30 August 2009

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
Psalm 15 (1)
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I have a confession to make: I’ve pretty much been avoiding people this past week. I’ve busied myself instead with catching up on unanswered email – only 34 left to go; and I’ve been sketching out sermon ideas for the next few weeks; I’ve been preparing for all the great faith formation opportunities our Education Ministry is planning for the next couple months; and I’m getting up-to-date on all sorts of things for our web site. I haven’t wanted much to talk to people though; you see, I don’t know what to say with regard to the history-changing, history-making actions of the ELCA’s Eleventh Churchwide Assembly that began in Minneapolis almost two weeks ago now. I fear that people will perhaps want me to celebrate, to declare a victory, to be joyous. And that is, of course, my natural inclination and tendency. I personally would love to sing with Moses and the Israelites along the shore of the Red Sea after the once-parted waters returned to cover the chariots to drown the chariot drivers and the entire army of Pharaoh. I personally would love to pick up the tambourine and dance with Miriam and all the women and join in their song of “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

Yes, I would love to celebrate the passing of the Social Teaching Statement on human sexuality after the seven years of bloody hell that went into its crafting. I would love to do a victory dance; that which I never truly believed would happen in my lifetime has indeed occurred. Now, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has joined with the Church of Sweden and with our full-communion partners of the Episcopal Church USA and the United Church of Christ in declaring an end to vows of perpetual celibacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people who are called to ordained or consecrated ministry in the church. In doing so, the ELCA has, in effect, sanctioned publically accountable, life-long, mutual, and monogamous same-gender unions, both for laity and the clergy. And people in such relationships or hoping to be in such a relationship may now enter into candidacy and be called and ordained by congregations on behalf of the whole church. I’ve struggled for these ends since I entered the seminary thirty years ago almost to the day. I feel like I’ve earned the right to bump knuckles, high-five, and shout “booyah.”

Some of your know that it’s my big mouth that gets me in trouble more than everything else combined. I was always the smallest kid on the playground, in the gym, and in the locker room, I was way too smart, and I was clearly different, very, very different – bully-bait from the get-go. So I learned to use language to get back at the people who stole my lunch money and who loved to slug me just for the sport of it. Though I should have long-ago left that childhood habit behind me, I’ve remained somewhat of a verbal brawler. Not pretty. So, quite reflexively, I’ve developed, with a little help from whole lot of other folks, a full repertoire of dastardly descriptors for those in the church who have opposed full-inclusion into the life and ministry of the church not only of LGBT people, but of women and other minorities as well. And my natural tendency, at this juncture, is to drag out all of the most clever, albeit totally juvenile, words and phrases I can to talk about “those people.”  None of it would be pretty, but it sure would be . . . witty.