Love
Connection
Sermon for Celebration MCC-
Naples, FL
May 6, 2012
Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.
There she
was, Ayanna, an Ethiopian diplomat coming to the United States for the first
time. After all her hoping and
dreaming and working, she had finally arrived. As she rode in the back of her
newly government-issued, unmarked black sedan, she sat with her iPad in her
lap, reading the news of her homeland for the day. “Will the tragedy ever end
in Africa?” she thought to herself. She read of the bill in Uganda that if
passed will call for the imprisonment or death of so-called “homosexuals.” She
thinks of close friends who had been killed for their sexual orientation and
gender identity. She wonders how the remaining underground communities are
doing. She says a silent prayer for their safety.
As her eyes
turn up, out the window, she remembers her own journey. She thinks of her early
years growing up as a boy- Amare was his name. She feels a deep pain in her
chest, remembering how out of place she felt in a place where she was expected to
live up to male gender expectations. She remembers the lashes she got for
acting feminine and insisting she was a girl. Turning her eyes quickly from
that thought back down to her lap, she realized her iPad was covered in tears.
The memories had caught her off-guard.
But as she
looked down at the tears running from her tablet, she remembered she had a
Bible app. The Bible had always comforted her when she needed it. So she opened
to a random book and began reading. It happened to be the book of Isaiah. She
read, “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases
me and hold fast to my covenant — to them I will give within my temple and its
walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an
everlasting name that will endure forever.
--Isaiah 56-4-5
“Eunuch”
she said to herself… “These eunuchs sound like very special people.” Just as
she spoke, her driver turned a corner and there stood a church with a rainbow
flag outside. “Metropolitan Community Church” she mouthed as she read the
awning. “Stop!” She said to the driver. “I must visit this place.” Nearly
tripping in her stilettos, she sashe’d up the driveway and made her way inside
to an office labeled, “Pastor Phillip.” She knocked timidly on the door and a
voice from within said with enthusiasm, “Come in!”
Inside,
Ayanna found a man in a clerical collar sitting at a desk piled high with
books, papers, and various other churchy things. He introduced himself, “My
name is Pastor Phil. I’m the minister her at MCC. What can I do for you
today?” Excited and yet still
apprehensive, she replied, “My name is Ayanna. Does that flag outside your
church mean what I think it means?” Phil interrupted, “Yes, we affirm people no
matter what sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.” With joy,
the words slipped quickly from her lips, “I’m transgendered!” As if she had
just cursed, she immediately covered her mouth with her freshly painted nails.
Pastor Phil smiled her and assured her, “That’s wonderful! You know, transgender
people have a special place in God’s world.”
What serendipity!
She had just been reading something about a favored kind of people in the
Bible. What were they called again… eunuchs! That’s right... “What is a
eunuch?” she asked the pastor. Phil explained, “In biblical times, eunuchs were
biological males who became servants to female royalty because of their
different genital condition. Historians think people born with ambiguous
genitalia or men who had some sort of genital problem later in life were likely
to take such a role. In some cultures they were revered. In others, such as in
ancient Jewish culture, they were not allowed into the temple to worship because
they were considered “imperfect.” But Jesus said of eunuchs in Matthew 19 that
they should be accepted as they are.
Ayanna
interjected, “And I read in Isaiah that they are special to God and have a name
that is better than sons and
daughters. Pastor, do you think I’m like the eunuchs? Do I have a special place
in God’s kingdom?” “I believe you do, Ayanna. Transgender people seem to have a
special calling in traveling between genders and knowing what it’s like to live
as both recognized genders and everything in-between and beyond.”
Ayanna was
speechless. Never in her life had she received such affirmation, especially
from someone religious. That
encounter led Ayanna to be baptized in MCC, this time with her female name. No
church in her home country would baptize her as female. And so with that
powerful message, Ayanna the Ethiopian transwoman was empowered to live her
life as an advocate for LGBT people in Africa.
This was
not a factual story. But it is a true story. It is a composite story based on
my experience with the trans community. Every week, new people visit
Metropolitan Community Churches for the first time and hear the essence of the
reading that we heard from First John: “GOD IS LOVE. Whoever lives in love
lives in God and God lives in them.” There is very little that can be
considered doctrine in MCC. Our bylaws outline some things, but the central
message in MCC no matter where you go is based on this text: God’s
unconditional love is for you.
Over the
past 44 years, MCC has imagined the amazing implications of these affirming
words. We realized early on that though many of us do not live in the kind of
love that we were taught we should, that we still indeed live in love. We
choose partners of the same or different gender, the same or different
ethnicity, the same or different socioeconomic status. We build families of
people who love each other. Sometimes our families produce children and
sometimes they don’t. But regardless, they are still fruitful. Not fruity-
fruitful! J
Those of us
familiar with the Hebrew Bible may remember in Genesis when God tells the
people to be fruitful and multiply. Well God knows my husband and I try and try
but we can’t for the life of us produce a child! (Funny story: my husband James
was at his culinary school recently and said that joke to a heterosexual male
friend of his. The friend wasn’t paying attention and replied seriously, “Well,
just be patient. It will happen eventually.” James had to snap him out of his
cooking task to remind him that his partner is male.)
Anyhow, I
bring up this verse from Genesis because some have taken it as an excuse to oppress
the childless… and overpopulate the world. Case and point: the TLC TV show 19 Kids and Counting. More seriously, such an assertion has been
used against infertile men and women as well as same-gender loving and
transgender people to say that they are not able to fulfill God’s will in
creation. I think Jesus corrects this idea in the Gospel of John.
In the
verses we heard today from John, Jesus teaches a greater meaning of
fruitfulness. That meaning, again, has to do with love. It is works of love
that are the very practice of abiding in Christ. We remain connected to Jesus-
the True Vine by following his commandment of loving one another that comes
after these verses in the Gospel of John, and is repeated in the book of First
John. To “abide” is to live or to dwell. So Jesus is saying that when we live
in love (to God, to ourselves, and to other humans and the world), we are
connected to the Source, to the Ground of our Being.
This kind
of connection in the Christian scriptures is called koinonia in Greek. The essential meaning of this word is communion,
fellowship, or sharing. So each week when we come forward to receive the
Sacrament of Holy Communion, we aren’t just coming forward to participate in
tradition. And we don’t do it because we’re terrible people who need a magic
solution for sin. Communion is in truth a Feast of God’s Unconditional Love. No
two people in this room believe the same things. That doesn’t matter. What
matters is that we are all choosing to dedicate our lives one week at a time to
the practice of the Love of Christ in the world. And how many churches actually
do that? This past week, the pastor of a church in North Carolina preached from
the pulpit that fathers should break their son’s wrist if it’s limp and should
punch him and make him tougher if he’s feminine. How is this an expression of
the Love of Christ? I say it’s not.
Author
Elizabeth O’Connor writes, “We believe
ourselves to be engaged this very moment in that which is the hope of the
world. Our commitment is to the Lord of that redemptive community which has the
task of pushing back its boundaries until it holds the world. There will be no
peace or healing in our day unless little islands of koinonia can spring up
everywhere--islands where Christ is and because [Christ] is, we can learn to
live in a new way.”
When some
of us go home after meeting with church folk, it can be lonely. Some people
aren’t partnered. Some are shy and have trouble making friends. Some like
Ayanna in the story are experiencing culture shock. That is what koinonia is here for- not to become an
elitist social club where only those who fit in can attend, but rather to be a
connected community where people take care of each other. We are here to catch
each other when we fall. We are here to feed those among us who are hungry. We
are here to encourage and mentor each other. We are here to remind each other
that we are never alone.
The mystic Julian of Norwich
reminds us, “God
wants to be thought of as our Lover. I must see myself so bound in love as if
everything that has been done has been done for me. That is to say, the Love of
God makes such a unity in us that when we see this unity no one is able to
separate oneself from another.”
It is when some
of us fall into that pit of loneliness that we become the branches that shrivel
up and are tossed into the fire. Notice, nothing is said about hell or
damnation here, but as soon as we hear fire, at least I know I wince a bit.
Punishment is not the point here. First John even told us today that punishment
has nothing to do with love. The point is that when we lose our spiritual
connection, we too easily lose our ability to live in love- or live at all. Too
many people I have known have taken their own lives because they isolated. Even
this past week, we heard in the news of another young man in Utah who took his
own life. He was a community leader and still could not hold onto life.
Sometimes
you may think that you are just a little church on a corner in Naples. But you
have a community here where the love of Christ is present and palpable. The
Christ-root is dead center here and you are the branches. Sometimes God will
prune a branch for the health of the vine because instead of loving, someone
tries to get into people’s business… (Just had to tell a bit of hard truth
there, but there it is.) And God does that because God’s vines, God’s
communities are so precious. You are each precious to God the Gardener. God
reaches deep down in the dirt and gets her hands dirty- for us, and with us.
And the benefit is the life we have been looking for.
I think
this reading from the non-canonical Gospel of Philip (79:18-33) sums it up
well. “Farming in the world requires the cooperation of four essential
elements. A harvest is gathered into the barn only as a result of the natural
action of water, earth, wind, and light. God’s farming likewise has four
elements – faith, hope, love, and knowledge. Faith is our earth, that in which
we take root. And hope is the water through which we are nourished. Love is the
wind through which we grow. Knowledge is the light through which we ripen.”
I pray that
together as a vine and separately as branches that you grow your roots deeper
in the wisdom of the Divine, drink deep of hope that you will never be thirsty,
branch out wide and allow your branches to quiver in the wind, and stretch
upward to receive the light perpetual that will warm the coldest chill. Amen.
