There were two – not one, but two – Jesuses, each known as “Barabbas” (“son of the father”) – who stood before Pilate. One was released into the crowd. The other was executed. Both are very much with us still. This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, Minnesota, a place for the mind and heart sharing the message of God’s unconditional love for everyone.
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This young woman (“a child,” she calls herself) spoke as clearly and boldly to power as I have heard. “And a child shall lead them.”
Rush Limbaugh STOP Obamaism
Get a Rush out of this tongue-in-cheek acrostic by my friend Steve.
“Barak Obama” (acrostic)
Barak Obama was not born here in
America. He is not qualified,
Really, to be the President. Fear in
All the conservative radioland:
Knowing he will take away each one’s gun.
—–
ObamaCare says all must be insured,
But who wants health care for everyone?
Arrest Saddam Hussein? Don’t say a word…
Marriage should only be between a man
And woman. Gay folks equal? That’s absurd!
President Barak Obama at National Prayer Breakfast
Steve Shoemaker, host “Keepin’ the Faith” @www.will.illinois.edu/keepinthefaith. Steve knew the President when he was an Illiinois State Senator. He told me then, “This is one very unique human being. He’s special.”
President Obama’s support for gay marriage made headlines yesterday. In Minnesota the issue will come before the voters in November: Should the Minnesota State Constitution be amended to define “marriage” as between a man and a woman? One of my colleagues weighed in on the question from the pulpit of the Oak Grove Presbyterian Church. I post it here because it says more clearly than I what I believe.
“Standing on the Side of Love”
Oak Grove Presbyterian Church
Galatians 3:26-28
Bill Chadwick
Sunday,April 29, 2012
Today I invite us to think together about the amendment that is before the voters of Minnesota this fall that would place into the state constitution the requirement that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman.
I have a pastor friend, now retired, who loved to rile people up. If I might play amateur psychologist, my theory is that as the child of an alcoholic he was uncomfortable when things were calm. Well, my parents were teetotalers. As am I. I love calm. I hate conflict. I would much rather not talk about the amendment. I do so only because of the ordination vows I took almost 35 years ago. I am preaching today about the Marriage Amendment only because I am attempting to follow faithfully my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I might be mistaken. I once again remind you, that in the Presbyterian way of doing things, “Just because the preacher says it, doesn’t mean you have to buy it.”
I believe that to be faithful the Church always needs to take a stand, just like it did against slavery, just like it did in favor of human rights for women, for people of color. The Church ALWAYS needs to take a stand on behalf of human rights for all of God’s children. And especially so when it comes to fair treatment of LGBT folk, since the church has consistently led the way in their persecution.
When my grandchildren ask, “What did you do when the issue of human rights for gay people was still being debated?” I don’t want to have to say to them, “Well, as you know, Grandpa doesn’t like conflict, and I didn’t want to offend people, and I was afraid it might affect contributions, so I kept my mouth shut.” I especially don’t want to say that if the questioning grandchild happened to have been born gay.
There is so much to say that I couldn’t do it in one sermon, so I put a bunch of stuff in the bulletin handout. What I would like to do primarily in the sermon is to tell stories, most of them personal.
My story. It has been a long journey for me to get to where I am today. The Presbyterian Church was just starting to talk about the ordination of gay people when I graduated from seminary 35 years ago. The following year was the first vote at General Assembly, when the proposal was roundly defeated. In the lead-up to that vote I preached a sermon using Acts 10 and 11 as my basis. That is the story of Peter praying at midday on the rooftop in the city of Joppa. He has a vision in which a sheet comes down from heaven laden with all kinds of animals, clean and unclean (according to Jewish dietary laws), and Peter hears a voice saying, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” And Peter protests, “Surely not, Lord. Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” The voice spoke from heaven a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times. Immediately following, he encounters Cornelius, a Roman centurion who has had his own vision. Long story short, Peter realizes what the vision was trying to tell him: It’s time to change his mind! The gospel is not just for Jews, God’s love is for uncircumcised Gentiles as well. That is absolutely mind-blowing for Peter! It’s against the scriptures. It’s against tradition. But God was doing a new thing and commanding Peter to get on board.
So the gist of my 1978 sermon was this: I am still not quite ready to ordain homosexual individuals, but I am open to the possibility that the Spirit might someday change my mind.
Over the next few years I continued reading the latest Biblical scholarship and scientific research. I met and became friends with several very committed Christian people who happened to be gay. They had undergone extensive therapy and prayer for years and still couldn’t change who they were. I finally came to the conclusion that people simply are born who they are; gay people clearly have God-given gifts for ministry and that we should welcome all God’s children to use their gifts in ministry in ordained positions.
And we should encourage people to form committed relationships. I was happy to bless civil unions.
But marriage?… It somehow didn’t seem right to me to call a same-sex commitment “marriage.” Why? Just pure emotion, tradition, inertia.
Nothing logical about it. I am embarrassed to say that it was only a few years ago that I moved to the point of fully supporting marriage equality.
Another story. My younger brother, John, and I were extremely close growing up. I was so excited when he and his wife started having children. I didn’t have any of my own yet. I loved being an uncle. Many of you had the joy of watching Claire and Jim grow up here at Oak Grove. A couple of GREAT kids! Claire grew up, fell in love with a wonderful man, and married him two years ago. Jim grew up, but when he falls in love he will not be able to marry the one he loves. By the time Jim was three or four years old, I was very sure that he was gay. Jim didn’t choose to be gay. Why shouldn’t Jim be able to share the same right to marriage as his sister does? Jim has told me that a lot of his relatives got married at Oak Grove and it would mean a lot to him to someday be married here.
One comic has said, “Let gays marry. Why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us?” That may be kind of a funny line. But I’m not miserable. My marriage means the world to me. On Tuesday Kris and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. My marriage is a place of safety, welcome, commitment, companionship, intimacy, trust. That can all happen without marriage. But our relationship is acknowledged, encouraged and celebrated by the world and by the church. Why should Jim be excluded from that acknowledgement, encouragement and celebration because of an accident of birth?
Marriage says “We are family” in a way that no other word does.
About two months ago while flipping through the TV channels one evening I came across a presentation of the Broadway play, Memphis, which won the Tony Award for best musical in 2010. Have any of you seen it? I wasn’t familiar with it, but the TV program was just starting. I was quickly captivated and I watched the entire thing. And then a few weeks ago a touring production came to the Ordway in St. Paul and Kris and I went to it and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Unlike most straight men I love musical theater.) The play is set in the 1950s and is loosely based on the career of a Memphis radio disc jockey. In the musical the lead character is called Huey Calhoun and through the course of the play Huey meets a wonderful singer named Felicia, and eventually they fall in love. Huey asks her to marry him and she says, “Yes. Yes, I love you with all of my heart and I would marry you, Huey, …if I could.” She means, if it were legal. But he is white, and she is black. In Memphis in the 1950s it was against the law for a white person and a black person to marry.
Doesn’t that just make you shake your head in sadness? In amazement? I am utterly confident that fifty years from now—or probably less, maybe half that—almost everyone will be shaking their heads about the current ban on gay marriage in the same way that almost everyone shakes their heads at the ban on interracial marriage of a half-century ago.
Even if this amendment passes, it is just a temporary bump in the road on the way to the inevitable. According to the Gallup Poll (May, 2011) 70% of young people in America favor gay marriage. When the loudest voices opposing gay marriage come from the Church, it’s one more nail in the coffin…of the Church. The Church is brushed aside by the younger generation as being narrow-minded, judgmental and irrelevant.
You sometimes hear the statement, “Gay marriage is a threat to heterosexual marriage.” How so? Two of our very good friends, Suzanne and Diane, were legally married in Massachusetts eight years ago. My wife, Kris, flew out to be in the wedding. We see them socially on a regular basis. Eight years. Their marriage has not affected my marriage one bit. Any more than your marriage (pointing to congregation) or your marriage affects my marriage. Whom you choose to love does not affect whom I choose to love.
Another story. About a woman named Ruth. (I’m indebted to St. Paul theologian David Weiss for this insight.) You (probably) know Ruth’s words, even if you don’t know her story: “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” (Where do we so often hear these words?) This is one of the most often quoted texts at straight marriages. But these words were spoken by Ruth to her mother-in-law, Naomi. These words were spoken by a woman whose people, the Moabites, were condemned in the Bible – forever. She has no business pledging – and fulfilling – a vow of faithfulness like God’s own promised faithfulness. But while her love for Naomi was ethnically and culturally odd and her (later) marriage to Boaz (a Hebrew) was religiously dubious, thanks to her odd love and dubious marriage she became the great-grandmother of King David. Her off-limits love became a blessing.
I could give other germane Biblical stories: The stories of Rahab, Hosea, the parable of the Good Samaritan, several women in Jesus’ life, and others. As Weiss notes, “The Bible is full of stories about a God who welcomes surprising people into God’s family. Stories about heroes and heroines whose praise-worthiness lies in their promised faithfulness to another person.” (See Weiss’s book, To the Tune of a Welcoming God: Lyrical reflections on Sexuality, Spirituality and the Wideness of God’s Welcome (2008, Langdon Street Press).
If you support marriage equality, what can you do? Outfront Minnesota is an organization working to defeat the Amendment. The Outfront folks expect that there will be an onslaught of misleading advertising this summer financed by the Mormon Church and others. An Outfront trainer noted, “We believe that the way forward is not to be found in loud and angry debate with the opposition. We think this only entrenches people. Rather, our research finds that the single most effective way to advance our position is through one to one conversations. So, our strategy over the next months is to facilitate a million conversations. And, we have scheduled numerous trainings to help people plan those conversations, and feel comfortable having them.” You can find information on the Outfront website. Please hold gentle conversations with your friends and neighbors.
Final story. Tuesday afternoon I was toiling away in my study when our receptionist came and knocked on my door to inform me that there was a man here who has just moved from another town and he is looking for a new church and wanted to know about Oak Grove. I’m always eager to tell folks about Oak Grove so I bounded out to greet him. We introduced one another and then walked out into the hall where I started to give him a little tour and tell him about the church. But he stopped just outside the office and interrupted me, “You have a flag out front,” referring to the rainbow flag.
“Yes,” I said. And I was thinking “Hmm. This could go either way.” (I remind you that in 2008 a man came into a church in Tennessee with anger in his heart at what he called “liberal gay-lovers” and he opened fire, wounding seven and killing two.) This was not in the back of my mind; this was in the front of my mind. Was this man in front of me happy that we had the flag or was he here to set me straight, so to speak?
He continued. “Does the flag mean you welcome everyone?”
“Yes, that’s what it means.”
A big grin spread across his face and he pumped my hand again. “That’s what I’m looking for!” And for the next twenty minutes he told me about his spiritual journey and how he had been hurt by some of his previous church experiences. He said he was looking for a church that would preach positive messages and where everyone was welcome. At the conclusion of our conversation he shook my hand again and said, “I’ll see you Sunday at 8:15.” (And he was here. And he received a very warm welcome from you Oak Grovers.)
We are in the season of Eastertide. The essence of Easter is the message that Love wins. Why take the temporary detour of this amendment?
Love will win.
money – follow the money
Eight years as Executive Director of the Legal Rights Center, Inc. in Minneapolis confirmed this perspective by Fareed Zakaria.
Money spent on Prisons is rising 6 times the rate spent on higher education By Fareed Zakaria, March 25, 2012.
“Televangelist Pat Robertson recently made a gaffe. A gaffe, as journalist Michael Kinsley defined it, occurs when a political figure accidentally tells the truth.
“Robertson’s truth is that America’s drug war has failed and that the country should legalize legalize marijuana. This view goes against the deepest political, moral and religious positions Robertson has held for decades, so imagine the blinding evidence that he has had to confront-and that has been mounting for years-on this topic.
“Robertson drew attention to one of the great scandals of American life.
“Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a
fundamental fact of our country today,” writes the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik.
“Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in
America-more than 6 million-than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin
at its height.”
“Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per
100,000 citizens. That’s not just many more than in most other developed
countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany
has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britian – with a rate among
the-highest – has 153. Even developing countries that are well known for
their crime problems have a third of U.S. numbers. Mexico has 208 prisoners
per 100,000 citizens, and Brazil has 242. As Robertson pointed out on his TV
show, The 700 Club, “We here in America make up 5% of the world’s population
but we make up 25% of the [world’s] jailed prisoners.”
“There is a temptation to look at this staggering difference in numbers and
chalk it up to one more aspect of American exceptionalism. America is
different, so the view goes, and it has always had a Wild West culture and a
tough legal system. But the facts don’t support the conventional wisdom.
This wide gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is relatively
recent. In 1980 the U.S.’s prison population was about 150 per 100,000
adults. It has more than quadrupled since then. So something has happened in
the past 30 years to push millions of Americans into prison.
“That something, of course, is the war on drugs. Drug convictions went from
15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold
increase. More than half of America’s federal inmates today are in prison on
drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on
drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4
of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession.
“Over the past four decades, the U.S. has spent more than $1 trillion
fighting the war on drugs. The results? In 2011 a global commission on drug
policy issued a report signed by George Shultz, Secretary of State under
Ronald Reagan; the – archconservative Peruvian writer-politician Mario Vargas
Llosa; former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker; and former Presidents of Brazil and
Mexico Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ernesto Zedillo. It begins, “The global
war on drugs has failed … Vast expenditures on criminalization and
repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of
illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or
consumption.” Its main recommendation is to “encourage experimentation by
governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power
of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.”
“Bipartisan forces have created the trend that we see. Conservatives and
liberals love to sound tough on crime, and both sides agreed in the 1990s to
a wide range of new federal infractions, many of them carrying mandatory
sentences for time in state or federal prison. And as always in American
politics, there is the money trail. Many state prisons are now run by
private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals. These
firms can create jobs in places where steady work is rare; in many states,
they have also helped create a conveyor belt of cash for prisons from
treasuries to outlying counties.
“Partly as a result, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six
times the rate of spending on higher education in the past 20 years. In
2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons vs. $5.7 billion on the UC
system and state colleges. Since 1980, California has built one college
campus and 21 prisons. A college student costs the state $8,667 per year; a
prisoner costs it $45,006 a year.
“The results are gruesome at every level. We are creating a vast prisoner
under-class in this country at huge expense, increasingly unable to function
in normal society, all in the name of a war we have already lost. If Pat
Robertson can admit he was wrong, surely it is not too much to ask the same
of America’s political leaders.”
– appeared on-line, IllinoisDemNews@yahoogroups.com
Click
This sermon, inspired by a visit to an estate sale and Via Lucis’ photographs of Gothic and Romanesque architecture, was preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN.
Katie delighting in Sebastian
Today is the second anniversary of Katie’s death after a valiant battle with leiomysosarcoma, a rare terminal cancer.In today’s earlier reposting of Kay’s reflection on her blog, www.rawgrief.com, I quoted the last line of a great hymn.
The composer, T. Tertius Noble, spent his summers in the big house at the top of the wall of Old Garden Beach in Rockport, MA, one block from my grandparents’ home. Only later in life did I learn that this favorite hymn was composed by the man in the house above the wall at the beach.
Here are the lyrics and an organ rendition of the hymn that flooded my mind this morning, as I gave thanks for Katie and thought of Kay’s reflection.
Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fears!
No arm so weak but may do service here; By feeblest agents
may our God fulfill His righteous will.
Come, labor on. No time for rest, till grows the western sky,
Till the long shadows o’er our pathway lie,
And a glad sound comes with the setting sun,
“Well done, well done!”
4:30 am Reflection (during my first few months of grieving).
Kay and her brood -Katie, Andrew, and Kristin
Two years ago today we said goodbye to 33-year-old Katherine (“Katie”), RIP. Today her mother Kay posted this amazing reflection. Click the link above the photograph for Kay’s recollection and reflection.
Below is a photograph of Katherine (she preferred her formal name in her adult years) and Christopher (“Chris”), her husband and best friend, during a family trip to Costa Rica in 2009. Chris, you were the best of the best. Payers for Chris Katie’s father, Steve, sister Kristin, brother Andrew, and Kay. “And a glad sound comes with the setting sun: ‘Well done! Well done!'” – final stanza, hymn “Come, Labor On.”
Katie and Chris on Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica
We have so many things
we cannot count them all.
(We’ve added virtual
to piles of actual…)
We’ve had to rent more space–
or buy another house
just to store all our things.
And then we find, of course,
our houses are too small;
we tear them down so all
our stuff, our toys, the things
we bought to sooth our soul
will not have to be thrown
away. (Because our own
city, village, or town
is surrounded by things
in stinking, seeping hills
of trash, garbage, the frills
we thought were essentials.)
Our hell is filled with things.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, May 9, 2012
“Man and nature belong together in their created glory – in their tragedy and in their salvation.” – Paul Tillich quote on monument in Tillich Park, New Harmony, Indiana.
Paul JohannesTillich’s gravestone in the Paul TillichPark, New Harmony, Indiana
Inscription on Paul Tillich’s gravestone reads:
“He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in due season. His leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”
– Psalm 1: 3
This narratied video on Yellow-billed Loons in Arctic Russia speaks for itself. Few things are more lovely or haunting than the sound of Loons.
Views from the Edge 