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January 28, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Jeremiah 1:4-10, “Pride is Faith in our
Belovedness,” Luke 4:21-30
“Pride & Prejudice: Not Just an Old Book about Manners
& Morals”
The world
is uncomfortable with our pride. A straight minister took me aside
to tell me he had been honored by being invited to preach at an interfaith
Gay & lesbian pride service in his hometown. He said he had no problems
with the gay and lesbian part. But he had always been taught that
pride is a sin! I described to him the relatively recent movement
to address issues of self-esteem and self-worth among those who have been
shamed emotionally, spiritually, and sexually. I explained that among
those of us who are lesbian and gay, bisexual, or transgender, our “sin”
may not be pride, may not be thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought.
Our “sin” may be a failure to value who we are, beloved children of God.
And like most sin, or ways of “missing the mark,” it is a collective sin,
a communal missing the mark. All of culture has conspired to tell
us we are less than we are, to shame us, to deny our cultural and spiritual
integrity and inheritance. Thus it’s no mistake that, to counteract
this cultural and religious message, Pride festivities evolved. Pride
festivities do not celebrate that we are more than we are. Pride festivities
celebrate that we are no less than we are. And we can take humble
pride that our Queer difference has made all the difference that we offer
the world and the church. Our difference has given us spiritual gifts
that we offer the church.
-- Chris Glaser, “Pride is Faith in our Belovedness”
www.ChrisGlaser.com
I told the Staff-Parish Relations Committee of my three goals for the new year
– to see my mother in Indiana more, to stop the war, and to prepare for the 2008
meeting of General Conference! My mother will appreciate how I have my priorities
straight. The Reconciling Ministries Network (www.RMNetwork.org)
tells us efforts have been made at every General Conference since 1972 to
eliminate or to amend the anti-gay legislation then adopted. The most
honest healing statement of plain simple truth of the matter would be, the
United Methodist Church, as all of Christianity – not just the most highly
politicized factions -- is made up of persons and peoples with many and
differing views on this and almost any issue we can name.
There is no consensus in the larger church to single out gay people as intrinsically
“incompatible” with Christian thought and practice. In fact, since 1980, the
percentage of those wanting to eliminate or amend this prejudicial response to “Gay
Pride” has risen from 20 to 45 percent! Some General Conference soon, we will
change. We will confess again we do not know -- nor need to know -- the whole
mind and heart of God on this or on anything else! It’s all right for God
to be big enough to remain at least a little mysterious to us. Let’s be there
for that General Conference! Meantime, if there is biblical consensus on anything,
it is on the ethic of love Paul spells it out in 1 Corinthians 13, concluding --
“faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
The Gospel of John says more crisply still, “God is Love!” Christians are
called by Jesus see and hear, say and do everything through gratuitous love! If we are to “err” theologically or otherwise on any side, let us be on Love’s
side.
Our Book of Discipline in the “Social Principles” affirms love’s priority:
“We seek for every individual opportunities and freedom to love and be loved, to
seek and receive justice, and to practice ethical self-determination.” What
a concept! We go on to say, “We understand our gender diversity to be a gift
from God, intended to add to the rich variety of human experience and perspective.”
We further say, “We recognize that sexuality is God’s good gift to all persons.
We believe persons may be fully human only when that gift is acknowledged and affirmed
by themselves, the church, and society.” Then we are open and honest enough to add,
“We also recognize our limited understanding of this complex gift and encourage
the medical, theological, and social science disciplines to combine in a determined
effort to understand human sexuality more completely.” I mean, we live in
a time of realizing our universe may one just of a “multiverse” of universes!
Surely we also realize unlearned/unlimited diversity/complexity among/within
us!
We affirm disciplined and responsible sexual relations most clearly in
marriage – though we then let civil society define marriage for us as “the union
of one man and one woman.” We speak against any sexual relations that are
“exploitative, abusive, or promiscuous” and against “sexual harassment.”
Our congregation in keeping with the whole church has just adopted a policy for
preventing sexual and other abuse of children, youth and adults. We favor
sex education opportunities for all. We speak at length about both
abortion and adoption.
On this “Reconciling Ministries Sunday,” we focus on the “incompatibility” paragraph.
We may find it a tortured attempt to confess our essential uncertainty while clinging
to an illusion of all-knowingness: “Homosexual persons no less than heterosexual
persons are individuals of sacred worth.” What a great place to start -- maybe
to stop while ahead! “All persons need the ministry and guidance of the church
in their struggles for human fulfillment” – Amen! – “as well as the spiritual and
emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God,
with others, and with self.” So far, so good – and so challenging to us all!
The best social witness touches all in some unsettling way.
Then we decide to judge even love itself – and committed relationships as loving
in their way as any other. But we do so in a way to make us wonder, how at
home are we with what we say? We say, “The United Methodist Church does not
condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with
Christian teaching.” We add immediately, “We affirm that God’s grace is available
to all, and we will seek to live together in Christian community. We implore
families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends.
We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons.” Is this called
“having our cake and eating it, too?” Do we understand why all persons might
not choose to be in ministry for and with us? How our judgment upon their
love leaves them feeling betrayed and excluded?
Do we needlessly “cut off our noses to spite our faces” -- to continue Paul’s
“body” imagery of the past two Sundays? And of course the “love chapter” that
comes next we hear so commonly just in weddings and holy unions -- as if to limit
the love ethic to two people! Yet Paul addresses these words to this same
fragmented, frustrated congregation that cannot seem to get “love” right!
We congregations cannot seem to acknowledge, honor, accept, enjoy every part of
the body as offering a gift unique and indispensable to the good of the whole!
That is why I am so grateful for the article by author Chris Glaser, entitled
“Pride is Faith in Our Belovedness” -- excerpted as an “epistle” with the scriptures
this morning. I asked us to read it in unison because I know for myself how
often it feels like words of scripture and tradition exclude some who read them
most faithfully – as communities of color, of language, of nation, of class, of
age, of condition, of gender and of sexuality. It is good some times to read
one another’s words as our own – which is what we do reading scripture anyway!
We identify with each other as persons and peoples -- with the stories that both
make us special and piece us all together. I just heard a preacher at the
Earl Lectures say, in a way that is personal to me, don‘t just learn to walk in
each other’s shoes. Also learn to walk in each other’s feet! In each
other’s whole bodies! And all that lies within us! For out of and into
one body we come and return.
Earlier I called our official United Methodist stance toward gay people – which
means toward some of us, toward some of any body of the church, often toward more
than we know – a stance prejudice against Gay Pride. The sermon title that
came to me picks up on the name of Jane Austen’s novel of two centuries ago,
Pride and Prejudice. In fairness, even her book is much more than
”another old book about manners and morals” -- that is, the superficial social pretense
to some kind of trend-setting God-likeness in the establishment class! Jane
Austen goes more deeply into “pride” as any “unrealistic exaggeration of one’s importance,”
revealed in “generally unjust and offensive treatment off others.” And into
“prejudice” as “judging before the evidence is at hand,” preventing “people from
judging others according to their real merits.”
Jesus may well be entitled to some of Chris Glaser’s “Pride” as “faith in his
own belovedness!” What else does Jesus hear God’s Spirit say in his baptism?
“This is my child, my beloved; in whom I delight!” How else could one be as
bold in claiming “fulfillment” as Jesus is without some true Pride? But Jesus’
home-townspeople may also be entitled to find in his declaration here an element
of Jane Austen’s “pride” as unrealistic exaggeration of one’s own importance!
After all, they know him. He’s Joseph’s son! He speaks their own humble
language! What can he possibly have to say to them? How can he possibly
be important?
We people who hear Jesus – now as then -- are basically “prejudiced” against
him. We are eager to shut him up before what he says tempts us to change --
to rid ourselves of the messenger before the message can sink in! Especially
the message that God is no respecter of anything else about us except for our need
of God’s love and care. Prophets Elijah and Elisha show love and care
toward widows and lepers – of Israel’s “chosen” or not! Clearly Jesus is
breaking us out of all boxes and boundaries that keep us divided and conquered
from reconciling ourselves with persons we find are “incompatible” in whatever
way. Persons whom we can condemn on the basis of “law,” so-called
“natural” law or otherwise -- without ever taking the time and the trouble to
know them for just who they are.
But our “people’s prejudice” against Jesus’ “Pride” really is prejudice
against ourselves. We say he’s “nobody” -- because he’s just like us!
We are so afraid of finding such Pride in ourselves. Most of our
prejudices, our systems of self-defense and self-denial, project what we fear
most in ourselves, and obsess about, onto to others -- even onto God and the
church! As if God and the church need such defense and denial -- from us
or from anyone else! God and the church have survived pretty well – too
well? – through the years.
We are like so many “Jeremiahs” here protesting that we are too young -- too
ignorant, too inarticulate, too afraid -- too anything – to be called to such witness
and service of God for ourselves. We are especially not ready if witness and
service of God mean witness and service against establishment civil society and
state! Lest we, even we, be appointed “over nations and over kingdoms, to
pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Who are we, in true prejudice of our false pride, to stand up to systems and structures?
Chris Glaser and gay people in the church offer the rest of us the Pride, the
Passion, the Power of God they have found in themselves – to stand up to such systems
and structures even as US – even as the United Methodist Church! “We celebrate
our faith in God,” Glaser writes, “and in God’s divinely queer idea to make us Queer,
set apart from the rest, outcast from religion, societal and ecclesial scapegoats
alongside other scapegoats of the world.” Like these home-townspeople of Jesus,
we need such a Pride that does not say “we are more than we are” but “we
are no less than we are!” We are no less than whole persons and
peoples of God and part of the whole body of Christ -- each of us with gifts to
be and to bring for the good of the whole of the church and the world!
Chris Glaser names such gifts as, 1) Discernment – not only safer sex but also
safer spirit! “Seeking out those religious expressions and environments that
honor our Pride, our faith in the idea that God had when God made us!” 2)
Imagination – the most underutilized gift of all! “Our imagination is the
reality. We have imagined our love is sacred, our relationships worthy of
blessings. Our imagination is the reality. We have imagined a church
that welcomes us, recognizes our sacred worth. Our vision has or will become
the reality.”
3) Sexuality – our Book of Discipline shows how much help we need here!
“When denied access to the traditional means of God’s grace, we have discovered
sexuality as a means of God’s grace, a way we receive and enjoy and share the love
God intends for all.” 4) Sanctuary – hospitality! Sharing our spaces
as well as our selves! “Creating sanctuary, a safe space where all are welcome,
regardless, as the beloved children of God.” And 5) Sacrament – self-offering!
Signs and stories of God among and within us! “Living sacrifices, living offerings,
living reminders of the holiness of the body . . . . We bring ourselves: beloved,
sacred, holy, good, loving. We celebrate our pride, our faith in the idea
God had when God made us, when God loved is into being.”
May the true Pride of each one of us, freed from all false prejudice against
ourselves as we are – prophet and people alike – express our faith in the idea God
had when God made any one and made all of us! When God loves us into our truest
being – not just once, but again, and again, and again . . . . Amen.
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