Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Passes Historic Resolution on Welcome of LGBT People

On Tuesday, July 16, as part of its biennial General Assembly, the Protestant mainline denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) voted to "to affirm the faith, baptism and spiritual gifts of all Christians regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity," declaring "that neither is grounds for exclusion from fellowship or service within the church." The resolution passed with over 75% of the vote.

Rev. Derek Penwell, pastor of Douglass Blvd. Christian Church in Louisville, was the resolution's primary author and DBCC served as the resolution's original sponsor. While this resolution does not speak directly either to the question of the same gender marriage or to standards for ordination, it attempts to say a positive word of grace and welcome to those people who, because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, have historically felt unrecognized and unwelcome by the churc.h"

Rev. Penwell said, "We know that the church has harmed countless LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, BiSexual, and Transgender) people in the past. Many churches continue to hurt today. This was a chance for Disciples to say publicly 'enough.' It was our chance to say that many Christians wnat to be a part of the solution of welcoming everyone, instead of the part of the problem."

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and part of an indigenous American religious movement that arose at the beginning of the 1800s, is today considered a Protestant mainline denomination with a historic concern for the pursuit of ecumenical unity, social justice, and freedom of Biblical interpretation.

For more information on the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), visit http://www.disciples.org.

Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, founded in 1846, has historically been committed to the pursuit of justice for all people, offering leadership in trying to live out the message of love and hospitality embodied by Jesus. In 2008, Douglass Boulevard Christian Church voted to become an Open and Affirming Community of Faith.

Douglass Boulevard Christian Church is located at 2005 Douglass Boulevard in the Highlands near Douglass Loop. For more information on the church, visit http://douglassblvdcc.com.

For more information on Rev. Derek Penwell, visit http://derekpenwell.net.

Rev. Penwell handing out certificates to over 19 new Open & Affirming congregations.

The Iconoclasm of Washing the Wrong Feet

On Holy Thursday newly elected Pope, Francis I, stunned traditionalists by washing the feet of the wrong people. Yes, they were prisoners. Yes, one was Muslim. But that fact failed to raise any eyebrows. What really chapped the backsides of the keepers of the ecclesiastical keys was the fact that Pope Francis washed the feet of two teenage girls.

The scandal wasn't that they were teenagers either (a completely different article), but that they were female. Because, you know . . . they weren't men. Jesus, "on the night he was betrayed," washed the feet of those who enjoyed the comfy advantage of having been blessed at birth with the correct anatomical equipment.

Vatican observers with a commitment to the reforms instituted by Pope Benedict—reforms that called Catholics back to traditional liturgical and social concerns—blanched at the thought that Francis may be opening the door to innovation.

Innovation, to those who care about the unswerving devotion to a particular legacy, is not merely a lousy idea, but a potential threat to the faith. You can't have people walking around chucking the old stuff, adopting new practices higgledy-piggledy. That's a recipe for anarchy—or, if not anarchy, then potentially a state of affairs less than satisfactory to those used to calling the shots.

But then again, churches of all times and places have had to balance the competing impulses to stay the course or to strike out in a new direction. It's easy for new (read: young) people to come in and seek to turn over—at least in the estimation of the reformers—the tables of the ecclesiastical money changers. Self-righteousness, when it comes to seeing the failures of your forbears, is easy. They've made many mistakes.

However, we should probably begin with the generosity of spirit necessary for reform by pointing out that many of those mistakes in building a legacy were made in good faith. That is to say, for example, the institutional behemoth of mid-twentieth century mainline Protestantism didn't start out to build monuments to its own cultural domination. On the contrary, I take it as read that church leaders in the 1950s and 60s were overwhelmed by the pressures of trying to make enough space for all the people that came pouring in as the effects of the post-World War II baby boom began to emerge.

Young families were all there were. (Hyperbole: Don't email me.) It was like the curse of the Midas touch. Not necessarily through any special genius on the part of existing leadership, everything churches touched turned into 2.4 children. Pretty soon, churches didn't have room for them all. So, they built bigger and better sanctuaries to accommodate the inflow.

What the average minister didn't necessarily feel the need to build, however, was an ecclesiological or theological foundation upon which to ground this new cultural supremacy. It came to feel almost like a birthright.

"People will come because we're the church," these new cultural brahmins surely thought. Church leaders didn't often stop to ask the question about whether this growth was undergirded by anything more solid than the behavioral expectations of the culture, or if it was even healthy.[^1]

[^1]:I mean not all metastatic growth is good, right? Ask an oncologist. I'm just saying. Don't email me.

Why not?

If you're in a lucite booth that's blowing $20 bills, you don't stop to ask why somebody let you in there in the first place or whether the blower's going to turn off at some point, you just grab the money. And when you don't have enough room to stuff all the cash, you start looking for bigger, more efficient ways to reap the harvest of legal tender.

Unfortunately, apparently good fortune left the church with amazingly deep and well designed pockets, as well as the expectation that those pockets would always be full. So, when the air started to thin out from the flurry of $20 dollar bills, the conventional wisdom held that what was needed was not so much to figure out what to do with the $20 bills already there, but to come up with ever more ingenious ways to mimic the air circulation produced by the fan. Because the thinking appears to have been that the fan created the currency, rather than just blowing it about.

Ok. Let's not torture that metaphor any longer. However, we should be reminded that the cultural game that brought so many people to mainline churches in the middle of the last century, wasn't a game designed by the church. That churches adjusted their expectations and building habits to adapt to the sudden rush of suburbanites is understandable. They had to do something. We can argue about whether, in retrospect, it was the right thing; but to the extent it was an error, it was an error prompted by the need to act quickly.

Let's torture another metaphor: The problem wasn't that the ecclesiastical behemoth of the last century was guilty of trying to drink from a fire hose, but that it expected the fire hose would always be turned on full blast, and that its job going forward was to figure out both how to control the water pressure, as well as to figure out ever more efficient programmatic strategies for swallowing all that water.

In short, our criticism of the kingdom building taken on by previous generations of mainliners should be tempered by an understanding that they were reacting to a quickly changing cultural landscape. The issue we need to evaluate is any assertion that the ongoing maintenance of those kingdoms is a necessary function of living the way Jesus said to live.

Back to Pope Francis. What I find refreshing about—at least at this early stage of his papacy—his apparent pastoral presence is his determination to concern himself with the kinds of things with which Jesus concerned himself: Compassion for those on the margins—the poor, the powerless, the outcast, and the prisoner. Moreover, Francis' compassion is suitably dressed in a humility that refuses to take advantage of advantage—that is, the perquisites associated with papal power.

Setting aside for a moment the (always satisfying) thumb in the eye of overly protective traditionalists as a worthwhile end in itself, the attractive thing about what Pope Francis seems to be signaling is a commitment to following Jesus down the dark alleys of the human journey, in spite of the fact that most of the rest of the religious world appears too busy protecting the sixteen lane super highways we built to accommodate the increase in traffic. Which protection, unfortunately and to our lasting shame, often has little to do with making sure that the last, the least, the lost, and the dying feel the hands of mercy washing their feet.

The thing is, mainline churches ought to take a cue from Pope Francis and start turning over tables that keep us from the truly important things—that is, ministry to the people the religious bigwigs have always considered at best, a distraction, and at worst, a threat to stability. In other words, we should be out in search of people who desperately need their feet washed, instead of spending our resources building elaborate foot washing stations for people convinced the only thing they really need is a pedicure.

Iconoclasm, though it makes for good cable news, isn't worth much if the wrong folks don't get their feet washed.

[Derek]

Leading 'Ex-Gay' Organization Closes, Apologizes To LGBT Community | ThinkProgress

So, in case you didn't hear.  This is going to be a huge deal. 

Exodus International, one of the nation’s most prominent coalitions of groups promoting harmful “ex-gay” therapy, announced Wednesday that it was disbanding and apologized to the LGBT community for the massive harm it has caused to many. Alan Chambers, the group’s president, issued a written apology, acknowledging that his organization hurt many.

In his apology, Chambers wrote:

Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.

DBCC Hosts Screening of the Film "Gen Silent" on Aging and LGBT Elder Issues

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

CONTACT:

Chris Hartman, Fairness Campaign Director

(502) 640-1095; @FairnessCamp

Dr. Noell Rowan, BSW Program Director, UofL Kent School of Social Work

(502) 852-1964; NLRowa01@louisville.edu

"Aging Fairly" Series Includes FIlm & Lecture on LGBT Elder Issues

April 28, 4 p.m., UofL Chao Auditorium; June 9, 5 p.m., Douglass Blvd. Christian Church 

(Louisville, KY) As part of its "Aging Fairly" series, the Fairness Campaign is partnering with KIPDA Mental Health and Aging Coalition, the University of Louisville Kent School of Social Work, The LGBT Center at University of Louisville, Mad Stu Media, Faith Leaders for Fairness, and True Colors Ministry to present showings of Stu Maddux's award-winning documentary film on LGBT aging, Gen Silent. 

Each film showing is coupled with a brief lecture by Dr. Noell Rowan, BSW Program Director of UofL's Kent School of Social Work, who will reveal findings from a groundbreaking Hartford Faculty Scholars research project, Resiliency and Quality of Life for Older Lesbian Adults with Alcoholism. The series is free to the public with refreshments and will be shown Sunday, April 28, 4:00 p.m. at UofL's Chao Auditorium in the basement of Ekstrom Library and Sunday, June 9, 5:00 p.m. at Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, 2005 Douglass Boulevard.

The film showing and lecture series is part of the Fairness Campaign's ongoing efforts to promote awareness in the community of LGBT aging issues and disparities among older LGBT adults. As chronicled in Gen Silent, many older LGBT people struggle with going back into the closet as they fear prejudice and unfair treatment in assisted living facilities and nursing homes. According to Improving the Lives of LGBT Older Adults, a joint study by the MAP Project, Center for American Progress, and SAGE, 8.3% of LGBT elders reported abuse or neglect by a caretaker due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, senior lesbian couples have almost twice the poverty rate of senior heterosexual couples, LGB older adults have 11% higher alcohol abuse rates than their heterosexual peers, and 72% of LGBT seniors are hesitant to engage in mainstream aging programs for fear of being unwelcome, among other staggering statistics.

"With more than 1.5 million LGBT seniors living in America today, and with that number ever increasing as more Baby Boomers join those ranks, caring for and better accommodating the needs of our LGBT elders has become an increasingly urgent issue on the Fairness Campaign's radar," shared director Chris Hartman. "In the coming years, we will be deepening our partnerships with these and other organizations--like Elderserve, Inc.--to best serve Louisville and Kentucky's LGBT seniors."

WHAT: "Aging Fairly" film and lecture series

WHEN & WHERE: 
Sunday, April 28, 4:00 p.m. 
UofL's Chao Auditorium in the basement of Ekstrom Library

Sunday, June 9, 5:00 p.m.
Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, 2005 Douglass Boulevard

WHO: Dr. Noell Rowan
KIPDA Mental Health and Aging Coalition
University of Louisville Kent School of Social Work
The LGBT Center at University of Louisville
Fairness Campaign
Mad Stu Media
Faith Leaders for Fairness

True Colors Ministry

Sermon Podcast: Seeing with Different Eyes

"The story of Peter and Cornelius is a tough passage just to the extent that it asks us to do the difficult work of continuously discerning the movement of the Holy Spirit. Where is God going? What kind of new thing is God up to? Who is it that makes us uncomfortable, whom God is busy trying to welcome into the fold?

"It’s a lot easier to sit back, point out the rules, and say, 'This is the way God’s always done it before.' But God is bigger than our attempts to box God in. God cares about establishing a a reign of justice and mercy, not about making us feel comfortable."

---

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Sermon Text

MP3

Evangelical Leader, Jim Wallis, Now Favors Marriage Equality

"Jim Wallis' support of same-sex marriage is yet another proof of the ever-changing opinions in the U.S. about the subject. Since 2003, Americans, even from the most conservative states and religious creeds, have steadily increased their support for the issue. Slowly but surely, gays rights are becoming what African American rights were 60 years ago: accepted by more and more people."

Do you hear that? It's the winds of change

Sermon Podcast: Wanting What You've Got (Matthew 20:1–6)

This sermon begins with Louis C.K. and ends with the promise that "in the reign of God, we’re valuable not based on our production, not based on how much we’re worth.  We’re valuable because, by the grace of God, God says we’re valuable."

Here's the video Rev. Penwell references of Louis C.K.:



Remember, you can subscribe to our weekly podcast in iTunes and download all of the sermons automatically to your computer, as well as to your iPhone, iPad, or other mobile device.

Click the link below for the sermon audio or just subscribe to our podcast in iTunes and you won't miss a single sermon…

"Wanting What You've Got" by Rev. Derek Penwell

Sermon Podcast: "Treat 'em Like Gentiles"

Here's this weeks's sermon podcast, "Treat 'em Like Gentiles" delivered by Rev. Derek Penwell:

Remember, you can subscribe to our weekly podcast in iTunes and download all of the sermons automatically to your computer, as well as to your iPhone, iPad, or other mobile device.

You can save the sermon to read later with this .pdf.

Or, just read it beginning here:

Treat ‘em Like Gentiles (Matt. 18:15–20)

We live in a society that’s grown increasingly permissive. That’s not news to you, right? Scandals in politics, in the church. Corruption. Violence. Treachery. You stay out of my business, and I’ll stay out of yours.

We’ve come a long way down some very undesirable roads, both as a nation and as a church. With the media and liberal preachers forever expounding on the virtues of “tolerance and diversity,” we bought into the lie that it doesn’t matter what I do, as long as nobody gets hurt. And the logical conclusion of such an argument is that nobody (and I mean nobody) better tell me how I’m supposed to live. How I choose to live my life is my decision, it’s between God and me. Butt out!

Of course, it hasn’t always been that way. There was a time when the needs of the community superseded the demands of the individual. But to say that today is to be labeled a socialist. There was a time, however, when the church had authority, and that authority meant something. And with all the permissiveness in our culture, it doesn’t seem too outrageous to think that the church might move to regain some of that authority. It has to do something. The church can’t stand idly by while everything deteriorates. There has to be accountability somewhere.

I'm a Minister

I’m a minister.  Which is to say, I work as a minister in a church.  Historically, I’ve found myself reluctant to offer that bit of information in casual conversation, not because ministry occupies a position inherently more shameful than a host of other vocational options, but because when people find out that I’m a minister they either want me to answer their questions about I watch TBN, or they want to impart some theological nugget they’ve mined from The Prayer of Jabez or The Left Behind series.  Please don’t misunderstand—I like questions.  In fact I entered the ministry because of some of the questions I had about life and its ultimate meaning.  My problem lies not in questions in themselves, but in questions about whether or not I believe that the World Council of Churches, Democratic politicians, and certain cartoon characters on prime time television form a shady cabal intent on ushering in the anti-Christ and a one-world government—complete with standard issue UPC codes emblazoned on everyone’s forehead, or whether I’ve finally come to my senses and realized that mega-churches are the goal of God’s reign here on earth.

The fact is I like being a minister, in large part, because of the conversations that attach to a life spent following such a strange, quixotic, compelling character as Jesus.  The conversations, however, that seem to me to be important to have center on questions of justice, non-violence, grace, faithfulness, friendship, and devotion, rather than the sort of mass-produced fare provided by a popular religious culture that asks nothing more of Christians than that they act nice, refrain from swearing in public, and support any military action proposed by the American government as, ipso facto, God’s will.

To put a finer point on it, I like being a minister at Douglass Boulevard Christian Church.  I’m blessed to belong to a community of faith that takes seriously our call to live out the example of Jesus in the best way we know how.  DBCC is a community unafraid to take a chance on following Jesus down a dark alley.  I like that.  I like the sense of adventure I find at DBCC, as well as the adventurous thoughts I have when I think about what we can do together.

I guess this is all a long way of saying that my thoughts about ministry have evolved since coming to Douglass.  Many of the things I do don’t even feel particularly like work.  In fact, now when I’m asked what I do, I tell people I’m a minister at this really great church that seeks justice for the marginalized, that provides embrace for those who’ve been excluded, that looks into the eyes of the forgotten and says, “You’re welcome here.”  Though we’re not perfect, we are constantly looking for ways to grow and be better.

I’m a minister.  I just thought you should know.

"The Mercy of Bread" (Matthew 15:21–28)

Back from vacay, Derek preaches on the Canaanite woman with a demon-afflicted daughter who has the audacity to approach Jesus. In other words, he preaches about marginalization.

Our culture is so good at teaching us who we can safely ignore, but coming to the table each week reminds us that no one can ever be expendable again.

Click the link below for the sermon audio or just subscribe to our podcast in iTunes and you won't miss a single sermon…

"The Mercy of Bread" by Rev. Derek Penwell

What Is the What?

Brief note: Since the church where I pastor, Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, voted on Sunday, April 17 to honor all marriages (gay and straight) by refraining from signing marriage licenses, I have been asked to present a justification of my views on receiving LGBTQ folks as equals in all aspects of the life of the church.  Here is a brief glance at the nature of my thinking on this issue--which is to say an answer to "What is the what?"

On Facebook, as many of you know, I tend to be kind of a smart aleck.  More to the point, I tend to be a decidedly liberal smart aleck—a fact that annoys some people, while others seem more appreciative of my sarcasm.  At any rate, I received a message on Facebook the other day from someone about whom I care a great deal.  It read, in part:

“Many of the people in my generation are politically what they are because of their upbringing. It would do us well to hear the "other" side in a constructive manner. For instance, I have been thinking about the homosexual question, and all of my learning and understanding comes from my conservative teaching.”

The note went on to ask that I offer some clarification of my views on the “homosexual question.”  Notwithstanding the implication that my snarkiness is often less than “constructive,” I take the message to be a genuine attempt on the part of the writer to understand a different view—admittedly, something about which I could do better myself.  Since I believe the request to be a serious one, and since my early “learning and teaching” also came from “conservative teaching,” I feel a certain responsibility to try to offer a serious answer about how I have arrived at my current theological convictions.  And while the nature of the medium in which I provide my response necessarily narrows the scope of how thoroughly I can address each issue associated with this question, I will try to provide a general account of how my beliefs have changed.

At the heart of what my questioner refers to as conservative teaching, it seems to me, is the issue of authority—namely, who or what guides my theological beliefs, and how those beliefs get converted into action.  Growing up, I learned that it was the bible that provided a blueprint for what to think and how to act.  If the bible said it, I was taught to believe it.  On this reading of scripture one operates under the defining assumption that the bible was written with the intention of providing a clearly understandable set of universal guidelines by which to live, one that extends to all times and all places.  In other words, what the bible said 2,500 years ago is just as binding today as it was then.  When it said not to steal, that was a universally binding command.  When it said not to murder, that was meant for me as much as for the Israelites wandering in the desert.  When it said, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death” (Lev. 20:10), that was supposed to apply to . . . wait a minute.  It was there that I ran into problems with reading the bible as a timeless blueprint, since big portions of it were ignored as being only for certain times and places.

So when Paul said that a woman “ought to have a symbol of authority on her head [either a veil or long hair], because of the angels” (1 Cor. 11:9, cf., also 11:6), and I noticed that the women I knew never wore veils and often cut their hair short, I was told that Paul was issuing only a situational command.  That is to say, Paul was only speaking to women of his time.  But when, some verses later, Paul said, “As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches.  For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says” (14: 33b-34), I was told that he was speaking to women of all times and places.  It wasn’t clear to me how I was supposed to tell consistently between time-bound and timeless commands.  I just couldn’t figure out why the command for women to be silent in church should operate beyond the first century Roman Empire, but that the command that women ought to wear veils and refrain from cutting their hair shouldn’t.

I concluded that the church operates in a decidedly different context now—one the apostle Paul could not have foreseen.  That argument began to change my mind about women’s ordination (another “question”—that is, the “women’s ordination question”—I had learned from early on was a theological no-no).  In fact, it made enough sense to other Christians around me that there had already been a substantial shift in many parts of the church over the issue of ordaining women.  As important as that hermeneutical shift was, however, my ideas about women in ministry were cemented when I finally received the honor of working side by side with them as colleagues.  I saw how gifted they were at tasks that I had been taught were to be reserved to males.  I worked with women who could preach and teach and administrate much better than I could (not necessarily a heavy lift, that).  I saw this as a way that, over time, the Holy Spirit was able to reveal a new conception of what God intended.  It didn’t necessarily mean that God had changed, but that the world in which we lived had changed enough that God’s true vision of the way things ought to be could finally be received.

It occurred to me, though, that another gradual revelation of God’s true design had happened even before the shift on women in the church.  The bible, while not commanding slavery, certainly seemed to condone its practice.  In fact, many people who, at one time, defended the practice of slavery did so while standing firmly within the tradition of biblical interpretation, using the bible as the defensive tool of choice.  However, we’ve reached a point where, looking back, it seems outrageous that anyone ever used the bible to defend this kind of treatment of other human beings.  It struck me that perhaps the church’s stance toward gays and lesbians might follow this same trajectory.  In other words, I thought that maybe the Holy Spirit is in the process of revealing to us God’s true vision of the way things ought to be with respect to homosexuality.  If this is the case, then we need not necessarily say that God has changed (though my colleagues who are Process theologians probably wouldn’t object to this description), but that the world has changed sufficiently to be able to receive the fullness of God’s truth on this issue.

But beyond what I take to be the inadequacies of a static view of biblical interpretation that seeks to match the brown shoes of scripture with the often black tuxedos of context, the thing I found most persuasive in changing my theological views of homosexuality was my contact with my brothers and sisters who are gay and lesbian.  In the church where I minister there reside some of the finest people with whom I’ve ever been fortunate enough to work—people who just happen to have been be born loving others of the same gender.  These people are my parishioners; but more importantly, they are my friends.  My gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have the same love for Jesus in their hearts as all the rest of the people with whom I work.  They want to be a part of a community seeking to live faithfully as followers of Jesus.  They want this.  Unfortunately, though, the church has not traditionally wanted them back.  We have caused grave damage to people whose only crime was to be created different.  I found I could no longer view people for whom Jesus died as defective or degenerate just because the object of their affections happened to share the same anatomy.

I don’t have the space to go into a separate exegetical defense of the seven “clobber” passages, those passages in the bible usually cited as arguments against homosexuality; those arguments are well rehearsed on both sides (stay tuned for future articles on the “clobber” passages, where I’ll rehearse the arguments again).  My point here centers on how we identify authority.  I want to be clear about the fact that I’m not suggesting that the bible isn’t authoritative; I believe it is.  Instead, I’ve come to the place where I can no longer accept as authoritative the view that scripture is a handy guidebook, indexed with rules for every occasion.  Scripture acts as authoritative when interpreted within a community that seeks seriously to understand the story of God’s loving interaction with humanity in the person of Jesus the Christ.  And the community in which I interpret scripture consists of people who are better disciples than I am, but whose gender identity or sexual orientation differs from my own.   And, as someone who claims to follow Jesus, my primary vocation is to learn to love others (all others) with the same radical abandon as the Jesus who radically abandoned good sense by answering “the Derek question” and loving me.

 

The Gift

“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  Pray in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:7-15).

Do you pray?  I don’t mean when it’s your turn at the supper table, or when someone calls on you in Sunday School class.  Do you pray?  What do you say?  Is it hard to pray?

Prayer has been addressed for so long as a formal thing that is unlike anything else we do during the day.  We expect that prayers follow some kind of standard of length and prettiness; that is, we figure that the longer and lovelier the prayer, the better it is.  And the better the prayer, the more chance we will have of God hearing it and answering it.  Of course, this view of prayer makes it almost a magical incantation.  Which is to say, you have to find the right words in order to yank God’s chain hard enough to get anything done.

Jesus, on the other hand, heads us in a different direction.  Jesus tells us to pray simply and directly.  One doesn’t have to heap on the words for God to hear it—God already knows what you need before you ask.  Prayer is honest communication between us and the one who made us, and who watches over us.

Prayer is not a tool to manipulate God into doing what we want.  Prayer is the foundation of the relationship between God and humanity.  It isn’t designed to convince God to forgive us, or to take care of us.  God has already promised in Christ to do that.  Prayer is a way of allowing us to see our need (for a “Father who art in heaven”, for forgiveness, for bread, for aid in facing trials and temptations, etc.), of admitting that we couldn’t live without God’s grace.

And maybe that’s why Jesus tacks on the saying at the end about forgiving our brothers and sisters who have trespassed against us.  Because if we can’t see God’s grace in forgiving us so that we might forgive others, then we’ll never experience our bread, our trials, or the kingdom of heaven as a gift from God.  If we never get the picture that God’s forgiveness of us frees us to forgive other people (people that the world says we have a right to hold a grudge against), then we don’t have a clue about the rest of what’s involved in being a Christian.  How can God forgive those who have no idea what forgiveness is, or that they even need it?

Prayer is not a mystical formula, or a flowery show of devotion.  Prayer gives us a sense of the majesty of God, and to what great lengths God has gone to show us mercy.  It gives us understanding about gratitude and about whom we depend upon for even the most ordinary things in life.  Perhaps, most of all, prayer allows us to see that God lost in a Son in God’s desire to reconcile—even with those who have done us wrong.

Just Desserts

I received a call this morning that someone had broken into the church.  The caller told me that the police CSI people were dusting for fingerprints and taking DNA samples from the blood that the thief left behind after breaking the security glass in three of the offices—including mine.  The person(s) stole a laptop from my office, as well as one of the security cameras and the hard drive that kept the security footage from the administrative secretary’s office.  It happened on Christmas day.

Today was Sunday, and I had the day off.  However, I came in just before worship let out to survey the damage.  As the parishioners filed out, they were roundly denouncing the display of insensitivity demonstrated by breaking into a church.  I commented that whoever broke in at least had the sensitivity not to vandalize the place.  That would have been much worse.  Then, channeling the priest from Les Miserables, I said what (I guess) sounded like the Christian thing to say: “I hope the person who stole our stuff needed the money for food.”

Nods of chastened agreement.

“Unfortunately,” I continued, “I suspect that the needs were more pharmaceutical than gustatory.”  (Actually, I didn’t say gustatory.  That’s a bit much—even for me.)

More nods of agreement.

It struck me later, however, that, though I had gotten past my initial response (anger), my secondary response was scarcely better.   Implicit in my righteous sounding sentiment was something I complain about when I hear it in the comments of others.  Basically, what I said was, “I might be able to summon up forgiveness, if I know the person really needs it.”  That is to say, I’m happy to forgive folks who can rightly claim mitigating circumstances.  (“Excuse me, but I seem to have run over your Bassett Hound.  Please forgive me; my brakes went out.”)  In other words, people who need to be understood, not forgiven.  But out and out no-goodniks?  No luck.

This need to dispense love, help, forgiveness only to those whom we think deserve it is a problem for people who work with folks in trouble.  We find ourselves wanting to help those in need, but we want assurances that we’re helping people who really need it.  And, for the most part, this is not a bad impulse.  Sometimes our attempts to help those who say they need it serve only to make matters worse. (Giving money to a substance abuser, for example, is like throwing gasoline on someone who’s already on fire.)  Nevertheless, as is often the case when my kids start a sentence with “Dad can I?” the first answer that comes out of my mouth is a preprogrammed no.

But my no to the need of others, starting with my children, probably ought to be more thoughtful.  While it is true that sometimes saying no is the most loving thing to do, saying no as a reflex action betrays the enormous yes that the Christian faith tells us Jesus offered all of us.  Whatever else Jesus said, he certainly didn’t hold out for loving, helping, forgiving only those who could muster a persuasive enough case to convince us they deserve it.  Those who claim to follow him need a much wider embrace, a much more nuanced account of love, help, and forgiveness than that.

None of this is to say that I believe we ought to turn a blind eye.  When it comes time to press this case legally, I will most likely support prosecution.  What I am saying, though, is that maybe I ought to be less concerned with what people deserve than with figuring out the most constructive way to love them—whether they deserve it or not.  Because, Lord knows, I could use a little of that myself.

My Stonewall Remarks: 40 Years Ago

40 years ago the silent voice of a community was heard in a riotous action proclaiming that they would no longer be silent.  40 years ago a few hundred gathered to give voice to the marginalization and systemic oppression forced upon them.  40 years ago a movement was born that we celebrate here today.

The most important thing to remember about movements is that they are comprised of people.  People with hopes, dreams, and vision.  People with love in their hearts looking for a place to store that love.  People with the right to be.  PEOPLE! Movements being and end with the people.  Movements cannot sustain the movement when it is boiled down to an idea.

I stand here today a leader in the Christian church.  I stand here today as a white, straight male. I am a part of this movement.

The Christian faith has been utilized in the disenfranchising action of the GLBTQ community.  We have demanded that you must give up your faith if you insist on keeping your love.  We have demanded that you remain silent in order to nourish your soul.  We have demanded that you have a place in the Kindom of God only if you conform to the narrow standards of dubious origins.  For this I am terribly sorry.

It is my hope that we as a church may offer reconciliation and love to our sisters and brothers for the atrocities perpetrated upon them in the name of God.  It is my hope that the beautiful voice of faith embraced by the GLBTQ Community may enrich the faith on communities across Kentucky.  The faith of a few transforms the faith of us all.  This is a lesson we may draw from the actions of those brave people that would not be silent 40 years ago.

I recently read a lecture from Kentucky’s proud son, Bishop V. Gene Robinson, titledWhy Religion Matters in the Quest for Gay Civil Rights. He speaks, “I believe that it will take religious people and religious voices to undo the harm that has been done by religious institutions…It’s time that progressive religious people stop being ashamed of their faith and fearful that they will be identified with the Religious Right, and start preaching the Good News of the liberating Christ, which includes ALL God’s Children.”

It seems that the harm, the damage that is being done is by us, the religious community, by us being in the shadows.  It is time for us to step out of the shadows.  I offer that as this movement progresses and the fires of the Spirit burn in the hearts of the many that we the religious community owe the Gay community love for the silence we offer and the isolation that we perpetrate upon you.  We the religious community owe you that scared space to be fearfully & wonderfully made.  We the religious community owe it to you to emerge from the silence and join our voice with yours and demand that WE shall not be denied the justice imbued within our hearts and souls because we celebrate the diversity of Gods creation.

40 years ago a rebellion began that we are honored to celebrate tonight and participate in today.  40 years ago people came together and would not be silent.  Tonight let us commit ourselves to not remaining silent.  Let us join our voice as we demand that Liberty & justice truly be for ALL.