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.

“Our Mission: The Queer Body of Christ”

“Our Mission: The Queer Body of Christ”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

January 27^th 2013

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Texts:

1 Corinthians 12: 12-26

Luke 4:14-21

A selection from gay 19^th century poet Walt Whitman’s

Leaves of Grass: “I Sing the Body Electric.”

“I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all, in all nations and times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,

…

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,
Man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's, father's, young man's, young woman's poems,
…

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!”

I encourage you to look up the full text of this poem and read it in its entirety. Walt Whitman so beautifully expresses the beauty and goodness he sees in the human body. (And he goes into detail about almost every part of the body, and I do mean EVERY part.)

In our post-Puritan society, we still hold onto a lot of baggage concerning bodies. As a culture, I am sad to say the United States is “body-negative.” Though we have largely embraced the free-love mentality of the 1960s and sex symbols are everywhere in the media, we have not as a culture embraced our bodies as good, holy vessels that have great potential for good, holy experience.

I think it is fitting that the Apostle Paul uses the analogy of the body for understanding the way the church should function. Each human body, even with what we call faults, disabilities, flaws, and undesirable traits, is beautifully and wonderfully made. We give no glory to God when we say things like, “At least he’s beautiful on the inside.” Even those who have been badly burned or scarred carry beauty with their bodies.

Paul tells us that each one of us is a member of the Body of Christ. And each member of the body has a purpose that is no lesser than the others. We are diverse, but in our diversity we have strength, as the body has integrity. Most people have hands that allow us to do many things, but the body cannot be all hands (can you imagine what that would look like?). Most people have eyes that allow us to see and through them know what we are doing. But we could not function as a blob of eyeballs! So it is with the Body of Christ. We truly need one another.

Give some time today and this week to ask yourself which body part your life most resembles. (I know where some of your minds went!) Are you a foot that helps the body to travel softly across the earth? Are you an eye that gives vision for the church? Are you an ear that listens for truth and takes it in? Are you the loins that help the church to procreate? Are you the birth canal that delivers God into the world each day?

Embracing each part of the body as a blessing from God is being “body-positive,” and that is part of the identity of MCC. I have told congregations before that MCC is the third breast of the body: giving nourishing milk to the world, but so unexpected!

The global Body of Christ is a queer body. Like our queer bodies, it experiences violence. Its parts are so different, yet somehow fit together. They have different beliefs and values and yet all claim to follow in the Way of Christ. Some parts are ill and some parts are well. Some parts are old and some parts are new. The jury is still out on whether some parts are implants (and by that, I mean churches that have a message of hate). But somehow, this body has moved forward through two thousand years of history.

Since the early 1980s, in MCC we have declared to the world that the Body of Christ is HIV-positive, that the Body of Christ has AIDS. Thirty-two years later, this is sadly still true. Today, more than 34 million same-gender-loving and heterosexual people around the world are living with HIV. And all are children of God. An illness does not disqualify anyone from being a member of the Body of Christ, amen?

Jesus cared about bodies. He proclaimed in our reading today from the Gospel of Luke, quoting the Prophet Isaiah “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because [She] has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. [She] has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” In reading this scripture, Jesus was telling those in his home town of Nazareth that he was taking this passage seriously, that his mission was to do exactly as it said.

Part one of Jesus’ mission is to bring good news to the poor. Take a look at the front of your bulletin or at the poster in front of me. This picture is called “Patrono De Los Desperados” or “Patron of the Desperate Ones” by Mexican artist Octavio Ocampo. No, this is not just a picture of Jesus, and it is not a picture of Marjorie the Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock :). Ocampo has presented in this artwork his vision of the Body of Christ. It is made up of women and men (and even a dog) who scavenge for food and belongings among the garbage. This Body of Christ is not cleaned up. It has no façade. It is a true face of Christ, composed of those on the margins of society, the “least of these.” Jesus and Ocampo remind us that the poor are part of our body.

Part two of Jesus’ mission is to proclaim release to the captives. We remember today all those who are kept prisoner illegally, those who are part of a worldwide pandemic of human trafficking, and those who are in prison for their crimes. The raw truth of the corrections system in the United States is shocking. Hear this carefully.

The US has the highest number of people incarcerated in the world. As of the last census in 2010, 2,266,800 people, almost 1% of the population is in prison. Two percent more are on parole. This fact alone is shocking, but what is even more shocking is the disproportionate number of people of color in prison. Forty percent are African American, though African Americans make up only 12.6% of the total population. Twenty-one percent are Hispanic, though Hispanics only make up 16.4% of the total population. People of European descent make up 34.7% of prisons, but they comprise 72.4% of the total population. Some conclude from these statistics that people of color are just more likely to be criminals. But I cannot accept that as truth. What I see beyond these statistics is gross injustice. People of color are struggling in this country out of a history of racism. And so instead of putting them in the fields as slaves as was once legal, they are put behind bars.

Now don’t hear me wrong. I am not saying that those who commit crimes should not be brought to justice. What I am saying is that systemic oppression is pushing these folks into prisons. Spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson says, “We see criminals as guilty and seek to punish them. But whatever we do to others, we are doing to ourselves. Statistics painfully prove that our prisons are schools for crime; a vast number of crimes are committed by people who have already spent time in prison. In punishing others, we end up punishing ourselves. Does that mean we’re to forgive a rapist, tell him we know he just had a bad day and send him home? Of course not. We’re to ask for a miracle. A miracle here would be a shift from perceiving prisons as houses of punishment to perceiving them as houses of rehabilitation. When we consciously change their purpose from fear to love, we release infinite possibilities of healing.[1]”

Crime in our nation is a complicated thing to tackle. But there are steps that can be taken now, and we are called as the Body of Christ to advocate for them. Especially with gun law reform in the news right now, the time is ripe for a plentiful harvest. We can stop violence as Christ calls us to do. We just must act together as a society with the Mind of Christ.

Poet Kahlil Gibran reminds us, “Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also… You are the way and the wayfarers. And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.”

We all have the negative potential to commit misdeeds and crimes. And we all also have the collective responsibility to ensure that “stumbling stones” are removed so that those who come after us will have a lesser chance of stumbling.

Bishop Oscar Romero gives us our charge today in his poem titled The Long View. Listen to the words and find liberation:

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom [of God] is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying that
the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

That is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and
there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.”

         Church, we know that there is so much in our world that is upside-down. Jesus knew that of his world too. Jesus didn’t single-handedly stop global evil in his ministry 2000 years ago. Many terrible things have happened over that time. But he did give us tools to work with, truths to live by, and the Holy Spirit to lead us. And as we boldly live by these truths through our beautiful bodies, knowing with every fiber of our beings that we are made in the image and likeness of God, we can work miracles.

         Together, let’s worry less about how we should worship in church and be concerned more about how we should worship God through service. Let’s worry less about what we get and be concerned more about what we can give. Let’s worry less about how others have done us wrong and be concerned more about how we can better treat others with love. We are the queer Body of Christ and we have a mission to live out. With these frail, vulnerable, fallible, transitory, beautiful bodies, we can, with God’s help. Amen.

---

[1] Williamson, Marianne. A Return to Love, 86.

Justice Now

“Justice Now”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

January 20, 2013; 10:00am

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Texts: John 2:1-11, 1Cor. 12:4-11

         On this past Tuesday January 15^th, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 84 years old. We all know his life was taken much too early by assassination in 1968 at the age of 39. In the United States, King’s birthday is celebrated on the third Monday of January, which will be tomorrow. Also tomorrow, President Barack Obama, America’s first African American president will be sworn in for a second term with both Abraham Lincoln’s Bible and King’s Bible.

         This week, I reflect on the impact Dr. King and the civil rights movement have had on my life and on the LGBT community. I remember in second grade coloring a sheet we were given with a picture of King sleeping in bed with a thought bubble above his head that read “I have a dream.” At that age, I wondered why a dream meant so much. We all dream, right? The teacher explained to us what the kind of “dream” King referred to meant. She told us that this kind of dream is about hope for a better future. She then told us that as a Black woman, not too long ago she would not have been allowed to be a teacher for white students. We were all amazed by this because we loved Mrs. Penndel so much. She then pulled out the record player and put on the record of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Even now, I can remember the chills that went all over me after first hearing it. To this day, I still get those chills. I now know that King’s prophetic voice has always resonated so strongly with me because I too have a calling to preach social justice in our world. And I will.

         The social Gospel I preach is not only for people like myself: white, gay men. The social Gospel I profess and preach is the gospel that King and those who inspired him including Bayard Rustin, Mohandas Gandhi, and Jesus preached. It is a message of Good News. That Good News is that we are all One Human Family and each person in this multi-billion member family should be treated with dignity and respect and should be given equal rights. As ACIM (1:88) says, “God is not partial. All [God’s] Children have [God’s] total love, and all [God’s] gifts are freely given to everyone alike.”

         Some LGBT rights leaders have been criticized for comparing the LGBT rights movement to the civil rights movement. “After all,” they argue, “LGBT people were never taken from their homeland and made slaves.” I’ll stop the argument right now by saying that we get nowhere when we start playing the game of “I’m more oppressed than you are!” What I can attest to is that same-gender-loving and gender-variant people have suffered under patriarchy, heterosexism, homophobia, transphobia, hetero-privilege, homo-hatred, and hetero-supremacy for millennia. Some societies throughout history have been more favorable of queer folk, especially indigenous cultures of Africa and the Americas. But we know all too well through our own experience the prejudice that we continue to face today in our current context.

         In light of remembering MLK’s birthday, I want to talk a bit about the man behind King’s civil rights career: Bayard Rustin. Bayard was instrumental in teaching King most of what he knew about nonviolent social action, which they also learned from the followers of Gandhi in India. As a young man, Bayard was a professional singer in Harlem, mostly of Negro spirituals. His grandmother was a Quaker and Bayard professed his grandmother’s faith all his life. The Quakers (also known as the Society of Friends) have a long history of pacifism. They have always refused to go to war. So when Bayard burned his draft card and encouraged others to do the same, he was put in prison until the war was over.

         This wouldn’t be the last time Bayard would be put in jail. For sitting next to a white man on a bus in North Carolina, he was put on the chain gang for 22 days, working 10 hours a day in the hot sun. (Rosa Parks wasn’t the first African American to refuse to move to the back of the bus; her act was just well timed.) After Bayard returned to New York and reporting on the barbaric nature of the chain gang, North Carolina finally banned it. The next time Bayard was arrested would haunt him for the rest of his life. This time, instead of being arrested for intentional civil disobedience, he was arrested in Pasadena, CA for public lewd acts and sex perversion. Bayard had never hidden his sexuality and his colleagues in the civil rights movement never gave him flack about it. But being caught having homosexual sex in public not only put him in jail; it was the blackmail that white supremacists would hold over his head for the rest of his life.

         But even after this event, Bayard didn’t have shame about his sexuality. He was known for his many lovers who admired him for both his good looks and his charismatic personality. In fact, his first partner Davis Platt eventually broke up with him because he was always finding new men in his bed J It wasn’t until the end of his life that he would settle down for ten years with his partner Walter Naegle. So needless to say, Bayard had a lot of “energy”.

         It was his charismatic personality, intelligence, and networking ability that brought him to be hired as the organizer for the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. (This year marks 50 years since the March.) Bayard worked tirelessly to get 100,000 people to attend and his work paid off when over 200,000 people showed up on that historic day. Martin Luther King may have been the face of the March, but Bayard had been the one to really make it happen. And because of what he did for the African American community, his sexuality was irrelevant to all but those who opposed him. The Black Panthers called him a “homosexual pervert” because they opposed his philosophy of nonviolence, not because they cared who he slept with. Bayard took such insults in stride and continued to fearlessly work for social justice for the rest of his life.

         We know that the struggle against racism continues today. Amen? We may have a president of African descent, but that fact does not mean racism has been defeated. A perfect example of this sad fact is an e-mail that was widely distributed by Republican Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal this week. The e-mail was a prayer for President Obama’s death using the 109^th Psalm. The text reads, “When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.'” This is what this legislator considers “Praying for your enemies.” We know that’s not what Jesus meant by that.

         Many people in our country live in irrational fear. And unfortunately many of these people call themselves Christians. To be Christian is to follow in the Way of Christ, which is the Way of Love. But there is no Love in racism, sexism, or homophobia. There is only fear. ACIM teaches us that the opposite of love is fear. And Christian scriptures tell us that perfect love casts out fear. If we are to heal ourselves and the prejudice of our country, perfect love, unconditional love is the only answer.

         It is this same love at the center of the civil rights movement that is also at the center of the LGBT rights movement. In Bayard Rustin’s own words, “Gay is the new (n-word).” Until her death in 2006, Martin’s wife Coretta Scott King was a follower of Christ and also an ally to the LGBT community. She said in 2004, "I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice... But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr., said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere' ... I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people." She later said, "We have a lot of work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say 'common struggle,' because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry & discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination."

         Mrs. King’s message of radical inclusivity reinforces the messages of her late husband and all those who inspired he and Bayard Rustin. This is a common struggle. We need not create a hierarchy of injustice. We need only fight injustice wherever we find it.

         At first, I wondered what today’s Gospel reading had to do with the occasion of MLK’s message and the fight for justice. After all, we most often hear about Jesus turning water into wine through jokes or cartoon strips. When I go to parties, it’s a common joke when the booze runs out that I should make some more from the tap J It can seem like a menial “look what I can do!” magic trick if we don’t look at the details. But in the details of this story lies a profound message: transformation happens and the abundance of this transformation is for ALL.

         I like to think that Jesus was a party man. After all, he did want the guests of the wedding to enjoy themselves, so he provided 120-180 gallons of good wine (apparently he had good taste!... I wonder if it was a white or a red…) But beyond that, he wanted to demonstrate the bounty of God’s abundant grace. From the stone water jars used for Jewish rites of purification came something new and transformed, just as from the Jewish faith came the Way of Christ.

         Out of the stone jars of the Black Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement comes a new and flavorful, thirst-quenching drink: the LGBT Rights Movement. It is not any more or any less relevant or important than the movements that came before it. But it is a movement of our time, and a movement of the holy Spirit of God.

         Like Bayard Rustin, we must have no shame in this fight. We are fighting for our very lives. Hate crimes happen every day. Forty percent of homeless youth are LGBT. HIV infections continue to rise among young gay men. We are not treated equally in the workplace. And churches are still preaching hatred to our next generation. We have work to do, church.

         When you recognize these injustices in New Haven, will you join me in speaking truth to power? (If so, say Yes!) Will you join me in fighting the good fight? Will you ACT UP with me? Will you reach out with a hand of compassion? Will you walk next to me in following in the footsteps of Rustin, King, Gandhi, and Jesus the Christ? Engaged action will be the lifeblood of this church if we are to thrive. Today, we choose to act in the loving justice of God, and so we choose abundant life. What a miracle! Amen.

"Dive Deep!", a Sermonette

“Dive Deep!”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

January 13, 2013

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Texts:

Luke 3:15-16; 21-22

Isaiah 43:1-7

Repeat after me: “I am” … “God’s Beloved Child” … “God” … “is well pleased” … “with me.” Imagine it now in your mind: the sky opens up, the warm presence of the Holy Spirit flows over you, and you hear the voice of God in your mind’s ear say to you. “You are my Child, the Beloved. You make me happy!” Saints do you know what joy God takes in you? Can you comprehend that even when you aren’t at your best, God still sees you with the eyes of a Parent with unconditional love?

Some say that this message was only for Jesus. This message came to him as he was being baptized in the Jordan River. But as we are ALL God’s children, this message is for us too! And some say that this message is just for those who have been baptized formally by the institutional church. But baptized or not, we are still ALL God’s children and this message is for us all. Some say that our sexual orientation or gender identity takes away our status as God’s children. But that is a deadly lie that is in no way the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

After a suicide attempt, MCC’s founder Rev. Troy Perry experienced a reaffirmation of his life. He had lived, though he had slit his wrists in the bathtub. And while lying in a hospital bed, he heard in his mind’s ear the voice of God tell him, “Troy, you are my beloved child! I don’t have stepsons and stepdaughters!” This is the epiphany that ever since has been preached in every MCC around the world. Our queerness does not make us second-class citizens in the Realm of God; rather our queerness gives us a unique calling.

         This calling has to do with the fact that with our very lives, we demonstrate the Gospel by speaking truth to power. We have been and continue to be on the margins of society, viewed as abnormal. But “normal” is a category created by man, not by God (and I do mean "man"!). “Normal” to God is human beings loving each other. When a human loves another, it is a miracle, and miracles are what is “normal” to God. This miracle of love is the only relation God recognizes in our world. All else is an illusion. Only we are tricked by this illusion.

         Holy Baptism is a recognition of a change in heart from fear to love, from the illusion of lack to the reality of abundance. It is not about specific belief. God doesn’t care about the wording. Remember, we created our own languages; God speaks the language of the heart. One chooses as an adult to be baptized if s/he is ready to live in the fullness of Christian life- that is following Christ. It does not mean being a puritan, not ever enjoying the pleasures of life anymore. That is only a stereotype of what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian, marked by the outer sign of the waters of baptism, is to follow in the Way of Christ, which is the Way of Love.

         Baptism in Christian traditions is a sacrament. A sacrament is an outer sign of an inner reality. So in MCC we have two sacraments: Holy Communion and Holy Baptism. We practice Communion every Sunday and we offer Baptism whenever someone wants to be baptized. Today, we will have the opportunity to both remember our baptisms (for those of us who have been baptized before) and be baptized for the first time. But before we do that, I have to give you some history of what baptism has meant traditionally.

         The five meanings of baptism that are widely known in the mainstream of Christianity are: 1) Forgiveness, 2) Union to Christ’s death and resurrection, 3) Incorporation into the church, 4) Receiving the Holy Spirit, and 5) New birth or regeneration. Going through the act of baptism is not to perform a magical ritual that causes these things to happen. Whether you have a little water sprinkled on your head or you’re dunked, it is always a recognition of something that has already happened in the heart. The baptized is recognizing that she is forgiven of misdeeds, not of her identity. (We affirm in MCC that our identities are not sins and therefore do not need to be forgiven.) The baptized knows what it means to walk through the fires of hell and live. The baptized has a deep desire to be an integral part of Beloved Community. The baptized feels the guidance of the Holy Spirit on his life or wants to feel that guidance. And the baptized is willing to leave negative life patterns behind, embracing instead the positive, loving Way of Christ.

         In the 3rd century Syrian church, female deacons (called deaconesses) were appointed for the baptism of females. This was because of the very intimate nature of baptism.  In that church, the whole body was anointed with oil before baptism.  One did not anoint oneself; a fellow church member of the same sex did it.  Can you imagine stripping down naked in front of your fellow church members as they watch you being covered in oil? Well rest assured, we are not going to do that today. You can do that on your own time if you like :)

         No, today we are here to reaffirm our greatest identity, our identity as Children of the Living God. This is an identity that no one can take away from us, for we are all born with Original Blessing. God’s blessing of the abundance of life is ours today.

Your Epiphany

“Your Epiphany”

Sermon for MCC New Haven

January 6, 2013, 10:00am

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

First Reading: Isaiah 60:1-6

Gospel: Matthew 2:1-12

Today, we celebrate a holy day that dates back to the early church. That holy day is called “the Epiphany.” The word epiphany in Greek means “manifestation” or “to show.” So we call this time in the Christian year “epiphany” because we recall how God was made manifest in Jesus and how he was first “shown” to the world. Before Christians began to celebrate Christmas in the fourth century (replacing a pagan holiday recognizing a Roman sun god on December 25^th), Christians celebrated the Epiphany: the birth and baptism of Jesus.

The strange thing about the gospels found in our Bible is that the years between the nativity scene and Jesus’ baptism at nearly thirty years old are missing. We are told of Jesus teaching the elders in the temple at age twelve, but the only other childhood story of Jesus given in the gospel of Matthew is that of the visiting Magi.

In our Christmas hymns and in the nativity scenes we put under our Christmas trees and sometimes on our lawns, two events are shown at once: the birth of Jesus and the visiting Magi. Take note: the Magi are not said to arrive from the East until quite some time after Jesus’ birth. Notice in the text that the Magi do not visit the barn where Jesus was born. They visit Mary (and we assume Joseph) at their house. So there is no cow smell to cover by frankincense and myrrh.

Tradition has filled in many more details than the Bible tells us. Scripture does not include how many Magi there were, only that there were three gifts. Matthew does not name the Magi, though tradition has called them Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar. Tradition has also called them “kings,” even going as far as to say that they were the kings of Persia, Arabia, and India. From this tradition comes the hymn many of us know, “We three Kings of Orient…” With some words changed, the choir will treat us with this song for the offertory. (Keep in mind, calling Asian people “oriental” in 2013 is like calling people of African Descent “colored.”)

As rich as it can sometimes be, let’s put tradition aside and focus on who these Magi really were and what impact they had on our spiritual ancestors and on our spirituality today. In MCC, we believe that the wisdom of other faiths can help us on our path, the Way of Christ. So let’s learn about another faith today and let our souls be fed.

History tells us that those called Magi in Jesus’ time belonged to a particular religion: Zoroastrianism. Since five hundred or so years before Jesus was born, until today, Zoroastrians have followed the teachings of their prophet: Zoroaster (or more accurately Zarathustra). Zarathustra was born in what is now Iran and was a priest in their religion that worshipped many gods. Some of those gods were good and others were evil. In a sort of epiphany or “aha” moment, Zarathustra came to the conclusion that there is only one good God named Ahura Mazda, but there is also an evil god Angra Mainyu, who seeks to destroy and cause chaos.

The purpose of life for Zoroastrians (also called Magians) is to “refresh” the world with good, opposing all evil. They do so through “good thought, good word, and good deed.” Doing so is said to add to the power of the one good God. Zoroastrians worship around a fire or facing the sun, as the good God is represented by light and the evil god is represented by darkness.

It sounds a lot like our own Christian faith, doesn’t it? We could easily claim that the wise teaching of “good thought, good word, and good deed” is Christian. After all, such things are what a Christ-like existence is made of. And like the Jewish faith that Jesus followed, Zoroastrians believe in one God, Creator of the Universe, who is good. The difference is, Judaism has never personified evil. It seems Christianity got that idea from Zoroaster, along with much more.

So the belated baby shower scene we told in the legend found in Matthew represents so much more than just bringing gifts from afar. It has to do with the interconnectedness of our faiths. And it also has a lesson to teach us, one about seeking and finding.

It makes perfect sense in the Magi legend that they would follow a star. Stars are after all sources of light and the Magi believed that light came from God. In a town called Chak Chak in Iran, an eternal flame burns in the Zoroastrian temple that is said to have been started 2500 years ago by the prophet Zarathustra himself. Zoroastrians have kept that flame alive all that time by feeding the fire daily. It is the center of their worship. It is possible that the same flame that burns today is the flame the Magi left from to follow the star to Bethlehem.

What we are not told in our scriptures is that their empire, the Parthian Empire, stood in opposition to the Roman Empire that ruled over Palestine. So it was a dangerous act for the Magi to tell the hybrid Roman/Jewish King Herod that they were looking for the next King of the Jews. Herod killed most of his own family because he suspected they were trying to take the throne from him. So news of a possible new king being born would have enraged him. But the Magi took the trip regardless of the danger, bringing not only physical gifts, but gifts of wisdom from their tradition.

This brings up the question for us to day, what is it that we seek? Happiness? Power? Peace? Wisdom? What drives you day in and day out to get out of bed in the morning and go about your day? With the dangers of the world out there, what star shines in the heavens to lead you forward?

Some Christian ethicists have claimed that the aim of our faith is happiness. Not just the emotion, but also a life of happiness. And the purpose of practicing our faith is to help others to live happily, and in doing so we make ourselves happy. One of my favorite spiritual teachers Marianne Williamson asks the question, “Would you rather feel in control or be happy?” I know that question strikes at the root of my heart and mind. Especially in a world when we too often feel out of control, our first instinct is often to grab onto control, to be controlling. Marianne tells us, the solution to our fears is not to grab for control, but rather hand over control to God. Through us, God will work it all out. Let go, and let God, so to speak

Do you want to be happy? Don’t try to manipulate life until you are happy. Ask God to remove the barriers to your happiness. Do you want to be a shining star, a beacon of hope in the world? Don’t do everything in your power to get attention. Ask God to shine through you. You are the stained glass window. God is the Light. Do you want a life full of love? Don’t grip tightly to people that come into your life. Ask God to bless every relationship you have and to remove barriers to love in your life.

A star was shining in Bethlehem, church. Like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites through the darkness of the desert by night to the Land of Deliverance, the star led the Magi through the darkness of the desert by night to the child Jesus, whose name, Yeshua, means “Deliverance.” Your personal deliverance is near, friends. It may not feel like it at times. When our government passes legislation that is bad for the majority of Americans, especially the poor, we feel like we’re in the darkness of the desert. When school shootings happen, we feel the soreness of our legs from walking so far. When governments around the world fight to keep same gender love illegal, we have trouble catching our breath from the difficulty of the journey. When we see poverty and disease around us every day, we want to just collapse in the sand and give up.

But… the star still shines. It stopped shining over Bethlehem long ago, but it still shines- from within you. When you practice those ancient tenants of the Zoroastrian faith that we can claim as our own too: Good Thought, Good Word, and Good Deed, your light shines! Keep your thoughts, words, and deeds positive and you WILL be led through the darkness of the desert.

The prophet Isaiah speaks to all of us today through the ages. Hear his words from The Message translation:

1 "Get out of bed! Wake up! Put your face in the sunlight. God's bright glory has risen for you. 2 The whole earth is wrapped in darkness, all people sunk in deep darkness, But God rises on you, [God’s] sunrise glory breaks over you. 3 Nations will come to your light, [rulers] to your sunburst brightness. 4 Look up! Look around! Watch as they gather, watch as they approach you... 5 When you see them coming you'll smile - big smiles! Your heart will swell and, yes, burst!”

MCC, shine for the world to see! Be a beacon in the perceived darkness in the world, proclaiming God’s unconditional love for ALL. Be the Epiphany. Do not be afraid, for you are never alone. The Light of God is your strength and your guide. Amen.

The Light Within

The Light Within

Sermon for MCC New Haven

December 24, 2012 (Christmas Eve)

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

In the words of St. Julie Andrews, “Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.” All of our readings tonight are about the beginning or the origin of our human reality. Most of us are familiar with the first and second chapters of the book of Genesis, the very first book in the Torah. The creation narrative is told, that YHWH creates the universe and calls it “good.” We are given the beautiful image of the Spirit or Breath of God moving over the waters. We know through the blessing of science that the earth did not form over seven rotations of the earth on its axis, but rather over billions of years. But our knowledge of facts does not make the truth of our faith untrue, it just saves us from the dangers of biblical literalism. Through our rich Scriptures (and also through the sacred texts not found between the pieces of leather that contain the Bible), we can receive wisdom.

So we can also read the lesson from Proverbs, and the lessons from the Prophet Isaiah, and the Gospel according to Luke that we will hear throughout this service, knowing that though they come from an ancient worldview, we can still find truth to live by today.

In the reading we just heard from the book of Proverbs, we see the author imagining what Wisdom would sound like if it were personified. The author of Proverbs makes Wisdom female and says that she has been with God since the very beginning, witnessing all the wonders of the Universe. She says, “I was beside God like a little child; I was God’s daily source of joy, always happy in God’s presence.” It’s a sweet image really, a little girl keeping God company from the very beginning. We get a wonderful sense that the author of Proverbs really valued the power of Wisdom in the human experience.

Jump with me now to the first chapter of the Gospel of John in the Christian Testament. We read, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” What is translated as “Word” here is the Greek word “Logos,” which is a synonym for “wisdom.” We can see John’s inspiration from Proverbs here. We can also see the similarity in how both texts highlight the importance of this Wisdom.

Now what does all of this have to do with Christmas? Tonight, we will hear the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth from the perspective of Luke. These readings tell us of the importance of the birth of this Jewish peasant child, said to be the Child of YHWH. This Christmas, I am not going to talk about the scene that we usually see on the front of Christmas cards. You will be able to imagine all of that on your own in hearing the text read. Rather, the focus of my message tonight has to do with questioning. And our main questions tonight are, “Why did God send this Child into the world? What was this Jesus all about?”

The answer can be found in a couple passages to remember by heart. The first is from John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” The thief that Jesus speaks of here is not a personification of evil. Rather, that thief is oppression. That thief is injustice. That thief is fearful and hateful worldviews and actions. Jesus says here that in the face of these thieves, he came that humanity may have Life, and have it ABUNDANTLY.

The second verse to remember by heart comes from the Gospel of Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of God is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…” This verse says nothing about coming to separate the “saved” from the “unsaved” or about judging people for who they are. No, Luke tells us that Jesus came as an anointed prophet to bring Good News. Condemnation is never good news! And contrary to the ideology of the Religious Right, Jesus does not say that he has come to keep the rich rich and make the poor poorer. Quite the opposite, Jesus’ mission was with the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.

This is the Good News of the Christmas story for us tonight. As a Queer people on the margins of society, the Christ Child is born to us today. And more importantly, Christ is born through us today. There is a song that says, “Love came down on Christmas.” That phrase reinforces an ancient worldview in which God literally lived above the clouds. Instead of “Love came down”, let’s profess tonight, “Love came out on Christmas.”

The theme of coming out is important to us in the LGBT community. Each of us comes to points in our lives when it is necessary to put out into the world a truth about ourselves that lies within. We often know from early childhood our sexual orientation and gender identity. Only later is it safe to identify publicly (and in many places around the world it is never safe to self-identify as LGBT publicly). In the same way, it wasn’t safe for Jesus to publicly identify with the message of God’s Unconditional Love that burned within him. The dangerous act of living with integrity led to his very public execution. But tonight, we focus on a miracle, that Divine Love was born in a baby, in a barn two thousand years ago. A truly Enlightened One was born.

A Course In Miracles teaches that “Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle.” On that Spring night so long ago, this kind of miracle occurred. A child was born who had the potential to change the world forever. The Holy Wisdom that he embodied shined brightly from within to a people who had all but lost hope. He showed not only that he was the Christ, the one to save us from loneliness, despair, and degradation, but that the Christ presence lives within us. Jesus said, “The Real of God lives within you.” Folks, regardless of your beliefs or doubts about God, religion, and spirituality, that Divine Spark still lives within you. It is not something that you need to search for outside yourself. You are indeed, Mary, perpetually pregnant with and simultaneously birthing Christ. We are all Mothers of God. We may not be virgins, and I doubt that Mary was either, but we are anointed of God with the mission of birthing God into the world each day, letting our Inner Light shine.

In the words of spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson, “The significance and power of the light of Christmas is that it emerged into the midst of darkness. The birth of Christ two thousand years ago did not occur at a time when things were good, but at a time when things seemed hopeless — as to many they seem now. Suddenly, there was hope and its name was love. The star of Bethlehem led to our salvation in the tender scene of a mother having given birth…It bespoke the miracle of love…The birth of Jesus is more than a historical reality. It is a spiritual reality that occurs every moment when our hearts are open to love…Where there is love, God is…”

Especially after what happened in Newtown last week, we may find it easy to close up our hearts. We feel anger. We feel fear. We feel grief and loss. This is all a natural part of the human experience. But what we must refuse to do is close ourselves off to the power of Love. Because it is our only salvation, our only hope.

We open our hearts tonight to give and receive love at once, as the Scriptures assure us that “Perfect love casts out fear.” If you are missing loved ones tonight, let love cast out fear. If you are experiencing pain in body or mind, may you feel Love Divine wash over you. If you need spiritual nourishment tonight, may you find it at Mother God’s breast.

I close tonight with a selection from retired Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston, “What a wonderful thing to be on the eve. On the threshold. On the night before. At the very dawn of something new. It is the linguistic sign of ultimate expectation. It is the spiritual sign of immanent contact with the divine. I pray this day be the eve of your life. May it fill you with the energy of knowing that something new and empowering is about to happen. This is the turning point. This is the hinge time, the moment when reality begins to change. Now is your eve, your countdown to a fresh beginning. What has happened has happened: now hope is at the door.” And so it is! Amen.