Month: January 2022

A Meditation on Luke 4:14-21

A few years ago, our younger child, Jesse (who was in high school at the time), had a friend that I’ll call “Pat” to protect their identity. Pat was assigned female at birth (AFAB) but realized he was transgender male. He definitely did not have accepting parents and greatly feared that he would be homeless if he came out. This was unacceptable to Jesse, so we talked about what we could do to help. We do have resources in Rolla, particularly The Rolla Mission, but living on the streets is dangerous anyway. We had a spare bedroom, so we offered it to Pat as a transitional option until he went to college. Thankfully, when he came out, his home life was unpleasant but not unbearable. He was able to survive the last months of high school and then move on to new horizons.

Not everyone is so lucky. I am aware of another young person who came out and was then subjected to severe emotional abuse until they turned 18 and were able to leave home—thankfully, to live with a supportive friend. Again, not everyone is so lucky. Many LGBTQ youth do not have accepting parents, do not have healthy home environments, and do not have friends who will take them in. According to True Colors United, LGBTQ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than other youth. Although they comprise about 7% of all youth, up to 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. In addition to the usual reasons (like family poverty), major reasons for LGBTQ youth homelessness include being forced out or abused because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. (This is actually why I started volunteering at The Mission. I may not be able to help homeless LGBTQ individuals explicitly, but fighting homelessness anywhere helps indirectly.)

Importantly, the two individuals that I know who might have fallen prey to these family issues would not show up in the statistics as “youth” because they were both 18. Our society treats an 18-year-old as an adult, but at the same time expects parents to support them for a few more years. For example, colleges assume that parents’ financial resources are available to their children. A story in Rolling Stone describes a college sophomore, Jackie, who came out and was immediately cut off—her car taken away, her credit cards canceled. Of course her tuition immediately became her own responsibility, regardless of what the college may have expected. In the ensuing years, she experienced intermittent homelessness.

Sadly, the Christian church has had an outsized role in driving division within families. In the Rolling Stone story, Jackie’s parents were devout Catholics. When she called them to tell them she was gay, “After what felt like an eternity, her mom finally responded. ‘I don’t know what we could have done for God to have given us a fag as a child,’ she said before hanging up.”

Somewhere along the line, Jackie’s parents had been told that being gay made her irredeemably sinful and unacceptable to God. Indeed, many churches continue to preach that the Bible clearly states that being gay is inherently evil, based on a handful of “clobber passages.” They ignore the other 99% of the Bible that preaches love for neighbor and equality before God.

This week’s lectionary passage is Luke 4:14-21, which I refer to as Jesus’s mission statement. Up to this point, Jesus was teaching and healing and calling followers, but had not yet clearly stated what kind of Messiah he was. Would he be a warrior and lead a rebellion to expel the Romans? No. He picked up Isaiah’s mantle and said,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

Jesus brought good news to the poor—all of the poor, not just the “worthy” poor. He proclaimed freedom to the oppressed, including those who are abused—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And no, homelessness is not freedom.

Then he followed his proclamation by saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Today. Not tomorrow, not next year. Not when it’s convenient. Not when the world is ready. TODAY.

Last weekend we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. As part of my celebration, I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In the best prophetic tradition, his words were right on target for his time and circumstances, while also describing a broader truth about the way the world works. “The time is always right to do what is right.” He went on,

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Too many of us are comfortable with the way the world operates. I’m a cisgender, heterosexual, white, middle-class, well-educated man. It’s hard to imagine a more privileged place in American society. Oh, and I have tenure. The world works just fine for me. But there are plenty of people for whom the world does not work so well. Women’s rights have come a long way since the time my mother was forced to quit teaching due to pregnancy, but women are still subject to discrimination that results in lower wages and less economic stability. Explicit discrimination due to race has been outlawed, but systemic racism built over the centuries continues to maintain a gap between White and Black Americans. In my lifetime, I have seen tremendous strides in LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality, but there remains no state or federal law against discrimination over sexual orientation or gender identity.

Unfortunately, as MLK Jr. wrote elsewhere in his letter,

The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

The Christian church, born as an egalitarian movement, has evolved into a patriarchal, White-centric institution. We have built systems of inequality. We have driven LGBTQ individuals into closets, and when they come out, they have suffered at our hands.

The time is always right to do what is right. Today is the day to work towards reconciliation. There are plenty of sins of which the Church must repent, too many to list. My calling is to work towards reconciliation with the LGBTQ community—not by asking them to change, but by changing the Church from within.

This weekend, I’m attending the virtual Q Christian Fellowship Conference. Their theme this year is Making a Way. How will we enter into full fellowship with our siblings in the LGBTQ community? I don’t know, but I know that God will make a way.

A meditation on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Wheat is a grass species with large grains around their seeds. Humans have cultivated wheat for thousands of years. The grain itself has three parts: endosperm (used for white flour), bran, and germ (the part that sprouts). As it grows, though, special leaf-like structures surround the grain. These structures, called chaff, are inedible and must be removed. A major development in agriculture was the cultivation of free-threshing wheat, in which the chaff can be easily removed by beating (threshing) the harvested sheaves. After threshing, the chaff is no longer attached to the grain, but everything is all mixed together. “Winnowing” involves throwing the mixture up in the air with a light wind (possibly provided by a fan). The grain falls while the chaff blows away.

John the Baptist was a firebrand of a preacher. He held nothing back when he was teaching his followers. And yet, he said that worse was to come: “I baptize you with water, but … [the Messiah] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Pretty strong words! Hearing them, I’m not sure I would really look forward to the coming of the Messiah.

What is chaff? One common interpretation of this verse, and many similar verses of judgment, interprets the wheat and chaff as people: righteous people are the wheat, wicked people are the chaff. Yet Solzhenitsyn had a brilliant insight:

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Nobody is perfect. Nobody is righteous in themselves. Everybody falls short of the glory of God. Everybody can point to ways they have hurt other people.

Yet we often feel compelled to hurt people, by action or inaction, as a way to protect ourselves. We know that we should welcome the stranger and help the poor, but when confronted with an actual poor stranger, our fear prevents us from welcoming and helping them. We know that we should put God first in our lives, but spend most of our time chasing money so that we can have a comfortable life.

Plus, we are all connected to various social structures: our family, community, workplace, church, other organizations, state, and nation. I may be willing to follow God’s call in a certain way, but I have to work within the rules of these social structures. When I have to choose between my urge to do the right thing and my desire to belong to a certain organization or community, I may choose belonging as the easier, more comfortable path.

This is the chaff. These are the things that protect us in this world as we grow into the people God desires, but do not serve us in God’s kin-dom. Our fears, our attachments, our covetous yearnings, our anger, our anxiety—they all separate us from each other and from God, yet they are necessary to function in this broken world.

I am currently on my second reading of Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly, on the recommendation of my dear friend Ashley Brooks. (It’s one of the things that led her to become the executive director of the Rolla Mission.) It is written from deep in the Roman Catholic tradition, so there are some things that just don’t apply outside of that context. One valuable part of Roman Catholicism, though, is the ritual of confession. Repentance is a critical part of the Christian tradition, one that we include in Presbyterian worship each Sunday. There are three main parts of confession: self-examination to prayerfully consider the ways in which you have failed to meet God’s standard; the actual confession in which you put words to your sins (either speaking to a priest or, in my tradition, directly to God through prayer) and express contrition; and the joyful response in which you celebrate knowing that God has forgiven you, so you share God’s mercy with others.

There is also a need for restitution. As we confess, God forgives us, but that doesn’t necessarily resolve any pain we caused someone else. I’m reminded of the confession scene in Moonstruck. (I can’t find a better video, sorry.) Loretta, Cher’s character, confesses that “once I slept with the brother of my fiancé.” The priest absolves her, but her life is still a mess. She still has to deal with the disruptions in her relationships, but she can do so with the confidence that God loves her.

In the same way, we each need to reflect on the ways in which we have fallen short of God’s calling—the people we have hurt through action or inaction, the barriers we have erected between ourselves and our neighbors or between ourselves and God. Self-examination and confession are essential, but so is the response: work towards restitution and reconciliation.

Jesus’s message throughout the Gospels was, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” Then he told people what that meant in their lives. For each person, there was a different answer, but in every case, Jesus told them to set aside anything that was preventing them from fully entering fellowship with God and all of God’s people.

John the Baptist taught a baptism of repentance. All four Gospels report, though, that Jesus was baptized. We believe Jesus was the only human who was sinless. So why was he baptized?

In other passages that describe John’s teachings, he emphasized social issues like generosity and fairness. Jesus was not himself sinful, but he was a part of sinful social structures. That’s unavoidable in this world. If Jesus wanted to worship with his fellow Jews, he had to visit the Temple, which excluded people that he would have included (women, Gentiles, lepers, the disabled). He was able to connect with all of these people individually, but could not overcome the sinful exclusionary practices of the religious establishment. He was part of a sinful economic system governed by an occupying army.

So Jesus was baptized to proclaim his participation in the reconciliation of the world. By himself, Jesus of Nazareth could not change the social, political, and religious structures of Judea, but he could start a movement that would. Through his death and resurrection, and through the action of the Holy Spirit, he could continue to work through people everywhere, in every age, to reconcile us to each other and to God. Even today, he is working through me, through you, through each person who hears his message or feels the Holy Spirit’s nudges to create a more connected, inclusive, just, and righteous world.

Our task, then, is to look at the world, see where there are problems that God is trying to solve, and try to be a part of the solution. There are so many problems, though. It can become overwhelming. In five minutes of doomscrolling, you can read about political struggles in the US and abroad, wars, famine, homelessness, climate disruptions, and more. There is too much for anyone to fix, so it’s easy to lose hope and just quit.

I’m taking the other approach. I can’t fix everything, but I CAN fix something. I can’t change the world, but maybe I can change one person’s world. I will continue to work at the Mission as my small contribution to resolving the issue of homelessness in America. But my true calling is to work for the reconciliation of the Christian church with the LGBTQ+ community.

There are some people who read that and think, Right, gay people need to repent of their sinful desires and become Christians. That’s not what I mean. I mean that the CHURCH needs to repent of its sins. For centuries, LGBTQ+ issues were completely in the closet—ignored, not even castigated, as the church pretended that concepts like sexual orientation and gender identity didn’t exist. Over the past century, Christianity at large has turned its attention on first sexual orientation and now gender identity as problems to be eliminated. Instead, we should be treating LGBTQ+ individuals as people to be loved and welcomed. Not to “pray the gay away,” but to learn from their different perspectives and to show them that life is better in Christian community. To teach them that God loves them, and then to show that we love them, too. A person’s sexual orientation and gender identity are deep within them—wheat, not chaff.

That’s my calling. What’s yours? Where do you see God at work? What is the chaff in your life that needs to be removed so that you can be the person God desires? What are the social structures that are preventing you from doing so, that need to be changed? Blessings as you discern your path through this world as a participant in building God’s eternal kin-dom.