An open letter to bleeding heart liberal mainline Christians who want to stand up for those who mourn the decisions of the SCOTUS this morning

There is this Facebook group called "ELCA Clergy" which I am a part of, even though I am not yet ordained.  There is a mighty discussion right now around the biblical idea of rejoicing with those who rejoice, and mourning with those who mourn in regards to the SCOTUS decisions on DOMA and Prop 8.  The premise of the question is about how social media often doesn't leave room for feeling empathy for the 'other' and what we as clergy people can do to level the playing field and mourn with those who are mourning and rejoice with those who are rejoicing'

Here are my two cents on the issue:

It seems that the heart of the question is a very guilt driven desire to be everything for everyone.  And in that mindset the question really looks like this 'I am a bleeding heart liberal Christian who feels immense amounts of guilt when something happens that I can be happy about and I am really afraid that I might offend people who believe something different than me'.  Over functioning at it's finest, really.  

So ultimately, I reject the premise....because over functioning never got anyone anywhere but into a pit of self-misunderstanding and alienation because you cannot provide what people tell you they want from you at all times.

I want to say to these people something like 'I've never known federal protection of my relationship until now goddammit so let me celebrate and celebrate with me' but then they'd go around still feeling guilty that they aren't sympathetic to the bigoted assholes who want to deny my rights as a citizen.  Which still wouldn't solve anything.  

So instead I say to these people who feel guilt for not being able to hold both sides:

I'm not interested in you rejoicing with me and then turning around and apologizing for it to those who don't like it.  I'm not interested because when you do that your integrity cracks open and I can see your inability to stand true to your own beliefs.  I have more respect for a protestor than you, because they at least aren't trying to play on two different fields at once.

From my perspective, when you want to coddle those who are angry, you are sending me a very clear signal that we need to respect those who are hurting more than those who are rejoicing.  This, of course, is the downfall of mainstream Liberal Christianity....we can very rarely allow ourselves to feel joy, especially if there is the slightest chance that might offend someone.  

Let me tell you something though, I've been offended by your complacency as you've sat by and let our country make laws that are unjust.  I've been offended by your unwillingness to see me as a human being when I sit in your pews.  I've been offended by your sideline support when you say you welcome everyone in your churches but 'everyone' means that you still won't talk about ME because you're afraid your big money giving republicans might leave.  I've been offended when you assume that I'm straight because I'm a man.  I'm offended when you insinuate in your boundaries training that I shouldn't interact with children because people might think I want to touch them.  I'm offended by your watering down of the gospel to say 'lets sing kumbyah and get along' instead of the radical news of 'love your neighbor' which means that the people who disagree with me get communion too and I have to deal with what it means that Christ invites everyone to his table...and also that I get to be loved by people who hate me for my sexuality....the gospel does not just convict me to love people I'd rather kick to the curb, it convicts them to not kick me to the curb too.  I've been offended that you refuse to see me as a human who is capable of loving one other person and being committed to them.  And I've been offended that it has taken so long for me to be able to be ordained.  

So if I offend you by Facebook statuses that say 'DOMA is Dead' and 'thanks for standing on the right side of history' and 'Equality: Shantay you Stay, DOMA: Sashay away'....if my rejoicing offends you because I'm not worried about the bigot down the street, I'm not sorry.  I'm not sorry that you have to deal with what it means to stand for something.  I'm not sorry that I'm not allowing you to over function  at me and tell me I need to be more concerned with the poor oppressors who are now sad than my own joy at finally being able to be treated as a citizen.  

A sermon about what happens when we are finally free.

Sermons are better when you listen to them!  Listen here:

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from the Holy Trinity.  Amen. 

So, today is Pride Sunday...the final day of Denver PrideFest, which happened to be my very first Pride ever.  I've heard this weekend called "the feast day of the unclean masses" by our Pastor Nadia and I might agree, but with the additional adjective, "the feast day of the unclean glittered masses".  

And since it is Pride, and since your vicar is gay, and since a bunch of us marched and biked in the parade this morning, I think you might expect some sort of a "gay sermon".  However, the gospel reading isn't explicitly about gay people...so I have a hard time bringing the gay agenda into a sermon.  Except for this: God created each of you, gay, straight, bisexual, black, white, purple, male, female, both or neither, and loves you as you are, and there is nothing that you can do or say or be that will separate you from the love of God in Christ, and if someone tells you something different, in the name of Christ, they are lying to you.

I have been thinking this week about the woman in the gospel story we just heard, and not just because we were told in seminary that whenever a woman is mentioned in the gospel to preach about her since women get the short end of the stick when it comes to being mentioned in the Bible.  Instead I've been thinking about who she was, and why on earth she would be pouring out such expensive perfume onto Jesus' feet and rubbing them with her hair.  

Someone mentioned to me this week that she seems sort of like Joan Rivers.  Over the top and a bit annoying (after all, I would guess Jesus got a bit perturbed with her constantly kissing his feet for minutes on end).

And then there's the matter of her being called 'a sinner'.  It is commonplace for commentators and theologians to jump to the quick conclusion that this woman is a hooker, as if that is the only sin that a first century Jewish woman could commit, but the Greek word for sexual sin is not the same as the one being used in this story...it's more general...just that she is a woman who has happened to sin.  Which makes her pretty relatable I'd guess.  

She's relatable, because we are all sinners...which isn't a very popular thing for progressive Christians to preach, maybe because it makes us feel a bit too much like street preachers and protestors.  I don’t think it’s very popular to preach about because, I, at least, have a lot of “sin baggage”....childhood lessons about sin meaning you will go to hell, and that anything that doesn’t fall into a legalistic and moralistic code of behaviors is sin...and I think it’s easier if we just throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to sin and say that actual sin, which might be the guilt that drives us to the cross, is just as unworthy to talk about as the misinterpretation of sin I’ve been given my whole life.  But I think there's a bigger reason we don't want to talk about sin...and it has to do with telling the truth about ourselves.  It's easy enough to deny our sin, even when we confess it every week and it's easy enough to walk through life without looking at sinful parts of ourselves that we walk above the surface of, never looking deep enough into ourselves to discover.  

Telling the truth about ourselves, acknowledging our sinful nature is uncomfortable.  Being able to say to myself that I probably shouldn't flipped off the guy in the car who cut me off means saying to myself that I am not as compassionate as I like to think I am.  Being able to say to myself that taking pens and staples from work is still stealing even though I think my company owes me means saying to myself that I steal things, and that it isn't okay.  

Being able to say to myself that I need to give other people in my life who are important to me a voice means saying that I am not the most important person in my life, and I need to value those I love more.  

Being able to say to that I am only motivated by what will make me successful means saying that altruism is not something I truly value.  

And yet, I think that maybe the guilt that comes from these introspections...the guilt that comes from not living up to our expectations for ourselves, the guilt that comes from hurting someone or something else...maybe that's really sin....

Maybe guilt about what we do or don't do is the crux of the question of sin.  Guilt is what the law feels like...it convicts us and makes us recognize the fault of our actions...and drives us to the foot of the cross in search of freedom.  Martin Luther believed that sin was being curved in on yourself, not looking outward at your neighbor, but instead being a navelgazer.  And that's what guilt does to us, doesn't it?  It keeps us captive in our own minds, and is the fastest spiral toward dispair that we have available to us.  And while we intentionally and unintentionally hurt other people through things we have done and things we have left undone, while we have not loved our neighbors as much as we have loved ourselves, while we have not followed our personal moral code....we have also become captive to the guilt of our actions.  We are captive to hearts that have been drilled through by guilt and left us with ones that are empty, drained of blood and drained of life, leaving behind a shell of what once was full of flesh, and love, and life.  

 Acknowledging the sin present in our lives, acknowledging the captivity of guilt, acknowledging that acting out of guilt does more harm than good....is what leads us to freedom from guilt and sin. For when we acknowledge that sin is true, that guilt holds us captive, we allow ourselves to be broken open to receive grace.  In taking off the rose colored glasses we use to look at ourselves, it is easier to see our sinfulness, and to see our need for freedom.  And in seeing our need, we can speak the truth that we actually want to be free from the guilt that enslaves us.  Breaking our silence about who we are, and the things that have control over us and speaking that truth outloud to God gives us the ability to accept the seed of grace and forgiveness.  For when we are silent about our need for forgiveness, we close ourselves off to the liberating freedom of forgiveness.  When we remain silent, we close ourselves off to God's grace and forgiveness entering the holes drilled by guilt in our hearts.  

When we name guilt and sin, something transformational happens.  The psalmist puts it this way: 

⁵Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not conceal my guilt.

     I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD."

     Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin.

In our acknowledgement of sin and revealing of guilt, God forgives and frees us.  The grace and forgiveness of God, in that moment, comes into us and fills our hole drilled heart allowing it to once again beat with life and love.  In our freedom, we are able to sing the song the psalmist sang, a song that tells a different story than one of guilt, a song that tells a story of a God who frees us to live a new life.  

Because, in our freedom from guilt, shame, and sin, we are no longer able to live out of selfishness.  We are no longer able to look at our navels, thinking about our own selves.  In our freedom from sin, we are brought to look out into the world, and respond to it with hearts of love, instead of hearts of stone.  Life lived free from guilt is a life that boldly walks alongside the unloved and unloveable and unclean masses, not because you feel guilty about your privlige, but because you recognize the humanity in everyone.  Life lived free from guilt is a life that daringly proclaims to the world that all are created equal, not because you feel guilty being straight, or white, or male, but because you recognize that there is no place in the world for oppression.  Life lived free from guilt is a life that creatively seeks the presence of God in the world, not because you feel obligated to acknowledge a God that demands your reverence and respect, but because you recognize that God is the source of all life, and is present in love.  

I like to think that the woman in the gospel heard the psalm we sang...it certainly seems like she did.  Because she did not anoint Jesus’ feet to atone for her sins, but rather, Jesus tells Simon, that she was forgiven, hence she washed his feet out of love.  Nothing about this woman’s actions of love toward Jesus was motivated by a guilty need to make up for her past and present sinful existence...instead they were done out of the freedom of forgiveness which allowed her to act out of love.  I like to think the phrase “Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin”, rang true in the ears of the woman who we only know as sinner, as she performed an extravagant act of love toward another person, and toward God.  The woman, forgiven and freed by Christ, works not out of guilt, but out of love.  Because working out of guilt only shows that a person is still captive to that sin...but acting out of freedom shows that love has been able to fill in the cracks and transform her into a new creation.  

We too are forgiven, freed in Christ, and hence we act in love...because we are forgiven, freed in Christ, the natural response is to act in the world through love, no longer needing to spend our time doing damage control for the things that cause us guilt, but instead living in the world with a new mindset.  A mindset that has no room for guilt, and no room for sin, because God fills the holes in ourselves and others with grace that overflows and transforms us...and that grace, which overflows through our transformed and freed selves, washes over all of creation through our actions to heal and change and transform our broken and hurting world.  Thanks be to God for that! Amen.  

A sermon about lies we're told, and how the truth sets us free

I still haven't gotten the audio for this one yet...but as soon as I do I'll add it. 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from the Holy Trinity.  Amen. 

This week on my Facebook page I asked people what the best lie their parents told them was.  Here are some of my favorites:

The official language of Delaware is not English. 

The ducklings hatched in the night and went away in the night but you just missed them.  Two decades later I learned that a raccoon had eaten the eggs.  

You can tell the difference between boys and girls by looking into their eyes.  

You could probably make a pretty good case that these stories some of us were told did nothing to harm us (in fact, I know each of the people that had these things said to them, and they seem pretty normal to me) and were all in good fun.  Or maybe they were said out of exasperation when their parents heard nothing but "why?" for hours on end.  

So, while these little white lies are easy enough to dismiss as acceptable fibs, it's much less easy to dismiss other lies we're told...either as individuals, or as a society.  

Paul gets at that, in his self-righeous, sort of overdramatic way, in the reading from Galatians we just heard today.  He's pretty angry at the church in Galatia for not listening to the true gospel, and instead listening to the false gospels that were being preached by people.  

And that got me thinking about the false gospels we hear every day.  There are obvious ones....like how we can only be pretty if we are thin and tan.  Or that we can only be successful if we reach the top of the corporate ladder.  Or that money buys happiness (and while it does buy prozac, that's not really the same thing). 

Those are pretty easy to point out, critique, and dismiss.  

Then there are other things we hear that we think might be gospels... ones that aren't so easy to rid ourselves of.  These sticky lies we get taught haunt us in the middle of the night.  Some of them are ones we hear from the voice in our own head:

What am I thinking?  I look like a fool.  I'll never be good enough.

things that if some guy said to us on the street, we'd think he was an ignorant asshole, but if the voice in our head says them...somehow it's the voice of reason.  

And there are the lies, proclaimed as gospel truth, by those around us...things that we believe and take to heart because we are inundated with them every day.  

Like being told when we were young that the only possible route to heaven is by believing everything in exactly the correct way.  Which leads to lots of anxiety when, as a child, you don't know the answer to every theological question which means your salvation is at stake. 

Or like hearing that the rapture is a real thing and then having a panic attack when your parents don't come home from work when they said they would, causing you to fear you've been left behind. 

Or like hearing that God doesn't give us more than we can handle...which, if were true, would mean that God is a bad judge of the amount which we can handle which is not a really healthy way to look at the stuff we have to deal with on a daily basis...depression, cut off relationships with our siblings, or parents, heartbreaking stories our clients tell us.

 Or like the decal on the truck I saw every day in my high school parking lot that belonged to one of my fellow students.  It was a picture of the Trix rabbit and the text next to it said "Silly faggot.  Dicks are for chicks."  Or any number of other homophobic slurs I heard in the hallways between classes...all, of course, spoken by the 'cool' kids.  

Which, as a young kid who knew he probably was gay but prayed really hard not to be, became truths I told myself.

These lies, preached by others as gospel truth, when they become so prevalent to us that we begin to believe them, keep us chained to a false reality.  They keep us buried in thoughts that do not allow us to have hope God will come into our places of despair, fear, or loneliness.

Paul speaks about wishing to curse those people who speak false gospels...and I get it.  

I want to curse those people who manipulate others in the name of God.  I want to curse those people who were too cheery to me when I walked through the valley of the shadow of death.  I especially want to curse those people who created a reality for Drake, telling him he wasn’t welcomed, wasn’t loved, and wasn’t worthy of being treated like a fellow child of God...which caused him to take his own life.  Those are the people I want to curse...because they manipulate and twist the Gospel into something that does more harm than good.  Something that promotes hate instead of love.  Something that teaches kids that their worth is based on lying to themselves and to others about who they are instead of being a beautifully unique child of God.  

I get Paul’s anger here...I don’t want to have to continue grieving the senseless deaths of children where the only response I feel like I can say with any meaning is “what the hell do you say to that? Lord Have Mercy.  Christ Have Mercy. Lord Have Mercy.”  I get his frustration that there are so many things besides the truth that we get coerced into hearing, and believing.  And I pray, like Paul, that Christ comes again to set us free from this present evil age.  

So, we wait.  We wait for a new heaven and a new earth, for all the saints to come together in a world where pain and death and hurt is no more, and all God’s children are celebrated for who they are.  We wait for a time when God reaches into our physical graves and pulls us out to live among each other in unity, and peace. 

And while we wait, we can still find the true Gospel, the one that liberates instead of enslaves.  The one that is not coercive, but freeing.  The gospel that teaches hope instead of despair.  The one that bravely walks alongside a confused young kid and says “I love you.  I promise, it gets better.”

The true gospel, the one preached by Christ that says things like “love your enemies and blessed are the poor in spirit”, the one that has stories of Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors.  The one where slaves are healed and women proclaim the resurrection.  This gospel is the one that promises to release us from the things that keep us captive right now.  

It promises to release us from captivity because we hear stories like Jesus healing a gentile’s slave...showing that the kingdom has no boundaries and All are included.  It promises to release us from places of death that keep us in our graves of mourning, our graves of self deprecation, our graves that are not just metaphorical, because Christ not only commanded Lazarus to come out of his tomb after being dead for three days, restoring life to his stiff limbs, but Christ too came out of the tomb after being dead for three days, raised to eternal life and offering that promise of life to everyone and everything.

The gospel we hear from bold people around us who dare to tell the truth of it...who dare to tell you that no matter what keeps you stuck in the grave, God will reach in and pull you out..that Gospel gives us the promise of life.  And I believe that nothing can separate us from that promise.  Not present realities, not mourning, not bullies, not the grave.  Nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  

Amen.