Resources that support the unconditional welcome of people of all sexual orientations, gender identities & their families in the church home of their choice.
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Resources that support the unconditional welcome of people of all sexual orientations, gender identities & their families in the church home of their choice. | |
A Sermon by Fintan Moore
First United Church of Christ
Northfield, MN
Sunday, February 11, 2007
You may be asking yourself, "Who is this big, strange man standing at our pulpit? What is he doing here?" Well, thank you for asking. Apparently, your beloved Pastor, Sandy, being such an incredible romantic, wanted to do something really special for St. Valentine's Day this year. She did some research into the history of St. Valentine and discovered that his bones are enshrined in Dublin, in the Carmelite church on Whitefriar Street, to be exact. Sandy thought long and hard and asked herself, "Now, who do I know to be from Dublin?" Fortunately for me, and hopefully fortunately for you, she thought of me. At least that is my version of the story.
To be honest, I don't really know why the Pope decided to give the bones of St. Valentine to a Carmelite church in Dublin. I do know that these holy relics are carried in procession each year on St. Valentine's Day and that couples come to the church on that day to receive a special blessing for their relationships.
It's not unusual for churches to offer a special blessing for couples on the Sunday closest to St. Valentine's Day. One of Minnesota's largest such events takes place each year at the Catholic Cathedral in St. Paul. After the Gospel, the Presider invites married couples to stand and receive a special blessing. In recent years, same-sex loving couples have also risen silently alongside their legally married counterparts to receive God's blessing. Naturally, their actions continue to cause quite the controversy while they witness to their convictions that God is still calling them together as a family and that God is still blessing them regardless of the official status of their relationships.
I think St. Valentine would have been proud of these gay and lesbian and bisexual couples taking advantage of the occasion of his feast day to witness to love. After all, according to tradition, St. Valentine was martyred for going against the government on marriage. Valentine lived near Rome in the third century - so long ago that all we know about him comes to us from mythology - and there are several stories that suggest that Valentine was put to death by the Roman Emperor, Claudius II, because he broke the rules about marriage.
Apparently, the Empire was in the midst of an unpopular war and Claudius was having difficulty recruiting and retaining soldiers (doesn't that sound frighteningly familiar). His aides told him that the men were reluctant to leave their sweethearts and families to go to war. The Emperor's response was to suspend marriage. Valentine had the courage to disobey and he continued to marry people illegally. He was arrested, imprisoned, and executed for going against the official government line on matrimony.
So it is fitting that on Valentine's Day, same-gender-loving people stand up and bear witness to their conviction that God loves all God's people, their conviction that God creates God's people to be in loving relationship with one another, and their conviction that God blesses these loving relationships. And every year people work hard to exclude "these people" and their convictions from God's house.
Unfortunately, the exclusion of God's people doesn't just happen on Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, the exclusion of God's people doesn't just happen in someone else's community or someone else's house of worship. God's people are not always welcomed in the house of God.
I'd like to turn to the Gospel reading assigned for this morning's Worship Service. It's the reading of the Beatitudes from the sixth chapter of Luke's Gospel. Now, you know that there are two versions of the Beatitudes - one in Matthew and one in Luke. Matthew has the familiar eight Beatitudes - the ones we usually turn to in our Bible Study, in our songs, in our art, and in our prayer. Luke has only four Beatitudes, four phrases beginning with "Blessed are you…" and he balances these four blessings with four "woes," four phrases beginning with "woe to you…!"
There are more significant differences between the two versions.
Matthew has Jesus leave the crowds of people behind and go up a mountain with his friends. Up there, far from the madding crows, Jesus teaches the Beatitudes to the inner circle. Luke, on the other hand, has Jesus go up the mountain to pray with his inner circle but he comes down from the mountain to teach the Beatitudes - and not just to a select group, but to everyone who cares to listen: "Gathered around him were a great crowd of his disciples and a multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon."
Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount. Luke has the Sermon on the Plain. Luke likes flat places. Remember, very early in his Gospel, the words of John the Baptist - "Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low." (Like what the Ice Age did to Minnesota) Luke likes flat places. Luke would have loved Minnesota.
However, his love of flatness is not just about geography or topography. It extends to people. In his opening chapter, he introduces us to the pregnant Mary singing a song of great joy and praise on her arrival at the house of her relative, Elizabeth. Remember that song, the Magnificat: "God brings down rulers from their thrones and lifts up the lowly. God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty"? All through Luke's Gospel and all through his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke is breaking down the barriers between people - barriers that separate people vertically: upper classes and lower classes; rich and poor; men and women; married and single; old and young; slave and free; Roman, Greek, African, Jewish…
Jesus in Luke is the Great Leveler, the Great Balancer. He's not anti-anybody. He is advocating an immense leveling out - a great flattening. The rich come halfway down the economic ladder and the poor go halfway up until all are equal. That is, until the equality that exists in the heart of God is reflected in our human world. Until the equality among humans that exists in the heart of God is reflected in the here and now of our world, our communities, our workplaces. Until the love that exists in God's heart for God's same-gender loving people is manifest in our hearts, our schools, our places of worship.
Matthew has eight Beatitudes and Luke has only four:
And then Luke has the four woes:
I would argue that Luke really has only one Beatitude: "Blessed, you poor!" and that the following three sentences unpack what he means by "poor" - hungry, weeping, marginalized. I would also argue that this one Beatitude is balanced by one woe: "Woe to you rich!" and that the following three sentences unpack what he means by "rich" - well-fed, cheery, well-regarded in society.
According to Luke, Jesus went up a mountain to pray and then came down with the courage to tell people that the rich were not rich in God's eyes and that the destitute were not destitute in God's eyes - that the divisions and separations - social, economic, ethnic, and religious that we see so clearly are not present in the heart of God. He advocates a leveling, a flattening of society. The poor move up and the rich move down until both groups are on the same plain. I believe that Jesus meant this to be interpreted in literal, economic terms and I believe that Jesus meant this to be interpreted metaphorically.
If I'm right, Luke's Jesus is against everything that ranks and separates God's people. If I'm right, Luke's Jesus would be appalled at the ways in which God's people are ranked and separated according to their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their marital status and even more appalled at the ways in which God's people are ranked and separated according to the sexual orientation, the gender identity, and the marital status of their parents and their children.
There are people out there who think it's a bit of a leap of faith for me to take Luke's teaching on "blessed are you poor" and "woe to you rich" and apply it to the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families. "Aren't there all those passages in the Bible that condemn homosexuality and its pernicious practices?" they say.
If you don't believe me - and I'm not saying that you don't believe me - turn to the Acts of the Apostles, also written by our friend, Luke. Meditate on the great story of the Pentecost when the circle of the disciples of Jesus was expanded to include Jews from every conceivable part of the world. Meditate on the great story of the conversion of Cornelius and his family to Christianity - remember the dreams that Peter had before he visited Cornelius and his family and friends when God showed him that the food a person eats does not separate us from God - and the circle of disciples was expanded to include Gentiles. Meditate on the great story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch - the biblical term "eunuch" embraced hermaphrodite, transgender, and unmarried people as well as people rendered eunuchs by others and those who are "born that way" - and the circle of disciples was expanded once again.
The trajectory of Luke's Christianity seems to be always from exclusion to inclusion. Even our religious traditions must yield when they perpetuate the separation of God's people one from another.
We are gathered here this morning as one manifestation of the Body of the Risen Christ - together we are the Body of the Risen Christ. Who should have access to the Body of Christ and who should be excluded? Jesus came down from the mountain where he had been worshipping with a select group and he had the courage to share the revelations of his prayer with everyone - a great crowd, a multitude from as far away as Jerusalem and the Mediterranean coast. The people came to hear him speak, they came to learn and that made them disciples. They also came to be healed and to be liberated from unclean spirits. Gathering together in the presence of Jesus and, in our time, gathering together as the presence of Jesus, heals us and liberates us - sets us free from all that separates us from the love of one another - from all that separates us from the love of God.
In this week of cards and chocolates, may we have the vision of Jesus and the courage of St. Valentine. May we have the love of God - a love that respects no ranking, no hierarchy. May we be healed and may we be set free from all that binds us. Amen.
Reprinted with permission of the author.
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