an open and affirming community of faith
n open and affirming community where faith is questioned and formed, as relationships are made and upheld.
On Sunday, we were delighted in welcoming Rev. Joseph Pusateri to the pulpit to deliver the sermon in Rev. Penwell's absence. Just in time for the holidays, Rev. Pusateri examines time, tradition, and our service to a God that both encompasses and transcends them.
If you'd like to read more of Rev. Pusateri's stuff, check him out at his blog, Isa 61.
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"Then which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny?"
What do you have to be thankful for?
Rev. Penwell discusses what we should know, what we shouldn't know, and whether we should concern ourselves regarding the destruction of temple.
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Bob Cornwall writes about the difficulty of the Church, the public sphere, and politics:
As a church, we must be a collective voice for those who need to be heard; a voice remaining beholden to the message of Christ, and not necessarily a political agenda. While they do often align, they nearly as often to not. This is the balance we must continue to manage.
Rev. Penwell gives us insight on what a widow's two copper coins may really be telling us.
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“These victories did not come easily, and they represent the work of thousands of people of faith across the country. We know that people of faith came together to work for marriage equality and abortion rights in every state where they were debated. We know that the values of compassion, full inclusion and equality for all triumphed. ”
The voices of faith groups across the country in support of inclusion and justice are being heard.
I had a conversation with a parishioner one time that still vexes me. At one point some years prior, she and her husband had opposed me on the issue of homosexuality. A wealthy and influential couple, they were convinced that I was leading the flock down the road to perdition. I was a young pastor at the time, so their opposition proved particularly worrisome from a vocational standpoint. But, after a great deal of work, we mended fences--unfortunately, without ever really addressing the hurt I'd experienced.
A few years after the controversy, we were sitting in my office speaking candidly with one another--about what I don't remember. But I do remember feeling like it was important for me to say something out loud about the kerfuffle we'd had. So, apropos of nothing we happened to be discussing at the time, I said, "Gladys, you know that whole big thing we had a few years back over homosexuality?"
I saw her eyes widen. She nodded her head, perhaps more as a warning gesture than an affirmation. "Yes," she said.
Gladys was a true southern woman, one who did not like to engage in direct interpersonal dust-ups. She was the kind of person who preferred never to attack a problem head-on. Instead, she preferred to circle it for a while, sneak up on it, then strike passing blows--hoping, I think, to wear it down and force it to surrender. I, on the other hand, grew up in the North thinking that speaking directly is a virtue. Two different ways of communicating, the conflict between which often trips me up still.
"Well," I said, not picking up on the signs, "I felt very hurt by you and Henry in that whole thing."
I'm not sure what I was expecting. I guess I hoped she would say, "I know, Derek, and we're so sorry about that. I hope you'll forgive us." Or, "Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I wished that had never happened." Or maybe even, "Mistakes were made."
Instead, what she said was, "That's behind us now. We don't need to talk about it."
I wanted to object: "No. It's really not behind us. Otherwise, I wouldn't bring it up."
What I said instead, however, was . . . well, not much of anything.
I've been thinking about forgiveness. There are things in my life I need to forgive, things for which I need to be forgiven. But what exactly does that mean? Say, for instance, you've been involved with an addict, who's left a trail of devastation behind. This person has done some work to get clean and work through the process of recovery. What now, though? What does forgiveness look like in this situation? I don't think Gladys' response that "that's behind us now. We don't need to talk about it" is the answer. Forgiveness is not willed forgetfulness.
On the other hand, I realize that forgiveness at some point means taking a chance on getting hurt again. When is it time to take that chance? If I'm the offended party, is it up to me to decide when is the right time? This seems right to me.
But what if I'm content to nurse my wounds, to savor the wrongs? Does the offender ever have a right to say, "I've said I'm sorry every way I know how. I've tried to regain your trust, but you won't let me near?"
I'm torn because I realize that some hurts are so grievous that getting past them seems impossible. The offender has a difficult time regaining the moral high ground in this interchange.
But as someone who follows Jesus, who regularly preaches that forgiveness isn't part of the optional special off-road package upgrade, I think the offended has certain responsibilities to the offender.
(I'm a good liberal, so let me just say, that last sentence scares me--since this sounds eerily like what the powerless are often urged to offer the powerful who've hurt them.)
What does that forgiveness look like? When, and under what circumstances should I offer it? I wish there were an algorithm into which I could plug my experience, the depth of the hurt, the nature of the offender's remorse and recovery, and have it spit out answers to those questions.
But I don't have such an algorithm. All I have is a community. So, let me ask you: What does forgiveness look like? When, and under what circumstances should I offer it? Do I really have to forgive?
Check out Rev. Penwell's latest.
Just wanted to give everyone a quick reminder of all the stuff coming up this weekend.
If you have a trunk, you're welcome to throw some candy in the back and join the circle of trunks. If not, just come out, have some chili, and enjoy the River Sirens caressing your face with their dulcet tones.
Bring a snack to share at Youth group, because we'll be sharing our youth meeting with members of the Movie Club. We'll be viewing "The Wise Kids" which is a film that Travis Myles is providing from the Louisville LGBT Film Festival. We'll be starting the movie at 4:30 with some discussion afterward.
The American Guild of Organists have a tradition every year of having a night for kids young and old to spend the night before Halloween experiencing some truly AWESOME organ music. I'm sure there will be at least one rendition of Tocata and Fugue by Bach before the night is over. It should be pretty awesome. If you're interested, be sure to email Dennis Blake for more details!
If you can't make it to all of the events, or can only make it for some of the time, you should still totally come out. It's all going to be a blast.
... with candy in them...
... we could also use some chili.
The Trunk r' Treat/Chili Supper is only 13 days away!
If you would like to contribute your trunk, candy, or chili to the event, just contact Geoff or Jennifer with the info by calling the office, or shooting an email to douglassblvd@gmail.com.
You can also click here for a printable flier to pass out to those you think would be interested in attending.
Thanks, everyone!
-- Geoff
Here is the latest Sermon Podcast.
This week we had some technical difficulties, so we're starting just into the first few words of the sermon. Read the Scripture listed above and you shouldn't have any trouble jumping in.
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By Derek Penwell
Apart from the yearly drag show on Phil Donahue, I had no contact with gay people as a kid. That’s not true, exactly, because as we know now, gay people are always around—which I didn’t know then.
The whole thought of people loving others of the same gender was unfathomable to me as a child. I knew it was wrong, but I’m not sure how I knew.
I don’t remember having a conversation about it with anybody. It wasn’t the kind of conversation we would have had–like we would never talk about the relative advantages of owning a beach house in the Keys over owning a sail boat in Martha’s Vineyard. What would have been the point? Our lives were never going to be touched by it, so why talk about it?
I don’t know if I just picked up a vibe about it, when my parents seemed a little fidgety if we walked in and saw Billy Crystal on Soap.
It could be that I, like every kid my age, was especially familiar with the schoolyard epithets that made their way into our vocabulary as a means of publicly establishing our masculinity.
I don’t know where I learned it, but I knew being homosexual was a bad thing for people to be. I didn’t have to do any soul searching about the issue. I was pretty certain that the whole idea was self-evidently something that any “normal” person could recognize as abhorrent—and by “normal” I meant something like “Christian” (since Christianity was a normative reality in my world).
We now live in a different world from the one in which I grew up. My kids have grown up with children who have two moms and two dads.
Our own minds, my wife’s and mine, have changed over the years regarding this issue. I know that on the rare occasion when we talked about “Charlie’s” moms with our children, we were adamant that love is love, and that “Charlie’s moms love each other like Mommy and Daddy do.” But we never had sit-down lessons on diversity.
Consequently, when my own kids, who are now teenagers, overhear the debate about same gender marriage, they’re confounded. Why is this such a big deal?
I grew up in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement believing that everybody is created equal, regardless of race. Just a few years before I came onto the scene, however, no consensus existed on the issue. People braved batons and German Shepherds, went to jail, lost their jobs, and died in the streets to establish an understanding of human relationships that I have always taken to be self-evident.
It never occurred to me as a child that anyone still believed that black people were inferior. I didn’t carry the same baggage about the issue of race that my parent’s generation had had to haul around the first part of their lives.
Let me be quick to add that passing the Civil Rights Act didn’t do away with the baggage from my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, but it did at least two things that I can see: 1) it made continuing to hold racist beliefs problematic, and 2) it cleared the cultural air so that continuing to indoctrinate children with racist ideas was not only problematic socially, but also more difficult.
These days, my children don’t have to carry around the same baggage I did on the issue of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer people. They see the propriety of love as an issue unencumbered by concerns about which genders should be paired together, and which pairings should be avoided at all costs.
A demographic divide over the issue of homosexuality has emerged, a divide that continues to grow wider with each passing day. The younger you are, the more likely you are to have no problem with the idea of a man marrying a man, a woman marrying a woman, or a man born in a woman’s body, becoming what she feels she was created to be, etc.
Just the other day I had to come home to tell my children that Charlie died (different Charlie).
Back in the 70s Charlie had been ordained in the church where I serve. He soon left the ministry, however, after meeting Kirby—the love of his life. In fact, he didn’t last long in the church altogether. He just couldn’t take being told that being gay made him unacceptable. Charlie became a corporate executive and moved to Virginia.
After Charlie retired, he and Kirby moved back to Louisville. They’ve been together over thirty-eight years. A former minister at our church, got in touch with Charlie and encouraged him to come back to check out the church that had ordained him so many years before. He did.
Charlie found that much had change since he left. For one thing, our church had voted unanimously the year before to welcome all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, into full participation in the life and ministry of the church. He loved it, and eventually rejoined.
However, not only did Charlie reconnect with the “kids” from his old youth group (almost all of whom were now parents and grandparents), but he got to know the youth who are in the church today. He talked to them, joked with them, brought donuts for them—in short, he cared about them. Everyone in our church, but especially the youth, loved Charlie.
Charlie died the other day. I had to come home to tell my children. They cried. But their first question was: “How's Kirby?”
According to the statistics, the younger you are the more likely the first question out of your mouth in a situation like this is “How is Kirby?” Because to young people Charlie and Kirby aren’t first gay men, they’re people who’ve spent most of their lives loving and taking care of each other.
In a post-denominational world mainline denominations are going to have to come to terms with the inevitability of having to appeal to young people whose first question upon hearing of the death of someone like Charlie is: “How's Kirby?”
Are you looking for the perfect whatcha-ma-call-it at a to-die-for price? If so, there is a great chance you will find it at our sale! Here you will find tons of deals & steals.
It's going to be AMAZING!! This is like the Black Friday of yard sales people.
We are also collecting items for the sale. This is the perfect incentive and opportunity to get rid of things from your house that no longer fit, work, or come in handy.
So ask yourself... have I cooked with it, worn it, displayed it, used it or read it within the last year?" If not Donate It to the Douglass Blvd. Christian Church Yard Sale! Your donated treasures will help provide assistance for children living in the Casa de Hogar Orphanage in Mexico. You can drop off your donations Mon. - Fri. 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. or call the church office for assistance.
This week's sermon is here!
Or here, if you'd prefer to read it.
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In honor of October’s coming Louisville AIDS Walk, and our Youth’s participation in the event, the movie club is having a joint meeting with our DBCC Youth on Sunday, October 28th from 4–6:30. The film we will be viewing/discussing is called The Wise Kids; a film featured in the Louisville LGBT Film Festival.
A vivid, dynamic Southern coming-of-age drama, [The Wise Kids] takes place in the transitional space between high school and college, when life seems to be all questions and no answers, and the future is scarily wide open.[1]
So please, come out and join us in a discussion that is sure to be insightful for all of us, young and old.
Oh. And bring a movie snack!
