by Dr. Mark Achtemeier

 Isaiah 49:8-13
Hebrews 4:12-13

Covenant Presbyterian Church
Madison, Wisconsin

October 8, 2011

We are gathered here today to ordain a wonderfully gifted Christian man to the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. Scott’s steadfast faith and pastor’s heart and devotion to Christ and the church have been a source of personal inspiration for me and many others. I give thanks to God, Scott, that your gifts will now be fully available to the Presbyterian Church, and to John Knox Presbytery, and to all the individuals whose lives will be touched by your ministry. This is indeed a joyous occasion.

Many of us wondered if this day would ever get here, and what a blessing it is to be witnesses of its coming! Many of you have worked and prayed diligently to make this day a reality. But lest we think this is all about us, I think it important to take a step back and reflect on what God is doing in and through this happy occasion.

Indeed the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.^[1]

From the very beginning of its existence, the church has borne witness to holy occasions when the Word of God blazed to life, judging the thoughts and intentions of many hearts, overturning established assumptions, bringing light and life where formerly only darkness reigned.

In the earliest days of Christianity, the Word and Spirit of God kindled a fire in the hearts of Jesus’ followers about the despised and unclean Gentiles. Standing apart from biblical law and condemned by it, these Gentile outsiders were so unclean that Jesus’ followers wouldn’t even eat with them. But God’s Word and Spirit helped the church see these despised outsiders as beloved children of God. The result was a new reading of Scripture, and the joyous movement of a reviled and ostracized people into the fellowship of Christ’s body the church. The Word of God is powerful!

In the late Middle Ages God’s Word blazed to life in the heart of a troubled monk named Martin Luther. The result was a new reading of Scripture and the release of millions of anguished souls from a thousand-year captivity to guilt and fear and condemnation into the clear light of God’s grace and mercy in Christ. The Word of God is powerful!

In the history of our own nation, the Word of God blazed forth in the hearts of abolitionists and prophets and reformers. The result was a new reading of Scripture and captives emerging from bondage, former slaves set out on the long road toward freedom and dignity and equality. “The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword!”

Such revolutions are not the product of human devising. At the height of the Reformation a friend of Martin Luther’s found him sitting idly one day over a drink. ‘Dr. Luther,’ said the friend, ‘look at everything that’s happening, look at the crisis that’s upon us. Don’t you think you should be working?’ Luther sat back in his chair, looked at his mug, and said, “Here as I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer, the Gospel runs its course!”^[2]

The Gospel runs its course. What a remarkable privilege to be living in a time when once again the Word of God has come to life as good news for the broken-hearted! The Holy Spirit is abroad, blowing across the landscape of our established convictions and setting many hearts ablaze.

These changes are supported by the work of many scholars, but their origin is not the scholar’s study. How many of the changes leading to this day have been Damascus road events, holy occasions when ordinary life and ordinary assumptions are caught up short as the Risen Christ begins to speak. .

The Spirit moves and hearts are changed. And when that happens we are able to go back to the Scriptures and see all those things we missed earlier. We employ all the classical guidelines for interpreting Scripture: We read the Bible in its historical context. We interpret Scripture by Scripture. We follow the Rule of Faith and let the fullness of the Gospel illumine individual passages. Following Calvin we interpret biblical Law according to the purposes of the Lawgiver. Joining with the ancient church we read every text in accordance with the Rule of Love.

When read the Bible as our tradition has taught us, we have found God’s Word blazing to life and all these paths converging on the gracious conclusions that bring us here today. Jesus tells us that when we interpret the Bible rightly, we shouldn’t expect to come away bearing only the old understandings: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”^[3]

This new treasure we have found in the Scripture seems so obvious to many of us, but we have to remember it is not obvious to all. There is nothing unusual about this. Almost always when the living Word has blazed to life there has been conflict and heated opposition. Almost always there have been committed Christians defending the status quo based on long established readings of Scripture. In the wisdom of God, change does not come quickly or unanimously. And so in our own time, Christ grants us an important opportunity to the bear witness to his love which binds us together even in the midst of our disagreements.

For that reason we must all be very patient, and very respectful, and very gentle with our sisters and brothers who take a different view of this day than we do. They, like we, confess the Lordship of Christ. They, like we, fervently desire to follow Jesus in obedience to the Scriptures. For a time, in the mysterious providence of God, we are finding something very different in the Bible from what our neighbors find there. It is a distressing and puzzling situation, but far from unusual. And it gives us opportunity to testify that the faith we hold in common is vibrant enough and faithful enough to sustain our fellowship until that joyful day when all our differences are overcome  in Christ.

Until that day arrives, however, let us be mindful of the particular role that Scott and we have been granted to play in God’s plan. Our passage from Isaiah today describes what happens when the Word of God goes out to do its work. The result is release for the captives, hope for the outcast. Isaiah paints a moving portrait of one such occasion when the Word of God has done its work. He speaks of newly liberated exiles setting out on the long and difficult journey that leads toward home, toward grace, toward blessing. It is a slow and arduous trek across a barren wilderness, but they do not journey alone:

They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.^[4]

I think this passage provides a fitting picture of the hope and promise contained in this day. I believe God will use the life of John Knox Presbytery as a spring of clear water, a source of renewal and refreshment for a tired and weary Presbyterian denomination that is struggling to find its way through a wilderness of rapid change.

Scott has led the way with this, going out of his way time and again to forge bonds of respect and caring and understanding across the lines of separation and disagreement. Other people have responded in kind, so that with rare exceptions, the life of this presbytery has been marked by kindness, mutual respect and forbearance grounded in the love of Christ. This little group of Jesus’ followers provides compelling testimony to a grace of God that is powerful and life-giving even in the midst of deep disagreement.

I also believe God will use your ministry, Scott, as a life-giving spring of water for sustaining weary exiles who have been alienated from the church of Jesus Christ and are seeking a way back home.

I recently read an essay by a woman named Chely Wright, a Kansas farm girl and a country music singer. She writes about being a gay person growing up in the church, calling to mind third grade kickball games where the kids would pick up sides before playing. Inevitably there would be that one awkward, uncoordinated kid who always got picked last or not at all. “[E]ventually,” she writes, “that kid would stop hoping to be chosen for either team…”

And eventually that kid would probably develop an aversion, perhaps even a life-long, deep loathing for the game of kickball. It’s a protective mechanism that humans employ to preserve the most tender parts of their psyche. That’s what it feels like for an LGBT kid in a place of worship.  That kid is repeatedly given the message that he or she will never, ever fit in and be acceptable to God or to the congregation.^[5]

Chely Wright was pointing a loaded gun into her mouth when God spoke to her over and above what the church was saying. That Word from God touched her heart and started her on a long journey toward wholeness. Today she writes, “It is my deep belief that someday I will meet my maker and I will be asked who I am and what I did for others. Everyday, I am working hard, preparing my answer to be, ‘I am a gay, Christian, farm girl from Kansas who sang Country Music and I did the very best I could do — to know God and to share God.’”^[6]

Scott as we gather here today, you and I both know there are thousands upon thousands of Chely Wrights out there, beloved children of God who have been ostracized and alienated from the faith. They have learned through bitter experience to associate the name of Jesus with hostility and rejection and condemnation.

I rejoice in the sure hope that your gifts and your ministry will nurture and strengthen many people in the faith. But I am especially hopeful that your ministry will bring healing good news to all the Chely Wrights who have been rejected and alienated from the Christian faith. What we do here today won’t solve the problem. But I pray your ministry may at the very least provide a spring of water in the wilderness for sustaining and refreshing those weary exiles on the long journey back to the God who loves them.

I sometimes wonder if there really is hope for many such journeys to take place. There is a passage in Isaiah just after the one we read today where the exiles are wondering the same thing. “My Lord has forgotten me,” they say.^[7]  Their alienation seems too hopeless, their darkness too deep, for these dreams of restoration to have any meaning for them.

God’s response is powerful. I was with a person the other day who needed to remember a phone number, and while I was searching my pockets for a scrap of paper he simply wrote the number on the palm of his hand. It’s a messy but effective system these hand-note-takers have.

Well God’s response to the exiles who have lost hope is to show them his hands: “See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands,”^[8] he says. God has not forgotten these alienated children. There, written on God’s hands are the names of every anguished soul, every broken spirit.

Scott I rejoice that today we ordain you to the ministry of the Word, and I am confident that you will both proclaim and embody the deep love which that Word conveys for all of God’s exiled and brokenhearted children. You will not always see immediate results, but that loving, powerful Word of God will not return empty. It will accomplish the purpose for which God sends it. Good new will come to all the exiled souls.

They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.

May God make your ministry a spring of life-giving water, Scott!

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

Dr. Mark Achtemeier has served the Presbyterian Church since 1984 as a minister,
author, speaker and theology professor.
He may be contacted at  mark.achtemeier@gmail.com.

Eily Marlow
Lilly Project Program Associate
Macalaster College

Genesis 32:22-33:4 ; Hebrews 6:9-12

When told that the theme of the conference was covenant, to be honest my first thought was back to my ordination exams.    There is much talk in seminary about this extraneous hoop we maneuver.  But there is an equally universal experience when you’re actually confronted with the four session members who all misunderstand the most primary concepts of baptism.  You don’t need to be in ministry long before you encounter your ordination exam question in real life and see your worship professor mouthing ‘I told you so.’   

Well, I passed my ordination exams writing on covenant, but this morning to my theology professors’ chagrin, you will probably hear little of my answer.  With great theologians and biblical scholars in our midst, I thought it best to stick to my greatest knowledge base – the realm of the pastoral and how covenant is uncovered amidst fresh challenges faced by this new generation.  In our achievement-based culture, today one’s place in God’s chosen community fights for relevancy with one’s position in society’s chain of command.   Within this new generation there exists “a vulnerable but promising self” that is being fought for daily.   Beyond the place where integrity wrestles with the will to win, there is a self that is ever searching for a fitting home.  

 This might be why I was so drawn to the story of Jacob.  Throughout this conference we will surely hear of the great patriarchs and matriarchs who were the earliest recipients of the promissory covenant.   The covenant made before Sinai where God first performed the very radical act of choosing a people.  It was here a stoic Abraham and unwavering Isaac faithfully respond to this divine gift.  Jacob, though, is the new generation.  Equally chosen, his life is riddled with conflict, uncertainty and betrayal.   Jacob is this new generation living with great vulnerability and promise.   He holds onto an immense calling laden with moral choices that will brand him faithful to some and to others seriously depraved. 

One of these vulnerabilities is Jacob’s precarious place within the tradition.  As you will recall, in contrast to his brother Esau who is described as “a hairy, skillful hunter and a man of the field,” a sort of Todd Palin kind of guy,  Jacob is “a quiet man with soft skin.”  Not a man of the fields, but a man “living in tents.”   Just as many cultures organize public and private spheres by gender, “tent space” in the ancient near east was domestic space dominated by women.  A Presbyterian homiletics professor suggested naming a sermon based on Jacob, “Not a God for Sissies.”  But Jacob is a sissy of sorts.  The text suggests that he does not conform to traditional gender roles. 

Though even beyond this cultural taboo, Jacob knew that it was not just his fundamental nature that might keep him outside of the promise;  categorically it was beyond his reach.  Human life at this time was structured so that the older child received the blessing, and his brother Esau was that child.  Walter Brueggemann states that j“primogeniture is not simply one rule among many.  It is the linchpin of an entire social and legal system which defines rights and privileges.”  Jacob has two strikes against him.  Perhaps if he was not “a man of the tent,” he would be able to prove he was the stronger son.  Or, if only he was born first and was older then Esau, then even if he was not masculine he would be given the privileges bestowed by society.  But neither scenario is real, and therefore Jacob must live with this great insecurity that he is sitting on the margins of something great.  At the bottom of his gut he worries he sits just outside of God’s inheritance.  
  
Humans will go to ridiculous extremes to receive others’ affirmation, but we will go to even greater ones for confirmation that we are blessed by God.  At his mother’s pleading Jacob dresses up as his brother, using animal fur to rough up his skin in order to steal the blessing from his brother.

In the GLBT community, we call this trying to pass. 

And whether you identify as gay or straight, many of us have attempted this in our own lives. Allow me to use an example from my own.   The day before my examination on the floor of Presbytery, I went to get my hair cut.  For the very first time I walked into this expensive salon in my neighborhood and luckily there was an open chair.   As the hairstylist was washing my hair, I shared with him why I was getting a hair cut.  I explained what happens in an ordination examination, and why as an out lesbian I needed all the confidence I could get.    Now as he sat me in his chair, this gay man took one look at me and shook his head as if to say, “You are not going up there like that.”  What was first a hair cut ended up being my first ever eyebrow trim and an on-the-house head of $100 highlights.  The day of my examination my mother dressed me in her prized Norwegian sweater, pewter buttons and all, and laced me in my grandma’s pearls.  In back of all our minds was the unspoken idea that maybe even though I would say the word ‘lesbian,’ somehow like Isaac the Presbytery would be tricked by the disguise.  I would look enough like one who is traditionally chosen that the word would soften to the ear in favor of what the eye confirmed. 

Jacob’s own passing does not really pan out for him.  Although he receives the blessing, his brother is totally outraged and vengeful; Jacob becomes estranged from his family and lives a life questioning his own credibility.

Jacob discovers what many of us do when we end up playing the part of the other brother.  To prove this point, let me go back to my Presbytery meeting.   At the end my successful examination, my friend and mentor Janie Spahr and I were playing back the examination and she told me that I had used “he” for God!  We looked at each other in great horror!  Having worked in the denomination’s office of women’s advocacy educating the church on inclusive language – I betrayed my own understanding of God and had absolutely no recollection of having done it.   The danger of passing is that we not only become estranged from the self but from our deepest understanding of the divine. 

So Jacob does not receive resolution and must continue to live with an insecure blessing.  Has my family really chosen me, or is this just a loop hole?   Does God really see me as a recipient of covenant, or am I just a trickster with a bad case of entitlement?  Am I following God’s will or manipulating people and things for my own power?

Jacob ends up estranged from his family, and it is only when he is now totally bewildered and alone that God intrudes onto a scene which has until now been humanly orchestrated.

We know from the biblical narratives that there are very few encounters with God outside of messy lives and subsequent human heartache.   Perhaps God realizes that when we are most vulnerable, there is greater probability we will open to the promise.  And at these moments when we are in total anguish, God knows that we are to be approached with great care.  Thus God often comes to us in the darkness, when the shock of God’s intrusion is absorbed by the night.

God first meets Jacob in a dream as he sleeps at Bethany, gifting him with a vision of a ladder to heaven, assuring him of his lineage. He is a grandchild of Abraham, an unquestionable heir of the covenant.  There should be no doubt that the promise is extended to him.   “I will keep you,” God says, in intimate language almost more persuasive than lineage talk.  “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”  

And after this encounter with God, Jacob does go on to live into the wealth and family promised to him.  But the covenantal promise does not end there.  Years later the time comes when he must finally return to his homeland to fulfill the promise, and this requires a meeting with Esau.   And even though Jacob has now encountered God like Isaac and Abraham before him, nothing can stop him from fearing this reunion.  Jacob is still vulnerable to a belief that covenant assurance and blessings reside in the human sphere.  His fear and insecurity are palpable as he divides up his family and sends ahead of him great gifts for appeasement.  He knows that Esau could very well kill him for what he has done; and in the midst of his anxious preparations Jacob remembers the glorious and tender assurance of promise God bestowed upon him when estranged in Bethany.  Again feeling totally bewildered, those divine memories show him where to go.  He crosses over the river away from his family to once again sleep alone.  Before meeting his brother, he goes searching for God, something experience has shown comes most easily in the cover of night.

And God does not come delicately approaching Jacob, knowing he is a frightened soul, but instead a stranger arrives assaulting him with unrelenting force.

The night before having to meet my session, after getting called back for yet another meeting because the church had been in great turmoil over the support of my candidacy, I had a dream.

I was hiking with a group of people; all with big backpacks, we walked in a line through a beautiful field.  As I looked around me I started to feel a sense of familiarity.  I realized I knew this place!   I was with a woman and I ran up to the man leading the hike and asked if I could take her to some near-by small towns I knew.  The guide said “No, two women are not safe going alone.”  We continued walking and we approached a church where we would stay the night.  As we entered the front hall there on the ground were the boots and clothes of two women piled up as though the women had combusted into thin air leaving just a mound of clothes behind.  I asked the pastor what had happened and she simply said, “It is not safe for two women to go alone.”  As our group shuffled into the church, the pastor explained how the perpetrator of this crime was unknown but that he would be among those welcomed into the church.  As people flooded in to greet us, I became terrified.  Not knowing what to do, I quickly hid under a table as each individual entered the fellowship hall.  Then there he was, this stranger, this antagonist.  In sheer panic a system deeper then fight or flight kicked in; I came to understand I would be safer if I was to stand.  With every ounce of energy in my body I stood, and as he turned around I put my hand out smiling as though my life depended on it.  Our hands touched.  Our eyes met.  And I woke up.

After wrestling all night, Jacob finally prevails.   He looks this antagonist in the eye and says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  And whether this stranger is the Holy One or not, I believe that Jacob, after years of wrestling with humans, now thoroughly believes he is wrestling with God.  This divine force looks at Jacob and instead of giving him a blessing asks him his name.   Jacob’s life long question – blessed or unblessed – is set aside by this One who seeks to address the core concern.  In my mind’s eye, here is God crushed by Jacob’s weight, and that of his struggle, taking Jacob’s face gently into the palms of God’s hands.  God looks him in the eyes, face to face with God’s chosen one and tenderly asks, “What is your name?”  I would guess this is the moment Jacob comes to believe he is a bearer of the covenant.  He does not say ‘Esau,’ ‘grandchild of Abraham,’ ‘tent sitter’ or ‘wealth maker.’  Jacob does not say ‘betrayer of Isaac’ or ‘undeserving one.’  For the first time, the human drama is peeled away and he looks at God and simply says, ‘Jacob.’  He sits in front of the one who has been for him both antagonist and promise bearer. He sits completely in his vulnerability and promise, and all that exists is pure blessing.

I was sweating and terrified when I woke up from my dream.  And it was then that I too recognized God’s emergence.  An experience we can not often put into words, but it was here in this unfamiliar dawn that all was changed.  As I had equally felt that terrorizing dream, it was balanced with an equally powerful confirmation of God’s presence.   This was not an imagined presence but a very physical one.    My body at once hot and tense suddenly felt cool and fluid.  In my mind, there was an image of a fountain, the water flowing up through my body, and then covering me.  Soothing and consoling, I knew beyond a doubt that I was being bathed in the very water of my baptism.  I had encountered God, and I knew at the depths of my being that my encounter with the church, in which at times I had felt so estranged, could not endanger me.  It was baptism that confirmed my place in the covenant community.  And it was to be with this assurance, I was to face not the enemy but my brother in what was not a heavenly struggle, but a very human one.

God then says to Jacob, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”  Only when Jacob stands in front of God as pure Jacob does God verify that he is not only a part of the covenant community, but one of its truest reflections.   The sun rises upon him and he immerges into an unfamiliar dawn, never again having to resort to meeting God in dark places, having now a faith that no longer distinguishes day from night.  

It was the same sun that rose upon Jacob that surfaced this summer at our own reunion at the General Assembly in San Jose.  And it was with this same resilient knowledge of being God’s chosen that 15 young adults of this new generation came to G.A. with That All May Freely Serve.   Even as co-moderator, I was at first a bit skeptical with our organization’s idea to pour all our funds into bringing young people to G.A.   In my work as a college chaplain I often hem and haw about bringing youth, especially GLBT students, to the Assembly.  As they listen to the debate and experience distressing votes, it can be a time of deep estrangement.

But what occurred at this Assembly was an in-breaking of God’s abundant light.   This welcoming generation came to G.A. not preparing for a clash, but focused on the ministry they could bring to this reunion.  Protected by a deep security in their place within the covenant, they welcomed commissioners with hospitality.  Morning and evening, they stood at the convention hall doors handing out coffee and cookies, supplying commissioners with a vision of what living into God’s promise might actually be like.  

And as the sun continues to rise on this new generation – and we have seen it do so this week – so it does on Jacob.  Jacob humbly stands before his brother with all of his imperfections enmeshed with God’s delight.  And though Jacob in the spirit of hospitality brings extravagant gifts, ultimately it is Esau whose move towards reconciliation is reminiscent of God’s very own grace.  Esau, with his own undeniable experiences of pain and betrayal, kissed his brother conspiring with God in shedding even more light.  

So as we go out into a crucially important moment in Presbyterian history, let us heed the wisdom of Hebrews and be “imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”  Let us walk with Jacob and Esau into unfamiliar places.  Let us rest assured we live a shared covenant that is beyond human meddling if we in fact believe in God’s abundant light.

Amen.

Scott Black Johnston
Pastor, Trinity Presbyterian Church, Atlanta

Isaiah 25:6-9
6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  7 And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; 8 he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.  9 It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Hebrews 12:1-2, 12-15a
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.  12 Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.  14 Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.  15 See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.

1 Thessalonians 2:5-8
5 As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; 6 nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, 7 though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.  8 So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

So, have you heard the news?  I am talking about the rumor that has been racing up and down the corridors of the literary world, the gossip that has bloggers popping caffeine tablets just to keep up with the torrent of internet posts, the revelation that has been tying cable news pundits in befuddled knots:  Dumbledore is gay!  Yes, that’s right; about ten days ago J. K. Rowling, the author of the wildly popular series of books chronicling the adventures of Harry Potter, boy wizard, took questions from a Carnegie Hall audience about her work.  In responding to an inquiry about the love interests of Albus A. Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Rowling revealed that she had always imagined that the world’s most powerful wizard was gay.  On hearing this news, the crowd gasped, and then a smattering of applause broke out.  Reactions over the last ten days have followed a similar pattern; some are gasping, some are applauding.  On the Harry Potter fan website, TheLeakyCauldron.org, one concerned person wrote, “Thanks for permanently staining my view of Dumbledore.”  Another, a woman from nearby Gwinnett County, who has been trying to have the books removed from public school libraries for years, wrote that, “This proves Rowling’s anti-Christian agenda.”  To be fair, there were posts that called the author’s actions “courageous.”  These numbered about the same as the skeptical posts which accused the author of staging a publicity stunt; although it’s hard to imagine that this series has ever suffered from a lack of attention.  Many posts, however, simply seemed puzzled, leaving at least one fan to ask why the author had decided to “politicize” the series at this late date. 

Then, two days ago, on the editorial page of the New York Times, cultural critic Edward Rothstein had this to say about the controversy:

[T]here seems to be no compelling reason within the books for her after-the-fact assertion. Of course, it would not be inconsistent for Dumbledore to be gay, but the books’ accounts certainly don’t make it necessary. The question is distracting, which is why it never really emerges in the books themselves. Ms. Rowling may think of Dumbledore as gay, but there is no reason why anyone else should.

Maybe Rothstein is right—there’s no good reason for this.  It’s a distraction.  We should probably laugh and dismiss the furor as simply another bizarre attempt to sexualize a fictional character.  Remember Tinky-Winky, the purple Teletubby, or, further back, the rumors about Bert and Ernie.  How silly was that?  Of course, in those cases, it was clergy from the religious right who were worried that public television was sneaking hidden agendas into the antics of asexual puppets.  In this case, the situation seems different; for it is not a critic, but the author herself, Ms. Rowling, who has “outed” her creation.  Now, why would she do that? 

In 1963, Motown great Marvin Gaye, with members of both the Supremes and the Four Tops doo-whopping in the background, produced a song that climbed all the way to #3 on Billboard’s R&B chart.  The popular tune was about love gone wrong, and Gaye entitled it, “Can I Get a Witness.”  In the ensuing years, the song was so popular that numerous other artists covered it, including Stevie Wonder, The Rolling Stones, and Rod Stewart.  More recently, the title phrase in Gaye’s hit song has become a catchy refrain in American hip-hop.  Can I get a witness?  If you are at all familiar with the roots of Rock and Roll, it probably won’t surprise you that Gaye’s inspiration for the song came (as was so often the case) from a less-famous gospel number performed by the Swan Silvertones; and, yes, their music is on I-Tunes.  What you may not know, depending on the amount of time that you have spent in African-American worship services, is that the Silvertones took as their inspiration a question that is often asked by black preachers in the midst of their Sunday sermons:  “Can I get a witness?” 

Now, when this inquiry is uttered in worship (Can I get a witness?), it is important to know that it is not intended as a serious question; it is not something that you are meant to ponder through the coming week.  It is a question that, in the call-and-response rhythm of African-American preaching, the congregation is supposed to answer in the moment, from the depths of their faithful hearts.  Where did it come from?  It is difficult to pin-point, but the first written record that we have of this memorable phrase comes from the late 1800’s and the writings of an African-American educator, Nannie Helen Burroughs.  Burroughs was a native Virginian, a devout National Baptist, an educator, and an early civil rights leader.  Her father also happened to be a preacher.  All of this contributed to Burroughs’ work, calling for a stronger role for women in the church that she loved.  In a speech to her denomination entitled, “How the Sisters are Hindered from Helping,” Ms. Burroughs described the way in which the request “Can I get a witness?” would arise in a sermon.  It usually comes right after the preacher has told a story.  In posing this question the preacher asks if anyone in congregation can affirm what has just been said, with an “Amen” or the clapping of hands or maybe even verbal testimony that what is being said in the pulpit is true.  “Can I get a witness?”  Amen.  Yes, preacher, that’s the way it is.  I bet Ms. Burroughs got a lot of Amens that day, because in the aftermath of her speech, women were welcomed more fully into the mission work of the National Baptist Church.

There’s a whole lot of theology packed into the question, “Can I get a witness?”  It implies that the gospel that we share is alive and active, that the God we worship is busy knocking about in the world today.  It also places the community at the heart of Christian proclamation.  For with this question, one of the faithful says to the other, “this is how I am experiencing God,” in order to ask, “Are experiencing this, too?”  On the road to Emmaus the resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples, opens the scriptures to them, and then in the breaking of bread is revealed to them.  Before they have finished chewing, Jesus vanishes.  As these befuddled, wide-eyed souls resume their journey, they turn to each other for confirmation of what has just happened.  “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as we walked along, listening to him open the scriptures?”  You experienced what I just experienced; didn’t you?  Can I get a witness?

Now, all this talk of experience (while biblical, to be sure) is enough to get a true-blue Presbyterian worried.  After all, one of the strengths of our Reformed tradition is the recognition that human experience can be a source of moral rot.  We never want to imply that just because people can point to a “common” experience means that they have latched onto God’s truth.  We have seen too many cases when demagogues have used similar-sounding rhetoric to goad people into pooling their prejudices.  Consider the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi party, or any of history’s hate-mongers; they, too, have experiences that they want to hold up as the truth.  They spew their vitriol, and then ask if others haven’t experienced blacks, Jews, women, Roman Catholics, immigrants, homosexuals, Bosnians, and Native Americans that way, too.  Their awful “witness” reminds us of the old Methodist adage: taken alone, human experience is a one-legged stool that cannot stand as an authority.

So, is the question, “Can I get a witness?” theologically appropriate?  Does it elevate raw experience over other sources of God’s truth?  In a book that I read to my children this past week, a young boy, who has been planning to go trick-or-treating, discovers that his mad scientist costume (a white lab coat) has been dyed pink.  It had taken on this new color after being swirled in hot water with clothes that belonged to other members of his family.  It occurs to me that our inner lives could be compared to that clothes-washer.  We have all sorts of stuff tumbling around inside of us: secular stuff with sacred stuff; our family history being tossed around with the history of God’s people; our reasoning mind coloring our emotional hearts; a few memorized snippets of the creeds inking the same waters in which a depressing e-mail swims; the vivid recollection of a cold stare and a question about our commitment to Jesus spinning in the wash with a memory of a gentle Sunday School teacher pushing paper figures across a flannel landscape.  Somehow, all these things (and so much more) are at play inside of us; somehow, all these ingredients are tumbling around together, coloring each other.  So that, when we give testimony in front of the community of faith, we are always (inevitably) wearing pink lab coats.  When we dare to speak, to give witness, to point to God in the world, we are sharing both the gospel and ourselves in some strangely tinted, holy amalgam.

When the Apostle Paul writes to Christians in the bustling city of Thessalonica—a city where he and his sidekicks Silvanus and Timothy had planted a church—he writes with great affection.  It is a love letter.  Listen again to his language: “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves.”  Also our own selves!  These words are striking.  In this section of the letter, scholars like Beverly Gaventa, who will address us tomorrow, see Paul describing what it means to be a true apostle—a witness.  In this, Paul claims that sharing the good news of God requires more than a disciple armed with a profound subject; it insists that apostles do more; that they share their lives, their selves, their energies, their stories with each other.  Isn’t this, after all, the message of the incarnation?  God didn’t send us a textbook on faithful living; God came, sharing God’s own self with us, for us. 

About nine months ago a friend said to me, “Scott, I think that the legislative period in the life of our troubled denomination is drawing to a close and we are entering a judicial season.”  I asked him to elaborate.  “Well,” he said, “it’s like this.  We have fought and fought and fought over the Book of Order.  We have battled ourselves into a bloody stalemate, and now I think, with the passage of the PUP report, we are not going to have as much energy for the next charge onto the legislative fray.  Instead, we are going to move to a time when individual cases are being decided on the floors of presbyteries, and at session meetings, and in front of the Permanent Judicial Commission.  This means that our church’s conflict will no longer be focused on a generic issue; it is going to be about specific candidates.”  I think his analysis was pretty good, although it remains to be seen whether this change of venue will move us (as a denomination) a single step closer to the kingdom of God.  What I do believe is that if we are, in fact, entering a judicial season in sorting through the church’s current turmoil, if we are entering a time then these issues will be considered in the context of ecclesial courts, then, it is the time, my friends, for witnesses.  

I don’t know about you, but the first things that come to my mind when people start talking about court proceedings and witnesses are John Grissom novels and Hollywood trial movies.  My favorites include Grissom’s “A Time to Kill,” and “A Few Good Men” with Tom Cruise playing a Navy JAG and Jack Nicolson a colonel in the Marines.  Their final courtroom confrontation is a classic, as one circles the other, jaws set, neck veins throbbing, voices bellowing…  “I want the truth!”  “You can’t handle the truth!”  Still, as much as I like that kind of thing, probably because it gives me the visceral sense that justice is happening, it ain’t the church.  At least, not the way Paul sees it.  In Thessalonica, Paul knew that the Christian community had been visited by philosophers who gained an edge in arguments (and received financial rewards) by appealing to people’s base emotions and by ridiculing their opponents’ morals and motives.  In today’s text, Paul seems momentarily tempted by this image when he says “we might have made demands as apostles” (“I want the truth!”), but then he pulls back, offering an alternative perspective that is so tender it may well make us blush (well, at least half of us).  “We were gentle among you,” writes the apostle, “like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.”  According to Gaventa, this image evokes the most primal way in which a nurse cares for her own children: by breast-feeding them, nourishing them, sustaining them with her own flesh.

Ok, so back to J. K Rowling and her world-famous wizard.  Is it, as author Edward Rothstein suggests, “irrelevant” that Dumbledore is gay?  On one hand, I would have to say, “yes.”  Having read the entire series, it’s true, that Dumbledore’s sexuality doesn’t seem to be a factor as the wizard administers a school for magical young people, honing their minds, developing their skills, challenging their ethics, and eventually leading them in a larger fight against the powers of darkness and death.  On the other hand, Rowling’s disclosure makes a clear point.  While a person’s sexual orientation is never irrelevant to that individual, is it ever a determining factor in predicting who will and who will not run the good race?  So, far from being the distraction that Rothstein suggests, Rowling’s comments come as a revelation, moving these popular books from the category of escapist fiction to that of gentle witness.

I love the cover of this evening’s bulletin, Fra Angelico’s fresco of “All the Saints.”  When you look at them, whom do you see?  What do you see?  Do you wonder, in that great cloud of witnesses, how many were gay?  How many were straight?  Does it matter?  I used to argue that it didn’t matter at all: that it was irrelevant to God, and therefore ought to be irrelevant to us; but now, as we enter into this judicial season, I am changing my mind.  I think we all need to sit in small circles and tell the tales that strike us as relevant to our faith, and then boldly pose the old, old question, “Can I get a witness?”  I think we in the church need to stop writing position papers and start sharing our stories… honest stories, painful stories, goofy stories, until the gospel stains us pink with its gentle grace and we find ourselves standing with all the ordinary folks at the end of the race.

Edward Rothstein, “Is Dumbledore Gay? Depends on Definitions of ‘Is’ and ‘Gay’,” The New York Times, October 29, 2007.

©Scott Black Johnston

Sermon for Old First Presbyterian Church
August 29, 2004

Pamela Byers
Elder, First Presbyterian Church, San Francisco
Executive Director, Covenant Network of Presbyterians

Luke 14: 1, 7-14
Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16

As we read the gospels, it becomes clear that Jesus just had no standards at all about whom he ate with. His utterly indiscriminate table fellowship, in a society with strict rules of precedence and protocol for dining, caused plenty of critical comment. People noticed and complained that he ate with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes – all sorts of unsuitable people!

In today’s gospel story, though, Jesus is at a proper dinner in a proper company – he’s having a Sabbath meal at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. The story is set up like a typical Greek symposium – with cultivated guests exchanging civilized conversation.

Jesus takes the opportunity, however, to comment provocatively on the behavior both of his fellow guests and of the host. First he notices how everyone’s moving their place cards around to sit closer to the head table. Don’t shove yourself forward like that, he says – you only risk embarrassing yourself.

Most scholars think that Luke probably added this particular bit of worldly wisdom to catch the attention of the gentiles who were his particular audience; but its punch-line is certainly a very common theme in Jesus’ teaching:

“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (v.11)

It’s by no means only the Pharisees or the gentiles, of course, who jockey for position. All the gospels report the disciples arguing among themselves as to who is more important; the mother of James and John even comes to Jesus and asks to have her sons sit at his right and left hand in the Kingdom (Matt. 20: 24-28). In Luke’s recounting, the disciples are even arguing about “which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest” during the last supper! (Lk. 22: 24). Any of this sound familiar?

Getting back to this slightly awkward dinner party –
Jesus then turns his attention to the host, and perhaps not too graciously questions his guest list.

“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” (vv. 12-14)

Jesus is not here condemning normal socializing among family and friends. We know that he himself enjoyed dinners at the home of his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and at Peter’s home; and when he begins the Last Supper he tells his closest companions, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Lk. 22:14). Eating with friends is one of the joys of life; a “companion” after all is someone with whom you break bread.

But fellowship is not meant to be merely transactional, in which we collect and repay social debts. And extending hospitality or kindness just to our friends is no special merit. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Plain earlier in this gospel,

“If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.” (Lk 6: 33)

Instead, Jesus tells those gathered at this dinner party,

“When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (v. 14)

– people who would never expect to be invited , people who could never repay the hospitality – people, by the way, who could really use a good dinner.

Jesus in his life and teaching carried into startling and radical reality the demands of the Covenantal law that underlies the whole Old Testament. When God tells the Israelites over and over again, “You will keep my law, and I will be your God, and you will be my people,” the Law God is talking about is fundamentally a law of redistributive justice. When the prophets warn Israel in the Old Testament, it is always because they are both “running after false gods” and failing to uphold the demands of justice. While everyone in that Covenant has a strictly defined place, everyone also has rights. For example, the Sabbath is not only for the landowners but also for the slaves – even for the farm animals.

Torah law very consistently commands care for those unable to care for themselves, especially those structurally without power – the widow, the orphan, the stranger. The connection is clear and direct: “You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (Lev. 19:34).

Jesus’ whole life and ministry ask in effect, Why aren’t we doing this? The way of the world, under the Roman empire or the American empire, assumes that you get ahead by working hard, cultivating the right connections, accumulating money and position and power.

Very counter-intuitively, Jesus offers a whole other vision. “Blessed are you poor,” he said, “for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” (Lk 6:20-21) This can be true, his life shows, not just in a dreamed-of future, but right now, in a community of true sharing. When Jesus fed the five thousand, it was a preview of the eschatological banquet, in the Kingdom of God. However one interprets that miracle (and there are as many interpretations as interpreters), it all begins with the five loaves and two fish of one of those present.

The earliest Christians do seem to have practiced a radically communal lifestyle. Acts tells us that

“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the people.” (Acts 2: 44-47)

Scholar John Dominic Crossan suggests that this is how the early church managed to spread, against all likelihood, after its founding prophet had been killed. All very well to tell folks, he says, that Jesus had been raised from the dead – the Graeco-Roman world knew plenty of stories of gods and demigods who overcame normal human boundaries. But if Jesus claimed –as he did – that God’s reign of justice and community was already breaking in, the early church could show that in its own life(1)

Jesus went even further in his own activities and teaching, though. Besides the poor, he associated with all sorts of unsuitable people. He spoke at length to a Samaritan woman (John 4: 6-29); he let a prostitute anoint his feet (Luke 7: 36-50); he made himself ritually impure by touching lepers and even the dead (Mk 1: 40-45, Mk 5: 35-42, and parallels).

And he suggests in his surprising advice to the host that a generous dinner would include not only the poor but also “the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (Lk 14: 13). These are the same folks invited in the more familiar parable of the Great Banquet that immediately follows this passage (see Lk 14: 21). These folks interestingly enough are specifically excluded from serving as priests in Mosaic law (Lev. 21: 17-23).

Just whom to include in the shared meal was an active issue for the first Christians. The book of Acts is full of their discussions about whether Jews and Gentiles could eat together. But both Peter and Paul came to realize and assert that “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34, Rom. 2:11). That decision by the early church, of course, allows us – who are not Jews – to be here today!

Getting it right – acting like a community that mirrors the love of God – wasn’t much easier for the early Christians than it is for us. Most of the letters in the New Testament were written by Paul or other apostles to local churches that were losing heart or setting up artificial barriers or squabbling among themselves.

This morning’s epistle reading was probably written to a community of believers in or near Rome, fifty years or so after the death of Jesus. These Christians are getting discouraged as they wait for Jesus’ expected return. The writer exhorts this community to persevere in following Jesus’ example.

“Let mutual love continue,” he tells them. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Heb. 13: 1-2)

The community they need to rebuild has at least two critical parts. The fellowship here translated as “mutual love” is philadelphia – love of brothers and sisters. The “hospitality to strangers” is philoxenia – love of outsiders. Both are essential to a Christian community. (2)

Hospitality is a core value for Jesus and for his church. It is also, I am glad to believe, a core value for this church. If you look at the back of your bulletin, you’ll see this statement. Let’s read it together:

“Old First Presbyterian Church is an inclusive community of faith united by trust in God and faith in Jesus Christ. We warmly welcome all who accept and respond to God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ and who desire to participate in the life and ministry of this church.”

The session adopted that statement, after lengthy study, ten years ago. It was part of a multi-year process by which we decided that we wanted to be sure gay and lesbian Christians would be fully welcome here. It’s very important to me for that reason, of course. But it also speaks to an even larger value.

In the world Jesus envisioned – the world we in the church are supposed to represent – everyone is invited and everyone is welcome. Just a few verses before our gospel reading for today are these words that we hear each time we celebrate communion:

“People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.” (Lk 13: 29)

The function of our worship – indeed the function of the church – is to give some glimpse of the Kingdom or reign of God. We try to show in our life together what it would mean – what it does mean – if God is in charge in our lives. One of the things it means, it seems to me, is that we don’t get to choose who we hang out with. God does the inviting. And fortunately God’s imagination is much better than ours!

One of the great pleasures for me, sitting in choir every week, is seeing everyone come in and rejoicing in the varied and quirky bunch we are. All of us bring gifts to one another that we probably wouldn’t have imagined. In so much of our lives – in our businesses, our neighborhoods, our political clubs – we spend our time with people pretty much like ourselves. Old First – any church, I would hope – introduces us to people we might not otherwise know.

I always look forward to Visitors lunches because they are so full of surprises and blessings. The Indonesian newly-weds. The young lawyers just back from hitch-hiking around the world. The security guard returning to the church after decades away. The young woman studying to be a missionary in Cameroon, and the homeless man who startled us all by knowing its capital (Yaounde, if you want to know!) The foster mother of two young girls and the single man caring for his nephews during their parents’ messy divorce. The girl training for the trapeze and the man whose family ran circuses for years. The new member who joined because he fell in love with Calvin’s theology and the new member who, like the early Christians, came steeped in the Old Testament. The courageous men who pull themselves away from destructive life on the streets and put together a new life one day at a time.

It’s not obvious how most of us would meet in other circumstances. But in the church – as the church – we become family, because we are all adopted by God.

The Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee gives a big Thanksgiving dinner every year. They started it specifically for the gay and lesbian members whose original families don’t want them. Their church family says, Welcome. (You won’t be surprised to hear it’s a great dinner!) That’s also the impulse behind the Larkin Street Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners – offering a family celebration to people far from home. And behind our whole Welcome Ministry. Hospitality is what we in the church are or should be all about.

Saint Benedict lived in the 6th century and founded a monastic order whose monasteries and abbeys are still thriving today. Actually I visited one earlier this month. Benedict in his rule says, “A monastery is never without guests” and goes on to pose this challenge: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.” Presbyterian writer Kathleen Norris, who has made several stays with the Benedictines, writes that “if it regularly exercises enough hospitality so as to attract guests, it is a monastery. If it doesn’t, it is not.” (3)

That might also be a description of a real church. “If it regularly exercises enough hospitality so as to attract guests, it is a church. If it doesn’t, it isn’t.”

Do you remember how Luke ends his gospel? After Easter, two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem toward Emmaus. Someone joins them on the road, and as they walk along they discuss the Scriptures and the recent events. The disciples talk about Jesus and tell the stranger that some folks even say he has risen from the dead. As evening draws near, they get to their home and invite the stranger in.

These disciples have been discussing the scripture with this man and testifying to Jesus’ life for some hours. But it is only when they themselves offer hospitality – when they themselves make the invitation and share the meal – that “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luke 24: 13-31). (4) Jesus becomes real to us only as we ourselves live into the reality of his kingdom by offering hospitality to all who present themselves – as if to Christ himself.

Our epistle lesson ends,

“Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb 13: 15-16)

Living as Christ’s disciples includes not only “confessing his name” but also works of mercy and the sharing or fellowship – koinonia – that is Christian community. As we at Old First look ahead to the next stage in our life together, I hope these values will continue to infuse our church.

May it be so.

1. Crossan, Excavating Jesus; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001; pp 306-308.

2. Fred Craddock, New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. XII; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998; p. 162.

3. Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; New York: Riverhead Books, 1998; pp. 263-264.

4. J.D. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998; p. xi.

I am acutely uncomfortable—standing here, giving this talk. Partly, it’s the assignment, to speak about the church as it ought to be. The church is the theological topic about which I care most. I know that it is way down the list of what Calvin liked to call the heads of Reformed doctrine. He got to it in the fourth of four books of the Institutes, and it hasn’t advanced much in most people’s theological systems since. Indeed, many contemporary Christians think the church is dispensable, that God is more easily accessed outside the limits and constraints of church structures.

In my own salvation history, however, the church is central. My conversion experience occurred, not incidentally, in a church building. (Happily, I’m a liberal Presbyterian, so I don’t need to tell you anything more about that.) I was introduced to Jesus Christ by the actions as well as the words of his followers. I have grown in the faith because others have taken the time to teach it to me. Tom Torrance says that there isn’t any other way: in a tradition in which “the Truth is an historical person…, it must be communicated by other persons, in time. It is not something we can tell to ourselves.”(1)  And when my faith has flagged, as it does all the time, I depend on others—including some in this sanctuary and on this platform—to keep it for me. Perhaps God arranges exclusive assignations with some people, but not with me. In my case, it’s always been a group date. Given what I owe the church—in it and through it my life was saved—it seems cheeky of me to tell it what it should be like. It might be more fitting for the church to set the standard for me.

It’s not only the topic that daunts me this morning; it’s also the audience. Present in this room are two groups that have ministered to me in powerful ways in recent years. One is gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Presbyterians. The church has developed the bad habit of talking about this group as if it is a problem for the denomination. Let me address you directly. You have not been a problem for me. Quite the opposite: you have provided me with luminous examples of how to live a Christian life under adverse conditions—very adverse conditions. This denomination’s policies toward its GLBT members are restrictive to the point of cruelty. We tell many of you who want to offer sacrifices for the good of the church—countless hours of volunteer service as elders and deacons or a lifetime in demanding and low paid pastoral ministries—that your life choices are so much more sinful than the rest of ours that we’ve had to erect special barriers to keep you from laying your gifts at the altar. Our church’s teaching that all same-sex acts are wrong, no distinctions, has downright perverse effects. The more you conform to the practices the church blesses and honors for heterosexuals—public pledges of fidelity to another person, family commitment to the nurture of children—the less likely that you can be ordained and that you will be welcomed to work out your discipleship in most Presbyterian congregations.

Yet here you are, in this room, in this denomination, or eager to be, if only we had a place for you. You keep on witnessing to the truth of Christ in your lives. You keep on offering help that the church desperately needs but is too proud and stubborn to accept. You show us your anger—I take that as a compliment, a sign of trust. You keep on ministering, with tender compassion, to me and to many, many others who have the approval and privileges that have been denied to you. Your unselfishness lifts my sights. It makes it difficult, however, for me to lecture you about the future, because many of you live your lives better in the present, under far more difficult conditions, than I do.

The other group that makes me feel awkward and shy this morning is evangelical and conservative Presbyterians. Richard Mouw is here as their chief proxy, but others are present as well. I stumbled into the evangelical world by a kind of academic accident. Fifteen years ago, I decided to do some research in an evangelical seminary, not because I had any interest in conservative Christianity, but because some colleagues and I wanted to understand how the culture of a seminary shapes the ministers who are formed there, and culture is best studied from the outside. I could not have been more of an outsider if I had gone to do my research in Bali. I grew up in a home so liberal that when Dwight Eisenhower was elected president, I couldn’t believe it. In all my eight years, I’d never met a self-identified Republican—how could a party with no members elect a president? My liberal Catholic girlhood and liberal Protestant adult life were similarly sheltered. When I arrived on the campus of that seminary fifteen years ago, I knew very few evangelicals.

But I did have definite expectations for what I would find. They had been set by the liberal culture of which I had always been a part. I believed—I think this is standard on our side of the aisle—that the only reason anyone would choose to become or remain a religious conservative is lack of the psychological strength to confront the ambiguity and uncertainty of the world as it is. (I have since learned that evangelicals harbor a corresponding theory about liberals, that we are liberals because we lack the moral fortitude to confront the truth and live by it.) I also expected the evangelical conservatives with whom I would be more or less living for the next three years to be theological dinosaurs, mired in pre-critical questions long ago settled and forgotten by the rest of us. I had expectations, too, of what I would not find. I did not think that evangelicals would be either funny or fun. More seriously, I did not expect my faith to be enriched by what I saw and heard at the seminary I was studying. Indeed, I thought it would be severely tested by the things that were said and done there in the name of Christian faith.(2)

Now it’s true, Richard, that you, the one evangelical I knew fairly well when I started my project, didn’t fit this description. A guy who can drive a Dodge Dart without damage to his self-esteem has a lot of psychological strength. You know hundreds of funny stories, and you’ve got a searching, well-furnished mind. I assumed that you were the exception. I found out that you are not. Exceptional, yes: your intelligence, integrity and depth would be in any religious culture. But many evangelicals, in my experience, don’t fit those liberal stereotypes. In other settings, I have talked at length about what I have learned about evangelicals. I don’t have time to do that today, so let me summarize my findings in a few sentences.

I have discovered that you evangelicals (I’ll talk to you directly, too) are not, as a class, fearful and unstable, at least, no more than the rest of us. You do have some rather ruthless colleagues, and I confess I still find myself wondering what happened to them early on to make them that way. But I have met some of you who are much better than I am at looking at yourselves and the world with unsparing honesty and at changing your minds and behavior when that is warranted. Thanks to you, I’ve had to begin work on an alternate theory of why people become religious conservatives and stay that way. I’ve also learned that theology in your world is a mixed bag. The range is vast. Some of it is, indeed, fossilized debates that most Christians, even many evangelicals, don’t care about any more. But there is also lively theological conversation in the evangelical world that has reminded me how much gold there is in classic Christian tradition and how it still enriches all of us, including liberals. I have to admit, too, that I’ve had a good time, Richard, with you and your ilk. Among other things, I’ve learned a slew of good jokes about evangelicals.

But the biggest surprise for me has been that my experience in what is still for me a very strange religious culture has not shaken my faith; it has strengthened it. This is the doing of particular Presbyterians, first you, Richard, then others. Despite your best efforts, you have not changed my opinions. But early in each of the relationships that have become important to me, there was a moment–a sort of spiritual ka-ching–when we both knew, and knew that the other knew, that we were hearing the same gospel, loud and clear. I am not proud of the fact that, in every case, my evangelical friends spoke first, affirming my faith before I affirmed theirs. I’m not proud that I failed to take the initiative, but I’m grateful that they did.

I’m grateful, too, that a number of you have publicly affirmed the faith and sincerity of the liberals you know and respect, a risky act in your party, where some leaders like to stir up the troops by claiming that our party practices a different religion. One such public affirmative statement that I treasure personally is a nominating speech by Price Gwynn, a card-carrying conservative. He wrote it on my behalf when I faced conservative opposition in an election for a slot on a General Assembly committee. “Barbara Wheeler is a faithful follower of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Price said. “That doesn’t keep her from being wrong most of the time.” Just the point: the capacity to recognize each other as Christ’s own despite how wrong we are, about so many things, is proof that the gospel is true—it really does cut through our wrongness and other people’s. The fact that that happens strengthens faith. Because some of you evangelicals recognized me as a Christian first, however, or first had the courage to say so, I am reluctant to instruct you about how to be the church. You know how. You’ve shown me.

There is one more item in the catalog of factors that complicate any attempt to think together here about the church. Not to put too fine a point on it: the two groups I have named that have been the church so powerfully to me in recent years can’t stand each other. Of course there are exceptions. I am far from the only Presbyterian who has found faith and friendship in unexpected places. Generally, though, these two groups avoid and terrify each other. Each is deeply fearful that it and the wider church will suffer if the other gains any more power or prominence than it has already. What can I possibly say about the church in the presence of groups—many groups, for the alienation I have named is by no means the only one dividing this denomination—how to talk about the church when we are so deeply estranged from each other?

How about this? They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth. What if we not only acknowledge the fact that we are strangers to others in our own denomination (according to my Greek lexicon that is the first sense of “confess” here, “admit”); but also affirm it—the second sense, declare it; and even praise the fact, give thanks for it—the third connotation of confess (Let us praise God…, confess God’s name [Heb 13:15])? Instead of denying our estrangement, or bemoaning it, or whining in good 21st-century fashion that it makes us tired, why not embrace it as a gift from God? How’s this for a model of the church that we are called to become: A company of strangers, who like Abraham and Sarah set out for a new place, because from a distance all of us, in our own weird ways, [have glimpsed the promises of God] and greeted them?

This image of the church as a band of strangers who accept our discomfort with each other as God’s way of moving us forward may seem grimly Calvinistic, the sort of thing that Garrison Keillor had in mind when he said that Presbyterians are those folks who think that having a good time with nice people in a pleasant place makes you stupid. The image certainly flies in the face of the best marketing advice about how to grow your church or denomination: create a warm, friendly enclave where like-minded people can find refuge from the tensions of contemporary life. A church something like that—or churches—is what the proponents of a cool, clean division of the denomination claim to have in view. (They are dreaming. Having just studied the bloody split of the Presbyterian Church in the USA in 1837 under circumstances not all that different from our own, I am certain that peaceful or gracious schisms are not possible.) But I suspect that even those of us who hate the idea of an outright split have a secret hankering for a church in which they, or at least the most irritating of them, won’t be around to make our lives miserable. If we hammer each other long enough with whatever weapon our side has at its disposal at the moment, maybe the other side will eventually be cowed into silence, give up or go away, and we will have an improved if not completely purified church that is much more fun to be part of.

I want to advocate an alternative: a tense, edgy, difficult church made up of zenoi, strangers, who cling to each other for dear life in the same chilly, rocky baptismal boat because we are headed to the same destination: a better country. If I had time, I think that I could make the full-blown ecclesiological case for a church of strangers; but for this conversation I’ll stay with three practical advantages: strangeness is better for us, better for the church, and better for the world than the warmer and cuddlier options. I will try quickly to convince you that these claims are true.

Claim one: A church that contains members who we think strange, even barbaric, is a healthier setting for us, for our formation as Christians. We like to think that a church of our kind, one that excludes those who believe incorrectly and behave badly by our lights, would be a better school for goodness than the mixed church we’ve got. It is not necessarily so. Familiarity and affinity breed bad habits as well as virtues. Richard has already confessed an unhealthy family pattern of conservatives: contentiousness. I have seen it with my own eyes. When I arrived on the campus of that evangelical seminary I studied, I had steeled myself for a lot of liberal-bashing that I would not be able to counter because ethnographic researchers are supposed to keep their personal views to themselves. I was surprised, and I have to say a little hurt, that the faculty and students in that school rarely mentioned liberals. There was a good deal of hostile theological rhetoric, but almost all of it was directed at other evangelicals. As Richard has written in The Presbyterian Outlook, if this denomination split, within minutes the new conservative church would be organized into warring factions. Aggressiveness is part of conservative religious culture; it’s both the secret of its effectiveness and its downfall. When other targets are not available, evangelicals tend to turn their aggressiveness on themselves with special vehemence. In one of our exchanges at Fuller, Richard pointed this out and told the audience that he hoped the church wouldn’t divide, because far more good could be done by him contending with people like me than by him beating up on them.

And what about us so-called liberals? What are our bad family habits? It’s not easy to generalize about “us.” The very fact that there is no one name we all want to be called on the non-conservative side of the church signals that we are a loose association more than a party with a platform or community with a culture. But we do hang out together, without those Other Presbyterians, and when we do we can be, in fact often are, smug. We tend to look down on our opponents. We are pretty sure that we are advanced and others outmoded. When everyone else grows up, we believe, they will look and think like us. You could say that our progressive openness to the world, which is where this sense of being ahead of the curve comes from, is the secret of our effectiveness and also our downfall. In my experience, we are less likely to slide over into snobbishness, when “they”—those we have defined as inferior—are in the room, some of them thinking as clearly and acting as maturely as some of us.

So if one reason for joining a church is to get help for living more faithfully, the strange members are important. They make us self-conscious, maybe less likely to display some of the uglier traits of our sub-group and perhaps more aware that if we want more righteousness for the church and all of us in it, we may have to fix ourselves as well as those others

Claim two: the Presbyterian Church will be better off—more productive and more faithful—if we strangers in it hold on to each other. This denomination has a lot of important work to do; and though we would like to see all of it accomplished our way, the fact is that none of the factions, including our own, has the capacity or the skills to do it all alone. Richard has named two of the projects that estranged groups in the church could profitably work on together. One is Christology, which is high on the agenda not, I think, because we Covenant Network types have stepped over an orthodoxy line that is clear and easy to draw, but because none of us is able yet to say clearly or powerfully enough who Jesus Christ is in this religious situation and this world. The version of the Christological debate that is most audible inside the church and beyond takes place at the level of bumper stickers: “Jesus the Only Sole Singular Way” on their vehicles; “Many, Many Paths to God” on ours. We can do better than that. Our various parties and caucuses have different kinds of specialized knowledge: liberals are practiced in learning as Christians from other faith traditions; evangelicals have expertise in nurturing and sustaining intense personal relationships with Jesus Christ. There are some in the church—women, gays and lesbians, racial and ethnic minorities—who have experienced what it is like to suffer at the hands of the civic and religious establishment. That is valuable insight into what it means to be the body of Christ, who had similar experiences. Instead of battering each other with our different perspectives on Jesus Christ, we might listen for what complements and corrects our own view in what others have to say about their knowledge and love of him. Perhaps, if we did that, we could represent him more fully and accurately to a world that doesn’t know him very well. I think that he would be honored if we pooled our efforts in his behalf

And what about the issue that brings us to a Covenant Network conference? Is there anything to be gained by working together to resolve it? Richard and I know from experience how difficult this is. We do agree about two preliminary but critical matters: we agree that the question of homosexuality is important—the church has to face it. We also agree that important as it is, it is not a faith-breaker. Each of us—correct me if I’m wrong, Richard—thinks that the other, seriously mistaken as the other is, is a Christian, and a Reformed one at that. But beyond that, we do not agree even about how to define the challenge God has placed before the church. You, Richard, think that God wants us to hold the line, to keep traditional—you would say, Biblical—rules of sexual conduct firmly in place. I think that God is doing something different: expanding the church’s understanding, not of sex in the first instance, but of a deep and pervasive Biblical theme, hesed, loyal love. I think that God is teaching this church, chiefly through the impressive testimony of GLBT Presbyterians, that to love another person with one’s whole being and to pledge one’s life for that person’s welfare is not a sin. Far from it: such acts of self-giving love are channels through which grace can and regularly does flow—no way they should disqualify people for church leadership. Over the last two decades, many Presbyterians, most of them theologically and temperamentally moderate and some of them conservative, have come to recognize that God’s blessing is available to all who commit themselves to love God more fully by loving another person truly. Richard, this is not capitulation to a libertine culture. This expanding understanding makes the church and us in it more, not less holy. This is, I am deeply convinced, the work of the Holy Spirit.

On this issue, Richard, we really are strangers, far apart and mystified about each other’s outlook and convictions. Shall we stick with each other as we, and the whole church, continue to struggle about these things? You have implied that we should. You’ve candidly admitted that conservatives often don’t speak fairly or respectfully of homosexuals, especially when they are not around. From that I conclude that you think you can make a more faithful case if you are engaged with them and their allies.

I think the reciprocal is true for us. We make a strong case: God invites GLBT persons into full membership, committed partnerships and church leadership on the same basis as everyone else. But we tend to leave it at that, to give the impression that inclusion is the end of the story. Of course it is not. God incorporates us into Christ’s body for a reason: transformation. Evangelical theology and culture place heavy emphasis on that next step. Our side doesn’t have to agree with conservatives about what God is seeking to change or redirect or squelch—namely, all same-sex impulses—or about who is first in line for change. (I suspect that God’s priority is the privileged and powerful, including in the present instance we self-indulgent heterosexuals who have full church and society support for the promises we make, yet still don’t keep very well.) But we can stand our ground on these points and still let the evangelicals help us balance our word to the church: inclusion and acceptance, but also metanoia and new life. Who knows? If evangelicals listen intently to the testimony of faithful GLBT persons, and if our side accepts evangelicals’ prompting to admit our need and desire to be renewed, maybe we can strive together for a church as just and generous—and holy—as God’s grace.

The last and most critical reason for all of us Presbyterian strangers to struggle through our disagreements is to show the world that there are alternatives to killing each other over differences. As long as we continue to club the other Presbyterians into submission with constitutional amendments, judicial cases and economic boycotts, we have no word for a world full of murderous divisions, most of them cloaked in religion.

In 1869, the two Presbyterian denominations formed in the bitter split forty years before came back together. Seeking, said their reunion plan, to create a church marked by “diversity and harmony, liberty and love,” both assemblies met in Pittsburgh, in separate halls from which their members marched to opposite sides of a broad avenue.(3) Their moderators and clerks then stepped into the street and met in the middle. They “clasped hands,” according to a contemporary account, “and amidst welcomes, thanksgivings, and tears, they locked arms and stood together in their reformed relations.” (4)

The last and most critical reason for all of us Presbyterian strangers to struggle through our disagreements is to show the world that there are alternatives to killing each other over differences. As long as we continue to club the other Presbyterians into submission with constitutional amendments, judicial cases and economic boycotts, we have no word for a world full of murderous divisions, most of them cloaked in religion.

In 1869, the two Presbyterian denominations formed in the bitter split forty years before came back together. Seeking, said their reunion plan, to create a church marked by “diversity and harmony, liberty and love,” both assemblies met in Pittsburgh, in separate halls from which their members marched to opposite sides of a broad avenue.(3) Their moderators and clerks then stepped into the street and met in the middle. They “clasped hands,” according to a contemporary account, “and amidst welcomes, thanksgivings, and tears, they locked arms and stood together in their reformed relations.” (4)

1) Thomas F. Torrance, The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), xxxiii.

(2) The results of this study are reported in Jackson Carroll, Barbara G. Wheeler, Daniel O. Aleshire, Penny Long Marler, Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

(3) Minutes of the General Assembly, N.S. 1868, 508.

(4) Presbyterian Reunion: A Memorial Volume, 1837-1871 (New York, 1870), 275, 380; cited in Maurice W. Armstrong, Lefferts A. Loetscher, Charles A. Anderson, The Presbyterian Enterprise: Sources of American Presbyterian History (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), 221.

The Rev. L. William Countryman

Good Shepherd Berkeley
Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
October 5, 2003

Proper 22B: Gen. 2:18-24; Ps. 8/128; Heb. 2:9-18; Mark 10:2-9

The Rev. L. William Countryman, Sherman E. Johnson Professor in Biblical Studies at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (The Episcopal Seminary of the West), is a well-known biblical scholar and teacher as well as a gifted preacher. He is the author of many books, including Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church (with M. R. Ritley) (Morehouse, 2001); and Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and their Implications for Today (Fortress Press, 1988).

***

Jesus, in this morning’s Gospel, is caught up in a religious conflict about sexuality with some people who quote Scripture at him. Does this sound familiar? Maybe it’ll be worthwhile to watch and see how he deals with that.

To start with, it’s worth noticing that people in the first century were already fighting about the meaning of the Bible. Even then it was hard to figure it out. On the matter of divorce, the Torah actually had very little to say. It only mentions it once in passing, while dealing with a related issue (Deut. 24:1-3). And we know from other sources that first-century Jewish experts disagreed about the grounds of divorce. Could a husband divorce his wife just because he felt like it? Or only if she had committed some serious fault? Jesus was being asked to take sides in that argument. That way, one side or the other—or both—could find fault with his answer. Academic communities—the more they change the more they stay the same!

But instead of just wading into the argument in the way they expected, Jesus does something shocking. He says ‘Moses only allowed divorce in the first place because of your hardness of heart.’ Yikes! What is he saying here?! He’s saying that you can’t assume that, just because it’s in scripture, it’s the will of God! Some Bible verses express nothing more than the stupidity, the sullenness, the bigotry, the hardness of heart of the people who received them in the first place—and, who knows? maybe of the people who read them now.

After all, Jesus talks to them about ‘your hardness of heart.’ Now he’s not talking to the scum of the earth. He’s talking here to the particularly good people. They pay close attention to religion, they fulfill its demands, they’re the respectable pillars of their communities. And they’re all male. I suspect that that’s the particular issue in this case. They’re all male. The Torah is addressed to males. In that world, males were the public persons; women were private persons who were supposed to keep out of the public eye.

And it was males who made the decisions about marriage. Marriage wasn’t the sort of thing we tend to assume—young people falling in love and deciding to create a new family together. Marriage was a contract between the parents’ families: the woman’s family gave her away (you recognize the language) to bear a new generation of children for the husband’s family. She never even became a member of her husband’s family. If she bore a male heir and if she and the boy both lived long enough, she would finally have a secure place in it when it became her son’s family. But if she was divorced and sent away, the son remained with his father and she just had to hope that her natal family could and would take her back.

This may be hard for us to imagine, since it’s so foreign to our own mores. But it was the norm of the time. Marriage was something men did to women; and so was divorce. And divorce was usually a disaster for the woman. There were some exceptions. We know that women from influential families sometimes had the right to divorce their husbands; but that right had to be written into the marriage contract. It was sort of like the legal work-arounds that gay and lesbian couples today have to use in order to secure some of the basic rights that come to heterosexual married couples in the normal course of events. Basically, divorce was for men.

So Jesus takes this accepted cultural practice and the Scripture that was seen as backing it up. And he says: That’s not what God meant at all. That just reflects the mean-spiritedness, the hardness of heart, that’s treated as normal in our society. And he puts his questioners right on the spot with it: Moses said this because of your hardness of heart.

But you notice that Jesus isn’t in fact discarding the Scriptures, even though he is rejecting one particular text. Sometimes, when we’re looking for an easy way to understand these arguments, we distinguish between religious conservatives who take Scripture really, really seriously and religious liberals who don’t take it seriously at all. Is Jesus here being a conservative or a liberal? The system of classification doesn’t work, does it? Yes, he’s pitching one text out. But he’s also calling another one in and making quite a big deal of it and interpreting it in a way that nobody had ever understood it before.

The text he introduces, of course, is the last part of our Old Testament reading this morning:

A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

And then he adds his own commentary: ‘Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’ God, he says, has created something good here; you men can’t just use it for your human convenience and then discard it when a better match, a better family alliance comes along.

The Torah preserved the power that men had in a patriarchal society to abuse women. Jesus abolished divorce in order to protect women. [Incidentally, Jesus wasn’t the first person to notice that divorce was a bad thing. Some centuries before, the prophet Malachi had already claimed that God hates divorce (2:13-16). And Jesus grounds his changing of Scripture in Scripture itself: God didn’t intend to authorize hardness of heart; God intended to teach us how to love one another and do one another good.

Of course, some later Christians turned Jesus’ own statement into yet another license for hardness of heart. In Eastern Christianity, it was held that Jesus was establishing an ideal of lifelong marriage, a goal. But Western Christians long held that Jesus was establishing a rigid new law: no one can be divorced; if they are, they cannot remarry. Does that condemn you to spending the remaining decades of your life with an abusive spouse? Well, we’re terribly sorry, but that’s the rule. Hardness of heart sneaks in the back door again.

But what Jesus is really doing in this story is turning the whole use of Scripture on its head. The Scriptures, he says, are not a book of statute law to protect the powerful. They are a book of astonishing insights into God’s extraordinary generosity. The purpose of God all through Scripture is the well-being of God’s beloved human creatures. If you find things in the Scriptures that seem to speak otherwise, consider who benefits from that. Whose hardness of heart caused that blemish in the sacred text? Whose hardness of heart is maintaining that interpretation even now?

After all, one thing hasn’t changed. When religious people (that’s us) read Scripture, we’re still quite capable of using it to support and affirm our own hard-heartedness. White Christians in the early nineteenth century justified slavery by the Bible. After the Civil War, they justified discrimination against blacks by the Bible. Christians have justified wars by the Bible. Christians have justified Inquisitions by the Bible. Christians have justified the subordination of women by the Bible.

Hardness of heart is something that just keeps on cropping up. It wasn’t unique to the Pharisees in Jesus’ audience. It’s not specifically Jewish. It’s an equal-opportunity sin. It’s the property of the whole human race. You can’t escape it just by being religious; but you can’t escape it by ceasing to be religious, either. And if you quit reading the Scriptures, you not only lose the passages that cater to your particular kind of hard-heartedness; you also lose the ones that might wake you up and suddenly let you see how really big and generous God’s love is.

The people in our own world who like to wield the Bible as a weapon—they like to claim that they’re just reading it all literally. They’re not. They pick and choose what they will take seriously, just as Jesus did in this morning’s Gospel story. They just prefer not to notice what they’re doing. The big difference is that Jesus knew what he was doing and said it straight out.

Jesus wasn’t a biblical conservative. But he wasn’t a biblical liberal, either. He expected something important from the Scriptures; he expected to be challenged and surprised by God. And he also expected that when you are challenged and surprised by God, some of the details enshrined in the sacred text will be revealed for what they are, as concessions to hardness of heart—and they will have to go.

But how do you decide which ones to discard? That’s still the scary question for us, isn’t it? Well, you know, this passage does one more thing for us. It actually gives us a principle for making those decisions. I’m going to conclude with that because I hope you will take it away with you.

When Scripture seems to confirm your own hardness of heart, it’s wrong. Ditch it, just the way Jesus did. Conversely, when Scripture breaks your world open and makes it bigger and more loving, it is achieving its true goal.

Hang onto that principle. It may not be the whole story, but it’s a great place to begin and it will take you a long way. Hardness of heart is a dead giveaway that we’ve got it wrong. Only generous love can open the door to God’s truth.