Back before the pandemic, when I was in my campus office all day most days, I would often walk up to the Mobil On the Run for a drink, or sometimes lunch. Nothing makes you feel successful like a gas station hot dog! Anyway, I don’t remember what tipped me off, but I somehow realized that a clerk there has a gay son. She and I struck up a bit of a relationship—something more than just clerk and customer but less than friendship. Like me, she loves and accepts her son but worries about him. When someone is “out,” supportive parents are great, but not really sufficient. Despite all of the progress over the years, we still live in a cis- and heteronormative world. Just look at what’s going on in Florida these days.
Being a parent is hard. Being a parent of someone LGBTQ+ just compounds it. Yesterday was the Miner Welcome Bash, a time when incoming freshmen at S&T (and their families) can come and find out about various programs on campus. There is a resource fair where many campus ministries had tables, including my church’s, Common Call Campus Ministry. I think it’s important for us to show that there is a welcoming place for everyone to explore their faith. Ignite, sponsored by First UMC, is generally accepting within the bounds of what the denomination teaches, but I believe Common Call is the only campus ministry that is explicitly and publicly progressive and inclusive. Not many students stopped by our table, but perhaps we planted a seed.
The only substantive conversation I had was with a family from St. Robert, which is just in the next county over. The student in question is LGBTQ+. The family sought me out, having been pointed in my direction during a faculty presentation. “You want to talk to Dr. Kimball. Look for the guy with the big gray beard. Best beard on campus.” The family has escaped from a very conservative Christian church and are put off by Christianity, even if it’s progressive. I gave my little spiel, just for the record, then pivoted to what they really wanted to know: What’s the campus climate like for queer students? I connected them to our student diversity programs and also shared that by the standards of a small town in rural Missouri, we’re pretty inclusive—though that is admittedly a low bar. I also told them about Pulaski Pride and other activities down in St. Robert.
The organizer in Pulaski County once spoke at a parents panel that LGBTQ+ Rolla put on. Although she is herself transgender, she worries a lot about her queer kid. She knows how hard her life has been. She knows that things are better now than, say, thirty years ago, but that doesn’t mean her kid’s life will be easy. Especially around here.
I’m motivated to change that. I know that as an ally, and a cisgender, heterosexual, white man, I will never understand what gay, transgender, and other queer individuals go through. At the same time, if I just sit back and wait for someone else to act, nothing will change. I founded LGBTQ Rolla two years ago to provide a focal point for the LGBTQ+ community in Rolla and Phelps County. We’re gearing up for our second annual Phelps Pride (this Friday night!). As the organization has evolved, I have tried to drift more and more into the background. I’m not the president—I’m the secretary/treasurer. I don’t know what it’s like to be gay, but I do know how to balance a checkbook and can learn how to file with the IRS, the Missouri Department of Revenue, the Missouri Secretary of State, and so forth. At Pride, I can hand out T-shirts and sell new ones. I can do the administrative stuff so that LGBTQ+ individuals can lead the narrative and just enjoy time together. I’m an admin on our Facebook page, not to control the discussion but to kill spam.
So, happy Pride month! I’m looking forward to our second annual gathering and I’m hopeful about the future of the LGBTQ+ community in my adopted home. And happy Father’s Day to all the gay and trans dads out there and all the fathers of queer kids.
This Holy Saturday, I’m once again thinking about liminal times. This is the day that we recount in the Apostles’ Creed when we say, “He descended into hell.” This is the day we remember the already-but-not-yet nature of salvation. Jesus has died for our sins and will conquer death. In fact, he already has, but we cannot experience God’s kin-dom fully just yet, only in part.
Everything is temporary. The only thing constant is change. Making predictions is hard, especially about the future. However you say it, the fact is that the future is unknown and unknowable. We dwell in this time and space where something good or bad will happen soon, but we don’t know what or when.
Our church currently has no installed pastor. We are in an in-between space, where we don’t know what the future will hold for us. How long will our current situation last? I preach twice monthly, Susan Murray and Rev. Bob Morrison preach once monthly, and we have other fill-ins; our session is moderated by a pastor who is installed at a different church; our various committees are operating under lay leadership. This operating regime is working for now, but will the situation be resolved in six months, two years, or never? What kind of new ministry might we undertake, either before or after we get a new installed pastor?
Our campus leadership is constantly in flux—less so now than in the past, but we still have a lot of people in interim roles. My department has an interim chair, as do several others around campus. The campus has three dean positions; one (mine) is stepping down at the end of the fiscal year, one is interim, and the other is a new position that has not yet been filled. I’m currently on one of the dean search committees, as well as two other search committees.
An opportunity may be presenting itself to me. Our dean (who is stepping down soon) is in the process of opening an internal search for a permanent department chair to replace my department’s interim chair. I am almost certain to apply, in no small part because several people have encouraged me to do so. But the position has not actually been opened yet. Assuming it is opened and I apply, will I be interviewed? Will I get an offer, and if so, will it be acceptable? I can do some things now to prepare, but ultimately, there’s nothing I can do to rush the process. I have to sit in this liminal time, this in-between time.
Today, I’m feeling the waiting acutely for another reason. I’m the chair of a committee on campus. The UM System rules changed, so my committee (meaning me) drafted a policy to implement the rules on our campus. The policy has been circulated for comment. Most of the comments were negative; some were pretty emotional. I believe the anger resulted from a misunderstanding. We have a meeting on Monday where I’m going to present the policy and the reasoning. I have shared a bit with a friend of mine who, because of his background and position, could become a strong ally or a strong opponent. Of course I believe that I’m in the right, so I expect the former, but friendship aside, I could be wrong and he could turn out to be an opponent. I just don’t know, and whatever his response is today, I can’t know until Monday’s meeting. I have to live in that space of not knowing.
The message of Easter is this: in the end, life wins. Love wins. God wins. We can’t know the future, but we do know that God loves us and will always care for us. If things go sideways on Monday, or our church ultimately fails, that doesn’t change the fact that I am beloved by God and that in the end, all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
I’m on the steering committee for the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference, having served as general chair in 2017. It’s held ever year in March (or possibly late February). It’s a bit unusual in that it has very strong academic participation AND very strong industry participation, including an exposition. At our peak, we had over 5000 attendees and over 300 exhibitors. We were growing every year, like a runaway freight train.
APEC’20 was supposed to be in New Orleans starting March 16. Those first few months of 2020 were pretty crazy, with meetings several times a week to figure out what to do. We finally had to pull the plug, in a manner that was unsatisfying to everyone involved. Like the train crash in Back to the Future III.
In 2021, we had hoped to be able to hold it in Phoenix as planned, and even shifted to June in hopes that the COVID status would improve, but again were unable to gather in person. (I’m not going to lie—I wasn’t looking forward to JUNE in Phoenix!) I was the mastermind behind THE BEST VIRTUAL APEC EVER! And, Lord willing, the only one. We had decent engagement, probably the best of any virtual conference, but it just wasn’t the same.
Last week, we had our first real conference of the pandemic, in Houston. All of our metrics were around the 60% point—2900 attendees, 220 exhibitors, etc. We had little to no attendance from Asia (especially China). Basically, we have experienced a ten-year setback. Hopefully, the growth over the next few years is quick so that we can return to pre-pandemic size in fewer than ten years, but we shall see.
Still: IT WAS AWESOME! Seeing all my colleagues again. Having a long conversation over (non-alcoholic) beer. Short, casual connections with lots of people. Seeing what’s going on in industry—new products, companies I had forgotten, mergers and spin-offs. Rejuvenating my creativity in the technical presentations.
I’m not known as a people-person. I’m an introvert, and conferences exhaust me. I hate travel, too. But I love going to APEC every year, and I hope to never miss one again. Really, what makes it special is the people. Having spent the first decade of my career in industry (including a start-up) makes me value the perspective that practicing engineers have. The ones who come to APEC are engineers who are dedicated to their craft. Like academics, they strive to understand the limits of technology while pushing them a little bit further in service of their project goals.
Most importantly, they are my community. We all need to feel like we are part of something bigger than ourselves. I’m a member of several different communities: my university, my church, my town, Steelers fans, elk hunters, etc. APEC gives me an opportunity to transcend geography and connect with people who share a love of power electronics, a goal of improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness of everything from handheld devices to electric vehicles to solar energy to satellites. Going to APEC, wherever it is held, feels like going home.
Recently, a pastoral colleague shared with me the concept of “one sermon,” that each preacher has basically one sermon that they preach. For example, the late Rob Heberer always preached that Jesus is God, often ending up in the upper room with Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. The message that I generally preach is that everyone belongs in God’s…something.
Historically, and in the gospels, we reference the kingdom of God or of heaven. So usually I preach that the kingdom of God is at hand and all are welcome in it. “Kingdom” has fallen out of favor, especially in progressive circles, for at least two reasons. One, “kingdom” implies a king, not a queen, and reinforces the patriarchy. God is neither male nor female (or perhaps is both male and female, or perhaps is genderfluid). To identify God as a king limits our ability to perceive God’s feminine nature. Two, modern Western society has moved beyond concepts of royalty in favor of democracy. Sure, Great Britain is formally the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” and its constituent countries acknowledge the sovereignty of their queen, but the real power rests in Parliament.
So “kingdom” has too much baggage. What else can we use? Many people use “kin-dom” instead. Because of its similarity, when I’ve used it in my sermons, people in the congregation probably heard it as “kingdom.” But the implication is that we are part of God’s kin, God’s family. I used to like it and use it a lot, but the novelty kind of wore off. It’s a made-up word that seems more of a distraction than anything else.
“Family” might work. It would certainly fit the Biblical narrative. Historically, all governments were extensions of the family. Individual nuclear families comprised a clan; clans comprised a tribe; tribes comprised a nation. The king or emperor was considered to be like a father to his subjects. Unfortunately, modern families have decayed. We are less connected to our families now than they were in antiquity, back when children inherited property or learned a trade from their parents. Mobility has meant that our families have scattered to the winds without the same sense of intimacy that we should have with God. Also, while I have been blessed with three wonderful, loving families—my family of origin, my family by marriage, and the family of which I am the father—not everyone can say the same. Some people have suffered abuse and neglect from the people who should love them the most. Others, particularly people who are LGBTQ+, have been rejected by their families. One answer to that is to say that God’s family is the ideal to which human families aspire. True enough, but the word can trigger a lot of bad memories.
I don’t have a good answer, but perhaps some synonyms for “kingdom” will work. “Realm” or “reign” aren’t bad. “Realm” connotes a place, so maybe the “realm of heaven” makes sense. “Reign” connotes an action, so perhaps we can celebrate Christ’s reign rather than Christ’s kingship. “Dominion” has some of both connotations: both the place and act of God’s rule. We just need to be wary of the slippery slope from dominion to domination or domineering behavior. “Commonwealth” is perhaps the democratic counterpoint to a kingdom, but there is no connotation of anyone being in charge. “Protectorate” has potential—God as our sovereign and our protector.
What about “nation”?
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21 He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
We hear a lot about white Christian nationalism lately [1],[2]. The problem in many corners of the Christian church is that people equate the United States of America with the kingdom of God. We are not tasked, though, with taking political power and using it to impose our interpretation of God’s will on our fellow Americans. That was actually one of the three temptations Jesus encountered in the desert. He chose to reject the path of worldly power. We too are tasked with submitting ourselves to God’s reign in our lives. We are not to think of ourselves as Americans first, but as Christians first. Perhaps if we proclaim the coming nation of God we will remember to set aside our American nationalism and let Christ be our president, our supreme justice, and our commander in chief who wages peace throughout the world.
Jesus came to grant all people citizenship in God’s nation.
In a recent sermon, I mentioned a concept that I picked up from “Find Your Inner Monk.” We don’t learn philosophy and spirituality and ideology in a vacuum. We don’t simply observe our surroundings and make sense of them on our own. Rather, we form our attitudes and beliefs within our communities of belonging.
Our first community of belonging is our family. As teenagers, each person then starts finding new communities to join. Some find belonging on sports teams, others in clubs, still others in musical ensembles (choir, band) or other artistic endeavors. Or in a church, or in a gang. Each community forms its own belief system; each member both absorbs the community’s beliefs and contributes to their formation and propagation.
I am an advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, which recently had an event titled, “What Is Progressive Christianity?” It was an information session open to the community. I firmly believe that there are students on campus who find their best path to God through other campus ministries. Yet I also believe that there are students who cannot find belonging in any of those communities, and therefore believe that they are not welcome in God’s kingdom. Our mission is to help those students learn and grow as they seek the path God has chosen for them.
An unfortunate circumstance has emerged over the past few decades. Where before, communities had a lot of diversity of viewpoints, now they are all becoming more single-minded. We see this in politics: both parties are being taken over by their extremists who are purging (or trying to purge) those who disagree with them. We see this in churches: each denomination or association is adopting theological stances that tend to push out those who disagree. I am proud to be a member of a denomination (PC(USA)) that not only endorses gay marriage, but also allows gay ordination. Unfortunately, some of the largest congregations in our presbytery could not stand to be associated with a denomination that held those beliefs, and left. As a result, our presbytery has become more liberal because we lost those conservative voices.
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending The Gathering, which is a group of people who have been disaffected from existing churches. They are striving to formulate just who they are and what it means to be in community with each other. My prayer for them is that they find a way to disagree agreeably, and keep their priorities aligned. Patrick Wilson opened the evening with some discussion of the Great Commandment:
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus’s entire ministry was an exposition of this commandment. Through words and deeds, he showed how we can love God, and how we can love our neighbor. Yet we still struggle with his teachings and seek to limit God’s dominion over our lives (say, to just Sunday morning) or to limit who we consider to be our neighbor.
Yet if we keep this commandment front and center, we can avoid many of the pitfalls that so many churches fall into. So often, we obsess over petty slights, or argue minor points of doctrine or behavior. Jesus taught that we can disagree about almost everything, except for the fundamental value of each person. If we love each other, we can remain in community together and then grow and change together, each seeking the path that God has laid out for us individually and as the body of Christ.
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.
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.
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.
All are welcome! Wait—you’re gay? Well, you can still worship with us, but of course you can’t join our church.
All are welcome! We’d be happy to chat with you about why your sins are so much worse than our sins.
All are welcome! I guess you can join our church, but only if you remain celibate. We know it’s tough to go through life without a romantic partner, but that’s the price of admission here.
All are welcome! Oh, and of course you can’t serve in any leadership positions. I mean, we don’t even let women preach and teach, let alone gay people. And transgenders? (Or whatever they call themselves.) Of course not them.
You are welcome! Straight, cis, white man? Great! None of the above? Great! We affirm your worth regardless of your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We are all equal before God.
You are welcome! We value your different life experiences. They give us a better picture of the glory of God.
You are welcome! We are sorry that other churches have hurt you. Come, join us and heal.
You are welcome! Oh, and we’d love to have you as an officer, or Sunday school teacher. We even have the occasional opportunity to preach, if that’s how you are called. We have opportunities for each person to live out their calling, and believe that all people have gifts to offer God’s people.
You are welcome! You are a beloved child of God. Come join us in helping to exhibit God’s reign. Come be a part of Christ’s body. Come be a part of God’s family.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As I write this, I am preparing to take Jesse back to college at the University of Pittsburgh. I thought I’d write a quick note for any of my students who happen upon my website.
My Old Viewpoint
I used to maintain a pretty strict detachment from my students, both graduate and undergraduate. Over the past few years, though, I have realized that my job as a professor is not simply to pour information into their brains. My job is to help them become better versions of themselves. It is essential not only that they learn whatever subject matter I’m teaching, but also that they develop as engineers, as members of a professional community, and as members of God’s family.
I believe that all people are beloved by God, no matter their age, race, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic. I believe that all people are drawn to God according to their understanding. I have a certain understanding of God’s relationship with humanity, which can be gleaned from my writings on this blog. But I may be wrong—in fact, I certainly am wrong about some things, but I don’t know which ones.
I believe in universal salvation: that all people will one day live in God’s realm. If we seek God, we can participate in God’s reign NOW. Jesus supremely taught us what it is to be a human made in God’s image. He taught us that there are only two rules: love God and love your neighbor. I seek each day to live both of these commandments. Some days I do better than others.
These days, though, I put more of my energy into other things. One is my church, where I preach somewhat regularly (approximately twice monthly). The other is LGBTQ+ Rolla, a nonprofit that is aimed at supporting the queer community in Rolla and Phelps County through education and social connections. I also volunteer regularly at The Rolla Mission.
Wherever you may be on your path, I hope that you finish this semester a little closer to your goal: a little closer to graduation, a better engineer, a better member of the community, a little closer to God. A little more like the person you want to be. Blessings to you.
In most of the world throughout human history, “power” refers to political power, wealth, or both. It is the ability to do as you please, and to force others to do what you want them to do. For centuries now, Christian church structures have been caught up in secular power as well. In the time after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church wielded power and influence throughout Europe, choosing and guiding rulers. The Reformation disrupted this arrangement, and a wider range of church leaders sought political power. Here in America, some traditions rejected involvement in politics, notably the Mennonites and similar Anabaptists, where others openly embraced theocracy, notably the Puritans. Early in the 20th century, Christian fundamentalism arose in response to modernism. The Scopes Monkey Trial is perhaps the best-known example of fundamentalist striving for power. Fundamentalist William Jennings Bryant won the trial, but fundamentalism lost public support. Not long afterwards, the movement disavowed political ambitions, turning instead towards cultural institutions like colleges.
Then in the 1970s, a new generation of evangelical leaders built a political movement on the established fundamentalist cultural structures. The Christian Right emerged to support politicians who would enact the laws that aligned with their religious beliefs. This has been an amazingly successful strategy. Unfortunately, any striving after political power ultimately involves compromises, which have sullied the name of Christianity in the public consciousness. It is probably not coincidental that the white evangelical church has been in decline for a while now, with a rising average membership age due to a dearth of young adults.
Over the past few years, a new movement has emerged, the Christian Left. The reality is that there are a similar number of practicing Christians on both ends of the political spectrum, but they are better organized on the right. The Christian Left seeks to build coalitions to enact their vision of public Christianity. Unfortunately, this movement too is destined to run into the compromises and hypocrisies that arise when striving for worldly power. I have seen some Christian Left memes and Facebook posts that are clearly political but not so clearly Christian. So begins the road that leads to elevating worldly goals above our commitment to God.
Jesus lived in a time of great political turmoil. There were many Jewish leaders that were working to overturn the existing power structures, to expel the Roman occupiers, to establish a new nation devoted to worshipping God. Jesus was not that kind of Messiah, though. After the feeding of the five thousand, when the crowd sought to make him a king, he withdrew to place where he could be in private communion with God. Jesus preached and taught that the kingdom of God, or kin-dom of God, was already at hand, and is not of this world. The good news was and is the in-breaking of God’s power to all of us. What power did he mean? What gospel did Paul write about to his Gentile audience?
Let’s remember that Paul did much of his writing in prison. He knew worldly power from both sides. In his younger days, he persecuted Christians under authority from the Jewish leaders. After his conversion, he ended up as one persecuted, receiving floggings in synagogues, being cast out, being arrested by Roman authorities in cities around the empire. Yet he wrote about a greater power. God’s power didn’t free him from prison, but instead gave him the ability to endure prison and punishment. God’s power is love: love of your family, love of your friends, love of your enemies, love of those who persecute you and revile you. Paul experienced God’s love in a personal way, and it empowered him to spread the Gospel to Gentiles around the Near East.
God’s love is still at work today. It enables us to grow into the people that Christ desires as his body, which is the church. God’s love heals broken hearts, broken relationships, broken communities. God’s love is here today, and will go with us when we leave this sanctuary.
Paul prays that we will know the length, breadth, height, and depth of God’s love. Now, I’m an engineer, and I can see right away that there is redundancy in this list. We have three dimensions, X, Y, and Z. X and Y are the length and breadth. Why does Paul use two words for the Z dimension: height and depth? Well, let’s set aside our modern perspective and go back to an ancient worldview. In ancient Near Eastern cosmology, there was the surface of the land and sea where we live, the “waters above,” that is, the heavens, and the “waters below,” that is, the underworld. The “height” was the heavens where God resides. The “depth” was the underworld. In the Greek tradition, the underworld was Hades, where the dead were punished, I suppose just because they were dead. In the Jewish tradition, the underworld was Sheol, where the dead would rest. Some Jewish thought picked up the Greek perspective and imagined Sheol as the place where the wicked dead were punished. Paul is picking up a theme, though, from Psalm 139:
God is everywhere. This is sometimes called “panentheism.” “Pantheism” is a belief that all things are God, but “panentheism” is a belief that God is in all things. Like the psalmist, Paul is saying that God is not only in the highest heavens, but also in the depths among the dead.
I believe in universal salvation. I believe that in Christ, God was reconciling all things. Not some people, not all people, but everything. God is in all. God is everywhere. What is missing in our lives is not God’s presence, but our awareness.
There are challenges ahead of us in this church. No doubt about that. But churches have always struggled to live up to our calling. When we were persecuted, we struggled to remain faithful and true. When we were powerful, we struggled to resist the temptations of worldly wealth and often claimed credit for the work God was doing. Today, in this congregation, we need to be renewed and revitalized. The good news, the Gospel, is that the kingdom of God is at hand, and is indeed here, right here, today. The kingdom of God is a state of being where God’s love is flowing in us, through us, and among us.
Paul prays that we would “know” the love of Christ. The word he used is an experiential knowledge, not just intellectual. He prays that the Ephesians, and all of God’s people throughout history, would feel and experience the love of Christ. I mostly feel that love through God’s people. I feel it each Sunday morning when we gather for worship and when we gather afterwards for fellowship. I feel it in committee meetings, when we are trying to discern God’s will for our congregation and how each committee can help the congregation along the path God has laid out for us. I feel it at church picnics, at potlucks, on float trips. I feel it each time I am in the presence of God’s people.
But God’s people extend far beyond this congregation. All people are part of God’s family. Paul uses a little play on words as he prays to God the Father, Patera, from whom every family, patria, takes its name. God is not just working in this room this morning. God is at work all around our community, state, nation, and world. Where have you seen God at work? Where have you felt God’s love?
Let me tell you a few places I have experienced God’s love. The first is The Rolla Mission. Many of you have volunteered at the Mission and know what I’m talking about. It’s a wonderful place where everyone is striving to become a better person, and to help each other grow. Now, there are failures, of course, but plenty of successes as well. I feel so much love when I’m there, love from the patrons, love from the staff like Ashley and Brandy, love from the other volunteers.
I felt God’s love at our Pride Picnic last month. About a year ago, I started LGBTQ+ Rolla with a mission of providing visibility, education, and connections for LGBTQ+ individuals in Rolla. We sputtered along through the pandemic, and eventually had enough people engaged that we formed a board of directors, who then planned a social gathering. It was wildly successful. Not only did lots of people show up—83, by Jesse’s count—but also lots of people really engaged with each other, shared in fellowship. It definitely was not a religious gathering, but it definitely was alive with the Holy Spirit.
Here’s an odd way I experience God. I am the chair of a search committee seeking a founding director for a research center on campus. The position is a little bit unusual for academia, so instead of just advertising and hoping for the best, we are doing some outreach to identify good candidates. I started out with just some cold emails to people who seemed appropriate. One professor responded that he was not personally interested, but wanted to discuss the position anyway. We probably talked for close to an hour about the position, the university, and our future. He ultimately connected me with two good candidates and several more individuals who, like him, are not personally interested but are willing to chat with me and connect me with other candidates. These are people who have no special connection to Missouri S&T, no personal career interest, and plenty of other demands on their time. And yet, they are willing to give me some of their precious time to help me, to help my university, and to help their colleagues who are seeking growth.
Here’s another one. I have two students from India, one from near Hyderabad in the south and one from the eastern state of Assam. I was in the lab recently meeting with another student and heard them talking in a foreign language. As I walked over to them, they shifted to English. I asked them if they shared a language, and they explained that they both speak three languages: their mother tongues (which are different), Hindi, and English. They speak Hindi together because it feels more like “home.” They’re far from their birth culture, but they are able to connect to each other through this shared language. We had a great chat about languages, such as the relationships between their mother tongues, Hindi, and Sanskrit. It was a wonderful window into their lives, a lowering of barriers between us.
There are many other places I have experienced God’s love, and many other places where I see God at work. God is not just in this place during this time when we are together. God is out there, too. We never lack for God’s presence, only for awareness of it.
As I said, I believe in universal salvation. There are two extreme schools of thought. On the one end is universalism, the belief that all people will be saved. This can be de-motivating, since salvation is in God’s hands and there doesn’t seem to be anything for us to do. On the other end is the belief that only the elect, a select few, will be saved, only those who accept Jesus into their heart, who say the sinner’s prayer. Many people on that far end believe that’s all you have to do. Say the prayer, you’re saved. Job done. Don’t say the prayer, you’re damned. That’s wonderful motivation to spread the Gospel, but not to change the world. Universal salvation means, to me, that all people will reach God eventually. Our job, then, is not a one-off, please say this prayer, but neither is it to step away from the world and let God take care of it. No, our job is to walk with each other on our path towards God. God is in all things, but what is lacking is awareness. Our job is to help people to see God at work and to know, to feel, God’s love.
We all take different paths, different trails. Some of us need more help than others. Some of us feel like we are in the wilderness without a map, while others seem to have a GPS leading them straight to God. Regardless, we all need each other for guidance and encouragement. God is working through us, loving us individually and collectively. God is working throughout our community. Let’s open our eyes to God’s work in the world, joining in and helping to build God’s kingdom, welcoming everyone into God’s family, God’s kin-dom, and walking together towards a future where nothing is certain except for the length, the breadth, the height, and the depth of God’s love. Amen.
