I’ve been perplexed and vexed by comments made by political leaders, elected officials, ordained ministers, the Vatican, and others, scape-goating the issues they are really facing by condemning Gay People (read: gay, lesbian, transgender, bi-sexual, inter-sexed, etc.). They seem to feel that if we didn’t exist then their lives wouldn’t be so difficult and the issues they have to deal with would be less complicated. The fact is, our absence wouldn’t make any difference in the issues or difficulties they face, they just can’t bring themselves to admit that and so they attack us instead of themselves.
This is Holy Week when we focus on the Passion of Jesus and remember his Crucifixion and Resurrection. The leaders of his day thought that if they could just get rid of Jesus then they would not face the issues and difficulties that he was pointing out to them through his ministry to the people who lived on the edges of society, the people those leaders thought they could ignore and exclude. But Jesus made it dramatically very clear that God loves everyone and excludes no one by eating with so-called sinners and outcasts, by healing the sick and forgiving sins. Jesus wouldn’t let the criticisms and threats of those in power stop him from proclaiming God’s Good News and the truth about God’s New Community that he was trying to establish…and nor should you or I stop working to bring about that New Community of God in our own time and place.
The disciples had a choice when Jesus died. They could return to their lives as they were before they had met Jesus, before they learned that there was a different way to think about and relate to God than they had previously experienced. When the news about Jesus’ resurrection began to be told, they still had a choice to ignore the truth or to act on the truth and begin to bring about the New Community of God. They could have remembered what Jesus said and how Jesus acted and it could have stopped right there…just a good old memory that could be taken out whenever you felt lonely or depressed. Or they could claim that the resurrected Jesus was the same Jesus speaking the same words or hope and love, the same Jesus touching lives with power and promise, as the Jesus who had walked along with them before the Crucifixion.
We sometimes concentrate on the differences that happened to Jesus with the resurrection, but this Easter I would like you to remember that the same Jesus that walked and talked and cared for disciples and strangers was exactly the same Jesus that rose from the grave and was seen and heard by his followers.
The political and religious powers of ancient Israel gave their final word by condemning Jesus and everything he had represented and taught to death. They thought that was the end of the matter. But God had something very different in mind. And when they killed Jesus and buried him, thinking him no longer a problem, no longer a nuisance, God boldly said, “NO! I don’t think so!” And God resurrected Jesus to continue his ministry and his life, to encourage his followers to keep on working to see that New Community of God come into existence through God’s power and God’s presence every single day of their lives.
We may not like what politicians and religious leaders say about us. We may not like how easy it is for them to reject whole segments of our population on the basis of sexuality, gender, race, ethnic background, political persuasion, economic power, mental or physical abilities, etc., but they don’t get to have the final word on the matter. God does! And how will God have that final word? Through you and me when we speak up and act up on behalf of those who aren’t given a voice in the world, who are ignored and excluded, arrested and condemned simply because they are different from those who are in power.
How do we celebrate Easter? By praising God for God’s actions, of course. But also by taking bold actions ourselves on behalf of God, for the purpose of building the New Community of God in the here and now by standing up and speaking out and acting up on behalf of all the people living on the edges of society. It’s at least something to think about.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Getting Jesus Right--Lent 5, Year C
We are often so self-righteous about our behavior and our thinking that we need a 'spiritual' slap across the face to get ourselves in a better position to listen to God. How many times in life have you thought you had the right answer to a particular situation or problem only to discover later that you were completely off base and not really focused on the truth of the situation? Suddenly something someone else says or does opens you up to a brand new revelation and you have an "Ahh-ha!" moment as your thinking and feeling is readjusted to a new point. I like to call that a "Spiritual Tune-up."
This week's Gospel Reading comes from John 12:1-8 and tells the story of Jesus returning to the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha not long after he has raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus and Lazarus are under threat for their lives from the ruling priests and other religious leaders. Many people are now following Jesus and they fear that Jesus and his followers will upset the way things are and that the foreign Roman government ruling over them will dismiss them from their own positions of power.
Here in the home of this very unconventional family: a single man and his two single sisters...a Queer Family if you will...Jesus, also a single man, returns to his chosen family for rest and renewal. Some scholars even believe that Lazarus is the "Beloved Disciple" that the gospel writer refers to in the book of John. We know that Jesus is intimately connected to this family and has chosen their home as his base of operation when he is in the Jerusalem area. Those of us in the LGBT community can fully understand the importance of our "Chosen Family," those friends we have developed as part of our experience and life in Queerdom. Often our Chosen Family is more important to us than our family of birth, especially if that birth family has rejected us or harrassed and condemned us for being sexually oriented differently than they desire for us to be.
Can you imagine the emotions that must be at play as Jesus returns to this home? Here sitting with them again is the one who brought their brother back from the dead. Here is the man who did the impossible. Here is the Messiah, come from God, and he's eating and talking witht them. Mary, moved with what I can only describe as passionate thanksgiving and supreme adoration, takes a bottle of very expensive perfume...worth a year's wages, probably her 'trust fund' in case something did ever happen to Lazarus and she had no one else to support her...and pours it out onto Jesus' feet, massaging his feet and wiping the oil from his feet with her long hair, an extremely intimate and almost erotic kind of action. There are very deep emotions flowing here.
Some who were present that evening are offended by Mary's behavior and criticize her wastefulness of the costly perfume in such a disturbing...to them...demonstration of love for Jesus. Why we could have used it to feed the poor...or built a new chapel...or paid the pastor's salary...or sent a missionary to Africa. There is always something that needs to be done, there is no doubt about that. But Mary ignored all that kind of so-called important thinking and truly spent a very emotionally necessary moment adoring her Savior, for he literally was the one who saved her from what would have happened to her if her brother had remained dead. Jesus meant all the world to her at this moment and she took the time to focus her attention on him, and only on him.
What was Jesus' response to her actions? He accepted her adoration and claimed that generations throughout history would remember what she had done for him before he died. She annointed his body with oils prior to his death, which was coming soon. He was loving and kind in his acceptance of her sacrificial gift to him.
How much time have you spent this week truly focusing your thinking and feeling on Jesus? What sacrifice have you made in your own life to demonstrate that God is supreme in your life? Have you spent time with God in prayer, in Bible study, in reflection finding the peace within yourself that only God in Christ can give to you?
I encourage you this week to be extravagant in your praise and adoration of God in Christ Jesus. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks about what you are doing. Lose yourself in praising God. Remember: Like Jeus was to Mary, God wants to be just as accepting, and extravagant in love toward you...even more so. It's at least something to think about.
This week's Gospel Reading comes from John 12:1-8 and tells the story of Jesus returning to the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha not long after he has raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus and Lazarus are under threat for their lives from the ruling priests and other religious leaders. Many people are now following Jesus and they fear that Jesus and his followers will upset the way things are and that the foreign Roman government ruling over them will dismiss them from their own positions of power.
Here in the home of this very unconventional family: a single man and his two single sisters...a Queer Family if you will...Jesus, also a single man, returns to his chosen family for rest and renewal. Some scholars even believe that Lazarus is the "Beloved Disciple" that the gospel writer refers to in the book of John. We know that Jesus is intimately connected to this family and has chosen their home as his base of operation when he is in the Jerusalem area. Those of us in the LGBT community can fully understand the importance of our "Chosen Family," those friends we have developed as part of our experience and life in Queerdom. Often our Chosen Family is more important to us than our family of birth, especially if that birth family has rejected us or harrassed and condemned us for being sexually oriented differently than they desire for us to be.
Can you imagine the emotions that must be at play as Jesus returns to this home? Here sitting with them again is the one who brought their brother back from the dead. Here is the man who did the impossible. Here is the Messiah, come from God, and he's eating and talking witht them. Mary, moved with what I can only describe as passionate thanksgiving and supreme adoration, takes a bottle of very expensive perfume...worth a year's wages, probably her 'trust fund' in case something did ever happen to Lazarus and she had no one else to support her...and pours it out onto Jesus' feet, massaging his feet and wiping the oil from his feet with her long hair, an extremely intimate and almost erotic kind of action. There are very deep emotions flowing here.
Some who were present that evening are offended by Mary's behavior and criticize her wastefulness of the costly perfume in such a disturbing...to them...demonstration of love for Jesus. Why we could have used it to feed the poor...or built a new chapel...or paid the pastor's salary...or sent a missionary to Africa. There is always something that needs to be done, there is no doubt about that. But Mary ignored all that kind of so-called important thinking and truly spent a very emotionally necessary moment adoring her Savior, for he literally was the one who saved her from what would have happened to her if her brother had remained dead. Jesus meant all the world to her at this moment and she took the time to focus her attention on him, and only on him.
What was Jesus' response to her actions? He accepted her adoration and claimed that generations throughout history would remember what she had done for him before he died. She annointed his body with oils prior to his death, which was coming soon. He was loving and kind in his acceptance of her sacrificial gift to him.
How much time have you spent this week truly focusing your thinking and feeling on Jesus? What sacrifice have you made in your own life to demonstrate that God is supreme in your life? Have you spent time with God in prayer, in Bible study, in reflection finding the peace within yourself that only God in Christ can give to you?
I encourage you this week to be extravagant in your praise and adoration of God in Christ Jesus. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks about what you are doing. Lose yourself in praising God. Remember: Like Jeus was to Mary, God wants to be just as accepting, and extravagant in love toward you...even more so. It's at least something to think about.
The Amazing Grace of a Prodigal Parent: Lent 4 Year C
This week's lectionary uses Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son as an example of the kind of grace and love that God pours out upon us. The parable might more appropriately be entitled "The Prodigal Parent." The word prodigal means 'extravagantly wasteful' which describes both the young man's spending of his inheritance and also the father's demonstration of love toward his son upon the son's return.
If you read the passage in Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 you will quickly see that Jesus is dealing with Religious leaders who feel that Jesus is hanging out with the wrong kinds of people, with those that they find unacceptable to themselves and who they also wish to define as unacceptable to God. So Jesus tells them a story about a horrible son, a child who goes against all that is acceptable to their society by behaving in an unthinkable manner and demands that his father give to him his portion of the estate that would be left to him when his father dies. This is basically the same thing as saying, "Drop dead, Dad...and do it right now." In order to fulfill the son's request...something the father does and which would have been not only outrageous to Jesus' listeners, but totally unexpected of a Jewish father in that society...the father apparently divides his property in half and gives each son a half. Law said only one-third would go to the youngest son, while the oldest son would get two-thirds of the inheritance.
The younger boy apparently converts his property into cash, again a horrendous kind of action because you did not sell the family farmland as it was entrusted to you for future generations as a gift from God, departs with his wealth and spends it recklessly. He went to a Gentile city and hung out with unclean Gentile people. Soon he is destitute and must go to work for a pig farmer in order to stay alive, the worst kind of employment a Jewish man could have taken in that society. It would have made this sinful and unacceptable boy completely unclean. No one could have wanted such a person in their community, let alone in their home. Faced with starvation the boy decides to go home and offer himself to his father as a servant on the farm reasoning that his father treats his servants better than the boy is being treated by his own employer.
Off the child goes back home. Now Jesus' listeners would have expected the father to reject the son and kick him back out, but there is another turn of events, another unexpected action by a character within this story. The father has been watching for the return of the son and upon seeing him walking toward the house, the father runs out to him and embraces him and bestows upon the son all of the honors reserved only for a beloved, well-behaved child. This would have been a horrendous situation to the listeners. How could this father do this after all the son has done to hurt the father? And most important of all, if you notice, the son never got to tell the father that he was sorry for what he had done. No real repentance if you read the story carefully, just pure and simple self-preservation on the boy's part knowing his father would at least feed him and he wouldn't starve. That's not real repentance. And anyway, the boy never even gets to tell any part of his story because the father overwhelms him with love, care, restoration, hope and a future. This is, if you will, a glimpse of the resurrection Jesus himself will experience in a short while.
Many teach that in order to receive God's love and blessings we must repent, we must enumerate our sins and beg God to forgive us, throwing ourselves upon God's mercy. Many think that some so-called sins by their definition are so horrible as to almost cause God to fail to forgive anyone who commits those sins. Homosexuality, pre-marital sex, pregnancy out of wedlock, divorce, and more have all been treated almost as unforgiveable 'sins' by many on the religious right. But even with such "unspeakable and horrible" sins we have the reassurance from this parable that God goes running past those who say God cannot act in love toward such sinners, and we see God embracing all persons with God's amazing grace, enfolding them with God's unlimited love, and restoring them to their rightful place as God's own children.
The young man in this story was loved by the father before he demanded his own way, before he left home, in the same way that he was greeted and loved and welcomed back home when he did return. Jesus' story is about an unthinkable, extravagant loving parent who exceeds all social standards to demonstrate love for the child. I think Jesus is trying to tell us that there is nobody who falls outside of the boundaries of God's love and grace. God's love and grace are truly Amazing and beyond expectation and belief. God is truly prodigal in God's love for you and me. It's at least something to think about.
Pastor Ray
If you read the passage in Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 you will quickly see that Jesus is dealing with Religious leaders who feel that Jesus is hanging out with the wrong kinds of people, with those that they find unacceptable to themselves and who they also wish to define as unacceptable to God. So Jesus tells them a story about a horrible son, a child who goes against all that is acceptable to their society by behaving in an unthinkable manner and demands that his father give to him his portion of the estate that would be left to him when his father dies. This is basically the same thing as saying, "Drop dead, Dad...and do it right now." In order to fulfill the son's request...something the father does and which would have been not only outrageous to Jesus' listeners, but totally unexpected of a Jewish father in that society...the father apparently divides his property in half and gives each son a half. Law said only one-third would go to the youngest son, while the oldest son would get two-thirds of the inheritance.
The younger boy apparently converts his property into cash, again a horrendous kind of action because you did not sell the family farmland as it was entrusted to you for future generations as a gift from God, departs with his wealth and spends it recklessly. He went to a Gentile city and hung out with unclean Gentile people. Soon he is destitute and must go to work for a pig farmer in order to stay alive, the worst kind of employment a Jewish man could have taken in that society. It would have made this sinful and unacceptable boy completely unclean. No one could have wanted such a person in their community, let alone in their home. Faced with starvation the boy decides to go home and offer himself to his father as a servant on the farm reasoning that his father treats his servants better than the boy is being treated by his own employer.
Off the child goes back home. Now Jesus' listeners would have expected the father to reject the son and kick him back out, but there is another turn of events, another unexpected action by a character within this story. The father has been watching for the return of the son and upon seeing him walking toward the house, the father runs out to him and embraces him and bestows upon the son all of the honors reserved only for a beloved, well-behaved child. This would have been a horrendous situation to the listeners. How could this father do this after all the son has done to hurt the father? And most important of all, if you notice, the son never got to tell the father that he was sorry for what he had done. No real repentance if you read the story carefully, just pure and simple self-preservation on the boy's part knowing his father would at least feed him and he wouldn't starve. That's not real repentance. And anyway, the boy never even gets to tell any part of his story because the father overwhelms him with love, care, restoration, hope and a future. This is, if you will, a glimpse of the resurrection Jesus himself will experience in a short while.
Many teach that in order to receive God's love and blessings we must repent, we must enumerate our sins and beg God to forgive us, throwing ourselves upon God's mercy. Many think that some so-called sins by their definition are so horrible as to almost cause God to fail to forgive anyone who commits those sins. Homosexuality, pre-marital sex, pregnancy out of wedlock, divorce, and more have all been treated almost as unforgiveable 'sins' by many on the religious right. But even with such "unspeakable and horrible" sins we have the reassurance from this parable that God goes running past those who say God cannot act in love toward such sinners, and we see God embracing all persons with God's amazing grace, enfolding them with God's unlimited love, and restoring them to their rightful place as God's own children.
The young man in this story was loved by the father before he demanded his own way, before he left home, in the same way that he was greeted and loved and welcomed back home when he did return. Jesus' story is about an unthinkable, extravagant loving parent who exceeds all social standards to demonstrate love for the child. I think Jesus is trying to tell us that there is nobody who falls outside of the boundaries of God's love and grace. God's love and grace are truly Amazing and beyond expectation and belief. God is truly prodigal in God's love for you and me. It's at least something to think about.
Pastor Ray
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Second Chances (Lent 3, Year C)
In this week’s passage from Luke 13:1-9 Jesus confronts the question of why bad things happen to good people. In the thinking of ancient cultures a person deserved whatever happened to them, that is, bad things only happened to bad people. If you were a good person, then God would bless you with wealth, health, and happiness. If you were a bad person then God would punish you with bad health, accidents, and you would end up poor and homeless. In other words, blame the victim was the ruling thought of the day.
But Jesus contradicts this kind of thinking by saying that those who do encounter difficulty in their lives are no different from anyone else. But the idea that bad things only happen to bad people still persists in our society today. How often have you heard that anyone who gets HIV/AIDS deserved to get it by their faulty behavior? When I was growing up my parents would quote the following statement whenever I was in trouble, “If the shoe fits, wear it,” or “You made your own bed, now lie in it.” They were basically telling me that whatever had happened to me was my own fault. That wasn’t always true.
When my younger sister was born with facial deformities my parents decided that her handicaps meant that God was punishing them because they didn’t go to church and my father smoked tobacco and drank the occasional beer. Even as a five year old child I couldn’t understand the logic of that kind of thinking and if it was true wondered if God would get back at my parents by doing something horrible to me. My parents did start taking us to church and my dad did stop smoking and drinking any alcohol. But they also stopped playing Rook and cards and wouldn’t let me go to movies thinking that all of these things were somehow so sinful that God would punish them again if they didn’t clean up their lives completely.
We still have that kind of thinking going on in our own minds when someone has trouble in their lives. We ask: “What did they do or not do in order for this to happen to them.” Two hundred people get laid off because a company has economic problems but we ask our friend is one of the 200, “What did you do that they laid you off, too?” Like our friend might have some greater importance or ability than the other 199.
The fact is that we don’t control the future. But I guess I’m also saying that God doesn’t always control our future either. God has established a world where there are consequences to human actions like economic depressions and natural events like earthquakes and hurricanes that have nothing to do with what you and I might decide to do or how we might be living our lives. You cannot always, nor should you even try, to connect a natural event that causes you trouble with God deliberately punishing you in particular. That is a very childish way of relating to God. Grow up and take some advice from Jesus.
Jesus ends this discourse by talking about the fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit and the owner that wants it cut down. However, another person suggests that the tree may need some special attention and that by loosening the soil and adding some good old manure to the soil the tree just might bear fruit. Jesus is saying that God loves us enough to give us another chance, another opportunity to recover from our troubles and begin again. We are so much more important than even a barren fig tree that gets a second chance.
Got trouble in your lives? Don’t blame God or think that God is punishing you. Instead do turn to God for encouragement and God’s presence and power in your life to start all over again. God loves you enough to give you a second chance. It’s at least something to think about.
But Jesus contradicts this kind of thinking by saying that those who do encounter difficulty in their lives are no different from anyone else. But the idea that bad things only happen to bad people still persists in our society today. How often have you heard that anyone who gets HIV/AIDS deserved to get it by their faulty behavior? When I was growing up my parents would quote the following statement whenever I was in trouble, “If the shoe fits, wear it,” or “You made your own bed, now lie in it.” They were basically telling me that whatever had happened to me was my own fault. That wasn’t always true.
When my younger sister was born with facial deformities my parents decided that her handicaps meant that God was punishing them because they didn’t go to church and my father smoked tobacco and drank the occasional beer. Even as a five year old child I couldn’t understand the logic of that kind of thinking and if it was true wondered if God would get back at my parents by doing something horrible to me. My parents did start taking us to church and my dad did stop smoking and drinking any alcohol. But they also stopped playing Rook and cards and wouldn’t let me go to movies thinking that all of these things were somehow so sinful that God would punish them again if they didn’t clean up their lives completely.
We still have that kind of thinking going on in our own minds when someone has trouble in their lives. We ask: “What did they do or not do in order for this to happen to them.” Two hundred people get laid off because a company has economic problems but we ask our friend is one of the 200, “What did you do that they laid you off, too?” Like our friend might have some greater importance or ability than the other 199.
The fact is that we don’t control the future. But I guess I’m also saying that God doesn’t always control our future either. God has established a world where there are consequences to human actions like economic depressions and natural events like earthquakes and hurricanes that have nothing to do with what you and I might decide to do or how we might be living our lives. You cannot always, nor should you even try, to connect a natural event that causes you trouble with God deliberately punishing you in particular. That is a very childish way of relating to God. Grow up and take some advice from Jesus.
Jesus ends this discourse by talking about the fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit and the owner that wants it cut down. However, another person suggests that the tree may need some special attention and that by loosening the soil and adding some good old manure to the soil the tree just might bear fruit. Jesus is saying that God loves us enough to give us another chance, another opportunity to recover from our troubles and begin again. We are so much more important than even a barren fig tree that gets a second chance.
Got trouble in your lives? Don’t blame God or think that God is punishing you. Instead do turn to God for encouragement and God’s presence and power in your life to start all over again. God loves you enough to give you a second chance. It’s at least something to think about.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
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!
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!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Ash Wednesday: Put Down the Ducky!
(Read Isaiah 58:1-12)
Lent is often thought of as a time to give up certain things from chocolate to a favorite TV show, to even more important things, in an effort to free ourselves to focus on God and our relationship with God. The truth is that for many LGBT persons we’ve been giving up a lot about who we are and who we love in order to fit into other people’s ideas of what it means to be Christian that we often haven’t realized how much their demands upon us have kept us from being and becoming what God wants us to be, in fact, what God created us to be. Perhaps there ought to be more to Lent for us than just giving up something. Perhaps we ought to begin to focus on what we need to do to become authentic believers of God and give up all the entrapments with which others want to tie us down.
In this week’s commentary from “Out in Scripture” from the HRC website, Rev. Kharma Amos, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia in Fairfax suggests, "If lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies want to give up something for Lent, perhaps we should consider relinquishing shame about our sexual orientation or gender identity, or letting go of guilt about the loving relationships that bring us joy, or emerging from the closets that keep us from living our lives openly, authentically and abundantly."
Perhaps we should think of Lent as the time to prepare for Holy week and let our imaginations take us on a journey with Jesus and the disciples as they travel to Jerusalem going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does. We may want to look at what repentance really means, turning away from habits and activities that lead us toward death and depression and instead turn toward the life-giving uplifting ways of Jesus Christ. Instead of emphasizing things we should give up, as I said last Sunday morning, perhaps we should look for new ways to practice discipleship.
I raised four children on Sesame Street, both the TV show and its songs. I have seven grandchildren who watch and listen to the same shows and songs now. So what’s that got to do with Lent and Ash Wednesday? Well, perhaps more than you’d like to think. In one episode Ernie wants to learn how to play the saxophone, but to do so he will have to put down his beloved rubber ducky. He must let the ducky wait while he learns something new. The ducky will still be there when he finishes. We too, must find ways to free ourselves and allow ourselves to learn new ways to be Queer Christians. We might find that when we free ourselves from life as we know it that we will find entirely new ways to be what God is calling us to become.
Isaiah 58:1-12 gives many suggestions for how we might add some new practices to our lives of discipleship this Lenten Season from feeding the hungry, finding homes for the homeless, giving clothing to those who have none. If we do these things then the Prophet says “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom become like the noonday.” The Prophet encourages us to repair the brokenness in the world and become restorers of life. This is the kind of “fasting” that God truly desires of us during Lent.
Perhaps we all need to rethink what Lent means to us, what it is suppose to accomplish in us. It’s at least something to think about.
Lent is often thought of as a time to give up certain things from chocolate to a favorite TV show, to even more important things, in an effort to free ourselves to focus on God and our relationship with God. The truth is that for many LGBT persons we’ve been giving up a lot about who we are and who we love in order to fit into other people’s ideas of what it means to be Christian that we often haven’t realized how much their demands upon us have kept us from being and becoming what God wants us to be, in fact, what God created us to be. Perhaps there ought to be more to Lent for us than just giving up something. Perhaps we ought to begin to focus on what we need to do to become authentic believers of God and give up all the entrapments with which others want to tie us down.
In this week’s commentary from “Out in Scripture” from the HRC website, Rev. Kharma Amos, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia in Fairfax suggests, "If lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies want to give up something for Lent, perhaps we should consider relinquishing shame about our sexual orientation or gender identity, or letting go of guilt about the loving relationships that bring us joy, or emerging from the closets that keep us from living our lives openly, authentically and abundantly."
Perhaps we should think of Lent as the time to prepare for Holy week and let our imaginations take us on a journey with Jesus and the disciples as they travel to Jerusalem going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does. We may want to look at what repentance really means, turning away from habits and activities that lead us toward death and depression and instead turn toward the life-giving uplifting ways of Jesus Christ. Instead of emphasizing things we should give up, as I said last Sunday morning, perhaps we should look for new ways to practice discipleship.
I raised four children on Sesame Street, both the TV show and its songs. I have seven grandchildren who watch and listen to the same shows and songs now. So what’s that got to do with Lent and Ash Wednesday? Well, perhaps more than you’d like to think. In one episode Ernie wants to learn how to play the saxophone, but to do so he will have to put down his beloved rubber ducky. He must let the ducky wait while he learns something new. The ducky will still be there when he finishes. We too, must find ways to free ourselves and allow ourselves to learn new ways to be Queer Christians. We might find that when we free ourselves from life as we know it that we will find entirely new ways to be what God is calling us to become.
Isaiah 58:1-12 gives many suggestions for how we might add some new practices to our lives of discipleship this Lenten Season from feeding the hungry, finding homes for the homeless, giving clothing to those who have none. If we do these things then the Prophet says “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom become like the noonday.” The Prophet encourages us to repair the brokenness in the world and become restorers of life. This is the kind of “fasting” that God truly desires of us during Lent.
Perhaps we all need to rethink what Lent means to us, what it is suppose to accomplish in us. It’s at least something to think about.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Reflecting Jesus: Luke 9:28-43
We begin Lent this week, a time of reflection on Jesus’ life as he journeys toward Jerusalem and his death on the cross. Traditionally it has been a season of thoughtful introspection, often sad and depressing, but it needn’t be. Many Christians have traditionally given up something for Lent to remind themselves of the sacrifices that Jesus made in order to fulfill his destiny and bring all men and women into a loving, affirming, life-giving relationship with God. Some have more recently decided that in order to reflect the true light of Christ in their lives that they will instead add something to their lives during Lent by volunteering at a homeless shelter, or a food bank, or going to a nursing home to visit the lonely persons there who have often been abandoned by family and friends.
The story is told at the very end of Herman Wouk’s two book long series the Winds of War and War & Remembrance of a young mother, Natalie, reunited with her child, Louis, after their terrible ordeal in a concentration camp. The child has refused to speak while separated from his mother, but when she returns to him cradles him and begins to sing a soft lullaby to him; the child begins to slowly sing along with his mother. The two men watching this scene unfold before them “each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light.” They were looking at transcendent beauty that forced them to cover their eyes. That is the kind of light that emanated forth from Jesus that morning up on the mountaintop with his disciples.
We think of Transfiguration as a very supernatural kind of thing that only happened back in Biblical times, not something that could happen to you and I in our modern lives today. Oh, back then, we tell ourselves, God suspended the very laws of nature and physics to make really important statements…but, we also tell ourselves…God doesn’t act that way now.
But is that really true? Or are we misunderstanding and misinterpreting, as we are often prone to do, the very real spiritual experience that did happen to Jesus and the disciples? Do we do the same thing in our own lives today, ignore the truly spiritual moments of transformation and transfiguration that God wants us to experience?
As we begin this Lenten Journey with Jesus let us remember that we do so at the invitation of Jesus just as he invited Peter, James and John to go with him to pray on the mountain Jesus invites us to go with Him on a journey to Jerusalem. Like the disciples we are being called during Lent to go where Jesus goes and to do what Jesus does. And, like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to do this in community with one another, not alone, but together.
Just before they go up the mountain they have had a conversation about who Jesus was. Jesus asks all of the disciples to tell him what the buzz about him is among the people? They answer that some think he must be John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the other prophets come back from God. But that isn’t what Jesus really wants to know. So he asks them again, “Okay, guys, that’s what everyone else may be saying about me, but who do you say that I really am?” Its one thing to tell about what others think and believe about Jesus, about God, but it’s something else when we have to explain what we truly believe about who God is in Jesus Christ. It makes it very personal and very spiritual. Peter, the first one to speak, responds immediately, “You are the Messiah of God.”
You’d think that Jesus would have given Peter an A for his response to the question, but instead Jesus tells the disciples to not share that information with anyone because things are going to get very rough for him and for those who follow him. He says he’s going to suffer and die and on the third day be raised again. Anyone who wants to be his follower must be willing to lay down their own life, too. As we have talked about frequently before, the disciples don’t seem to understand.
And like the disciples we are often going to be less than understanding of what Jesus is telling us and showing us than perhaps we think we do. Jesus has just told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will face troubles and death but they don’t really believe him because they have a different outcome in mind than that which Jesus is trying to tell them about. They want a taste of victory and liberation from the despised Romans. Death and suffering is not what they had in mind; glory sounded so much better to them. How often do you and I ignore the obvious spiritual lessons that God wants to teach to us because those lessons don’t correspond to how we want to live our lives?
Oh, they get a big taste of glory up on the mountain that morning, but it wasn’t what they thought they were going to get, and the truth of the moment exceeds their understanding according to the text. Like Moses up on the mountain seeing and talking with God, Peter, James and John get a real taste of glory. As usual they aren’t able to pray with Jesus and stay awake. Suddenly they are brought out of their sleepiness by the sight of Jesus, whose body and clothing are now glowing with an unnatural brightness, is seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the tradition of the Law and Elijah the traditions of the prophets. Joined together with Jesus, the author of Luke, is telling us that Jesus is the natural successor of these two traditions and in fact unites them into one spiritual wholeness.
Here we are in the middle of this holy moment Peter, like Peter often does, interrupts saying something to which he hasn’t given much thought. “Oh, wow, this is really something, Jesus. Let’s build three houses here. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah so we can preserve this moment forever. We can live right up here on the mountain for the rest of our lives.”
All over the world there have been monuments and churches built to preserve such holy miraculous moments for all of rest of history. Frozen moments in time to which we can return and remind ourselves how wonderful it was or might have been for those who were present when it happened. Sure, those moments are important, but I don’t think that God intends for us to freeze those moments in history and stay up on the mountaintop. I believe instead that God wants us to use such moments to be the motivation and the reason for us to accomplish God’s hopes and plans for us and others through us. We have to take the miracle with us back down the mountain to where we live our daily lives.
And so out of the divine cloud that surrounds them God speaks almost as if to tell Peter to shut up. God, who spoke to Jesus at his baptism and told him that he was God’s beloved child, now says to those with Jesus that this is God’s chosen one, God’s beloved and only child, and suggests that they listen to him.” Maybe God was annoyed with Peter for interrupting this holy experience. As one commentator wrote, “If Moses was told up on that mountain that he couldn’t see God and live, perhaps Peter should have been told that he couldn’t see God and talk so much.” Perhaps God was also saying to the mostly Jewish audience that Luke was writing to, “Yes, Moses and Elijah had a lot to say that you need to pay attention to, but you need to pay even more attention to what Jesus has to say because he is my chosen one.”
Peter is just like you and me. We often try to talk our way into understanding. We want to process the experience so we can come to understand it and make our understanding a part of who we are. But more often we want to, like Peter, carve that moment in stone by building a monument or by hardening our own traditions and interpretations of scripture to say, “This is what we believe. We’ve always believed this way. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve always said it this way.” We want to take the experience and make it into something that we can hold on to, something that won’t change, and best of all, something that really won’t change us…or not that much, hopefully.
But Jesus wouldn’t let them preserve the moment. Jesus takes them back down the mountain and back into the world where they meet a man with a sick child. The man had approached the disciples to heal his son, but they couldn’t help, even though they had been up on the mountaintop with Jesus. So he calls upon Jesus to heal his beloved only child, echoing the words of God about Jesus up on the mountain. And Jesus responds with the loving-kindness of God and heals the boy.
My four grandsons love transformer toys. They are always showing me a toy that looks like one thing but with a few twists and turns becomes something else entirely. When I don’t know what else to give them, I can always purchase a transformer toy and know that they will be delighted with it, for at least a moment or two. That’s usually what we want to do with transformational experiences in our own lives. Hold on to them for a moment or two, but not long enough to let them really change us into what God wants us to become.
We are truly afraid of being changed. Because when we allow God to change us, we aren’t in control of the outcome any longer. And that scares us. I don’t understand why, but it does. Because the one thing that we do know is that God loves us and wants the very best for us, so why are we afraid to let God change us to become the best that we can become?
The word transfiguration is different from the word transformation. Transfiguration is about change, but it emphasizes a dramatic change in appearance, and it especially means a change that glorifies or exalts someone, which truly works well for today’s scripture reading about what happened to Jesus. But transformation also means the “changed state that results from this change in appearance.”
And that works well for us as we come to the end of another season of Epiphany. During Epiphany we have turned our hearts and minds and opened our eyes and ears to the ways that God is showing forth God’s self in the world around us. Here at the edge of Lent, as we set out with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the mount of Calvary, we pause on another mountain for one of those “mountaintop experiences,” one of those thrilling moments when we truly glimpse glory, a bright flash of light, an indescribable moment when everything seems to change not just in appearance, but becomes forever different for us.
Oh, we may not be up on a mountaintop this morning, but the experience this past year of watching this congregation grow in so many different ways, not just in the number of persons, but in heart and soul of each person, as we have deepened our spiritual growth and our relationships with God and with each other, yes, that is a mountaintop experience all by itself.
The stories of your lives are the stories of people who have found their way to God and to us, people who thought that there was no church home for them anywhere, no spiritual community that would welcome them and their faith walk, no place that would be grateful and celebrate their presence. But here you are today. Your personal stories make my heart fill with wonder and awe and I am transfigured by the changes I see in you, changes you never thought you would experience, that I have to put my hands over my eyes because you move me to transcendence with your faith and your hope and your presence here this morning. You are a miracle that I cannot ignore nor explain away.
Metropolitan Community Church Seattle is a different church than we were a year ago. Together we have begun a journey toward heaven. Soon we will receive more new members, persons who have already told me that they are committing to joining us on this journey. Their stories will be joined with ours and we must not expect them to do things the way we have always done them or to believe the way we have always believed. We won’t put up pup tents nor will we carve anything in stone. We will instead, stand still for our moment of glory and then we will go back down the mountain and continue the work we have been given as we journey with Jesus everyday of our lives…together.
The true work of discipleship isn’t up on the mountain; it’s out there in the world. We take the church, this church, to the world when we leave here this morning, transfiguring lives as we go.
The story is told by a surgeon about a young couple. The doctor had to perform a disfiguring surgery on a young woman so that she could live. As a result of the surgery she would never be able to smile on one side of her face again. The surgeon felt very bad about this outcome and watched with a heavy heart as her partner went into her room and saw her for the first time, her mouth drawn permanently downward on one side. Her partner reached out and touched her face and said, “I think it’s kind of cute; your crooked little smile,” and kissed her gently. The doctor said he had to look away from these two young people, as if the light of their love were too bright for him to bear.
Where is God? All of the earth, all of creation, broken and yet beautiful, is full of the presence of God. We don’t have to climb a mountain to find God, although we probably should turn off our cell phones, computers, and television sets long enough to notice…like our ancestor Jacob, who said, “God is in this place, and I wasn’t aware of it.”
God is in the beauty of nature. God is in those moments of unconditional, tender love. God is there, between the lines of our lives, when we share our stories and our, oh, so fragile hopes. God is there in our suffering and in every moment of rescue, restoration, and resurrection. But be careful, my dearest friends, because the light may be so very bright that you will need to cover your eyes.
You and I don’t need to climb mountains or even look for miracles in order to be transfigured and changed for always. Every time we experience love, forgiveness, healing, God’s grace in our lives, we are changed forever. Every time we have a glimpse of God’s presence in our lives…a presence that is everywhere and with everyone all of the time…we are changed forever. The love that we show to one another and the love that we offer the world, the peace and justice and healing we work for, the forgiveness and reconciliation we seek, the hope we offer to those we meet, no matter who they are, no matter how we may feel about them, this is the kind of love that can change the world, change the way it looks, and feels, and the way it is, not just today, but in all the days ahead, for all of us: all God’s children, beloved and blessed by God.
Lent lies ahead of us, my sisters and brothers in Christ. The road to Jerusalem is waiting for us. Let the light of Christ shine forth from us as we walk that road with together.
The story is told at the very end of Herman Wouk’s two book long series the Winds of War and War & Remembrance of a young mother, Natalie, reunited with her child, Louis, after their terrible ordeal in a concentration camp. The child has refused to speak while separated from his mother, but when she returns to him cradles him and begins to sing a soft lullaby to him; the child begins to slowly sing along with his mother. The two men watching this scene unfold before them “each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light.” They were looking at transcendent beauty that forced them to cover their eyes. That is the kind of light that emanated forth from Jesus that morning up on the mountaintop with his disciples.
We think of Transfiguration as a very supernatural kind of thing that only happened back in Biblical times, not something that could happen to you and I in our modern lives today. Oh, back then, we tell ourselves, God suspended the very laws of nature and physics to make really important statements…but, we also tell ourselves…God doesn’t act that way now.
But is that really true? Or are we misunderstanding and misinterpreting, as we are often prone to do, the very real spiritual experience that did happen to Jesus and the disciples? Do we do the same thing in our own lives today, ignore the truly spiritual moments of transformation and transfiguration that God wants us to experience?
As we begin this Lenten Journey with Jesus let us remember that we do so at the invitation of Jesus just as he invited Peter, James and John to go with him to pray on the mountain Jesus invites us to go with Him on a journey to Jerusalem. Like the disciples we are being called during Lent to go where Jesus goes and to do what Jesus does. And, like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to do this in community with one another, not alone, but together.
Just before they go up the mountain they have had a conversation about who Jesus was. Jesus asks all of the disciples to tell him what the buzz about him is among the people? They answer that some think he must be John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the other prophets come back from God. But that isn’t what Jesus really wants to know. So he asks them again, “Okay, guys, that’s what everyone else may be saying about me, but who do you say that I really am?” Its one thing to tell about what others think and believe about Jesus, about God, but it’s something else when we have to explain what we truly believe about who God is in Jesus Christ. It makes it very personal and very spiritual. Peter, the first one to speak, responds immediately, “You are the Messiah of God.”
You’d think that Jesus would have given Peter an A for his response to the question, but instead Jesus tells the disciples to not share that information with anyone because things are going to get very rough for him and for those who follow him. He says he’s going to suffer and die and on the third day be raised again. Anyone who wants to be his follower must be willing to lay down their own life, too. As we have talked about frequently before, the disciples don’t seem to understand.
And like the disciples we are often going to be less than understanding of what Jesus is telling us and showing us than perhaps we think we do. Jesus has just told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will face troubles and death but they don’t really believe him because they have a different outcome in mind than that which Jesus is trying to tell them about. They want a taste of victory and liberation from the despised Romans. Death and suffering is not what they had in mind; glory sounded so much better to them. How often do you and I ignore the obvious spiritual lessons that God wants to teach to us because those lessons don’t correspond to how we want to live our lives?
Oh, they get a big taste of glory up on the mountain that morning, but it wasn’t what they thought they were going to get, and the truth of the moment exceeds their understanding according to the text. Like Moses up on the mountain seeing and talking with God, Peter, James and John get a real taste of glory. As usual they aren’t able to pray with Jesus and stay awake. Suddenly they are brought out of their sleepiness by the sight of Jesus, whose body and clothing are now glowing with an unnatural brightness, is seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the tradition of the Law and Elijah the traditions of the prophets. Joined together with Jesus, the author of Luke, is telling us that Jesus is the natural successor of these two traditions and in fact unites them into one spiritual wholeness.
Here we are in the middle of this holy moment Peter, like Peter often does, interrupts saying something to which he hasn’t given much thought. “Oh, wow, this is really something, Jesus. Let’s build three houses here. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah so we can preserve this moment forever. We can live right up here on the mountain for the rest of our lives.”
All over the world there have been monuments and churches built to preserve such holy miraculous moments for all of rest of history. Frozen moments in time to which we can return and remind ourselves how wonderful it was or might have been for those who were present when it happened. Sure, those moments are important, but I don’t think that God intends for us to freeze those moments in history and stay up on the mountaintop. I believe instead that God wants us to use such moments to be the motivation and the reason for us to accomplish God’s hopes and plans for us and others through us. We have to take the miracle with us back down the mountain to where we live our daily lives.
And so out of the divine cloud that surrounds them God speaks almost as if to tell Peter to shut up. God, who spoke to Jesus at his baptism and told him that he was God’s beloved child, now says to those with Jesus that this is God’s chosen one, God’s beloved and only child, and suggests that they listen to him.” Maybe God was annoyed with Peter for interrupting this holy experience. As one commentator wrote, “If Moses was told up on that mountain that he couldn’t see God and live, perhaps Peter should have been told that he couldn’t see God and talk so much.” Perhaps God was also saying to the mostly Jewish audience that Luke was writing to, “Yes, Moses and Elijah had a lot to say that you need to pay attention to, but you need to pay even more attention to what Jesus has to say because he is my chosen one.”
Peter is just like you and me. We often try to talk our way into understanding. We want to process the experience so we can come to understand it and make our understanding a part of who we are. But more often we want to, like Peter, carve that moment in stone by building a monument or by hardening our own traditions and interpretations of scripture to say, “This is what we believe. We’ve always believed this way. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve always said it this way.” We want to take the experience and make it into something that we can hold on to, something that won’t change, and best of all, something that really won’t change us…or not that much, hopefully.
But Jesus wouldn’t let them preserve the moment. Jesus takes them back down the mountain and back into the world where they meet a man with a sick child. The man had approached the disciples to heal his son, but they couldn’t help, even though they had been up on the mountaintop with Jesus. So he calls upon Jesus to heal his beloved only child, echoing the words of God about Jesus up on the mountain. And Jesus responds with the loving-kindness of God and heals the boy.
My four grandsons love transformer toys. They are always showing me a toy that looks like one thing but with a few twists and turns becomes something else entirely. When I don’t know what else to give them, I can always purchase a transformer toy and know that they will be delighted with it, for at least a moment or two. That’s usually what we want to do with transformational experiences in our own lives. Hold on to them for a moment or two, but not long enough to let them really change us into what God wants us to become.
We are truly afraid of being changed. Because when we allow God to change us, we aren’t in control of the outcome any longer. And that scares us. I don’t understand why, but it does. Because the one thing that we do know is that God loves us and wants the very best for us, so why are we afraid to let God change us to become the best that we can become?
The word transfiguration is different from the word transformation. Transfiguration is about change, but it emphasizes a dramatic change in appearance, and it especially means a change that glorifies or exalts someone, which truly works well for today’s scripture reading about what happened to Jesus. But transformation also means the “changed state that results from this change in appearance.”
And that works well for us as we come to the end of another season of Epiphany. During Epiphany we have turned our hearts and minds and opened our eyes and ears to the ways that God is showing forth God’s self in the world around us. Here at the edge of Lent, as we set out with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the mount of Calvary, we pause on another mountain for one of those “mountaintop experiences,” one of those thrilling moments when we truly glimpse glory, a bright flash of light, an indescribable moment when everything seems to change not just in appearance, but becomes forever different for us.
Oh, we may not be up on a mountaintop this morning, but the experience this past year of watching this congregation grow in so many different ways, not just in the number of persons, but in heart and soul of each person, as we have deepened our spiritual growth and our relationships with God and with each other, yes, that is a mountaintop experience all by itself.
The stories of your lives are the stories of people who have found their way to God and to us, people who thought that there was no church home for them anywhere, no spiritual community that would welcome them and their faith walk, no place that would be grateful and celebrate their presence. But here you are today. Your personal stories make my heart fill with wonder and awe and I am transfigured by the changes I see in you, changes you never thought you would experience, that I have to put my hands over my eyes because you move me to transcendence with your faith and your hope and your presence here this morning. You are a miracle that I cannot ignore nor explain away.
Metropolitan Community Church Seattle is a different church than we were a year ago. Together we have begun a journey toward heaven. Soon we will receive more new members, persons who have already told me that they are committing to joining us on this journey. Their stories will be joined with ours and we must not expect them to do things the way we have always done them or to believe the way we have always believed. We won’t put up pup tents nor will we carve anything in stone. We will instead, stand still for our moment of glory and then we will go back down the mountain and continue the work we have been given as we journey with Jesus everyday of our lives…together.
The true work of discipleship isn’t up on the mountain; it’s out there in the world. We take the church, this church, to the world when we leave here this morning, transfiguring lives as we go.
The story is told by a surgeon about a young couple. The doctor had to perform a disfiguring surgery on a young woman so that she could live. As a result of the surgery she would never be able to smile on one side of her face again. The surgeon felt very bad about this outcome and watched with a heavy heart as her partner went into her room and saw her for the first time, her mouth drawn permanently downward on one side. Her partner reached out and touched her face and said, “I think it’s kind of cute; your crooked little smile,” and kissed her gently. The doctor said he had to look away from these two young people, as if the light of their love were too bright for him to bear.
Where is God? All of the earth, all of creation, broken and yet beautiful, is full of the presence of God. We don’t have to climb a mountain to find God, although we probably should turn off our cell phones, computers, and television sets long enough to notice…like our ancestor Jacob, who said, “God is in this place, and I wasn’t aware of it.”
God is in the beauty of nature. God is in those moments of unconditional, tender love. God is there, between the lines of our lives, when we share our stories and our, oh, so fragile hopes. God is there in our suffering and in every moment of rescue, restoration, and resurrection. But be careful, my dearest friends, because the light may be so very bright that you will need to cover your eyes.
You and I don’t need to climb mountains or even look for miracles in order to be transfigured and changed for always. Every time we experience love, forgiveness, healing, God’s grace in our lives, we are changed forever. Every time we have a glimpse of God’s presence in our lives…a presence that is everywhere and with everyone all of the time…we are changed forever. The love that we show to one another and the love that we offer the world, the peace and justice and healing we work for, the forgiveness and reconciliation we seek, the hope we offer to those we meet, no matter who they are, no matter how we may feel about them, this is the kind of love that can change the world, change the way it looks, and feels, and the way it is, not just today, but in all the days ahead, for all of us: all God’s children, beloved and blessed by God.
Lent lies ahead of us, my sisters and brothers in Christ. The road to Jerusalem is waiting for us. Let the light of Christ shine forth from us as we walk that road with together.
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