May 13, 2007
Sixth Sunday after Easter, Festival of the Christian
Home, Mother’s Day Sunday, Blanket Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 15:1; I John 4:16b-21; John 17:20-26
Psalm 15 asks, “ O Lord who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on
you holy hill?”
Last week I told you about the challenge the United Church of Christ is
facing to its unity, a challenge with those questions from Psalm 15 at its heart.
The UCC will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding next month at General
Synod in Hartford, Connecticut. At the same time that we celebrate, though, the
Synod will also be considering a dozen resolutions. They are on a variety of
environmental and social justice topics, and some would affect the way the UCC
does business. The ones that really challenge our unity call on the UCC to take a
different stand on marriage.
Two years ago at the last General Synod there was a long, emotional,
prayerful debate at the end of which the representatives passed a resolution that
extended equal marriage rights to all couples, homosexual as well as heterosexual.
Two new resolutions this year would overturn it and say that marriage can be only
between a man and a woman. They argue that scripture presents only one model
of marriage (male-female), and that scripture condemns homosexuality, and that
Christian tradition has upheld both of these truths for almost two thousand years.
Therefore, if the United Church of Christ is to remain united, it should be on the
basis of the traditional scriptural position.
I will be one of eight delegates representing the Vermont Conference who
will have to vote on this issue. I am taking the coming week off in part to read the
volumes of background material required to prepare for the Synod, including
much on the issue of marriage. But I will be doing something else next week, too.
Lesley and I will be flying down to Austin, Texas where a dear friend is getting
married. The friend happens to be a lesbian, marrying the woman she has been
with for the past several years. And I happen to be the one officiating at the
wedding.
Some of you may remember our friend. Her name is Anne Manning. Anne
was one of three people who came and spoke to us one evening ten years ago
when we were first discussing the issue of homosexuality on our way to becoming
an Open and Affirming Congregation. Anne grew up a devout Catholic and
considered becoming a nun. Then she began to accept that she was a lesbian. The
church’s condemnation of homosexuality—of the sexual orientation she could not
help having—was extremely painful for her. She lost her spiritual home. She felt
shut out of God’s tent.
I am happy and honored to be going down to perform this wedding
ceremony, and as you can tell by my choice of words, I believe in extending
marriage equally to all faithful, loving couples.
Last week someone suggested to me that we need to get away from the
word marriage because it is too loaded with history and emotion. We need
another word or phrase for the sacred covenant between two people of the same
gender. I would have no problem with that as long as heterosexual couples also
gave up the word marriage and called their relationship the same thing that
homosexual couples did. To me what is crucial is bringing us all into the same
tent, recognizing that there is one God for all and one love of God for all and one
union that God blesses and offers to all.
My reading of the New Testament convinces me that liberation and
equality extended to the oppressed or excluded is a good, legitimate position for
the church to take, but that does not mean that I will have an easy time voting as a
delegate at General Synod.
The United Church of Christ takes as its motto the prayer that Jesus made
in today’s passage from John, “That they may all be one.” Jesus asks this “so that
the world may believe that you have sent me and have loved them even as you
have loved me.” Our unity shows the world the love of God and the presence of
Christ. Anytime we do anything that threatens our unity, we are risking going
against that prayer that is at the heart of our denomination. We risk sending the
wrong message to the world. Anytime a stand we take causes another member
pain, we need to realize how much is at stake and to struggle with our choice.
Every year our Pastoral Relations Board has the responsibility of evaluating
the Pastor and pastoral relations in this church. This year the Board is trying a
new approach, designed to evaluate how we are doing as a congregation. One
response that came in was an anguished explanation of why this person no longer
worships here. They do not want to confront controversial social justice issues on
Sunday morning, and even if they did, they do not feel that their more
conservative, minority viewpoint would be welcome.
Taking stands is nothing new to this church. Asa Burton was the second
pastor here, beginning in the 1770s and holding the pulpit with a firm grip for fifty
years. Asa Burton took quite strong positions on social issues, and he expected the
congregation to follow his opinions. In more recent history, in the 1980s our
congregation gave its blessing to Eleanor Zue to go to Nicaragua as a Witness for
Peace. In the mid-1990s before I came the congregation began wrestling with its
public stance on homosexuality.
Even since it became Open and Affirming, though, the people of this
congregation have worked hard to make more conservative members feel
welcome, starting with the day of the vote. One of the most moving things I have
ever seen was how everyone rose after the meeting and surrounded the few people
who had opposed becoming Open and Affirming, and expressed their ongoing
love and support. Later we were home to a couple who were between
conservative evangelical churches. We listened to them and took steps to make
them feel at home here.
Knowing that some of our members are uncomfortable with the public
events we have been having on climate change and peace, should we stop?
Knowing that many churches and members have already left the United Church of
Christ because of its position on equality of marriage for all, should we reverse our
position for the sake of unity?
We should, if our basis for unity is either agreeing on or avoiding
controversial issues. We need to stop our peace and justice work here if our only
way of showing God’s love and Christ’s presence to the world is to have no
disagreement and no discomfort. We need to return to our ancestors’ way of
interpreting scripture and to our forefathers’ traditions on marriage if that is the
only way to be a united Christian church.
And yet I expect that some of you are thinking, “If the church does that, it
is going to lose me, and then where will its unity be?” Unity based on agreeing or
avoiding controversial issues or holding to one rigid traditional interpretation of
our faith creates a church that draws lines and divides us just as much as a church
that takes controversial stands and reinterprets the faith over time. Unity based on
a common position will not work. It has been tried for two millennia and failed.
Here is why. Those who believe that eating pork is a sin, as the Bible says
it is, will say to the rest of us, how can you be open to people who eat pork? It is
like welcoming into your midst an unrepentant murderer or thief. Those who
believe that homosexuality is a sin, as the Bible says it is, will say the same thing:
How can you affirm sinners in the midst of their sin? How can you bless their
sinning and still be a true church? There is no possibility of bringing those
opposing viewpoints together as long as one person believes the activity is sinful
and the other does not. We need to find unity another way.
Last week the scriptures offered another way based on love and the Spirit.
Today’s scriptures continue to show how we can reach across what divides us so
that we may all be one. The gospel of John says, “I ask…that they may all be one.
As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…that they may
become completely one.” This unity comes from all of us dwelling within God
and Christ, and having them dwell in each of us.
Mystics and practitioners of centering prayer understand that this is not a
selective qualification, but a universal human condition. Every person dwells in
God. Each heart has within it Christ’s presence, here waiting to be found.
The first letter of John makes things clearer. It says, “God is love, and
those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” It says that those
who love do not have to worry about judgment or punishment, about being shut
out of God’s tent. “Perfect love casts out fear,” for this reason. Perfect means
complete, all-encompassing, unconditional—in other words, the way God loves
us, the way Christ loves. If you abide in that kind of love and it abides in you, you
are in the tent.
This love is not something we have to accomplish or create. It is the grace
that God sent to us in Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is the grace God breathed into
our dust at the Creation. God’s love is in us already, and it unifies us already. All
that is needed is our choosing to abide in it.
Given that basis for unity, we have a way to remain united even as we take
controversial stands with which some of us disagree. Given that basis for unity,
we see that Christ calls us to take controversial stands. How can we tolerate war
or environmental degradation when we see that God’s love abides in all creation
the same as in us? How can we tolerate the injustice of poverty existing along side
obscene wealth? How can we tolerate anyone saying to two loving women or two
loving men, no, you may not get married, or no, you may not be a part of the
church? The love that makes us all one demands that we continue to take stands
until all forced divisions have been resolved and God’s will is done on earth, as it
is in heaven, meaning that all creation is one in love and justice and peace.
We need to forget our worrying about who to shut out and instead expend
all our energy on bringing more into the shelter and nurture of God’s tent. The
celebration of the Festival of the Christian Home is a time to remind ourselves to
throw open our doors ever wider, even to those who disagree or disapprove of us,
who also abide in God as God abides in them.
As I said last week, I do not know how we will work things out at the
General Synod. Sometimes to be able to love one another and be one, people have
to live and worship apart. I do not know how we will work out our differences,
but I do know that God’s love within us and between us, and the ongoing present
guidance of the Spirit, and the indwelling and all-encompassing grace of Christ are
the basis for our unity—not all agreeing on one position. They are the way and
the only way that we may all be one.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 05/13/2007