Sunday

A reading from the Gospel of Mark, the 16th chapter, verses 1-8

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” ⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” ⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

(NRSV)

Saturday

If you've lost anyone close, really close to you---a person who crosses your mind several times a day with thoughts like, "I'll have to tell ______ about this"---you know the feeling after the funeral.

What next?

How next?

It can be that way with any loss. Or victory, for that matter. Sometimes there's not much difference between the two. A new absence, a new presence---both bring a change in your life. The old has passed away. All things are new.

But right after the funeral, right after the final goodbyes, the new is not so wonderful. Old patterns, old normal is gone. We just can't see how the next day will make sense. We can't see . . . . That's just it. We just can't see.

We walk by faith, not by sight.

A surprising new normal is coming.

Friday

It is finished. A lifetime, a ministry, an attempt to tell something of God's love, mercy, and grace. Take up my cross and follow? Are you kidding me? Look where it gets you. Isn't there another way?

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He knew what he was talking about, I guess.

What does it mean to die to yourself? What does it mean to give your life for another?

Abba Poemen said, "When you hear someone complaining and you struggle with yourself and do not answer him back with complaints; when you are hurt and bear it patiently, not looking for revenge; then you are laying down your life for your neighbor."

I take this stuff seriously. It mostly paralyzes me, but I take it seriously.

I sometimes wonder what it would look like for the church to die. What would it look like if the corporate church were to put on the mind of Christ who, though he was in the form of God, did not take equality with God as something to be grasped at but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave. What if the church sold all its buildings and furniture and real estate, gave it to the poor, and followed Jesus to the cross? It doesn't even seem possible, does it? Because all those buildings and furniture and real estate are useful. They can be used to further the work of God. They can also become the whole reason for the church existing. So much goes into the upkeep of the physical plant. So much of the church's resources go into self-preservation and its sometimes hard to see the emptying out.

But, as we were told to sing years ago, we are the church. And I'm not so good at emptying myself. I don't personally know anyone who is. It's no wonder that collectively we fail to do it as well.

But Christ calls us, and there is dying involved in the call. Dying to self. To put others before us takes a little out of us, is a small death. To give to charity when you want some shiny new toy is another death. To help someone on the side of the road when we're in a hurry to get somewhere, that's a little death. We might manage those. Sometimes. It makes small differences.

I heard someone say recently---I can't recall where---that death is a miracle. I can go along with that. It seems unnatural to stop breathing. It seems unlikely that it'll happen to us. It's hard to believe.

But there's something in our faith that speaks of death as a choice. Not as a suicidal thing, not as a killing sort of thing, but as a sacrificial sort of thing. Love takes something out of you. It is also sustaining and rejuvenating, but let's not fool ourselves, it also takes something.

There is an argument to be had as to where or not Jesus went willingly to the cross, but I'm not interested in that argument, not tonight. What I think is more interesting is that Jesus made choices that he had to have known would make powerful people angry. He did this even though he knew it could cost him his life. He taught, healed, helped even when he knew it would rub people the wrong way. And as much as I trust in the resurrection, I have to say---I'm often quite afraid to do that. I'm not willing to put myself out there in the same way that Jesus did.

I'm not willing to empty myself. Not often. Hardly every.

Jesus ended up on the cross---what a failure! I love the business books that speak of success in terms of how Jesus became a success. They read a different Bible than I do. Jesus did what was right, did everything right, and still ended up on a cross, a victim of a state sanctioned execution.

I'm not willing to be that big of a failure. I'm afraid of dying that big a death.

But that's our story today. Follow Jesus, get a cross. Follow Jesus---he calls you to die. Follow Jesus and learn to not hold grudges, to forgive, to take no revenge.

"Teach me to live that I may dread the grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die that so I may rise glorious at the awesome day."

This is serious stuff. This is deathly serious stuff. And, to bring it around to the supposed topic of this blog, it bothers me that all sides of the argument around GLBT stuff (or just about any argument within a church, for that matter) are defending themselves, speaking ill of othe other side, not willing to die for the other. I'm in the thick of that. I'm not entirely sure how to die to myself in this argument. I'm not sure how to give my life for someone with whom I fundamentally disagree.

God, save us by your grace. We're certainly not going to get saved by works here.

Follow Jesus. Take up a cross and follow Jesus. Be willing to do what Jesus did, even though you know it will create powerful enemies. it will get ugly, maybe even bloody, and it'll likely be your own blood.

It was Jesus's own blood. And after all of it was done, Jesus gave up his spirit and said, "It is finished."

But in each ending, there is a beginning . . .

Thursday

Peter, Peter . . . so zealous and so mercurial. I know what you were thinking. If you reveal what you know, you'll be arrested, too and that won't help anyone. I bet Jesus even knew that, even understood that. Jesus probably forgave that even as it was happening.

* * * * *

I'll tell you I go to church and then almost apologize. You know how those people are that go to church. And you understand, I'm not that type of church-goer, okay? I mean, if they think I'm that kind of Jesus follower, that won't help evangelism---it's important to know that there are many kinds of people who call Jesus "Lord," right? And if I'm a bit embarrassed by my church, or certain factions of it, that's understandable, right? It just does no one any good to always be shouting, "I follow Jesus."

* * * * *

It sometimes feels like . . . You know, I want to follow Jesus. I find Jesus so compelling, so much like how I wish I could be. Willing to speak truth to power. Willing to trade the facade of power for servanthood. Able to reach out to the undesirables of society and make a difference in their lives. But there's an awful lot of people between me and Jesus at this points. Crowds and crowds, and sometimes I can't see over them to see Jesus. Sometimes there is confusion about where Jesus is leading. "This way," says one person. "No, he went thataway," says another. Some of them are clearly wrong, some are less so. Worst of all, the crowd that is actually following Jesus is sometimes indiscernible from the ones who only think they are. Plants the seed of doubt in my brain as to who I'm actually following.

* * * * *

Peter, I want to shake my head at you, tsk-tsk at you and your unwillingness to speak up for Jesus. I want to berate you for proclaiming your undying allegiance one minute, denying you even know the man a few hours later. But clearly Jesus loved you, even after all the times you got things wrong, even after all the times you missed the point. Jesus loved you enough to know you, really know you, know you well enough to predict exactly what you would do. That is some kind of love. So if I make zealous proclamations one minute and embarrassed apologies the next---could it be that Jesus still loves me, too? Peter, there aren't any of us really worthy of being a role model, except that maybe we might learn the depth and breadth and width of Jesus's love by watching you?

Wednesday

It's been a busy month here, but I think I can breathe for the Triduum. An article I was assigned is written and with the publisher. A book group that I facilitate at a retirement home was today, so I can let that slip from the forefront of my mind. I have music to still learn for services, but I'm not too stressed about that. I choreographed a foot-washing and the rehearsal went well tonight. I have to carry a huge cross (with two other men) on Friday, but I've done that procession before, too, so nothing to stress about.

Each year, I take the Triduum off from work. I've come to look at it a bit like a religious retreat for which I don't have to travel. I go to all the services my church offers (yes, even the 3-hour 7-last-words service on Friday afternoon). I assist at the Saturday vigil (I savor the chance to read the story of the three young men in the fiery furnace again---perhaps the funniest story in all the Bible and I read it so that people know they can laugh and still learn from scripture). But I also try very hard to take time to breath, be still, RETREAT. I don't slow down well, and although I know it is a busy busy time for clergy everywhere, I take advantage of the chance to stop and think and pray and reflect. It's weeks like this that I'm glad that I didn't just go ahead and get ordained after seminary. Besides being ill-suited for ordained ministry, I would come to resent this time, which is truly my most favorite time of the year.

It's Wednesday in Holy Week and I just realized how . . . not quite right it seems to say I find these days as days to slow down and breathe. Jesus would surely be feeling the heat by now, even as his disciples remain somewhat clueless. Judas, perhaps, has already made his deal, or is on the verge of it, but the rest of the twelve appear unaware. They surely sense some tension, but maybe they just experience it as excitement. Maybe they think this is the time for Jesus to assert his Messiah-dom, to bring in his kingdom, to take back Jerusalem from the Romans. It's all coming to a head and I want to be still and reflect.

Well, that's the benefit of having read ahead in the story, I suppose, the benefit of living in a post-Easter world.

Except, of course, we all live in this space of uncertain expectations, maybe even false expectations. We all wish for some things that just aren't going to materialize. And the excitement we feel? Maybe it's just stress from the people around us who are paying closer attention.

Apply that, as you see fit, to the current situation that's going on in the ELCA.

It's Wednesday in Holy Week. How are you feeling?

Tuesday

What does one do on a Tuesday? The week is started, no Monday excuses. Maybe the excitement of Sunday is beginning to fade, maybe you're beginning to question your own commitment, maybe you've got a cynical streak that says it was just mass hysteria and you're sorry you were caught up in it. You've spent a lot of chronos waiting for the Messiah, but now you're wondering if this is the kairos.

I'll admit to something: at this point on the timeline, I don't fully believe that the ELCA Churchwide Assembly will pass the documents before them regarding human sexuality. I also can't believe that they'd vote it down. I have faith and doubt in vascillating measures. Well, Frederick Buechner once said that doubt was not the opposite of faith, but a component of it. Yea, verily.

I've spent a lot of chronos waiting for validation from the church. I wonder if that's always been my "problem," the root of my constant involvement at church throughout my life. I want to be told that I'm okay. This goes beyond sexuality. It's probably pathological and deserves some serious couch time.

I'm also waiting for kairos. I have some sense of God's timing, I do. I'm also increasingly aware of passing chronos. Will my chronos intersect with the church's kairos? In some ways it's too late.

I speak of the importance of these documents, so that another generation of children doesn't grow up think GLBT folk can't be pastors. This is important, but today I was reflecting on all the ways allowing openly GLBT folk be pastors can affect a young person's vocational choice---it doesn't have to be about becoming a pastor.

Back in college, as a theater major, I took dance classes. I apparently had some ability. I had dance teachers asking me to declare a double major or at least a dance minor. I might have been able to justify a few classes---they fulfilled P.E. credits, at least---but I couldn't see myself pursuing dance. It just had too many perceptions of being gay. I simply could not allow myself to be perceived as gay (not that not pursuing dance stopped anyone from perceiving me as gay!). The church had told me gay was bad and I wanted to please the church. I don't think this was a conscious thought process, but in retrospect, it was there. There's a part of this fear of being gay that led me to give up acting when I did. I kept being around all these gay people. Guilty by association---or just plain guilty. I needed to get away from it. Would it have made a difference if the church had been supportive of gay folk 25 years ago? Would I have stuck with a performing arts career instead of careening around for my adult life, still not having much of any kind of career at 45? Well, we all look for scapegoats, and again, this might require serious couch time, which I'm not likely to pay for at this point. So perhaps we'll never know.

The point being, the right time for me to have been told it's okay to be perceived as gay was 25 years ago. It's too late, at least for the dance career (although I seem to be building a resume as a dance writer---not a bad substitute, but substitute all the same). But it could be just in time for some good Lutheran boy who is in his teens, looking at clothing design, or visual arts, or any number of things that is seen as "too gay" and thinking, "I don't want to be seen as gay." Or a nice Lutheran girl who is being told that working on cars or pursuing sports is a little dyke-y.

This affects everything. And chronos is always running out for someone. When will there be kairos?

It's Tuesday and there are doubts and the euphoria is passing and there are rumblings about sinister plans afoot. On Tuesday, it's difficult to know what to think with any real conviction.

Holy Week

Yesterday, we commemorated Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. It's an odd beginning to the last week on earth for Jesus. A crowd welcomes him as king. By Friday, that crowd is dissipated and disappointed.

Did the dissipation begin on Monday? Probably. We're fickle that way. The TV show, the pop song, the actor we admire and laud on one day is out of favor almost as soon at the peak in popularity is attained. I'm sure it wasn't quite that way in first century Jerusalem---the 21st century seems especially efficient in disposing it's heroes---but I doubt human nature has changed all that much over the centuries. We keep looking for the person who will make everything better for us---save us---and when we find that person lacking in anyway, we blame them for letting us have unrealistic expectations.

The ELCA council has passed the resolutions and statements for inclusion in the Churchwide Assembly this summer. This is a great hurdle for those of us hoping for full inclusion in the church. It is not the final hurdle. It is, in fact, painful news to some in the church. We're all looking at this moment and we're not sure where it will end and those greeting the news with palm branches may still be mourning---or worse, simply disillusioned and cynical---by Friday. Those who are fearful now my be celebrating soon.

I hope I've made it clear by now, over the course of this blog, how much it pains me that there is this great divide, this great confusion over whether or not the news is good news.

But it's only Monday in Holy Week. Who can see what Friday will bring? Much less the following Sunday . . .

This Violent Present

My mind is elsewhere tonight, not on gay schtuff. These United States are more fragile than I might have suspected, or rather the residents are.

In the middle of this "economic downturn," it seems people are taking up arms and randomly killing other people before killing themselves. It's a response to hardship that I don't particularly understand, but it is one that bears prayer and vigilance. Do I know anyone who, upon losing a livelihood, is likely to barge into some public place and open fire? Do I know anyone who will feel such a failure at providing for family that s/he will murder the whole family rather than ask for help? No one comes to mind, but if I did, what would I do?

I just read an essay speaking of the failure of the American dream, of people buying into the land of opportunity and feeling angry at not getting their piece of the pie. But this has always been true. Isn't this the story of the 1930s? Didn't Steinbeck write about that? What has happened to us as a culture that we turn to violence so quickly and easily? It's an old story for a failed businessman to take his own life---what is it that makes someone takes his (and let's face it, this appears to be a male phenomenon---no need to work so hard at inclusive language) own life, but not before taking out a dozen (give or take) others first?

Is it a sense of entitlement? We're Americans and we can pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and if we can't, then we're taking it out on as many people as we can? Is this the rugged individualism that has been warned about for decades, suddenly taken to it's most violent extreme?

It's easy to point to our fascination with violence in our entertainment. Violent movies and video games continue to make a lot of money and it's easy to blame the makers of these things for desensitizing us to violence, for making us violent. I think, however, that the fact that violence has become such a big part of our entertainment is only symptomatic of the violence that is exploding around us these days. Maybe it's simply a chicken/egg question: Which comes first, the violent entertainment or the hunger for violent entertainment?

A gay tangent---back in November, when California voted to repeal the right for same-sex couples to marry, there was immediate responses with rallies of protest, some of which reported some property damage and violent speech. (I don't know of any physical attacks on humans, much less killings.) This worried me. I understood the anger, but not the expression of it in property damage and threats. I don't know how this ties in, other than this blog is supposed to be about GLBT and religion and it seems that there is a certain segment of the GLBT population that is getting fed up with what it sees as religious people interfering with their lives.

I guess the connection is that we're all so . . . tightly wound, I guess. Everyone is feeling betrayed, belittled, disenfranchised . . .

The most disheartening thing is that people are getting angry and violent when they are affected. We're not getting angry when someone else is getting disenfranchised in some way. It does, in fact, seem to be an "every man for himself" scenario. Live and let live until you're the one being affected.

We've lost the humility, perhaps, to say, "It can happen to someone down to street, it can happen to me." Instead, we have only the pride to say, "This can't be happening to me and someone has to pay."

I'm at a loss, and this isn't why I started this blog, but this is where my mind is tonight.

Let us pray for our nation, our neighbors, our vigilance in watching and caring for our neighbors, and our own state of mind should misfortune befall us. We're very sick. Pray for healing.

What Draws Us Toward God

A reading from the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans:

¹⁸The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

²⁶Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

After my post last night, I've been thinking about what has drawn me toward God. The ironic answer has been the fact that I'm gay. For many gay people, this sends them away from God, or at least the church, God's representative to many people. True, my initial disgust and shame at being gay is what sent me to God in intense prayer, asking for change, cure, redemption. It is the intense prayer that, in turn, brought me to an understanding of the wideness of God's mercy, love, redemption.

I also thought of these famous verses from the first chapter of Romans. These are well known to GLBT Christians, as they are one of the handful of "clobber" passages used against us. Setting aside the fact that this is in the first chapter of Romans and that in the eighth chapter, Paul goes to some length to tell us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (making me think that maybe Paul was setting up the problem in chapter one and solving it in chapter eight), let's look at what these verses actually say.

"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another."

Here, Paul clearly sets up a cause and effect situation. The effect is turning people over to sinful desires, to sexual impurity. The cause was people not glorifying or giving thanks to God.

As I struggled to find peace with my own sexuality, this made no sense to me. From as early as I could say so, I wanted to go to church. I was the kid who wanted to go to Sunday school and looked forward to it. I never had a "rebellious" stage in college but was very involved in Lutheran Campus Ministry the whole time I was there. (My mother once joked that I got my degree in theater, but I majored in campus ministry.) I searched my life for a time where I was not part of a worshiping community or not seeking out a worshiping community. I'd spent my entire life, to the best of my ability, glorifying and giving thanks to God.

Why had God turned me over to "sinful desires" and "sexual impurity?"

I won't belabor the point, as I believe it's right there. I suppose there are people who would argue that I had not worshiped, glorified, or gave thanks in the proper manner, not "in spirit and truth." It's why there are some people who pray for a million dollars and get it while others don't.

But I'm not hear to debate a prosperity/"name it, claim it" theology. I'm here to simply say that if God turned me over to sinful desires, God also used it to draw me closer and to ultimately convince me that the desires weren't inherently sinful anymore than a straight man's desire for a woman is inherently sinful (although I confess that I know something about the sinful desires, too---perhaps we all do).

Being gay is a thorn in my side. It is also my blessing. It is not the same for all people. For some it's never a thorn, for others it's never a blessing. But this is my story and it's sticking to me.

Time Well Spent and Wasted

As I"m in a crunch period this week with a deadline and church committee meeting and foot-washing choreography all falling within one week---not to mention the usual 40-hour/week job---I find myself short-changing this blog, my lenten discipline. I'm also finding that I have really little to say about being gay and Lutheran other than what I've already said, sometimes more than once.

But as I feel all these other pressures on me these days and wondering what to write about here . . . I'm coming to the conclusion that there really are more important things than talking and talking and talking again about being gay in the church. All the time, energy, and resources we put into studying and discussing . . . is this really time well-spent?

Okay, so some think that the fact that I respond emotionally and physically to people of my sex is inherently sinful. I used to think that, too. Spent a few hours wailing and praying. A few hours? It was a few years, but I can't claim I spent all that time wailing. Some of it was spent just numb. But a lot of praying.

I suppose here is the irony, and one that I wish I could, as I said a couple of posts ago, download into a flash drive: it was all those years praying and listening for God that finally gave me rest about my sexuality. Maybe "rest" is too strong a word for it, but some measure of peace. I'm not going to recount it all now, and early on somewhere, I linked a Whosoever piece I wrote over 10 years ago that outlines that experience. What I mean to say is that after years of struggle and even some years of no struggle, but numbness, God intervened and said, basically, you have bigger things to worry about.

I honestly do believe the church has bigger things to worry about, too. We do some good things on the hunger front, but there are still hungry people. We do some good things on the caregiving front, but there are still people in need of care. We do some good things on the education, evangelism, and worship fronts---and we do a lot of dissemination of lies and half-truths about any number of things, not only in regard to homosexuality.

Is all this talk and talk and talk time well spent? Maybe. If it draws us close enough to God to hear that we have more important things to deal with. (I'd like to keep open the possibility that God does think all this wrangling over sexuality is worthwhile, but I just don't believe God does. But if we draw close enough to hear God, maybe we can know for sure on that, too. )

In an illustration from a 4th or 5th century preacher (I'll try to look up the name---I have it here somewhere, but I post it in a reply another time), we are told to think of God as in the center of a circle and we're all on the edge of the circle. As we move closer to God, we cannot help but move closer to each other, as the circle gets smaller and smaller.

I don't even know what that might mean for the decisions to be made this summer at Churchwide Assembly. I just believe it to be true. I'm clinging to the hope that all this talk and talk and talk might actually draw at least some of us closer to God and we'll all end up closer to each other.

Mystery

You have to be of a certain age to remember when no one knew the sex of a baby until the baby was born. For decades now, science has taken away that bit of mystery from our lives. We know within weeks of a pregnancy if it will be a boy or a girl and names are picked out well before the arrival.

Science has not yet come to a place of predicting sexuality, in part because it hasn't been able to pinpoint a cause for sexuality. Latest studies suggest that while sexuality is set very early in life, it might be determined by a few different things, or perhaps the right combination of a few certain things. We don't know of a gay or straight gene. We don't know that hormone levels in a mother at a precise moment in gestation determines sexuality. We do know that for some it appears to have a genetic component and for some it appears to have to do with a mother's hormones or maybe even birth order. The problem is that there are exceptions to every pattern (which is the most we have---patterns), and the patterns are different between gay men and lesbians.

So, since we no longer have the anticipation and wonder about the sex of a child, could we replace that with anticipation and wonder about the child's sexuality? Who will s/he have a crush on as puberty sets in? Who will s/he take to the prom? Seems like there should be some wonder and mystery about children.

Okay, I'm only half serious about this post. (The other side of that is it's only a half joke, I suppose.) It's not really intended as an April Fools post, but I'm just really swamped with other things right now (must remember next year to not take on a writing assignment that will be due the week before Holy Week!) and this was the best I could do for today. That makes two not so serious posts in a row. The lent police will be after me before long.

We'll see if tomorrow is any better.