Life has a way of changing, sometimes so rapidly that it’s hard for us to keep up. Did you ever wonder as society and culture bring enormous changes economically and socially change into our lives just what your faith response is supposed to be? Where is my place in all of this change? Where is God in all of this? How do we hang on to the important spiritual aspects of our faith but allow almost overwhelming changes to enter in our lives without destroying our faith? What can we do or not do to assure our relationship with God is a good one?
I'm sure the First Century Christians in Rome had many of the same questions that you and I do today. Society was rapidly changing for them, too. Then they get a letter from Preacher Paul that tells them that we all, even Paul, are confused about what is God's will for our lives and that we often fall far short of achieving anything near our goal in faithful matters or actions.
"Good news," Paul says. We don't have to do anything to make sure that we are all right with God, because God has already done that for us through Jesus, God's Child, who came into the world to share with us God's incredible Love and Acceptance.
Listen carefully! Whenever you are down on yourself because you think you have failed God or family or friends or yourself, stop and read what Paul says in the first verse of chapter 8: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!"
Get it? You don't have to feel guilty or depressed because you couldn't live up to the expectations you thought God, friends, family, or you had for yourself. God loves and accepts you exactly the way that you are...warts and all. God loves you and me so much that God forgives us, forgets what we've done to keep God away, embraces us and includes us in God's family giving us the same inheritance as our Big Brother Jesus.
The fact is that though we don’t want to sin, that is do those things that separate us from God, we still do them. We then feel guilty because we couldn’t stop ourselves. In chapter 8 of Romans Paul describes the Christian life as feeling stuck between knowing what to do and not being able to do it. Sometimes it is very difficult to choose the right thing to do, knowing that others will have very strong opinions about our choices and may in fact accuse us of sinning because we did in fact choose the right thing which in their opinion was the wrong thing. You ever ask yourself that question, “How can I be right and still be wrong?” Life is very confusing.
Then in the midst of our confusion along comes Preacher Paul and tells us: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” Did you hear that? No condemnation! None! Not now! Not in the future! Not ever! Why? Because God loves you enough to forgive you, to restore you to a full loving relationship with God just like the Father welcomed back the Prodigal Son when he came back home.
That, Paul says, is exactly why Jesus came into our world. Not to show us how we must live in order to receive God’s love. Not to satisfy some weird sense of ancient justice that makes it possible for God to love us only if Christ’s blood is shed. And most definitely not to demand that Jesus be tortured and brutalized so that you and I can feel both guilty and grateful for his sacrifice.
No Jesus came to show us through his life and love how much God already loves us. His example was so extremely out of step with what his ancient society thought was right that they killed him. But through his resurrection we found out that God’s love is more powerful than anything, more powerful than death, more powerful than our sin, more powerful than our confusion and guilt.
That last part is probably the toughest for us to understand and accept: No matter how many times we are told that we’re forgiven, no matter how bravely we act, I believe it’d be a good bet that we all live quiet lives of desperation. What is it about your own life that your regret? What happened to you that you can’t quiet seem to get over? What did you do years ago that you still kick yourself about? Are you and another person at odds with each other? Maybe it’s an old lover, a parent, a sibling, a co-worker?
When I talk with people as their pastor there always seems to be one thing in their life that they regret happening and can’t seem to bring themselves to forgive themselves for, or to move forward in their life because of that past. Even when I’ve worked with someone for months, sometimes years, and I think that they have made progress toward forgiving themselves and moving on, I discover that they are still hurting and haven’t yet found a way to forgive themselves or another.
You’ve got two blank pieces of paper in your bulletin this morning. I want you to use one of those papers to write down that one regret, that one bitter moment, that one broken relationship, that failed attempt in your life to get right with God or another. What is it that keeps you from claiming God’s promises in your life? Take just a moment and write something down.
Now I want you to hear Paul’s words one more time: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Get it? No matter what you have done, no matter what others may have told you previously, no matter what you think you believed before today, GOD IS NOT ANGRY WITH YOU! God loves you, forgives you, accepts you just as you are and sets you free to live a life of meaning, purpose, grace and gratitude.
During communion this morning. I want you to take that piece of paper and toss it into this garbage pail. Throw away your regrets, toss out your failures, get rid of all the ancient history that keeps you from claiming God’s love and acceptance for you. I don’t care what it is, God doesn’t care what it is, just get rid of it. Stop letting it have control over your life. Stop wearing your shame and confusion like some snail shell you have to carry around with you everywhere you go. Take it off. Take it all off! Do your own strip-tease this morning and get rid of anything and everything that keeps you from having a real and right relationship with God. As you throw that piece of paper away this morning say to yourself: “There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”
Let’s practice saying it together, There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Now you say it: “There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”
When you have finished communion, go back to your seat and take out the second piece of paper and write down what it is that you are now free to do or become because you no longer have that threat of inadequacy and condemnation, of shame and regret hanging over you. What might you dare to do? What challenge will you accept? What act of courage or generosity might you attempt because you know that you are beloved by God whether you succeed or fail?
Then I want you to put that piece of paper in your wallet or your purse and take it with you this week as a living remembrance of God’s promise to be with you and to empower you with God’s Spirit to share God’s love with others you come into contact with at home, at work, at play.
One pastor reports that a neighbor has a sign on his front door that reads: “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.” My question to you today is this: “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life now that there is no condemnation. What will you do now that you are free? What will you do with all the love and grace that God can give you? What will you do….?”
Showing posts with label acceptance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acceptance. Show all posts
Sunday, July 10, 2011
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.”
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!
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