CHRIST IS STRONGER IN MY GLBT BROTHERS AND SISTERS HEARTS THAN IN MY OWN. A Sermon by Matt Fitzgerald St. Pauls United Church of Christ, Chicago June 30, 2013 Psalm 139:1-18 What were you doing in 1989? What was the most important matter in your life? I was a senior in High School. I had two concerns: First, would my basketball coach let me grow a mullet like all the cool hockey players had? Second, would my mom let me use the family K-car station wagon on Friday night? Kierkegaard says that purity of heart is to will one thing. So at least my divided heart was halfpure. I wanted those two things so badly. For the record, the answers were, Absolutely not and clean your bedroom first. It was a long time ago. Fortunately, in 1989 Saint Pauls heart was pure, and was focused in a much better direction. Way back in 1983 the United Church of Christ began moving for our lesbian and gay members and against the nearly universal belief that to be Christian was to be homophobic. In 1989 under the leadership of Tom Henry and some bold lay people Saint Pauls became one of the very first of our 6,000 congregations to declare itself Open to and Affirming of Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered and Bi-Sexual Christians. That is nearly twenty-five years ago. A long time ago. I was talking about this with an old friend, remarking on how remarkable this church is and he said, Well, it s a liberal church right? Of course you think it s okay to be gay. I didn t like the way he said it. Or at least I didn t like the assumption that lay behind it. The common assumption is that in the church debate over homosexuality, the Christian right have the rules on their side, a Bible that says homosexuality violates God's will. And liberal America has a political philosophy which holds that the autonomous, self-sufficient, free person is able to do whatever he or she pleases. "Okay" is a liberal word. It refuses to pass judgment. "I'm okay and you're okay. It is okay to be gay. It is okay to be straight. You do your thing and I'll do mine and so long as no one gets hurt, what's the difference?" The theologians I love have taught me to be suspicious of this kind of liberalism. Not because I am conservative, but because I am a Christian. And any ideology whose bedrock assumption is that people should be free to do as they please flies directly in the face of the Christian doctrine of sin, which holds that we are flawed creatures who, when set free to do whatever we want, will typically do the selfish thing, subjecting ourselves to what Stanley Hauerwas calls the tyranny of our own desires. 2 But we're not here for a civics lesson and you're not here to agree or disagree with my politics. Which is a good thing, because my politics are incoherent. Meanwhile, God is still speaking, and God s word upends my old friend s assumption. For while liberalism makes a good argument for the fact that homosexuality is acceptable, the Bible goes one step further to say quite clearly that gay people are
good. Not all right but beautiful. Not tolerable but wonderful - wonderfully made. Not okay but beloved. In churches like ours we need to be clear that our Open and Affirming status is neither a negative response to the Christian right nor a spiritual gloss for the left to cloak itself in when useful. Instead, it is a positive theological conviction. God creates some people gay, lesbian, bisexual and because God declares creation good, you are therefore good. Genesis doesn't say that God made straight people on the sixth day and gay people two weeks later. We are all children of the same creation, same creator. But you already know this. Saint Pauls knew it twenty-five years ago. Before that actually. In the research he did for his thesis Jeff interviewed many of the pastors and lay-leaders who led us into our ONA status. Pastor Glen Loafman joked that Saint Pauls became Open and Affirming because the church appreciated good tenors. But behind his flippancy there is a beautiful and obvious truth. When it began deliberating about whether to officially welcome GLBT people Saint Pauls was already home to gay and lesbian Christians. Jeff quotes a longtime member, It was not a difficult process. It was a recognition and public declaration of who we were. Having all of this in the background can make our ONA status seem like yesterday s news, as historical as Ulich or Saint Pauls House. "Of course Saint Pauls welcomes gay people. Of course Saint Pauls has stained glass. Of course Saint Pauls has pews. Now, let s concentrate on the important matter and focus our attention on God." Perhaps a day will come when we can do just that. But it isn t here yet. Despite the joyful progress that burst out of the Supreme Court this week, there is still a long way to go. And there is still work for Saint Pauls to do. Speaking in my official capacity as your only straight male pastor let me say that the last thing Saint Pauls ought to do is take our ONA status for granted. I doubt that any of our GLBT members ever would, but Saint Paul s inclusivity is sewn so deeply into the weave of this place that it is easy for the rest of us to forget how remarkable it is. And we shouldn t. We can t. Because even as Saint Pauls ONA decision retreats into the past - becomes something we did a long time ago, most of the rest of Christendom refuses to get on board. When DOMA was struck down you knew it would be our fellow Christians who had the most venom in their response. This means that refugees from intolerant traditions will continue to walk or limp or leap through our doors. Not twenty-five years ago, but today. This morning. Right now. And next Sunday too. I know Jesus wants all of his followers to be one. I know it does the Kingdom of God very little good for me to stand here and rail against the Baptists and the Catholics. I know that I am probably about to irritate Jesus, but I am a sinful man and some of his people enrage me. Which is to say that as Christians we cannot sit idly by while the two largest Christian bodies in our country continue to condemn gay and lesbian people as a matter of both doctrine and practice.
I also know that as nice liberal mainline Protestants we are reluctant to make any absolute truth claims, You believe what you want and I ll believe what I want and we ll all be okay. That isn't in our statement of faith, but it is practically UCC doctrine! But the truth is when it comes to the question of sexual orientation the Catholics and the Baptists are wrong and we are right. They are hurting people and we are healing people. Now ask yourself, where do you think that Christ is? One of the reasons I know he s here is because I have seen my LGBT sisters and brothers carry him into this place. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said that Christ is always stronger in my brother s heart than in my own. What he meant by that is simple. You cannot be a Christian on your own. You need the faith of other people if your own faith is going to be strong. I need your belief if mine is going to flourish. And you need my faith in order for yours to grow. In isolation faith quickly becomes thin, insubstantial, weak. But in community it flourishes. And it flourishes because in community we see each other s commitment to God and we see God s commitment to one another. Like anyone who has ever tried to follow Jesus my faith wavers and grows weak. Left to myself I dither and doubt and question and get all wrapped up in the prospect of my own unbelief. I was having such a week about nine months ago, and then, into my office came a family wondering whether they should join Saint Pauls. They d been chased out of their home church because they re gay. They asked their home church, will you marry us? They were told, "Of course not." Will you baptize our children? No way, you shouldn t even have them. Can we have communion on Sunday morning? Not after you told us who you really are. Heartbreaking. And it would be heartbreaking were it not for one thing. This family would not let go of Jesus. Or God would not let go of them. Even if they "took the wings of the morning and settled at the farthest limits of the sea," God was going to pursue them. So they shook the dust off their feet and found Saint Pauls. And having witnessed such tenacity, having seen that kind of faithfulness, how can mine not grow in response? More than that, having witnessed God s unrelenting commitment to His GLBT children, how can my trust in God s faithfulness to all of us not grow? We all have doubt. Many of us have reasons (good reasons!) to stay away from church, to write it all off as a disappointing institution or a confusing myth. We all have hurdles to clear in order to be here. But, not all of us have heard the Church say you are not welcome here. Not all of us need to challenge two-thousand years of liars who twist the truth to tell us we are disordered. Not all of us have been told we are beyond the pale of salvation. It is only gay and lesbian Christians who have to clear those hurdles in order to sing a hymn, teach Sunday School, feed the hungry, share a cup of coffee in the church basement and praise the God who made them. And in leaping into God's embrace over the obstacles our religion has placed in their path, our gay sisters and brothers teach the rest of us just what it means to be faithful. And so we learn to be
faithful. And in our faith we re saved. So I thank God for you. Not just this weekend, but always. Amen. Psalm 139:1-18 To the leader. Of David. A Psalm. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them they are more than the sand; I come to the end I am still with you.