Opening Song: Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus (Traditional)
It’s the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. The song we just sang is usually sung during Christmas or Advent. I chose it today because we need Jesus to come, not just at Christmas, but into every part of our lives. Our confession this morning focuses on the ways in which we respond to violence with violence; the ways in which we promote the kingdoms of this world rather than the kingdom of Jesus. Today, more than ever, we still need Jesus to come.
Confession
Merciful God,
We confess that we are people
with grossly misplaced priorities.
We have replaced love with hatred,
abandoned peace for violence,
and given up forgiveness for resentment.
Instead of repaying evil with good,
we have repaid evil with evil;
waging wars of retaliation,
scarring creation,
and leaving your children
crying out for mercy.
We have focused our energies on revenge,
rather than on your mission
of bringing good news to the poor,
binding up the brokenhearted,
proclaiming freedom to the captives,
and light to those in darkness.
In our blindness,
we have even been complicit in hatred
for those who do not share
our faith traditions.
Forgive us, Lord,
for we know not what we do.
Today, bring us restoration,
redemption, and hope,
that gladness will replace sorrow,
dancing will arise from mourning,
and ashes will fade away to beauty.
For the sake of Jesus,
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
(from Isaiah 2)
Confession Song: Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
Prayer
God, comforter of those who mourn, healer of those who are broken, bring restoration to us today. Bring healing to those who are victims of evil and oppression around the world. Bring your kingdom to earth. In Jesus’ name.
Communion Song: From The Inside Out (Hillsong)
I chose this last song because it begins with a line famous from a militaristic song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…” I’m sure you’ve heard it before. But like the Isaiah passage I read earlier, where swords are beaten into plowshares, this song takes that line and turns it on its head, announcing that God is about something new: not military victory, not triumph by might, but solidarity with humanity through incarnation, and a subversive victory that we call the Kingdom of God.
Closing Song: Everything Is New (Chair and Microphone/Worship Circle)
This was part two of a two-part sermon on the congregation-submitted question “Is homosexuality OK?”, ending our summer series entitled “I’ve Always Wondered…”
I spoke for one half of each Sunday, with our lead pastor giving the other half of the sermon. You can read my half of Part One here.
What follows below is the text of my portion, along with the songs and liturgy from the morning.
The main idea of my sermon, and of the confession, is that we need to truly live out the idea of freedom in Christ, allowing each other to disagree graciously. The sermon tells some of my story, and how I came to my current views on this issue. It ends with my thoughts on how we can live in community with this issue.
Opening Song: Came To My Rescue (Hillsong)
Confession
God,
To give freedom to another
is a self-threatening act,
forcing us to recognize
our limitations, to face
the possibility that we are
wrong.
But in Christ we are not
right,
but free.
Forgive us,
for using certainty as a weapon,
for elevating ideas over people,
for hoarding freedom for ourselves,
rather than releasing it to the world.
Help us to walk in love,
extending grace to one another,
as we create a community
of life and peace.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1)
Confession Song: O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing (Traditional)
Sermon
Last week I suggested that the question “is homosexuality OK” is really the question “how do we read the Bible.” I’d like to talk today about how I read the Bible, and how scripture, tradition, experience, and reason have guided me to my current thinking on the topic of homosexuality.
I am a pragmatic thinker and theologian. Pragmatism is guided by whether and how ideas actually work in the real world. So I look at ideas and theologies, and ask how they are useful to people’s lives, whether they are consistent with my observations of the world, and what their long-term ramifications are. Over the past five years, I’ve reevaluated my prior views on homosexuality and come to a place of acceptance and affirmation of my lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters (whom I will refer to as LGBT). Let me talk about how this change occurred.
I grew up in a fairly traditional evangelical family. I spent most of my childhood in the Covenant church, and my parents still attend there. I never questioned the assumption I picked up that there was something deeply wrong with LGBT individuals, and, sadly, I even participated in ostracizing suspected LGBT kids in my conservative Christian high school.
I stayed within the evangelical world, as a music director in a Covenant church in Buffalo for seven years. During this time I didn’t publicly voice most of my questions and doubts, because as good a church as it was, I did not feel safe in its relatively conservative walls giving voice to my innermost thoughts. I had private conversations, though, enough to know I wasn’t the only one rethinking some traditionally held beliefs. I still held LGBT Christians to a standard of celibacy, but I had come to understand that they did not choose their orientation and could, in fact, actually be real Christians. Until then, the idea of a gay Christian was an oxymoron to me. I began supporting legal efforts for equality, recognizing that our country’s government should not hold nonbelievers to certain Christians’ moral standards.
Upon moving to New York, I chose to stay within evangelicalism, but found Queenswest to be a place where I could be safe giving voice to the questions I continued to explore. I did not want to be escapist, running away from my tradition to a place that just mirrored my beliefs, but I also did not want to live a double life and be unable to speak honestly with those in my church world. So thank you all for allowing me to be part of your lives this past three years.
Let me talk for a few minutes about my biblical framework for approaching the homosexuality question.
I want to be clear that what we’re not talking about here is promiscuity and cheap sex; I think most of us would agree that is not healthy for either straight or gay people. However, there is no recorded biblical view of what we would describe as monogamous homosexual relationships among equals, which is what we’re really addressing here. The culture of Biblical times simply did not have a context for the particular type of relationship that we see today. Since the Bible does not directly answer the question, we have to look at how the biblical narrative might speak to this issue.
I spoke last time about how I look at the Bible as a narrative with an arc that is leaning toward openness and acceptance, and breaking down notions of insider and outsider. Paul, in Romans 1 and 2, supports this idea, dealing with the specific cultural issues the Roman Christians were facing.
To Jews following the Law of Moses, this insider/outsider division was a big deal. Many of the laws, including those on sexuality, deal with separating the insider Jews from the outsider Gentiles through cleanliness and ritual purity. Mixed fabrics and shellfish were condemned, among other things. The Jews, at the time the Law was given, were a people who were establishing a national identity. The New Testament, though, turns this nationalism upside down, making it clear that the law we are really under, and always were under, is the law of love. The regulations and structures of the Law of Moses are not binding rules to be followed as participants in the new kingdom that Jesus is bringing.
Paul tells us in Ephesians, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, so making peace.”
Jesus says in Matthew 22: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the greatest commandment.
The book of 1 John continues this idea, radically dismantling human categorization of religious insider and outsider, telling us: “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in them.”
It’s all about love.
With that in mind, I want us to look at a story in the book of Acts, the narrative of the earliest church. We find Philip taking a walk in the desert:
“And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.”
We need some context. What is a eunuch? The word was used as a catchall term in biblical times. It could, of course, refer to a person who had had his sexual organs physically incapacitated for some reason. It could also refer to an asexual person, who feels no attraction for men or women. However, it also often indicated someone who is uninterested in heterosexual marriage because he (or she) is attracted to the same sex. Yes, a eunuch could be, and often was, a gay person. Jesus accepts the sexually other in Matthew 19, saying that “there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and eunuchs who have been made so by others.” And the prophet Isaiah gives special honor to the “eunuchs that keep the sabbath” and worship God.
We can’t know for sure whether this Ethiopian man was gay, but it’s very possible. In any case, he’s returning from the temple in Jerusalem. But there’s a big problem! He could not possibly have been allowed to worship there. As an ethnic and sexual minority he would have been turned away at the gate. It’s interesting that I’ve talked to many LGBT people who have had this kind of an experience with churches, too. So like those friends of mine today, he’s disappointed, and heading back to Africa, when he encounters Philip and his life changes.
“And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”
So Philip explains that the passage from Isaiah that the man is reading is really about Jesus, and they come to some water, and the eunuch says, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” He gets it. He understands the gospel.
“What prevents me from being baptized?”
What an amazing way for the writer of Acts to phrase it! Jesus has inaugurated a reality where nothing prevents us from being accepted. Nothing.
So it’s clear that Jesus’ new reality is open to all, including sexual minorities. But the elephant in the room today is: how should they live?
I really think the better question is “how should I live?”
I believe I need to be extremely cautious when I speak from a privileged position and tell someone else, especially someone on the margins, how to live. The Bible does not directly tell us how LGBT people should live. Instead, the Bible calls us all into the role of discernment. That’s hard, and kind of scary. But I do not believe the Bible is there to be an answer book for us. Instead, it is an inspired template for how the church is to engage issues that come up over time, by showing us how the church engaged the issues of its day.
God invites us to participate in being moral agents in the world. And the reality of freedom in Christ compels me to offer that freedom to other Christians; to accept their faith is as valid as mine, and let them make moral decisions based on their reading of scripture, their relationship with God, their reason, and their experience of life.
The moral decisions I should be second-guessing are my own, not those of others.
I end with a second story from the book of Acts. Cornelius, a Roman, a Gentile, and a worshiper of God, has had a vision telling him to send for the apostle Peter. Peter, as a Jewish man, would not think of going into Cornelius’ house on his own, so God prepares him:
“Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’
This voice, this God, is telling Peter to break the Law.
“‘Surely not, Lord!’ Peter replied. ‘I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.’
“The voice spoke to him a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’
Later, when Peter is in Cornelius’ house and talking with him, he tells Cornelius, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”
I choose to walk forward today in affirmation of LGBT people, to refuse to call them impure or unclean, to welcome them into my life and into the life of the church, and to embrace what they have to teach me. I come to this view seeing a lack of scriptural prohibition of monogamous, same-gender relationships, I come valuing the experience I’ve had knowing LGBT individuals, and I come prioritizing the freedom I believe we need to give each other in Christ.
Church, freedom in Christ means nothing if I do not offer it to others. I trust you and offer freedom to you. And I trust and offer freedom to my LGBT brothers and sisters who want to walk in the way of Jesus.
How do we live in community with this issue?
Leadership in many evangelical circles tends to be top-down; authority of the pastor, denomination, and evangelical world as a whole is not open for questioning. I, on the other hand, have a fairly strong anti-authoritarian streak in me. I question everything. I’m intrinsically suspicious of people and institutions with unchecked authority and power.
I have come to believe and desire that church would be a place that is safe for questions and doubts. Many churches say this. But many times the implication is that the questioner can question, as long as she changes her mind eventually. I’m not looking for that kind of place. I want a place where everyone changes. I don’t want a seemingly safer version of an authoritarian structure. That isn’t true safety. I want to see the authoritarian structures dismantled and deconstructed, replaced by a community where all of us are seeking together.
I want church to be a place for all people. Including the marginalized. Including LGBT people. Including even those like me who ask sometimes disruptive questions and are so often not welcome in traditional churches.
I want to see a church where our community and relationship is primary. Only after that is established can we begin to discuss disagreements. If our relationship and community is based on our agreeing on a list of things, we are in rough shape indeed.
Would I like to see our entire community be welcoming and accepting of LGBT brothers and sisters? Of course! But what I want more is for our entire community to be welcoming and accepting of each other and our freedom in Christ. This is the kingdom, the new life, the reality that I believe Jesus is calling us into.
Amen.
Communion Song: Sanctuary (Eugene Kim)
Closing Song: Spirit Fall (Phil Wickham)
Was my first sermon on the question, “Should I be nice to people?”
No. My first sermon was part of a two-week sermon on “Is homosexuality OK?” I spoke for the first half of this week’s sermon, and will speak for another half in two weeks.
The basic idea is that the Bible is not a sexuality textbook, and the opening of the book of Romans is not about sex, but about the breaking down of the insider/outsider constructs that so often define us. I introduce the idea of the Bible being a meta-narrative that leads to openness, acceptance, and justice. Full text below in between the music and confession liturgy!
Opening Song: Amazing Grace (Traditional)
Confession
God,
Your servant Jesus came
to proclaim reconciliation,
and yet we remain separate.
We build divisions of
insider and outsider,
us and them,
accepted and rejected.
We are stubborn people,
who hear your words,
but do not practice them.
Forgive us.
Call us again to be your people,
accepting the rejected,
becoming one with the other,
bringing the outsider in.
For the sake of Jesus,
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. (Ephesians 2)
Confession Song: Let Everything That Has Breath (Redman)
Sermon
“Dear Peter:
“As a young man, you would do yourself a favor to back off and listen to your family and others who know a lot more about the road of life than you do because we’ve been there.
“No, I can’t see your point of view. I am sorry. I don’t suppose that surprises you.
“You don’t have to agree with the school’s position on this matter to stay here, obviously; but you do have to keep your disagreement to yourself, because griping isn’t tolerated.
“As I mentioned the other day in Chapel, 40-50 years ago in America, it was understood by believers, North and South, that interracial dating was not proper. There would have been a few radicals, of course, that would not have agreed, but it wasn’t even discussed in churches because it was just understood.
“You and others of your generation who have allowed yourselves to be brainwashed by the media have been sold a bill of goods.
“Yes, Moses married a non-Jew. That was what he was criticized for, and the issue for which Miriam his sister was judged by God was her criticism of the leader God appointed and the divisiveness that it brought. The race of Ethiopians has to do with what part of Ethiopia they come from. Haile Selassie, the former ruler of Ethiopia, and the ruling family are not black. To make a racial issue out of this is to argue a point beyond all reason.
“I could spend my time dealing with this issue, but I am not inclined to because I don’t think you really want to know but that you want to argue. Forgive me if I have misjudged you, but that is how your note comes across.
“Kind regards.”
When do you think this letter was written? It’s actually not surprising to most of us that this letter exists, but I admit to being surprised that it was written just fifteen years ago. Yes; a generation after Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights legislation, and the Supreme Court decision that struck down anti-interracial-marriage laws, a Christian university president told a questioning student to keep quiet and accept that two people with different color skin could not be together.
If you know your conservative Christian history, you may have already guessed that this letter was written by Bob Jones III to a student at his university. Bob Jones’ response to this student is biblical. It is backed up with centuries of tradition. It makes appeals to reason. And yet it is completely and catastrophically wrong.
What happened?
Bob Jones made a common mistake. We’re in a sermon series here at Queenswest called “I’ve Always Wondered…” As we look, today and next time, at what the Bible might tell us about sexuality, specifically about the question of “is homosexuality a sin?”, I think we need to avoid the mistake that Bob Jones makes. The mistake is this: We have come to read the Bible as a rigid document; as Brian McLaren says, as a constitution. We have been trained to think that the Bible’s job is to consistently dispense timeless answers to our current, specific questions about life.
Just to see where this takes us, let’s make that mistake along with Bob Jones. Let’s see what the Bible says about some topics related to sexuality, marriage and family. You might not remember that a couple of these are in the Bible:
“When you go to war against your enemies…and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head…After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.” (Deut 21:10ff)
It’s probably not news to most of us that women have been treated as property for much of human history. Here the Mosaic Law affirms this, allowing a man to take a girl as a spoil of war. He is permitted to take her from her home and parents, who he might have killed in battle. After humiliating her by having her shave her head, he can have sex with her and keep her as one of his wives. Polygamy is accepted as a natural state of affairs in the Old Testament; though it’s mentioned specifically here, there are many passages in the Torah that expect men to have multiple wives.
I’m not sure we’re finding a timeless ethic of sexuality yet. Next chapter of Deuteronomy:
“If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death–the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife…If out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the woman…there was no one to rescue her. If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her.” (Deut 22:23ff)
So the Law again is pretty clear that punishment for sexual crimes like rape is based on the status of the woman as property. When David sleeps with Bathsheba, the sin that Nathan calls him out on is not the sex; it’s the sin of encroaching on her husband’s property (and arranging for her husband’s death).
So, in the passage I just read, an engaged girl is the property of her fiance, and the punishment for raping her is severe. The man will be stoned. It’s also not very generous to the victim; it’s assumed that if no one hears her cry for help, that the sex was consensual and both victim and perpetrator will be killed.
Things get better if she’s not engaged. If a man rapes a girl who is not engaged, the only punishment is that the couple have a shotgun wedding after the rapist pays the girl’s father. The girl, of course, has no say in this forced marriage.
So that’s the Old Testament. Let’s look at what two big personalities in the New Testament, Paul and Jesus, have to say. Paul writes to the Corinthians:
“Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman. But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband…I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all of you were as I am.” (1 Corinthians 7:1ff)
The apostle Paul, as best as we can tell, was celibate. In this passage, he only grudgingly allows people to get married, and only because they don’t seem to be able to control themselves. His preference is for all to be celibate.
So what about Jesus? This might be a controversial statement to make, but I think Christians need to come to terms with the fact that Jesus wasn’t a big fan of marriage. In fact, he undermines family and marriage relationships.
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)
The family, for Jesus, is made up of believers. His statements radically marginalize traditional family structure, and he certainly does not encourage marriage. Jesus’ teachings on marriage are some of the most confusing of his teachings, and the four gospels don’t agree on many of the details.
Where do we go from here? Does the Bible speak to sexuality in any meaningful way for us today?
I believe it does. But I also believe we have been doing it wrong. We’ve been doing what I just did, and what Bob Jones did, looking for passages that provide us with answers to our questions about sex. We’ve been looking to the Bible as a constitution. Now of course, I picked some examples that don’t get cited very often. People don’t usually preach on these passages. These verses clash with us culturally (we’re uncomfortable with forced marriage of rapist and victim; we’re uncomfortable with girls as spoils of war), so we tend to ignore them in favor of other passages that support our views. We pick and choose scriptures that tend to back up our way of looking at the world, or the way we think we’re supposed to look at the world.
This approach leaves us as the church reading the cultural views of our current or previous generation into scripture, and then being forced to play catch-up and change our views as they become less and less tenable. Even Bob Jones University finally ended their policy against interracial dating a decade after the letter I read earlier. In 2005.
This way of reading scripture is a game we cannot win. Throughout history, it has led to the marginalization of women, the condoning of American slavery, and the persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trangender people. We need another way forward.
Paul’s letter to the Romans begins with a famous passage that has been used, especially in the last half-century, to excoriate people for various perceived sexual and other transgressions. So you might think this a strange example for me to draw attention to. But I believe part of finding a way forward is to realize that this passage in Romans is not, actually, about sex.
Too often sermons are given and arguments are made on Romans Chapter 1 alone. It’s unfortunate that in dividing the Bible into chapters hundreds of years after it was written, thoughts that were meant to flow into each other are often read in separation. This is one such passage.
When we read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 together, we see what Paul is doing. He is actually exploiting a rhetorical device, leading his readers into agreeing with him, taking advantage of their cultural prejudices in pointing out the sins of gentiles, and then pulling the rug out from under them with Chapter 2.
Let me read a few selections from the passage:
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile…They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles.
So we have believers in God who convert from that religion to becoming pagans or idol worshippers.
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
They progress into heterosexual orgies, most likely associated with their idol worship.
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.
Then their heterosexual immorality turns to homosexual immorality.
“Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.”
Now Paul rattles off a scary litany of sins. It’s a slippery slope to greed, murder, and disobeying parents.
But wait! Just as everyone is smugly following right along with Paul’s line of argument, he stops them in their tracks:
“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.”
You see why Chapter 2 is often left out of sermons about homosexuality. According to Paul, we are all in the same boat. We cannot pass judgment on anyone without condemning ourselves. Jesus himself teaches this in the Sermon on the Mount— “Don’t judge others, and you will not be judged.” Chapter 1 is not the point; it’s the setup to the point. The real point he’s making is the rest of the letter, which is all about Jews (who didn’t like Gentiles) and Gentiles (who didn’t like Jews) becoming one in Christ. Church, we trivialize this radical message when we make this about sex.
We need an approach to scripture that does away with treating the Bible as an answer book. The Bible was never meant to be read in that way. It fails us every time we force it into that place.
Instead, we need to locate the Biblical story, the arc of the narrative scripture gives us, and let that holistic narrative dialogue with the issues we are facing and questioning. Perhaps it’s obvious by now, but I believe that the question “is homosexuality OK” is actually a question of “how do we read the Bible.”
I believe the story of the Bible is an arc that pushes continually toward openness, acceptance, and breaking down of insider/outsider constructs. The Kingdom of God, which we could also call the Reign of God, or the Revolution of God, is a radical change from the exclusion that comes so naturally to us, the exclusion that Paul was teasing his readers into in Romans 1, the exclusion that Bob Jones embodied. It is a change so radical we are still struggling to understand and to live it two thousand years later. Jesus ushered in a reality that is still a mustard seed. It’s pregnant with potential, but we need to nurture it, to water it, to protect it.
Yet we stumble constantly, falling back into our old ways of categorization, exclusion, and marginalization, failing to realize that we are one with all humanity, in the same condition as everyone else, as Paul makes clear in Romans. But this shared human condition is not one of futility. It’s one of hope. For God not only loves all creation but is redeeming all creation, reconciling the world. The mustard seed is growing.
Praise be to God for God’s indescribable grace!
Communion Song: Everything Is New (Worship Circle)
Closing Song: Reign in Us (Starfield)
I’m posting highlights from the summer, since I’m behind and want to catch up.
This week’s topic in the summer series “I’ve Always Wondered” is “How does conflict bring heaven to earth?” This is a combination of a couple submitted questions.
The confession centers around our humanity and our difficulty with reconciliation and disagreement.
Opening Song: God of Beauty (Solomon’s Porch)
Confession
Reconciler of all,
We confess our difficulty
with reconciliation;
our need to have the answers,
our idolization of being right,
and the great pain that causes
in our families, relationships,
and churches.
Though we thirst for community,
our fear works against its formation,
and we often choose conflict
over relationship.
God,
Break our defensiveness
and quell our fears.
Help us to change
and to be changed
through the conflicts we encounter,
as we seek to be people
of reconciliation.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:14-19)
Confession Song: Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated (Traditional)
Communion Song: Just Let Me Say (Hillsong)
Closing Song: The Benediction (Timothy James Meaney)
“What really happened on the cross?” is today’s question in the summer series “I’ve Always Wondered…”
Opening Song: From the Depths (Sojourn Music)
Confession
God,
We sing and speak of the cross;
and though we barely understand it,
we confess those things
we believe to be true:
We confess the centrality of the cross,
an image that, through history,
has anchored and sustained
your church and her mission.
We confess the ugliness of the cross,
as it lays bare the reality
of our abject human failure
to love and to understand.
We confess the victory of the cross,
as it makes the claim to the world
that those who lose their lives
will truly find them.
We confess the necessity of the cross.
Today, as we find ourselves
in the depths of need,
we receive the gift.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
As for us, we have this large crowd of witnesses around us. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and let us run with determination the race that lies before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. He did not give up because of the cross! On the contrary, because of the joy that was waiting for him, he thought nothing of the disgrace of dying on the cross, and he is now seated at the right side of God’s throne. Think of what he went through; how he put up with so much hatred from sinners! So do not let yourselves become discouraged and give up. (from Hebrews 12)
Confession Song: The Wonderful Cross/When I Survey (Traditional)
Communion Song: Everything Is New (Worship Circle)
Closing Song: Reign in Us (Starfield)
Opening Song: Amazing Grace (Traditional/Tomlin)
Today we’re talking about freedom, which is one of those things that we all want but nobody wants to give. James is going to introduce our new summer series by talking today about one of our core Covenant affirmations, the reality of freedom in Christ.
Offering freedom to someone else to disagree with us seems like a zero-sum game where we have to give something up, to lose something, to admit we might be wrong. But somehow the kingdom of God allows us to find life when we lose it. The confession this morning admits the difficulty of extending freedom to each other:
Confession
God,
To give freedom to another
is a self-threatening act,
forcing us to recognize
our limitations, to face
the possibility that we are
wrong.
But in Christ we are not
right,
but free.
Forgive us,
for using certainty as a weapon,
for elevating ideas over people,
for hoarding freedom for ourselves,
rather than releasing it to the world.
Help us to walk in love,
extending grace to one another,
as we create a community
of life and peace.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1)
Confession Song: God of Beauty (Solomon’s Porch)
Communion Song: Spirit Fall (Phil Wickham)
Closing Song: The Benediction (Timothy James Meaney)
Solo: Were You There / Alleluia, Sing to Jesus (Traditional)
Opening Song: Christ the Lord is Risen Today (Traditional)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! It’s Resurrection Sunday. It’s real. But Saturday was real too. Today is a day of rejoicing, yet many of us live in the pain of Saturday. It’s too bad, in some ways, that we don’t have services on Holy Saturday anymore, since we spend a lot of our lives in the tension that day represents. We feel the pain of the disciples, who wondered Saturday what they had spent the last three years for. Not only were they mourning the loss of their best friend, they were mourning the loss of the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about so often. What good could possibly come now?
I think we fail to live in the resurrection whenever we look at the world with less hope than Jesus looked at the world. The resurrection is the ultimate declaration of God’s hope in humanity, in creation. This confession asks God for that resurrection hope.
Confession
God,
Where we are tired,
worn by the relentlessness of life,
bring renewal,
the hope of resurrection.
Where we are hard-hearted,
desensitized to the violence around us,
bring love,
the hope of resurrection.
Where we have been hurt,
crushed by others’ fears,
bring forgiveness,
the hope of resurrection.
Where we hurt others,
denying their humanity,
bring repentance,
the hope of resurrection.
Where we feel imprisoned
by fears and expectations,
bring freedom,
the hope of resurrection.
In all things, may our lives affirm
renewal, love, forgiveness,
repentance and freedom,
the relentless hope of God
made real in resurrection.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a human being. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:20-21)
St. John Chrysostom was an early church father. He had a fascinating life; he wasn’t the kind of person that Empires usually place into power; he spoke truth to power and served only reluctantly as the Archbishop of Constantinople. He was always getting into trouble, but he was respected for his oratorical and sermonizing skills. His words inspired the next song we’re going to sing: “Where is your sting, O Death! Where is your victory, O Hades! Christ is risen and you are abolished. Christ is risen and the demons are cast down. Christ is risen and life is set free. Christ is risen and the tombs are emptied of the dead.”
Confession Song: Christ is Risen (Matt Maher)
Communion Song: You Came (Eugene Kim)
An Indian Easter prayer: Servant Christ, help us to follow you out of the dark tomb, to share daily your resurrection life, to be renewed daily in your in your image of love, to be used daily as your new body, in your service to the world. Servant Christ, help us to follow you.
Closing Song: Stronger (Hillsong)
Opening Song: All Of My Days (Hillsong)
Where there are crowds in the Bible, we usually poke fun at them. But often, the point is that we actually are the crowd, and the story of Palm Sunday is no exception. The crowds in Jerusalem just didn’t get it. They were looking for a political leader, someone to topple the Romans and restore Israel to greatness. So Jesus let them have their party, even though they were worshiping him for the wrong reasons (which is reassuring, since we often don’t get it either). Jesus was aware that they didn’t understand what was going to unfold in just a few days. But we do. We know the rest of the story, and yet we still often act like that crowd, using Jesus, using Christianity, for our own ends.
Confession:
God,
The crowds of Jerusalem praised Jesus,
but as a means to their own ends.
We confess that we see ourselves in them.
We, too, want Jesus on our side,
so we can be victorious.
But like the crowds a few days later,
we soon become angry.
Seeking our own way of triumph,
we are ill-prepared for Jesus’ mission,
the way of love and loss.
And like the crowds, we turn on Jesus.
We shout “Crucify him!”
when we fight culture wars with earthly power.
We shout “Crucify him!”
when we wield religion as a weapon.
We shout “Crucify him!”
when we cry out for Jesus’ mission to die
so that our own priorities can live.
Forgive us, God,
Bring us face-to-face with the humility of Jesus.
May we lay down our pride, ambition, and power
and, through losing, find the way of love.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon:
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion -
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called mighty oaks,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.
They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
that have been devastated for generations.
(Isaiah 61)
Confession Song: When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (Traditional)
Communion Song: Everything Is New (Enter the Worship Circle)
I love “Everything Is New” because it takes words (“My eyes have seen the glory of the coming Lord”) which we know from “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and turns them inside out. That hymn was used as the military hymn of the US armed forces, often appropriating religion for political ends. But this new song says that the coming of the Lord looks more like a donkey than a horse, more like peace than war, more like servanthood than dominion. “It looks like God’s own feet, walking along these floors.”
Closing Song: Cannons (Phil Wickham)
Opening Song: You Came (Eugene Kim)
This is the beginning of Lent. The last time we gathered, we looked at the Transfiguration, and I talked about getting rid of metaphors for God that don’t work for you or that give you a false identity. Our confession this morning is a recognition that we impose identities on ourselves and on others that are based on what we do, what we believe, and what people think of us, rather than on being God’s beloved creation. This actually denies our humanity. But Jesus came to affirm our humanity; to affirm God’s words that “it is very good”; to embrace being human and show us what it means to be human.
Confession:
God,
We say all the right words—
that you love all,
and that all are your children;
but we live our lives
in denial of that truth.
When we look down
on someone else’s sin,
we deny that we all
share a common humanity.
When we condemn ourselves
for our own sin,
we claim that our identity
is found in our morality.
When we judge another’s
birth, life, or death,
we forget that Jesus’
birth was illegitimate,
his life was rejected by his own,
and his death was that of a criminal.
Have mercy on us and forgive us.
Help us to become
more connected,
more loving,
and more human.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon:
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.” (John 15:9-15)
Confession Song: Marvelous Light (Charlie Hall)
Communion Song: Everything Is New (Enter the Worship Circle)
Closing Song: Our Great Savior (Traditional)
Call to Worship
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. It’s the end, the culmination, of the season of Epiphany. Jesus goes to a mountain and is transfigured. Given the mystical nature of this event, I’d like to read a quote from Thomas Kelly, an early 20th century Quaker mystic as we begin worship:
The basic response of the soul to the Light is internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender and listening. The secret places of the heart cease to be our noisy workshop. They become a holy sanctuary of adoration and of self-oblation, where we are kept in perfect peace, if our minds be stayed on Him who has found us in the inward springs of our life. And in brief intervals of overpowering visitation we are able to carry the sanctuary from of mind out into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness, and in a hyperaesthesia of the soul, we see all mankind tinged with deeper shadows, and touched with Galilean glories. Powerfully are the springs of will moved to an abandon of singing love toward God; powerfully are we moved to a new and overcoming love toward time-blinded men and all creation. In this Center of Creation all things are ours, and we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.
Opening Song: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (Traditional)
So when Jesus is on the mountaintop, he hears a voice from heaven, saying “This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus had a healthy image of his father. For him, the use of the imagery was helpful. He used the word “abba” when he spoke of his father.” But we all have pasts. We all have unhealthy relationships. And our past often makes it difficult to see God in a healthy way. You don’t need me to point out that some of us have difficulty with father images for God. Our confession this morning is an acknowledgement of our human relationships and how they affect our view of God.
Confession
God,
You are Father;
yet our fathers have not always
told us they are well pleased.
You are Mother;
yet our mothers have not always
cared for us and nurtured us.
You are Brother;
yet our brothers have not always
supported us and stood by us.
You are Friend;
yet our friends have not always
loved us without conditions.
Save us from viewing you
through the confining lenses of
our human relationships—
from projecting those experiences
on our understanding of your grace.
If the images of
father, mother, brother, and friend
are toxic for us,
release us to jettison them.
Give us a healthy, freeing view
of your love and mercy.
Amen
Assurance of Pardon
And so we know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love. God is love. Those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. This is how love is made perfect in us: that we can be without fear on the day God judges us, because in this world we are like him. Where God’s love is, there is no fear, because God’s perfect love drives out fear. It is punishment that makes a person fear, so love is not made perfect in the person who fears. We love because God first loved us. (1 John 4)
Confession Song: Came To My Rescue (Hillsong)
Communion Song: There’s A Table (Lynn DeShazo)
Closing Song: God of Wonders (Chris Tomlin)
