"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.

Generosity: Making Love Real Ruth 3 and 4

Ruth chapters 3 and 4

We were introduced to Ruth and Naomi last week. This is a very strange book that falls between the time of the Judges and the time of the Kings. As we pointed out last week it is a story that begins with a famine of food and spirit and ends with an abundance of both.

It isn’t a story about a man, though Boaz, who would have been the main character in most Biblical stories does play a very important role, but a story about two poor, desperate widows, who leave the land they have been living in and journey back to Naomi’s home in Bethlehem of Judah. Since this is a story about famine and feast, it is significant to note that the name Bethlehem literally means “the House of Bread” implying a place of hope and abundance. For Naomi and Ruth that is exactly what Bethlehem becomes: a place of hope and abundance.

It is my hope that MCC Seattle will become a modern Bethlehem, a true place offering hope and abundance to all who come here seeking help in their lives. I want us to be known as a generous congregation that shares abundantly from our own time, talents, and treasure with those around us through the ministries that we can offer to our community, through the lives that we can touch by demonstrating to others that God truly does love them, care for them, and accepts them exactly as God has created them. You and I have to begin to transform the world around us into becoming a real expression of what some have called “Heaven on Earth.”

Imagine with me a ministry to the homeless LGBT community where people can find a warm place to stay, with food and clothing, with job counseling and job training, skilled counselors offering psychological healing and recovery. What about a home for gay and lesbian and transgender youth who have become homeless when their parents kick them out of their homes because they have just come out as gay? Did you know that our gay youth are more apt to commit or attempt suicide than straight youth, and that they are more apt to become homeless because of their sexuality, ending up on the streets where they become prey for those who would exploit and abuse them? Why can’t we be a part of the solution to that problem? MCC in New York City offers such a shelter of help and hope to homeless teens and young adults. Why can’t we?

Ruth and Naomi had nowhere to go, no one to help them. Naomi tried to send Ruth back to her own family, but being the widow of a foreigner and childless, she was not what that society would see as an attractive prospect for marriage. Widows could own no property, and as we shall see in today’s story, were still considered the property of their deceased husbands, who could be given away to the next male relative that would claim them. Ruth and Naomi represent to us the homeless and the rejected that fill our homeless shelters in Seattle to overflowing every night with thousands left out on the streets even in the coldest weather. We should be doing something about that. We should become the Bethlehem, the house of bread and hope, for as many of those persons as possible.

Ruth makes her famous commitment to Naomi and they leave for Judah, for Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem. She and her husband had left Bethlehem and gone to Moab because of a famine of grain. Now, Naomi, having buried her husband and her two sons, in a foreign land where she comes to live a famine of spirit, she returns to the only place that might offer her hope.

Did you know that every week people walk through the doors of our church coming with hope in their hearts that we just might be the community that can offer them relationship and care that they aren’t getting from anyone else? Most people come to church because they are seeking community and an escape from loneliness. Are we the kind of community where they can find the relationships they need, where they can experience real community with us and with God?

Naomi and Ruth make a journey toward hope. Naomi has changed her name to Mara which means bitterness. She is sad and depressed and grieving, but Naomi still shows us that she has hope by going back to the one place where she has experienced true acceptance and real community and she has great expectations that these people, these friends and relatives, will offer to her and to Ruth, the chance to start their lives over again.

As your pastor I am privy to the true story of many of your lives. I know for a fact that some of you came to this family, to this community that we call MCC Seattle, because you wanted to find a place of hope and acceptance, a place where you could build real community, find true and honest friends, and start your lives over again. Some of you have found us to be that kind of family of choice for you. I hope many more will experience the same kind of abundance as they begin their lives over again with God and with God’s people.

You cannot take the social situation of the Old Testament and translate the story over literally into the 21st century. We don’t understand the social and tribal history or taboos that Ruth and Naomi lived under. And we certainly can’t apply the social rules and expectations that society had for women or men to ourselves today. Listen, nobody really takes the Bible literally. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, for everyone interprets the Bible in their own special way based upon their own history and social setting. You and I are no different. We do not apply the Biblical rules for the marriage of widows today and force them to marry their brother in laws or another close kin.

A widow had no standing in Naomi and Ruth’s day. They were the poorest of the poor. They were the rejected ones lying on the doorsteps and huddling in a doorway to stay out of the cold wind. They were the homeless and the hungry of their day. A woman like Ruth, a widow and a foreign widow at that, would have been subject to harassment, sexual embarrassment, and even rape. It was expected in that society that such a woman would make her living as a prostitute. Not a wonderful way to begin your introduction to a new community where you hoped to build a live full of hope and abundance. Ruth began her new life about as low down the ladder as anyone could ever be.

Biblical Law said that you shouldn’t take all of the grain out of your fields, but that you should leave the grain that falls to the ground and that might be left on un-harvested stalks for the widows and orphans who could come after the harvesters and scrape together whatever they could for their own livelihood. That is what Ruth is doing in order to support herself and Naomi. She is doing whatever it takes to make sure that they survive.

As luck, or God would have it, Ruth goes to glean in the fields of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s husband. We don’t know much about Boaz, other than the fact that he is rich and that his name literally means Strength or Strong. Most people assume that he is older, perhaps a widower, but his marriage state isn’t that important, because at this time, a man could have more than one wife at a time, and might have due to a law called the Levirate Law, which we’ll explain in a moment. And so, when Boaz comes to see how the work is progressing in his fields he sees Ruth gleaning. She would have been noticed. She was an exotic beauty, someone not from their community, perhaps dressed in fabrics made by herself with different colors than the local women used, or with a slightly different cut of her dress or the style of her hair. In any event, she caught the eye of Boaz.

He asks about her. Perhaps one could say, it was love at first sight. The story of Naomi’s situation has made the rounds in the community. Gossip always gets around. He is told about how Ruth has committed herself to Naomi and made the journey back to Bethlehem with her. It is an impressive story and one that wasn’t that common. In fact it was an extraordinary story about an extraordinary young lady. Family was important. Boaz had a commitment to extend his care to Naomi and therefore to Ruth out of his abundance. It’s just the way things were done.

So he goes to Ruth and he tells her to stay in his fields when she is gleaning and to stay with his own young women when she is working and to stay away from the young men. Boaz understands his society. He knows that a young foreign widow will be abused and he does what he can to protect her out of respect for her relationship with Naomi, and out of respect for his own relationship with Naomi and for her deceased husband, his own kinsman. Obviously, Boaz, is a man who has great moral strength. Strength, as his name implies, can mean strength in many aspects of his life, but obviously strength in character and concern for others.

He forbids the men to bother her or touch her. He tells her to make herself at home when she is working in his fields: To drink from the water jugs the men have filled; to take her rest in the house with the young women. He provides for Ruth.

Ruth asks why she has found favor in his eyes, and he tells her: "I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

Ruth thanks Boaz with graciousness. Boaz calls her over and gives her bread and lets her dip the bread in his drink. He gives her some of the roasted grain that has been prepared for the men to eat. This is very significant event in that society. Boaz has a family meal with Ruth. Boaz is including her in his family.

Boaz extends his care for Naomi and Ruth beyond what was considered to be normal. Boaz gives to Ruth and Naomi out of his abundance, out of the blessings that God has poured out upon him by giving them extra grain. He even tells the men to allow Ruth to glean not just from the fields they have emptied, but from the stalks that they have already gathered for the harvest. He wants to be sure that she and Naomi have enough to live on. This is incredible. This is amazing. This is not what was expected of Boaz. It goes far beyond what one could have hoped for.

Naomi celebrates this happy circumstance with Ruth. And she tells Ruth to avoid the young men and stay with the young women. The only hope for survival Ruth has is to not become what everyone expects her to become, what society would have forced her to become: a prostitute.

Boaz has provided them a gift that goes far beyond mere food, but goes toward creating a life that offers hope and opportunity for the future. When we help others in God’s name we offer them hope and opportunity with a future! It doesn’t matter who they are, where they have come from, or even how horrible their own life story up to now, we can offer through our abundant giving of our time, talents, and treasure, hope and opportunity for everyone in our community.

Naomi begins to plan. She is a very smart woman. She has learned all she can about Boaz from her relatives and believe me, people loved to gossip then just as now and she probably knew everything about the man the very next day. She was quite resourceful. The grain harvest is coming to an end. The question of food will again become paramount when that which Ruth has gathered for them becomes exhausted. What will they do then? Naomi begins to lay the groundwork for a future for both of them.

The men will be trashing the grain, separating the grain from the heads, and this is a big event with lots of food and drink at night. The men sleep in the trashing house out in the fields. Drunkenness abounds and a lady slipping into the situation under darkness of night would not be uncommon or unexpected…if you understand my meaning. Naomi tells Ruth to dress up to the nines and to go to the trashing house and wait, but not to be seen by Boaz until he has eaten his fill of harvest foods, and drank enough wine to become sleepy.

She is then to go to Boaz where he lies and to uncover his feet and lie with him.

The Bible uses a lot of euphemisms about sex and uncovering the feet means to uncover the genitals of another person. This is quite a forward kind of act for anyone, in any culture, but this is part of the expectations of the Levirate Law which provides that when a man has died that his brother or other next of kin goes to the widow and takes her as his wife and if she has a child the first born male child is to be known as the child of the deceased man and to receive that man’s inheritance and property. The man is then known as the kinsman-redeemer: The one who redeems them from their situation. It’s so absolutely different from our way of thinking as to be totally foreign and outlandish, but that’s the society that Ruth and Naomi and Boaz lived in and they are acting in accordance with that society’s laws and expectations. Shocked though we might be, it was how things were back then.
Boaz awakes and asks who it is that has come to him in the dark. Ruth identifies herself: "I am your servant Ruth," she said. "Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer."

Interestingly enough, she uses the exact same word which is interpreted here as garment and which Boaz used earlier when he talked about her being under the wings of God’s protection. She is asking Boaz to put her under the wings of his protection when he places his garment over her. Boaz replies:

"God bless you, my daughter," he replied. "This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. 11 And now, my daughter, don't be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character.

But there is a problem. Boaz continues: “Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman-redeemer nearer than I. Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem. But if he is not willing, as surely as the LORD lives I will do it. Lie here until morning."

He sends Ruth back to Naomi with a great deal of grain, what some have seen as a wedding gift, a betrothal gift to Naomi for Ruth’s hand in marriage. However, Naomi, too is aware of the complication of another closer kinsman-redeemer and she knows full well that Boaz will take care of the problem quickly.

The story continues with Boaz going to a man who in the Hebrew is identified only as “so and so” or “What’s his name” and he tells the man about Naomi and how her deceased husband Elimelech has some property that the man could redeem by claiming himself to be Naomi’s kinsman-redeemer. The man declares that he will do so, and the property, the land, will become his own, and he will give Naomi a home. Naomi is old and the man doesn’t have to worry about what his wife and children might say. She will have no children. All of the property he gets from Elimelech will go to his own children.

Then Boaz declares that Naomi also has a widowed daughter-in-law and that the man would become the kinsman-redeemer of a young woman to whom he would also be wed and to whom a child might be born who would inherit the land of his grandfather. Now this changes the situation.

I would like to think that this man has a wife who wouldn’t be too welcoming to Ruth and might make the man’s life a living hell if he took upon himself this responsibility. Perhaps Boaz knew this already. In any event, the man says, no way can I do that.

Boaz is then left with the opportunity to become the kinsman-redeemer of Ruth and Naomi. Later when their first child is born, there is great celebration. It is interesting to note that what the women say: “Praise be to God, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! 15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth."
Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. 17 The women living there said, "Naomi has a son."

The child, Obed, was the grandfather of King David, the greatest king of Judah, who brought a time of success and honor upon the nation. Thus our story goes from one of famine to abundance because of the generosity of Ruth to Naomi, and of Boaz to both women.

We’ve been through much as a church. We’ve been through several years that many might term as famine, when all a small group of people could hope for was just to hold on, just to be here again another Sunday. That was important for you to do. You have been those who trusted in God and kept on keeping on even when others told you that you should just give up. But you persevered! You trusted God and your trust and your patience, and your persistence, and your commitment have paid off. We are on a new journey together toward an abundant future full of hope and grace not just for ourselves but anyone and everyone that comes to be a part of this new community of God.

It won’t happen without you. It won’t happen without your commitment of your time, talents, and, yes, your treasure, your financial resources. Will you take the journey with us toward the future that God has waiting for you and for me and for MCC Seattle. Will you make the commitments that are necessary to help us become that new community of hope that I believe, and I hope you believe, we can become together. Will you offer your own generosity to God, to our church, to our community, by making your love real?