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.

Barbara K. Lundblad
Professor of Preaching, Union Theological Seminary (NY)

Isaiah 56: 1 – 8, Matthew 15: 21 – 28

I am deeply honored that you invited a Lutheran to be part of this gathering – a tangible sign of our full communion agreement. While we may be in full communion, Lutherans and Presbyterians aren’t always on the same page. (You may have experienced that already.) Specifically, I’m talking about the lectionary page.  During this long green season of Ordinary Time, we continue to share the same Gospel reading Sunday by Sunday. But we go our separate ways with the First Reading. You follow the Revised Common Lectionary, reading in a three-year cycle through the great stories of the Old Testament. The Lutheran lectionary appoints an Old Testament text chosen to correspond to the Gospel.

So it was on August 17, we all heard about the Canaanite woman. But while you were reading about Joseph in Genesis 45, we Lutherans were reading the Isaiah text we just heard. Well, not exactly. Our appointed text was Isaiah 56: 1, (comma) 6-8. Why the comma? What didn’t somebody want us to hear? The eunuchs — the eunuchs are in the comma. I guess the lectionary committee decided the eunuchs weren’t necessary because the Gospel was about a foreign woman and —

All of a sudden the Canaanite woman jumps up off the page. “What’s the matter with you Lutherans? Couldn’t you read four more verses?” Well, people get anxious if the service goes longer than an hour. Isaiah and Matthew are both talking about foreigners and the lectionary planners thought eunuchs would just be distracting  “So they put the eunuchs in the comma! Don’t you see? Isaiah wanted foreigners and eunuchs together in this text. He even placed them side by side in the same verse:  “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people;’ and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’” What Isaiah put together let not the Lutherans put asunder.”

I wanted to ask the Canaanite woman how she knew so much about the Hebrew prophet, but I have a feeling that she knew the answer.  After all, she stands in a long line of stories about who can be part of God’s covenant people and who cannot.  Threads of exclusion and expansion are woven together in the great tapestry of the Bible with no attempt to get rid of one or the other. As we heard this morning, “biblical tradition is saturated with contradiction.”

• Ruth, the woman of Moab, becomes great, great grandmother to Israel’s greatest king, and she lives in the same testament as Esther the faithful Jew who saved her people, God’s chosen people
• The Ninevites – consummate evil empire — repent and receive God’s forgiveness in the book of Jonah, only a few pages from Daniel, the faithful Jew who refuses to bow to any God but the God of Israel

And Isaiah, writing after exile, seems to open the door to everybody, not only foreigners but eunuchs:
For thus says the Lord:

To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. (Is. 56: 4)

How could Isaiah say such a thing? Surely he knew the prohibition: “Those whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall not be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 23: 1, page 166 in your pew Bibles)  This text isn’t in the lectionary and if it’s ever read aloud, men usually cross their legs! The prohibition was written down. Whether someone was born a eunuch or castrated later in life, the text is clear. Where did Isaiah get this new word? “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” said the prophet, “because the Lord has anointed me, and sent me to bring good news to the oppressed…” (Isaiah 61: 1a) That is, the Spirit didn’t wait until Luke chapter 4. Isaiah dared to proclaim a new word different from the word written down. If he had been a literalist, he could not have spoken this expansive word.

The promise of a monument and a name is yad vashem in Hebrew. Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem memorial to those who were lost in the holocaust, especially those who had no children or those whose lives were cut off before they could bear children. The promise to them is yad vashem – “a monument and a name better than sons or daughters, an everlasting name which shall not perish.” This is Isaiah’s word out of exile to the childless eunuch: do not call yourself a dry tree; I have given you a name better than sons or daughters.

Let me be clear:  there is no indication that eunuchs in Isaiah’s text were gay, bisexual or transgender – though it seems likely they weren’t lesbian! In his book The Exegetical Imagination Jewish interpreter Michael Fishbane invites readers to bring their own experiences and questions to the biblical text:

The rhetorical question, ‘to what does this matter compare?’ opens up a hermeneutical space in which similarity is imagined…The significance of a similitude is thus that life serves to explain the text, and it gives a concreteness or directness to the text which it might otherwise not have. (1)

Perhaps the biblical texts are indeed as dynamic as Stacy Johnson told us yesterday afternoon, as dialogical as Walter Brueggemann told us this morning. We’re invited to bring our life stories and experiences to the text, to open an interpretive space in which similarity is imagined. We need not turn the eunuch into a homosexual to see the similitude between his life and the lives of those judged as “other” based on gender identity alone. A eunuch is a man, yet not quite a man. He doesn’t measure up to the culture’s definition of what is masculine. A eunuch is defined by his genitals even if the term “eunuch” is sometimes used metaphorically.  Though eunuchs often hold positions of responsibility in the military, as teachers, as personal attendants to kings and queens, as financial officers – like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8 – eunuchs are still seen as “other” in the culture. 

Even if a eunuch has a high position in the military or the king’s court, the written text makes it clear that a eunuch has no place “in the assembly of the Lord.”  Yet, Isaiah promises eunuchs just such a place: a place in God’s house and within God’s walls. Perhaps Isaiah already knew what our brother Walter dared to tell us today: “God violates Torah for the sake of relationship.”

Let me be clear about something else: Isaiah didn’t make this bold promise to eunuchs because they were eunuchs. No, it was because they keep the Sabbath and do those things that please God, because they hold fast God’s covenant. A few years ago a gay Orthodox rabbi wrote an article for the journal Tikkun. For obvious reasons he used a pseudonym Yakov Lavado:

In these verses Isaiah is speaking to his ancient Israelite community and trying to convince them that God’s covenantal plan for Israel is larger than they think…He speaks to two obvious outsider groups…the foreigners of non-Israelite birth, and the eunuchs…In the chain of the covenantal family, the foreigner has no past and the eunuch no future…It is their “exclusion” that the prophet addresses. The prophet comforts the pain of eunuchs with the claim that there are other ways in which to observe, fulfill, and sustain the covenant…(2)

Isaiah’s promise is deeper than a new category of people. For too long, categories have been the beginning and end of our moral deliberations in the church:  heterosexuality is good, homosexuality is bad; heterosexuals are good; homosexuals are bad. But categories alone cannot bear the weight of moral discernment. Isaiah spoke not only of eunuchs as a category, but of “eunuchs who keep my sabbath, who do the things that please me.” Rabbi Levado is clear that Isaiah’s promise goes deeper than category to covenant:

Gay people cannot be asked to be straight, but they can be asked to “hold fast to the covenant.” God will work the story out and link the loose ends as long as we hold fast to the covenant…Holding fast to the covenant demands that I seek a path toward sanctity in gay life…being gay does not free me from the fulfillment of mitzvoth. The complexities generated by a verse in Leviticus need not unravel my commitment to the whole of Torah. (3)

Krister Stendahl of blessed memory spoke a similar word within the Lutheran Church: “We must handle our sexuality responsibly. For Christians that means according to the principles of fidelity and mutuality. Such responsibility applies equally to those who have come to know themselves as homosexual.” (4) Of course, many Lutherans, including bishops, have protested saying, “How can we overturn two thousand years of Church teaching?” Longevity of tradition does not insure its faithfulness. It is possible to be wrong for a long time.

Even Jesus discovered that when he ventured into the region of Tyre and Sidon. He shouldn’t have been surprised to meet a Canaanite woman for this was her home. He was the one out of place. Some have tried to deal with this troubling story by saying that Jesus was testing the Canaanite woman to see if she really had faith. Well, that sometimes works to get Jesus off the hook. But in recent years, many New Testament scholars have dared to stop making excuses for Jesus’ harsh words to this desperate Canaanite mother. Mary Hinkle who teaches New Testament across the river at Luther Seminary speaks directly to the Canaanite woman:

Did you teach the teacher? I think you did. When he finally heard you and saw the face of your fierce need, God’s own Son came to see his life’s work as bigger than before. What he had not thought to look for in someone like you, he saw: faith. He saw your tenacious conviction that he could help, and amazed, he did.

I have thought that fear makes it impossible to imagine things. “Perfect fear casts out all imagination,” I have thought. But you were afraid—you must have been afraid of the demon and of your daughter’s suffering and afraid of all those foreign men and all their insults. You must have been afraid, yet you could see a new thing—“healing—at the same time…You imagined healing before it happened and you showed it to the Healer. (5)

Jesus heard this Canaanite woman and he was changed. Could it be that he also remembered “the covenantal God who is capable of self-criticism” (WB)?  If Jesus could be changed to see and act in a new way, can the Church also be changed? If Isaiah could speak a new word that contradicted the word written down, can we hear God speaking a new word in our own time?  The Canaanite woman dared to claim her right to crumbs that fell from master’s table. Many people in this sanctuary have been given crumbs and have been told to be satisfied. We have lived in the commas of Presbyterian propositions and endless Lutheran sexuality studies. Some have given up and gone away. But some of us stubbornly stay because we believe that “God has determined not to be God without us” (SJ). We believe we have been given a monument and a name, a place within God’s house — not because we are sexual and gender minorities. But because it is possible to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender and hold fast to God’s covenant.

Mark Twain was once asked, “Do you believe in infant baptism?” to which he replied, “Believe in it – hell, I’ve seen it.” We’ve seen something, too, haven’t we?  GLBTQ people in congregations small and large who are faithful to God’s covenant – people who believe that “God is for us, that Christ is with us, that the Spirit is present among us” (SJ). People whose committed relationships are marked by fidelity and mutuality, and hopefully blessed by the church even when the state refuses.

Soon we will see something miraculous right here: the eunuch and the Canaanite woman will come off the page to stand with us. Then each of us will reach out our hands for a piece of bread that is barely bigger than a crumb. But we believe it is more than a crumb. This is the Bread of the New Covenant. This is the very Bread of Life given for each of us. This bread will be sufficient tonight and forever.

Notes:

• Michael Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998) 3
• Yakov Lavado, “Gayness and God: Wrestlings of an Orthodox Rabbi,” Tikkun, 8:5, 58 and 59
• Kevado, 59
• Krister Stendahl, “Can Bishops Tell the Truth as They See It?” in Deborah A. Brown, ed., Christianity in the 21st Century (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2000), 188
• Mary Hinkle, “Letter to a Canaanite Woman” (sermon preached at Luther Seminary)

Insights from Stacy Johnson’s  and Walter Brueggemann’s presentations at this conference  are identified by their initials.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kimberly C. Richter

Sermon to the Covenant Network Southeast Conference

April 2, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

The Reverend Dr. Erin Swenson

Accepting the 2005 Lazarus Project Award at the Lazarus Banquet in Pasadena, CA.

February 26, 2005

Thank you. There is no way that any one person can be so honored, and this award is clearly for all those who are bridge-builders. When Don Crail called and said that the Lazarus Board had made this choice, it came completely out of the blue for me. I of course said, “yes” I would be here with you tonight.  Then shock set in as I found myself thinking about the countless people who have worked for so many years, the ones I have worked beside at General Assembly, and those who serve the church, both PCUSA and Universal in every capacity imaginable.

So in accepting this award I also know it is not mine… I can only hold onto it for all of us… a witness to stories told and untold of offering, sacrifice, and love that springs from the lives of so many of God’s most beautiful children.

It was one of those phone calls you put off as long as possible, yet there I was in the basement apartment in our home actually pressing the buttons on the phone. Everything inside me did not want to do it, and still my fingers pressed until the ringing sound emanated from the earpiece. A moment later and I was talking with the chair of our Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Lloyd. This is Eric Swenson. You probably don’t know me, but I am a minister member of the Presbytery, a pastoral counselor. I’m calling to inquire how one goes about changing their name on the roll of Presbytery.”

“Sure I know you,” came the reply. “Well, it’s really not too hard. You just need to send a letter to the committee stating the name you want changed, and we take it from there.”

“I see.”

“By the way, what are you wanting to change your name to?”

“Uhh… Erin Katrina Swenson.”

“Why would you want to change your name to that?”

“I am actually changing my gender expression to female, and thought that this would be a better name.”

Silence.

After an awkward pause he responded, “I see… I’m going to have to get back to you on that…”

This happened in 1995, as I was in the midst of rearranging my life from one lived in the masculine key to one lived in the feminine, and the “church piece” was the one I had dreaded the most. The phone call led to a letter in which I was required to outline just exactly what this process was, and what I intended regarding my ordination. I am sure they were not comforted by my request that my ordination be continued, yet that was what I wanted. The Committee on Ministry was up to the task, and gathered a list of reading materials, listened to experts, and finally interviewed me before recommending to the Presbytery in June 1995 that my name be changed without changing my status as an ordained minister in good standing.

The Presbytery wasn’t buying it, however. As the motion came to the floor, one of my colleagues rose to make a substitute. He wanted the request sent back to the committee for further study… you know, the Presbyterian version of the “deep six.” He went on to explain that there had been no other Presbyterian minister that had made such a change, and that this move would set a precedent for the entire denomination, perhaps for all of Protestantism. He argued that the church’s acceptance of people who had changed gender had never been established.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it HAD been done before. When the bible study for the 215th General Assembly arrived in my mailbox a couple of years ago, I dutifully read the assigned passages. The theme of the G.A. was “A house of prayer for all peoples” and the study was of Isaiah 56.

Now if you are a lectionary preacher, you will be facing this text in late summer of this year. And if you follow the lectionary you will be reading Isaiah 56:1, 6-8.That’s verse one, and then jumping to verse 6. Now commas are often used in lectionary readings to skip parts of a passage that add little to the meaning, or to pull logical units out from their background, so the comma isn’t unusual at all. But there are also times when the comma is used in other ways, and it so happens that this comma bears fully on the perspective of my colleague who believed that my predicament in the church is novel.

At the risk of making this sound like a sermon… I would like to look carefully at this for it bears witness to what we are doing here tonight. First, allow me to read the passage as the lector arranged it for us, the way you preachers might use it this in Year A, Proper 15, if you follow the comma:

Thus says the LORD: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed…And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant– these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered. (Is. 56: 1, 6-8)

Now these are powerful words indeed. They come at a place and time in the life of Israel when the question of membership in the church is foremost. The Jews had been scattered for a generation throughout the ancient world in what we know as the Babylonian Exile. The temple, the church, had been demolished in 587, bringing despair among the people. Now, however, the people were returning to Jerusalem, and the temple was being rebuilt.

But there was a problem because so many of the Jews had been scattered for so long. While they had maintained their worship of Yahweh and kept the law, they had also been absorbed into the cultures in which they lived. They had become foreigners with different dress, language, and custom… strangers among their own people.  The Deuteronomic Law was clear that foreigners were not to be allowed into the holiest places in the temple where the sacrifices were offered. They were allowed only in the outer courtyard where the women and children gathered. So when God declared through the prophet that these foreigners would be allowed in, and that their sacrifices would be accepted, it was radical indeed. One could imagine Jesus himself nodding in pleasure that those who had been cast out were now embraced fully with full membership in the church.

Funny thing about commas, though… pesky little things that can change the whole meaning of a statement. A book on punctuation by Lynne Truss was published a couple of years ago that made the best seller list on the strength of a comma. In fact the title of the book was from a now famous joke:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the Panda makes towards the exit. The Panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a Panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

[Truss, Lynne.Eats, Shoots&Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.2003, Gotham Books. The quote can be found on the outside back dust jacket.]

By adding one little comma to this simple statement about a Panda’s eating habits, our cute bear is turned into a hungry and impatient potential executioner. It might be argued that our comma, the one in the Revised Common Lectionary, doesn’t really change the meaning of the prophecy. I would like you to judge for yourself. Here’s the part of Isaiah 56 that is hidden in the comma:

Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing any evil.

Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.  (Is. 56: 2-5)

For us… ones so clearly left out, removed from the places of worship and community, these words are life-giving. Every TG gathering I have read this to has been filled with amazement and tears of joy. How have we as the church become a community where these people, so honored by God that they would have a place and name better than sons and daughters, are stuffed behind a damned comma? As Isaiah brings this to us God’s intention is anything but to hide us, but to make sure that we are honored and remembered. So why are we hidden in the comma?

Could it be fear?

That’s what it was for me. I was certain, at the age of 10 when I first knew I was different from other little boys, that I would never fully belong to the human race. Terrified by this truth, I endeavored for the next three and a half decades to hide… not behind commas, but behind the appearance of being normal.

In my fear I constructed myth to explain my quirk. I developed the idea that all boys wanted to grow up to be girls… it was just a secret. The trick was that when you grew up and fell in love with a woman that all the desire to BE a woman was refashioned into the love bond between you. (Remember that this was the 1950s, and same-sex attraction was also still well hidden behind commas and everything else it could hide behind.)

This is the old idea of completion in heterosexual bonding taken to new depths… and I know that now, but it comforted me. So that when I fell in love with Sigrid at the age of twenty I was cured instantly. She was (and still is) a wonderfully strong and handsome woman, and it worked. I was cured, at least for awhile and until about three months after our wedding, when I found myself standing alone in our bedroom dressed in Sigrid’s clothes devastated that I was not only NOT cured, but I had entangled my beloved in my web of fear-laden deceit.

It took 25 years for me to finally get honest with her… time to have children and build as normal an appearing life as I could. I was, in fact, quite successful. As a middle-class white male I found admittance to just about all of the “holy places” of life. I was a successful psychotherapist, honored by my peers and blessed by a robust and growing practice. I was a vital part of a number of ministries that spanned denominations and churches in Atlanta, developing the first successful premarital workshop in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and spearheading an equally successful movement in the state legislature to reform professional licensing in our state. I was flying high, well hidden behind the very large “comma” of my normalcy.

But those closest to me knew otherwise. While my public life seemed to soar, my private life descended into inevitable depression. Twenty years of my own therapy, the best antidepressants, and endless hours of solitude and prayer could not stave off the advancing darkness. Sigrid, my beloved, finally had her fill and through painful tears told me that she would be leaving me… that she loved me and always would, but could not let my depression destroy her spirit. Darkness set on my life with no apparent hope for a new dawn… depression moved to despair as I began to consider suicide.

And then an unexpected thing happened. Despair became the harbinger of hope for me as I had to accept that I could hide no longer. My life slid from behind my own personal “comma” as I came out to family, colleagues and friends, discovering in each new encounter that truth, like birth, is messy, life-giving, and often painful.

I decided that a gender transition was necessary to my continued health and well-being, and began the process that eventually led to that Presbytery meeting where I was sent back to the committee. Sixteen months later the church voted for the second time on my continued ordination, and this time the “comma” fell from the page as the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta approved my request, 186 to 161.

It is no simple victory, however, for there are many who continue to be afraid. This is why this award tonight is so important to all of us, for it signifies your willingness to help the church stop using commas to hide uncomfortable truth. In the ten years since my gender transition literally hundreds of transgender Christians have contacted me to find out if it’s really true. “Yes,” I tell them, but with hesitation. “The church was willing to accept me, but it’s not so simple.” We as a denomination continue to be uncomfortable with people whose gender identities are non-normative. I think of this as the church’s struggle not with people like me, but with itself as the church. Our denominational resources continue to be devoid of any distinctively transgender materials for pastoral care. When the word transgender is brought to the floor of our General Assembly, commissioners still rise to question what that really means. And our own statements about ordination standards and marriage speak exclusively to humanity lived in the binary identities of male or female. There is no room for people like me, whose identities cannot be so easily categorized.

So there is much work to do beyond the comma. And I thank God that you and people like you make it possible to carry on.

Thank you very much.

The Reverend Dr. Erin Swenson is an ordained Presbyterian minister (PCUSA) and a licensed marriage and family therapist. In 1996 she became the first known mainstream Protestant minister to make an open gender transition while remaining in ordained office. She provides counseling for individuals with gender identity issues and their families from her office at the Morningside Presbyterian Church in midtown Atlanta and lectures nationally on issues of gender and faith. Erin serves on the national board of More Light Presbyterians and is co-founder of the Southern Association for Gender Education, Inc. For more information, please visit http://www.erinswen.com.

Isabel Rogers
Professor Emerita of Applied Christianity,
Presbyterian School of Christian Education, and
Moderator of the 199th General Assembly

Commissioners’ Convocation Dinner
216th General Assembly, Richmond, VA
25 June 2004

We Richmonders want to welcome you to our fine city. There is so much beauty and history here. I hope you get to see some of the wonderful architecture. Richmond goes back to earlier than colonial times, and I hope that you will have some time to explore some of its riches. I am feeling a little bit of concern by what I see of demolition and rubble all around, buildings being blown up and streets being blocked with construction. I don’t want you to think that we are just getting ready to rebuild after the Civil War. I assure you that is not true. Actually the construction just down Broad Street is going to be a Performing Arts Center for the Virginia Opera, Richmond Ballet, and the Richmond Symphony, and we music lovers are going to feed on music in high style.

As a matter of fact, having explosions and things blowing up is par for Richmond’s course when the General Assembly comes to town. Back in 1847, the General Assembly met here when the slavery conflict was getting tenser and angrier. At course, at that Assembly Presbyterians north and Presbyterians south were at each others’ throats. It was not many years later that war came, and the Church split apart; and it took 122 shameful years before we could get back together again. Explosion and tension – we’re used to that in Richmond when General Assemblies come!

The last time the General Assembly came to Richmond was 1955. That was the Southern Assembly. Note that year! The year before that was the Supreme Court’s decision on school segregation. The Supreme Court had declared that schools could not be segregated, and so when the General Assembly came to town, they came to a Richmond of seething anger with politicians trying to figure out how in the world to get around this law, by what they called “massive resistance.” We weren’t going to have a Court tell us what to do! But let me tell you all that the General Assembly that met here in 1954 condemned shenanigans of every kind and came out clearly for desegregation. And the Assembly of 1955 reaffirmed that commitment to racial justice.

There were two Presbyterian giants who helped lead the way in working for racial justice. The Presbyterian Outlook of May 31st has a story by Jim Smylie telling about these two. Their pictures were on the front page. Louis Powell, an attorney and an elder in the Grace Covenant Church here in Richmond, had faithfully worked against segregation, and in 1959 Louis Powell was the president of the Richmond School Board that finally brought about the complete desegregation of the Richmond schools. Of course, as you know, Powell went on to Washington to the Supreme Court where, for years, he was a voice of moderation in the life of the Court.

The other picture on this front page is of Ernest Trice Thompson. Dr. Thompson for many years was a distinguished professor of church history at Union Seminary. Year after year after year Dr. E.T. challenged the consciousness of Presbyterians on all matters of justice and particularly of racial justice. So persistently and clearly did he attack racial injustice that this Presbytery got worn out, called him up and tried him for heresy. They failed, but you can see the kind of impact he had.

When I think about Louis Powell and E.T. Thompson, it is clear to me that these two and many other faithful Presbyterians were working against racial injustice for years and years and years, but the fruit of their labors was very slow in coming. We know that when the law changed, social patterns lagged way behind. They labored faithfully and worked patiently for change, for they were convinced that God was doing this, and that God was moving in God’s own way and in God’s own time.

That reminds me of one of my very favorite New Testament characters, the Pharisee whose name was Gamaliel. Luke tells us about him in the 5th Chapter of Acts – you remember the story: Peter and James and John had been preaching in the marketplace, and the high priest and the Council said, You all have to quit doing that, and they went right on preaching, and then the Council threw them into prison, and the prison opened up, and they got out, and they were preaching further. So they finally hauled them before the Council and said, “You have to quit doing this preaching!” That’s when they said, “We must obey God and not human beings!” Picking up at verse 33:

When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. 34But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up and ordered the men to be put outside for a short time. 35Then he said to them, ‘Fellow Israelites, consider carefully what you propose to do to these men. 36For some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him; but he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and disappeared. 37After him Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered. 38So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; 39but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!’

Georgia Appleton, the great British missionary bishop, has written all sorts of wonderful devotional meditations, particularly in poetry. Not too long ago I was reading one, and it just leaped off the page at me because it was called, “Dare to be Gamaliel”. It purports to be Gamaliel speaking in contemporary language. People will rise and claim to be somebody, and they turn out to be a flash in the pan, and they get a headline for a day. Then they’re gone! Hear the crucial words of Gamaliel, “If it be of God, beware, for nothing can stop it, only hinder or delay, yet your acceptance and faithful labor can advance its purposes and hasten its blessing.”

Louis Powell and E.T. Thompson and a host of other devoted Presbyterians, they move the reality of what Gamaliel was talking about. They worked for racial justice, a cause which moved forward with agonizing slowness. We still have far to go – we know this. They had to wait and wait. There was so much to hinder and delay, but the time did come, and God did move towards the justice that they were seeking, that they believed God intended. To use Gamaliel’s words, their acceptance and their faithful labors did, in fact, advance that cause and hasten its blessing. Without a host of leaders like Louis Powell and E.T. Thompson, we would not be where we are today.

So, with us, the cause of justice for gays and lesbians to which we in the Covenant Network are committed, that cause is hindered and delayed and hindered and delayed, and we find ourselves having to hope short term and work long term.

We know for sure that God is at work changing our church and changing our society. We know this is of God; but the frustrating need for patience and waiting for God takes its toll on us, and a harsher toll on our friends and colleagues who are gays and lesbians.

Let me be very clear. When the Hebrew prophets talked about waiting on the Lord, they weren’t talking about twiddling their thumbs. We think of waiting as a passive sort of thing. It is the waiting room at the doctor’s office, and you sit idly, and you wait for somebody else to do something. But for the Hebrews the word had an entirely different feel to it. The word was Qavah, and it meant tension, hopeful expectancy. The word Qavah comes from the root Qav, which refers to a line or a string drawn taut, like the string of the bow when the archer pulls it back, and it gets tighter and tighter until you can release the arrow. So to wait for the Hebrews meant standing on tip toe in expectant tension. It was active. It meant never stopping work.

That’s our calling, it seems to me, in this time of hindrance and delay, to be working actively, faithfully, in the assurance that God is now bringing justice among us.

Second Isaiah said better than anybody the vigor of waiting on the Lord, the activity of it, in the very familiar words:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.
God does not faint or grow weary. God’s understanding is unsearchable.
God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk –
they shall plod faithfully ahead –
they shall walk and not faint. [Is. 40: 28-31]

Amen and Hallelujah!

God’s Private Arrangements

Cynthia Jarvis
Pastor, Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church
Philadelphia

 Sermon to the
2002 Covenant Conference
Communion Worship, November 8, 2002

Isaiah 44:24-45:7
John 10:7-16

 ”I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

“The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ,” “Jesus Christ is the only Savior and Lord, and all people everywhere are called to place their faith, hope, and love in him,” “Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all and the way to salvation.” Thus reads the Confession of 1967, reads Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, reads the second affirmation of the so-called Confessing Church movement. It is what the church has always claimed, ever since Paul put pen to papyrus. It is what most of us have confessed as Presbyterians from the moment we first believed. Yet the spirit in which Christ alone is confessed as Lord of all has varied, throughout the ages, from graceful invitation to arrogant judgment.

These days in our part of Christ’s church, the spirit partakes more of the latter sentiment. The confession of Christ has come to be used as a judgment, first directed not against those outside the church, but turned against those within the church whose stance on social issues is presumed to coincide with a wrong-headed doctrine of Christ. The claim is this: that apart from a public profession of faith affirming Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation, human beings are headed toward everlasting separation from God and, it is hoped, toward the door leading out of the Presbyterian Church.

The real villain in relation to confessing Christ today, of course, is the gospel of pluralism, which theological liberals are said to espouse. Many do. Such a stance can tend toward the empty-headed belief exemplified in the sixties by Charlie Brown’s statement, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you’re sincere.” From this standpoint (or lack thereof), following Jesus in a pluralistic world involves making no distinctions among truth claims because Jesus would not want us to offend anyone in his name.

Rather, this evening, our text from the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel invites us into a much more complex conversation than can be had either in a congregation signed on to the Confessing Church movement or amid cocktail party talk about spirituality. “I have other sheep,” said Jesus, “that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

To help us listen for the meaning of these words, we would do well to recall the community first addressed by the parable of the Good Shepherd in John’s gospel. As we all know, much in the fourth gospel has been read, on the surface, as anti-Semitic. When John refers with derision to “the Jews,” we cringe because we know how these words have been used in history and even up to this present day. But if we investigate the context of John’s gospel, we discover that in referring to “the Jews,” John is referring specifically to religious authorities of the day, those who condemned the community that believed Jesus to be God’s Word made flesh.

Furthermore, if we take the characters of John’s world and read them into the characters of this parable, the thieves and bandits are said to be those who pretend to be the saviors of Israel, while the hirelings are those who have been placed in authority over the people (the religious leaders of the day) but who have no real care for the people. Then there are the other sheep that do not belong to this fold, the Gentiles [us!], whom this good shepherd will bring into the flock.

Two thousand years later, by and large, Gentiles have become the identifiable flock of this shepherd, raising — for some — the burning question: what will eternally become of those who are visibly and confessionally outside the flock? Does the Good Shepherd, whom we know and confess to be Jesus Christ, have dealings with other sheep still, in ways we can neither see nor affirm, but with whom — given God’s greater purposes — we will be made one flock when the kingdom comes?

The honest answer would be, “Who knows?” or, as Calvin said in regard to our desire to know more about God than God has chosen to reveal, “When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world, the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious.”

More to the point, said a friend, rather than asking after the world’s salvation, the better question would be, “Is there any manifestation of God’s saving grace and activity within the visible believing community these days?” However, precisely because there are so many in the church eager to condemn every other sheep not of this flock to hell in a hand-basket, not to mention their fellow sheep whose confession of Christ is not properly exclusive, we must attempt to say more.

Implicit in these verses from John, in the first place, is the freedom of God, who brings into relationship with God whomever God wills. Chock it up to sibling rivalry, but human beings have always wanted to limit God’s freedom by way of our boundaries, placing God on our side of the ecclesial and theological and moral fence, while presuming God to be against all others. When John wrote his gospel, such was the case vis-à-vis Jews in the Temple and Jews who had become followers of Jesus and Gentiles. These verses in John’s gospel judge the boundary drawn by the Temple authorities against followers of Jesus because they could not believe God had acted in Jesus Christ, even as these same words assert the ultimate lack of boundary between the then current followers of Christ (who were Jews) and Gentiles who were being claimed by God’s activity beyond the visible believing fellowship. This God, who once had chosen a particular people, now was revealed to some of those same people anew in Jesus Christ and, in the end, would be known by others way outside the bounds of those first chosen . . . by us!

“God’s action and God’s freedom are never more plainly misunderstood,” wrote Paul Lehmann, “than by those who suppose that God has acted and does act in a certain way and cannot, therefore, always also act in other ways. Of course God is bound to what God does and has done. But [God] is not bound by what God has done.” Putting Lehmann’s words in laymen’s terms, he means God will be consistent in activity and revelation with who we know God to be in Jesus Christ (there is not going to be some wild, new revelation clean contrary to the God we know in Jesus Christ); but God’s freedom to be in relationship with other sheep is not bound by what God has done with us.

So as we look for God’s activity in the world, you and I look to and through Jesus Christ alone in order to glimpse God’s hand acting still. Here is where we differ with Charlie Brown. Not everything goes. If we look through Jesus Christ to see what God is doing, Osama bin Laden may be sincere, but we must make the judgment that he is sincerely misguided in his claims about God, as are many others in this age and every age.

Still, given God’s freedom, we also may, through Christ, recognize God’s activity in the life of one or in the fellowship of a community that does not know Christ and surely does not confess him as Lord. “After one has settled the credentials of believing,” again wrote Paul Lehmann, “one always sooner or later is bound to encounter another human being who had never been baptized and appears to be totally unaware of, or indifferent to, the koinonia, yet who behaves like the Lord’s anointed. This may be one of God’s happy private arrangements in order to keep baptism from becoming an advertising campaign.” This also means that what God is up to with every other sheep on this planet is potentially, or in actuality, a relationship destined for the one flock that will be gathered eternally.

So the next question often is, “Then why be Christian?” If God is finally going to gather us all up in one big happy family eternally, what difference does being Christian make here and now? Going back to John’s parable, the difference is that we dwell among those who know the voice of the shepherd and who live, in the midst of a broken world, as a flock consciously and confidently under his care and guidance. The point is surely not church membership, nor is it even an orthodox confession. It is a relationship which turns our energy, intelligence, imagination and love, by way of this Good Shepherd, toward what “God is doing in the world to make and to keep human life human.”

Though make no mistake: “The difference between those who are inside and outside the koinonia [the fellowship-creating reality of Christ's love] is not the difference of being inside and outside of what God is doing in the world. It is not a difference distinguished from being outside of Christ and so under judgment as distinguished from being inside with Christ and so under grace.” We are all under both! The difference being Christian makes is the difference that comes from knowing the One who accompanies us and who has promised to lead us, along with the rest of the world he came to save, home.

So finally, how are we to live in relation to these other sheep, to people of different faiths or of no faith at all? Karl Barth, when he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in April of 1962, said that his reading of scripture led him to believe Christ died for all and so came to reconcile all the world to God. “I do not preach universal salvation,” he is quoted as saying; “What I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all . . . at the judgment.” Or as Barbara Grizzuti Harrison put it, “I cannot believe in a God who is less merciful than I am.”

Though given the fact that we cannot even live mercifully in relation to the sheep in our own flock, I am presently taken with the image of monks in the Dominican Cloister of San Marco where each was assigned a cell on whose wall was painted a fresco of Christ’s life by Fra Angelico. “How might it change one’s life to live, day after day,” Harrison asks, “in close white quarters with a fresco of a crucified Christ, blood spurting out of His side . . . or with a placid infant in the manger, the animals alert and knowing, the angels rejoicing . . . or with the risen Christ extending a benediction, His radiant blessing casting out all fear?” Yet no one depiction of Christ told the truth, it always has seemed to me, until the doors of the cells were opened and each monk came out into the common courtyard with the Christ he was given to see for the sake of the whole. Only on common ground, in the common life, did Christ’s body take shape and form and reality.

So too it is for us, in the cells we know as our part of Christ’s church. Only as we find one another in a common courtyard, and bear witness to the Christ formed in our minds and hearts and lives by the proclamation of the gospel we have heard all of our lives, will the voice of the Good Shepherd be heard above the fray and followed.

Only as we face one another on the vast common plane of what God is doing to make and keep human life human in the world, as the question of our own humanity toward the other is up, then we are those who must live believing that the other is one with whom God may just have private arrangements! No doubt, what we do or say, the way we bear witness to our faith in Jesus Christ may be part of God’s hidden agenda with the other; but so also may the other be part of God’s hidden agenda with us. And if what Jesus said in John’s gospel is true, if in the end there will be one flock and one shepherd, then we ought behave toward one another as though we were stuck with each other, around one table, eternally — because the nub of the confession that Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all is that, in Him, we already are! Thanks be to God.

2000 Covenant Conference
Closing Worship, November 4, 2000

Sermon 

It’s Waiting

Isaiah 65: 17-25, Acts 2:1-13

Scott D. Anderson
Executive Director, California Council of Churches
Sacramento, CA

Several years ago a pastor in my Presbytery, Brad van Sant, and I were invited to co-lead a workshop on “The Church and Homosexuality” at a Synod youth leadership event. The conference organizers–in good Presbyterian fashion–wanted to maintain a “balance of perspectives.”

In many ways, Brad and I were different. Brad pastored a rural congregation in Woodland, north of Sacramento. I attended a middle size urban church widely recognized as one of the most progressive in the Presbytery. Brad finished distinguished service in the U.S military and responded to God’s call to a second career in the parish ministry. I had served as a Presbyterian pastor for eight years before setting aside my ordination because I am a gay man.

The conference registrar called the week before the event: “By the way, you and Brad will be roommates for the week.”

Planning and leading this workshop was one thing. But rooming with Brad for a whole week was just not my idea of a good time. The pit in my stomach signaled distress.

Isn’t that the way it is in the Presbyterian Church these days? It’s not just that we hold different worldviews; we live in parallel universes. We attend different seminaries, use different Christian education materials, support different mission enterprises, employ different placement systems, read different theologians, even go to different conferences. And in those rare moments when we do meet across the theological divide, our visceral reaction is a mixture of fear and mistrust: mistrust of motives, mistrust of theology, mistrust of commitment, as if we all don’t really belong in the same room, let alone the same church, together.

What a contrast to that Day of Pentecost, “when they all gathered in one place.” When the second chapter of Acts is read liturgically, the list of nations represented that day in Jerusalem is often omitted, probably to spare the lector any tongue-tied embarrassment. The omission is unfortunate, for the table is something of a political and cultural geography lesson. It reads like the contents page of an Empire Atlas. Devout Jews from every nation under heaven hear the word and gather into community.

Funny thing about the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t stop for border guards. The authoritative lines are crossed. Indeed, at Pentecost–and in the drama that follows in welcoming the gentiles–those lines are blown right off the spiritual map.

“They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” The marvelous utterances of the gathered faithful from the far corners of the known world are a mystery guarded much like the Gospels veil the particulars of the resurrection. What’s clear is that because of the Spirit’s work, the folks who were there understood what was going on, and even more to the point, they understood in their own tongues: not a paraphrase, not a delayed interpretation, not even a translation; they understood in their own languages.

Peter Gomes reminds us that one of the great paradoxes of race in America is the fact that the religion of the oppressor, Christianity, became the religion of the oppressed and the means of their liberation. Black Muslims ask incredulously how any black person in America could possibly be a Christian, given the legacy of white Christianity. The answer, of course, is that if Christianity in America depended upon white Christians, there would be no right-minded black Christians.

What is the case is that Christianity, and the Bible in particular, does not depend upon us for the Gospel, but upon the work of the Holy Spirit. Thus black American Christians do not regard their Christianity as the hand-me-down religion of their masters, or an unnatural culture imposed on them and thus a sign of their continuing servitude. No, they understand themselves to be Christians in their own right because the Gospel, the good news out of which the Bible comes, includes them and in fact is meant for them.

The same is true for my own community. Many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in America ask incredulously, “How can any healthy, self-accepting gay person possibly be a Christian, given the oppressive legacy of the institutional Church?” The answer is that Christianity, and the Bible in particular, does not depend upon heterosexual Christians for the Gospel, but upon the work of the Holy Spirit, who doesn’t really like border guards.

Behind the text of Scripture is the Spirit that animates it, the force that gives it life. There is always something elusive about the Bible; it’s a book that has a life of its own. And so, for gays and lesbians, we hear the Gospel not as first-century Christians or even as 21st-century heterosexual Presbyterians. We hear the Gospel in the same way the gathered faithful did on the Day of Pentecost–as only we can –in our own language.

Almost thirteen years ago I began serving as Pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church, a 400-member congregation in suburban Sacramento. Since I had arrived at Bethany, a couple in the church and I had been in conflict over a particular social issue. They wrote to me and told me that just after New Years in 1990, they had learned from a colleague in town–another Presbyterian pastor who had been a trusted friend for almost 20 years– that I was a gay man. They surmised that my need to hide my sexual orientation as a Presbyterian minister was the reason that I was so timid about their issues. Now, if only I would do what they wanted me to do for their cause, they would keep my secret.

Ironically, a year earlier I had already made the decision to leave the Presbyterian ministry. My partner’s departure after 8 1/2 years heightened my own dissatisfaction with having to live a lie about who I was. I grew emotionally weary of my despair and self-hatred. If I was to live with the kind of honesty, integrity, and whole-ness that God intended for my life, I realized I could not do so as a Presbyterian minister.

I felt like Lazarus locked away in that tomb. After Jesus arrived at Bethany, he said to Mary and her friends, “Take away the stone.” Martha objected on the grounds that the body had been in the tomb four days and there would be an odor. A four-day stench. The smell of death.

Something was rotting inside my tomb. Something was rotting in my roles and relationships. Something was decaying inside my soul.

Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” Jesus comes to us in whatever tomb we are decaying. He calls out our name. He calls us out of our stench. Come out! He says. Come out of hiding! Come out of that cold dark tomb with its odor of death.

Coming out has to do with accepting our true identity regardless of what others say. Coming out always makes a disturbance and lets out the stink. Coming out is going public; it is being on the outside who God has created us to be on the inside!

And so, in a church which speaks of us as sick and suffering, we hear the words of Jesus to Lazarus, the language of resurrection hope.

Last spring I had a phone call from a Presbyterian pastor I had known for many years. The 17-year-old son of a long time family in that congregation had told his parents over dinner the week before that he was gay. The pastor called me because he didn’t know what to say or do. The boy’s parents also were at a loss for words, embarrassed by the whole situation. So was the Moderator of the Board of Deacons, a long time family friend. What was this 17-year-old young man to do with all this awkward silence from the adult Christians in his life?

In a church that still equates sexuality with shamefulness, we hear John’s gospel that the Word became flesh, the language of incarnation: that in the most intimate and vulnerable moments of life when the core of our humanity is revealed to us, there is Christ.

Seventy United Methodist ministers in the Northern California-Nevada Annual Conference held a Holy Union in Sacramento that became a national news story last year. As the service began, the standing-room-only crowd of 2,000 people was told, “Today, we are not only celebrating the relationship of these two women, we are honoring all of you who have made life commitments to each other. Would all of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender couples stand.” Over 60 couples rose to their feet across the convention center. “Those of you who have been together more than five years, remain standing.” A few sat down. “Those of you who have been together more than 10 years, remain standing.” A few more sat down. Those of you who have been together as long as this couple–15 years, or longer– remain standing. Almost 30 couples still stood. The congregation went wild with applause.

“Do not press me to leave you, or turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die–there I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me and more as well, if even death parts me from you!”

These words are, of course, the passionate expression of Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi. Words of faithful, life-long commitment. Ruth’s pledge has always been honored as a classic scriptural statement of love and fidelity. Thousands of times ministers have read this passage at heterosexual weddings, but I have never heard it noted that these words were spoken by one woman who loved another.

In a church that speaks of our relationships as sinful, we hear the words of Ruth to Naomi, the language of covenantal fidelity.

The Hartford meeting of the National Council of Churches was an absolute zoo. The Inclusive Language Lectionary was being introduced. And, because of stiff opposition from the Orthodox communions, the NCC adopted a compromise motion that would postpone indefinitely their long-debated vote on the Metropolitan Community Church’s application for membership. After the vote happened, the leadership was called out into the hallway in front of 50 or 60 reporters, and everyone read their prepared statements. The mainliners wearing their Protestant polyester and the Orthodox in their long black cassock robes. Eileen Lindner, now the Associate General Secretary of the NCC, recalls that the local newspaper, the Hartford Currant, was short staffed that day and sent its sports reporter to cover the National Council of Churches story. After hearing all of the statements, the reporter asked her, “So, let me understand this: it’s the guys in the skirts who don’t want to let the queers in?”

In a church that is mired in conflict, we hear the language of Holy humor. An irreverent humor that prophetically names the truth of the situation. An outrageous humor that reveals the preposterousness of divine grace. The kind humor Abraham and Sarah, in their old age, experience when the divine comedian whispers in Abraham’s ear, “The two of you are going to have a baby.”

The miracle of Pentecost is two-fold. It is not just that we are able to hear the Gospel in our own language; it is also the miracle of being able to speak the Gospel in a whole new language.

After my own coming out experience, the first few years I attended General Assembly, I left devastated and demoralized. Because of my own woundedness, every negative comment, every scripture quote, every reference to our confessional heritage which contradicted my own point of view I was taking as a personal attack on me and my community.

Today, after attending the last eight General Assemblies, I find myself at a different place. I find myself trying to listen through the fear, to listen beyond the misunderstandings and the stereotyping, to listen for the testimony from my evangelical friends, of “God’s deeds of power,” the Gospel. I find myself asking, “How can I speak the Gospel of my understanding in the language of the listener, in the language of those who stand across the theological divide?’” Isn’t that what happens at Pentecost? Hearing the Gospel in our own language, and by some miracle of the Spirit’s doing, speaking the Gospel so that all the others who had gathered can understand it in their own language.

Pentecost is not about agreement, and Pentecost is not about avoidance. Pentecost is about mutual understanding. St. Francis of Assisi must have had Pentecost in mind when he penned his famous axiom, “Seek first to understand, and then be understood.”

Ronald Heifetz of the Kennedy School of Government writes in his remarkable book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, “Leadership consists not of answers or assured visions but of taking action to clarify values. Leadership asks questions like, ‘What are we missing here? What are the values of opposing groups that we suppress rather than apply to our understanding of the problem at hand?’”

That’s our Pentecostal challenge. To speak the Gospel in the language of the listener, which is, in the case of our evangelical friends, the language of boundaries. And to invite our evangelical friends to speak to us about their understanding of the Gospel in our language, the language of justice.

In spite of all the naysayers and cynics on both sides of this debate, I believe Pentecost is waiting for the Presbyterian Church. Not necessarily one big “capital P” Pentecost, but 1001 lower-case pentecosts–the kind of Pentecost that happens over quiet conversation at the local coffee house, in the pastor’s study, out in the narthex during a boring Presbytery meeting, or at a Synod youth leadership event. The kind of miracle that can happen when someone, somewhere, has the courage to reach across the theological divide, and trust the Spirit that Pentecost is waiting.

And speaking of Synod youth leadership events, the one that Brad and I attended didn’t turn out the way we feared it would. That’s because the 100 or so senior highs who went through our workshop simply couldn’t shut up. For five days and five nights! In their exuberance, in their innocence, and in their disarming faithfulness, those senior highs dragged Brad and me kicking and screaming towards Pentecost. It was one of the most exhilarating, exhausting, and hopeful weeks I have spent as a Presbyterian.

One 16-year girl came up to me at the closing worship service and said, “We don’t get to talk like this in my church.” Maybe it’s time we adults start trying.

2000 Covenant Conference
Morning Worship, November 3, 2000 

Sermon 

Homecoming

Isaiah 55:1-13

Agnes W. Norfleet
Pastor, North Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, GA

The poet, Maya Angelou, remembers her grandmother, who raised her in the little town of Stamps, Arkansas.

One of my earliest memories of Mamma is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air on nothing visible.

That incredible vision was a result of what my imagination would do each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, “I will step out on the word of God.”

The depression, which was difficult for everyone, especially for a single black woman in the South tending her disabled son and two grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often. She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, “I will step out on the word of God.”

Immediately, [Maya Angelou recalls] I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her.

Naturally it wasn’t difficult for me to have faith. I grew up knowing that the word of God has power.

The word of God has power, according to the prophet Isaiah, to gather a divided community of faith, and to provide the way home to those who have been displaced and scattered in exile.

Originally the invitation of Isaiah 55 was addressed to the exiles of the 6th Century B.C.E., who had witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and their Temple at the hands of the Babylonian empire. They had suffered devastation, brutality, cruelty, hunger and thirst. The middle class and upper middle class, the property owners and political leaders, the educated and skilled, and the religious leaders had been lined up and sent walking across the Fertile Crescent into Babylon. The poor had been left behind to die in the streets.

The situation of this divided and displaced people is the bitter cry of Lamentations:

“How lonely sits the city that once was full of people She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks She has no one to comfort her. She has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude, she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place.

“The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate. Her children have gone away, captives before the foe, and there was no one to help her.”

After fifty years in exile, the biblical answer to the pleading cry of Lamentations is the choral response of Second Isaiah:

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you that have no money, come, buy and eat.
Come buy wine and milk without money or price.
Incline your ear, and come to me, so that you may live

This invitation was addressed originally to a particular people in a particular historical circumstance, but if you listen carefully you will hear that this is no ordinary invitation.

Its unusual accumulation of imperatives is so loud and so clear that we know the invitation is intended to echo through the corridors of time into our ears.

Come, come, buy, eat, come, buy without price,
Listen carefully, eat, delight, Incline your ear, come to me,
Listen, See, Seek.

This is no simple, “You are cordially invited” to a small select group for a particular time! The imperatives of this extraordinary summons expand the invitation list to include the exiled of our time.

Exile has become a common biblical metaphor for the situation of believers in the North American context — thanks to the scholarship of our friend, Walter Brueggemann, and others.

As Christians — we are exiles in an increasingly secular society which has disestablished the church.
As Presbyterians — we are dislocated by deep and painful divisions.
As members of the Covenant Network — we know our Reformed Theology has been dispossessed by the inclusion of paragraph G-6.0106 b in the Book of Order.

This year we are further displaced by the uninviting amendment prohibiting any participation of church leaders in same-sex unions, now out for a vote in our presbyteries.

How dare the church tell us when or where we can or cannot invoke the blessing of God?

There is indeed a sense of being exiled as our Temple, our community of worship, is being torn asunder, and many of us have found ourselves within the church exiles in a strange land — a land in which we have baptized, loved, and raised in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord a whole definable group of people, to whom we have then said,
“Because you are gay, the gates of this church are desolate, no one will come to your festivals, you may as well make your home in Babylon among other gods.”

A friend of mine just recently received a couple into the membership of her church. Two lesbian women in a long committed relationship. Both were the daughters of ministers and yet they had long since left the church of their youth. About a month ago they met with the session to join the church and one of them, with tears in her eyes, said something like this:

“Tonight marks twenty-six years since I have been a member in any church. It’s been a difficult estrangement, because after being nurtured in the church as a child, I was then told that I don’t belong because I don’t bear the image of God.

But,” she said to the session of the church that night, “I believe that with you we have found a place where the face of Christ will be seen in us.”

Those words of that Christian woman shared with a welcoming church community were the beginning of the end of a long period of exile.

Don’t you imagine that somehow in her estrangement she may have heard the echoes of Isaiah’s invitation! Come, buy without price, eat, delight, Listen carefully, Incline your ear, come to me, See, seek.

What you and I need to be doing in our churches all over the country is singing Isaiah’s song so loud that everyone who suffers the exile of the church will hear God’s invitation to come home.

To borrow a phrase from Walter Brueggemann’s work on Second Isaiah, “Yahweh is an exile-ending God.” God takes a people that is weary with hopelessness and gives them a future again.

“Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you that have no money come, buy and eat!”

God looks at a community whose human dignity has been shattered and lays out a way for their restoration. “You shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace.”

And in between the invitation and the restoration, the bridge between the exile and the return, is the highway of the word of God.

“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

This is not a liberal, left-wing invitation. This not merely a politically correct posture. This is not a secular response to a gay political movement void of Christian value.

The reconciling work of the Covenant Network is not “in spite of” biblical authority ­ it is because of it!

The invitation home, is none other than the dependable word of God.

On the eve of a national election I am awfully proud to call John Lewis my representative in Congress. He tells a story from his childhood which gives the title to his autobiography, Walking with the Wind.

He was about four years old at the time, growing up among the pine forests and cotton fields of Pike County, Alabama. All the neighbors of his family were sharecroppers, he says, and most of them were relatives. Every adult he knew was an aunt or an uncle, and every child a first or second cousin.

One Saturday afternoon about fifteen of those children were outside playing in his Aunt Seneva’s dirt yard. Lewis remembers:

The sky began clouding over, the wind started picking up, lightning flashed far off in the distance, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about playing anymore.

I was terrified. I had already seen what lightning could do. I’d seen fields catch on fire after a hit to a haystack. I’d watched trees actually explode when a bolt of lightning struck them, the sap inside rising to an instant boil, the trunk swelling until it burst its bark, strips of pine bark snaking through the air like ribbons.

Lightening terrified me, and so did thunder. Aunt Seneva was the only adult around that day, and as the sky blackened and the wind grew stronger, she herded us all inside. Her house was not the biggest place around, and it seemed even smaller with so many children squeezed inside.

Small and surprisingly quiet. All of the shouting and laughter that had been going on earlier, outside, had stopped. The wind was howling now, and the house was starting to shake.

We were scared. Even Aunt Seneva was scared. And then it got worse. Now the house was beginning to sway. The wood plank flooring beneath us began to bend. And the corner of the room started lifting up.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. None of us could. This storm was actually pulling the house toward the sky.

With us inside it.

That was when Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands. Line up and hold hands, she said, and we did as we were told. Then she had us walk as a group toward the corner of the room that was rising. From the kitchen to the front of the house we walked, the wind screaming outside, sheets of rain beating on the tin roof. Then we walked back in the other direction, as another end of the house began to lift.

And so it went, back and forth, fifteen children walking with the wind, holding that trembling house down with the weight of our small bodies.

That story comes from the memory of a child who grew into a young man who was almost beaten to death because of the color of his skin. He’s now a leader in the United States Congress.

How many baptized children are out there dreaming of going to seminary, of being a pastor, an elder in the church that raised them, and who risk being beaten to a pulp or ratcheting up the suicide rate because they’re gay?

We’re not just gathered around an issue before the church; We’re not just gathered around a division within the denomination.

We are gathered around a word that has the authority to go forth and accomplish its purposes — to bring the exiles home.

And we’ve got to have the faith of those little children in that storm to help it happen.

Remember those children, scared to death, the walls of the house around them seeming as if they might fly apart? yet they never ran away, they came together and clasped hands and moved toward the corner of the house that was the weakest.

That’s who Isaiah is calling us to be:

children of God holding hands,
stepping out on the word of God,
walking with the wind of God’s spirit,
and answering God’s invitation to all of us, saying,

“Yes, Exile-Ending God, we’re coming home.”