LGBTQIA – Salvaged Faith

General Conference Reflections #gc2019

Posted on March 3, 20191 Comment

I knew that whatever decisions we made or didn’t make during this past week in our General Conference that this Transfiguration text would be appropriate to frame our conversation.
You see, in the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke – the three that see together – the Transfiguration represents a turning point.
Where Jesus had been about ministry and is seen among the people teaching, healing, working miracles, and sending out disciples to share the good news… from this chapter on, in all three texts, his face is now set to Jerusalem.

This General Conference, no matter what we would decide or not decide, was always going to be a turning point. Like no other conference I have been to, the emotional and spiritual investment of people going into this gathering was intense.
It was either going to be a mountain top experience, or we were going to find ourselves in the valley of despair, and it all depended on what “side” you were on and what would end up having the votes to pass.

So, I want to frame my reflections this morning by thinking about that moment of Transfiguration on the mountaintop.

First of all – not everyone was invited or privileged to be able to be there.
Just as Jesus only took three disciples up on that mountain with him, the General Conference itself is a relatively small body for a global church.
864 delegates from all across the world were seated together on a concrete floor in a football arena. The reason we were gathered was to vote on plans related to how our church will include or exclude LGBTQ+ persons, but there were only a handful of people who identify as queer who were elected to serve on delegations and have a voice.
While some of you chose to livestream the deliberations, and others traveled down from Iowa to observe, as a delegate on the floor, we felt far removed from everyone else.
In addition, not everyone who wanted to speak got to speak. We all had devices that looked like blackberries and we had to insert a special card to be able to vote. It was also how we registered to speak. With such a large group of people, who actually gets chosen out of all of the people who want to say something is very limited.
Separating us from the observers was a 15’ ledge, and a series of three gates or doors that you had to have a special badge to pass through.
In some ways, it allowed for observers and protestors to have a voice and to shout and sing without disrupting our proceedings. But we also felt very isolated from everyone else.
A few times, there were responses that erupted on the floor itself among the delegates and it was powerful to be able to join in and to feel a sense of solidarity with the people who were standing or singing in the stands or far away at home.

Second – there were some sightings of glory and hope in the midst of that gathering.
General Conference is like a global family reunion. Everywhere I turned, from the hotel lobby to the pizza place to the floor itself, I ran into people I knew. There was Stanislaus and Pastor Celestin who serve with me on Global Ministries. I reconnected with people from my time with Imagine No Malaria and the year I served on the Episcopacy Committee for the Jurisdiction. My Committee on Reference team decided to take a field trip together and visit the arch.
All around were reminders that we share in work and a mission and a calling that is bigger than our disagreement about how to read six verses of scripture. We share a common faith in Jesus Christ, we have been baptized with one baptism. We have broken bread together in both communion and around shared meals. We have prayed for each other and laughed and have literally helped to save lives of millions of people in the name of Jesus Christ.

But this experience, like the Transfiguration, is a turning point.
When Jesus appeared in all of his glory along with Moses and Elijah, what they talked about, Luke tells us, is the preparations for what is coming next. They were preparing for his departure, for his exit, for his death.
Everything from here on out is going to be different.
And what I find so fascinating in the gospel accounts is that Peter wants to capture this moment. He wants to literally enshrine it. He wants to stay right there in that place forever.
But Peter doesn’t understand that we can’t stay right here. This is not the fullness of Jesus’ ministry. This is not the culmination. This is not the finale. This is really only the beginning of everything that is yet to come.
And the scripture tells us that this cloud and fog overwhelmed them and they were speechless and didn’t really know what to say or not to say to anyone about what they had seen.

Friends. What was clear going into this conference is that when we got to the other side and we voted, the United Methodist Church would never be the same. The decisions that we would make would have ripples across our connection.
Some were preparing for exit and departure. In fact, of the top six plans and petitions that got the highest priorities of votes, four of them were related to how we leave or how we protect the pensions of those who leave.
Some should have been preparing for exit and departure.
I supported the One Church Plan and a version of it called the Simple Plan, because I believe we are a big family. We are the body of Christ and none of us can say to another – I have no need of you. I have witnessed the faithful ministry of my queer siblings and I cannot deny the way the Holy Spirit has called them to serve our church. We are better because they are a part of us.
I also know that faithful people disagree about how to interpret those six verses of scripture that some believe condemn homosexuality.
And, I believe that the witness of scripture itself that we have delved into over these last two months as a church is that there is room for disagreement in our interpretations and room for contextual ministry.
There is a core of belief and doctrine that we hold in common and it is contained in our articles of religion for the United Methodist Church, and within those core doctrines, there is room left for discretion and contextuality on matters of marriage and religious ceremonies.
What we have essentially done is we have taken our understandings that relate to the contextual practice of ministry and we have enshrined them as doctrine and have declared that there is only one way of being a faithful United Methodist.
I believe that we should provide space for those who faithfully disagree on what John Wesley would call “unessentials” to be able to use their discretion and follow their conscience. And I think it goes against every fiber of what it means to be United Methodist to single out this place of disagreement on the marriage and ordination of LGBTQ persons and to say that if you cannot agree and abide by the rules we have created on this topic that you should exit the denomination.

The vote of our General Conference disagrees with me.

This handout contains a summary of the decisions that we made.

– Implementation delated for conferences outside the U.S.
– Pensions protected for exiting clergy and churches
– Partially constitutional Traditional Plan – to be determined if the Judicial Council will allow parts to take effect or because parts are unconstitutional the whole thing will be unconstitutional.
o At its core, much of this plan was determined to be unconstitutional for a very simple and very Wesleyan reason. We do believe in accountability – but we believe that it comes through being held accountable in love by your peers, the people who know you and the people who walk with you. Much of what this plan would have done was to create separate spheres of accountability. As it is, what it did was add mandatory minimum penalties and changed the process for how we hold one another accountable on that peer level.
– Exit Plan for churches, that was unconstitutional because it didn’t also require the Annual Conference to vote.

There is a cloud hanging over us. There is a fog that surrounds us. And I’m not sure what the church will look like when it emerges from this fog.
The simple reality that we face today is that the world was watching.
The headlines in some places have been brutal to our denomination and I feel like they will impact our witness for years to come.
Many of our families and members that are LGBTQI feel like they have just been rejected by the church.
But there are also centrists and progressives across the denomination that feel the same way. That feel like because we support ministry with those persons that we have also been asked to leave the church.

And I want to be absolutely clear. I, personally, have been and always will, love and care for and support our LGBT family. And to be completely honest, I don’t know what that means for me. The plans that we have passed invite to me to leave the denomination.
But I also see countless folks across the connection who are not going to simply turn in their credentials.
The reality is that there was no back-up or exit plan for those who were centrists or progressives. We had nothing in place for when we came out of the fog of General Conference. There is no where else to go.

What I anticipate is that these next two years are going to be kind of messy.
The denomination is fractured, and conversations are already starting from both sides of the aisle, if you will, about what comes next.
I anticipate that while we did everything in our power to not divide the denomination this past week, in essence we exposed the rift and our next general conference in 2020 will strategically and carefully formalize that divide.

What does that mean for you?
It means, as a church, that you have some time to pray and talk and wrestle with one another about what you might choose to do in the future.
In fact, I know that some are experiencing a lot of pain and grief and there are some of you who have already expressed that you want to just throw in the towel.
But acting out of grief is never a good idea.
So instead, I want to invite you to journey through Lent with me. I want to invite you to breathe and pause and rest in the presence of God and this church. I want us all to hold one another and to focus our attention on the one who has called us, who loves us, and who is with us – whether on the mountain top or in the valley. And the one, who from either of those places, calls us to follow.
So friends, care for one another in love.
Reach out to people that you disagree with and share a cup of coffee.
Find every opportunity you can to witness to love.
And breathe.
We are still in the midst of the fog and the clouds and for a moment we need to take the time to listen. Listen to God, listen to Jesus, listen to one another.

May it be so.
Amen.

A Way Forward? To Each Their Own Convictions

Posted on August 26, 20181 Comment

Text: Romans 14:4-12

“How do we know we are following the way of Christ?… How do we navigate the culture around us? What happens when Christians disagree profoundly with each other?”

There are just a few of the questions that Rev. Christine Chakoian believes Paul is trying to answer in his letter to the Romans. (CEB Women’s Study Bible Introduction)

And they are questions that we are wrestling with today.

What should we do when United Methodists, faithful followers of Jesus Christ profoundly disagree? How do we find our way forward?

In Paul’s time, the conflict he saw in the Roman community was a clash between Jews and Gentiles – people who followed the laws of the Old Testament and those who had never lived under that law but who were accepting Jesus Christ.

At this point in time, Christianity was not really a separate thing from the Jewish faith… It was a movement that had begun within the Jewish community, but it was also quickly taking root in Gentile communities who had no knowledge of or cultural connection with the Jewish faith

This created all sorts of problems:

Should someone be circumcised into the Jewish faith before being able to follow Jesus?

Did the Jewish dietary laws have to be followed?

What are the holy days that must be honored?

When you got to a cosmopolitan, diverse place like Rome, you had folks in the same community who held vastly different opinions about how the faith should be practiced.

People who ate meat and people who didn’t.

People who were circumcised and those who weren’t.

“One group, “Jeanette Good writes, “believes that the ‘right way’ is to rely solely on texts of old interpreted literally, and the other group is adamant that the ‘right way’ is to believe that God is being revealed in new ways to each generation. Both groups are ‘in their camps’ and are sure their positions are the right ones.” [1]

Sound familiar?

It would be impossible for us to talk about what comes next and how the various proposals to lead us forward might play out without getting a sense of the current landscape of the United Methodist Church today and the camps that people have fallen into.

We have them represented here by these four vessels of water.

The way I describe these camps is going to use terminology initially coined by Tom Lambrecht, the vice-president of Good News, a more conservative coalition within the UMC and then adopted by Tom Berlin. Tom Berlin not only wrote the stewardship book that we shared together this summer, but he serves a theologically diverse church on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Both were members of the Commission on a Way Forward and both are noted as authors of two very different plans that have been proposed that we will discuss next week.

If you were here last week, we talked about six scriptures that have historically been understood to condemn homosexuality within the bible. If you missed this message or the one from the week before, you can pick up a copy on the back table.

We also discussed how our task as people of faith is to think theologically: to ask and reflect upon how God is working in the world today. We begin with scriptures like these and we interpret and translate and make sense of them in light of other scripture, the tradition that has been passed down to us, and our own human reason and experience.

These four sources, what we call the Wesleyan quadrilateral, helps the church translate the gospel to the world, but also helps the church make sense of the world around us. Last week, I asked some theological questions that we are called to wrestle with as a result of reading these passages:

Does the description of people in this passage reflect our experience of LGBT+ persons today?
What do scripture, tradition, reason, and experience lead us to claim are taboo sexual acts today, framed by our understanding of Christian community?
What is natural for LGBT persons? What are the fruits we see in the lives of LGBT persons?
How do we talk about sex, sexuality, and identity that rejects the way people use and abuse one another and helps all people to honor their bodies?

Those who would find themselves in the progressive camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that they do not condemn LGBT+ persons.

They believe that some these passages refer to culturally bound understandings of holiness that no longer apply in Christian community.

These passages are not talking about loving, mutual, relationships between two persons, but instead about exploitive violent actions and abuse or cultic sexual practices.

Members of this camp would also point to scriptures that they believe affirm LGBT+ persons within the scriptures.

For example, King David and Saul’s son Jonathan had a close relationship. After Jonathan’s death, David laments: “I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan! You were so dear to me! Your love was more amazing to me than the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)

They might also point to the time when Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurian in Matthew 8 and Luke 7. Here, the Greek word for servant or slave – doulos – is not used, but instead, the word, pais, is used to describe the unwell person. A pais in this time was either a child – a son, or a close personal attendant, or was sometimes used to refer to a younger male lover. Progressives see this as a possible example of Jesus encountering an LGBT+ person and not hesitating to heal… in fact, even affirming the strength of this person’s faith.
Progressives would call us to look for the fruit in the lives of all persons who claim the Christian faith – do they love God and their neighbor? And for those who have experienced the call of God in their lives to serve, it wouldn’t matter if they were gay or straight. Progressives believe that the same standards for holiness should apply to all relationships, whether gay or straight. Is anyone being harmed through this sexual act? Does this relationship demonstrate mutual love and respect? How are chastity and fidelity expressed through this person’s life?

Progressives also would point to the marginalization of LGBT+ persons, not only in history but all around us today as well. They see current prohibitions in church law as harmful not only to our witness, but to the actual lives of LGBT+ persons. They would point towards statistics that show that LGBT youth are at a much higher risk for both homelessness and suicide than their peers and that LGBT youth for whom faith is important to them had a 5x higher rate of suicidal thoughts than their straight peers. [2]

As Jesus calls us to reach out to the sick, the oppressed, the hungry in order to offer life and life abundant, progressive United Methodists believe that a church that is not actively in ministry with LGBT+ persons and fully inclusive is being unfaithful to the gospel.

Those who would find them in the traditionalist camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that scripture is clear about the prohibition of homosexual acts.

While justice might be a key word to describe progressives, covenant might be a key term for traditionalists.

They believe that these passages, along with others, describe what personal holiness looks like within the Christian community and that if we interpret the meaning away from these scriptures, than all of our understandings of personal holiness might be compromised. God has created us in a particular way, man and woman were designed for one another, and only within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman are sexual acts pleasing to God.

When we choose to follow Christ, traditionalists would argue, we reject the ways of this world and allow ourselves to be conformed instead to Christ. That is the covenant under which we now live.

Traditionalists believe are called, in community, to hold one another accountable to this covenant. That means there must be a clear, shared understandings of what is right and what is not. To be faithful to the gospel, one must call out sin and invite repentance and transformation. If we fail to do so, then we are allowing that person to remain on a path that might permanently separate them from God’s love.

So these are the camps in which we find ourselves today. Progressives and Traditionalists, who each love the church, love Jesus, and love scripture.

When we turn back to the Apostle Paul and his description of conflict within the early Christian community in Rome, he appears to have solid advice for us to rely upon today.

“One person considers some days to be more sacred than others, while another person considers all days to the be same. Each person must have their own convictions. Someone who thinks that a day is sacred, thinks that way for the Lord. Those who eat, eat for the Lord, because they thank God. And those who don’t eat, don’t eat for the Lord, and they thank the Lord too.”

To each their own, Paul appears to be saying.

These practices, these convictions, they are not essential to what it means to follow Jesus.

If you are celebrating particular holy days in the Lord’s name – great!

If you choose to refrain from participating in the Lord’s name – great!

Because you are doing it all in the name of Jesus.

Whether or not you keep kosher laws or are circumcised or whether you prefer pew chairs or pews – as long as you are focused on your Lord – that’s all that really matters.

Paul goes on to say that we should not judge one another for our various convictions. Each person will stand before the Lord in their own time. We are not to force our own convictions about practices upon one another, nor are we to be a stumbling block to another person’s faith by allowing our practices to interfere with those of others.

Within these progressive and traditionalist camps in the United Methodist Church today are those who take Paul’s words to heart. Tom Berlin uses sugar packets instead of vessels of water to demonstrate these various positions.

As you can see there are progressives and traditionalists represented here who have their own deeply held convictions about how we should relate to LGBT+ persons – justice and full inclusion or covenant faithfulness.

But there are those within each of these camps that understand people who have been wrestling with these questions arrive in different places. These folks also don’t believe that the answer to this particular question is essential to our faith.

Lambrecht and Berlin would refer to these folks as compatibilists.

Compatibilists are willing to remain in community with those who disagree with them. They know and understand that our very church is full of a diversity of perspectives on this topic, but that what unifies us as United Methodists – what IS essential is our understanding of grace, our focus on personal and social holiness, and the connection that allows us to be in ministry across this globe.

Compatibilists might best be described as those who firmly hold their own particular theological convictions, but also respect the theological convictions of others. As we live together within the church, what is important is that there is freedom of conviction and no one is forced to act against their own beliefs.

As long as you love God and love your neighbor and seek to live and die for the Lord, the non-essentials of our faith should not divide us.
There are those within each of the progressive and traditionalist camps, however, who would reject the idea that this is a non-essential of our faith.

They would argue that Paul is talking here are about practices like what we eat and wear – truly non-essential things. But values like justice and covenant are not something you can compromise.

Traditional non-compatibilists believe that our call to covenantal holiness requires us to maintain these standards across the church. They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are obvious prohibitions within scripture. We are not called to be blown to and fro by the winds of culture, but must hold firm to the tradition that has been passed down to us.

Progressive non-compatibilists believe that our call to justice for all people requires us to see anew who Jesus is standing with in the margins. They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are the obvious cries for inclusion within scripture. We are not called to a legalistic faith, but must allow the Holy Spirit to lead us and recognize the presence of God in LGBT+ persons.

Within the United Methodist Church today, this division has created our current conflict.

Progressives are dissatisfied with the current language within our Book of Discipline and by and believes that it harms our witness for Jesus Christ in the world today. They believe that they are being faithful to the gospel by disobeying the Book of Discipline in order to celebrate same-gender weddings and welcome LGBT+ folks into ministry of the church.

Those who are Traditional Non-Compatibilists see these actions and feel like the covenant we have made with one another has been broken. They feel personally harmed by this betrayal and some are leaving these churches as a result.

Traditionalists who are frustrated that the covenant has not been honored are seeking to maintain the discipline of the church by naming and formalizing consequences of these actions. We have a process for accountability within our Book of Discipline that begins with the filing of a complaint, and you may have heard in the past few years of such complaints being filed here in Iowa against pastors who have officiated same-gender weddings or who have publicly come out as queer.

Those who are Progressives see these actions and feel like it not only personally harms people who are LGBT+ but has also harmed their congregations as people have left their churches because we are not fully inclusive.

Within the United States, there are regional differences that are apparent. The Western Jurisdiction is more progressive than other areas and in 2016 consecrated Karen Oliveto as a bishop, a woman who is married to another woman.

Annual conferences across the North Central and Northeastern Jurisdictions have committed to ordaining clergy based on their fruit, not their sexual orientation.
Southern Jurisdictions and Annual Conferences throughout the connection are advocating for a church that maintains its faithfulness to scripture and traditional understandings of marriage.

And there are global factors.

The conversation we have had today is largely U.S. based, but the United Methodist Church is a global denomination. While assumptions should not be made about any particular area of the global church, it is thought that the majority of our African and Filipino brothers and sisters would describe themselves as traditionalists. In many of their own cultural realities, homosexuality is rejected and in some places even an illegal practice. Others, in parts of our connection like Western Europe, would align more with the progressives. The goal of the Commission on a Way Forward was this: To design a way for being church that maximizes the presence of a United Methodist witness in as many places in the world as possible, that allows for as much contextual differentiation as possible, and that balances an approach to different theological understandings of human sexuality with a desire for as much unity as possible.

Is the question of human sexuality an essential of our faith? Will our response divide the church?

Or is it a non-essential? Is it a place where we can respectfully disagree and create space for one another?

The plans that we will explore together next week will answer those questions differently. The impact of these plans on our particular congregation can only be known if we have a sense of where this church itself stands.

For that reason, I want to invite you each to take and fill out one of these yellow surveys. We will compile these anonymous responses in order to have a sense of the impact any of these plans might have on this church.

I’m going to give you a few minutes to do so right now. There are four simple questions to answer.

First, based on what we have described today, where would you place yourself on this spectrum of progressive/traditional and compatible/non-compatible?

Next, three questions about how you personally might respond if there were or were not changes to our Book of Discipline.

As a reminder, here is a general description of the Book of Discipline’s current language:

The Book of Discipline affirms that we should be in ministry with all persons and reject homophobia. It also states that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. Self-avowed practicing homosexuals may not be ordained as clergy.

What I want to leave us with today is a phrase that John Wesley clung to in his own ministry – a phrase that exemplifies the spirit of our passage in Romans today:

In essentials, unity.

In non-essentials, liberty.

In all things love.

May God continue to lead us as hold fast to the essentials of our faith, respect differences in non-essentials, and may love been the source of all that we do.

Let’s stand together as we are able and affirm some of those essentials that form the core of our faith.

[1] Jeanette Good. Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, p 65

[2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/queer-youth-religion-suicide-study_us_5ad4f7b3e4b077c89ceb9774

I am NOT a prophet

Posted on June 19, 2016Leave a comment

In 1908, a mining disaster in Monogah, West Virginia claimed the lives of 361 men.

250 of those men were fathers and nearly one thousand children in the area were suddenly fatherless.

And along comes Grace Golden Clayton, a Methodist, who had recently lost her own father.

She felt a call to do something, to say something… and so the first observance of “Father’s Day” was held at her church, the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South on July 5, 1908.

Ordinary people are sometimes called to speak extraordinary things.

There were, in the time of Amos, professional prophets who lived in bands and studied with one another in guilds. They would often lift up apprentices, like Elijah did with Elisha, and sometimes the trade was passed from one generation to the next. Often, they found their place near power… much like the prophets of Baal in the court of Ahab and Jezebel.

Amos was not one of these professionals. As we hear loud and clear in our scripture this morning: “I am not a prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son: I am a shepherd and a trimmer of sycamore trees.” Amos 7: 14

And yet he is called by God to go toe-to-toe with the royal priest Amaziah. He is called to speak uncomfortable truths to those with power. There is no community at his back, just him and God’s word.

And it is not an easy word. Everything is hunky-dory for the elite and powerful of Israel. Life is good.

And that is precisely the problem.

In the words God speaks to Amos: I won’t hold back punishment, because they have sold the innocent for silver, and those in need for a pair of sandals. They crush the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and pus the afflicted out of the way.” (Amos 2: 6-7).

All of their wealth and comfort has come at the expense of the poor and afflicted.

They are fat and happy as cows, lounging around on couches, singing idle songs, drinking wine and buying expensive oils for their bodies… and they couldn’t care less about the suffering of others. (Amos 6:1-7)

Plague after plague was sent upon Israel… God’s way of gently pushing the people back onto the right path… Over and over God was calling the people to return and they refused. They were too comfortable right where they were.

We live in a world of reality television, Netflix binging, and crowded airwaves. We live in a time of consumer pleasure where everything can be bought for a price. We live in an era of slacktivism… where we think that signing our name to an online petition or sharing an article on social media means that we are changing the world. In spite of our own personal struggles, compared with the world… compared with history… we are fat and happy as cows, too.

The world of Amos was not all that different from ours.

One of the powerful images given to Amos in his vision in our scripture this morning is that of a plumb line. As we demonstrated with the children this morning, the plumb line shows where adjustments need to be made. The plumb line shows where things are out of whack. The plumb line shows whether or not our foundations will be strong and lasting.

God was building a nation out of the people of Israel – a nation that would show the world how to live.

God wanted Israel to be a people who cared for the poor and oppressed.

God wanted Israel to let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And just because Israel is set-apart and called to be God’s people doesn’t mean they are immune from judgement.

God desires true community and justice for ALL peoples, not just Israel, and holds all nations accountable to that same standard… but perhaps there is no greater disappointment than when the one whom you love the best, the one you’ve chosen lets you down.

The walls of Israel are out of alignment. The structure will no longer hold. And so it needs to be torn down so that it can be rebuilt.

Sometimes, when we think about the Old Testament, we think of it as the collection of laws and judgment and so we write it off, because we have the New Testament… which is full of love and grace.

But that is to misunderstand both judgment and grace.

Both are acts of love.

They are two sides of the same coin.

Judgement helps you to have an accurate picture of where you are and where you should be and grace is the transformative power that moves you from here to there.

Tearing down the walls so that they can be rebuilt… better, stronger, more faithfully, is an act of love.

An act of love both towards the wayward elite who are full of sin and pride…. AND an act of love towards all of those whom they have trampled on in their climb to the top.

The world of Amos was not that different from ours. And a plumb line is being held up in our midst, too.

I’m going to be completely honest that I stand in this pulpit today with a little bit of fear and trembling in my heart.

Much like how Grace Golden Clayton, who was very shy must have felt when she approached her pastor about starting a Father’s Day Commemoration.

Much like Amos must have felt when God sent him to the royal court of Jeroboam in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

I am not a prophet.

I’m a pastor… which ironically comes from the Latin… meaning shepherd.

So I resonate with Amos.

When Amaziah threatens him and sends him away for speaking a word against the king, Amos answers:

“I am not a prophet… I’m a shepherd… but the Lord took me from shepherding the flock and the Lord said to me, God, prophesy to my people Israel.”

Friends, I am not a prophet. I don’t want to be a prophet.

I have felt a call all of my life to be someone who stands firmly in the middle to help bring ALL of the sheep into the fold. Black sheep, white sheep, grey sheep, brown sheep… they are all precious children of God and I have felt a call to care for them… to care for you.

At various points in my life, I have been the type of leader who finds a way for every voice to be heard, who finds a middle way in the midst of difference, and who seeks to keep everyone engaged and involved.

Yet, as a shepherd, as a pastor, I also am keenly aware that there are sheep who have left the flock… who have wandered away… or who have been scared away by the other sheep.

Last week as we gathered for worship, I didn’t yet know about the tragedy that had taken place in the night in Orlando. Even as we worshipped that morning, more names, more lives were added to the death toll.

And all week, my heart has been broken by this massacre… by the taking of so many young, vibrant, lives.

But I think one of the things that has truly broken my heart is that I wonder if they knew that God loved them.

You’ve heard me talk about how we are called to love all people many many many times from this pulpit. And so maybe you know that when I say that, I mean the lives of gay and lesbian, trans and queer, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, intersex… the whole alphabet of our lives, too. But if you didn’t, I’m saying it. God loves you, too.

But I have watched as friends I love have left the church because they were not accepted for who they were. I have watched colleagues have to hide who they are in fear… and I’ve watched them come out and claim their identity… even if it means that they might lose their credentials.

Yesterday, one of my friends posted on facebook that a fourteen year old trans* child in her last congregation took their life.

Several researchers have found that faith is associated with a lower chance of risky behavior and suicide among youth. Religious teenagers are less likely to kill themselves than their peers… unless they are gay.

If they are LGBT+ and religious, they are actually more likely to take their own life.

And its because too often, they feel rejected, at the core of who they are, by their faith families.

As we have learned as the week went on that the perpetrator of this act of hate and terror was likely also someone who wrestled with his own sexuality and took out his pain and hatred on the lives of innocent people, I can’t help but think about that statistic.

This past week, I’ve been forced to hold up a plumb line to how we, as people of faith, truly welcome LGBT+ folks.

Do our sons and daughters, grandchildren and neighbors know that God loves them? Are they welcome here, in this place, in this sanctuary?

Monday, I came here in the sanctuary to pray and to cry and to grieve for the loss sustained last weekend… to grieve for them and their families… the moms and the dads whose children were taken from them…. For the ones whose own parents didn’t know that they gay… who didn’t know that there in the dance club was the only safe place they could be themselves.

And I was struck by how this tragedy also lived at the intersection of color and sexuality and how violence disproportionally impacts people of color. And I was struck by how the lives lost on that morning are only a fraction of the lives taken because of homophobia and hatred. And I heard the call to reach out to my friends and colleagues, my family, my neighbors and to simply say these words: I love you. I see you. I care about you. You are beautiful and beloved by God. You are worthy. You are not alone. If you need me, I’ll be here.

Too often, acts of violence and tragedy come and go with the news cycle in our nation. We say a prayer and then turn our attention back to something more entertaining.

And in that we are absolutely no different than the people of Israel in the time of Amos. We turn our backs on the downtrodden and the marginalized. We say all the right words and then go right back to doing what we have always done and nothing ever changes.

Stephen Colbert, in his opening monologue on Monday night talked about how we accept that script and become paralyzed by despair, but then he said these words, which I leave us with today:

Well I don’t know what to do, but I do know that despair is a victory for hate. Hate wants us to be too weak to change anything. Now these people in Orlando were apparently targeted because of who they love. And there have been outpourings of love throughout the country and around the world. Love in response to hate. Love does not despair. Love makes us strong. Love gives us the courage to act. Love gives us hope that change is possible. Love allows us to change the script. So love your country, love your family, love the families of the victims and the people of Orlando, but let’s remember that love is a verb, and to love means to do something.

We hold up the plumb line today and I can’t help but wonder if changing the script means to tear down the walls built on hate, injustice and oppression… tearing them down and starting over as a people who share the love of God with every single person… who create a wide space in this church, in this building for all of God’s people.

Amen and Amen.