God: Forever Faithful (Year C, Lent 2)

Lectionary: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35; Psalm 27; Phillipians 3:17-4:1

As we read through the lectionary passages today did you catch any of the similarities? Sometimes I’m at a loss to connect the passages, and I’m the pastor. I’m supposed to know the connections. Mark will often ask me what the lectionary is about this week. How do you summarize four Bible passages into a word or two? It ain’t easy. Each week I do an in-depth study, time permitting, of the passages to get a better understanding of how they may be related before I select which ones I will preach on and what I will say.

This week the connection is all too obvious. Jesus is facing the facts about what staying the course to achieve his destiny will cost him. Abraham has been promised by God that certain things will happen and that he must persist in his trust in the faithfulness of God that they will in fact happen, even if it appears that he should make other choices in the meantime. Psalm 27 was written by someone in obvious trouble who is choosing to hang on to the promises of God for protection and blessings. In Philippians Paul tells us to hang on and preserver in our commitment to serve God and others to achieve the promised New Community of God.

This should be comforting to those of us in the LGBT community, because we have a vision of a future that is radically inclusive, it’s not yet a reality, but it is a reality that we believe God has promised us and that God will eventually achieve in us and through us as we work to promote our beliefs and educate our nation and the world. But it won’t be easy. It hasn’t been easy. Many have sacrificed much to get us to a point where we can hopefully stand up and say: I’m a gay man. I’m a lesbian woman. I’m transgender. I’m bi-sexual. Stand up and say it without fear of harassment, hostility, or being excluded. We’ve made much progress, but we still have much to do to make the vision a reality. The fact of the matter is though that we must remember at all times, even when there are setbacks, and there will be setbacks, that God is in this with us and God will be present and faithful to us all the way, just like God was with Jesus, Abraham, and Paul.

When we hear that God has promised Abraham that he will become the father of a natural child by his own wife and that Abraham will not have to adopt a heir, or have a child with another woman to fulfill the promise, it may in fact rankle us a little bit. Many of us will never father or mother natural children. Some of us will have to adopt children to have families of our own. Despite the fact that we who are Queer seem to be left out of this promise to Abraham, we have to understand that Queer people weren’t an obvious part of that ancient society or even of human understanding. God’s promise was one of family and a home. In Abraham’s world children represented the future, without children you had no future. Without land you had no home. God promised Abraham both: children, that is a future, and land, that is a home.

I grew up in the 50’s and early 60’s. My grandparents still owned a family farm. They had six children over twenty years. My dad was the oldest and at age 11 was forced to drop out of school in order to help on the farm. They couldn’t afford to hire help. Your children were the help you needed to make a living. The farm was our home. I remember growing up and saying to my friends, “I am going home for the summer.” To which my friends would say, “You are home.” But to my family home wasn’t where we were currently living in Chicago. Home was the farm that we came from and to which we hoped to return someday. Home was family and home was a place where that family lived. That was what God was promising Abraham, a family and a home for that family.

At one point in Abraham’s life God comes to him and basically tells him to leave behind his current family and his current home and to start the journey to a new home, a new land that God will give to him. Abraham was to all ancient customs already an extremely successful farmer and herder, but God comes to him and says, “You think this is something? Why its nothing compared to what I’m going to give you.” And without knowing where he is going, Abraham pulls up roots and takes off on a journey with God leaving behind his family and his home for the promise of a new family and a new home.

Now, doesn’t that sound like the same type of journey that many of us have been on since coming out about our sexuality or our gender orientation? For many people coming out means that we must leave behind the family and home that we knew, and loved, for a different kind of family and a different kind of home. It isn’t easy to do. It is damn hard. It was filled with troubles and disappointments as well as the realization that it is a journey we must make to achieve the hoped for life and future that we desire for ourselves and for others like ourselves. There is a line in the Psalm that we read today: “Even if my own parents threw me out, you’d still be there for me God.” Many of us have literally experienced being thrown out of our homes by family when we announced that we were gay or lesbian or transgender. Even if they didn’t physically throw us out on to the street, we were thrown out of our families emotionally and socially.

It’s a very common experience among our community that when you do come out family members cut you off socially, refuse to include you or invite you to family events. One of the first things that happened to me when I came out was a phone call from my younger brother telling me to not come to his son’s wedding. They were afraid I’d use the event as an opportunity to promote my gay life style. What did they mean? They meant that they were afraid I’d show up with Mark at the wedding. Being the pastor of a fundamentalist church in Tennessee, my brother didn’t want to have to explain to his congregation why his older brother, also an ordained Baptist minister, was with another man instead of a woman.

We all face trials and tribulations when we chose to follow God’s will and God’s way for our lives. Abraham did. Jesus did. Paul did. I do. And so do you. Some of the worst opposition comes from those who we thought shared our own religious understandings. I grew up in a family and part of congregations at churches my family attended that taught me that God loves everyone: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Nice song. Good message. I got it. The problem was that the people teaching me that song and that message didn’t get it.

We’re in the middle of Black History month and sometimes, Gil, I feel it is my history, too. I lived through the upheavals of society in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember fountains and bathrooms that had signs over them saying, “White Only. No Blacks Allowed.” I remember dear friends having to enter through the back door of a restaurant when I could walk in the front door. I remember friends who had to sit in the balcony of the theatre while I could sit anywhere I wanted to sit. I remember the difference between my school building and their school building and the fact that society had the audacity to tell us that separate was equal when I was using new textbooks and they were using thirty year old textbooks. I remember all too well the superiority my own family exhibited over those who were of a different skin tone or a different language group or a different culture than my own. I was told to fear what was different and stick to my own kind at the same time that I was taught how to sing, Jesus loves me, and Jesus loves all the children of the world. My family was okay with loving all the children of the world as long as those children stayed in their own lands with their own kind. The problem was that I believed what the Bible said and what the songs told me and I thank God that even though my family didn’t believe those things that they had enough faith to teach me the truth of the Bible even if they didn’t get it themselves. Thank God, that I got it.

Society is very different than it was before the 1960’s. Thank God for that. But it wasn’t a change that was easy. It was a hard fought change and there were many martyrs along the way, people who gave all they had and were to achieve the world we now live in. It still isn’t a perfect world. There is still much to do in the cause of equality for all people. Though the laws have changed, there are still hearts and minds that have to do a lot of changing.

Our own Metropolitan Community Churches began because there were no open, affirming, inclusive churches back in the late 60’s. Or there were churches you could attend as long as you didn’t disclose that you were gay or lesbian or, heaven forbid, transgendered. You could go to church as long as you stayed in the closet about your sexuality or gender, or at least didn’t talk about it, didn’t bring up the topic for discussion. They could ignore the obvious truth about you as long as you didn’t make it an issue. Just be a good gay they would say and don’t rock the boat. In the same way they told my black friends to stop rocking the boat.

Troy Perry, who went through his own dark night of the soul, claimed the vision God gave him of a church where gay and lesbian and transgendered persons could find a family and a home where they could worship a God of radical love and acceptance. There have been many times over the last 42 years that we have feared and wondered if the effort was worth all the trouble and tears. But all throughout those long years of struggle and hope God kept coming to us one by one and as a denomination and telling us like God told Abraham, “Do not fear.” God has been with us and God is with us today.

We have much to do as a congregation to achieve the vision of the future that God has given to us. We want to be a congregation where all persons as welcome and included no matter who they are. We want to be a part of the ecumenical community and join with other churches to make sure that all of them know that we are here and that we are Queer. Why? Because we want to be a part of God’s family and we want that family to know that God loves us exactly the same way that God loves them. Our mere presence in such projects as the University District Ecumenical Campus Feasibility Study tells people in ways that cannot be told any other way that we share their love of God and we want to be a part of expressing that love to this city in such a way that every straight, gay, lesbian, transgendered person knows he or she is included, welcomed, and has a home and a family that they can count on to help them out when they need a little help from us.

We met this past week to talk about the kind of building we hope to erect in the University District and the kinds of social service programs that we hope will occupy that building with us. Shelters for homeless men and women, daily meals for those who are homeless or can’t afford food, senior activity center, needle exchange program, health services, and more. But Lee and Dan and I, your representatives to the UDECC board will keep advocating for the Queer Community and for full exclusion in things as simple as restrooms where transgendered people feel safe and comfortable to the question of where does a gay man, a lesbian woman, or a transgendered person go when he or she is without a place to call home. We have much to do with the UDEEC project, but we have much to do ourselves.

I get phone calls every single week asking where gay men and transgender folk can find a homeless shelter where they safe and won’t be harassed. Where can committed Queer couples go and get to stay together as a family in a homeless shelter? Where does a Queer person with a child go for help? Currently there aren’t any homeless shelters who can consistently say that they provide such services to the city. Even those facilities that say they are inclusive can’t guarantee the safety of someone who is different in sexual orientation or gender. Those who do go are often taken aside and told by the staff that they won’t be safe if they do stay and that the staff cannot guarantee their safety. How does that make a person feel to have the administrative staff tell them that this isn’t a place they should count on staying at very long for fear of violence? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?

More Queer teens are on the streets than any other group of teens. Queer youth are often the victims of sexual exploitation and violence. Queer youth are often thrown out of their own homes by their so-called loving parents for no other reason than that they are Queer. Where do these young people go? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?

I don’t know how we will do it, but I am beginning to see that MCC Seattle has a purpose beyond merely providing worship services on Sunday mornings. We may be the very ones that God is calling to provide social services for our own Queer community and fill the gaps that aren’t being filled even though we live in the great gay Emerald city of Seattle. We tend to think that because this is Seattle that all of the problems we might encounter as Queer people have already been overcome, but that just isn’t true.

Jesus wept and then described how he wanted to gather in the people of Jerusalem like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her protective wings at night. This harkens to the Old Testament promise that God will gather in all the peoples of the world into God’s New Community, all the outcasts, all the rejects, all the persons on the edges of society. God will not leave anyone out of God’s family. God will create a home for everyone.

Some miss a very important part of the Genesis passage that we read this morning. To seal the covenant, the promise, between them, Abram prepares a sacrifice. The ancient way of sealing a promise was for each party to go amongst the sacrifice and each one to ignite portions of the sacrifice to signify that they were eternally bound to keep the promise made to each other. This promise was even binding upon their descendants.

But something interesting happens in the story we read today. Did any of you catch it? Just as Abram finishes preparing the sacrifice, God causes a deep sleep to come upon him. Then God passes through the sacrifice and ignites the sacrifice. Do you understand what this means? God will keep God’s promise to Abram even if Abram doesn’t keep the promise to God. God will be forever faithful to Abram. God’s faithfulness does not depend upon what Abram will or won’t do for God. God’s faithfulness depends only upon God. And so it is with you and me. When God makes us a promise, God will keep that promise regardless of whether you and I live up to the promise ourselves.

We have a God who comes to us and tells us to not fear the future because God is present with us, working powerfully to make sure that our God-given vision of the future will come into reality. We have a God who looks upon us with weeping eyes and gathers us under her loving protective wings giving us a new family and a new home, a place where we can safely celebrate exactly who God created us to be.

You and I have been together as pastor and congregation for a full year now…an amazing year of growth and change. Mark and I want to thank you for becoming our family and for giving us a new home among you.

As your pastor, let me leave you with a challenge: Will we, MCC Seattle, accept the Apostle Paul’s challenge from Philippians to become the very persons who God will use to achieve God’s New Community? Will we offer family and a home to anyone God sends our way? If we accept God’s challenge to us, then here is the promise that God gives to you and me: God who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Have no fear! You can count on it! God will be forever faithful!

Leaving It All Behind

Scriptures: Luke 5:1-11 and Isaiah 6:1-8

You are on the beach cleaning your nets and hanging them up to dry. You’ve fished all night long with no results. You’ve been at this occupation for many long years and you know what you are doing. But, still no fish last night. While you are cleaning your gear and hanging out your nets to dry, a popular teacher draws a crowd of people to the beach nearby. The excited people have now almost pushed him out right out into the water. He asks if you can’t let him use your boat as his pulpit and speak to the crowds on the beach that have come to hear him. His voice will carry better over the water to them from your boat. You agree and you launch your boat back into the shallow water.

You listen to his teaching. This isn’t the first time you have met Jesus. You have heard him speak before and you have been impressed by what he says. When he’s finished teaching he challenges you to go fishing one more time. You protest, “We’ve done this all night long with no good results.” He encourages you anyway with his laughing eyes and his gentle, but firm suggestion, “Launch out into the deep water this time.” You sigh and you and your men collect your nets from shore and following his request you launch out in the direction of the deepest part of the waters.

You guide the boat to the location he has pointed out, just to humor him, knowing the results will be no different this time as they had been during the night. You know this water, you know the way the fish live in these waters, and there isn’t anything about this situation that is new to you. Nothing will change, you tell yourself, why it isn’t even the right time of day to be doing this kind of fishing, but you follow his directions anyway, mostly so you can later point out how little he knows about fishing, and how much you do know.

You glance over at him sitting there so relaxed and comfortable, and he winks back at you waving you on toward the deepest part of the waters. You nod your head at him, but you do not smile back. You don’t want to encourage him any further with his ludicrous ideas. Just what does a teacher like him know about fishing? You are the professional. He’s just an amateur. Soon he will understand. You’ll all laugh and then you can go home and get some much needed sleep.

Then something twists within your heart and you think to yourself, “But what if he is right? What if he knows something I don’t know? What if there were fish to catch here? Maybe this won’t be a wasted effort after all. Maybe we won’t go home empty handed. Maybe we’ll have something to sell at the Fish Market today anyway.” For a moment a glimmer of hope captures you, but then long years of experience, and reason and knowledge return and you tell yourself, “No, nothing will change today. Nothing will be different.”

“This is the place,” he finally says to you and so you drop your anchor. “Throw your nets out one more time,” he says smiling and then sits back to watch you work. You go through the same tasks you’ve gone through so many times before, thinking how ridiculous this is and you ask yourself, “Why are we throwing out the nets we just cleaned. It will take us hours to clean them up again and for what? Just to humor the Teacher?” And finally, for no other reason than the fact that the Teacher asked you to do it, you cast your nets into the water one more time.

Surprise! Something’s different this time. Something has changed! Immediately your nets are filled to capacity and beyond, to the point of bursting with teeming schools of fish. You and your workers cannot bring in the haul. Your boat is in imminent danger of capsizing from the overabundance of fish weighing down the net and your boat. You call for another boat nearby to help. The catch is too large even for two boats and both of your boats begin to take on water with the enormous weight of the catch that is far, far greater than you ever thought possible or could have ever dreamed about in your wildest imagination. This will be a fisherman’s story that no one will believe.

You look over at the smiling Teacher. Who is this man, you ask yourself? Exactly how has he caused all of this to happen? There is no question about it. This Jesus must be more than just a Teacher, he must be a holy messenger from God. That is the only explanation your mind can come up with. You may even be in the presence of God. Now you feel so unworthy, so sinful, so out of place with this kind of miracle working power calling into question everything you thought you knew and believed. “Leave me alone, Teacher,” you cry as you fall down before him, “I am not worthy to even be near to you.” Truly a miracle has just happened.

“Don’t be afraid,” the teacher says to you and your two best friends who were in the other boat, “You think two boatloads of fish was a miracle? Why that is nothing compared to what is going to happen! From now on, if you follow me, you’ll be bringing in boatloads of people to the New Community of God.”

Then, comes the second miracle of the day, you and your two friends leave your expensive fishing boats behind, and all of your costly gear and nets, everything that defines you as a professional fisherman, and you go off with the Teacher to become Fishers of Men and Women, growing the New Community of God.

What, you all are asking yourselves? How could they leave behind everything they’ve worked for, everything they’ve accumulated, everything they’ve sacrificed to attain and hold on to all these years. What’s the point of working so hard to provide for yourself if God come into your life one day and ask you to give it all up and begin a new life?

Many of you aren’t any different than Simon Peter. You know what to expect from your life. You have been living life the same way for far too many years. We tend to just keep on doing things the same old way, feeling the same old feelings, complaining about the same old disappointments, arguing the same arguments, missing out on the same opportunities to change, over and over again. We often do very little to change those things about our lives that we don’t like and could change if we wanted to. We become complacent and hopeless that anything about our existence will ever change. To put it bluntly, we end up living in a rut And you know what a rut is don’t you? It’s a grave that’s open on both ends.

And then along comes Jesus. Jesus who smiles and laughs and who wants to stir things up in your life, to get you moving again, to get you thinking and hoping and believing that perhaps your life could be better, or at least different.

We don’t know what Jesus preached about to the people that morning on the beach. But we can surmise something of the lesson by what he did that day. Jesus often taught a principle and then demonstrated that same teaching by what he did. Here we have a demonstration of the abundant blessings that God will and can pour out on God’s people, a boat-sinking abundance of fish where there had been no fish earlier. Perhaps Jesus had been teaching the people about God’s abundant love and grace and how God will have mercy upon everyone, even those that they don’t feel deserve God’s love. But the miracle of fish demonstrates to Peter and James and John that even if you feel unworthy of God’s blessings, God will still pour out those blessings upon you.

Peter is struck by his own unworthiness to receive such a blessing. Peter feels that God has made a mistake by giving this miracle to him, not unlike many of you who don’t believe you deserve God’s blessings in your life for whatever reason you have selected to believe makes you unworthy. But Jesus says to Peter, “Don’t be afraid.” Jesus gives Peter the reassurance that God hasn’t made a mistake, that God has deliberately selected Peter for this honor and this work. It is the kind of reassurance that makes Peter and hopefully you and I willing to listen to what Jesus has to say next. Jesus tells Peter, “That? You think that was a miracle? Just wait until you see what God can do with you if you will walk with God in your life. You won’t believe the miracles that you and God can work together.”

The truth is that you and I often concentrate on the past, on what has been, on what we have done wrong…usually failing to see all the right things we have done right…it’s as if one wrong thing, one sinful decision in our lives, outweighs everything else in our lives and therefore makes us unworthy and unable to follow God or do God’s will.
Let me give you some advice. Get over it! Leave all those feelings behind. Move on. God isn’t concerned about the mistakes you have made in the past. God has already forgiven you for those mistakes. God wants to put God’s power and God’s presence to work in your life today, but you have to be a willing partner in this. You have to decide that you are going to allow God to let you and God make a difference in your life and in the lives of others that you will come into contact with.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God when he went to worship in the Temple on the death of his relative the king. Everything seemed hopeless to him. The threat of war, the nasty internal politics of the palace and Temple, the failing economics of the day weighed him down and made him give up hope for the future of himself and his country. But the power and presence of God awed him, much like Jesus awed Peter that day in the boat with a miracle. Isaiah felt inadequate and powerless, sinful and unable to be the kind of servant that God wanted. But God was still there powerful and mighty, holy and present just as God had always been. The facts of human tragedy all around Isaiah made absolutely no difference to the power and presence of God. God demonstrated to Isaiah that the prophet was the exactly the very one God wanted to use and when God said, “Who shall I send and who will go for me?” Isaiah got over himself and forgot about his problems and Isaiah answered God in the affirmative, “Here am I, send me.”

It does you no good to hang on to the past, especially if it negative. God is all about the future. God knows all about your past. God has used it to make you who you are today. Stop dwelling on those things that you’ve done wrong or simply think you’ve done wrong. Quit psychologically kicking yourself in your proverbial ass. God forgives your past. God wants you to claim the miracles that God has waiting for you.

Sure there will still be disappointments from time to time. Sure things won’t always go your way. We live in a world where other people can and do mess things up for us by their own decisions against what God wants, even when we are choosing to go with God. It’s just the kind of world we live in. Jesus had to deal with that, so did Peter, so did Isaiah, so do you and I.

But when you decide to move forward in your life claiming the power and presence that God wants to give to you, you have a resource that others don’t have, that others usually fail to rely upon. Go with God and wait and watch for the miracles to happen, for the open doors of possibilities, for the answers to your questions, for the hope and help that you need to accomplish God’s will and way in your life.

The truth is that when Jesus comes into our lives we need to open ourselves up to the possibility of life-changing, life-shaking miracles, awe-inspiring miracles! When Jesus calls us to become Fishers of Men and Women we may be truly amazed at what God does to cause our small faith community to grow beyond what we ever imagined possible.


When I was a child, people kept telling me that one day I would be a great missionary. Even then, I think they saw something different about me, and not being able to exactly name it…That boy is certainly different…they decided that being different, being QUEER, meant I must be special to God. Well, I’ve got news for them! They were right! I was special to God because I was QUEER! They kept telling that they believed that God had called me and if I would respond that God would send me to some foreign land to preach the good news about Jesus Christ to people who had never heard about Jesus or God.

Isn’t that just like us American Christians? If anyone is to do a great work, then they must do that great work someplace else, as if no great works of God can ever be done where we already live, where we already are. Mother Teresa sent her life serving the poor in India. She once spoke to an American audience saying that Americans are always saying that they wanted to leave their lives here and go to work in India with her. “Stay here, right where you are,” she told them that night, “Love the people God has given you to love. Care for people right where you are.”

Jesus is calling MCC Seattle to throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy to those who live and work around us. We are called to share God’s love in all its overflowing, boat-sinking abundance with the QUEER people all around us. There is more than enough forgiveness, more than enough healing, more than enough grace to go around for everyone.

When we partner with God, you and I aren’t responsible for the results, but we are responsible for finding ways to throw out the nets of Love that will bring in those that God has desires to be a part of our growing community. We may have to work in ways that we have never even considered before, unconventional ways of being the church and doing the work of God. We may have to change. We may have to think very differently about what it means to be a church to our Queer Community. It might not end up looking like anything we’ve ever been a part of previously. It might be something new, something miraculous.

We have to strike out into the deep waters, even when we’re tired, even when we’re sure it won’t work. We have to find ways to share God’s love by making the right kinds of choices in our votes, in the giving of our money to causes and organizations that support the creation of God’s new community. We have to r build coalitions of hope and compassion with others to consider the needs of the poor, the homeless, the emotionally disturbed, the elderly, those living with HIv/AIDS. We can’t take care of everyone, but we can take care of someone. And by joining forces with other congregations and groups we can make a real difference in our city and beyond.

Maybe the deep waters also speak of the places we would rather not go, places of discomfort and unfamiliarity where we might get in over our heads. What if you and I were to actually forgive those who has hurt us in the past. What if we were to give up those feelings of being put down and rejected and actually offer to those persons the same kind of forgiveness that God has given to us? What if you and I actually took a clear-headed view of our own personal talents and abilities and stepped forward with excitement and eagerly volunteered to begin to use our skills to help others and to build this New Community of God into the miracle working place that I believe God wants us to become? There is much that needs to be done, but those things won’t happen until more of us decide we are the ones through whom God will make it happen.

This is the season of Epiphany; when we are suppose to be especially aware of the many different ways that God is at work in the world. Hopefully, we will be like Peter and decide that we can’t just go back to our ordinary nets and our ordinary lives trying to deny that this story is about us, and this calling from Christ to be fishers of men and women isn’t our calling. Renita Weems says that the last thing those tired fisherman were expecting was a showing of God’s awesome power right there, at the end of their workday. When Jesus shows up and surprises us with miracles, the next thing you know, our lives will be changed forever. Hopefully, like Peter, we will allow God to transform our lives right where we are. Hopefully, we will begin to make a difference to the lives of those we know and love and live with.

All of us have had life changing experiences with God at one point or another in our lives, some kind of spiritual experience that caused us to realize that God was there and God was with us. What would happen if we let God give us that kind of life-changing experience as a community of faith today? What if we started sharing this life-changing power and presence of God in our lives with our co-workers during coffee breaks this week, over lunch or dinner with friends, or speaking a kind word to a stranger in need on the street? That’s exactly what we should be doing, telling others the good news about what God has done in our lives in such a way that they might find some hope to hold onto that God could do the same thing in their lives for them.

Wait, you say, we already did that. Why we’ve worked at it for almost 38 years with no good results. But the Teacher is calling us to go out into the deep waters of this community one more time and throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy one more time. You know I can’t help but I wonder what will happen this time?

Just Not Feeling It...but Doing it Anyway

I sit here at my computer thinking about Advent, the season of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love, when we remember to welcome Jesus the Messiah into our world and our lives again. Only I'm not feeling as hopeful, peaceful, joyful, and full of love as I would like to be experiencing. I'm having some trouble treating others like I should be...as if they were Jesus Christ himself. I keep bumping into my own selfish feelings and desires when I try to help others.

I get my feelings hurt by what people say and do just like anyone else. I'm not immune to anger at the actions and words of others anymore than you are. However, given my role as your pastor, I have to carefully think about my reactions to others, my words to them, my actions toward them, and ask myself that not so easy question: "Am I being Christ to them? Am I treating them as if they were Christ?" Sometimes the answer is a refreshing, "Yes!", and sometimes I have to admit to myself that it is a disappointing, "No!"

There is another dimension to the answer though and that is: does the other person perceive my words and deeds as helpful to them? Sometimes the answer is "Yes" and sometimes it is "No." But when the answer is "No" does that mean that I have failed that person, or not done the Christ-like thing? I have a feeling that doing the Christ-like thing isn't always taken as being kind and helpful to others. Sometimes doing the right thing for someone else is very difficult for me to do and difficult for them to receive.

I believe that it was very difficult for Jesus to always do the Christ-like thing in his ministry to others. I think of his interactions with the Pharisees and religious lawyers and the Sanhedrin and priests and I know he must have felt great frustration at their inability to comprehend the truth about their lives and the scripture. They were so immersed in their own history, society, and reasoning that they couldn't see the truth Jesus was giving to them, or they refused to take the truth to heart even when they could see it. Even his closest friends misunderstood him and his mission. But he kept himself focused on the goal of bringing God's Love to all in order to create God's community on earth.


So despite the fact that I don't always feel hope, peace, love and joy during Advent I have decided that I am going to follow Christ's lead and keep myself focused on communicating God's Love to everyone by trying to create God's Community of Hope-Peace-Love-and-Joy on earth right here in Seattle. I may be an imperfect servant, but I am a servant who is determined to succeed with God's help. I pray that you are, too.

Hope for the Hopeless! World AIDS Day 2010

Today's Scripture: John chapter 11

This is the first week in Advent, a season prior to Christmas that we set aside to focus on the coming of God into the world: God in Christ, God with us. Advent is a season of hope, a time when we focus on God giving hope to the hopeless. I had not previously seen the Advent qualities of John chapter 11 prior to my decision to move this passage from All Saints Day to the first Sunday in Advent when we also focus in our church on World AIDS Day in worship.

Normally in a passage like this I’d take you through it verse by verse to help you understand the social context, the history, the geography, the theology, and come up with a spiritual teaching that will help you to understand the scripture and how to apply it to your life. But this is a very long chapter and we don’t have that kind of time today.

Suffice it to say that Lazarus, whom some believe was the “beloved disciple” that John and others refer to in the gospels has fallen ill. We know that this family was very special to Jesus, who spent much time with them when he was in the area of Jerusalem. This is a very non-traditional family: an unmarried male and two unmarried sisters. However, these three persons were part of Jesus’ chosen family.

So, when Lazarus falls ill, the sisters, who will be left destitute when he dies, for they could not own property and would not have any income, call for Jesus to come immediately. They send for Jesus, their only hope. Without Jesus’ help and without Lazarus they are hopeless.

Probably by the time word gets to Jesus Lazarus has already died. Jesus stays where he is a couple of more days before departing. Why? Perhaps because he knows what he is going to do and he also knows the tradition that says that the spirit stays hovering over the body for three days. When he arrives it has been four days. The spirit of Lazarus has gone. The body is rotting. It is absolutely too late for a miraculous resurrection to happen. Lazarus is beyond hope. The sisters are indeed hopeless. However, just like when he healed the blind man, Jesus says that this situation will result in God being given glory. Indeed, when we are hopeless, when we have exhausted all other possibilities, there is only One to whom we can turn, only One who can restore our hope and help us to live with joy again.

We are too often like the sisters. We ask God to be present with us but we can’t understand why God doesn’t show up exactly at the moment we want, doing exactly what we want. When we are in trouble or turmoil, or illness or disaster hit us we want God and we want God right now doing exactly what we have already decided that God should do to solve our problems for us. When God doesn’t answer our prayer exactly that way, solving our problem immediately, we question whether God loves us at all, maybe even whether there is a God.

I’m often asked, “What did I do that God hates me so much that God would let this happen to me?” I understand the question and the very human feelings behind it, but I also understand that God is present even if we don’t think God is there. God is always present with us working with us even when we can’t see the what God is doing in us and for us.

This week we will turn our attention toward World AIDS Day on Tuesday. People with HIV and AIDS are often left depressed and defeated when they are given the diagnosis. They feel their lives are over. They might as well already be dead. It is very much like the sisters feel when Jesus arrives four days too late to do anything for Lazarus. Why try now? Surely the body stinks from rot. What could you do now?

The tragedy of our modern lives is that most of the rest of us act the same way toward those diagnosed with this virus, thinking that HIV is a death sentence. We avoid and exclude those with HIV and AIDS. They have become the modern day Lepers who aren’t welcomed in society. There have even been attempts in our own nation to legally isolate and exclude anyone with such a diagnosis. It is only this year that men and women from other nations who have been diagnosed with AIDS are now allowed to visit our country. Probably the most terrible tragedy is that many in our society blame the victims for having the disease, or see it as punishment from God for a variety of ridiculous reasons I shall not even credit with mentioning them.

This week we set aside Tuesday as World AIDS day in an attempt to educate our city, our state, our nation, the world in what HIV and AIDS really are, and how we can reduce the infection rate, treat those with the virus and help those who are dying from AIDS. Many groups in our own city provide care and support to persons with HIV and AIDS. Several of you are volunteers in those programs. Thank you. You are bringing hope to the hopeless.

Very often in life we reject the very idea of God working a miracle in our lives. We are hopeless and we even explain to ourselves and to others exactly why a miracle is impossible in our lives. We even, almost, begin to feel sorry for God in the situation. Like the sisters said to Jesus we say to God, “It’s too late, God. Don’t do anything now, God, the stink will be unbearable.” And we tell God that there isn’t anything that God can do about it now.

Aren’t we so kind to God. “Hey, God, we’re not going to get our hopes up and be disappointed when you don’t work it all out for us, God. After all, it’s just too late for even You to change things. So just leave us alone in our stinking situation. We forgive you God for not being able to help us.”

But God won’t leave us alone. In fact, God never leaves us alone. God is always present with us. We may not think or believe that God is there in the most difficult moments of our lives, but God is right there with us, giving us reassurance if we will accept it, giving us the strength that we need, encouraging us to have faith and hold on.

Jesus stood at the entrance to Lazarus’ grave after they removed the rock from the entrance and he called out: “Lazarus come out!” That’s what God is doing for us in the most horrible moments of our lives. God is saying to us, “Come out! Come out into the light of my love. Come out into the power of my creativity. Come out of your misery? Come out and live again.”

I had a conversation with a friend who has HIV. He was depressed and defeated. He had lived for several years with the diagnosis and was taking his medications with good results. But he had decided that he was condemned to death by the disease and wouldn’t be able to have a complete and happy life. I said to him: “You know what your problem is? You are going to live and you don’t know what to do about that fact.” I’m glad to report to you that this same friend did come out of his depression and has been the one to give me great help over the years by encouraging me come out of my own self-imposed grave and live again.

We get these ideas in our heads about what life is going to be like for the good or the bad and it is very hard to give up those ideas when we are faced with the realities of life when things are very different from what we imagined.

It’s as if we have to die to the old life we were living and be resurrected to a new life where there are new possibilities and new opportunities that we hadn’t even imagined or ever dreamed we would need. I know, I’ve been through several of those moments in my own life including facing traumatic disease, the death of a child, the end of a marriage, and more. But in the depth of my depression in each of those situations there was someone that God sent into my life to tell me, “Ray, come out of your tomb. Come out and live again.”

Where are you today? Are you lingering in the tomb with the stink and the rot of your life? Or are you willing to come out into the light and live the resurrected life that God has waiting for you? Are you willing to let God give you new life for the old life that needs to die? Do you need to let go of the old and embrace the new that God wants to give you?

Only you can answer that question. Nobody can go into the grave you have created and bring you out. You have to come out yourself. No matter how difficult it was, when Jesus called him, Lazarus had to get up from his grave and come out into the light. So do you. So do I.

It is important to note that the community, the family and friends of Lazarus had to do their own part of help him live life again to the fullest. They had to unbind him, to take the grave wrappings off of him so he could live again without any limitations. He couldn’t unwrap himself. He had to have help to fully return to life. Lazarus needed a little help from his friends.

Friends are critically important to us. Friends bring us the real presence of God. Friends lend us the help we need to begin again, they fill us with hope and expectation that life will get better and we will be able to do what we want, what we need to do, what we hope to become. I cannot tell you how very important my friends have been to me in life, especially my Christian friends who have held the Christ-light for me so I can see my way out of the darkness of my depression.

I had not been out of my marriage for very long when I lost an adult daughter in a car accident. I went back to our former hometown for her funeral. Having just come out to my family and friends I felt alienated standing alone in that reception line at the funeral home on one side of her casket while my ex-wife and children stood together on the other side.

My daughter was dead. However, my family and so-called friends treated me like I was the one who had died. I looked up from that reception line and saw the faces of two friends from MCC Knoxville who had traveled over two hours by car to do nothing but give me a hug and a kiss and tell me that my church family loved me and wanted me to know that they were praying for me and loving me from afar. I cannot express to you the importance of their presence in my life at that moment. They were helping me to remove the grave cloths from my life.

We need to be the ones who are helping others unwrap the bindings that keep them from experiencing the abundant life that God wants to give to each one of us. We have to help others overcome the difficulties they are facing by being present with them when we can, by encouraging them however we can, by letting them know that we are loving and caring for them in whatever way is appropriate. Yes, I believe you can experience a relationship with God all by yourself. But I doubt you can ever experience a relationship with God fully the way God intended for us to experience it apart from the company of other Christians. Jesus didn’t try to go it alone. The first thing Jesus did when he began his ministry was to find others to share the work with him. We were created to be in community with each other.

I’m glad you are here this morning to worship God and to be in community with us. This is a very important part of my week and I hope it is a very important part of your week whenever you can be here. But you and I must extend our need for community with other Christians by finding ways to be with others during the week. Sundays aren’t enough. It will take more than Sunday for us to truly experience the strength and power of Christian community.

Let me leave you with an observation this morning: If you want to experience the resurrected life God wants to give to each one of us, you must realize one important thing: There has to first be a death. Death comes before resurrection. There can be no resurrection without a death. Death isn’t something we like to think about whether it is the death of a loved one, or the death of a life situation. We don’t like change, even when we expect things to be better. No matter how good change is, we miss what we had because that was what we were used to experiencing. However, change is inevitable. How will we deal with change when it comes, as it always does, to our lives, to our church?

Mostly we like to hang on to what we had. We like living in the grave clothes and bindings of our old life. We even enjoy the stink after awhile. We learn how to ignore the rot. But unless we have the courage and hope to begin again, to change, to start to experience the new resurrected life that God wants to give to us, we will never give up the old grave clothes, nor will we let others begin to unwrap us and help us experience the abundant life that Jesus promised to those who would willingly follow him.

Christ came to give hope to the hopeless. You and I can begin again. We can live the resurrected life no matter how dreadful our lives have previously become. All we have to do is come out of our tombs and begin to unwind the bindings from each other that prevent us from experiencing the joy-filled life of God’s new community. We can begin living heaven on earth. Sometimes it’s just a matter of attitude.

There is told the story of a woman who is allowed to visit heaven and hell on the same day. When she arrives in hell she sees a room full of starving people. Though there is plenty of fabulous food piled high on tables all around they are starving because they have had enormous wooden spoons strapped to their arms so that they can’t pick up any food and feed themselves. They are weeping and cursing their condition and each other.

Later she is let into heaven. The scene is incredibly similar. Large tables of scrumptious food piled high on the tables. Long spoons strapped to everyone’s arms preventing them from feeding themselves. But here there was much happiness and conversation going on and everyone was well fed and healthy. What was the difference? In heaven everyone was feeding each other. And that made all the difference.

Where do you choose to live today? In the tomb with the stink and the rot of death? Or are you willing to come out and let others unbind you and help you begin to live the resurrected, abundant life that Christ promises to all of us?

Come out of your grave. Come out of your troubled situation. Come out and live the abundant life. Let your Christian family help you unwrap and unbind those things that keep you from living the abundant, joyful life God wants to give you.

Will you help us all create the new community of God, a renewed and joy-filled Metropolitan Community Church Seattle, by bringing about a little bit of heaven on earth? Will you be a part of bringing hope to the hopeless?