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.
Showing posts with label PRIDE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PRIDE. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
It's Not About the Rules Mark 7:1-23 PRIDE WEEK 3
“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?
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?
Saturday, June 4, 2011
"Am I the Older Brother?" Luke 15:11-32
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.
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
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.”
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.”
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Counting the Costs of Following Jesus, Proper 8C
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!
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!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Thinking About PRIDE, proper 7C
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!
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!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Will You Join the Parade or the Funeral Procession? Luke 7:11-17
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!
........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!
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