Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner

… The hushed question that we are cautious to articulate is whether the church will be able to give bearings to and accommodate those of differing orientations. Will you and I and those who differ from you and me be able to find our way home from the landmark of our church? Is there room in our church for those of differing orientations, particularly differing sexual orientations?…

Varying degrees of theological distance occur in the church, when the stranger or intruder or enemy is considered in a figure-ground relationship with the host theology. This phenomena can be dis-orienting. When I encounter someone who is resistant to my position on an emotionally-laden topic, I ask myself silently the question Dr. Letty Russell taught me to ask: What is at stake here? What would the individual have to lose if he/she saw the issue from my vantage point? This exercise and the insight that can ensue has often assisted me, not in agreement with, but in compassion for “the stranger”…

Read the whole essay.

FROM RICHMOND TO RICHMOND

A Gathering of the Covenant Network

March 28, 2004

Stephen R. Montgomery

It’s good to be back home. There’s a part of me that is surprised that I would say that– for two reasons. There’s the “home” part.  Though my formative years were only two blocks away from here, over on the corner of Brook Road and Confederate Avenue, my parents moved to Atlanta when I was in college. (Fortunately, they let me know of the move!) But since I spent 16 years in Atlanta before moving to Memphis three years ago, whenever people have asked me where home was I’d say, “Well, I was born in Texas and grew up in Richmond, but Atlanta is home.”

And so I come back here for only the second time since 1974, expecting to feel somewhat alien, strange…I mean, that was 30 years ago! But I am amazed at how quickly the feeling of home came back. Part of it is simply in driving around this community and seeing how little has changed, knowing that much has changed. But the bigger part of it is seeing so many of you who were so formative in my emotional and spiritual development. Seeing one of my best friends from high school and then seminary, Steve Dalle Mura, for the first time in about 25 years. Seeing Izzie Rogers who was a shining light at PSCE back when my mother worked there, long before the rest of the denomination got to know her shining light as Moderator.

And being back in this presbytery, albeit with a different name, is being back home. The earliest recollections I had of the mission work beyond the local church was going on an “Operation Mexico” caravan during the summer of 1968 – 10 weeks of work camps sponsored by Hanover Presbytery, which of course was led by John Ensign. It was Grace Covenant that nurtured me and led me to appreciate excellence in church music and Christian Education. It was Ginter Park that opened up its softball team to allow a few vagabonds like my brother and me to play on their team. It’s home.

But I was also surprised to hear myself say “It’s good… it’s good to be back home.” My high school years were wonderful in so many ways, but difficult in so many ways. This was, after all, Richmond in the 1960′s! I was ready to leave, and back then all sorts of young people were rebelling in all sorts of ways….some rebelled by doing drugs, some by alcohol. I rebelled by going north. Spent some time at Wooster, and then some time at Yale, but it was through those experiences that I began to appreciate the fact that these were my people. This was my home. And I’ve been in the south ever since. It is good. I only hope your response to my talk will be a little kinder and gentler than the reception that another preacher received when he went back home for the first time to speak about 2000 years ago. (See Luke 4!)

But what I would like to do this afternoon is speak somewhat personally and share a little of that journey from Richmond, back to Richmond, to let you know why I think the most faithful and hope-filled movement in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is found in the Covenant Network of Presbyterians. I had actually agreed (and promised my wife) not to accept any more speaking engagements outside of Memphis, but I would jump over the moon for Janet James, and my wife would too! And I would do anything to introduce good people (you) to good people (in the Covenant Network.)

This journey actually begins in another church in this presbytery….All Souls.  Back in the late 1960′s there was a small but vibrant youth group there called “Nogapsallowed.” (That’s “no gaps allowed” without any gaps.) It was probably the only integrated youth group in the entire city back then, and they would form little groups to go to speak to other youth groups, with role-playing and such, and try to heighten the awareness of racism among young people, to help people understand people of different races. They were all friends of mine so I would drop in from time to time. But I’ll never forget one discussion we had. I don’t remember all the details, but somehow we started talking about how different people read the bible in different ways, and how their experience often shapes their reading. The discussion was being led by an older African-American man and we were talking about the birth narrative in Luke. He said, “Now when you hear ‘there was no room for them in the inn,’ what do you think that means?”

Well, just what it says. “There was no room for them in the inn. The inn was full.” And he said, “Now let me read it and see what you think it means.” “There was no room (he paused) for them in the inn.” And it hit me. Here was a man who had grown up in the south in the 1940′s and 50′s and had gone by many an inn that had rooms available, but not for them. And later on when I went to seminary and studied scripture in a little more depth, lo and behold, there was no less a scholar than Raymond Brown in his The Birth of the Messiah saying that Mary and Joseph were a part of the “anawim,” the poor ones, the lowly. There was no room “for them” in the inn.  It made me thankful that we have African-Americans in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to bring their eyes, their experience to the reading of scriptures, for it is through their experience and their honesty and their reading of scripture that my God became a lot bigger and a lot more just. It was hard to believe that for years they couldn’t even sit next to us in a sanctuary. And when our eyes were finally opened to what was already there in scripture–the equality of all God’s children– we were not abandoning the authority of scripture. Rather, we believed that the Spirit of God was moving in our midst.

Several years later when I was at Wooster I had the privilege of serving on an associate pastor nominating committee for the church there on the campus. We came up with a job description and started pouring over the resumes, and you’ll never guess what happened. We narrowed the list down to three names, and all three were women! Now, that doesn’t sound radical today, but I had never heard a woman preach up until that point. And all three of these just blew us away! (One of those, incidentally, is now the current moderator of our Presbyterian Church (USA). Another is a president of one of our seminaries. Neither one got the job, which says something about my wisdom and insight!)

It was hard to believe that only a few decades earlier, we would take verses from the bible, out of context, with a disregard for the greater themes of scripture and throw them around as though they were the gospel truth. “A woman should be silent in church.” Says so right there in the Bible. That settles it.

And since I served on that PNC, my ministry has been influenced as much, if not more by women, as by men. I shudder to think of where I would be without the gifts of women in ministry, or where the Presbyterian Church would be without the gifts of women in ministry. My God is a bigger God, a more tender God, a more just God, a more hospitable God, a more motherly God, as a result of women’s eyes and experiences that they bring to their reading of scripture. And when we opened the doors of the church more fully to women, there were those who cried “We are abandoning scripture!” Yet we believe that it was the Spirit of God moving in our midst.

There was another experience I had once I got out in the field and was serving a church in Atlanta. I was invited to be a part of a group to go down to Nicaragua during the height of the contra war. Most of you might remember that?  Well, we spent some time in what was called a base community. These were little communities that would get together and just read the bible and talk about it. That’s it. They didn’t have seminary educations, or even college for that matter. A few were even illiterate. But they knew their bible. And they gave me an education that I couldn’t have received at Yale.

One of their favorite stories, of course, was of the exodus. They knew all of the details. And I was right with them. “Way to go, Moses. That’ll show ol’ Pharaoh a thing or two.” But once we got beneath the details, they started bringing their experience to this story, about where they stood in the story, who they identified with, and about who Pharaoh was in their lives, about their desire for freedom. And you know what? In their eyes, I represented Pharaoh! I couldn’t believe it! I always thought I was on Moses’ side! They began to talk about their suffering under Somoza, who was supported by the United States government. And I knew all of this was true…I was a Latin American history major, but I had never had applied all of that to scripture. It took some people with totally different eyes, totally different experiences for me to see my own complicity in the bondage of the Israelites! I didn’t like what they said, but when I got home and did some more bible study, I found out that they were speaking the truth.

God loves us all, but I saw in a new way that God has a special place in God’s heart for those oppressed, those suffering, the poor. And I couldn’t see it without the help of my Latin brothers and sisters.

Now I’m not going to say that the Presbyterian Church has closed our doors to Hispanics like we have with women and African-Americans (although we do a rotten job of partnering with them!), but I do hope you can see a theme emerging. My spiritual growth (and I hope what little wisdom I have) has been at its greatest when people with different eyes, different experiences, and different cultures, and especially people without power, have spoken the truth in love with me about what they see in Holy Scripture.

You can guess where I’m leading, so let me fast forward several years. It was in about 1986 or so. I was in my study in my church in Atlanta when I got a phone call. “Steve, my name is Connie, and John Storey gave me your name and said you’d be a good person to call.” “Well, thank you. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I am in my final year at seminary here and the only remaining requirement I have is my SM210, my summer internship. In order to graduate I need it, but they won’t let me interview with everyone else and won’t let me post my resume on the board.”

“Now, why is that?” I asked.

“I’m a lesbian who is out of the closet, and I’d like to know if I could come and work for you this summer.”

I had to do some quick thinking. “Listen, Connie, we’re a small church and there’s no way we could afford an intern.”

“I’ll work for free.” We talked some more and like any good Presbyterian pastor trying to pass the buck I said “Let me take it to the session.”

I didn’t know the session well since I was fairly new there, and this was all before we had to vote on all those lettered amendments that we love to hate and have to choose sides on, so I honestly didn’t know what they would say. This wasn’t a radical church. I wouldn’t even call it liberal. But I learned that if there is one thing stronger than Presbyterians’ fear of homosexuals, it is our desire to get something for nothing. And so the session unanimously voted to hire her (for free) for the summer. (We actually came up with a little stipend, which was supplemented by donations from members of the faculty at the seminary.)

We’d take a look at Leviticus. After all, it says right there that a man who lies with another man is an abomination. (I heard that thrown at a gay person just last week. Remember, I live in Memphis, Tennessee!) But with Connie’s help, I looked at other parts of that same Levitical code. I found out that it was also an abomination to eat shellfish. I found out that if I had a son who disobeyed me, I could stone him. I found that I could possess slaves, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. (I wonder if that applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians.) I found out that if I were bound to the code, I could not be a minister, because it said that one could not approach the altar of God if I had a defect in my sight. Plus, I wore clothes of different threads.

We looked at Sodom and Gomorrah, which I had been raised to believe was an open and shut case. But Connie helped me to see what I had learned in seminary but hadn’t applied to stories like this. I had learned that Presbyterians let scripture interpret scripture, and that all of our interpretation must be in the light of the centrality of Jesus Christ. And so we looked at what the rest of scripture said about Sodom and Gomorrah, and there was nary a word about homosexuality. Rather, in Ezekiel, and Jeremiah and Isaiah and even Jesus all claimed that the sin of these two cities were inhospitality and violations of rudimentary social justice.

We went on to Romans 1 and 2, which has been considered by almost everyone to be the central biblical text regarding homosexuality. Paul wrote this from Corinth and from what we learned in our study about Corinth was that it was a seaport town that boasted just about every kind of bizarre and corrupt sexuality. Jack Rogers says that when you stand at the place where Paul was tried by the civil court, you can see the AcroCorinth, the mountain on which there was a temple to Aphrodite, a bisexual god/goddess. There were probably 7,000 prostitutes there, male and female. You paid your money, had sex, and you had been to church. [1]

And Paul felt that was the worst example of idolatry he had ever seen. He wasn’t talking about homosexuality per se, but idolatry, worshipping false gods. He was talking about idolatrous people engaged in prostitution. To single out gays and lesbians and apply this judgment to them would be like using Howard Stern and Hugh Heffner as the norm for heterosexual males and saying that all of us are just like them. [2]

Paul goes on to say that we are all guilty of sins just as bad as the idolatry that goes on up in the temple, and he lists about 15 sins that cover us all, including envy, gossip and foolishness. I’m not sure I’d have a session at my church or we’d have a presbytery in Memphis if we enforced a limitation there. I know I couldn’t be ordained.

And then, Connie would read to me Paul’s conclusion: “Therefore, you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.” (Rom. 2.1) It was Connie who first pointed out to me that both Martin Luther or Karl Barth, who wrote arguably the two greatest commentaries on Romans, discussed this passage without even mentioning sex.

Then Paul summarizes the issues: “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Listen again to Jack Rogers:

“Justification comes by grace received through faith. That is the central insight of the Protestant Reformation. To turn Romans 1 into a law, condemning, not the pervasive idolatry to which every one of us is susceptible, but only the sexual expression of one group of people, is to misrepresent Paul’s point. It turns the Protestant Reformation upside down.” [3]

Now we could debate some of these texts until we are blue in the face. I have to admit that even professors in Presbyterian seminaries are divided in their interpretations. But I want to make two points here. First, I began to see, with Connie’s help, how inconsistent I was with my biblical interpretation. If, for example, I would hear a Southern Baptist quote Titus 2, in which wives should be submissive to their husbands, I wouldn’t know whether to laugh out loud or burst out into a self-righteous fury. (I heard a preacher say that just a few weeks ago. Remember, I’m from Memphis, Tennessee.) But then we Presbyterians would take a look at Romans 1 and take that to be gospel. Why Romans and not Titus?

Or, we have made peace, thankfully, with some of those difficult sayings by Jesus on divorce and remarriage.  They seem fairly straightforward, even more straightforward than the biblical assertions concerning same-sex intercourse. Yet we have moved beyond that graciously as a denomination. And one of the reasons we have is because more and more of our members, our elders, our pastors, had been through the pain of divorce, and we were able to look at those texts anew through their experience, their eyes, and see something of a bigger God, a more gracious and just God than we had ever imagined. We would also relate those texts with the larger themes of scripture as well as the rest of the life and ministry of Jesus.

William Placher asks the question why is it that we take some of these hard texts as gospel, and have made peace with other texts. He especially points to Jesus’ judgment that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven. Have we ever made peace with that!!! And, he writes, “my sad conclusion is that if a given group is powerful enough, then we ignore the passages that criticize them. And that has become our interpretive rule.” [4]

And that relates to the second point I want to make about my bible studies with Connie. Like my studies with African-Americans, or women, or base community Central Americans, she helped me recover the classic Reformed practice of interpreting the Bible which begins with the Bible, and not with the powers and prejudices of our culture. It took someone with a different experience, a different world view, different eyes, someone out of power to help these texts come alive to me in a new, more graceful way. We lost Connie, one of the brightest, most biblically literate interns I had in over 20 years, to another denomination.

So I’ve struggled with these texts ever since, but I have always done it in the context of simply being a pastor of a local church and not a biblical scholar. And it is in that capacity as a pastor, that the deepest transformations have taken place in me.

As a result of that summer, I became one of the “go to” Presbyterian pastors when there were pastoral needs for people with AIDS. Remember, this was in the mid-80′s when AIDS was pretty much a death sentence; research on causes and cures had just begun, and the stigma of AIDS was unparalleled. I did a lot of funerals and provided a lot of pastoral care for gay men. I’ll never forget the first funeral I led. Sam had committed suicide. His body had been deteriorating for several years, and he knew the end was approaching and simply did not want to burden his partner Lee, who had cared for him night and day, any more. They had been together seven years. It had been Sam’s wish to be cremated, but when he died the funeral home would not release Sam’s body to Lee. It could only go to the next of kin, a family in Kentucky who not only had never accepted Sam’s homosexuality, but did not believe in cremation because, as they said, “How could the rapture take place if the body’s not in the ground?”

We were finally able to work something out, (one part of the journey I left out was that I spent four years in Appalachia, and I could “speak their language.”) but I’ll never forget that memorial service. I went to the front of the church and looked out and saw something there it was… a glimpse of the kingdom of God. They were all there: blacks, whites, old, young, gay, straight, men, women, some obviously working class, some obviously quite well off. A few dressed rather flamboyantly. A few little gray haired ladies. (Come to think of it, a few little gray haired ladies dressed rather flamboyantly!) Some obviously “in,” that is Presbyterian-looking; some obviously “out.” And during the prayer, I asked God to be with Lee in his grief, and thanked God for the way Lee cared for Sam. This was nothing exceptional.  I always try to make a point of mentioning by name those closest to the deceased, so it seemed to be a natural thing to do.

The next day, Lee came to my office. He had tears in his eyes as he told me that that was the first time that anyone in a church had ever acknowledged the relationship they shared in a positive way. “And,” he said, “it was beautiful. If the church keeps this up, maybe there will be room for me some day.” I of course assured him that there was, but I never saw him again.

There was one more part of the story. I have a friend who had graduated from Union Seminary right here who was gay and thus never ordained, but he moved out to California and became active in a little Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. Two of his friends were moving to Atlanta, not too far from my church, so he told them to come and visit. Tom and Steve had been together 17 years, and to this day, I still think they have one of the most beautiful relationships that I have ever seen, gay or straight. Tom had been transferred, so Steve moved with him, of course.

Tom and Steve were rather conservative. They lived in cul de sac in Dunwoody, an upper crust suburb of Atlanta. But they fit right in to our church, and soon joined and got involved by ushering, coming to work days, teaching church school, serving on committees, Tom even was installed as an elder, and made one of the best elders I’ve ever had….organized, gracious, headed a committee to upgrade facilities and got done what we had been talking about for 8 years! He even served on a task force for our presbytery. The 1993 General Assembly, to which I was a commissioner, had voted to make a concerted effort to study the issue of sexuality for three years, with a particular emphasis in bringing to the table those who had felt hurt by the policy of exclusion. Tom put himself into that with grace and diligence. And then 1996 came along.  That was the year the General Assembly handed down Amendment B, the so-called “fidelity and chastity” amendment.

I had moved to another church in Atlanta, and got a call from Tom. “Steve,” he said, “I just can’t do it any longer. I’m tired of fighting. You know me,” he said, “I’m not a banner carrier, I don’t march in parades. I mean, I voted for Ronald Reagan! I just want to be in a denomination where I can just be a member of a church and use whatever gifts I have for ministry.” We lost Tom and Steve. It still hurts.

Well, it was that amendment that led to the formation of a group called The Covenant Network of Presbyterians which brings me back here to Richmond. Far from being on the fringes of the church like so many of our organizations on the right and the left, this is a movement started by large church pastors, former moderators of our denomination, to try to claim the “radical center” of our Reformed heritage.

What do we affirm? 1) We affirm faith in Jesus Christ. 2) We affirm that the church we seek to strengthen is built upon the hospitality of Jesus. 3) That the people of God are called to be “the light to the nations.” 4) That the words of scripture provide life and nourishment…embracing gifts of scholarship, research and dialogue as we seek to understand the Bible’s relevance to the ever-changing needs of the world; and 5) we seek the gift of unity among all who confess the name of Jesus Christ as Lord.

Because we affirm those principles, these are the things we covenant together to do:

- Welcome, in the name of Christ, all whom God calls into community and leadership in God’s church.

- Reach out in solidarity and compassion to all who are wounded or excluded by recent legislative actions of our church;

- Continue to be faithful to the Presbyterian Church (USA), supporting its mission in Christ’s name to God’s world;

- Reaffirm our denomination’s historic understanding that “God alone is Lord of conscience” both for ourselves and for those with whom we disagree.

- Trust session and presbyteries to ordain those called by God, through the voice of the church, who are “persons of strong faith, dedicated discipleship, and love of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord” and whose “manner of life demonstrates the Christian gospel in the church and the world (G-6.0106a);

- Seek pastoral and theological solutions to division in the church; (not legal solutions!);

- Maintain dialogue, study and prayer in the spirit of Christ with those with whom we differ, seeking to understand the deeper roots of our disagreements;

- And to seek God’s will for the church through the presence of Christ, the study of scripture, the guidance of our historic confessions, and the dynamic work of the Holy Spirit.

That’s the covenant. It’s not, you notice, a litmus test for orthodoxy. It’s not an attempt at a new confession. It is a call to covenant community, and it, more than anything else I have seen in the Presbyterian Church (USA), is what has given me hope that God just might not be through with us yet.

So let me close with just a few observations or reflections on my journey from Richmond to Richmond.

First, from my pastoral experience with straights and gays and lesbians, I have come to see that being gay is first and foremost about being a human being made in the image of God, not about having sex! Tim Hart-Andersen, a pastor of a large church in Minneapolis and a member of the Board of Directors of the Covenant Network and dear friend, I might add asked the right question recently: “Why is it that the church is so focused on the sexual activity as the central defining quality of the life of a person who happens to be gay or lesbian, while for the rest of us sexuality – if it is considered at all – is viewed simply as a piece of the whole, or as a healthy expression of love between two people?” [5] We need to work on that question.

Second, there are times when I, and perhaps you, get so tired of the struggle, tired of the constant wrangling. What has it led to? We have driven from the leadership of the church good and faithful leaders. We have become intolerant of one another. We have disillusioned a whole generation of young people who learned that song “They’ll know we are Christians by our love” and now have turned away in frustration. And we have resorted to taking difficult biblical, theological, and pastoral issues and made them a political football… “judicial cannibalism” someone called it.

Add to that the fact that 6 million children die each year, mostly from hunger related causes. 12 million children in this country alone have to skip a meal to make ends meet. [6] And we are fighting two wars right now. There are times when I think God has more important things on God’s mind. Shouldn’t we be about the “real” business of the church?

Let me respond in two ways. First of all, any issues of life and death are indeed a part of the “real” business of the church. Fully 1/3 of all teen-age suicides occur because of issues pertaining to sexuality. If that’s not “real” business, I don’t know what is.

But secondly, well, I like the way Jon Walton put it: “resolving this issue may in fact be precisely the business that God has given us to do, which is why it will not go away. In fact, if we cannot solve this with God’s help, then what do we think God will help us solve? This ordination issue is not on our plate by accident, nor is it an interruption from our other work. It is precisely the issue God means for us to resolve, for heaven’s sake, and for the sake of the gospel.” [7]

Third, God has not left us alone to solve this. God has given us each other as the means by which it shall be resolved. Not by outvoting one another, or out-shouting one another or calling each other names. But by hanging in there together calling the church to a rigorousness of Biblical integrity and a faithfulness to theological depth which all of us, conservative, evangelical, moderate, and liberal aspire.

When I moved to Memphis, it became obvious that the presbytery was highly divided. Secret strategy sessions, tense debates, even rumors about opponents. So I called one of the leaders of the evangelical wing in the presbytery and suggested that he find five pastors on “his” side of the issue, and I find five on “my” side of the issue and covenant together for three gatherings over lunch. I was a part of such a group in Atlanta that we called “Common Ground,” and thought it might be worth a try in Memphis. Several evangelicals said there was nothing to talk about, but we did it…10 pastors gathered for lunch at Idlewild. We prayed, ate, and simply shared our faith stories that first time. It has now been going on for 3 years. Sometimes we talk about stewardship, about personal concerns, sometimes we read articles together, sometimes we address this issue.  Not one mind has been changed. And it has been at times one of the most frustrating, anger-producing experiences I have had. “Why am I doing this?” I ask.

And yet, through the breaking of the bread, the praying, the bible study, the sharing, the laughing, and yes, the crying, something has happened. I have been transformed. No, they haven’t changed my mind on this issue, as a matter of fact, they have unwittingly forced me to sharpen my arguments and through them I have been more convicted than ever to give voice to those who do not have voice. But I have found that we hear the same gospel, loud and clear. I have found that we have a lot more in common than we don’t have in common. I have found that so many of my stereotypes that I have carried about evangelicals turned out to be just that…stereotypes.

And I began to see that just because one disagreed with me that did not necessarily mean that they were homophobic. And I hope I have helped them to see that just because I am for the full inclusion of gays and lesbians into the life of the church, I have not abandoned scripture. I also quit calling them names. I became convinced that the Presbyterian Church will be better off – more faithful – if we in it hold on to one another.

Fourth, and finally, The Covenant Network is more than simply a single issue network. Far from it. It is about the kind of church that I want my children, one of whom is Hispanic, and one of whom is Asian, to grow up in. A church that believes in a BIG God, a church which can show and tell the world that submitting body and soul to the Lordship of Jesus Christ means giving up all pretense of power and privilege, and that walking with Jesus means listening to and walking with the poor, the marginalized, the voiceless, the grieving, the sick.  A church which is composed of manifestly Bible-believing Christians, yielding priority to no one in our fidelity to this book. A church which is joyfully evangelical, big enough and diverse enough to include us all – conservative and liberal and every point in between, gays and straights, single, divorced, and partnered, young and old, certain believers and confused seekers, abled and disabled – all the varied children of God who can help us change and grow and become more together than we can ever be apart.

I suppose the most beautiful and poignant glimpse I have ever had of that kind of church took place in a Presbyterian Church…St. Andrew Presbyterian in San Marin California. It was told by Anne Lamott, who shared a story about a man named Ken Nelson, who was dying of AIDS and had started coming to the church and finally joined. His partner had already died of the disease, and he had a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but, she said, “when he smiles, he is radiant. He looks like God’s crazy nephew Phil.”

There was woman in the choir named Ranola, large, beautiful, jovial, black, and as devout as one could be, who was always a little standoffish towards Ken. Anne said she had been raised in the south by Baptists who taught her that his way of life – that he-was an abomination. It was hard for her to break through that. She might have been afraid of catching the disease. Ken was getting weaker and weaker and would start to miss a few Sundays, but when he was able to come, he would still, before the prayers of the people, talk joyously of his life and decline, of grace and redemption, of how safe and happy he was these days.

On one particular morning, Anne writes, “for the first hymn, the so-called Morning Hymn, we sang “Jacob’s Ladder,” which goes “Every rung goes higher, higher,” while ironically Kenny couldn’t even stand up. But he sang away sitting down, with the hymnal in his lap. And then when it came time for the second hymn, the fellowship hymn, we were to sing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” The pianist was playing and the whole congregation had risen – only Ken remained seated, holding the hymnal in his lap – and we began to sing “Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?” And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up – lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang. And it pierced me.” [8]

That’s just a glimpse of the vision that I think the Covenant Network is working towards. And for me, we’ll get there when Connie, and Lee, and Tom and Steve, and a whole host of faithful, gifted children of God will come into a Presbyterian Church and say “It’s good to be home.”

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] William Placher, “Struggling with Scripture,” Address to the 2000 Covenant Network Conference, November 3, 2000. 

[5] Tim Hart-Andersen, “This Is Our Time,” Covenant Network GA Address.

[6] Bread for the World website.

[7] Jon Walton, “Is Anything Too Wonderful for our God?” Covenant Network G.A. Address.

[8] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, New York: Pantheon Press, 1999, p. 64-64. (Yes, I do read things besides the Covenant Network Website!)

COVENANT NETWORK CONFERENCE 2003
New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC
Sermon – Friday Morning, November 7, 2003

A Chaos of Uncalculating Love

Kenneth E. Kovacs
Pastor, Catonsville Presbyterian Church, Maryland

It might come as a surprise that at the end of his life, the venerable Karl Barth (1886-1965) reflected upon the Christocentric nature of his Church Dogmatics and said if he had to do it all over again – he would get a good editor.  No, he didn’t say that.  He said that if he had to do it over again he would start not with Christology, but with Pneumatology -with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. [1]   He seemed to say there would come a time, an Age of the Spirit, when in order to meet the demands of the time the church will require a theology of the Holy Spirit. [2]  

I believe we are living in such an age and that the turbulent times we’re facing in the church might have less to do with the fact that we have lost our way (as some suspect), and more to do with the fact that the Holy Spirit is shaking the foundations of the church, forcing us to get off our butts and move where Christ is taking us, enticing us to give up old patterns of knowing, old ways of being, and opening us up for something radically new, creative, bold. I’m not talking about a free-wheeling movement of the Spirit doing whatever he/she wants, but the work of the Holy Spirit which is firmly grounded, connected, and committed to the ongoing power of Christ’s resurrection. [3]   This is why I linked these two texts together – one, an account of the resurrection and the other a reference to the movement of the Spirit.

 The Spirit of the Risen Christ is pulsating throughout the universe, a Spirit who is working deep against the defenses of the human ego, yearning, struggling, groaning to realize something within us that we could never achieve nor imagine on our own.  And it should not be surprising that the same Spirit who searches the depths of God’s own nature, a God who reveals the depths of love through the power of resurrection, would be at work in the world in ways that are startling, disturbing, conflict-producing, and even chaotic.

When Cleopas and his friend encountered Jesus on the Emmaus Road, grief, confusion, and infinite sadness enveloped them.  Jesus’ crucifixion threw them into a conflict of immense proportions; it shattered their hopes and dreams and left them with existential shock. [4]   We might think the resurrected Jesus, once they recognized him, resolved this conflict and made everything better.  Sure, their hearts burned within them and they ran enthusiastically – en theos — all the way back to Jerusalem (probably at night).  But do you think they returned to life as normal?  For what is “normal” after you’ve encountered resurrected death?  The resurrection turns everything upside down and inside out.  It’s a shattering experience.  When the Resurrected One encounters us on the road of life we’re thrown into a conflict of immense proportions, it threw them into crisis and chaos.  It’s the end of the world as they knew it (to quote R. E. M.) and the start of something radically new. [5]   Everything changed.  “Once you wise up,” Kierkegaard (1813-1855) said, “you can’t dummy down.”  Their knowledge of the world, their knowledge of themselves, their knowledge of God would all have to yield to the higher knowledge offered in that moment of radical insight.  What they had previously assumed and thought was sure and steadfast was completely undone.  God had done a radically new thing.   Once they realize what God had done, Jesus vanishes from them and moves on. 

Have you noticed that Jesus is always ahead of us?  Luke loves this about Jesus.  In Luke, Jesus is always going further, always on the move, leading us forward into something new. [6]   Sure, he will sit and share a meal, open up the pages of scripture for us, offer us fellowship, but Jesus never stays in one place.  He calls us and takes us along his road, he moves us toward a new horizon, that far country, the realm of God’s justice, into what scripture calls “that day,” that New Day.

It’s this sense of movement which Jesus offers that I want to stress this morning.  And it’s the Spirit who takes up this movement for Christ. The Holy Spirit is moving – powerfully – with resurrection power in the world today.  I believe the Spirit is extending the work of Christ, completing and perfecting what began with the resurrection.  The Spirit is kinetic, flowing with the pulse and rhythm of God.  The Spirit is infinitely swift, blowing where she will.  The Spirit cannot be managed, controlled, tamed, or constrained by the human spirit.  While the church has often identified the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, my mentor, James Loder (1931-2001), who taught at Princeton Seminary, taught me the Spirit is also the Provoker and the Conflictor.  The Spirit is wild and not afraid of conflict – if conflict is what it will take for us to wake up and see what Christ is doing in us and through us. [7] The French refer to the Holy Spirit in terms L’esprit audace: the audacity of the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is daring, never contained, recklessly bold, intrepidly daring, adventurous.  The Holy Spirit is risky, sportive, and playful.  Michael Mitton writes, “The Holy Spirit is not a tame bird, kept in a clean cage, to be released for short bursts of charismatic meetings. . . .  The Holy Spirit makes his habitation in some of the wildest, darkest places this world has to offer. . . .  The Holy Spirit is wonderfully free, able to go to the dark places of our own lives, for healing to the dark unvisited places of our churches, and to the dark and demon-infested places of our society.” [8]   But, we need to trust where these experiences are taking us and not pull back in fear.    The wild experiences in the Spirit can be chaotic, revealing what we might call the Pandemonium Tremendum, but this does not mean she is capricious, regressive, or destructive.  We Presbyterians need to learn that chaos is not the opposite of order.  For is not the void and chaos a part of God’s creation, the stuff of existence, over which the ruach of God moves and calls life into being? [9]

All of this is to say that the Holy Spirit not exclusively in service to the church.  The Holy Spirit is in service to the Word (that is Christ), who through the Spirit is continuing the work of Christ with resurrection power, enfleshing human life with the Spirit of God in the church, but also out in the streets of the city, in the world.

Three years ago I was at a wedding rehearsal dinner.  After cocktails, we were told to find a seat for the meal was about to be served.  I noticed that the bride’s brother, who lives in New York City, had a guest with him, a male, Jose, and it was clear that they were together.   There was an open seat across from them, so I sat down.  We talked about life in Baltimore and life in New York (I grew up outside of New York in Northern New Jersey).  During a lull in the conversation, Jose looked at me earnestly and said, with fear and trembling, “Why does God hate me?”  Everyone around us heard the question.  “Why does God hate me?”  Slightly stunned, I replied, “The church might hate you; but God doesn’t.”  I don’t know if that answer was from the Holy Spirit or not, but that’s what I said.  In that moment, for some reason, I needed to separate the voice of God from the malicious statements of the institutional church.  Where did he learn all of this?  From the church. Jose moved to New York from Puerto Rico. He was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and was disowned by his family because he’s gay.  Then he told me about two experiences he had.  One time, Jose said he literally felt, as he put it, “the hand of God,” resting upon his shoulder, offering him assurance as a gay man.  Another time he was in the subway when he sensed God’s presence and heard a voice that was not his own say to him, “You’re okay.”  The experience overwhelmed him, lasting fifteen minutes.  As he was telling me this, beads of sweat were running down his forehead.  He was so excited, but also nervous. “I was afraid when you sat down across from me,” he said, “because I knew that I had to raise this issue with you.” 

He knew that God didn’t hate him, but he didn’t learn this from the church.  He learned it from God and he was afraid of me because he didn’t want someone representing the church to tell him otherwise.  I told him there are plenty of churches in Manhattan that would welcome him and his partner and celebrate God’s love for them and each other.  But I don’t think he believed me.

This was painful for me because I was being identified with what he perceived primarily as a hateful institution that excludes and condemns. I don’t ever want to be seen this way.  And I don’t want to be part of a church that is seen this way, either, that cannot be clear about God’s radically inclusive love. 

This encounter was another reminder that we cannot ignore the experience of countless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender(ed) persons who have encountered the Resurrected One on the Emmaus Road, who have come to know the love of God and the movement of the Spirit sometimes apart from and despite the witness of the church.  Some today argue that theological conviction is more important than experience.  Yet, we must remember that experience comes before dogmatic formulation, experience grounds conviction (as it was in the early church). [10] In one of her letters, Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) wisely wrote, “Conviction without experience makes for harshness.” [11]   Sometimes, I fear we Presbyterians have become terribly harsh in emphasizing conviction and ignoring, if not silencing the experience of many sisters and brothers who are trying to tell us something of Christ’s love and what the Spirit is doing in their lives.

My God – how did we get this way?  There are days when I’m in my study, reading Presbyweb or The Presbyterian Outlook or The Layman (when I’m really bored) wondering, what on earth are we doing to ourselves? There are days when I don’t even recognize this denomination any more.  Several years ago, I remember being at the General Assembly in Charlotte, listening to the comments from the floor, hearing a theological vocabulary that was thoroughly un-Reformed, and I said to the person next to me, “Did I stumble into the Southern Baptist Convention by mistake?”  To borrow from Michael Moore, at times I want to scream, “Dude, where’s my church?” [12]   I love the Presbyterian Church.  But sometimes we just don’t get it.  We’re so busy trying to preserve the institution or denomination, wrestling for control in our blessed rage for order – but at what price?  We’re getting in the way of what Spirit is doing in the world and what Christ is trying to do through us.   It’s enough, as Anne Lamott says, to make Jesus drink gin from the cat dish. [13]

The Holy Spirit, Barth told us, has no respect for the past or for traditions, per se, no respect for ecclesial institutions, but only for the redemption of human lives and community. [14] The Spirit of Christ is moving in the world and the church can either be part of it, caught up in the Spirit’s work, or it can stand aside.  But the Spirit of Christ will not be constrained. 

One of the oldest prayers of the church is Veni, Creator Spiritus. “Come, Creator Spirit.” I’m always praying this prayer. It’s a prayer, as one theologian put it, of “open surrender to the absolute creativity of God.” When the church is trusting in the movement of the Spirit, open to where the Spirit wants to take it, then the church will be free, truly free to be as revolutionary and as radical as we here know the Gospel to be. To live this way liberates the church to be as creative and imaginative as the age demands. And there is no one more creative and imaginative than the Holy Spirit who is continually creating and recreating the world and our lives from within the generative power of God’s redeeming love. Then the church will be unshackled – infinitely swift – free to move down whatever road the Spirit wishes to take us!

In one of his prayers, George MacLeod (1895-1991) – the Presbyterian minister, prophet, and visionary (he was one of the firsts to fight for the rights of gays and lesbians in the church, back in the ‘50s and ‘60s), moderator of the Church of Scotland, founder of the Iona Community, my guess is he probably preached in this pulpit on one of his American tours – petitions to Christ for help in figuring how to be the church in a changing day. He confesses that we have spent too much time making the “Church an institute,” knowing full well that God wants the church, as he put it, “to be a chaos of uncalculating love.” I love this image. For me, it says it all. I wish I could take credit for this vision. But I embrace it with all my heart and “we,” together, offer it to the church. Thanks be to God!

[1] Philip Rosato, The Spirit As Lord:  The Pneumatology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh:  T & T Clark, 1981).

[2] See Hans Hoffman (1923-?), “How Karl Barth Influenced Me,” Edited by Edwin Lewis, Theology Today, 23 (1956):  369.

[3] John McIntyre, The Shape of Pneumatology:  Studies in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh:  T & T Clark, 1997), p. 671

[4] James E. Loder, The Transforming Moment (Colorado Springs, CO:  Helmers & Howard, 1989), pp. 99ff. I am indebted to Loder’s reflections on this story

[5] R. E. M. “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine).” Capitol Records, 1987.

[6] See Luke 4:30, 4:43, 4:44, 5:16; from Luke 9:51 until 19:44 Jesus I on his way to Jerusalem.  In the book of Acts the gospel of Jesus spreads “to the ends of the earth.”  The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville:  Abingdon, 1995), p. 479.

[7] For the role of conflict in Christian transformation, see Loder, The Transforming Moment, pp. 36ff.

[8] Michael Mitton, Restoring the Broken Chord (London:  Darton, Long & Todd, 1995) cited in Ray Simpson, Exploring Celtic Spirituality:  Historic Roots for Our Future (London:  Hodder & Stoughton, 1995), p.  123.

[9] James E. Huchingson, Pandemonium Tremendum:  Chaos and Mystery in the Life of God (Cleveland:  The Pilgrim Press, 2001), pp. 96-115.

[10] Luke Timothy Johnson, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity:  A Missing Dimension in New Testament Studies (Minneapolis:  Fortress, 1998), pp. 39ff.  See also Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, Translated with a new Foreword by Douglas Horton (Gloucester, MA:  Peter Smith, 1978).  “In Biblical experience nothing is less important than experience as such.  It is an appointment and a commission, not a goal and a fulfillment; and therefore it is an elementary thing, hardly conscious of itself, and necessitating only minimum of reflection and confession.  The prophets and apostles do not wish to be what they are; they have to be.  And therefore they are. (p. 69)”

[11] Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being:  Letters of Flannery O’Connor, Selected and Edited by Sally Fitzgerald (New York:  Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1995), p. 97.

[12] Cf. Michael Moore, Dude, Where’s My Country? (Warner Books, 2003).

[13] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies:  Some Thoughts on Faith (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1999).

[14] Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man.  “The Holy Spirit makes a new heaven and a new earth, and therefore, new men, new families, new relationships, new politics.  It has no respect for old traditions simply because they are traditions, for old solemnities simply because they are solemn, for old powers simply because they are powerful.  The Holy Spirit has respect for truth, for itself.  The Holy Spirit establishes the righteousness of heaven in the midst of the unrighteousness of the earth and will not stop or stay until all that is dead has been brought to life and a new world has come into being. (pp. 49-50) ”

[15] Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (London:  SCM Press, 1965), p. 245.

[16] George F. MacLeod, The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory (Isle of Iona:  Wild Goose Publications, 1985), p. 39.  See also Ronald Ferguson, George MacLeod:  Founder of the Iona Community (London:  HarperCollins, 1990).

What Would Jesus Do?

Address to the Commissioner Convocation Dinner

213th General Assembly
Louisville, KY
June 8, 2001
Sponsored by the Covenant Network of Presbyterians 

Freda Gardner
Professor Emerita of Christian Education
Princeton Theological Seminary
Moderator of the 211th General Assembly

Excerpts from this address appear in Covenant Connection Vol. 4, #3.

In Anne Lamott’s book, Traveling Mercies, she speaks at one point of a situation at her son Sam’s school when she, Anne, was finding herself mentored by a very efficient and somewhat officious other mother who was driving Anne crazy. Wanting to reply to one of that woman’s suggestions, Anne was held in check by the thought that her reply, if uttered, would be enough, and here I am quoting: “. . . enough to make Jesus want to drink gin out of the cat dish.”

If that quote isn’t enough to make you wonder, I have to add, in an effort to speak the truth, that I have one of those Lamott moments with some frequency.

One of the surest triggers for me is to be advised to consider: “What would Jesus do?” The question irritates because, I think, just by being Jesus, Jesus does. Who he is is what he does, or, to turn it around, what he says is who he is, the One in whom there is no guile. There’s little evidence in Scripture that Jesus spent a lot of time wondering how to say something or how to act. he does and says who he is. There’s none of that stuff that we’re supposed to be rid of when we get through adolescence, although some of us have not been able to pull that off, or at least we can’t pull it off consistently.

I’m remembering a time when I had invited one of the girls in our congregation’s youth group to spend the weekend with me when her parents were going to be away and she had been invited to a great party. Before the party, we were talking about it, and she said that she hadn’t decided who she’d be that evening. Should she be the life of the party or the slightly pathetic “I’m easily hurt” waif or the compassionate strong confidante? These were serious considerations, and she was spending a lot of time and energy sorting out the possibilities.

There’s no evidence of an arrested adolescence in Jesus, and still we ask: “What would Jesus do?” And maybe, after all, it’s not such a bad question, even for those of us who think we know the answer.

I wonder if Jesus looks at our Church and sees so many congregations without pastors or educators and just shrugs and says, “Hey, that’s where we are.” I wonder if Jesus looks at those congregations and then turns to take in the scores of women and men, fully qualified, educated, called, poised to take on those leadership roles and sees also the single barrier that keeps them from using the gifts they have been given for the building-up of his Body, for the work of ministry among his people.

What would Jesus do? Maybe head for the cat dish. Again.

Or maybe, sometimes, he’d look at me and know at once that I am having a hard time with the “slow-to-see” and the “quick-to-condemn” and the “my-truth-is-all-there-is” crowd. Maybe he’d know that I’d never carry a sign saying “Jesus Hates All Haters” or “God Despises the I’ll-Never-Change” set but would also see in me ugly truths just below the surface: the stone in my hand, the twenty pieces in my fist, the quick joining of the “get-him-to-the-cliff-and-throw-him-off” crowd.

I wonder what Jesus would see and what he would do. I can ask the question with the best of them, even though I do know that Jesus has already done it. By being who he is, he has answered the question for every age with his life, his words, his death, and his resurrection.

How many ways does anyone have to inquire about who God loves? How often does anyone have to wonder if there are some to whom God gave no gifts for the common good? How frequently do we have to ask if it’s the right time, when we have heard “This is the time of your visitation”? When is it that we who proclaim one God will begin to live as if we believe that, no matter by what name that One God is named?

What else can Jesus do? He accepted lepers and persistent women and children and tax collectors and scoffers and those who couldn’t or wouldn’t see and aliens and the self-righteous and the overly ambitious.

And then there’s us.

And also them. We believe that Jesus loves us, the same Jesus who mentioned other sheep and said, “Unless you come as a child,” the one who helps us know that what God has made clean, let no one make unclean.

What would Jesus do? My hunch is that he’ll probably sit down at the long tables, maybe at B22 and G14 and T7, and undoubtedly at B23 and G13 and T8. He’ll be there when the first votes are cast and when the debate brings some to anger and some to tears. When R38 votes “yes” and W19 votes “no,” Jesus will be with each of them, saying who he is and reminding them of what he has done, and maybe will shake his head and feel the pain because some will not see or understand.

And when we, or they, throw the first stone, the stone of words or groans, of tears or anger, of smugness or despair, we may . . . will hit Jesus first.

How’s it ever going to be different? What can we do besides endure? Jesus did overturn the table of the moneychangers. Jesus did name the one who would betray him. Jesus did tell his closest followers to shake the dust from their feet if they were not welcomed, but then he was always found with the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned, the naked, and the vulnerable.

Are the ones we know and love the only ones who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness, the only ones who are locked up unfree, unable to accept the abundant life God has promised, the only ones who tremble, who shrink from real and imagined threats? When I hate, I am the one who hates and whose life is shaped by hate. If I am afraid, I am one with the fearful, those who do not believe that God can be trusted. If I am self-righteous, I cannot know the righteousness of God.

Several weeks ago in my congregation, our pastor preached from the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel the story of Jesus’ healing of the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years who had no one to put him in the water when the water was stirred up. David Davis, my pastor, spoke about our need to know about the motivation, the inner thoughts, the presence of faith in those who were healed by Jesus.

Among other things, David said, “The religious leaders just had to know more. It had to do with power and control. To admit we can never know enough about the heart and motivation of those who encountered Jesus of Nazareth is to come to grips with the fact that the focus of the Gospel always says more about God’s grace and less about us. And when you can’t figure it all out, when you finally figure out that you’ll never know all about “them,” well, then you’re sort of left with this absurd grace that pours out on you. While the Church is worried about them, the grace of God is played out up on that hill, on the Cross of Calvary. God sends his Son to die on the Cross, and you and I are still trying to figure out if the lame man deserved to be healed.” Or figure out if the “thems” of our life are worthy of God’s love.

The events of the last decades in the life of our church and in our personal lives have been about a lot more than a few lines in our humanly-created guide for living as Christ’s church. Each time we have tried or cried, voted or organized, strategized or despaired, given up or acted out our resolve, we have been given the opportunity to be Christ’s ministers in the world. We know the shape of his ministry. We choose again and again. Sometimes we have a sense of achievement, and other times we wonder if we will live long enough to see what new thing God is doing in our midst.

I want to close with a story from last year’s Assembly and from this year. Some of you have heard most of the story. It began at the Assembly last year sometime before the vote, the one in which nine more would have made the difference.

I was leaving the floor of the Assembly when a woman, an older woman, stopped and asked me if she could speak with me. She said she was a commissioner, first-time, and had been very nervous about her ability to fulfill expectations. She had read all the reports and prayed that God would see her through this very new experience. Then, before coming, she’d heard about the protest and the counter-protest that would be part of the Long Beach scene. She confessed that she’d never been anywhere near a protest and was frightened about it, and prayed once again for guidance.

On Sunday morning, she was walking toward the worship service when she saw the signs, the signs with words of hate and scorn, and she was frightened to tears.

She told me, “I asked God to please see me through this.” And then she told me how, when she turned away from the signs, she saw other women and men with linked arms, heads up, smiling and making eye contact with those who looked at them. By now, tears were in her eyes as she grabbed my hand and said, “I was wrong. I knew I’d been wrong. How do I go back to my church?”

We talked for a few more minutes, and she went back to her seat, and I came to the room where some of you were very upset about the latest attempt to thwart your efforts, an act of violence and, in my words, cowardice. And I shared the story of that woman with you, and I thought the story was ended.

Less than two months ago, I was at a meeting of Presbyterian women of one of our synods, and at one meal I sat down with two women I had not yet met. We’d begun to talk when another woman joined us. I don’t remember how she got into the conversation, but she soon began to speak about an experience she’d had at last year’s Assembly. It took me a while to realize I was hearing the same story I’d heard in Long Beach. I looked at her and said, “Did you tell me this on the floor of the Assembly as I was walking out of the room?” She looked at me and, with some surprise, said, “Oh yes, it was you!” I don’t know what that says about what happened to me in a year, but…And then she told the rest of the story, about her returning home and her continuing concern about how to share with her friends and fellow church members what she now saw so clearly.

And then she told us that it was just a few weeks later that her daughter came home from where she was living and working to tell her mother that she was a lesbian.

What would Jesus do? What does Jesus do? Maybe sometimes he takes the most awful language and the most blatant hatred and uses it to prepare a woman for a new form of discipleship, and a mother for a daughter who is ready to claim herself and trust that love will sustain such a revelation. Maybe, indeed, God’s purpose is being worked out as year succeeds to year. Maybe the time is drawing nearer and nearer, the time that shall surely be. And maybe God makes it possible for a whole story to be heard and shared and lets it bear the fruit of a conviction that truth will finally define the day and the people of God will take one more step toward the new Heaven and the new Earth that God is creating in our midst.

What can we do to hasten the time, the time that shall surely be, when the Earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea? I hope, indeed, I pray that I, that we, will not be the wounders, that our truth-telling will be in love, that we will recognize whoever will become the “them” of this Assembly as the other ones loved by God, offered new life in Christ, being nudged by the Spirit. I hope that we will put strong arms around the wounded among us, our friends who have suffered so much, our friends who have fought the good fight for a very, very long time, our friends who wonder if they have a future in this Church, those who have run out of patience or steam or hope, and hug them with the compassionate love of Jesus, who will be there, wherever we and they are.

And I hope that many of us will be given the strength to see God’s other frightened, manipulative, defensive children and to let God’s love reveal them to us as our sisters and brothers. It takes more courage to love than it does to hate, and more grace. I think it’s what Jesus would do . . . and has done . . . and can do . . . with us.

Amen.

1999 Covenant Conference
Morning Worship, November 5, 1999

Sermon

The Narrow Door

Luke 13:22-30

Jon M. Walton
Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church
Wilmington, Delaware

A few summers ago I was in Europe and as all tourists do, I visited several of those innumerable castles that are there. But after awhile one castle starts to look like another, no matter what country you’re in or what period the castle was built.

There was one in particular, however, that I remember very well. It was the one with the maze.

Whoever built the castle thought that as a protective device as well as an entertainment he would build a very complicated labyrinth of hedges, a puzzle that has been carefully tended and meticulously groomed all through the centuries. Over time the hedges have grown to about eight or nine feet high, tall enough to prevent you from getting your bearings once inside.

I thought I could probably knock off that maze in about five minutes, and I said as much to the attendant at the entrance as I went in. He was European, stuffy, and not amused. From his look I suspected he had seen my kind go in that maze and never come out again.

The first part wasn’t too hard, a left here, a right there. It was going rather well, I thought. Except of course, I kept hitting blind allies. Soon I found I was passing people in both directions who looked vaguely familiar to me.

I began to get a little concerned after about a half an hour or so when I heard voices on the other side of the hedges that seemed to come and then go.

It became more and more frustrating the longer I searched. I started to imagine that nightfall would come and I would still be there, trying to make my way by moonlight.

At last the attendant from the entrance came up to me doing what must have been one of his hourly sweeps of the lost. “Having trouble are we?” he asked trying to keep his face straight. “Just follow me,” he said. “It’s by the narrow way.”

And sure enough there was a kind of gap in the hedges that served as the narrow door to the last row leading to the exit. And standing sideways you could make it through and be on your way. But for those unaccustomed to mazes, or to risking a slightly different way of solving the puzzle it proved too difficult to resolve.

It was as I was leaving the maze that I discovered the attendant was a Christian as he paraphrased Jesus, “Don’t feel bad,” he said smugly, “many have tried, few are able.”

I cannot help but think of that castle and of that maze when I hear Jesus’ words, “Strive to enter by the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

The teaching comes in response to a question posed by someone along the way as Jesus traveled through one town and village after another. It was an earnest question. Not hostile, but seeking. “Lord, will only a few be saved?”

What a great question! And wouldn’t we like to know! John Calvin loved this one. It led him into those magnificent statements about the sovereignty of God, and on to his theology about predestination, and picking up speed to double predestination, until finally at warp speed he went right into a brick wall as free will and God’s sovereignty collided.

“Lord, will only a few be saved?” What a good question. We are still asking it. The minimalists and new age folks of our spiritual reawakening in this country smear it all around saying, “Oh it doesn’t make any difference what you believe. We’re all going to the same place.” They seem to say, “All will be saved.” But is it that simple?

Some in our culture dismiss the question of salvation by suggesting that it’s essentially irrelevant. God is like some all-permeating gas in the universe, they say, impersonal and distant, unknowable. With an impersonal God, who needs salvation?

Still others are looking for a form of salvation in a bottle or at the end of a needle or in a powder up the nose. An expedient and sensory answer to an eternal and spiritual yearning. There is no salvation there, at least no salvation in the Hebrew sense of wholeness, health, oneness, and peace with God.

“Lord, will only a few be saved?” A simple yes or no would do. But instead, Jesus answers quizzically, “Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

So how do we get to it, to that narrow door of salvation which many strive to enter, but few are able?

Is the narrow door asceticism, the monastic life? Do you have to take vows to find it? Must you live a life like Mother Theresa? Endure martyrdom like Martin Luther King, Jr.? How do we get to the narrow door, and once there, enter?

Maybe this is all easier than we make it with our discussions of determinism and free will and grace. Maybe we all know where that narrow door is. Maybe we’ve always known. After all, there are certain well traveled routes that just about all of us on the theological spectrum, whether Coalition people or Covenant people or “normal” people in between, can affirm.

Paul told the Ephesians and us how to do it: “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph. 4: 1-3). Somewhere at the end of that kind of journey there is a door worth entering.

Maybe you get to the narrow door by simply leading a life of Christian discipline. You know, trying to live the Christian life as best you can, nothing too fancy about it.

You pray every day and you read your Bible. You go to church, get your children baptized. You keep the Ten Commandments in your heart and in your life as well as you are able. You treat people with respect, and attempt in some imperfect way to love one another as Christ has loved us. You become race- and colorblind and start to see others with the delight with which God has made all of us, so different. You care for the poor, and work for justice in this world of injustice.

You make solemn vows to the person you love and try with all your heart not to avert your eyes. And if you have made no such promises, you try with all your heart to be responsible in your living, not to squander your love or your body, but to use it wisely and carefully knowing that the heart is a fragile thing, and our bodies are given to us imprinted with the very image of God on them and in them, something to be treasured and honored in its keeping.

You do all those things trying to find your way to the narrow door, and all the time knowing that nothing you ever do earns you the right of passage once you get there. Surprise of surprises, it is always and only by the love and grace of God that any of us ever find the door, or enter through it. And as often as not somebody has to come and rescue us and take us there when we are lost and giving up hope of finding it.

Just about all of us in this church of ours, or better said, this church of Jesus Christ’s, hold those things in common; and would that it could take us all the way home.

But somehow it does not, and we are left divided by our disparate understandings of how gracious is God’s grace and how inclusive is God’s welcome. God help us, our enmity over 6.0106b is so strong that it tends to make friends enemies, which only makes the journey to that narrow door longer and lonelier.

It has gotten so bad that some are saying we do not even share a common faith anymore in our church, which if it were true, would be the greatest tragedy of all.

We do know that the trials are mounting in the church as in the Synod of the Northeast, and this is causing sessions and PNCs to inquire about bedroom behavior and whether our sexual expression is faithful or unfaithful, active or inactive, self-acknowledged or self-denying, frequent or infrequent. I feel more and more anxious about all this, not because I have so much incriminating evidence to report, but so little.

We are, as a denomination, right now hell bent on getting to some narrow way, so narrow, I fear that none of us may make it. I find myself wondering with the psalmist, “O Lord, if thou shoulds’t mark iniquities (as do my brothers and sisters in the church), O Lord, who shall stand?”

I think I am most concerned about the idea that the narrow way to salvation leads us to love the sinner while we hate the sin.

The problem is that none of us is very good at loving sinners and hating their sins at the same time. Hate has a way of enveloping everything, and so Matthew Shepherd is tied to a Wyoming fence rail and left to die like a trophy animal in the winter cold. And Barry Winchell, 21 years old, an Army private, is murdered at Fort Campbell, Kentucky this past summer, bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat while he lay sleeping ­ by fellow soldiers yelling, “faggot!” I think we have enough already of loving the sinner and hating the sin!

In the passage today, there is a surprising reversal that takes place, and one that puts us all on warning.

People arrive at the door and it is night. God, who is thinly veiled as the householder in the story, is roused from sleep, and comes down to answer.

But he is not quick to open. “How do I know you?” he asks.

“We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets,” they say. “We talked about you all the time. We prayed, we tithed, we contributed to the building fund, we taught in the church school. We did everything the way you’d have wanted it.

“We kept folks out that didn’t belong in the church. the tax collectors and prostitutes, the drug addicts, the radical feminists, the gays and lesbians. Those people from east and west and north and south, the Gentiles, the great unwashed. We kept them out. We forbade them office. We did it for you, master. We did it for you.”

But the master, unimpressed by the claims, responds from behind the closed door, “I do not know where you come from.”

Fred Craddock says of this reversal of expectations that “added to the pain of sitting before a closed door will be the sight of large numbers who are admitted [who are] the unexpected Gentiles who heard and believed,” the ones everybody knew could not enter the kingdom.

What Jesus wants us to know, and we are loathe to get, is that in the kingdom of heaven God alone is arbiter of who will be called to serve and who will not, who is in and and who will be left outside pounding on the door. To assume that place of judgment that is God’s place is a terrible mistake. And it cuts both ways.

What we all need to understand is that in the kingdom of heaven we will be sitting with folks we did not expect would be there. The place cards will be surprising. You know, John Buchanan next to Jerry Andrews. Joanna Adams next to Roberta Hestenes. Chris Glaser next to Clayton Bell. And if I get in I get to sit next to that elder in my church who for all these years just hasn’t gotten it, the one who always wants to tighten things up.

But, you know, it’ll be all right. It will be wonderful to be there together. Because at last we will understand even as we have been fully understood.

Someday we are going to understand that gay and straight alike, we all want essentially the same things in life. Not promiscuity but constancy. Not faithlessness but faithfulness. Not to waste our lives on something of the moment, but to give ourselves to something of eternity.

Don’t we all want to build a home with light shining through the windows so brightly that many a friend and sometimes a stranger may find a welcome there. To know that another’s heart beats for us somewhere. To live knowing that God has made us and delights in us just as we are. To believe that in this vast universe we have a place here, and that we belong, and that God means for us good. Don’t we all want to believe that Jesus includes us when he says, “Anyone who comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.”

Fred Buechner says that “salvation is an experience first and a doctrine second” (Wishful Thinking, New York: Harper & Row, 1973, p. 84). It is the experience of losing yourself and by doing so, finding yourself. It is loving God and getting lost in that love so deeply, that in it you are found.

It comes down to this Anne Lamott, in her book Traveling Mercies, which I find myself quoting all the time anymore, remembers a moment that had a touch of eternity in it when the narrow door opened and she watched two friends enter in. It is the story of a member of her church named Ranola and of a man with AIDS named Ken. Lamott writes:

Shortly after [Ken] started coming [to church], his partner died of the disease. A few weeks later Ken told us that right after Brandon died, Jesus had slid into the hole in his heart that Brandon’s loss left, and had been there ever since. Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but when he smiles, he is radiant. He looks like God’s crazy nephew Phil. He says that he would gladly pay any price for what he has now, which is Jesus, and us.

Lamott says Ranola, a large beautiful black woman kept her distance from Ken, always looked at him with confusion when she looked at him at all. She was raised in the South by Baptists, and she had been taught that Ken’s way of life – that Ken ­ was an abomination.

On one particular Sunday just before he died, Ken was very weak, he had had a stroke and his face was more lopsided than ever. But he came to church and during the prayers of the people, he spoke joyously of his life and decline, of grace and redemption, of how safe and happy he felt nonetheless.

The first hymn that day was “Jacob’s Ladder.” “Every rung goes higher, higher,” the congregation sang. And Ken, who had not the strength to stand, sat and sang anyway, with the hymnal in his lap.

And then they sang, “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” And Anne Lamott says, that Ken remained seated, too weak to stand on his own while the congregation stood around him:

“Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?” [the congregation sang] Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up ­ lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang. And it pierced me. (Traveling Mercies, New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. p.64-65.)

Salvation is an experience first and a doctrine second. It is loving God and getting lost in that love so deeply that in it you are found, and in it we find one another.

Strive, then to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try and will not be able.