Tag Archives: walls of separation

Love. Period

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Justice, LGBTQ, Sermon portions

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interfaith Pride Celebration Santa Barbara, CA

Interfaith Pride Celebration, July 12, 2015, Santa Barbara, California

Members of our church recently participated in the first Interfaith Pride Celebration in Santa Barbara. I was pleased to be part of this outdoor worship service in support of the LGBTQ community. There were about 20 sponsoring faith communities, including ours, and an estimated 250 to 300 people in attendance.

The reason we were there is simple really – if Jesus were here it’s where he would be. We are Christ’s body on earth and so it follows that we will go where Jesus would go, and we will spend time with people with whom Jesus would spend time, and we will be the bearers of grace and peace to those with whom Jesus would do so.

It was a beautiful afternoon, with great gospel music and inspiring speakers. I was among the faith leaders who read a Confession written by the Rev. Frank Schaefer acknowledging the wrongs that faith communities have done to LGBTQ persons. We have not always been welcoming and affirming of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. We have failed as churches and people of faith to acknowledge the human dignity and worth of LGBTQ persons. We, the Church, have treated them as second-class believers and have harmed them with words of exclusion and hatred, defining them as “sinners,” “perverts,” and “abominations.”

We have not given them their own voice to express their love of God. We have subjected them to abusive “religious counseling” and harmful “conversion therapy” in a misguided effort to fix them. The heterosexism and homophobia of our faith communities has caused real suffering in the lives of our sisters and brothers in the LGBTQ community. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, told us to “Do no harm.” But we have been doing harm for decades now.

Following the service, a woman came up to me with a couple of her friends, and with tears forming in her eyes she said, “It was very moving for me to hear the words of confession. It is the first time I have heard anyone say they were sorry for the hurt we have felt. Thank you so much.”

My heart is with my LGBTQ brothers and sisters, who have been harmed by the Church’s message of exclusion and condemnation in the past. I have been involved over the years in advocating for marriage equality. I have been involved in trying to change the language in the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church so that it no longer singles out one group of people based on sexual orientation to deny them the ability to be ordained as ministers or to receive the blessing of the church for their committed relationships. I will continue to do these things because I owe my primary allegiance to Jesus Christ and his reconciling grace and not to the United Methodist Church.

I want to be unequivocal and stand on the side of love, because as I see it, “love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). “Those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16b). As long as I am the Pastor-in-charge in the church I serve, we will be working toward full inclusion of all people in the church’s ministry, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other ways we have of dividing people into classes.

Christ is our peace, my friends. Christ has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. We become people after God’s own heart as we continue this work of tearing down the walls that have harmed others, and indeed have harmed us all.

Words (c)2015 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Becoming People after God’s Own Heart

27 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by in Reflections, Sermon portions

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Christians are known as “people of the Book,” people whose lives are shaped by the Word that God communicates to us through Scripture. We look to the Bible to tell not just any story, but OUR story. In the Bible, we connect with people who struggle to be faithful, people who rely as we do upon the mercies of God.

Mortimer Adler has said, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” So the true test of how honestly, faithfully, and seriously you are reading the Bible is how much of it is getting through to you!

Two powerful cultural influences create problems for us as we read and respond to the Bible. One is the myth of productivity, which says we are what we do. The second is the myth of consumption, where our perceived worth is measured by our possessions.

The world will not be changed by how hard we work or how many things we own. Our discipleship will not be more fruitful based on what we produce or consume. Our worth is tied up entirely in what Christ has done for all people – breaking down the dividing walls that separate us from one another, the walls we place between ourselves and God, the walls of greed and pride in our hearts, the walls constructed of hatred, injustice, and fear.

United Methodist Bishop Elaine Stanovsky tells a story about one of her three sons, a freshman in college, who returned to his dorm room one evening to find one of his roommates drinking and despondent. As her son talked to him, he discovered that this roommate was gay, and he was a long way from home. That day he had received word that a good friend from high school had committed suicide. He was closeted and had no support system.

Her son didn’t know what to do, but he turned to his roommate, and he said, “Do you go to church?” And the boy said, “Well, I did, but my pastor at home was pretty condemning, and so I really haven’t gone, and I don’t have a church here.”

Her son said, “I attend Epworth Church, just across campus. It’s a reconciling congregation. You could come.”

What he didn’t say to his despondent roommate that night was, “Homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Then Bishop Stanovsky added, “We are so grateful that our son had a church that he could invite his friend to. I am so glad that he grew up in the wideness of God’s mercy” [Vimeo posted on Facebook, July 20, 2012].

The writer of Ephesians reminds us, “Christ is our peace.” Christ came to reconcile all things, things on earth, and things in heaven, so that God would be all in all. In spite of our inclinations to divide ourselves up along party lines, religious denominations, or economic status, Christ enables us to see one another for the sisters and brothers that we are. In spite of our disagreements and the trouble we have living with difference, Christ challenges us to forgive, to strive for mutual understanding, and to be gracious toward one another.

It is up to us to take care not to build or maintain walls of separation between ourselves and others. It is up to us to examine our hearts to find those invisible but very real barriers that can so easily be erected in our lives. In a world that constantly encourages the “us versus them” mentality, the Christian message is that there is no “them.” There is only “us” – all of us, right here in the same boat, members of the same human family. Christ has created in himself “one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace” (Eph. 2:15b).

Christ does this work of reconciliation for us, among us, and within us. Still, it is up to us to develop within ourselves a spirit of cooperation with the Spirit of Christ. In so doing we are becoming people after God’s own heart.

Give me a pure heart — that I may see Thee,
A humble heart — that I may hear Thee,
A heart of love — that I may serve Thee,
A heart of faith — that I may abide in Thee.
~ Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, 1964

Words (c) 2012 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photo (c) 2012 Dallis Day Richardson