Rest in peace, Rosemary!

March 31, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“As they were going along the road, someone said to him, `I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, `Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” — Luke 9:57–58It is unsettling to think of Jesus as homeless, and yet that is how he is characterized in the Gospels, because throughout his entire ministry he not only was an itinerant preacher and healer, he depended on the kindness of others who welcomed him into their homes. (In Galilee, he was the guest of an unknown person or family. In Judea, he presumably stayed with Mary, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. It was probably from their home that he moved with determination and triumph toward Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday morning.)The Nicene Creed states in formal terms what Christians accept from the Scriptural witness: Jesus is “true God and true man.” We know that Jesus completely shared our humanity, and in many ways which sadden us and appeal to our conscience. As an infant, when Joseph and Mary fled from King Herod, Jesus and his family became “political refugees” in Egypt for a time (some might say “illegal immigrants”!) Jesus wept. Jesus agonized over the suffering he would face. Jesus was betrayed and denied. He bled. He died. These are very human experiences!

But perhaps most jarring of all is this passage above, telling us that Jesus was homeless. Who among us would not find some way to take Jesus in, to get him off the streets, if we met him in Los Angeles today?

It calls to mind Isaiah’s prophetic utterance, which tugs at the heart during Lent:

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” — Isaiah 58:6–7

The “problem” of homelessness is always with us in these times.  So many in our society wishes “the problem” would just go away!  But our homeless neighbors are still human beings, created in God’s image, and still our neighbors.  Our neighbor and friend Rosemary succumbed to breast cancer in mid-February.  I led a memorial service for her in the Sanctuary two weeks ago, and it was well attended by members, friends and neighbors.  A candle burned day and night in her memory for 40 days in our Sanctuary.

Rosemary is survived by Matthew, her companion of nearly 20 years, and by a cousin in the Midwest. She was nearly 70 at the time of her death, and still homeless, along with Matthew.   [See:  LA’s Homeless Blog“] Over the years, our community has done a lot to feed, clothe and help these two special people, but now we face a different “problem” or opportunity. It may cost as much as $400 to pay for the cremation of her body, and to gain the legal release of her remains. But we would also like to help Matthew start his life anew, off the streets, by helping him find temporary shelter and then long-term housing and employment.

In situations as these our faith and discipleship are being tested, to see if we can truly follow Christ wherever he goes, wherever he leads. We are at the threshold of Holy Week, the one week of the year in which Christians are most keenly sensitive to the humanity of Jesus, and to the power of God to change our world. Please join me in prayer for Matthew, and in doing anything we can as a community to honor Rosemary and to help the homeless poor get a fresh start. It would be our most fitting celebration of the Resurrection.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Hollywood, Public Affairs, PRAYERS, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

Is change coming or is this futile?

March 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I’m just passing on this news, as surprising as it is. Can this be the same Church Council that in 1990 summarily approved two documents which “preclude” gay and lesbian people from the ordained ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America? (It took me the better part of two decades to get the back story from an unnamed source who identified the two church executives in 1989 that simply pushed and drafted the language to keep those homosexuals out of the church.)

I suppose the immediate answer to my own rhetorical question is that, no, it’s not the same Church Council as 19 years ago. The membership of any organization keeps changing all the time, and as our friend Howard Erickson keeps reminding me, “There have been a lot of funerals.”

Nonetheless, it is surprising to see the next to the highest legislative authority in the ELCA (the biennial Assembly which meets this coming August in Minneapolis being the highest) actually recommending the very “policy change” that we’ve been working for forever. The final decision, of course, must be made by the Churchwide Assembly, and it remains to be seen whether the composition of that delegation will be substantially different than it was in 2007 when policy change failed to win over a sufficient number of votes.

Here is most of the news release from Phil Soucy, Director of Communications for Lutherans Concerned:

Today at its meeting, the ELCA Church Council passed the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies, the rostering recommendations, and transmitted them to the August Churchwide Assembly. If approved by the churchwide assembly, these will allow the rostered service of those in committed same-gender relationships.

This report and recommendation on rostering was the direct result of a requirement from the 2007 Churchwide Assembly to the Task Force for a separate look at what would be required to change the policy prohibition against LGBT ministers in committed, same-gender relationships. The discussion was wide and varied, respectful and calm.

The report itself was received and passed on to the assembly without change. The vast majority of the discussion was on the recommendation, which consists of the four resolutions at the end of the document.

The council sought and received clarification concerning the roles of congregations, synods, and churchwide units in the calling process. Among the clarifications was that there was no authority granted to synods to opt out of the policy, should it be approved. Congregations and other calling bodies can decide whether they will or will not call a minister in a committed, same-gender relationship.

The church will call on all of the members of the church to make a commitment to respect the bound consciences of those who disagree with them on the matter of service of ministers in committed, same-gender relationships. If approved, the church will allow what is called “structured flexibility in decision-making” necessary to call ministers in committed, same-gender relationships. Everyone will be held to the same, high standards of behavior befitting ministerial service.

In its report on rostering the Task Force described the process of the four resolutions in a stairstep manner - each successive resolution could only be considered if all the preceding resolutions had passed. Neither the Task Force nor the Church Council can bind the assembly to such a process. The assembly itself must decide how it wants to process the recommendation resolutions. If the assembly wants to follow the stairstep approach, it has to pass a special rule for itself, which will require a 2/3 majority. Information will be given to the voting members concerning this prior to the assembly voting on rules.

Emily Eastwood, Executive Director, said of today’s actions by the Church Council, “Today’s momentous actions by the ELCA Church Council guarantee that for the first time in the history of our church a recommendation for the elimination of the policy of discrimination against ministers in same-gender relationships will come to the floor of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly from the churchwide organization itself. The Church Council has acted for justice.

“Substantive edits by the council helped clarify that what had appeared in the Task Force documents was not intended as a form of synodical option.

“Structured flexibility” in processes will now allow for ‘bound conscience’ on both sides of the issues. Meaning that ‘finding a way for people in such publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders in this church’ will be the guiding principle for the church in local matters of ‘bound conscience.’ Congregations and other calling bodies wishing to call a rostered minister in a same-gender relationship will be allowed to do so. Congregations and other calling bodies opposed to such calls will not be required to act contrary to their ‘bound conscience.’ This is what we have always wanted, to let the call be the test.

The fine print is exhausting, but the outcome of today’s actions counts as a major turning point in our quest for justice and equality. Our genuine and heartfelt thanks go out to the Task Force and the Church Council for its decisions. Thanks also to the Goodsoil Legislative Team who has been present throughout. I give thanks to God for all of you, for your prayers, your courage, your patience and your resolve. The ball is now passed to synod assemblies where the work of the Goodsoil partners will continue.”

Phil Soucy, Director Communications LC/NA - communications@lcna.org

Posted in LGBT Christian, Coming Out, Ministry, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Appealing to common prejudice.

March 15, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

People make fun of the Ten Commandments nowadays. We’ve had our battles over conservatives trying to stick them on a granite monument in court rooms, etc. Make the Law of Moses loom over our daily lives, our justice system, our bedrooms. they get a lot of bad press.

And in these liberal, crazy times, most of us who are open-minded and compassionate seem to think there is little left of value in the Ten Commandments. they have become, literally, the Ten Suggestions. And of course all of us, including all who are religious to any degree, have found our way to work around them. We make ourselves all manner of “wiggle room.”

This past week, the Ten Commandments surfaced in the common ecumenical Lectionary for Sunday readings. I bit the bullet and spoke about them. But it set me thinking whether or not Christians in our time should be about the business of filtering out the heavy stuff and lightening-up the burden of legalism by trivializing these Ten Words (in Hebrew, the Words of God). Or should we start where the Lutheran Reformers started, by acknowledging that the Commandments (and the entire Law) do not save us, but they do convince us of our need for grace. They convict us of our own sin.

Ordinarily I cringe from applying any word of Law to other people’s sins, errors, excesses or missing-the-mark. But one thing jumps up to me as I try to apply the Commandments to our contemporary scene: I find that they still point at what is flawed in us with dead aim.

The Small Catechism published by Mobipocket.com.  How cool is that?

I have written before, for example, about the Eighth Commandment (”you shall not bear false witness”) as something our right-wing Christian people should look at carefully when they make derogatory, misleading or false statements about gay and lesbian people. Luther’s Small Catechism, for example, says this to explain the Eighth Commandment:

We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their refutations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.

One cannot help thinking that Fred Phelps could do a little introspection on this. But what of those in the gay community who have engaged indiscriminately in “outing” other LGBT people? Clearly the commandment of God says, we are not to do things which harm others (no matter how tempting and delicious!).

During Lent this time around, it was the Second Commandment which struck me also. and yes, I am thinking too much of other people’s wrongs (not to put others down, but to clear say that I, and other LGBT people, have been disastrously hurt, and I appeal to this Second Commandment in our defense). “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” Again from Luther’s catechism: 

We are to fear and love God, so that we do not curse, swear, practice magic, lie, or deceive using God’s name, but instead use that very name in every time of need to call on, pray to, praise, and give thanks to God.

(I must yawn in the reference to “magic” ~ as an occasional visitor to the Magic Castle here in Hollywood, knowing that it is all the art of illusionists, but yes there are other sorts, and Martin Luther lived 500 years ago in a more fearful era…). What does it mean to deceive using God’s name?

Am I deceiving others, if I offer them comfort and assurance of God’s unconditional love, when there are hundreds or thousands of conservative preachers who think that the word of God is utterly clear that LGBT people are going to hell? Dare I interpret the Scriptures to say, God’s word for us is grace, for the sake of Christ, and sexual minority persons are recipients of that grace along with every other human being? Or is it the right-wing conservative who is deceiving others?

But after waging this battle within the Christian church for decades, I am tired of being overly polite and self-effacing, allowing the deceiving, negative, hurtful, even murderous word of the Religious Reich to be spoken in the name of God. This is wrong. This is evil. Isn’t it a misuse of God’s name to invoke God in the service of hating people? shaming people? taking people’s rights away?

We’re all used to bad-mouthing attorneys, politicians, and used car salesmen for being dishonest. The finger of God also points at preachers, too, if they use God’s name to condemn, to defame, to bear false witness, to deliberately harm other people (in this case, LGBT people). They think that appealing to common prejudice in their pews will fill their collection plates! We’ve just seen this happen again in the religious right-wing campaign to pass Proposition 8 — people misusing the name of God to sell prejudice to the voters, and bolster stereotypes, bigotry and fear, rather than to less those things.

The bottom line of the commandment is as relevant as ever, once we see that people are being harmed when religion breaches the basic purpose of the commandment and the justice and rightness of God. “Don’t go there,” God says. “You shall not do that!”

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Living by Grace | Print | No Comments »

No shame, no gain?

March 12, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I have written before about the toxic and corrosive effects of shame on human beings. (See for example, “Pray for the Bobbies of this world,” January 3, 2009)

I seriously think that what lies at the center of the culture wars’ battlefields is shame.

Those conservatives who spend millions of dollars and hours doing everything possible to deprive LGBT people of our rights are not merely trying to preserve rights and decency for their “traditional values” constituency. Beneath all of that strategic and rhetorical stuff they are really trying to shame us back into the closet, back into the stone age. Without shame, the reactionary and conservative side cannot make gains in these “wars.”

The battle over Proposition 8 in California is only the latest issue in these “wars.” On every other battleground I can think of in recent decades, there has been the public issue articulated by the cultural/religious right, but there has been the underlying shame-related view as well. This analysis is clumsily worded here, but I think we could devote more attention to this correlation until clarity is revealed:

Marriage Rights: “Traditional marriage” must be protected and preserved as the foundation of society.	Lesbian and gay “marriages” are shameful because their pathetic attempts to form “relationships” are sad and shameful.
Employment Non-Discrimination: Homosexuals do not deserve special rights. Employers should not be forced to hire people whose behavior is contrary to accepted moral standards.	If homosexuals get jobs, they will do shameful things on the job. Anita Bryant insisted that homosexuals would try to wear dresses to work.
Adopting or Parenting Children: Children need a father and a mother to grow up right.	Children need to be protected from the shameful and disgusting desires of predatory homosexuals who will trying to lure innocent young people into shameful behavior.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: Homosexuals should not be allowed to serve in the military because it will destroy troop morale.	Homosexuals ought to be ashamed of themselves for trying to infiltrate the ranks of our brave people in uniform, to lure them into shameful acts.
Sodomy Laws: Our society needs to preserve public decency.	Anything two homosexuals do together, even in the privacy of their own bedroom, is shameful and disgusting.

Shame is a constant in the formula of the cultural and religious right. It is still thought to be a convenient tool or weapon, that can be picked up and used any time other arguments are not persuasive enough to push LGBT people into their closets. And shame, as viewed by the conservative power base, is thought to be almost self-evident. That is, the way in which they make attempts to shame us —just for being who we are, or just for wanting to live our lives with the same rights and the same opportunities as other people— is built on their conservative view that what is so shameful about being or behaving as a homosexual/bisexual/transgender person, is that it is just shameful.  Most typical of all is the attempt of the Right to belittle pride by shaming it.

Americans for Truth trying to shame the Chicago Gay Pride Parade.  Keep reading down the page to find this shocking headline: “I Was Attacked By a Homosexual Mob!”

What is self-evident about circular reasoning? That we or our behavior is shameful because, well, it’s shameful? We should, in their view, just know and admit that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. And if we’re not, that is evidence that we are shameless, which is pathetic, disgusting and shameful.

Shame is often defined as unwanted attention. Take a room full of people, single out one person and have all the others simply stare at this one person and yell, “Shame on you!!” This is the power of the majority over the minority. For centuries, the heterosexual majority has reserved this power to shame lesbian/gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and for that matter any other minority that they don’t like, simply by yelling “Shame” until the minority is intimidated enough to back down, withdraw, build a closet, or run away in fear for their lives.

This is 2009, for God’s sake. Why does shame still work as a cultural and religious gimmick, a contrived deus ex machina to rescue the conservative view from an otherwise dismal collapse? That is, after all, the other use of religion — the one I don’t subscribe to at all — when you appeal to a judgmental and cruel God to shame people when your own efforts don’t seem to work well enough. The fact that LGBT people are not sufficiently ashamed of themselves in the sight of God is largely what propels the Religious Reich to such extremes.

But the God I know and obey is the one who calls us to compassion, to love, and to take risks in order that God’s realm may come to this earth. The spiritual lights by which I try to walk are those which reveal the power of love and grace, and call all people to come out of their fear and hiding, rather than to be shamed or run from God’s steadfast love and kindness. Perhaps the most spiritual thing any of us can do is to refuse to be shamed, and to have confidence that our integrity and our conscience are leading us to change society in a positive direction.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, "The Closet", Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Spirituality, LGBT Rights, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Our [next] day in court.

March 5, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Just like the previous year, this day has been a long time coming. The passage of Proposition 8 four months ago has triggered the lawsuits which have led to the Supreme Court’s second look at issues relating to same-gender marriage.

Last May, a majority of the same Court made itself abundantly clear that gay and lesbian people are entitled to the same dignity and the same rights as all other citizens of California, so that Proposition 22’s statutory ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

But the cultural warriors of the Religious Reich mounted a much heavier campaign against LGBT people by putting Proposition 8 on November’s ballot to amend the constitution and define marriage as being only between a man and a woman. Never mind that 18,000 same-sex couples had legally tied the knot since June 17. Never mind that marriage has been a very fluid institution for thousands of years. Through the enormous support of the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches, incredible expenditures on misleading advertising, and especially by playing the “fear card” with the public, Proposition got a 52% majority.

The close vote demonstrates that in California, we are not all of the same mind.

At issue today is whether a simple amendment through a ballot initiative can simply erase the civil rights of a specific portion, a minority of the population. Lawyers will argue that such a fundamental change is a revision, not a simple amendment, and should be stricken down. There is another process for such major revisions, which requires a 2/3 majority of the legislature among other things.

Yesterday, numerous impassioned religious leaders spoke to the media in the hopes that the Supreme Court’s own arc will bend toward justice, not toward popular bigotry or majority vote. Time and again the popular opinion of California voters has had to be overturned by the Supreme Court because the momentary narrow thinking or bigoted fears stirred up had deprived justice to other minorities.

I was glad to be standing in the company of Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno and other bishops, two rabbis, a Buddhist monk, as well as other Protestant clergy who had the courage to speak on behalf of justice.

At issue for me is that no religious persuasion should rule our civil rights in California, especially no one particular religious view. There is a spectrum of opinion among people of faith on the moral issues of our times. I do not hold the same views as Roman Catholic or Mormon Bishops and in fact believe their loud support for “traditional marriage” is little more than a distraction from their own excesses and extremes. I do not hold the same religious views of marriage as Southern Baptists or Rick Warren or other mega-church showmen who appeal to popular prejudice to build their kingdoms.

And I do not expect the Court to enshrine my religious views, or any one else’s religious views, about marriage, family and moral law. what I expect is that the Court will see the purely civil rights issues in civil marriage and rule accordingly that Proposition 8 is invalid.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Catholic matters, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

A courageous voice, a costly sacrifice.

March 4, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I had the privilege of meeting Father Geoff Farrow last night, at a Love Honor Cherish meeting in Los Angeles.

 You will remember him as the priest who outed himself to the media last September when his bishop John Steinbock, in the San Joaquin Valley instructed his priests to read a letter to all parishioners instructing them to vote in favor of Proposition 8. Farrow refused to read the letter.

Love Honor Cherish is one of the many grass roots organizations that have sprung up in California in the last year to defeat Proposition 8, and have only become stronger in the aftermath of the proposition’s passing by a 52 to 48 % margin in November. Tomorrow, the oral arguments in the combined lawsuits to overturn Prop 8 will be heard in the California Supreme Court in San Francisco.  (Check here for televised stream of proceedings.)

At the time Farrow’s story hit the papers I thought he was another of those unfortunate flash-in-the-pan martyrs who had not previously been a part of the LGBT rights struggle and so in a moment of weakness gets caught and destroyed without the benefit of support or voice in the larger community.

But after hearing Farrow speak last night, I was impressed, and realize that he has done his homework and is very much a part of our community’s struggle. He is articulate and informed, and speaks with focus about the spiritual questions which inform our struggle for human dignity.

It was because of this keen sense of human dignity that Farrow reached the point where he was compelled to break with his superiors, even at the cost of his own job. Bishop __ suspended him from his duties, but then apparently was surprised that he vacated his position as the parish/campus pastor with such has that Steinbock characterized it as abandonment. “My parish was divided” he said, “and everyone expected me to make a statement.”

Farrow is a veteran of 22 years in the priesthood, and has a pastoral sensitivity to the people who are often conflicted over the revelation of human sexuality. He has counseled mothers who “finally get it” that their daughters are not miscreants or emotional cripples because they have discerned their inborn attraction to the same gender. He is aware that kids who are taught to feel self-loathing just for being who they are, will be at higher risk of suicide.

Knowing that a public statement on Prop 8 would require enormous integrity, Farrow prepared himself to speak to the media, decided he would have to come out if asked about his own sexuality, and even began to pack up his office in case things went badly in the aftermath.

Today, Farrow is in the Los Angeles area, and very much in tune with the larger picture about Proposition 8. To allow this bigoted measure to stand is an attempt to shame LGBT people and to tell them, not just that they cannot marry, but that they have no right to live their lives.

Father Farrow will speak tonight at the rally downtown beginning on Olvera Street, one of more than 20 which will happen up and down the state of California. Details are at www.eveofjustice.com.  His own take on the Court date is at Farrow’s blog.

Apart from the purely legal and constitutional issues which will get their day in court tomorrow, people like Farrow will champion the moral issues which Proposition 8 backer sought to mow down with scare tactics and prejudice. But as we say, after Martin Luther King Jr., the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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A kinder, gentler Rush Limbaugh?

March 3, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Did you catch the obituary for Paul Harvey?—the famous radio commentator for half a century, who died Saturday at the age of 90.

I used to hear Harvey’s Noon broadcast years ago because he was taken seriously then by news radio as if he really had something important to say. Of course, it was important to his conservative following, so in our funny American way of making heroes and stars out of people who draw a crowd, Harvey was a “great” broadcaster. Tim Graham has a third-hand quote that Paul Harvey was “the Norman Rockwell of radio,” a pleasant image which is hardly true, since Rockwell’s paintings never disparaged people the way Harvey’s broad strokes with the conservative brush did.

In my view, Harvey was a kinder, gentler, naive and (non-drug-taking) version of Rush Limbaugh. He held knee-jerk conservative views about many things in society which were seldom tempered by testing, listening and discernment. The L.A. Times obituary mentioned something I am too young to have remembered: that Harvey supported Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunt in the 1950s. Later he ranted against moral decay in general and homosexuality in particular. Harvey spoke to a particular audience that he could safely assume shared his narrow cultural and political persuasions and would not be troubled by his lack of in-depth analysis of unfolding events.

All the usual suspects:  the colorless, humorless, righteous political leadership of America.

I am not the first to connect the dots between Paul Harvey and Rush Limbaugh, according to Tim Graham, although his link to the Wonkette blog is no help in tracing the original.

Some people are deeply conservative to the core, and it’s not always a matter of aging brain cells getting hardened and brittle. Harvey was only 34 years old when he sided with McCarthy. Something deep within made him distrustful, so it was easy to buy into the anti-communist rhetoric of the 1950s. But McCarthy was one of the early adopters of conspiracy theories, believing and manipulating the American people into believing that there were Marxist sympathizers—plotting to overthrow the American government— who had infiltrated our entire society.

The Paul Harvey broadcasts (of 2-3 minutes’ length) I remember did not so much report facts as to broadcast a distinct “ain’t it awful” editorial remark about the current events. So it is likely that Harvey simply swallowed McCarthyism whole, the way he did anti-gay views.

Rabid anti-communism continued to fuel conservative America for decades and certainly propelled Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980. I never gave more than a nod to Marxist rhetoric about class struggle in those years, but I roll my eyes to this day that Reagan took so much credit for bringing down the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union. In fact, it mostly collapsed of its own weight — a broken and flawed system that had so little to offer the huge portion of the world it controlled that it could not keep that control in perpetuity. Fear, alienation and negativity only have power when free-thinking people remain weak or intimidated.

That is why I believe that North Korea will eventually crack, and that Rush Limbaugh will eventually lose his grip on the conservative mind. Whatever is false and useless cannot sustain itself forever if there is no strong reality behind it. Ultimately, that is why homophobia is dwindling and collapsing now. There is no reality to the irrational fears which Harvey in his time and others in our time continue to promote that lesbian and gay people are trying to destroy American families and marriages, and should be compared to terrorists.

As many of us remarked after the May 2007 death of Jerry Falwell (who blamed pagans, abortionists, feminists and homosexuals for bringing on the 911 terrorist attacks), Paul Harvey too is “in a better place.”

– P.D.

Posted in Homophobia, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Can we party during Lent?

March 2, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Here we are again in the church’s dark season, the season when we wear a “smudge” on our foreheads to tell the world that Jesus makes us so joyful we beat our breasts and hang our heads with shame and repentance.

I could go one about that, especially since the Gospel tells us not to parade our piety before others but to keep our spiritual disciplines to ourselves, in secret, because God “who sees in secret” will reward us.  (Matthew 6:1-18). 

God forbid that he gets a smduge on the mitre! 

Perhaps the finest parable in the New Testament is that of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, about which I have written perhaps hundreds of pages.  It still astonishes me that in the ecumenical Lectionary used by many denominations today, the Prodigal Son is read only once every 3 years!  How can you set aside the premier story of God’s love for humanity and the need for unity and love in the household of faith for three years at a time?

Today I am working again in earnest on the “Gay Catechism” project I have begun, and it led me back to the Prodigal Son.

Commentators have long pointed out that the parable’s two sons are a more covert teaching about Jews and Gentiles: the Jews are the older brother, the Gentiles the younger and reckless brother who comes home after squandering his inheritance. The point tucked in here is that Jews, or at least Jewish Christians, who were resentful about the sudden presence of Gentiles claiming God’s love and grace, have a huge lesson to learn about God’s unconditional love.

Today, those two groups may well be the welcoming churches and the scolding churches (for want of a better term). Conservative churches not only don’t want to speak to LGBTQ people, they often imagine terrible sins they think LGBTQ people are guilty of, even though it isn’t true. Moreover, they resist celebrating the return of LGBTQ people to the church of Jesus Christ.

(Please temporarily overlook the “sexism” of the parable, because it only mentions males. In fact, whether God is a “father figure” or whether the siblings are male is irrelevant.)

This inexhaustible parable teaches lessons on many levels. When the prodigal son has returned home and is unconditionally welcomed by the father, a party is prepared. The older brother is resistant and resentful “and refused to go in” to the party.

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Return of the Prodigal Son

Many conservative corners of the church today refuse to celebrate our presence.  They throw no party for us.  They are angry.  They want to believe that they have a “leg up” on the sinners (whom they claim to love while hating the sin, even though their anger is completely transparent and mocks the very idea of loving the sinner!)  They think their lifelong obedience to strict moral laws ought to have qualified them for a party of their own, and they certainly aren’t going to rejoice with us.

Some of the churches in the middle ground are “struggling” with the presence of lesbian and gay people in their midst, let alone bisexuals, transgender people and God-knows-what-else.  They put out somewhat “conditional” messages of welcome, such as what the ELCA has been doing for nearly 20 years.  And they are not prepared to rejoice with us, thinking that as long as the whole church can’t be of one mind about homosexuality and human sexuality, we had all better be pretty reserved and cautious.

Well, what does Jesus teach in this parable?  What would he say about celebrating the presence of LGBTQ people, on the basis of this parable?

Does the father postpone the party until the older brother has come around?  No!  In truth, even at the risk of disunity in the family, the father commands that the party be started without the older brother, in the hope that he will come to understand why the presence of his brother is a cause for such celebration.

We will never resolve the issues of homosexuality and human sexuality by obsessing about what the Bible says about sex.  That is abundantly clear.  But it is time to look all over the Bible, especially at major teachings such as that contained in Luke 15, to better understand who brothers and sisters of widely differing opinions are expected to get along in the one church.

So this parable is a lesson for the whole church, which must understand that some people in the household of faith are going to celebrate the return and the presence of the “prodigal” even before the rest of the church is ready to come in.  We are not commanded to wait until those who are morally narrow and emotionally resentful can get over their fears and their anger (and their appeal to the father’s authority).

In fact, in Jesus’ teaching as made clear in several places in the Gospels, he repeatedly says that the Jews will come late to the Kingdom of God because they resist allowing others in, even while those others are gladly entering it before them.  Prostitutes and tax collectors in his day.  Bisexuals, transgender people, lesbians and gays and queers, oh my! in our day.

Can we party during Lent? I think it’s safe to bet that we know how to party, even while others are not ready even to talk to us.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Sex, Gay Catechism, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Faith | Print | No Comments »