Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-21

Dr. Mark Achtemeier

Covenant Presbyterian Church
Madison, Wisconsin

June 12, 2011

Sometimes I think good communication is overrated. I knew an older couple some years back who had been seeing a marriage counselor to work on their communication skills. They did pretty well with it, and the day came when the husband managed to communicate to his wife exactly what he wanted her to hear. As a result she wound up chasing him around the house with an axe!

The story of the Tower of Babel that we heard this morning tells about a time when God needed to limit communications in order to keep the human sinfulness from turning history into a permanent and total disaster.

The people in the land of Shinar were ambitious. They set about building a city and a tower reaching up into the heavens, so that they might make a name for themselves. Even at the dawn of history fallen human beings dreamed of ruling over their neighbors. On the plain of Shinar there arises in primitive form the quest for domination that in every age since has left human history awash in the blood of innocents.

So the Lord confused their language and scattered them abroad over the face of the earth. The sinful will to dominate was left intact, but by a severe mercy of God the ambitions of every ruler aspiring to empire would henceforth be met by the countervailing ambitions of rival clans and tribes and nations. A balance of competing powers could limit the scope of oppression. And hope would be kept alive within human history.

The church in its engagement with society has sometimes forgotten the harsh mercy which the Babel story illumines. Around the turn of the 20^th century the churches in our country were deeply concerned about the terrible exploitation of factory workers by out-of-control industrial development. For many years Christians worked to convert the business owners and upper level managers to the faith, on the theory that following Jesus would motivate them to show a greater degree of compassion toward their workers, resulting in higher wages and better working conditions. The problem was that even the most committed Christian management was beholden to stockholders, and if stockholders discovered that profits were being diverted to raise the living standard of workers beyond what was necessary to keep them coming back to work, those managers would be speedily replaced.

Reinhold Niebuhr, a brilliant Christian theologian and social theorist, pointed out that corporations and other collective institutions were self-seeking by nature and extremely limited in their ability to act with compassion or Christian charity.[1] Rather trying to persuade management to act with Christian compassion, Niebuhr sought to harness that balance of competing powers to which the Babel story points. The way to secure justice for workers, he argued, was to oppose the sinful self-interest of corporations with a countervailing self-interest of organized labor. The key to better working conditions for laborers wasn’t a more Christian board of directors, but a strong union that could oppose the managerial monopoly on power. God confuses the languages at Babel and divides human beings into separated tribes and nations. God creates a tragic but necessary rupture in the fabric of human community, in order to secure the possibility of justice in a world populated by self-interested sinners.

Which brings us to the birth of the church at Pentecost. God pours out the Holy Spirit not just on the isolated prophet or religious leader as before, but upon all flesh—upon the whole body of Christ’s church. The rush of a mighty wind is heard, tongues of fire descend upon the gathered disciples, and they stagger out into the daylight like drunken men, filled with the Spirit and speaking in tongues.

It’s an event which makes staid and sober Presbyterians nervous. There is a famous inscription on the tomb of the Countess Huntington outside Winchester England which reads,

“She was a Godly, righteous, and sober Lady, bounteous in good works and Christian affections, a firm believer in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and devoid of the taint of enthusiasm.”

Perhaps we, too, are a little bit leery of the religious ‘enthusiasm’ that attends the Pentecost event. I’ve seen a lot of Pentecost bulletins of Presbyterian churches over the years, and not once have I run across a time in the service devoted to speaking in tongues!

It is quite remarkable what a large portion of the Acts report is devoted to this phenomenon, but it is also worth attending how much this account differs from the speaking in unknown tongues which characterizes some peoples’ worship services these days. The tongues in the Book of Acts are not unknown! The Apostles wind up speaking in languages that are known and recognizable to the multi-national crowd of bystanders. St. Luke gives us quite a remarkable catalog of all the different nationalities who heard Peter and the others proclaiming the Gospel in their native tongues.

With this outpouring of the Spirit, God provides a sign to help us understand the significance of the church that is coming into being. The Spirit reverses the confusion of tongues that took place at Babel, and the language barrier crumbles. A reclamation is underway, restoring people to a state where human divisions are no longer a tragic necessity required to hold the power of sin in check. A new unity becomes possible across tribes and nations and languages and peoples. The Spirit descends and a new world dawns.

This kind of reclamation involves the deepest healing of human hearts, one which overcomes the sinful self-seeking that for so long has been the order of the day. John’s Gospel records for us Jesus’ own explanation of what the coming Holy Spirit would do:

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me… On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.[2]

The Holy Spirit mediates Jesus’ presence to us in a whole new way. This mysterious process unites us with Christ, so that Jesus’ own knowledge and trust in God starts to mingle with our faith, and Jesus’ own love begins to bubble up inside our hearts. This is a presence that is deeper and more intimate and more powerful than even the disciples experienced as they walked with Jesus in his earthly ministry. Not Christ with us, but Christ in us: “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”

That presence of Jesus’ own self-giving love in our hearts makes it possible again for a multitude of different human beings to come together in a single community without our oneness becoming the vehicle for sinful domination of others. A new kind of human community becomes possible when the Holy Spirit descends upon the church.

Paul gives testimony to this miracle as he talks about the church in his letter to the Galatian Christians:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.[3]

The deepest divisions of race and economic class and gender crumble when the Holy Spirit draws us into union with Christ. God’s reclamation of a divided humanity appears visibly in the life of the church.

This is not some fairy tale theory; we can see it happening close to home in the life of this congregation as well as in the wider church.

Look around you at these brothers and sisters who are here with you in worship this morning. You may not have recognized it, but the persistence of the gathered church is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. Anyone who has hung around the life of a worshipping congregation for any period of time knows that where different people are gathered together, you will inevitable find differences of opinion about things. And where there are differences of opinion, it is almost inevitable that there will be bruised egos and hurt feelings from time to time. And the fact that you are still here, together, on this particular Sunday is testimony to the working of the Spirit, filling hearts with Jesus’ own self-giving love and sowing seeds of forgiveness and forbearance and mutual affection. If the Spirit were not at work here, this church would long since have shattered into a hundred grumpy fragments!

At Pentecost, God rolls back the divided languages of Babel so you and I will know the power which the Spirit gives the church to be a community of reconciliation in a divided world.

This power is desperately needed. We human beings are such tribal creatures. I think our evolutionary past has hard-wired us to just naturally divide the world up into “us” and “them.” On the one hand there is the home tribe of people just like us with whom we feel comfortable and secure, and on the other there is the group of hostile “others” whom we view with suspicion and strive to exclude. It takes a divine miracle to overcome this “us vs. them” mindset that we fall into so readily.

It’s possible to resist or reject the miracle. Our churches are not immune from these tribal instincts, and indeed our Presbyterian denomination has expended a great deal of energy in recent years dealing with the competing claims of opposing tribes of church members as they have jockeyed for political power and influence on the question of gay and lesbian ordination.

Yet thanks be to God, this past spring a majority of the tribes laid down their weapons. Across our denomination brothers and sisters in faith stepped back from playing king of the hill with our church’s constitution and replaced a deeply partisan prohibition of gay ordination with a statement of devotion to Christ that we can all affirm together. God’s Spirit is overcoming the tribal divisions that emerged way back at the tower of Babel. We can see it happening in our own church.

Our national life is also deeply marked by political and cultural and religious divisions. The Babel story points to barriers of miscommunication and failed understanding that are everywhere visible in our national life. Our tribal instincts take over, and political parties sacrifice a quest for the common good in favor of partisan one-upmanship. Religious minorities are objects of suspicion, and in the aftermath of
9-11, even the most peace-loving members of the Muslim community are treated with suspicion and prejudice and hostility.

In times such as these, we need the witness of the church to show our country that it is possible to reach our hands across these deep divides of race and ideology and religion, that a peaceful and united human community is possible, that even deep- seated differences can be overcome by the power of self-giving love.

The Holy Spirit has filled our hearts with Christ’s own love, and Jesus loved these other tribes enough to go to the cross for them. The democrats, the republicans, the Muslims, the immigrants, the politicians, the homeless, the obnoxious…and the people in Covenant Church who are just wrong about some stuff! Jesus laid down his life for every single one of these people, and the Holy Spirit unites us to him so that our hearts can fill up with his own self-giving love for them.

God is reclaiming your life and mine from the tragic divisions and fragmentations that have beset humanity since the dawn of history. He gives us hearts to love and brothers and sisters with whom to forge a common life. May God grant us eyes to see and hearts to embrace the miracle that is unfolding in our midst!

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. David A. Van Dyke
The House of Hope Presbyterian Church
Saint Paul, Minnesota

Pentecost Sunday
June 12, 2012                      Acts 2:1–21

Prayer: God of rushing winds and quiet stirrings, God of burning passion and a warm embrace, we give you thanks for the opportunity to gather on this Pentecost Sunday as so many did so long ago. In our coming together from many different places and backgrounds, show us how this ancient story is our story. Then send us out into the world to make your love known to all we meet.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Maybe it’s the Presbyterian in me but I sometimes wonder if Pentecost was an organized event?  Had there been a committee working months in advance to plan it?  We don’t know why all those different people from all those different places and cultures were gathered together that day, but presumably they were not sitting around waiting for something big to happen because when it did, everyone was surprised and amazed by it.

As Presbyterians, spontaneity is not our strong suit. We’re leery of it because control seems better to us.  It’s more thoughtful. Sadly, people who give in to the emotion-of-the- moment tend to make us uncomfortable. We like things more structured and organized. The name of our denomination, after all, comes not from our theology but from our system of government.  We are a branch of Christianity that places a high value on our governance structure and our systems.  We have a Book of Order and it is designed to do just that—to keep order in the church and not to let things get out of order.

But I’ll confess something to you, as long as it doesn’t leave this room, that even though we believe the Spirit works in and through our systems and structures, sometimes it’s hard for me to discern the Spirit’s moving under the weight of it all. Some things in the church can move so slowly.  We have numerous meetings and debate things to death and are sometimes guilty of over-thinking even the simplest things. It seems painful at times.

There’s a story about Charles Dickens attending a meeting of ministers one time.  He said the meeting was so dead, so dull and so boring that after a couple of hours he said to the ministers, “May I make a suggestion? Let’s move over to a table, join hands and sit in silence and see if we can commune with the living.”

As someone who has sat through my fair share of church and denominational meetings that have dragged on and on, I love this story about Pentecost—where the Spirit moves in a powerful way and no one expected it and no one could have stopped it even if they’d tried. It’s so refreshing.

And I love that it happens in a rich, culturally diverse, urban setting.  I think we need to pay attention to that detail in this story.  In fact as a city, Jerusalem was so cosmopolitan that it once prompted the Scottish minister George MacLeod, to say about it that, “When Jesus was crucified they had to write his name in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.”

And so when this thing happens, when the Spirit of God moves, it takes place where there are Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Phrygia and Pamphylia—and some other places not recognized by spell-check.  When it happened, it took place when all those different people were gathered together in one place.

On the one hand it seems remarkable that all those different people would be assembled together in one place until you think about it for a moment, and then you begin to realize that all those people from all those different places speaking all those different languages, is exactly what takes place on any given day at any public library in this country, or hospital or public school or airport—or on just about any street corner in America, for that matter. I mean, who could have imagined even twenty five years ago that the Twin Cities, of all places, would become one of the most diverse places in the country?  Who could have envisioned the day when you’d be able to locate a Hindu temple in Maple Grove, a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Roseville, and an Islamic mosque in Fridley!

Sometimes it’s difficult to make scripture relevant today.  Sometimes it takes a great deal of imagination just to understand its ancient settings.  Given the scene at Pentecost and the incredible sense of religious diversity in our country today, however, I think this Pentecost scene is one of the easier images in all of scripture for us to grasp.

Religious pluralism in this country can be a challenging issue but it’s not a recent phenomenon.  In a biography about Jonathan Edwards that came out a few years ago, the author describes the early struggles of a young man with all the answers living as a devout Puritan in the New World and confronting a growing religious diversity.  The biographer says this,

Edward’s life presents a particularly dramatic and influential instance of a   perennial American story. Countless Americans reared in conservative religious traditions have confronted the troubling issue of how their exclusive faith should relate to a pluralistic modern American environment. That tension has been felt especially among persons in ethno-religious communities—of which English Puritans were one of the first instances—who brought with them Old World ideals concerning the one true religion.

Even today, there are vast numbers of Americans who, although committed to live   at peace with other religious groups, believe it is a matter of eternal life or death to convert members of those groups to their own faith.  Like it or not, such evangelistic religion has been and continues to be a major part of the experiences of many ordinary Americans. Indeed, the tensions between religious exclusivism and pluralism are among the leading unresolved issues shaping the twenty-first century (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, George Marsden, p.8).

Perhaps no one is more in touch with issues of religious pluralism than Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard Divinity School and head of the school’s Pluralism Project that tracks this country’s growing religious diversity.  Eck, a United Methodist, cautions against tactics of religious conversion, however, and instead argues that followers of America’s traditional religions, Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism, need to open paths of understanding to different cultures and faiths because no longer are Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jains living on the other side of the world, they’re living on your street.

She also argues that accepting as legitimate the beliefs of others deepens one’s own faith rather than endangering it or diminishing it, and that increasing one’s understanding doesn’t mean leaving your religion at the door or discarding it, rather it’s about affirming a commitment to live together and to respect one another.

What we now know to be true is that America’s many faiths have never been static and that they will continue to grow and change and breathe in the air of a rapidly changing world.  And furthermore, that any religion or religious expression that isn’t open to breathing in that new air and living peacefully alongside people of other faiths, is destined to wither and perish and fail.

Breathing the air of new times sounds exactly like what happened at that first Pentecost.  The coming of the Spirit is known when new speech is heard for the first time—when people begin to hear things differently than the way they’ve always heard them.  When those who had been strangers are suddenly seen and understood in a new and different light.  When understanding develops as a result of real listening.   But none of that is easy and it doesn’t happen naturally.

Among the ordination vows for all officers in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is the promise to work for the peace, unity and purity of the Church.  We are at an interesting time in the life of our denomination.  We have recently removed discriminatory language from our constitution and made ordination possible for all those who are called to serve, including gays and lesbians.

This week a small group of us in the more progressive stream of the Church will be meeting with seven Presbyterian ministers who represent the more conservative stream of the Church and who are among the most vocal critics of the recent decision on ordination and who are now the most fearful about the Church’s future. They sent out a widely distributed letter in which they proclaimed the Presbyterian Church to be “deathly ill.”  They are threatening to leave the denomination which they acknowledge is difficult to pull off, or to at least isolate themselves from the rest of us—to retreat into subsets of the “like-minded,” to use another one of their terms.

And I really have a hard time understand where they are coming from.  I’ll be honest, I don’t understand what they think it means to be the church other than they seem to want to focus more on the church’s purity and less on its peace and unity.  I just don’t get it.  But I’m committed to being in conversations like the ones we’ll have this week because I love the church and I believe wholeheartedly that the church is better and healthier and a more accurate reflection of what God has in mind for the church, when it is made up of a broad diversity of people and when it doesn’t settle for doing the easy thing, which would be for us all to go our own way, drifting into camps of the like-minded—of keeping the Parthians with the Parthians and the Medes over there with the other Medes, and the progressive Presbyterians in their corner of the church and the conservative Presbyterians in their corner of the church.

How utterly dull and unhealthy that would be and furthermore, as I listen again to this great Pentecost story, I think that a case can be made that when people are grouped into their natural, comfortable clusters, composed of people just like themselves—communities of the like minded or of the same color or the same socioeconomic background—that when that happens, it is not where you’ll discover the Spirit doing the most exciting, creative, life-giving and nourishing work. And what a shame and what a blight on the church and on society when segregation, division and distinctions are made that result in keeping people apart instead of focusing on those things that will draw us all together.

In a wonderful essay about the church entitled The New Community, Wendell Berry writes,

The unity of the church is not to be found in structures, offices, doctrines, or programs. It is a distinctive unity rooted in new fellowship with God through Christ in the Spirit. The unity of the church is a fragmentary and provisional participation in the costly love of the triune God. Unity in the love of this God cannot possibly mean lifeless uniformity or deadening sameness. The unity of the church is a unity of love that enters into relationship with others and finds identity in relationship. The love of God, and the unity of the church which is grounded in it, is a lavish celebration of the communion of the different.

A communion of the different—I love that!  What a beautiful image and breath of fresh air. And what an altogether Pentecostal image.  It’s who and what we’re called to be as a church.  Diversity doesn’t mean that anything goes as some fear, but neither does unity mean that there is only one true expression of faith, as some claim. God’s grand creation is simply too large, too diverse and too mysterious for anyone to claim with much certainty anything that sounds exclusionary. It’s why someone once said that all good theologians know when to mumble.

God’s good creation is a communion of the different.

People of God, the Spirit who moved then still moves today, speaking a new language—a language larger and more comprehensive than our individual, regional, native and denominational dialects.  The church of Jesus Christ need not be worried about anyone else’s beliefs if we are simply intent on being faithful to our own.

Through the power of the Spirit, if we intentionally set out to live into the reality that we are a communion of the different, if we work to break down walls of segregation and separation, if we welcome all of the strangers with our gates, if we feed the poor and shelter those who need shelter—if we live the way Jesus taught us to live, the rest will take care of itself and God will see to it!

Of that I am both convinced and comforted.

Amen.

“Once the Scales Fell”
Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon preached at the Covenant Conference,
Nov. 4, 2010, by Rev. Katie Morrison

I am honored to have been invited to preach this evening and have looked forward to the “family reunion” that participating in this conference is for me as someone who stepped out of the Presbyterian “pool” five years ago in order to be able to freely fulfill my call to serve the church through ordained ministry.  Thank you to the wonderful worship planning team.  You have been a joy to work with.

In our Scripture reading this evening we hear that Saul, the vitriolic persecutor is on the move.  He is headed toward Damascus with the conviction that only MIGHT and RIGHT can induce.  This Saul of Tarsus -a devout Pharisee- had joined the security forces of his day to stamp out the small sects of Christian Jews in Palestine who were becoming unbearable for their blaspheme and heresy.  He had just overseen the martyr of Stephen and in the previous chapter, the text says that he literally entered “house after house” dragging off followers of The Way and committing them to jail.

Using his networking skills, in preparation for the trip to Damascus, he gets letters of introduction and accommodation from the high priest of Jerusalem to the synagogues in Damascus so that he might conduct his business decently and in order.

Heading out on the path, he was a warrior for the Purity of his religion, until something very powerful stopped him in his tracks and his life was forever changed.  One might say that he was mercilessly ambushed by heaven itself.

When we meet Saul, who later becomes Paul, he has just been struck by a blinding light.  So overwhelming is his experience that he is unable to see- though Scripture tells us his eyes were wide open. He is unable to eat or drink- so overcome is he- that the best he can do is put one foot in front of the other, as the voice:  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” commanded him to do.

Jesus stops him in his tracks and as much as that matters, what I want to draw our focus to tonight, is what happens in the days… the weeks… the months that follow that conversion.  I wonder… I wonder about something that the text doesn’t specifically tell us…

Does he make a visit to Stephen’s family?   What about the people he had gathered up, the people who were still in jail?  I wonder… does Paul ever circle back?

*******

I had an unusually exceptional church upbringing.  My grandmother, Marjorie Ellis Morrison, was the church secretary at Pasadena Presbyterian Church- my home congregation- for over twenty-five years.   I can remember visiting her in the office and watching her work the telephone switchboard, pulling plugs out of one hole and putting them in another while talking into this strange back microphone type instrument.  Do you remember those?

I felt comfortable in that church office since as early as I can remember.  I also attended the preschool that was a part of our church.  My mom was one of the teachers there.  My father had grown up in this congregation, had fond youth group memories of his own, and even worked as a janitor for awhile sometime during his young adulthood.  Both of my parents served as elders and sang in the choir.  My dad was chair of the Associate Pastor search committee when I was in Jr. high and was a part of calling our church’s first female pastor, which observing her Sunday after Sunday had a huge impact on me and planted the seeds for being able to see myself as a pastor.  Our youth group leader, Kathy Porter, was amazing.  She introduced us to inclusive language, liberation and progressive theology, led us on many mission trips local and away, and helped bond us as a group in ways that reverberate even today.

When the Senior Pastor started his ministry PPC, I was in sixth grade.  He and his wife had a daughter my age and a son my brother’s age.  Consequently, the search committee matched up our families to help them in their transition to a new church and home.  His daughter and I became fast best friends.  Our families began spending Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner together.  Saturday night slumber parties at her house were commonplace.  Her mom was our children and youth choir director.  When her grandmother moved in with them, she became my grandmother, too.  For being a downtown, urban church… this was a tight-knit experience for me.

Although I wasn’t aware that I was a fourth generation Presbyterian growing up, I was aware that this church was my home and this congregation was my family- a room full of grandparents, parents, and peers with whom I could feel safe and to whom I belonged.

My brother and the pastor’s son ended up going to the same college.  When it came time for the pastor’s daughter and I to choose a school, we influenced each other to both attend small, liberal arts colleges in Maine.  From California all the way to Maine… that’s how powerful this friendship was!)

When I came out as a lesbian during my first semester of college, things changed drastically in the relationship between me and my pastor.  This became evident during my first trip home from college…  but, let me stop there for now.

*******

The truth is… Pam Byers (who with the same tenacity of the widow woman coming to the unjust judge) – extended the invitation to me to be one of the conference preachers more than once… and each time, I have found excuses to say no.  While some were good excuses like being pregnant, I also wasn’t ready.  I wasn’t quite ready to step back in to the Presbyterian circle and I wasn’t sure what it was yet, that I would have to say.  But this last time around- the time where Pam got a YES- in saying that YES, I made a commitment.  I said to myself, “Self!  It’s now time.  Before that conference rolls around, promise to make those two phone calls you know you need to make.” … “ok” …  “I promise.”

We all have those experiences in life where our hearts were first broken— the loss of innocence, and trust and belief that love is enough.  I trace my earliest experiences of heartbreak back to two relationships with significant individuals who were both pastors within the context of my home church.  One was the Senior Pastor and the other was a seminary professor.  These phone calls were about circling back to those two people and revisiting those initial heartbreaks.

Two weeks ago I called the seminary professor- Jack Rogers.* After exchanging updates on our families, and explaining that I was preparing to be at this Conference, I asked him if he would provide me with the gift of simply listening so that I could continue some healing that I needed to do with him and that I was calling with the purpose of offering forgiveness.  He graciously agreed.  I continued…

It was 1993, and the summer after my junior year of college that I attended my second General Assembly.  Following the assembly, all members at Pasadena Presbyterian Church who had attended were invited to share about their experience, except, I wasn’t invited.  I called up the pastor and said, “Hey I noticed there’s this panel next Sunday and I’m not on the list… can I share my reflections also?”  He responded by requesting that I call Jack.  This seemed strange.  I called Jack and Jack said, “Well, we feel it’s in your best interest not to speak on that panel.”  Being a self-assured child of God newly awakened to the conflict in the church over the ordination of “homosexual persons” as it was then referred… I quipped back, “You mean it’s in your best interest for me not to speak on that panel.  Am I or am I not a member of PPC?”

That moment was my first tangible moment of discrimination from someone I knew that was based 100% on my being an openly lesbian woman.  I had never before experienced that kind of out-right exclusion and I experienced it first in the church.

I relayed this story to Jack in this recent phone call and talked about how strange it was to have been catapulted into this awkward relationship where he went from being one of my youth group classmate’s dad to the “panel gatekeeper” and someone who had strategized with my pastor- my best friend’s dad- in order to keep me from speaking to my church.  What a loss of innocence that moment was, and an initial, tangible source of pain—the reverse of EVERYTHING good I had ever experienced in the church.

Jack listened tenderly as I let out some tears.  “There’s one more I’d like to share, I said.”

Jack, I don’t know if you even remember, but you happened to be the chair of CPM when I first came before the committee with FORM 1.  Sometime during the hour and a half of questioning I received from the committee, you asked me, “Who is Jesus to you.”  I answered, “Partner and Friend.”  Again you asked the question, “Who is Jesus to you?”… and again I answered… again you asked… “WHO IS JESUS TO YOU?”  I replied this time, thinking I was being creative, “Well let me answer that with a story,” and I went on to share an experience that took place earlier that day.  But this answer still didn’t satisfy Jack or the committee.

You see, I didn’t understand the nuance of the question.  I didn’t know that there was a RIGHT answer… That “Jesus is my Lord and Savior” or that “I’m not gay” is what I was supposed to say.  I didn’t know the code.  I came only with honest answers.

Jack said to me over the phone something like, “I wish I had been at a place where I could have done better… where I could have thought to take you to lunch the next day and to be a teacher and explain the history of theological language for Jesus as the Christ and I can see how hurtful both of those experiences would have been.  Katie I am sorry.”

I explained that, while it is not as live for me now, for so many years I held such anger toward him and such hurt and how I didn’t understand why after having his conversion, he didn’t circle back… but that I was now ready to release that disappointment and I said,

“I forgive you, Jack, for the hurt you caused me.”  And I asked if he would pray for my on-going healing to which he replied, “May I do that right now?”

There I sat on a Saturday afternoon on my sofa in Oakland on the phone with Jack Rogers who sat in his home in Pasadena praying together for one another.

*******

Three days ago, I called Dean Thompson.**

In 1991, when word got to Dean that I was lesbian and we met to talk about my coming out, he said things like, “This is a phase and I have known people who came out in college who are now happily married and I wish you wouldn’t come out.”  When I said that I hoped he would still visit seminaries with me, he wouldn’t answer.  The excitement he had previously had about my sense of call to ministry had shifted.  Our relationship felt forever altered.  I experienced him walk the other direction when he saw me at gatherings.  When we met together to “be in dialogue” I heard about God’s plan for human relationships as laid out in Genesis.  The relationship between my best friend and I became strained and both of our families lost the connection we had once enjoyed.  We didn’t share holidays and special occasions anymore.  Sometime soon after, Dean left our home church for another call.

This phone call was the hardest phone call I have ever made.

“Hello” the voice said… “Hi. Dean?  It’s Katie Morrison.”

“Oh, Katie, Katie Morrison, I think of you,” he said without missing a beat.  I explained my preparation for the conference and how I was calling to release him, having held such anger toward him over the years.  “I’m the one in need of forgiveness,” he said, “and here you are, calling me with a Spirit of forgiveness.  How deeply I regret that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.”

We talked further…  “Dean” I said, “I don’t know if you have changed on your views about LGBT persons being ordained, but it’s my sense that you have.   If that is true, may I ask, why have you stopped short of calling and sharing this regret with me?”

“It not a good enough reason,” he said, “but I guess I’ve wanted to be face-to-face…”  “Yes,” I said, but what has stopped you from initiating us being face-to-face?”  “I guess I just thought it would happen at some point.”

*******

This is a sermon about circling back, a sermon about asking for forgiveness.  A sermon about the scales falling off… and what is the next step?

There are so many in the denomination who have been hurt, so many are no longer in the denomination as a result, and so many no longer participating in any Christian community.  I think about, comparatively, all of the privilege I had— knowing I was loved and accepted and had a place at the table.  I had (and have) EXTREMELY supportive parents.  They are the ones who sent me as a Birthday present to General Assembly in 1993, where, with a handful of others, I came out on stage in front of the entire assembly and was by far the youngest out LGBT voice many had ever heard from.  I remember calling my parents on the phone following that moment and saying, “Mom, dad… I just came out on the floor of GA!”  And their saying back to me, “Wow… we’re so proud of you.”   It was at GA the year before where I had been sent as a representative of the National Network of Presbyterian College Women of whose leadership team I was INVITED to be a part of BECAUSE I was an out lesbian because of their incredibly progressive commitment to representative diversity on that committee.  It was at that GA where I met Janie Spahr and Chris Glaser, Howard Warren and Lisa Larges, Jim Anderson, Dan Smith, Scott Anderson and Laurene LaFontaine, Lisa Bove and Susan Leo- all amazing, early, early LGBT pioneers of this movement for inclusion through PLGC (Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns).

I  had unusual support in this process, and I can’t help but think of all of the people who did not have my level of tenacity (or as my wife would say, stubbornness) and the support and encouragement that I received in this process, even through the WORST of what I experienced…  and I experienced some amazingly terrible behavior in the name of God and in the name of the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the church during my young adult tenure in this denomination.  Terrible things were said to me and about me.  One of my church school teachers expressed concern, suggesting that we would not be in heaven together if I did not repent.  Another member came to session the evening I was asking to be received as an inquirer and she spoke about the Scripture of the wheat and the weeds and said, “I held Katie as a baby in our church nursery, showing her the love of God, but with sadness I must share with you that God made wheat and weeds and unfortunately Katie has become a weed and we need to weed her out.  I am against her becoming a minister.”  There were actions that San Gabriel Presbytery should be ashamed of.  I hope and I pray that some day soon, when the denomination does remove or revise G-60106b that there will be something like a truth and reconciliation commission where those of us who got “caught” along the way in the cross-hairs of theological and social “debate” will have the chance to speak and share about what we experienced along the way of educating the church about our lives.

This brings me to my challenge to you, Covenant Network members and friends:  Have you always been in the supportive position you are in today?  Where were you at the beginning of your journey before you made a commitment to work toward creating a church as generous and just as God’s grace?  Are there any Sauls here?  Were any of you ever on the path that Saul walked before the conversion experience?  Has anyone contributed toward the pain of an LGBT Presbyterian either through direct action or through your silence on the “issue”?

After all, the church to-date (like it did to Saul) offers you authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke God’s truth for them of who they are as LGBT persons on The Way.

For those of you who have been on a conversion journey, what has it been like?  Did the shade pop up all at once, or was a slow pealing of the scales from your eyes?  Who were the people who played a role in helping to “restore your vision?”  Have you ever been visited by an Ananias, someone who loved you- as a brother or sister in Christ- enough to visit you or pick up the phone and call you, despite all of the evidence that you might hurt them or their people?  And, once your sight was restored, what did you do next?

Once we do change our hearts and minds, what do we do with our conversion?  Whatever your story, have you circled back and asked for forgiveness from those you may have hurt along the way as you were receiving your own transformation?  Covenant Network… that’s the message.  I’ve been given the very rare opportunity to circle back to you- to this very important pocket of the Presbyterian church- and to encourage you to do what Jack and Dean and many others were not, for whatever reason, able to initiate with me.

Our healing is wrapped up in one another.  Apparently, that’s the way God designed it.

Here’s the amazing and surprising ending to this amazing and surprising Scripture story of Paul’s conversion.  It reads:  “Ananias went and entered the house.  He laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’”  And the Scripture says, “Immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.”  And THEN it says, “Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food he regained his strength.”

Presbyterian Church… church of my upbringing… may the scales fall from your eyes, may you be renewed in your baptism, may you break bread together, and then may you regain your strength.  And, in the breaking of bread, may you have circled back and righted wrongs and asked for forgiveness so that in your strength there is a Peace, Unity, and Purity that is not false, but is true and just.

May it be so…

* The Rev. Dr. Jack Rogers has given his consent to the Covenant Network, to print Katie’s sermon with his name included.

** The Rev. Dr. Dean Thompson has given his consent to the Covenant Network, to print Katie’s sermon with his name included.

Ted Smith, preaching for the 2009 Conference

Acts 1:1-11

One of the deepest themes I have heard over these last few days is the need for a faith that can tell the truth about the presence of God in the church without slipping into triumphalism, a faith that can tell the truth about the violence of the church without slipping into cynicism or despair. Another theme, more contested, is the potential of traditional language of the church to help us make sense of our lives. With these themes in mind, I want to think with you towards this kind of hope … by means of some reflections on the Ascension.

1. If there’s one thing we know about Jesus, it is this: he is gone. Gone. Scripture, confessions and cynics all agree. Jesus is gone. Our lesson from Acts gives details: “a cloud took him out oftheir sight” and “two men in white robes” – might as well call them angels – attend the scene (1:9-11). Luke 24 gives the plain version: “he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven” (v. 51). The Gospel of John doesn’t say much about Jesus’ departure, but it remembers him talking about it all the time. “Do not hold me,” Jesus says to Mary in the garden (20:17). I’m going to “go away,” Jesus tells the disciples (14:28). Different books tell the story in different ways, but everyone agrees: Jesus is gone. [1]

The confessions of the church follow the witness of Scripture. In Kenda Dean’s workshop she had us recite the Apostles’ Creed: “He ascended into heaven,” we said. He’s gone.

Here is one place where the creeds and the cynics agree. “He’s gone. Well isn’t that a handy little doctrine? You say he rose from the dead. But where is he? He rose, but then flew up into heaven? Isn’t that convenient?” He’s gone.

2. I believe all serious talk about the church happens in the wake of the Ascension. It begins with a recognition that Jesus is gone. For if the church is the Body of Christ, as Fred Westbrook reminded us in his question during one of the plenary sessions, then the question of the church we can see from here becomes a question of the body we can see from here. And we must say: the body of Christ is gone. This is not just an abstract doctrine. It is the deep, faithful, painful recognition that our congregations and denominations are not as they should be. It is a recognition that children baptized in the church’s fonts, fed at the church’s tables, and called to ministry through the church’s preaching are then turned away because of who they love. And, as Melva Costen reminded us, this is not the first time the church has proven that the body of Christ is gone. We would not tell the truth about Scripture or our lives if we said anything else.

3. And we would not tell the truth if this was all we said. The Gospel of John, especially, reminds us that the going of Jesus is inseparable from the coming of the Holy Spirit. “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says to the disciples. “I am coming to you” (14:18). He promises them the gift of Advocate, Paraclete, Comforter. Jesus ascended, Ephesians says, “so that he might fill all things” (4:10). John Calvin has these passages in mind when he writes,

Carried up into heaven, therefore, he withdrew his bodily presence from our sight, not to cease to be present with believers still on their earthly pilgrimage, but to rule heaven and earth with a more immediate power. But by his ascension he fulfilled what he had promised: that he would be with us even to the end of the world. [2]

Jesus is gone. And the Spirit of Jesus has come, to fill heaven and earth with an even more immediate and intimate power, that Jesus might be with us always, even to the end of the age.

4. Stay with me now: there’s one more move in unfolding this dialectic by which we live. Jesus is gone, the Holy Spirit has come … and still, more than ever, Jesus is gone. The persons of the Trinity are not interchangeable parts. They are not fungible goods. The Ascension is not like some cosmic change machine (put a dollar bill in, get four quarters back, and it all spends the same).

Canadian theologian Douglas Farrow says it like this: “Pentecost does not resolve the problem of the presence and the absence. It creates it, by adding a presence which discloses an absence.” [3] Without the gift of the Holy Spirit, we don’t even know what we are missing. It is the presence of God in the church that lets us see the absence of God from the church. This is what I mean: it is exactly at the communion table, when God gives Godself to us most deeply, when we taste and see that the Lord is good – it is just there that we feel the distance of the church from God most deeply. It is as we gather around the table that we feel the absence of those many thousands gone, those enslaved bodies, those transgendered bodies, those gay and lesbian bodies, those sick bodies, those criminal bodies, those poor bodies, those bodies declared illegal, that crucified body of Jesus … all those bodies we have tried to stuff under the table and into the closet, just out of reach of our memory. The presence of God reminds us of their absence. In the presence of God, they cry out – we cry out – with the souls under the altar (Rev. 6:9-11). “Pentecost does not resolve the problem of the presence and the absence. It creates it, by adding a presence which discloses an absence.”

5. Imaginations formed by the Ascension can think – can live – presence and absence together. They can say no to visions of unqualified presence. This is, I think, what Eddie Glaude was calling us to when he called us to be Saturday Christians. He called us to hold off on the rush to Sunday, the rush to Alleluia. This is a call to hold open the space for deliberation in the meantime, the in-between-time, and so to refuse the easy comforts of false fulfillment.

Imaginations formed by the Ascension also say no to unqualified absence. They refuse the cynicism that sees only power politics at work in the church. They refuse the despair that says things will never change. And they refuse the hubris that says it is all up to us. They refuse to understand Saturday as anything but the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, a day made possible by the surrendered presence of Friday and already transformed by the risen presence of Sunday. Imaginations formed by the Ascension refuse any vision of absence that forgets the presence of God.

Christians in the wake of the Ascension see both presence and absence. They sit in the dark of absence long enough that – in the phrase we learned from Howard Thurman via Gregory Bentley – the dark becomes luminous. This is the kind of faith, I think, that has sustained Melva Costen’s family through eight generations of mixed messages – and worse – from Presbyterians. It is the kind of faith that a Moralistic Therapeutic Deism cannot sustain. It is the kind of faith shown by the glbt Christians who, Mark Achtemeier said, were “miraculously willing to hang in there with me.” Such faith is a miracle. It involves seeing enough of the presence of God in the life of the church that you can’t let go, but then finding yourself broken open by the depth of the absence that presence discloses … and then finding yourself, in that breaking, bound yet more tightly to the one broken for us.

This is the kind of faith, I think, to which the Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity called us. To say that Christ is the peace, unity, and purity of the church is to proclaim a kind of presence. It is to say that where we see only conflict, Christ has already made peace. It is also to refuse every other source of community as false. It is to say no to peace built on agreement about how to vote, or whom to ordain, or how to interpret Scripture, or what kind of worship we prefer. Ascension faith has the courage to refuse alternatives like these. It has the tenacity to wait for the peace of Christ by the peace of Christ. Ascension faith has the capacity to yearn. It knows how to yearn for the body we can see from here.

And surely this rainbow stole I wear was knit in the luminous darkness of the Ascension. It was made, you remember, by the prayer-shawl ministry team from Fairmount Presbyterian Church. It is a prayer shawl, for comforting a body that has grown ill in the absence of Jesus. And it is a stole, a recognition of the gifts already poured out, the means of grace already passed on by a rainbow of God’s people, the living presence of the Holy Spirit. It is both prayer shawl and stole, a faithful recognition of the ways presence and absence are knit together in the life of the church.

6. At the end of today’s lesson the “men of Galilee” are left staring in to space. They have seen the body of Jesus ascend, and they are just waiting for him to come back. And the angels say, “Don’t just stand here looking at the sky, contemplating the dialectic between presence and absence. Jesus will return to you in the manner in which he left.” That is, he did not leave because you sent him away, and he will not return because you tell him to. The men of Galilee seem to get it for a change. They do not stay to gaze into the sky. They come down from the high of the conference. They go back to the work of being church, back to yearning. They go back to the upper room, back to the place the women have been all along. I like to think of them sitting together, making prayer-shawl stoles for the church we can see from here.

1 Quotations of the Bible are from the New Revised Standard Version.
2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, transl. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill, Library of Christian Classics, vol. XX (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), II.xvi.14 (vol. 1, p. 523).
3 Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 271, n. 59.

Ted Smith
Assistant Professor of Ethics and Society
Vanderbilt Divinity School
Sermon delivered to the Covenant Network of Presbyterians
November 7, 2009

- Jack Rogers

… I had often said that I could not change my position on homosexuality unless I was convinced by Scripture. By studying the Bible in its historical and cultural context and through the lens of Jesus’ redeeming life and ministry, I have now been convinced that Scripture does not condemn, as such, the sexual expression of contemporary Christian people who are LGBT…

Read the whole essay.

Diane Givens Moffett
Pastor, St James Presbyterian Church, Greensboro, NC

Isaiah 61:8-9; John 3:16; Acts 15:1-3

Many of you may have heard the story of a little girl who was about six years old. She was in school and it was time for an art lesson. The teacher said that this little girl hardly ever paid attention, but at this drawing lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated and went over to her and asked, What are you drawing? The girl said, I’m drawing a picture of God. The teacher said, But nobody knows what God looks like. The girl said, They will in a minute. This little girl was confident in what she was drawing. She was using her creativity and her experience to make a picture of God based upon her understanding, and as limited as it may have been, it was meaningful and valid for her.

Now while some may laugh or smile at this incident, I believe that many people do the same thing. We create God in our image. We draw pictures of God based upon our understanding. And while our experience may be valid for us, we have only part of the story because God transcends our understanding. God is larger than our experience, bigger than our background and greater than our grounding. Through the history of humanity and in this nation where we have witnessed the election of Senator Barack Obama, the first African-American man to become President of this country, we can see how God keeps breaking out of the boxes we place God in, refusing to be shaped in our image, defined by our minds, and drawn with our limited understanding.

Because you see while there is no harm in using one’s divine imagination and inspired creativity to paint a picture of who we believe God to be, a problem arises when our picture is not in keeping with the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. He represents the new covenant and promise of God to the world. He came to establish this new covenant with whosoever would believe in Him. Jesus places no condition on the whosoever. He does not speak about one’s place, state or condition in life. He does not make mention of one’s marital status, one’s sexuality, or how old or young one may be. Jesus does not say that one’s gender, race and ethnicity—whether one is white, or black, brown, red or yellow–determines our salvation. He does not say that one’s religion or creed is the basis of our liberation. Jesus places no limitations on the proclamation; he states that whosoever will believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. And through this open-ended invitation God illustrates what I call a comprehensive covenant.

A comprehensive covenant is a promise that God makes to all believers. It is a covenant that extends to all disciples of Jesus Christ. My dad who is now deceased was an insurance salesman. As I child I learned about the business as he interacted with clients in his home office. I learned the importance of being fully covered when it comes to life insurance. Full coverage was often expensive, especially if you were purchasing a whole life policy. Yet full coverage is what Dad recommended because comprehensive coverage includes everything. It protects the insured and his or her family from all loss—one who holds a comprehensive policy is in good hands.  

In the same way those who believe in Jesus are in good hands when it comes to the covenant God makes with us through Him because it is a comprehensive covenant. The covenant guarantees the salvation and secures the liberation of all those who believe in Jesus.   The covenant is an assurance policy, purchased in full by God’s Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ on behalf of the family of God.  We did not pay for this coverage because we could not afford the bill.  Rather, as the hymn writer says, Jesus paid it all… All to Him I owe. Sin had left the crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.   All believers are heirs to this assurance policy, inheritors of the new covenant made possible through our faith in Christ.

It is no surprise then that Paul and Barnabas entered into sharp debates and disputes with the early church when beyond faith in Christ, an additional demand for the new Gentiles converts was being made in order to secure their salvation.  I appreciate Paul because he places the issue on the table. Some of us don’t like controversy or to speak with those who may not hold our view or agree with our perspectives. Others don’t mind putting up our fist and playing hardballs. Church fights can be ugly. But while some of us may not like debates and disputes—while we may grow tired and weary of the recourse and rhetoric, our Reformed History teaches us that when we argue well and debate openly, a new day can dawn, a new season can emerge, a new time can spring forth and our comprehensive covenant can be strengthened.

A good argument helps strengthen covenant by raising critical questions that help put the issues on the table; a good argument can move us to new insight and a new position. Anyone knows that if you do not address the issue and ask the appropriate questions in a debate, it can lead to inappropriate and even irrelevant conclusions. Just because I am in a donut shop does not make me a donut; but if my question is “Are donuts in a donut shop?” I may come to this conclusion.

When we read the Gospels and roam the pages of Holy Writ, we discover that one of the reasons so many contemporaries of Jesus miss him is that they are raising the wrong questions. Instead of asking what the Spirit of God is doing in Jesus, they ask why Jesus does not follow the law. Instead of celebrating the healing he performs on the Sabbath Day, they asked why he performs a healing work on the Sabbath. Instead of listening to his teaching, ruminating, contemplating and meditating on his Word, they want to question his authority. So often we err in our thinking because we are not asking the right questions nor debating the proper subject.

I am glad to be a part of a denomination that is not afraid to argue and confess the error of our ways. The motto of our Presbyterian Protestant and Reformed tradition is once reformed, always reforming.   We understand that we don’t always get in right in terms of homiletics, hermeneutics, and speaking what thus says the Lord. We understand that from time to time good men and women may err in our understanding of God’s word to us and our embrace of what God is doing in the world. We are a confessing church who questions, critiques and entreats ourselves in order to get right with God and neighbor. Our sometimes fiery and furious debate allows us to see a different picture and make a new sketch that is more in keeping with the God we serve.

It is the arguments and debates and the questions raised, for example regarding the innate right of African-American slaves to be free, in the former Southern and Northern streams of the Presbyterian Church and in this country at large, that helped liberate African-Americans and empower us to serve God and others in the church and in the world. It is the arguments and discussions of equality and justice, righteousness and truth that helped the civil rights movement to save the soul of America and compel her to keep the covenant she made to be one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Many shed tears of joy on November 4th when President-elect Obama won the election for the highest office in this nation, because we know about the blood, sweat and tears, the arguments, protests and debates that the ancestors endured in order to see this day come forth. It was not an easy road to travel. Initiating change and introducing something new seldom is easy. The movement of this country to this present moment did not happen over night, but over time, because people operating in the tradition of Paul and Barnabas, kept raising the issue and questioning the nation about a picture of the land of the free that was seriously flawed.

Looking back at the church, it is from the discussions and debate of the critical questions concerning the leadership of women in the PCUSA that we now mount the pulpits, preach and pastor churches in this denomination. It is from discussion and debate, good arguments that put the problem on the table, that issues are solved and positions changed, not over night, but over time.       

Paul and Barnabas raise the critical questions and issues regarding how to include the Gentiles in the church of their day. It takes some time to change the mental mode of the church leaders. It does not appear to be an easy task. Yet, history shows us that the work of people like Paul, and Barnabas is not in vain. When we invest in our church through arguments and debate out of a sincere desire to keep covenant and to move the church to a more powerful witness, we strengthen our covenant and acknowledge its comprehensive scope. A passionate debate and a good argument help to move people to new positions as we put the issues on the table and listen and learn from each other. Good arguments can also expose the assumptions and mindset we cling to regarding the issues at hand.

The late Reverend Dr. Sandy Ray, Pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Brooklyn, New York once told the story of some years ago, while he was working in a hospital. The head nurse became desperately ill. He was informed by the surgeon that she was suffering from what he diagnosed as “intestinal cohesion.” Some of the intestines had flattened and no nourishment could pass through her system. She was losing weight and becoming extremely weak. The surgeon had to correct the “cohesion” of the intestines so that food could pass through.

Sometimes the church can get sickly and feeble because we suffer from spiritual cohesion. We reject the life-giving truth and our souls become famished because our minds are closed—especially when we think that no one is right, but us. One thing that Paul and Barnabas appear to have is an open mind. We can see it through the assumption beneath the debate and questions raised by them. It is clear that their assumption is that the Gentile believers, although different from the Jews, are part of God’s covenant and should be included in the church. Just because Jews are circumcised does not mean that Gentiles need to be.

You see, one of things that I remember from seminary (and believe you me there are a lot of things that I do not recall) is this debate between Paul, Barnabas and the elders and apostles in Jerusalem. I was blessed to be under the tutelage of two outstanding scholars and teachers, Bob Coote and Marvin Chaney. They were the Old Testament Professors at San Francisco Theological Seminary when I attended. They were helping us neophytes to understand what was going on with Paul and the Gentile converts. They explained, (and many of us know, but thank you for allowing me to remind you) that there are three overarching covenants made in the Old Testament. The first covenant is with Noah—never to destroy the earth by water. The sign of the covenant is the rainbow. The second covenant is with Moses to free people from bondage and the sign of the covenant is keeping the Sabbath. The third covenant was with Abraham, and the sign of the covenant was circumcision.

When Paul begins converting Gentiles to the faith, some of the early Jewish Christians suggest that these new Gentiles to the faith be brought in under the covenant of Abraham—ouch! Paul does not co-sign with this painful decision, nor does he believe it is required to be saved and an heir to the covenant of Christ. Having witnessed the work of the Spirit, they are challenged to search the scripture to find an overarching covenantal theme that will make sense for bringing the new converts in. If we read further in Act 15:20 and 29, we learn that the Gentiles come in under the first covenant of Noah, which means the only restrictions on new believers are not to eat meat from the blood of strangled animals or from food polluted by idols, and to abstain from sexual immorality.  (That is another sermon and song, but suffice it to say it had little to do with sexual preference and more with sexual promiscuity).

My point is that the question raised for Paul and Barnabas is how to include the Gentiles in the covenant and not how they can be saved. They assume salvation is already there because of the Gentiles belief in Jesus. It is clear that they assume the church to be an inclusive of all believers. An inclusive church operates under the assumption that all believers are heirs to the covenant of Christ and looks for ways to yield to the Spirit while being obedient to the law. And because the law is subject to interpretation, debates will arise, arguments will ensue, disputes will manifest. And while we may grow weary, while we may ask the question, Lord, how long? Know that those who argue well, help move the church to a new place and clarify our assumptions concerning the comprehensive covenant made by Christ.

We bring the church a gift, whether the church knows it or not; and our life can be even more meaningful because of our desire to open our arms to all believers. Paul is known for expanding the Gospel. What will you be known for?  It is my prayer that, as the song says, If I can help somebody as I pass along. If I can cheer somebody with a Word or song. If I can show somebody that they are traveling wrong—then my living will not be in vain.    

When my oldest daughter married, she and her husband were blessed to be counseled by Dr. Ansley Lamar. She said that one of the things she learned from Dr. Lamar was how to argue well. He explained that couples who argue well have an opportunity to learn more about each other and grow in intimacy, love and appreciation of one another. Couples who cease arguing, usually after bitter debates, cut off communication and are more susceptible to breaking the marriage covenant. As they talked about raising children, Dr. Anstey also inserted that he felt it could be a good thing for children to hear their parents argue, especially if it is a good argument—one that is designed to foster learning and love for each other. When parents argue well, and don’t jump ship, and remain open to each other, they teach the next generation what it means to have a comprehensive covenant that stays intact through the peaks and valley of the relationship. In fact the parents model for the children how to love and care for each other through our differences.

Is this not what God calls the church to do? Through fits and starts with controversial issues, when we argue well, it forces us to look outside of the box we place God in. When we argue well we learn that God is doing far more than what we can understand or comprehend. When we argue well, we learn to appreciate one another and the gifts we bring to the table. When we argue well it helps us see the error of our ways, turn to God who is fair and gives people what they should have. When we argue well we demonstrate to all those who look upon us that we are a blessed people of God—a people who can work together, pray together, play together, worship together, because despite our differences we are all covered under the covenant of Christ. 

When we argue well we are able to see new colors and new shades that help paint a more accurate picture of the God who shares a comprehensive covenant and saves whosoever will believe in him! The hymn writer William Kirkpatrick spoke truth when he wrote, I have heard the joyful sound, Jesus saves. Jesus saves. Spread the tidings all around, Jesus saves. Jesus saves. To the utmost, Jesus saves. To the utmost Jesus saves. He will pick you up and turn you round, hallelujah, Jesus saves.

Sermon

The Rev. Dr. Nora Tubbs Tisdale

Acts 16:11-34
Philippians 1:3-11

Covenant Network Conference
November 3, 2005
Memphis, TN

Recently I read a very poignant novel entitled A Home at the End of the World. Written by Michael Cunningham, the book tells the story of three single adults—Bobby, Jonathon and Clare—who end up sharing an apartment and a life together in New York City, forging, in the process, a very unconventional family unit.

The two male protagonists in the story—Bobby and Jonathon—had grown up together in Cleveland, Ohio, where they were drawn together in their teenage years by the heartaches and dysfunctions of their respective families of origin.  Bobby—who had watched his own parents grieve themselves to death after his older brother died in a tragic accident—longs for the stability of home he finds with Jonathon and Jonathon’s parents, Alice and Ted.  Jonathon, on the other hand, is chafing under the wing of an over-protective mother, and a father who cannot come to terms with his son’s emerging gay identity. 

The two boys become fast friends, and though they part ways when Jonathon goes off to college and Bobby stays home to work, they meet up again in their mid 20s when Bobby goes to New York to search for a job, and ends up living with Jonathon and his apartment mate Clare.  Clare, who is in her late 30s, has also been through some tough family times—including a failed marriage and a string of bad relationships.  And so the three—each one lonely and broken in his or her own way—become something of a family to one another.  When Clare becomes pregnant and gives birth to a little girl named Rebecca, they all move out of the city, into a little farmhouse near Woodstock, NY, that Clare buys with her inheritance from her grandfather.  And it is there that they create together a “home at the end of the world.” 

The story is a haunting one, in part because their “home at the end of the world” does not end up being an altogether “happily ever after” one for any of them.  It, too, has its fair share of  heartache and sadness and pain.

But for me the real haunting of this novel has to do with the way in which it touches upon that deep sense of longing for home that is so prevalent in today’s society, upon the sometimes self-destructive ways in which we humans try to feed that hunger, and also upon the ways in which “family” is being redefined in the world around us.  

Unconventional Families Today

Frankly, there is hardly a one of us today who is not touched in some way by the ongoing redefinition of family in today’s society.  For family, as we are all aware, does not look much like the Cleavers any more.

Whether it is single adults striving to create a sense of home and family among the community of friends with whom they live and work,

Or older adults discovering that their once empty nests are empty no longer;

Whether it is married couples trying to come to terms with their dashed dreams of having biological children of their own,

Or working parents discovering that they are increasingly dependent on people outside of their immediate families to help nurture and care for their children;

Whether it children of divorce, grieving the disintegration of home as they once knew it, 

Or same sex couples struggling to create homes in a society that encourages them to be faithful but will not bless their unions,

People these days are struggling with what home means, and how they too might find “a home at the end of the world.”

My Unconventional Family

I know that it was in my young adulthood that I first became aware that my own immediate family—which looked for all the world to be about as conventional as they come (a husband, wife, and 2 children)—was not really as conventional as it seemed.  For if truth were told, my husband and I could not have survived during our first five years in ministry—when we were serving as co-pastors of four small churches in central Virginia—if we had not had as a part of our own extended family, a wonderful woman of faith named Sandy Hammond, who provided a home and loving care for our two children, Leonora and William, on weekdays while we tended to the needs of our congregations.

Sandy, a deeply committed Southern Baptist with a husband and four boys of her own, lived in a sprawling country farmhouse on a county road that ran between the booming Virginia metropolises of Mineral and Cuckoo.  It was there that she welcomed our children each morning to a house heated by a wood stove and to a yard littered with toys and stray cats she had adopted.  Sandy excelled in those basic Christian virtues of faith and hope and love, and so it was with grateful hearts that we would take our children to her home each day, knowing that there they would receive the kind of unconditional love and attentive care they so very much needed during those early formative year.

We still laugh in our family about the way in which our daughter, Leonora, who was verbal it seems since birth (one of the hazards I’m sure of having two ministers as parents!) used sit in her car seat and to wave her little arm in a grand sweeping gesture as we drove through the small hamlet of Mineral to get to Sandy’s house—which was certainly on the edge of her then-known world—and would say to me in her deep, gravelly 3-year-old voice, “Mommy, ALL THIS is Mineral!”  (Mineral, at the time had a population of about 300 people.) 

And to this day, when we decorate our Christmas tree each year, we pause when we come to those hand-made ornaments Sandy made for our children when they were toddlers, to reminisce about the good times our children had at her home.  Indeed, when the time came for our family to move away from that community to Richmond, where my husband had accepted a call to a new church, I sat on the front porch steps of Sandy’s home and wept with her, knowing that in a very real sense, we were taking our children away from one of their rightful parents. 

The Unconventional Family of Faith

In the Book of Acts, we learn that the family of faith has, since its beginnings, been rather unconventional as well.  And perhaps nowhere do we see that more clearly than in the story we read this morning about the first converts to the Christian Church in Philippi. 

Before going to Philippi you may recall that the Apostle Paul had been preaching the Gospel in Asia Minor.  But one night he heard God calling him in a dream to go over and preach the Gospel in Macedonia, a Roman Colony in what today is a part of Greece.

And so Paul obediently went.  Finding that there was no Jewish synagogue in Philippi—the place he usually went to preach when arriving in a new town—he went down by the riverside to a place of prayer where he found a group of women worshipping and striving to learn more about the God they did not fully understand.

Paul preached the Good News of Jesus Christ to those women.  And as a result, one of them named Lydia—a wealthy and evidently single businesswoman who made her living selling purple cloth—asked to be baptized along with her entire household.  She, in turn, became one of the founding members of the church at Philippi—one who also regularly opened her home to Paul and the apostles when they visited that area so that they had a home away from home on their missionary journeys.

The second person who was affected by Paul’s ministry in Philippi was a young slave girl whose name is not given to us.  This girl, according to the scriptures, was possessed by a demon—which probably means that she had some form of mental illness.  And because of her condition she was able to make money for her owners by telling the future.  When Paul and Silas came to town, she followed them around, heckling them and telling people that they were the ones who were possessed, until Paul called the demon within her to come forth.  As a result, she was healed, cured of the disease that had bound her.  But in the process she also lost her ability to tell the future, and her owners lost their ability to use her to fatten their own pockets.  So the owners became furious with the apostles, and had Paul and Silas beaten and thrown in prison.

And that is where we meet the third member of this odd newly emerging family of the Christian faith:  the Philippian jailer.  This man’s job, of course, was to insure that prisoners in his jail remained in their cells and shackles, and I’m sure he was used to dealing with belligerent and bullying types.  But when Paul and Silas were thrown in jail, he was confronted with prisoners of a different ilk.  For these men didn’t resist their chains; nor did they rant and rave and curse at the jailer. 

Instead, they held an all-night hymn sing there in the Philippian jail—testifying  with joy to the liberating God they knew in Jesus Christ their Lord.  And when an earthquake hit Philippi in the middle of the night, opening the prison doors and breaking the prisoner’s chains, the apostles didn’t walk out of jail as they so easily could have.  Instead they stayed there with the jailer, prohibiting him from taking his life by sword, and preaching to him the Good News of Jesus and his salvation.  As a result, the jailer, too, was unbound, set free by the Gospel of  Christ.  And he and his entire family were baptized.   

An Odd Church Family!

It was an odd family, this church in Philippi, where a wealthy single business woman, a former slave girl, and a jailer who had persecuted Christians came together to break bread and to sing hymns and to create a home at the end of the then-known world.  By God’s calling and God’s work, it WAS a family. 

And by all indications, it was this particular family of faith that gave Paul his greatest joy in his missionary travels.  Indeed, he writes in the opening paragraphs of his letter to the Church at Philippi:

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.  And I am confident that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus.  (Phil. 1:3-4)

Our Calling: To Be Such a Home

The Christian Church, since its inception, has been called to be a “home at the end of the world” for people who long for a place of belonging and commitment and family.  And it is my own belief that the more mobile our society becomes, the more broken our families of origin become, the more fragmented and separated we become from one another, the more we long for such a home. 

I know that in my own life there have been many a time when I have said, “What would I do without the church, and the home it provides in an increasingly broken world?” 

I grew up in a minister’s family, and in my childhood—when my father was pastor of a small, struggling blue collar congregation, and my parents were struggling mightily to provide for a family of five on a very modest  pastor’s income—it was our church family that insured that there were extra gifts for us children under the tree on Christmas morning, an outpouring of grace my brothers and I have never forgotten.

In my adolescent years when I was questioning the faith of my childhood and going through the usual adolescent rebellions against my parents, it was the church that gave me a safe place in which to wrestle with my questions, and a caring core of Sunday School teachers and youth advisers who took them seriously. 

In my young adulthood, as our immediate family moved from place to place, going through the difficult challenge each time of adjusting to a new locale, a new culture—it was the church that provided for us our central place of belonging—opening doors of friendship and welcome we could not have found nearly so quickly elsewhere.

And in more recent years, as my husband and I have encountered those challenges midlife invariably brings—an empty nest, significant job losses and transitions, illnesses, the death of loved ones—it is the Christian church that has wept with us, prayed with us, broken bread with us, and sung the hymns of faith at funerals with us.

The Church: a Dysfunctional Yet Hope-Filled Family

But as we gathered here are most painfully aware, the church has not always been such a welcoming haven for all. For the church, too, is sinful and broken and often displays far more of the world’s dysfunctions than it should.  Like any extended family, the family of faith is beset by infighting and infidelity, by prejudice and betrayals of trust, by disappointments and dashed dreams. 

My seminary theology professor, a staunch Calvinist if there ever was one, used to talk frequently about the “persistence of sin in the life of the redeemed,” and we know that reality for it is within us.  As the apostle Paul reminds the Philippians, the good work that God has begun in us will not be fully complete until the day of the Lord—that day when Christ comes again and takes us all to our eternal home.

But Paul also knows that within the church a very great and powerful work of God has already begun.  It is not our work; it is God’s work in our midst. 

And because of God’s presence and God’s work in our midst, on our better days we also find here in the church something of that home for which we so hunger and long:   

• A healing space, where we can name and confront our own demons, even as we draw near to the God who has the power to cast them out;
• A community of belief, where each individual has a unique story to share about God’s liberating work in his or her life;
• A family of care and commitment, where our joys are multiplied and our sorrows are divided,
• And a home at the end of the world, where the completely undeserved grace and love of Jesus Christ poured out for us all, are as lavish as piled up presents under the tree on Christmas morning.

All Saints Day

This past Tuesday the church of Christ around the world celebrated All Saints Day:  a day on which we are invited to pause and to give thanks for all those saints who have been family to us, but who have now gone to their eternal home in heaven with God.  

Like many of you, I have a whole gallery of saints—some from my immediate family, and some from my extended family of faith–for whom I give thanks this week: 

For my grandparents, Ruth and Sarah and James, who meant so much to me in my own childhood—despite the fact that my grandfather never did come to terms with the fact that I, a woman, became an ordained minister, and left the Presbyterian Church after reunion for the PCA;

 For my father-in-law, William Alfred Tisdale, Sr. (better known as Sleepy), who used to sit on the next-to-last row in the Mayesville, S. C. Presbyterian Church—now an ARP Church—singing the hymns in a strong tenor voice, and who died only a few months after the birth of our son, who also bears his name;

For my high school friend Dottie, who was like a sister to me throughout my teenage, and who died way too young, 

And for Sandy Hammond, who went to her own eternal home at the very young age of 39 after losing her battle with breast cancer. When my husband and I got word that Sandy was dying—just a few short years after we had moved to Richmond–we made a trip out to the country; to visit with her one last time at her home, intending to be good pastors to her.  But if truth be told, it was Sandy who ministered to us that day.  Telling us of her own deep sadness in leaving her husband and four boys behind, and how especially sad she was she would never get to see or hold her own grandbabies.  (For we all knew how Sandy loved babies!) But also telling us of her deep faith in God, and of how since childhood she had longed to know ALL of God, and was finally going to have that chance.

A few years later,  when a 10-year-old schoolmate of our children died of a rare disease, our daughter Leonora, said an amazing thing to me that showed me how much she understood about the church as extended family that stretches even beyond this world.  “You know Momma,” she said, “I’m just glad that when Travis gets to heaven, he’ll have Sandy Hammond waiting there for him.  I know she’ll take good care of him.” 

Our Calling

Beloved in Christ, one of these days all of us are going to have that chance to be welcomed to heaven—where our very deepest hungers and longings for home will finally and fully be realized.  In that literal “home at the end of this world,” we will be greeted and welcomed  by loved ones we have known and lost, and all imperfections in our natures and theirs will be transformed so that we truly become the loving, grace-filled, faithful, and fully healed people God intends us to be. 

But in the meantime, God calls us the church, in the midst of our imperfections and our sinfulness, to be strive with all we have within us to be home and family to one another.  A home where the broken and wounded and hurting find solace and strength and healing.  A family where love and grace abound, and where all God’s children are free to fully live out their vocations in Christ.  And a place of belonging, in which the liberating Spirit of Christ takes even an eclectic mix of folk like this one, and makes us one.    

We cannot create such a home in our own power. It can only happen in through the power of God.  But in that power, we too can know with confidence:  that the One who has begun this good work in US will also bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus our Lord. 

To that eternally loving and liberating God be all glory and honor and power forever more.   Amen.

Sermon

Margaret  Aymer
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta

Acts 10

Covenant Network Conference
November 3, 2005
Memphis, TN

Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane Rita.
Hurricane Wilma.
Hurricane Alpha.
Hurricane Beta.

The hurricane season of 2005 has given a whole new force to the cliché “the winds of change.”  And as I consider today’s passage from the Acts of the Apostles, I cannot help but raise a question, a question I hope we all will consider together today: What will we do? Christians, what will we do, when the wind blows?

This summer, I, along with all of you, watched Katrina, Rita, and Wilma grow into mammoth, category-five storms in the Gulf of Mexico.  And one of the things that struck me was this: if you were in the path of those storms, you were going to be affected.  Whether you were a rich merchant of the French Quarter or the working poor of the Ninth Ward, whether you were a tourist on Cancun or a cattle farmer in Lake Charles, no matter who you were, if you were in the path of the storm, if you were standing in the track of the wind, you were going to be affected.  And so the question rises: What do you do, when the wind blows?

Sisters and brothers, the testimony of the tenth chapter of Acts is very much like this:  When the wind blows, when the spirit of the Triune God starts to move, everyone in its path is going to be affected.  And so it is for Cornelius and so it is for Peter.

Cornelius, you recall, is a centurion, a Gentile leader of the 200 to 600 soldiers of the Italian cohort.  And Cornelius is stationed by an international empire in a foreign land, on a peacekeeping mission.  Who would think that such a man would be affected by the blowing of the Holy Spirit?

And yet, the angel of the Lord appears to Cornelius in a vision.  The angel of the Lord called Cornelius by name.  The angel of the Lord tells Cornelius that God has heard his Gentile prayers.

And even more scandalously, the Spirit of the Living God begins to blow, and God chooses to blow that Spirit right through the Gentile life of Cornelius and his family.  Hear me, Christians: there is no heavenly debate, no litmus test; the Spirit does not wait with decency and order for Peter to stop preaching.  The witness of the Acts of the Apostles is this: without so much as an “if you please,” the disruptive wind of the Spirit of God begins to blow – and to blow exactly where it should not have been blowing – on the Gentile Cornelius and his whole family.

And meanwhile there is Peter – Simon Peter, leader of the Twelve, the Rock.  Remember, friends, who Peter is.  Peter is the one who first recognizes that Jesus is the Christ.  Peter walks on water; Peter takes the post-resurrection lead; Peter preaches on Pentecost.  Peter bears prophetic witness to the leaders of religion of his day, including in the face of torture and jail.  Peter with John prays the Holy Spirit into the Samaritans.  Peter heals the blind and the lame.  Peter, Simon Peter, stands at the very center of the new Christian faith.  And Peter as a faithful Christian knows and claims his biblical heritage.

So it is no surprise that, on a rooftop in Joppa, Peter resists a vision that must have seemed to him a test at best and a fight with the very forces of evil at worst.  A vessel comes down from heaven full of unclean animals,  and a voice says, “Kill and eat.”  And Peter is completely justified in saying, No.  For what Peter knows is that the Bible says,

You shall not bring abomination on yourself by animal or by bird or by anything with which the ground teems, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean.  You shall be holy, as I am holy – thus says the Lord.

But when the wind blows, devout, Bible-believing Peter ends up in Caesarea.  When the wind blows, Peter who is so careful not to do anything unclean ends up in Cornelius’s house. When the wind blows, Peter finds himself confessing, I truly understand that God shows no partiality.  When the wind blows, Peter knocks down the barrier between Cornelius and baptism.

Siblings in Christ, when the wind blows – when the Spirit of the Living God blows – no one, not Cornelius, not even Simon “the Rock” Peter of the Twelve, remains unaffected.  And so the question we must ask ourselves today is this:  if we truly believe that God comes in three persons, that along with God who creates and Jesus the Christ, a co-equal and important person of God is the transgressive, disruptive, creative Holy Spirit – then what will we do, when the wind blows?

Early in the morning after Katrina hit came the sickening news:  there had been a breech in the levees.  A breech.  A hole.  A failure of the defenses constructed by human beings to keep out the overwhelming force of the waters that surround New Orleans.  Once the levee is breeched, nothing can stay the same.  The town that we have built with human hands, our town that we have made secure, the very identity of our town that we have called home, is irrevocably changed.  And what do you do, when the wind blows?

Christians, if we are honest, Acts 10 is a deeply disturbing text.  If we are honest, Acts 10 bears witness to the fact that none of our well-constructed defenses is any match for the Spirit of the Living God.

For consider Cornelius again. We know that he is a praying man.  We know that he gives of his resources to the community.  We know that he has found favor with God.  And yet. . .  When Peter comes to Cornelius’s home, in a complete and total lapse of social graces, Peter goes to great lengths to call Cornelius as common and unclean as the creepy  crawly animals that he had seen in his vision on the rooftop in Joppa.

Why is Cornelius unclean?  Perhaps it is his lifestyle.  Perhaps he is unwilling to give up a love of dried pork, fresh shrimp, and the cheesy, meaty, unkosher foods of Italy.  Or perhaps, just perhaps, Cornelius is unwilling to be circumcised.  Perhaps, just perhaps, he is unwilling to cut off a part of what makes him a whole being, sexually and socially, among his own people.  Perhaps, in the back of Cornelius’s mind is that old refrain, “We’re here.  Un-cut.  Get used to it.”

It doesn’t really matter, finally, why Cornelius was unclean. For the angel of the Lord appears to him.  And the wall of the levee starts to crumble.  The angel of the Lord calls him by name.  And the wall of the levee starts to break.  The Spirit of the Living God falls on Cornelius and his entire family.  And with the force of a mighty wind, the levees break and the church is changed forever.

Peter’s defenses do not fare any better, you know.  For although Peter tries hard – so very hard – not to do what the Bible calls abomination. . . the Spirit of the Living God blows and rocks Peter at the very foundation of his faith.  For a voice from heaven says to him, “What I have called clean, you must not call unclean.” And the levee cracks.  Again, the voice declares, “What I have called clean, you must not call unclean.” And the levee breaks.  A third time the voice says to him, “Peter:

what I have called clean –
what I have declared not to be an abomination –
what I have declared to be worthy of the indwelling presence of my Holy and Eternal Spirit –
you may not call unclean.”

And the levee crumbles; the Gentiles flood in; and the church is changed forever.

And what will we do, when there is no more “us” and “them”?  What will we do, when there is no more “clean” and “unclean”?  What will we do, when the wind blows?

And in the aftermath, in the aftermath, we in the United States looked up and saw that all our fairy tales about being one nation indivisible had blown away in the wind.  We saw ourselves as who we really are: divided between the haves and have-nots, divided between the ill and infirm and those who have access to transportation and medical care, divided by race and class, privilege and power in ways we have never dared to examine.  . . . Until the winds blow.  Until the levees break.  Until we are faced again with our own schismatic realities, our own total depravity, our own need of confession and repentance and grace.  Until we finally, honestly answer, Yes.  Yes, we are our sisters’ keeper; we are our brothers’ keeper.  And we have all failed.

And then we face a choice.  Will we return New Orleans to its old, familiar patterns of us and them, black and white, rich and poor, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and straight?   Or do we as a church call the nation to recognize that one wind blew through us, one wind exposed us, one wind crumbled our defenses; and in the face of the power of that one wind, who we are with one another must forever change?

To their credit, Cornelius and Peter both change.  They both choose to be reformed by the blowing of the Spirit.  Cornelius becomes part of the family of God – a whole member, baptized, filled with the Spirit – and ready to be sent.  Remember ,the only ordination needed in Acts is being filled with the Holy Spirit – thus Stephen,  thus Peter, Paul and Barnabas, wherever the Spirit might lead.

And Peter, the Rock?  The Acts of the Apostles testifies that Peter became an advocate for the full inclusion of self-affirming, unrepentant, practicing uncircumcised Gentiles into the church of Jesus Christ.  Peter began to argue that the only criterion for full membership was the presence of the Spirit of the Living God.  For Peter, this was Reformation Sunday – a reformation of his understanding of clean and unclean, a reformation of his assertion of what God is able to do:  a reformation caused by the transgressive, creative, disruptive, life-giving presence of the power of the Spirit of the Living God.

Christians, this is not some Bible story.  The Spirit is blowing, if we will listen.  No one in her path will escape, regardless of where they stand or in what pew they sit.  The Spirit is blowing to break down our carefully constructed defenses – to force us to reconsider whom we call unclean.  For if the Spirit calls them clean, no one – not gays, not lesbians, not bisexuals, not transgendered people, not straight people, not conservative people, not progressive people – not black people, not Latino people, not Asian people, not first-nation people, not immigrant people, not native-born people  — no one, no one may we call unclean.

And the witness of history is this:  when the Spirit starts to blow, the levees will break.  Henry Highland Garnett, a black man ordained in the 19th century in Troy Presbytery, bears witness to this fact.  Fifty years of the ordination of women in the Presbyterian Church bear witness.  Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers, Harvey Milk and Silvia Rivera, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu and a cloud of witnesses bear witness to this simple truth.  When the Spirit blows, the levees will break.

And then what will we do?  Will we still point fingers at those “rigid fundamentalists” or those “unbelieving liberals”?  Will we still speak about those “unrepentant self-affirming practicing homosexuals” or the “unchristian forces of the religious right”?  Or will we gaze into these waters, these waters of baptism,  these waters troubled at the beginning of all creation by the blowing of that same Spirit – and will we see our neighbors, our opponents, ourselves as God sees us – as fully and completely in the image of God?

Christians, the wind is blowing.  Blowing through overtures and demonstrations.  Blowing through task forces and deliberations.  And when the wind blows, and when our defenses fall, and when we finally see each other as we really are – the baptized, beloved of Jesus Christ – what will we do?

What will you do, what will I do. . . when the wind blows?

Amen.

Kimberly C. Richter

Sermon to the Covenant Network Southeast Conference

April 2, 2005

Isaiah 6:1-8; Acts 9:1-20

“Just what do you think God is up to?” he had asked me that day as we sat together in my office. I have asked myself that same question on many occasions since in the church. Just what is God up to?        

It was the question I pondered a year ago this April as Grace Covenant prepared for a protest. A hate group from Topeka, Kansas was coming to Asheville on the last Sunday in April. They were targeting six churches and we were on their list. This group hates with abandon! From the protest signs they carried outside our church that day, they hate America, mainline churches, and they especially hate gay and lesbian persons. One of the members of their protest team was a beautiful little girl about five years of age with blonde hair and a sweet face. She held a sign that read: “Thank God for September 11th.” I won’t repeat what their other signs said, but they all began with the words, “God hates…”

When I first heard that Grace Covenant was listed on their web site as a targeted church, I was stunned. I thought, “Grace Covenant is going to be picketed? Whatever for? We don’t do anything around here to warrant being protested!” Well, you can see what is wrong with that statement…

The local UCC congregation and the Quakers sent a few representatives to worship with us that day as a show of solidarity. The Unitarians, with whom we do various mission projects, called the week before to say that they were offended that they were not on the hate group’s picket list. I told them to count their blessings. Grace Covenant got organized. The pastors of the six targeted churches met together. The police chief and a team of officers also met with us because this group has incited violence elsewhere. The group was scheduled to arrive at Grace Covenant during our 11:00 a.m. worship service.

We organized teams of escorts who would help people feel safe coming and going from church that day. Our youth made banners proclaiming God’s unconditional love and grace. The banners flew from our windows and stood proudly on our grounds. Children drew pictures of Jesus and these were posted on the wall of windows in our narthex. In case a protester tried to disrupt our worship service, the choir prepared a few rousing anthems they could sing if needed to drown out shouts. And, instead of leaving worship that day to encounter hateful protests, we organized a pot-luck lunch following worship.

We had an Easter-size crowd that day. We were being asked to stand for something as a church. And Grace Covenant stood. Tall. But as we drew closer to that Sunday, it seemed important not to start standing too tall…not to point fingers at sinful “them” and give ourselves a holy “thumbs up.” Just what, I wondered, was God was up to as these protesters and Presbyterians encountered each other? What might God want us to see and to learn about ourselves in this circumstance?

The passages assigned for that Sunday helped in this regard. They are the texts we read today. There is Isaiah, seeing the surpassing glory and the smoking holiness of God. He is driven to say: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!”  Isaiah did not point fingers at others only, but began with his own uncleanness. Yet he knew God’s power to make clean. Trusting in God’s holiness more than our own, that Sunday a year ago offered an opportunity to examine, in light of their dirty rhetoric, our own uncleanness. To confess the ways we in our own church excuse and participate in language and laws that say God hates, judges, condemns some people more than others. 

The Acts passage is known primarily as the conversion of Saul. Saul, faithful and devout, watched over the coats of those who stoned to death Stephen. Saul walked away from the murder of Stephen and became a passionate persecutor himself, as Acts 8:1-3 graphically attests: “That day a severe persecution began against the church…Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” His hatred has not abated by chapter 9, which opens (as does chapter with Paul “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”

On his way to Damascus, Saul was intent on hunting down more people of “the Way,” as the early Christians were known. Suddenly, a light from heaven flashed around him and Saul fell to the ground as a voice called out to him: “Saul, Saul…why do you persecute me?” Knowing that light and a voice from heaven were likely to be divine, Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” At that, Saul lost his eyesight and his appetite. Saul had been fighting those he believed to be the enemies of God. What Saul could not have imagined was that in persecuting the people he had identified as enemies of God, he himself had become an enemy of God’s far-reaching intentions.

But there is in this text a second conversion story, for God has an eye not only on Saul but also on a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him and in the classic exchange of call and response, Ananias answered as Isaiah did, “Here I am, Lord.” God then gives Ananias very clear directions…go to Straight Street, find Judas’ house and look for a man from Tarsus. It seems that God is interested in both Saul and Ananias becoming a new creation.

Ananias must have wondered, “Just what is God up to?” This assignment seemed anything but heavenly. After all, Ananias had heard the stories about the evil things Saul had done. Lay hands on Saul? Okay God, how about around his throat?! But God is persuasive. And Ananias went in. He laid his hands on the man from Tarsus and addressed him with these amazing words: “Brother Saul…”

This is what happened the morning the member of my church sat across from me in my office. He had lived most of his life in a small town in South Carolina where he owned the local grocery store and served as the superintendent of the Sunday School in the Presbyterian Church. Now retired in Asheville, he worked part-time in the gas station down the street. It was a short walk up to the church and if, on Sunday morning, any worship leader referred to God with a feminine pronoun, I could expect a visit from him on Monday morning. He didn’t like it and kindly, graciously, he would sigh and tell me what he thought.

One Sunday as worship ended, he walked out and said, “I need to come see you tomorrow.” Mentally I raced through the worship service and couldn’t recall a “God our Mother” having been spoken. I waited for the Monday knock on my door. True to form, he appeared and sat down opposite me.

“You know I sit there in the back at the 8:30 service,” he began. “For the last year I’ve been sitting in the same pew with two women. I don’t know if they are a couple, but I think maybe they are and you know how I feel about that,” he said. Uh oh, I thought. But he was not done.

“Well, we’ve chatted every week and I’ve gotten to know them real well. Really, they are probably my best friends in the church. Yesterday they told me they had decided to join the church. And here’s the thing I’m wrestling with. They’ve asked me to be their sponsor!” There was a pause. Then he looked right at me and said, “Now just what do you think God is up to?” As I was scrambling to think of something profound to offer, he burst into deeply theological laughter. I laughed, too. When we both caught our breath, I asked, “So what are you going to do?” He sat back and put both hands on his knees and said, “I guess I’m going to sponsor them.” And with that, he was out the door. And I suspected that I had witnessed a continuing conversion…not just in his life, but in mine, too, and in the life of our church.

Isaiah must have wondered there in the temple, just what God was up to. And Saul must have asked the same question and Ananias must have wondered the same. We do well to ask in our time in our own church, “Just what is God up to?” I suspect conversion. Our continuing conversion until we become not only in our polity but also in our practice, as generous and just as God’s grace. Just what is God up to? Our continuing conversion as we eat from the one loaf and drink from the same cup, first at this table and then because of this table at our Session tables as well. Just what is God up to? Conversion. Our continuing conversion until the scales fall from our eyes enabling us to see that we are made brothers and sisters fully, freely, in the Lord Jesus Christ. May we in the Presbyterian Church find ourselves in Damascus, too. 

Amen.

 Address to the Covenant Network Commissioner Convocation Dinner
216th General Assembly – Richmond
June 25, 2004

Kimberly C. Richter
Pastor, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC
Incoming Co-Moderator of the Covenant Network

I was born in Birmingham, Alabama in the midst of the struggles for civil rights. As I was learning to walk and talk, my hometown was struggling to walk and talk in new ways, too. By the time I was old enough to run and play in the safety of my neighborhood, just a few miles away, children were being attacked by police with fierce dogs and fire hoses. As I lined up for snacks in pre-school, other children lined up behind paddy-wagons and, dressed in their Sunday best, sang hymns. They walked into jail in order to win their freedom. On a Sunday morning in September of 1963, I must have been in Sunday School at my downtown Presbyterian Church. I would have been five years old when, less than a mile away, at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, four African-American girls just a few years older than I were murdered at their church by a bomb blast. I would be in college before I ever learned in detail about that terrible event in Birmingham.

I was six years old when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. About a year ago, I took my own six-year-old daughter and fifteen-year-old son to Kelly Ingram Park and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, with the Civil Rights Institute located nearby. In the park, we walked through sculpted dogs that, though immobile and silent, are nevertheless straining and snarling at chest and throat level. Inside the Institute, you can watch a slide show of what life was like in that time for African Americans. The last slide shows two water fountains. One is large and electricity pumps cool water for its white patrons. Right next to it is a smaller, crude fountain marked “Colored.” There is a life-sized replica of this scene in the Gallery called, simply and profoundly, “Barriers.”

I thought of Acts 10-11, when Peter shares the good news with Cornelius and other Gentiles and finds, to his surprise, that they have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. He baptizes them with water. Peter then has to go back to headquarters in Jerusalem and explain himself. He tells the leaders what he heard and saw among these Gentiles and concludes with this line: “If God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

This is the question before us in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as we consider the gifts of the Holy Spirit that have been given to our Presbyterian brothers and sisters who are gay and lesbian. Baptized with same water and gifted by the same Spirit, gay and lesbian Presbyterians work with our youth and sing the faith, teach the Bible and read scripture in worship. Presbyterians who happen to be gay or lesbian visit the sick, work for peace, pray without ceasing, contribute their financial resources, their time and talents to the church. Our brothers and sisters in the Lord may serve freely everywhere except at our Session tables and Boards of Deacons and in the Ministry of Word and Sacrament.

So tonight, Peter’s question echoes through the centuries from Jerusalem to Richmond, through the changes of Biblical interpretation and theology and cultural prejudices about slavery and the place of women to this 216th General Assembly. It is my honor and it is my joy, as a female pastor from Birmingham, Alabama to ask Peter’s question to the church leaders—you commissioners—this June night in 2004, “If God gave them the same gift he gave us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who are we to hinder God?”

The Covenant Network of Presbyterians remains completely committed to opening ordination standards that will permit all sessions and presbyteries to ordain and install every person whom God calls to ordained service, including qualified gay and lesbian Presbyterians. We are committed to removing G-6.0106b from the Book of Order at the earliest possible time. As our Board stated last fall: “The good of the church and the truth of the Gospel are at stake.”

We have been busy this year in the Covenant Network in preparing the church for the change that is surely coming. We are providing a new array of resources to promote education and dialogue in the church. Joanna will be telling you about two of our newest resources in just a few minutes. We are building networks of support and conversation across the church. And we are offering legal and polity advice and counsel as needed. We believe these faithful and persistent efforts will contribute to the climate of change in the constitutional standards of the church. We already see a climate of change in the hearts and minds of people across the denomination.

In my own church, Grace Covenant, in Asheville, North Carolina in, of all places, the Presbytery of Western North Carolina, there are many stories I wish I had time to share tonight about hearts and minds being changed. But I will share only one. There is a man in my congregation I’ll call “Stan.” During my first few years as pastor, Stan came to my office a couple of times. He wanted to sit and tell me in his best South Carolina accent, that he just didn’t like it when one of the worship leaders referred to God as “she.” Almost apologetically, yet firmly, Stan would tell me that he had lived all of his life in a small town running a grocery store and going to the Presbyterian Church there. He had been the Sunday School Superintendent for years. Retired now and working in a gas station down the street, he still read the Bible every day and had his morning devotions. “I just can’t get comfortable,” he told me and that part was obvious enough by the pain in his face, “with these new things and ways. I just don’t like it.”

Then one Sunday about a year or so ago, Stan stopped me on his way out of church and said he needed to come see me the next day. My mind quickly ran through the worship service…no one had called God “she” or “Mother” as best as I could recall. So I had about 24 hours to brace myself for what new complaint he might bring in. The next morning he knocked on my door and we sat opposite each other. He began slowly…he recalled for me again his background and upbringing in the church and his love for the Bible. Then Stan stopped. And he said, “Now Kim, what I’ve come to talk to you about is this…” I took a deep breath.

“You know how I always sit on the back pew at the early service. I don’t really know that many people because I like to sit back there and just be kind of quiet. Well, for the last year these two girls have been sitting on the same pew with me. And I don’t know if they’re a couple, but I think they might be. And you probably know how I feel about that.” (Uh oh, I thought…here it comes…) “Well. We’ve talked a little bit over time. And I’ve gotten to know them. They are probably my best friends in this church, to tell you the truth. And, well, here’s the thing I’ve come to talk to you about today:

“They told me Sunday that they’ve decided to join the church. And they’ve asked me to be their sponsor.”

There followed a second of dead silence between us. Thankfully, before I could speak, Stan burst into laughter, the kind of deep laughter that makes little tears form at the outside edges of your eyes. And he asked his own Peter-like rhetorical question, “Now just what do you think God is up to?” I eked out the only thing I was capable of: “Well Stan, we never know, do we? What are you going to do?” He sat there for a minute and said, “I guess I’m going to be their sponsor.” And with that, he was out the door. For the rest of that day, I found myself alternately laughing and weeping…all from a place of deep joy and wonder at the God who will not be hindered.

At this General Assembly, we can work for change in a very specific way. As we continue to work for a church as generous and just as God’s grace, we want to support Item 05-07, the Overture from Western Reserve et al. This Overture clarifies our standards for ordination. It asks this General Assembly to make it clear that the church is no longer bound by earlier “Authoritative Interpretations” and “Definitive Guidance” statements that pre-date “Amendment B.” These earlier statements have never been part of our Book of Order and so were never ratified by our Presbyteries. The Book of Order alone is sufficient in determining fitness for office. Just as a new will replaces any earlier wills, so the inclusion of G-6.0106b into our Book of Order superceded and replaced earlier statements. This important overture can be effected this week by you, the commissioners. For just as these “Authoritative Interpretations” never went to Presbyteries for ratification, so now their removal can be decided by this General Assembly.

The detailed report that led to policy recommendations back in 1978 contains dated, obsolete and offensive statements that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should want to eliminate. It bases its conclusions about sexual behavior on a 1948 study of males and a 1953 study of females. I wasn’t even born when those two studies were made. Social patterns and statistics on perspectives toward gay and lesbian people are based on a 1977 Gallup Poll which shows the percentage of Americans then who did not think “homosexuals” were fit to be school teachers or doctors or clergy. The conclusion of our denominational report from this section states: “Most Americans continue to view homosexual persons with great disapproval, distrust, repugnance, and fear.”

Acknowledging a diversity of Biblical interpretations, the report nonetheless concludes that “homosexuality is not God’s wish for humanity.” And goes even further by stating: “In many cases, homosexuality is more a sign of the brokenness of God’s world than of willful rebellion. In other cases homosexual behavior is freely chosen or learned in environments where normal development is thwarted. Even where the homosexual orientation has not been consciously sought or chosen, it is neither a gift from God nor a state nor a condition like race; it is the result of our living in a fallen world.”

Given these kinds of statements, is it any wonder, then, that when it came to ordination, this “AI” declared—you’ll forgive me—straight-faced: “The repentant homosexual person who finds the power of Christ redirecting his or her sexual desires toward a married heterosexual commitment, or finds God’s power to control his or her desires and to adopt a celibate lifestyle, can certainly be ordained, all other qualifications being met.” And finally, that “our present understanding of God’s will precludes the ordination of persons who do not repent of homosexual practice.”

Friends, this General Assembly has the historic opportunity to step forward from the 1940s and even the 1970s to 2004 by approving Overture 04-18 from Western Reserve.

Back in May of 1963 in my hometown, one black youth went spinning across the pavement while firemen battered him with streams of water strong enough to take the bark off of trees. As a congregation of African Americans came out of a church singing hymns, they faced a line of police officers.

Not by fire hoses, but by the gracious waters of baptism, these church members knew who they were—beloved children of God. They knew that in their Bibles there were passages here and there that condoned, even encouraged, slavery. And the oppression of women. But they knew the bigger story that God is telling across the whole of Scripture. The story of God’s generous and just grace intended for every person.

One little girl, splendid in her newly starched dress, marched out of the church toward the police. She turned to a friend who had dropped further back and said, “Hurry up, Lucille. If you stay behind, you won’t get arrested with our group.”

I love the courage of her faith within that community. We Presbyterians probably don’t have to worry about getting arrested here in Richmond! But we can go to this Assembly and do at least this much: remove the bonds of old, obsolete, offensive language. And then—wouldn’t it be a source of wonder and joy if, at our 2006 General Assembly in Birmingham of all places, we could finally open the way to ordination for all people whom God calls to serve the church.

Amen… and let it be so!