Miracles in the Wilderness

“Miracles in the Wilderness”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

February 17^th 2013

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Texts:

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4:1-13

         I know many of you know the Jesus Prayer (known as the Lord’s Prayer, the Model Prayer, or the Our Father) by heart. So for the sake of today’s message, I am going to first read to you a translation from the original Aramaic that you will not recognize. This way, your mind will not just replay from rote memory.

Translation by Neil Douglas-Klotz in Prayers of the Cosmos

O Birther! Father- Mother of the Cosmos

Focus your light within us - make it useful.

Create your reign of unity now-

through our fiery hearts and willing hands

Help us love beyond our ideals

and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures.

Animate the earth within us: we then

feel the Wisdom underneath supporting all.

Untangle the knots within

so that we can mend our hearts' simple ties to each other.

Don't let surface things delude us,

But free us from what holds us back from our true purpose.

Out of you, the astonishing fire,

Returning light and sound to the cosmos.

      Amen.

This version is just as true as the one that many of us know by heart and if you want to experience the Jesus Prayer in a new way, I would suggest trying this one. But for the purpose of you being able to recall parts of the prayer, I will refer today to the traditional phrasing.

         I begin today with this prayer because just like Jesus’ forty days in the desert, this prayer reflects Jesus’ spiritual ideals. Essentially, Jesus’ temptation in the desert was to do the opposite of this prayer. Let’s start with the first temptation given in the Gospel of Luke: bread. The temptation was to turn a stone into a loaf of bread. The scripture tells us that Jesus was very hungry because he did not eat at all during his time in the desert. Remember that the Jesus Prayer asks of God, “Give us this day our daily bread.” This is usually a phrase that we see framed above dinner tables or even woven on banners in churches to refer to Holy Communion. While it is right and good to give thanks for what we have, the Aramaic actually uses bread as an analogy for wisdom. So while Jesus was tempted in the desert to embrace what the powerful considered wisdom, Jesus knew true wisdom, the Word that comes from God. And as Paul reminds us in the scripture we heard today in his letter to the Romans, “The Word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.” We need not look any further for the truth we seek than our own being, our own body, mind, and spirit.

         The second temptation Jesus faces is to take power and glory all for himself if he worships the Tempter. We know in reading all of the Gospels in our Bible that Jesus never asked to be glorified. He never asked for political or worldly power. He always pointed to God as the source of all he said and did. Jesus knew he was very gifted. He knew what great power he held and what he could do with it for himself. But the mission God had given him to subvert human understandings of power and glory kept Jesus from giving in to Ego. What is called “the devil” in this text is essentially what the Greeks called the Ego, the small selfish self that manipulates in order to get its own way.

         In the book The Hidden Teachings of Jesus: The Political Meaning of the Kingdom of God, Lance deHaven-Smith writes that “The Hebrew word Satan comes from the same root as seteh, which means, “to turn away.” … When Jesus spoke of Satan, he was not talking about some malicious ghost; he was pointing out to us that people are faced with a spirit that tempts them away from their humanity, away from their soul-given connection with God and with one another” (87).  When we look at today’s Gospel passage, we can see from Smith’s explanation that Jesus was being tempted to turn away from God and God’s mission for his life.

         This second temptation also has a reflection in the Jesus Prayer. We say, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the Kin-dom, and the power, and the glory forever.” Jesus was tempted to live up to people’s expectations of him. Many wanted him to lead a violent revolt against the Romans and become their literal king. They wanted a warrior, but God gave them a Hippie :) Jesus’ mission was not violence, it was non-violent resistance to power that oppressed people and caused mass suffering. The Kin-dom of God he spoke of was not a new rule, but rather the counter-kingdom where the Love of God reigns. A bumper sticker I saw recently said, “Do you really think Jesus would be a member of the NRA?” I know my answer is “absolutely not.” Jesus would put a flower in the butt of a rifle, not carry one himself.

         Smith teaches us today something about the root of the words power and glory. He writes, “…the word “power” in Greek is dunamis, which means “force.” … In Greek, the word glory is doxa, which means “opinion.” Jesus had to decide within his time of struggle before starting his formal ministry to hand over all power and glory, all force and opinion to God. He was vowing to not attempt to take down the Roman Empire by force and he would not let people’s opinion of “certain kinds of people” stop him from associating with, reaching out to, ministering with, and even making chosen family with the so-called “least of these” on the margins of society. Remember, people look at the outside of a person, but God is concerned with the heart.

         The third and final temptation that Luke lists in his Gospel is for Jesus to jump off the highest point of the temple because angels would save him anyway. There are two points I want to make about this temptation. The first is that we should note the location of this temptation: the temple. The temple was the center of religious and political life for the Jewish people at the time. Doing a magic trick for the crowds of Jewish people at the temple would certainly wow them, but that is not the purpose of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ ministry was centered on miracles, but as A Course in Miracles states, “The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is wrong, or better, is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are really used for and by believers” (1:10). The Course also says, “Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe” (1:42). If a miracle is a turn from fear to love, then Jesus’ time in the desert was really a time of miracles. He was choosing to embrace the God who is Divine Love instead of the Ego, which is fear.

         The second point I want to make about this temptation is that the Tempter quotes scripture. In fact, the Tempter proof-texts by taking a Bible verse out of context, using it against Jesus. Does this sound familiar to anyone?? Fundamentalists today take Bible verses out of context all the time just to prove their own point. They know the text from rote memory, but often forgo the context and deeper meaning behind the text. Jesus saw straight through this proof-texting and quoted scripture in return, “Do not put the Lord God to the test.”

         So here comes the practical stuff, the life-application. Smith proposes a very challenging question: “What if we began from the premise not that we want to maintain a social formation based on industrialism and competition, but that our aim is a society of humility and love?” (84). Some of us were taught that resisting temptation had to do with resisting pleasurable things. That’s why the stereotype of Lent is giving up chocolate for a few weeks. No, the power of Lent is rather in realizing our ability to let go of the things that tempt us to be less loving. In traditional terms, the purpose of Lent is to turn away from sin because after all the definition of sin is “lack of love.”

         I have heard some Christians say that observing Lent is wrong because it is not mentioned in the Bible. Well I hate to tell you, but a lot of our traditions are not in the Bible. The Gospel of Mark doesn’t mention the Resurrection, so no Easter for Mark! The Gospels of Mark and John do not mention Jesus’ birth, so no Christmas for them! My point is: we practice our spirituality here in MCC in ways that help us to grow closer to God and to one another. Lent is not just for Catholics or other so-called “high church” folks. We can see the good in deepening our prayer practice, meditating more often, taking on new spiritual practices, highlighting spiritual practices we already do, and questioning our faith. Lent is a time to “go deeper” into the Mystery of God.

         Lent is 40 days (actually 46 including Sundays), which reflects Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. During this time, don’t deprive yourself of joy. In the footsteps of Jesus, instead deprive yourself of life’s idols and instead embrace authenticity. During these forty days, intentionally try to resist force and opinion, as Jesus did. In other words, ask yourself, “In what ways do I embrace violence in my life and toward whom am I judgmental?” On this spiritual journey, what wisdom could you gain? Jesus chose the wisdom of God over the values of those in power. Could you perhaps pick up a Positive Thinking book or read Spirit & Truth devotional over these weeks?

         There is plenty to give up that doesn’t do us any good and there is also plenty to take on that enriches our lives. Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” Friends, choose abundant life this Lent. I’m on the journey with you. Amen.

On the Inclusion of Heterosexuals in MCC

On the Inclusion of Heterosexuals in MCC

I was asked today about the inclusion of heterosexuals in Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC). This has been a topic of discussion in our movement since the very beginning. Heterosexual allies have been members and regular attendees of MCCs since the very beginning of UFMCC in 1968. We have always expressed as a denomination that ALL are welcome, not just Gay and Lesbian people. We recognize that even within the "LGBT" community, Bisexuals sometimes partner with people of the opposite* sex, as do Transgender folks. (*Note that I use the word "opposite" within the ideology of the binary gender system (which I do not agree with) in which a person must choose to be either male or female.)

UFMCC is a Historically LGBT Church, just as denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) are Historically African American Churches. MCC grew out of the Gay Liberation Movement of the 1960s. So sexual orientation and gender identity have formed our story as a people. The founders of MCC did not seek to just form a system of LGBT community centers; rather they were (and are) people of Christian faith who sought to work for social justice and worship freely as LGBT people. Within our Christian identity, we find affirmation of our whole selves, including our sexual orientation and gender identity. And we also find a special calling through our experience as outsiders on the margins to be a prophetic voice in the world for social justice for everyone.

That "everyone" includes all heterosexuals whose privilege is challenged by other demographics such as race, class, ability, age, etc. So when a heterosexual attends worship at an MCC, s/he may at first feel out of place because the majority of those in the room are LGBT. But in listening to the message of radical inclusion, s/he will find that s/he is fully welcome.

Including hetero folks in MCC does not however mean compromising our identity and forgetting our history. On any given Sunday, you are likely to hear me mention in my sermon something about LGBT rights and identity. I speak very openly about bodies and sexuality (within appropriate boundaries of course). I also speak from my own experience, so I speak from my social location as a Gay man. As a feminist, I also do my best to challenge sexism and misogyny. You will also hear me speak weekly against racism. LGBT rights are not my only concern in regard to how I interpret the Good News of Jesus, but I do know that the intersection of gender/sexuality and the Christian faith is our history and our home.

I have been a regular attendee at several Historically African American churches over the years. I have enjoyed the rich sense of culture that is expressed and embodied unapologetically within worship. I was oftentimes the only Caucasian person in the room, but I was always welcomed with open arms. Sermons at these churches always included stories from Black History and challenged the oppression of people of color. These elements never made me uncomfortable as a white person because I share the same values as those in these churches. I too am anti-racist.  I did not misinterpret their authenticity as people of color as being anti-white. I know that there are groups such as the Nation of Islam that claim publicly to hate white people, but there was no reason to associate these inclusive Historically African American churches with such exclusive groups.

Such is the same with MCC. We are not anti-heterosexual. We ARE however against heterosexism, homophobia, homo-hatred, hetero-supremacy, biphobia, transphobia, cisgender-supremacy, and the like. We do not tolerate such ideologies in our churches and we fight publicly to eliminate them in our society. We welcome all heterosexuals into our communities who share these values of equality and justice. All present will experience each week a healthy dose of queer activism. If that makes you uncomfortable, I advise you to reevaluate your own internalized oppression. Just as it would be incredibly wrong, rude, and racist to ask a Historically African American Church to be "less Black," it is wrong, rude, and oppressive to ask MCC to be "less queer." MCC has recognized since our founding that queer activism is Christian activism. It is our faith that calls us to transform the world into a more loving place and a safer place for all people; and who better to address issues of discrimination than those of us who experience it (implicitly or explicitly) every day.

My final thought on this topic is to say "thank you" to all the heterosexual allies who have stood up for LGBT people even when it required sacrifice of your own privilege. It is a great joy and comfort to know that we are not alone on this fight for equality. You are appreciated, you are loved, and you are always welcome! Just know, you will experience the Divine in a unique way in our churches, a way that shows brightly the queerness of God.

Love Eternal

“Love Eternal”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

February 3, 2013 10:00am

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Texts:

1 Corinthians 13: 1-8; 13

Luke 4:21-30

         Have you ever found yourself pushed to the edge of a cliff in life? No, I don’t mean literally, like Thelma and Louise, though if you have been there, I’m glad you decided to turn around and live to tell the tale! Today’s Gospel passage from Luke is about just that: telling and living our truths so loudly that we are pushed to the edge of society, or even the edge of life.

         Jesus spoke his truth boldly in his hometown of Nazareth. We heard in last week’s reading what Jesus’ mission was: to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (which to Jesus meant bringing about what he called the Realm of God). These words were at first pleasing to those he was speaking to because they had probably heard about the wonderful things that Jesus had done in other places. But then Jesus does something very unexpected: he challenges their privilege.

         Remember, prophets are not fortunetellers; rather they are challengers. Prophets proclaim hard truths in the face of those living lies and lives of hypocrisy. Jesus essentially tells the people of his hometown that he will not do the same wonderful things that he has done elsewhere for them because they were not ready to receive them. These people thought they deserved Jesus’ blessing because they were ultra-religious people who believed in God’s exclusive promise to them, and them only. Jesus demonstrates through examples in the Tanach that God’s grace is far more inclusive than they could imagine.

         Because of his message of inclusivity that challenged their privilege, the people literally drove Jesus to the edge of a cliff to kill him. They were enraged that one of their own would not give them all they thought they deserved. And this is where we can learn from Jesus. Right when they are about to throw him off the cliff, Jesus passed through the crowd and simply went on his way. He just kept going. He didn’t let anyone stop him. He knew he had a mission to live and his hometown people would not stop him.

         Many of us come from places where we were not accepted as same-gender-loving or gender-variant people. When some of us have spoken our truths loudly in the fashion of Jesus, our hometown people have pushed us out. In too many cases, violent hate-crimes happen against us, many leading to death. And sometimes we don’t even have a choice in proclaiming our truths to the world around us. Some of us naturally walk or talk or gesture in ways that are indicators to the world that we are gender non-conforming. I know when driving across the country with my husband James, his swish from the car to the gas station in states like Wyoming and Nebraska made me nervous. And someone (not to be named) told me just last week that a child asked her, “Are you a boy or a girl?” which of course she took with humor. We can’t help but be who we are, but sometimes it gets us into trouble.

         To live our lives fully in wholeness and integrity, we need to have an outlet of self-expression. Jesus knew he couldn’t stay in his hometown because they wouldn’t accept him, so he moved on. In the 1970s, many gay and lesbian people moved from small towns to large cities such as San Francisco and New York. The Castro district in San Francisco was an Irish Catholic ghetto until gay men flocked there in the 1970s and took over the neighborhood.

         In 1968, Rev. Troy Perry decided to call our denomination “Metropolitan Community Church” because of the phenomenon of LGBT people flocking to metropolitan areas for safety. So Jesus’ story is our story today. Whenever we can, we go where we are accepted and celebrated, not where we are just tolerated and even hated. That is one of the main callings of MCC today. Though other churches tolerate queer folks, we celebrate one another in our rich diversity in MCC. (We are extremely blessed to have a host church, United Church on the Green UCC, which celebrates us, not just tolerates us.)

         In many ways, we have become comfortable in the rights and privileges we now hold in the United States. Since we can now legally have our own bars and sleep with who we want to and publicly dress in whatever gender expression we want to, we have become complacent. Since the invention of life-saving protease inhibitors in the mid-1990s, AIDS activism has been reduced to AIDS walks. Protests have been reduced to pride parades. Since many cities and states have granted us some relationship rights, the fight for marriage equality has dragged on for decades. And it took far too long for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to be repealed. As a people, we have been pacified with small bones tossed to us. What we have all but forgotten is that our God holds a seat for us at the table, not on the floor where the scraps are thrown.

         As a people, we are afraid of the cliff. Once we get far away enough from the cliff, we naturally don’t want to go back to that place. I’m personally terrified of heights, so I avoid high places unless there’s glass or at least a rail to keep me from falling. I get it. Why cause ourselves more suffering when we have what we have?

         Why? Because those who came before us fought long and hard for the privileges we enjoy today. Countless men and women in the United States were taken to jail during raids of gay bars just half a century ago. Millions of our three-dollar bills have been spent on attorneys to defend us. Our spiritual ancestors put their bodies on the line in nonviolent resistance so that we could have church today without question. In countries around the world today such as Afghanistan and Nigeria, MCC has to meet secretly because they would be killed if it were found out that “homosexuals” were meeting for any purpose.

         We recall that one hundred thousand of our spiritual ancestors were arrested in Nazi Germany for being “homosexual” and were marked with pink triangles on their prison uniforms. Ten thousand of those were sent to concentration camps and were murdered along with Jews and other groups deemed “undesirable” and “unfit to live.” Paragraph 175 in the German Penal Code written in 1871 read, “An unnatural sex act committed between persons of the male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed.” The Nazis strictly enforced this law that was previously all but ignored. Same-gender love was amounted to bestiality. The same kind of rhetoric is used by fundamentalist Christians today. We especially remember these facts today because people all over the world recall that on January 27, 1945 (that’s 68 years ago last week), the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps were liberated.

         Our queer spiritual ancestors worked hard with sweat, blood, and tears so that we could pursue happiness freely today. We are obligated to them to continue the fight. We are obligated to them to also not allow the masses to push us over the cliff. Like Jesus, we must slip through the crowd and walk on.

         The trouble in our faith after seeing the edge of the cliff is we are faced with questioning the nature of God. Jews call what is commonly called “the Holocaust” the “Shoah.” Holocaust means “burnt whole,” while Shoah means “catastrophe.” I choose to use the word Shoah because of these meanings. After the Shoah, theologies, the ways we think about God, are forever changed. From that point forward, we cannot think of God as the old man in the clouds who swoops down to save all the good people, destroying the evil ones. The reality is that the Nazis killed between 11 and 26 million sacred children of God (depending on what demographics one includes).

         This is the greatest example in recent history to tell us about the character of the Divine. God is the Light within us, and should we choose to hide that Light and deny it, we have the negative potential to do great harm. This does not mean that God does not care or that God wills evil to happen. It does mean however that God has entrusted us with being Her hands, feet, and face in the world. We are God’s body if we choose to embrace the God within. God’s body is all colors, all abilities, all ages, all gender expressions, all sexualities.

         As this Black History Month begins, I recall that in 1898, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Bishop Henry McNeal Turner wrote, “We have as much right biblically and otherwise to believe that God is a Negro, as you buckra, or white, people have to believe that God‘ is a fine looking, symmetrical and ornamented white man. For the bulk of you, and’ all the fool Negroes of the country, believe that God is white- skinned, blue-eyed, straight-haired, projecting-nosed, compressed-lipped and finely-robed white gentleman sitting upon a throne somewhere in the heavens.
Every race of people since time began who have attempted to describe their God by words, or by paintings, or by carvings, or by any other form or figure have conveyed the idea that the God who made them and shaped their destinies was symbolized in themselves, and why should not the Negro believe that he resembles God as much as other people? We do not believe that there is any hope for a race of people who do not believe that they look like God.”

         Our Christian faith tells us that God is Spirit. No one has ever seen God apart from creation because such a thing is not possible. The question of what God would look like if God decided to show up is irrelevant because God has shown up 525,600 minutes of every year! God shows up every day in the choices we make to embody the Love of God in discipleship.

         In the midst of the Shoah, Lutheran minister and anti-Nazi activist Dietrich Bonheoffer defined what it truly meant to be a disciple. Within his context of Nazi Germany, true discipleship was not easy; it was costly. He wrote in a poem, “[People] go to God when [they are] sore bested: find [them] poor and scorned, without shelter and bread, whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead. Christians stand by God in [God’s] hour of grieving.”

         The former ancient idea of a distant and wrathful god is dead. Some decide to prop up the rotting corpse of their petty god each Sunday, demanding worship of exclusion and ego. But we have moved on beyond that nonsense, church! Like Jesus who snuck through the crowd and went on his way, we do the same. We have no time in this short life for the pain that oppressive god-talk can cause us. We leave it behind because all it ever sought to do was throw us off a cliff.

         Instead, we embrace the God we know in Jesus Christ who in the words of the Apostle Paul is fully expressed in what we know as Love. Paul gives us a picture of the character of God when he writes, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

         The author of First John (4:16) wrote words that remain at the center of MCC theologies today: “Whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in them.” So if God is Love, then God is patient, God is kind, God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. God is not irritable or resentful. God rejoices in the truth. God…never… ends.

         Friends, Divine Love is eternal. Love will always win at the end of the day. But we cannot take that fact for granted. God gives us grace beyond measure out of Her own loving nature. But this same God grieves when we suffer. His tears saturate the earth. They are the tears of fearful immigrants who long for citizenship. They are the tears of the poor who long for healthcare and safety. They are the tears of the young women whose government seeks to control her body.

         MCC is not a complacent church; it is an active church. Its waters are not stagnant; they are living. If we are to fully embrace our calling as Metropolitan Community Church and as disciples of Jesus Christ, we must not allow even thoughts of the Shoah to throw us off the cliff of depression and despair. We must instead heed the call of our God to walk through the crowd of oppressive voices and walk on. Just walk on in the knowledge that in the words of the Course, “You are the work of God, and [God’s] work is wholly lovable and wholly loving.” Say this affirmation with me: I am … the work of God… I am… wholly lovable… and wholly loving. Take this essential truth into your spirit today and as the dissenting voices surround you this week (as they always will), the matchless Love of God will shield you. May it be so. Amen.