Interdependence Day

As we in the US celebrate today the independence of our country, I consider our interdependence. We depend on each other within community to survive and to realize our dreams. More than we allow ourselves to believe, we need each other. This is different from codependency, in which the individual denies her/his own value, requiring another to feed the ego. No, interdependence is what Jesus called "the kingdom of God." We can live in heaven on earth when we build families of choice and extended networks of unlikely friends. Declare independence today from the brand of individualism that divides, isolates, and alienates. Diversity is our strength.

What is a feminist?

As a progressive Christian minister, being a feminist means dismantling millennia of patriarchal oppression that I do not recognize as my heritage. As a feminist, I dismiss any notion that women are weaker, less-than, or have a different life role than men. Jesus empowered women and so should the church today. Equality for all!

Sacred Sexuality

“Sexuality is already sacred, for it is part of the glory of the universe... It is sacred because it is so deep a part of creativity and of our human personalities. It is sacred because it is God-given and because sacred beings receive their existence from it… but also [because it is] the sacred being called human imagination, play, communication, love.”  Matthew Fox

For over four decades, MCC has been preaching that sexuality is innately sacred, holy, and blessed. We prophetically continue that message today. Some of us express our sexuality inwardly and others more outwardly. But regardless of how we express it, we each hold a wonderful erotic energy that dances as Divine Eros within us.  Even when you feel your energy diminished, remember that what you may imagine to be a little seed-sized remnant holds the potential to grow into a beautiful tree. Step forward boldly in faith and watch as your inner power expands to let others rest on your branches.

Affirmation

My sexuality is sacred. My erotic energy is good. I remember this gift of God today and I am enlivened by it. And so it is!

Cult vs. Church

The question was posed on Facebook: "How can you tell the difference between a cult and a church?"


My response: I think it comes down to how much freedom of choice a member of a group has in his/her personal life. If the church requires access to your bank account or information about your wages, that's the first sign of a cult. A second and equally disturbing sign is the use of fear tactics to control individual behavior. There is a big difference between accountability to a moral guideline and such oppression. In a church, a parishioner is able to think for herself, make his own choices, and not be ashamed of self-expression (in appropriate ways that respect others, of course).

Wild Trust

“Wild Trust”

Sermon for Celebration MCC- Naples, FL

June 17, 2012

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Would you pray with me? “God, we know you by many names, and yet all of them fall short of capturing all of who you are. Our words fail us. We cannot put you in a box because you are the Great Mystery who breaks through all boundaries. But we remember that Jesus addressed you as Abba, Father. So on this Father’s Day, we remember the positive qualities of all the people who have been father figures for us. Even if our biological fathers have treated us as less than your children, we know that you remain the loving, warm, caring, providing, gentle Eternal Father in whom we put all of our trust. This day, Grandfather God, open our hearts that your word may enter in and give us rest in you. In the name of all that is holy we pray. Amen.”

Who here has ever planted a seed? It may seem like a silly question since many of us had gardens growing up. I know I did. It wasn’t a very large garden, but when I was a kid in the suburbs of Maryland we grew cherry tomatoes, various kinds of flowers, and we attempted to grow other things such as sweet peas but they didn’t quite work out. My family came from Iowa where the soil is dark and rich. My mother’s family was all farmers. They would take me out to one of the family farms and I would feed the pigs and laugh at their flatulence. (My female cousin was not amused. She would say, “It’s not funny. It’s gross!”) I would chase after the geese as my mother chased after me. One day my uncle even threw me on a small tractor by myself when I was only seven years old and told me to drive. I had no clue what I was doing. I inevitably crashed into the cornfield.

When my parents and I moved to Maryland when I was three years old, they realized something- the soil was not the same. Instead of rich black soil, our backyard just had red clay dirt. The only thing that seemed to grow well in it was crab grass and weeds. My parents thought it was the strangest thing that we had to BUY dirt in order to grow anything. “Buy dirt?? That’s like buying air!” they would say.

I think that’s what the disciples would have said too. Unlike many of us who live in suburbs or cities today, they lived in an agrarian world. Their whole existence revolved around agriculture. It was common knowledge when to sow and when to reap, what to plant when, how much water and sun exposure was needed for each plant, and so on. So Jesus uses the parables we heard today (called the parable of the growing seed and the parable of the mustard seed), meeting the people at the root (so to speak) of their life experience.

What we can’t immediately tell from reading this passage is that the parable of the mustard seed is actually a joke. What the text doesn’t tell us is that the mustard seed they speak of is a weed. So the punch line of Jesus’ joke is right up front: a man takes a mustard seed and plants it in the ground. That’s like saying someone planted a dandelion seed or a crabgrass seed. (My parents used to hate it when as a kid I would run through the yard and kick up all the dandelion seeds so I could see them fly around in the wind). Mustard plants multiplied like crazy and were difficult to control. And when they grew into the large shrubs that Jesus describes, they obstructed planting other plants. Obviously, people do not intentionally plant weeds; they pluck them up (unless of course we’re talking about another kind of “weed” that is consumed by a large percentage of the US population, but even that is called weed because when left in the wild it reproduces quickly).

With this humor, Jesus is really saying something profound about the Realm of God here. In this parable, Jesus redeems the unredeemable. He takes as an example something that was considered an annoyance and highlighted its so-called “faults,” calling them assets. We can take several meanings from this. First, Jesus is embracing the outcast and the marginalized. He is saying, “You may be considered a weed, a nuisance in our society, but to God you are a unique and beautiful blessing. You give shelter to those who need it. You surprise the world with your wild growth.” In the words of God in the book of first Samuel that we heard today, “I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”

Another meaning is that with a tiny bit of faith (which really is just another word for trust, not specific belief), a seed is planted in our spirit that is designed to grow like a weed. Imagine that we have built up different closets in our hearts, places where we know we can hide when we are afraid. A small mustard seed falls between the floor boards of each poorly built shack of a closet, takes root in the soil beneath, and soon enough breaks through the floor, branches out through every wall, and rips the roof right off! The Realm of God- the power of unconditional love, peace beyond understanding, and joy unspeakable quickly takes over all space within us. When that happens, we no longer hide in fear but rather rest in the branches of the shrub, as the branches are in truth the arms of God.

Perhaps for us the wild mustard seed is the all-inclusive gospel that we preach. We plant a seed with a friend or even a stranger, letting them know that God loves them just as they are and that rumors of an angry God are lies. And with fear moved aside, that seed springs up into a great plant within that person, producing more seeds to plant with others. The radical gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be stopped! It is subversive. It is counter-cultural. It is scandalous. It is indecent. Sometimes it’s even sexy. And stuffy religious types can’t stand it because it can’t be controlled. It can’t be contained by creeds and codes and rules. It’s too free for that. And what does this teach us? … It teaches us that the life of faith is not about keeping our fists clenched tightly onto the seed hoping that it will do something. The life of faith is about trusting that when we open our hand, and drop the seed into the soil, we give God the control. From then, we just trust God that the soil and water will prompt the seeds to grow, all in God’s time.

How many of us hoard our seed of faith, holding it tightly in case of emergency, in case of some tragedy that might happen that might require some more faith? The funny but sad thing about our crazy hoarding is that when those difficult times do come in our lives, if we have not planted, all we have is seed. And what in the world are we going to do with a handful or even a house full of seed? It is the plant that will serve us by giving us shelter, not the tiny seed. All we have done is put our faith in our own hands.

Or how many of us plant the seed but then get up in the middle of the night and mess with it, dig it up to see if it has grown any? Any middle of the night worriers here? I know I’m as guilty as anyone else J. We think that by worrying we can somehow control the situation when all we are doing is making ourselves sick. We struggle so hard to understand life, but I like what protestant reformer Martin Luther said, “If you truly understood a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” In other words, we are trying to grasp what is not ours to grasp, but is rather ours to stand in awe of. Science and a healthy sense of curiosity are good, and a gift from God. But when our wondering turns to worrying, we have lost our way.

Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us this: “Trust in the LORD with your WHOLE heart and do not lean on your own understanding. But in EVERYTHING (somebody say, “everything”!) acknowledge God, and God will direct your paths.” (Some translations say God will make our paths “straight”, but that never really sits right in MCC J ).  I think trust is the greatest challenge of our lives. It comes back again and again when we take our control back again and again. We may keep praying, keep coming to church, keep living a religious life, but still hold onto control.

Again, I know I’m guilty of it. There was a time in my life when I was worrying all the time. I was unhappy with my job, and yet afraid to lose it. I kept asking myself all the “What if?” questions. “What if I lose everything? What if we can’t eat? What if my reputation is damaged? What if all my efforts have been a waste?” I expressed these concerns to a close friend of mine. He doesn’t profess any particular faith, but he respects mine and respects the work I do. So in response to what I told him, he said to me, “Aren’t you supposed to trust God?” That was my epiphany moment. With tears and snot running down my face, I laughed out loud because it was so obvious.

I had lost my patience with life, with God even. I had planted the seed, but I was digging up the soil every day to see what it was doing. And my actions were doing it no good. My friend told me to quit it, slapping my proverbial hand away from the soil. His tough love is just what I needed to awaken from my nightmare of fear.

In her devotional called Faith in the Valley, Iyanla Vanzant writes, “Trust is a decision we make within ourselves when we surrender control to God. If you believe you have been betrayed, used, taken for granted, or in some other way had your trust violated, decide now never to give up on people or yourself… Always remember, no matter what happens, or how bad you feel about it, or how much you don’t like it, God knows exactly where you are and what you need. If you realize that your Creator is in control, there is never a reason to not trust people or yourself. ALL you have to do is trust that God will help you understand the value of your experiences… no matter what they look like.”

We have been conditioned to so quickly put a value on the situations we are in. Waiting in line: negative. A hug from a loved one: positive. A visit to the dentist: negative. A vacation: positive. A rainy or cloudy day: negative. A sunny day: positive. The list goes on and on, stretching over our whole lives. What if we could do what Jesus did with that poor mustard shrub and see it for its beauty?

Of course, it’s not the easiest thing to do to “Let go and let God.” I remember a story Yvette Flunder (Presiding Bishop of the Fellowship of Affirming Churches) told about her Pentecostal upbringing in the Church of God in Christ. When she was a small child, he aunt would get her up in the middle of the night randomly to take her to the church and pray at the altar. She would get down on her knees on the kneeler and her aunt would stand behind her as she prayed. And what confused her is her aunt would first say, “Hold on, Yvette! Hold on!” and then she would switch to saying, “Let go, Yvette! Let go!” It was a bit of a mixed message. How can you hold on and let go at once!

But in retrospect, it now makes perfect sense to her. In order to let go of all our doubts and fears, our regrets and resentments, our hatred and our negativity, we have to hold on- instead… to the hand of God, in trust.

We wake up each morning with the decision of how we will focus our attention that day, with what lens we will view the world. A Course in Miracles teaches, “God and God’s miracles are inseparable. How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who live in God’s light! Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do not perceive yourself in different lights. Know yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear” (3:VII: 60).

Friends, don’t underestimate your ability to sow the seed in this word that will build God’s realm of unconditional love, one heart at a time. You are doing it here, and you are doing it beyond these walls. Keep sowing those seeds of love! Amen.

Enlarge My Territory

Though it was a fad in the evangelical "prosperity gospel" world to quote the so-called "Prayer of Jabez," I don't let that ruin it for me. It still means a great deal to me. 1 Chronicles 4:10 "And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!" So God granted him what he requested." God is not a genie in a lamp to grant wishes, but when we think and speak into reality our deepest desires that align with Divine Love, miracles can happen.

Love Connection

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.