you oblivious to anything and anyone else. But when Jesus speaks here name, the same way she has heard him call her name many times before, the truth sinks into her deeply and she responds by calling him, “Great One.” Mary identifies the Living Christ as the same Jesus she knew before the Crucifixion. Can you imagine her joy? Peter and that other disciple may have ignored poor Mary in her grief, leaving her in the garden to cry alone. But Jesus didn’t ignore her. However, I bet those same disciples couldn’t ignore her when she burst into the room that second time that morning shouting, “Hallelujah, I have seen the Great One. Jesus lives!”

Jesus used this intimate way of identifying himself to those who knew him intimately more than just one time. That same day on the road to Emmaus two of the disciples, fleeing Jerusalem and the terror they had experienced, filled with grief, meet a stranger on the road who walks with them for several miles without recognizing. He teaches them about the Christ from the scriptures. When they arrive at their home they invite him into their home. Then when he breaks bread and prays with them before their meal…exactly the same way Jesus had broken bread and prayed with them many times before their hearts and their eyes were opened and they realized that the Jesus they had known before the Crucifixion was the very same Jesus that was breaking bread and praying with them that night. They, too, like Mary were filled with Joy and Hope and they got up and ran all the way back to Jerusalem in the middle of the night to tell the other disciples that Jesus was alive! Can’t you hear them shouting as they pounded on the door in the middle of the night, “Hallelujah, Jesus is alive!” What a joy filled place that house must have been!

Part B: The political and religious powers of ancient Israel and Rome thought they had given the final word about Jesus by condemning him to death. Now they were sure that everything he had represented and taught would die, too. They dusted off their hands and thought that was the end of the matter. Kill the man, kill what he taught and represented. But God had something very different in mind. And when they killed Jesus and buried him, thinking him no longer a problem, no longer a nuisance, God boldly said, “NO! I don’t think so! That is not the end of this story!”

God resurrected Jesus to continue his ministry and his life, to encourage his followers to keep on working to see that New Community of God would come into existence through God’s power and God’s presence living in and through them every single day of their lives.

We may not like what some politicians and religious leaders say about us. We may not like how easy it is for them to reject and condemn whole segments of our population on the basis of sexuality, gender, race, ethnic background, political persuasion, economic power, age, or mental or physical abilities. But those self-righteous politicians and religious leaders don’t get to have the final word on the matter. God does! And God says to all of us, “I am not done with you yet.”

And how will God have that final word? Through you and me when we speak up and act up on behalf of those who aren’t given a voice in the world, who are ignored and excluded, unemployed and homeless, handicapped and unable to work, or arrested and condemned simply because they are different from those who are in power. Stand up and be counted! Speak up for God and God’s people. Act up for God and God’s people!

How do we celebrate Easter? By praising God for God’s actions, of course. Yes! By thanking God for rising Jesus up from the grave to new life everlasting. Of course! But also by taking bold actions ourselves on behalf of God, for the purpose of building the New Community of God in the here and now.

How did the disciples react to Christ’s resurrection? Read the rest of their story in the Book of Acts. Read how they began a movement that includes you and me today, two thousand years later. They didn’t just go back home unchanged. They set out to change their world so drastically that others said they had ‘turned the world upside down.’ I’d like to think they finally turned it right side up by Bringing God’s kind of Love, Hope, and Joy to all people.

Today, dear friends, today is the day of Resurrection! Today, brothers and sisters of Christ, today is the day of Gods kind of Love, Hope, Peace and Joy! Will we act like it tomorrow? Or will we just go back to our own lives as if it never happened, as if nothing is different? Will Easter become merely a good old memory that we take out every once in awhile like an old photo album to relive the moment again? It’s not enough to remember the good ol’ days, we should be in the business of creating more good ol’ days for those that come after us.

How do you know that Jesus is alive? By the way Jesus touches people through your hands, your voice, and your life. There is an old hymn that begins, “Let others see Jesus in you.” Today, decide to let Jesus live through you. Let Jesus minister to those who need Christ’s touch in their lives through you. And, while you are at it, don’t forget to let us be Christ to you, too!

What do you do with Easter? (Lectionary Year C)

2010-03-31T10:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve been perplexed and vexed by comments made by political leaders, elected officials, ordained ministers, the Vatican, and others, scape-goating the issues they are really facing by condemning Gay People (read: gay, lesbian, transgender, bi-sexual, inter-sexed, etc.). They seem to feel that if we didn’t exist then their lives wouldn’t be so difficult and the issues they have to deal with would be less complicated. The fact is, our absence wouldn’t make any difference in the issues or difficulties they face, they just can’t bring themselves to admit that and so they attack us instead of themselves.

This is Holy Week when we focus on the Passion of Jesus and remember his Crucifixion and Resurrection. The leaders of his day thought that if they could just get rid of Jesus then they would not face the issues and difficulties that he was pointing out to them through his ministry to the people who lived on the edges of society, the people those leaders thought they could ignore and exclude. But Jesus made it dramatically very clear that God loves everyone and excludes no one by eating with so-called sinners and outcasts, by healing the sick and forgiving sins. Jesus wouldn’t let the criticisms and threats of those in power stop him from proclaiming God’s Good News and the truth about God’s New Community that he was trying to establish…and nor should you or I stop working to bring about that New Community of God in our own time and place.

The disciples had a choice when Jesus died. They could return to their lives as they were before they had met Jesus, before they learned that there was a different way to think about and relate to God than they had previously experienced. When the news about Jesus’ resurrection began to be told, they still had a choice to ignore the truth or to act on the truth and begin to bring about the New Community of God. They could have remembered what Jesus said and how Jesus acted and it could have stopped right there…just a good old memory that could be taken out whenever you felt lonely or depressed. Or they could claim that the resurrected Jesus was the same Jesus speaking the same words or hope and love, the same Jesus touching lives with power and promise, as the Jesus who had walked along with them before the Crucifixion.

We sometimes concentrate on the differences that happened to Jesus with the resurrection, but this Easter I would like you to remember that the same Jesus that walked and talked and cared for disciples and strangers was exactly the same Jesus that rose from the grave and was seen and heard by his followers.

The political and religious powers of ancient Israel gave their final word by condemning Jesus and everything he had represented and taught to death. They thought that was the end of the matter. But God had something very different in mind. And when they killed Jesus and buried him, thinking him no longer a problem, no longer a nuisance, God boldly said, “NO! I don’t think so!” And God resurrected Jesus to continue his ministry and his life, to encourage his followers to keep on working to see that New Community of God come into existence through God’s power and God’s presence every single day of their lives.

We may not like what politicians and religious leaders say about us. We may not like how easy it is for them to reject whole segments of our population on the basis of sexuality, gender, race, ethnic background, political persuasion, economic power, mental or physical abilities, etc., but they don’t get to have the final word on the matter. God does! And how will God have that final word? Through you and me when we speak up and act up on behalf of those who aren’t given a voice in the world, who are ignored and excluded, arrested and condemned simply because they are different from those who are in power.

How do we celebrate Easter? By praising God for God’s actions, of course. But also by taking bold actions ourselves on behalf of God, for the purpose of building the New Community of God in the here and now by standing up and speaking out and acting up on behalf of all the people living on the edges of society. It’s at least something to think about.

Getting Jesus Right--Lent 5, Year C

2010-03-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

We are often so self-righteous about our behavior and our thinking that we need a 'spiritual' slap across the face to get ourselves in a better position to listen to God. How many times in life have you thought you had the right answer to a particular situation or problem only to discover later that you were completely off base and not really focused on the truth of the situation? Suddenly something someone else says or does opens you up to a brand new revelation and you have an "Ahh-ha!" moment as your thinking and feeling is readjusted to a new point. I like to call that a "Spiritual Tune-up."

This week's Gospel Reading comes from John 12:1-8 and tells the story of Jesus returning to the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha not long after he has raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus and Lazarus are under threat for their lives from the ruling priests and other religious leaders. Many people are now following Jesus and they fear that Jesus and his followers will upset the way things are and that the foreign Roman government ruling over them will dismiss them from their own positions of power.

Here in the home of this very unconventional family: a single man and his two single sisters...a Queer Family if you will...Jesus, also a single man, returns to his chosen family for rest and renewal. Some scholars even believe that Lazarus is the "Beloved Disciple" that the gospel writer refers to in the book of John. We know that Jesus is intimately connected to this family and has chosen their home as his base of operation when he is in the Jerusalem area. Those of us in the LGBT community can fully understand the importance of our "Chosen Family," those friends we have developed as part of our experience and life in Queerdom. Often our Chosen Family is more important to us than our family of birth, especially if that birth family has rejected us or harrassed and condemned us for being sexually oriented differently than they desire for us to be.

Can you imagine the emotions that must be at play as Jesus returns to this home? Here sitting with them again is the one who brought their brother back from the dead. Here is the man who did the impossible. Here is the Messiah, come from God, and he's eating and talking witht them. Mary, moved with what I can only describe as passionate thanksgiving and supreme adoration, takes a bottle of very expensive perfume...worth a year's wages, probably her 'trust fund' in case something did ever happen to Lazarus and she had no one else to support her...and pours it out onto Jesus' feet, massaging his feet and wiping the oil from his feet with her long hair, an extremely intimate and almost erotic kind of action. There are very deep emotions flowing here.

Some who were present that evening are offended by Mary's behavior and criticize her wastefulness of the costly perfume in such a disturbing...to them...demonstration of love for Jesus. Why we could have used it to feed the poor...or built a new chapel...or paid the pastor's salary...or sent a missionary to Africa. There is always something that needs to be done, there is no doubt about that. But Mary ignored all that kind of so-called important thinking and truly spent a very emotionally necessary moment adoring her Savior, for he literally was the one who saved her from what would have happened to her if her brother had remained dead. Jesus meant all the world to her at this moment and she took the time to focus her attention on him, and only on him.

What was Jesus' response to her actions? He accepted her adoration and claimed that generations throughout history would remember what she had done for him before he died. She annointed his body with oils prior to his death, which was coming soon. He was loving and kind in his acceptance of her sacrificial gift to him.

How much time have you spent this week truly focusing your thinking and feeling on Jesus? What sacrifice have you made in your own life to demonstrate that God is supreme in your life? Have you spent time with God in prayer, in Bible study, in reflection finding the peace within yourself that only God in Christ can give to you?

I encourage you this week to be extravagant in your praise and adoration of God in Christ Jesus. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks about what you are doing. Lose yourself in praising God. Remember: Like Jeus was to Mary, God wants to be just as accepting, and extravagant in love toward you...even more so. It's at least something to think about.

The Amazing Grace of a Prodigal Parent: Lent 4 Year C

2010-03-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

This week's lectionary uses Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son as an example of the kind of grace and love that God pours out upon us. The parable might more appropriately be entitled "The Prodigal Parent." The word prodigal means 'extravagantly wasteful' which describes both the young man's spending of his inheritance and also the father's demonstration of love toward his son upon the son's return.

If you read the passage in Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 you will quickly see that Jesus is dealing with Religious leaders who feel that Jesus is hanging out with the wrong kinds of people, with those that they find unacceptable to themselves and who they also wish to define as unacceptable to God. So Jesus tells them a story about a horrible son, a child who goes against all that is acceptable to their society by behaving in an unthinkable manner and demands that his father give to him his portion of the estate that would be left to him when his father dies. This is basically the same thing as saying, "Drop dead, Dad...and do it right now." In order to fulfill the son's request...something the father does and which would have been not only outrageous to Jesus' listeners, but totally unexpected of a Jewish father in that society...the father apparently divides his property in half and gives each son a half. Law said only one-third would go to the youngest son, while the oldest son would get two-thirds of the inheritance.

The younger boy apparently converts his property into cash, again a horrendous kind of action because you did not sell the family farmland as it was entrusted to you for future generations as a gift from God, departs with his wealth and spends it recklessly. He went to a Gentile city and hung out with unclean Gentile people. Soon he is destitute and must go to work for a pig farmer in order to stay alive, the worst kind of employment a Jewish man could have taken in that society. It would have made this sinful and unacceptable boy completely unclean. No one could have wanted such a person in their community, let alone in their home. Faced with starvation the boy decides to go home and offer himself to his father as a servant on the farm reasoning that his father treats his servants better than the boy is being treated by his own employer.

Off the child goes back home. Now Jesus' listeners would have expected the father to reject the son and kick him back out, but there is another turn of events, another unexpected action by a character within this story. The father has been watching for the return of the son and upon seeing him walking toward the house, the father runs out to him and embraces him and bestows upon the son all of the honors reserved only for a beloved, well-behaved child. This would have been a horrendous situation to the listeners. How could this father do this after all the son has done to hurt the father? And most important of all, if you notice, the son never got to tell the father that he was sorry for what he had done. No real repentance if you read the story carefully, just pure and simple self-preservation on the boy's part knowing his father would at least feed him and he wouldn't starve. That's not real repentance. And anyway, the boy never even gets to tell any part of his story because the father overwhelms him with love, care, restoration, hope and a future. This is, if you will, a glimpse of the resurrection Jesus himself will experience in a short while.

Many teach that in order to receive God's love and blessings we must repent, we must enumerate our sins and beg God to forgive us, throwing ourselves upon God's mercy. Many think that some so-called sins by their definition are so horrible as to almost cause God to fail to forgive anyone who commits those sins. Homosexuality, pre-marital sex, pregnancy out of wedlock, divorce, and more have all been treated almost as unforgiveable 'sins' by many on the religious right. But even with such "unspeakable and horrible" sins we have the reassurance from this parable that God goes running past those who say God cannot act in love toward such sinners, and we see God embracing all persons with God's amazing grace, enfolding them with God's unlimited love, and restoring them to their rightful place as God's own children.

The young man in this story was loved by the father before he demanded his own way, before he left home, in the same way that he was greeted and loved and welcomed back home when he did return. Jesus' story is about an unthinkable, extravagant loving parent who exceeds all social standards to demonstrate love for the child. I think Jesus is trying to tell us that there is nobody who falls outside of the boundaries of God's love and grace. God's love and grace are truly Amazing and beyond expectation and belief. God is truly prodigal in God's love for you and me. It's at least something to think about.

Pastor Ray

Second Chances (Lent 3, Year C)

2010-03-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

In this week’s passage from Luke 13:1-9 Jesus confronts the question of why bad things happen to good people. In the thinking of ancient cultures a person deserved whatever happened to them, that is, bad things only happened to bad people. If you were a good person, then God would bless you with wealth, health, and happiness. If you were a bad person then God would punish you with bad health, accidents, and you would end up poor and homeless. In other words, blame the victim was the ruling thought of the day.

But Jesus contradicts this kind of thinking by saying that those who do encounter difficulty in their lives are no different from anyone else. But the idea that bad things only happen to bad people still persists in our society today. How often have you heard that anyone who gets HIV/AIDS deserved to get it by their faulty behavior? When I was growing up my parents would quote the following statement whenever I was in trouble, “If the shoe fits, wear it,” or “You made your own bed, now lie in it.” They were basically telling me that whatever had happened to me was my own fault. That wasn’t always true.

When my younger sister was born with facial deformities my parents decided that her handicaps meant that God was punishing them because they didn’t go to church and my father smoked tobacco and drank the occasional beer. Even as a five year old child I couldn’t understand the logic of that kind of thinking and if it was true wondered if God would get back at my parents by doing something horrible to me. My parents did start taking us to church and my dad did stop smoking and drinking any alcohol. But they also stopped playing Rook and cards and wouldn’t let me go to movies thinking that all of these things were somehow so sinful that God would punish them again if they didn’t clean up their lives completely.

We still have that kind of thinking going on in our own minds when someone has trouble in their lives. We ask: “What did they do or not do in order for this to happen to them.” Two hundred people get laid off because a company has economic problems but we ask our friend is one of the 200, “What did you do that they laid you off, too?” Like our friend might have some greater importance or ability than the other 199.

The fact is that we don’t control the future. But I guess I’m also saying that God doesn’t always control our future either. God has established a world where there are consequences to human actions like economic depressions and natural events like earthquakes and hurricanes that have nothing to do with what you and I might decide to do or how we might be living our lives. You cannot always, nor should you even try, to connect a natural event that causes you trouble with God deliberately punishing you in particular. That is a very childish way of relating to God. Grow up and take some advice from Jesus.

Jesus ends this discourse by talking about the fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit and the owner that wants it cut down. However, another person suggests that the tree may need some special attention and that by loosening the soil and adding some good old manure to the soil the tree just might bear fruit. Jesus is saying that God loves us enough to give us another chance, another opportunity to recover from our troubles and begin again. We are so much more important than even a barren fig tree that gets a second chance.

Got trouble in your lives? Don’t blame God or think that God is punishing you. Instead do turn to God for encouragement and God’s presence and power in your life to start all over again. God loves you enough to give you a second chance. It’s at least something to think about.

God: Forever Faithful (Year C, Lent 2)

2010-02-28T09:36:00.000-08:00

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!

Ash Wednesday: Put Down the Ducky!

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(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.

Reflecting Jesus: Luke 9:28-43

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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.