“Hi, I’m Sharon…and I’m addicted to Farm Town.” For the uninitiated among us,
Farm Town is a game,
set within a virtual world
associated with Facebook,
one of many social networking sites
on the Internet.
In the virtual world of Farm Town,
each player advances,
not by hurting or obliterating others,
but by helping out
on their neighbors’ adjacent farms.
Fields are plowed,
seeds planted,
crops harvested and sold,
and farms improved with the money earned.
The whole system of this particular game
is based on cooperation
and willingness to help one’s neighbor.
I like this virtual world…especially this past week…
The real world has been all too real this week.
Our Pastor Emeritus,
The Rev. Richard Blakley,
back in the hospital at the beginning of the week
with a diagnosis but no apparent treatment plan…
Our evening prayer service on Monday,
held here in the sanctuary
and within our beautiful labyrinth,
giving people in our community
a chance to voice fears, concerns,
hopes, and resolutions,
on the night before the California Supreme Court
announced their decisions
affecting same-gender marriages…
Then the day was here and the announcement made
and I, for one, felt body-slammed.
Trying to put on that proverbial hopeful face
for the media who descended,
but especially for you whom I love and lead,
I spoke with more hope than actual assurance
at the regional rally on Tuesday evening,
for somewhere within me that now clouded
yet real vision of full equality in marriage
was growing even stronger.
The Bible calls that “hope”—
the assurance of things not yet realized
and the conviction to work for their appearance—
it is, as christian author and activist Anne Lamott
declares,
“Hope [that] begins in the dark,
the stubborn hope that if you just show up
and try to do the right thing,
the dawn will come.
You wait and watch and work:
you don't give up.”
By week’s end, things were looking up:
Rich had both a diagnosis
and a viable treatment plan,
the energy around marriage equality
was swirling from ashes to fire—
from sorrow and sadness
and bitter disappointment
to resistance and determination
and collaboration and even hope.
Two of my UCC colleagues in Pasadena
took a public stand refusing
to officiate any weddings
until all couples are again welcome
to enjoy the benefits marriage offers.
Allies and GLBT community leaders
are joining hands and hearts and minds
to work fiercely together
to change the hearts and minds
of some of our fellow citizens.
Our own conversations here at RUCC
about marriage equality
have been quietly persistent for nearly a year.
Sitting in wedding after wedding,
under acres of tulle last summer and fall,
many of us—gay and straight—
were irreversibly transformed
in the presence of loving same-gender couples, who like others in love,
expressed their commitment one to the other
and were legally married.
Prior to that wonderful parade of weddings,
we met together in small groups
to learn the truth
about those hot-button scriptures
often used incorrectly and tragically
to beat GLBT people into despair.
We learned that there are many other,
more biblically accurate ways
to understand those scriptures...
and we resolved
to share our learning with others.
Over the past many months,
we have shared and listened to stories
of gay and lesbian families
who have the same struggles and joys
as everyone else,
but who live with the persistent edge of bigotry
day in and day out.
From the weddings and the classes and the stories, more than many of our neighbors
here in the Inland Empire,
we in this congregation
have a vision of what can be.
We have experienced the joy of equality.
We have been refreshed
by the winds of the Spirit swirling around us.
We have drunk in the joy
and eaten of the bounty
that is full marriage equality.
But we have done more than party!
When the election was over last November
and our collective heart broken by its outcome, we stood side by side at rally after rally,
forum after forum,
standing, speaking, thinking, feeling…together. The two-bit theological word
for what we have been doing these many months
is the word “solidarity.”
Solidarity in the christian community is,
as the word suggests,
a thoughtful action,
a prayerful action,
a resolute action
of standing with those who are marginalized
by the dominant culture.
The word solidarity
comes out of the liberation theology movement
of Latin America,
birthed in the mid-20th century
and still alive and vibrant today.
Its womb?
Countless small groups of oppressed people
who gathered together week after week
to study the Bible…
and, no surprise,
their insights and interpretations sparkle
with the brilliance of freshly-polished jewels.
From these oppressed people,
we in the dominant culture
are learning to hear the gospel message
through the ears of those
who are not in the dominant culture;
and to see the message and teachings of Jesus
through cultural categories
of oppressed and oppressor.
Liberation theology seeks
to bring the marginalized to freedom
and to inform those holding the power
in the system
of their needs to change;
liberation theology at its best
seeks understanding and learning
between oppressor and oppressed…
Because Liberation Theology
began out of Bible study—
out of a confrontation
with the biblical account
of God’s activities
in the midst of repeated oppressive situations—
it is a theology that marries study and action
in a way that makes them
not separate endeavors,
one following the other,
but rather simultaneous activities.
For those of you interested in reading more
in the field of Liberation Theology,
the “bibles” and “gurus” of the movement
are Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
and Gustavo Gutierrez A Theology of Liberation.
Both books were published in the early 1970s,
when the movement was gaining ground.
I bring Liberation Theology to us
on this particular Pentecost Sunday
because it illuminates both
the ancient story from the book of Acts
and our own continuing story
of the persistent Pentecost Spirit.
Liberation Theology helps us understand
the ancient Pentecost story
as a watershed moment in the christian narrative:
a moment when the Spirit acted
and the people listened.
When we meet them,
the large group of disciples are holed up,
still fearful because of the death of Jesus,
yet anticipating something,
even though they are not at all sure
just what it will be.
Without warning,
the wind begins to blow,
the energy in the room fills it to capacity,
and the disciples start speaking in languages
not their own,
but mother tongues
of all those visiting Jerusalem for the holiday.
“They must be drunk!” the crowd whispers.
Out of the stupor and the chaos,
Peter’s voice begins,
“People of Judea and all of Jerusalem, listen…
we are not drunk…
we are all of us living in the days
of visions and dreams and prophecies,
and the Spirit is coming upon all of us
and upon each of us!”
Liberation theology, friends,
is not just about the oppressed
wagging their fingers at the oppressors…
true liberation means
that both speak from the Spirit
and both listen in the Spirit
and all feel the Spirit’s refreshing wind
blowing upon them
and each vows together to work for change.
Charles Bayer,
author of A Guide to Liberation Theology
for Middle-Class Congregations, writes,
“liberation theology is finally a theology [that is]
an action-oriented,
thoughtful encounter
with the God of history…
this is an inductive approach to transformation:
that is, it moves us
by acting our way
into a new set of feelings or beliefs,
[rather than] to think our way
into a new set of actions…
At [certain times in history]
we simply act differently
and discover that what we believe
has been modified enroute…”
Bayer continues with the example
of the civil rights debates:
“During these debates,” he reminds us,
“we were often told,
‘You can’t legislate morality.
You can’t get people to accept integration
by passing a law…’
Yet laws were passed
mandating a change in actions,
attitudes were modified
because behavior was first legislated.
Legislation,” Bayer concludes,
“does not tell you how you must feel,
or even what you must think,
only how you shall or shall not act…”
It would appear that Pentecost persists today,
breathing into the hope of full marriage equality, and changing us and others along the way.
My own transformation
in the arena of marriage equality
happened dramatically last summer
when I returned from sabbatical
to find a parade of loving couples
waiting eagerly to be married.
There was never a doubt in my mind
that I would officiate at the weddings,
yet each time I did so I was stunned—
blown away, if you will—
by the metamorphosis
being effected in me
by that persistent wind of the Spirit.
To that point in my own 25 years of ministry,
I had never consciously considered
the inequities of marriage.
I had, with joy, married dozens of couples,
signed their licenses in the privacy of my office
to make their marriage legal,
and happily eaten cake
and lifted a glass to toast at many a reception.
I had acted as an agent of the state
to declare that each couple
was now wife and husband,
never even giving thought
to the thousands of other loving couples
right here in our neighborhoods,
who longed to be declared wife and wife
or husband and husband.
Seems unreal now,
now that the Spirit’s breath
has blown so vigorously through me and us…
and to be honest,
I am much more embarrassed
to confess this thoughtlessness
than even for you to know
I play virtual computer games in my off time…(!)
Yet there it was,
my own little bag of bigotries,
untied and now swirling around in my mind, baring itself up to God’s graceful transformation. And that transformation happened
because loving couples among us
stood up in holy places
to be counted among the married.
Couples who are actively and vibrantly
part of this congregation
gave me and all of us
an amazing gift last summer:
you invited each of us
to look into your eyes
as you gazed in love on one other;
you invited all of us
to open the circle of marriage
to include you, too;
you acted giddy like brides
throughout the centuries
and cried like grooms have forever,
and in that normalcy of human emotion,
we each were invited to see you
as the loving, committed, responsible human
neighbors you are,
and further,
we were invited to view
the institution of marriage
as forever open now to all loving couples. Friends, that is the change,
the transformation that the Spirit effected in me. It was like a bolt of lightening,
illuminating and burning through the inequities
of centuries of exclusive heterosexual marriage, and as your pastor I need you to know
that I can no longer participate
with any integrity
in that exclusive state-run institution.
I was holding out
for last Tuesday’s Supreme Court announcement,
hoping beyond hope
that perhaps we could return
to the acres of tulle
and the marriages that welcomed all.
But now I say with the conviction
born in the love of last summer’s marriages,
I will not sign another license
until all couples are welcomed yet again
into marriage in our great state.
The actions of last November
and of last Tuesday
have stripped me of the right
to practice our inclusive, welcoming faith,
by offering legal marriage to all,
and so I choose to act as the state’s agent
in marriage no more.
Please hear what I have to say next,
for it is as important a witness in our community
as the convictions I’ve just expressed.
I urge us as a congregation
to continue doing what we do well:
providing a safe and hospitable
and joy-filled place for all couples
to be married equally in the eyes of God,
knowing that Caesar will do what Caesar will do, and we must continue the journey
toward full marriage equality
with our integrity intact.
Redlands United Church of Christ
is an open and affirming place,
a place that welcomes all,
no matter who you are
or where you are on the journey,
and so in that Spirit,
I urge us as a congregation
to consider making a public statement
that all couples are free to be married here,
but no legal licenses will be signed.
When the state finally catches up
with our prophetic actions,
and decides once again
to issue licenses to all couples
and bestow on each couple
the legal benefits of marriage,
then I urge us to once again
start signing those licenses for all.
I believe the Spirit is blowing through us
on this matter of great urgency,
offering us as if on a platter,
an opportunity to continue in solidarity
till justice prevails.
This past week,
I was talking with a local news photographer,
who is originally from the Philippines.
He was remarking on
the beauty and openness of our sanctuary,
and I happily told him
the design was an intentional reflection
of this congregation.
We are people that do not want
to be cloistered in darkened sanctuaries;
rather we want to look out on the world
we are called to love and serve.
He smiled and told me that in his home country,
the churches are built with large windows
that open up so that people may be
refreshed and cooled by the cross breezes.
Seems like an apt image for us
on this Pentecost Sunday.
Pentecost is not so much
a benchmark of what the church should look like
on any given Sunday—
tongues of fire descending,
crowds of people thronging,
the whole known world
amazed and perplexed—
as it is a memo
communicating how important the church is
and how inseparable it is
from Christ who loved all, no exceptions. Pentecost is our once-a-year catechetical instruction
leading us, persistently,
into our identity and purpose.
As one commentary author writes,
“Every year, on the Day of Pentecost,
we are reminded of who we are as a church,
what we proclaim,
and the source of that proclamation.
It is a message to the church from the church,
passed down through millennia
to each generation.”
And what messages do we hear
in this persistent family story of Pentecost?
There are many:
the one sounding the most persistently for us
on this celebratory day
is, I believe, the message of the Spirit’s work
in our communications.
In the story from the book of Acts,
the Spirit animates a diversity in language
that contrasts with
the homogeneity of the disciples
in every other respect:
we read that they are all together
in the same place,
the wind fills the whole house,
all are filled with the Spirit,
and although the fiery tongues
are individually allocated,
each and every person has one.
Thus the Spirit reinforces the unity of the disciples even as that same Spirit
recognizes and honors the diversity
of the individual languages of those gathered. The story of Pentecost is, above all,
a story of communication,
and of God’s persistent desire
that members of one group
make understandable
to members from other groups
their message concerning
God’s deeds of powerful love.
Such is the moment in which we are now standing…
it is a persistent Pentecost moment…
some of us will respond to the Spirit’s flame
by participating in the ongoing struggle
for full marriage equality;
others of us will respond to Spirit’s flame
by speaking to City Council
about the inequities of a Super Wal-Mart;
others will continue work
on the intertwined passions
of race and racism and immigration reform;
still others of us will respond to the Spirit’s flame by reading more and studying issues
and vowing to share our insights more fully; others will move into a place of sacred silence, praying as they have never prayed before,
that Thy will be done,
and Thy kingdom of justice come,
on earth as it is in heaven.
The goal of Pentecost is to agree
that we each will hear the Spirit,
in our own language,
and will respond to that Spirit
with our own gifts
and our own talents
and our own values and commitments.
And, as we respond, each in our own way,
we too, shall be refreshed for the journey,
for just as Jesus promised,
that Spirit—
that Advocate, that Helper, that Comforter—
rests most assuredly upon the head
of each one of us,
so that we,
in daily partnership with Spirit
and with one another,
will take our place as persistent agents of change
in this, the real world.
