Tag Archives: LGBTQ inclusion

The Way Forward

20 Friday May 2016

Posted by in Justice, LGBTQ, Reflections

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Oregon Convention Center (two towers) where General Conference 2016 was held

The Way Forward proposed by the Council of Bishops at General Conference potentially provides a way to deepen the dialogue within the United Methodist Church on matters of human sexuality. It also gives us some breathing room to see how diversity can actually contribute to unity, rather than trying to force unity (perhaps I should say uniformity) through institutional pleading and legislative action.

As an LGBTQ ally and advocate for an inclusive church I am grateful for the leadership of the bishops in inviting respectful conversation that reflects the wideness of God’s mercy. However, I am also saddened and angry that justice is once again being delayed for many of my sisters and brothers in Christ by the harmful language that will remain in the Book of Discipline for at least two or three more years, and very possibly longer. In the meantime, many more gifted leaders will give up on serving in a church that does not accept them as the beloved children of God they are. In the meantime, many more young people will look elsewhere for open and affirming faith communities where they do not have to wonder if friends or family members will be accepted. In the meantime, many more loving and committed couples will be turned away from the ministries of a church that does not honor their love or value their witness. In the meantime, many more clergy will be forced to risk their livelihood and their future within a church they dearly love because the calling God has nurtured within their lives will not allow them to do otherwise.

So while I applaud the thoughtful leadership of our bishops and will pray and work to support a rethinking of the church’s stance on human sexuality through the special commission to be established, I am mindful of the deep pain and mistrust that many will continue to experience as a result of this outcome. Even though every paragraph in our Book of Discipline regarding human sexuality will be examined by the commission and a special session of General Conference could be called in 2018 or 2019 to act upon the commission’s recommendations, we cannot predict how these processes will play out and whether they will create more just and grace-filled church structures and laws. What we do know is that we need to pray earnestly and work expectantly for the future God has in mind for the people called United Methodist, a future shaped by the justice and mercy at the core of the Gospel.

Words (c) 2016 Mark Lloyd Richardson

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It’s Time

17 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in Justice, LGBTQ, Reflections

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It’s hard to know where to begin as I reflect on my two days spent in our church’s quadrennial meeting known as General Conference. I continue to believe in the incredible gifts our church has been given to offer the world. We are truly a church of social witness from the time John Wesley first took to the streets to announce the good news of Christ to the poor. We have a vast humanitarian reach throughout the world that brings hope and healing to many lives. We are a people who use our feet and hands to move into a hurting world with peace in the name of Christ. We have so much to offer, which makes our persistent wrestling with sexual matters all the more troubling.

Yet there is much pain in the midst of our ecclesial body. There are children of God who feel invisible when others refer to them as an “issue” because of their sexuality. There are children of God who are forced to be secretive about their sexual orientation knowing they may be judged ineligible to be in ministry. There are children of God who know they will not receive the ministry of the church when they commit themselves to one another in marriage. There are children of God who are being silenced and pushed aside by a church that will not recognize their giftedness and beauty as people of sacred worth. The pain is magnified because it is caused by the very church that has nurtured them in faith and trust in God.

It’s time that the church stop harming those who are beloved of God. It’s time to allow ministers and churches to honor and bless the marriages of two persons of the same sex. It’s time to recognize the gift and graces of ministry candidates who identify as LGBTQI and not disqualify them from serving the church solely on the basis of their sexual orientation. It’s time to recognize that the discriminatory language related to sexuality in the Book of Discipline reflects heterosexuality and homophobia and needs to be removed. It’s time to stop acting from fear, misunderstanding, and intolerance. It’s time to reclaim our heritage as a church grounded in Christ’s grace! It’s time to let love overwhelm hate. It’s time to breathe in the Spirit of the Christ who welcomed persons into the presence of God without conditions.

It’s time!

Words (c) 2016 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Inhabiting a Common and Precious Space

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Justice, LGBTQ, Reflections

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"Reach" Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

“Reach” Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Methodists have a way of envisioning and living out our faith that is expressed in three simple rules:

  1. Do no harm
  2. Do good
  3. Stay in love with God

Bishop Reuben P. Job describes the first rule in such a way that we can see its potential to change the world one relationship at a time. We live in a time of intense culture wars, political battles, religious squabbling, and international tensions. We see the huge scale of harm being done in the world through both careless and deliberate acts, too often by people of faith and religious institutions. So it helps to hear Bishop Job describe the first simple rule as an “act of disarming, laying aside our weapons and our desire to do harm.” Healing the world requires change from within the human heart as well as outward behavioral change.

For years now the United Methodist Church has been doing considerable harm to our LGBTQ neighbors, family members, and friends. We have had language in our guiding document The Book of Discipline that marginalizes a whole community among us. A day will come when the language will be removed and the church will repent of all of the harm it has knowingly or unknowingly done to peoples’ lives. Especially painful is the legacy of young people who have felt rejected by the very church that exists to nurture love for God and one another.

Bishop Job writes that the act of disarming and seeking to do no harm is revealing in other ways: “We discover that we stand on common ground, inhabit a common and precious space, share a common faith, feast at a common table, and have an equal measure of God’s unlimited love. When I am determined to do no harm to you, I lose my fear of you; and I am able to see you and hear you more clearly. Disarmed of the possibility to do harm, we find that good and solid place to stand where together we can seek the way forward in faithfulness to God” (Reuben P. Job, Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living, Nashville: Abingdon Press, © 2007, pages 23-24).

We, the people of the United Methodist Church, need to remove language from our Discipline that continues to harm individual lives as well as the heart of our spiritual community. We need to listen deeply and intently to the stories of our LGBTQ neighbors, family members, and friends, about how the gospel is being misrepresented in our broken institutional life. We need to look deeply and intently into our own hearts for the places we are armed with weapons of fear, mistrust, and judgment, and seek God’s help in laying those weapons down. We need most of all to repent of the harm the church has already done to persons of sacred worth and commit ourselves anew to manifesting the beloved community where God’s justice and righteousness reign!

We inhabit a common and precious space. Let us begin to act like it.

God, in your grace that exceeds our imaginations and confronts our complacency, hear our prayer.

Words © 2014 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photo © 2014 Dallis Day Richardson

God’s Year to Act

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Justice, LGBTQ, Reflections

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Prayer Vigil for Pastor Frank Schaefer at First UMC, Santa Barbara, CA

Prayer Vigil for Pastor Frank Schaefer at First UMC, Santa Barbara, CA

Tomorrow morning in a makeshift courtroom in a Memphis hotel, the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church will meet to hear the final appeal of Rev. Frank Schaefer who performed a same-sex marriage ceremony for his son Tim in 2007. Many prayers have been said for Pastor Frank and his wife Brigitte as they have traveled this difficult journey through a church trial and previous appeal process to arrive at this day. Many of us are deeply grateful to Frank for his prophetic witness to both church and society regarding the gospel imperative to offer grace and peace to all of God’s children, including our LGBTQ neighbors!

On this eve of Frank’s appearance before the Judicial Council, many people came together for a prayer vigil in the sanctuary of First United Methodist Church in Santa Barbara. During this vigil, we lifted up Frank and Brigitte, that they be surrounded by God’s comforting and empowering presence. We prayed for the team of people representing Frank and for the members of the council to exercise wisdom and compassion in their deliberations. We prayed for faith communities and followers of Christ everywhere that together we move forward in the ministry of Christ for the sake of the whole world, which is beloved of God.

At this critical time in the life of the church, I am claiming the inaugural sermon of Jesus found in Luke, chapter 4, for all of us. Here’s how Eugene Peterson’s The Message states these familiar words of Jesus to his hometown congregation:

“God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, ‘This is God’s year to act!’” (Luke 4:18-19)

At the close of our prayer vigil this evening we called Pastor Frank and Brigitte and through the wonders of speakerphone we prayed with and for them. We prayed that the church that seeks to follow Jesus fully embrace the ministry of Jesus that extends to all of God’s children. We prayed believing that in the end love will prevail, because it is a force stronger than fear or prejudice or discriminatory church law!

Words (c) 2014 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Every Common Bush

06 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Sermon portions

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burning-bushIn her poem “Aurora Leigh,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:
Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.

The story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-15) has long fascinated believers. Moses is going about his usual business as a sheepherder when he catches a glimpse of something unusual in his peripheral vision, and decides that he must turn and look. Like other call stories in scripture, this one provides a window into how we interpret the ways God calls us.

The story of Moses, and the story of each person who has been grasped by God’s unconditional love, shows that there is One who knows us and calls us by name. There is One who calls us to a centered life, a life full of burning bushes, a life lived on holy ground. These burning bushes are everywhere. We need only open our eyes.

Our primary source as Christian disciples is Scripture, not because it’s free of error or contradiction, but because it is the remembered story of a people seeking after God. We read it, study it, and wrestle with it. Scripture is a burning bush, demanding our attention.

Anything that brings our attention to our Creator is potentially a burning bush. Prayer can be a burning bush, as can meditation. Other people can be windows into the divine. Relationships sometimes cause us to look deeply within ourselves to encounter the intrinsically relational nature of life. Events sometimes converge in such a way that we find ourselves brushing up against what it means to be human. As we engage our conscience and take moral stands a bush is burning in our midst!

As followers of Christ, the shape our lives take in the world is the cross, reflective of the self-giving love of Christ. “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus tells his disciples, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Jesus knew that the God-centered life always involved a willingness to put one’s life on the line in order to participate in the divine presence in the world.

Therefore a person like Rosa Parks boldly refused to cooperate with the evil of segregation by refusing to sit at the back of the bus that day many years ago in Montgomery, Alabama. Every day, ordinary people work for social justice, among them the advocates for the full inclusion of our LGBTQ neighbors in society and in the church.

Then there are those dear souls who daily show mercy to others – nurses, teachers, social workers, first responders, caregivers, hospice workers. There are those who go beyond what is reasonable to cheer the depressed, to comfort the grieving, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked. Burning bushes, every one!

God cannot be kept on a shelf, or in a private corner of our lives. God tells Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” Therefore we walk into the world with this One whose name is I AM, and realize that we can’t take anything for granted, and we surely can’t assume to know what comes next. We worship the God who is the great I AM, whose relationship with the world is dynamic and active. We turn aside often to see what God is doing. We take off our shoes, and feel the holy ground beneath our feet. We remember that in our baptisms we put on Christ. We become the presence of Christ as we move out into the world. We go in the name of the great I AM, the Lord of life and hope!

Words (c) 2014 Mark Lloyd Richardson