Sermon: Gays, Lesbians, The Church

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Gays, Lesbians, The Church

By Charles Rush

May 16, 1999

day we come together to cast a vote. There is no question that votes make some of us grumpy and the trick is to keep our humor about us in the midst of a conflictual situation. When Winston Churchill was first a candidate in 1900, he did some door-to-door canvassing. Things were going pretty well, he thought, until he came to the house of a grouchy-looking-fellow. After Churchill introduced himself, the fellow said "Vote for you? Why, I'd rather vote for the Devil!"

"I understand", replied Churchill. "But in case your friend is not running, may I count on your support?"

I want to make a few comments this morning about what this vote means, particularly for those who find themselves in the dissent. Just based on the number of people that have spoken to me about this issue, I have every reason to believe that it is going to pass. The only question is by what margin. Once again, I want to extend an olive branch to those people that are still struggling with this issue, who are not entirely comfortable with either the resolution itself, for one reason or another.

Personally, I very much understand what it is like to be dissenting in the minority. Growing up as a Baptist in the South, I was on the losing side of nearly every vote. I was one of the few moderates in a church that was extremely conservative. It is an uncomfortable place to be. I got very tired of people saying "You're not like any Baptist Minister I ever met." I got tired of people staring at me when I spoke at the microphone, giving me these looks like I was less than Christian.

There is an inherent divisiveness to any vote. That is why you keep votes to a minimum. One side wins, the other loses. A division ensues. It is true that you have to vote once in a while to set your course. In this case, we started this process because a year and a half ago a gay couple came to me and asked me to bless their union. Now, some people have said ‘why didn't you just sneak over to the Watchung reservation and performed that union. No one would know and we wouldn't have to be bothered with it." The answer is that in our church, Ministers don't have the authority to act on their own. We act on behalf of the church and the church has to make decisions like that. Furthermore, I knew that someone else would ask me in the future. I had a sense that the zeitgeist, the Spirit of the times, had met us on this issue. So I put the question to the Deacons, who formed a sub-committee, sponsored a number of education sessions for a year and a half. And they did that because they realized that there were issues about the gay community, there were issues about what kind of church we want to become that are much broader than the simple question of blessing gay unions. So, we sponsored many different sessions. Finally, we are here today.

But I want to suggest that votes do not have to be so divisive on a local level. They are almost always divisive on a national level. 55% of the Methodist church is opposed to gay unions, 45% are for them. And this division becomes part of the larger culture wars that set the debate in our country, encouraging conservatives and liberals to keep taking pot shots at each other. There are times when it looks like these two groups are just destined to keep punching away at each other in every generation.

We don't have to behave like that. In fact, we don't behave like that now. Let me give you an example. Several years ago, we offered an alternative Doxology that had inclusive language. Instead of "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" we suggested you might want to sing "Creator, Christ and Holy Ghost." A few years after that we decided to do away with the optional business and we just print "Creator, Christ and Holy Ghost" because we are committed, in principle, to encouraging inclusive language in the church.

This morning, several years later, as Julie took up the collection, one of my ushers sang loudly, right in her face, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost". Just because we set ourselves in a direction towards inclusive language does not mean that everyone in the congregation follows in lock-step-march. I know that some of you are thinking, "if this resolution passes, will there still be a place for me to struggle with this issue? Can I say out loud, I still have some problems with this?" The answer is "Yes, of course."

We are a congregation, not the Fuhrer's Third Reich. If you think about it for a moment, what a boring church you would have if everyone agreed on every subject. We need a mix of people, tradition, values, and ideas. That is important. It keeps us growing and vital.

Votes like this are promises for the future. What we are saying as a congregation is "this is the direction that we want to head." We want to be inclusive. We want gay men and lesbian women to have the same participation in the life of the church that the rest of us enjoy, the same blessing and support for their monogamous relationships. That is the direction towards which we are headed. We are not there yet, but that is where we are going.

It is a commitment that sets a direction for the future. Yesterday, I performed a wedding. Two young people stood up here and made a commitment to share their lives together, to support one another in sickness and health, for richer and poorer, for better or worse, till death do us part." Now that doesn't mean that they won't ever have a serious fight. That doesn't mean that one of them won't ask the other to sleep on the couch for a period of time. It doesn't mean that one of them might not do something to undermine the marriage. You can't predict that. But they stood up here and made those promises to each other because that is the common future they hope for. This is the direction they are headed. As those of you know, who have been married for 30 years, the fullness of that commitment doesn't really come clear for quite a long time. After 30 years together or so, the meaning of that commitment, all of its blessing, its difficulty, the way you have grown and matured through it and because of it, the mistakes you have made along the way it has a richness to it, that pledge and commitment. But it is never a linear line is it? It doesn't mean that there wasn't struggle, doubt, and difficulty along the way. There always is.

This vote is like that. We are essentially pledging ourselves toward a future, a direction towards which to head. We are not all together. We don't have the specifics worked out. We can't predict the future challenges or the turns in the road that are out there. But we are headed out, probably like the children of Israel as they entered the desert of Sinai. I doubt they ever traveled very much together. We know, from the scripture, that there was some grumbling along the way. Some people wanted to change course. Some wanted to go back. Others questioned the leadership of Moses. And it took them 40 years of wandering. Like our marriages, this was not an army unit either. But, we, like they, are hoping to get to the Promised Land.

Finally, people have wondered if this vote will change our church. The answer on that is that surely it will, but only imperceptibly over a long period of time. I got a call this week from a UCC minister in Bergen County. A few years back his church became "Open and Affirming" and they actually began to actively recruit gay men and lesbians. Alas, no one came to their church, for a variety of reasons. But one of the things that he mentioned to me was the fact that the church has been so hostile to gay men and lesbians for so long that they are not exactly lining up in droves to come back to the church. Then, he went on to say what many other UCC churches have said, who went through this process. He said, "the change was more internal. It was more about who we saw ourselves becoming." He also went on to say, "one thing it probably does mean is that Billy, in your confirmation class, when he starts to come to terms with the fact that he is gay, won't have to worry so much about his church at least." I have a sneaking suspicion that this pastor is right and that the biggest change at Christ Church in Summit, New Jersey is going to come from how we view ourselves. We are not going to see much of any change in the percentage of gay men and lesbians in the foreseeable future, again for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that Summit is overwhelmingly dominated by families.

There are no winners and losers in a local church anyway. It is only a group of folks helping each other to grow. We are hesitant and holy, compromised and compassionate, trying to dodge any responsibility and trying to be faithful at the same time. We know where we are going, we have no idea what we are doing at the same time. We stand alone and we desperately need each other. We are a rag tag band of pilgrims, running from the tyranny of Egypt, but only meandering towards the Holy Land. None of us has any better handle on the Christian thing to do. We are all just struggling to live authentically faithful lives, to develop a community where our children can find spiritual roots and flourish.

I have been very impressed, as we have begun to discuss this issue with each other, the respect, mutual regard that people have for one another. It is one of the things this congregation does well. I have no reason to believe that this same respect and mutual regard will not continue on the other side of the vote. I expect that people will still give each other some space- room to live together in disagreement, room to mutually grow from each other. I expect that we will stay in communion with each other because the things which tie us together are much deeper than a particular moral issue.

Our extended family, I suppose like many families, regularly cancels one another out at the polls in November. And my wife will tell you that she is the only person in our extended family that is consistently right in the candidates she supports. Thank God that there is more to our relationship than politics. Otherwise, our extended family would have fallen apart a long time ago. Likewise, thank God that there is more to our church community than one issue. Soon after we vote, make sure you reach out to those people that you love in Christ that you differ with. It is time to vote, to reach out in reconciliation, and to move on.

Amen.