“Once the Scales Fell”
Acts 9:1-19a
Sermon preached at the Covenant Conference,
Nov. 4, 2010, by Rev. Katie Morrison
I am honored to have been invited to preach this evening and have looked forward to the “family reunion” that participating in this conference is for me as someone who stepped out of the Presbyterian “pool” five years ago in order to be able to freely fulfill my call to serve the church through ordained ministry. Thank you to the wonderful worship planning team. You have been a joy to work with.
In our Scripture reading this evening we hear that Saul, the vitriolic persecutor is on the move. He is headed toward Damascus with the conviction that only MIGHT and RIGHT can induce. This Saul of Tarsus -a devout Pharisee- had joined the security forces of his day to stamp out the small sects of Christian Jews in Palestine who were becoming unbearable for their blaspheme and heresy. He had just overseen the martyr of Stephen and in the previous chapter, the text says that he literally entered “house after house” dragging off followers of The Way and committing them to jail.
Using his networking skills, in preparation for the trip to Damascus, he gets letters of introduction and accommodation from the high priest of Jerusalem to the synagogues in Damascus so that he might conduct his business decently and in order.
Heading out on the path, he was a warrior for the Purity of his religion, until something very powerful stopped him in his tracks and his life was forever changed. One might say that he was mercilessly ambushed by heaven itself.
When we meet Saul, who later becomes Paul, he has just been struck by a blinding light. So overwhelming is his experience that he is unable to see- though Scripture tells us his eyes were wide open. He is unable to eat or drink- so overcome is he- that the best he can do is put one foot in front of the other, as the voice: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” commanded him to do.
Jesus stops him in his tracks and as much as that matters, what I want to draw our focus to tonight, is what happens in the days… the weeks… the months that follow that conversion. I wonder… I wonder about something that the text doesn’t specifically tell us…
Does he make a visit to Stephen’s family? What about the people he had gathered up, the people who were still in jail? I wonder… does Paul ever circle back?
*******
I had an unusually exceptional church upbringing. My grandmother, Marjorie Ellis Morrison, was the church secretary at Pasadena Presbyterian Church- my home congregation- for over twenty-five years. I can remember visiting her in the office and watching her work the telephone switchboard, pulling plugs out of one hole and putting them in another while talking into this strange back microphone type instrument. Do you remember those?
I felt comfortable in that church office since as early as I can remember. I also attended the preschool that was a part of our church. My mom was one of the teachers there. My father had grown up in this congregation, had fond youth group memories of his own, and even worked as a janitor for awhile sometime during his young adulthood. Both of my parents served as elders and sang in the choir. My dad was chair of the Associate Pastor search committee when I was in Jr. high and was a part of calling our church’s first female pastor, which observing her Sunday after Sunday had a huge impact on me and planted the seeds for being able to see myself as a pastor. Our youth group leader, Kathy Porter, was amazing. She introduced us to inclusive language, liberation and progressive theology, led us on many mission trips local and away, and helped bond us as a group in ways that reverberate even today.
When the Senior Pastor started his ministry PPC, I was in sixth grade. He and his wife had a daughter my age and a son my brother’s age. Consequently, the search committee matched up our families to help them in their transition to a new church and home. His daughter and I became fast best friends. Our families began spending Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner together. Saturday night slumber parties at her house were commonplace. Her mom was our children and youth choir director. When her grandmother moved in with them, she became my grandmother, too. For being a downtown, urban church… this was a tight-knit experience for me.
Although I wasn’t aware that I was a fourth generation Presbyterian growing up, I was aware that this church was my home and this congregation was my family- a room full of grandparents, parents, and peers with whom I could feel safe and to whom I belonged.
My brother and the pastor’s son ended up going to the same college. When it came time for the pastor’s daughter and I to choose a school, we influenced each other to both attend small, liberal arts colleges in Maine. From California all the way to Maine… that’s how powerful this friendship was!)
When I came out as a lesbian during my first semester of college, things changed drastically in the relationship between me and my pastor. This became evident during my first trip home from college… but, let me stop there for now.
*******
The truth is… Pam Byers (who with the same tenacity of the widow woman coming to the unjust judge) – extended the invitation to me to be one of the conference preachers more than once… and each time, I have found excuses to say no. While some were good excuses like being pregnant, I also wasn’t ready. I wasn’t quite ready to step back in to the Presbyterian circle and I wasn’t sure what it was yet, that I would have to say. But this last time around- the time where Pam got a YES- in saying that YES, I made a commitment. I said to myself, “Self! It’s now time. Before that conference rolls around, promise to make those two phone calls you know you need to make.” … “ok” … “I promise.”
We all have those experiences in life where our hearts were first broken— the loss of innocence, and trust and belief that love is enough. I trace my earliest experiences of heartbreak back to two relationships with significant individuals who were both pastors within the context of my home church. One was the Senior Pastor and the other was a seminary professor. These phone calls were about circling back to those two people and revisiting those initial heartbreaks.
Two weeks ago I called the seminary professor- Jack Rogers.* After exchanging updates on our families, and explaining that I was preparing to be at this Conference, I asked him if he would provide me with the gift of simply listening so that I could continue some healing that I needed to do with him and that I was calling with the purpose of offering forgiveness. He graciously agreed. I continued…
It was 1993, and the summer after my junior year of college that I attended my second General Assembly. Following the assembly, all members at Pasadena Presbyterian Church who had attended were invited to share about their experience, except, I wasn’t invited. I called up the pastor and said, “Hey I noticed there’s this panel next Sunday and I’m not on the list… can I share my reflections also?” He responded by requesting that I call Jack. This seemed strange. I called Jack and Jack said, “Well, we feel it’s in your best interest not to speak on that panel.” Being a self-assured child of God newly awakened to the conflict in the church over the ordination of “homosexual persons” as it was then referred… I quipped back, “You mean it’s in your best interest for me not to speak on that panel. Am I or am I not a member of PPC?”
That moment was my first tangible moment of discrimination from someone I knew that was based 100% on my being an openly lesbian woman. I had never before experienced that kind of out-right exclusion and I experienced it first in the church.
I relayed this story to Jack in this recent phone call and talked about how strange it was to have been catapulted into this awkward relationship where he went from being one of my youth group classmate’s dad to the “panel gatekeeper” and someone who had strategized with my pastor- my best friend’s dad– in order to keep me from speaking to my church. What a loss of innocence that moment was, and an initial, tangible source of pain—the reverse of EVERYTHING good I had ever experienced in the church.
Jack listened tenderly as I let out some tears. “There’s one more I’d like to share, I said.”
Jack, I don’t know if you even remember, but you happened to be the chair of CPM when I first came before the committee with FORM 1. Sometime during the hour and a half of questioning I received from the committee, you asked me, “Who is Jesus to you.” I answered, “Partner and Friend.” Again you asked the question, “Who is Jesus to you?”… and again I answered… again you asked… “WHO IS JESUS TO YOU?” I replied this time, thinking I was being creative, “Well let me answer that with a story,” and I went on to share an experience that took place earlier that day. But this answer still didn’t satisfy Jack or the committee.
You see, I didn’t understand the nuance of the question. I didn’t know that there was a RIGHT answer… That “Jesus is my Lord and Savior” or that “I’m not gay” is what I was supposed to say. I didn’t know the code. I came only with honest answers.
Jack said to me over the phone something like, “I wish I had been at a place where I could have done better… where I could have thought to take you to lunch the next day and to be a teacher and explain the history of theological language for Jesus as the Christ and I can see how hurtful both of those experiences would have been. Katie I am sorry.”
I explained that, while it is not as live for me now, for so many years I held such anger toward him and such hurt and how I didn’t understand why after having his conversion, he didn’t circle back… but that I was now ready to release that disappointment and I said,
“I forgive you, Jack, for the hurt you caused me.” And I asked if he would pray for my on-going healing to which he replied, “May I do that right now?”
There I sat on a Saturday afternoon on my sofa in Oakland on the phone with Jack Rogers who sat in his home in Pasadena praying together for one another.
*******
Three days ago, I called Dean Thompson.**
In 1991, when word got to Dean that I was lesbian and we met to talk about my coming out, he said things like, “This is a phase and I have known people who came out in college who are now happily married and I wish you wouldn’t come out.” When I said that I hoped he would still visit seminaries with me, he wouldn’t answer. The excitement he had previously had about my sense of call to ministry had shifted. Our relationship felt forever altered. I experienced him walk the other direction when he saw me at gatherings. When we met together to “be in dialogue” I heard about God’s plan for human relationships as laid out in Genesis. The relationship between my best friend and I became strained and both of our families lost the connection we had once enjoyed. We didn’t share holidays and special occasions anymore. Sometime soon after, Dean left our home church for another call.
This phone call was the hardest phone call I have ever made.
“Hello” the voice said… “Hi. Dean? It’s Katie Morrison.”
“Oh, Katie, Katie Morrison, I think of you,” he said without missing a beat. I explained my preparation for the conference and how I was calling to release him, having held such anger toward him over the years. “I’m the one in need of forgiveness,” he said, “and here you are, calling me with a Spirit of forgiveness. How deeply I regret that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.”
We talked further… “Dean” I said, “I don’t know if you have changed on your views about LGBT persons being ordained, but it’s my sense that you have. If that is true, may I ask, why have you stopped short of calling and sharing this regret with me?”
“It not a good enough reason,” he said, “but I guess I’ve wanted to be face-to-face…” “Yes,” I said, but what has stopped you from initiating us being face-to-face?” “I guess I just thought it would happen at some point.”
*******
This is a sermon about circling back, a sermon about asking for forgiveness. A sermon about the scales falling off… and what is the next step?
There are so many in the denomination who have been hurt, so many are no longer in the denomination as a result, and so many no longer participating in any Christian community. I think about, comparatively, all of the privilege I had— knowing I was loved and accepted and had a place at the table. I had (and have) EXTREMELY supportive parents. They are the ones who sent me as a Birthday present to General Assembly in 1993, where, with a handful of others, I came out on stage in front of the entire assembly and was by far the youngest out LGBT voice many had ever heard from. I remember calling my parents on the phone following that moment and saying, “Mom, dad… I just came out on the floor of GA!” And their saying back to me, “Wow… we’re so proud of you.” It was at GA the year before where I had been sent as a representative of the National Network of Presbyterian College Women of whose leadership team I was INVITED to be a part of BECAUSE I was an out lesbian because of their incredibly progressive commitment to representative diversity on that committee. It was at that GA where I met Janie Spahr and Chris Glaser, Howard Warren and Lisa Larges, Jim Anderson, Dan Smith, Scott Anderson and Laurene LaFontaine, Lisa Bove and Susan Leo- all amazing, early, early LGBT pioneers of this movement for inclusion through PLGC (Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns).
I had unusual support in this process, and I can’t help but think of all of the people who did not have my level of tenacity (or as my wife would say, stubbornness) and the support and encouragement that I received in this process, even through the WORST of what I experienced… and I experienced some amazingly terrible behavior in the name of God and in the name of the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the church during my young adult tenure in this denomination. Terrible things were said to me and about me. One of my church school teachers expressed concern, suggesting that we would not be in heaven together if I did not repent. Another member came to session the evening I was asking to be received as an inquirer and she spoke about the Scripture of the wheat and the weeds and said, “I held Katie as a baby in our church nursery, showing her the love of God, but with sadness I must share with you that God made wheat and weeds and unfortunately Katie has become a weed and we need to weed her out. I am against her becoming a minister.” There were actions that San Gabriel Presbytery should be ashamed of. I hope and I pray that some day soon, when the denomination does remove or revise G-60106b that there will be something like a truth and reconciliation commission where those of us who got “caught” along the way in the cross-hairs of theological and social “debate” will have the chance to speak and share about what we experienced along the way of educating the church about our lives.
This brings me to my challenge to you, Covenant Network members and friends: Have you always been in the supportive position you are in today? Where were you at the beginning of your journey before you made a commitment to work toward creating a church as generous and just as God’s grace? Are there any Sauls here? Were any of you ever on the path that Saul walked before the conversion experience? Has anyone contributed toward the pain of an LGBT Presbyterian either through direct action or through your silence on the “issue”?
After all, the church to-date (like it did to Saul) offers you authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke God’s truth for them of who they are as LGBT persons on The Way.
For those of you who have been on a conversion journey, what has it been like? Did the shade pop up all at once, or was a slow pealing of the scales from your eyes? Who were the people who played a role in helping to “restore your vision?” Have you ever been visited by an Ananias, someone who loved you- as a brother or sister in Christ- enough to visit you or pick up the phone and call you, despite all of the evidence that you might hurt them or their people? And, once your sight was restored, what did you do next?
Once we do change our hearts and minds, what do we do with our conversion? Whatever your story, have you circled back and asked for forgiveness from those you may have hurt along the way as you were receiving your own transformation? Covenant Network… that’s the message. I’ve been given the very rare opportunity to circle back to you- to this very important pocket of the Presbyterian church- and to encourage you to do what Jack and Dean and many others were not, for whatever reason, able to initiate with me.
Our healing is wrapped up in one another. Apparently, that’s the way God designed it.
Here’s the amazing and surprising ending to this amazing and surprising Scripture story of Paul’s conversion. It reads: “Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’” And the Scripture says, “Immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.” And THEN it says, “Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food he regained his strength.”
Presbyterian Church… church of my upbringing… may the scales fall from your eyes, may you be renewed in your baptism, may you break bread together, and then may you regain your strength. And, in the breaking of bread, may you have circled back and righted wrongs and asked for forgiveness so that in your strength there is a Peace, Unity, and Purity that is not false, but is true and just.
May it be so…
* The Rev. Dr. Jack Rogers has given his consent to the Covenant Network, to print Katie’s sermon with his name included.
** The Rev. Dr. Dean Thompson has given his consent to the Covenant Network, to print Katie’s sermon with his name included.