June 22, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“Where have you been?” the accusing voice in my head says. There’s a legit explanation, of course. I was inundated with nine days running of house guests and all that entails (cleaning house, for one thing), and then playing catch up on my own duties. Each time I thought about blogging, I just gave up.

I don’t want to dwell on this (who would?) but it is two years today since I had cancer surgery. Thank God there is no sign that it has come back.

A blog is a personal thing, but I don’t find blogs which are diaries, or verbal web cams, to be very compelling. I usually draw from my own experience, but I hope what is written here always has the element of something more universal.

But maybe that’s why I am musing about this personal anniversary. In the last 28 months since I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I have met numerous men who are struggling with the same reality, or the fear of it. And I have said the last rites for one of them, and tried to comfort his partner of nearly 50 years, who is also fighting prostrate cancer.

If you are male and even close to being forty, find out your PSA. Ask questions, and monitor the numbers. Prostate cancer affects a huge percentage of men, but there are a number of treatment options and each one of them is getting better all the time.  And they do not dictate the end of your sex life!  (In all honesty, there are some men who think that is worse than death. It sounds irrational, but it is a very real fear.) 

 The only thing that doesn’t get better with the passing of time is your chance of survival if you don’t even know you have it.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Sex, Living by Grace, Health | Print | No Comments »

May 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

 Two frogs are sitting in a pot half full of water on the stove. There are bubbles all around them. “You know, it just doesn’t get any better than this,” said the first one.

“What do you mean? Are you crazy?” said the other. “This water is getting hot. I think we should get outta here.”

“Why are you always so negative?” said the first. “It’s not boiling, after all. It’s only simmering.”

“I can’t believe it! I suppose now you’re going to tell me the pot is half full, not half empty.”

I read an interesting piece yesterday in Instinct magazine, which surprised me. It’s a pretty-boy fashion magazine that catches our eyes but seldom gets read.

Joel Perry’s article”Is There Still a Closet?” is a relatively sympathetic look at those (how few? how many?) sexual minority persons out there who are still hiding. His article is not edgy—he doesn’t contemplate anything as exotic as transgender politician or a bisexual bishop—but he talks about his friend Davis from small town North Carolina who still sings in the church choir and says, “You try not to live a lie; however, you have to cover your tacks well.”

Perry is probably more sympathetic than I might be. Maybe a transgender politician must hide, but a 42-year old medical assistant can get work almost anywhere. Why would he stay where he can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t live? Why would he try to hold his breath for a lifetime because there is no air in the closet? Or maybe in North Carolina?

Or is it that he just doesn’t know how to come out gracefully, or where to begin?

My friend, most of us didn’t start out to be radical activists. But there came a moment when we finally realized that the pain of inaction outweighed the risks of action.

The truth is that coming out is a multi-part test of one’s own inner integrity. You don’t come out only once, but many times to different audiences. The outcome of any of these will vary, depending on how well prepared you are, and what kind of people you trust with your integrity. It can be painful, and it can be relatively easy and enjoyable. depending on how each coming out event unfolds. Typically, my friends report that at least for some —family especially—they already know and were just waiting for them to talk about it.

Another important thing to remember is that the risk and pain are temporary. Once the coming out process is behind you, your life takes different turns. If doors slam shut, others will open. If some friends shun you, you will make other, more genuine friends. If you grow in the process of deciding you must breathe free, you may discover that other people are also able to grow and change their views and opinions. The family, friend or co-worker who is often overheard telling homophobic jokes may actually change his or her tune just because you were honest about yourself.

And the most important thing to remember, if you are a person of faith, is that God already knows your secret. The thunderbolt has not hit you, no matter how long you’ve been hiding your little secret, so many it’s time to reconsider how damning your sexuality really is. Could it be that God knows, and God still loves you? That the all-wise and omniscient God, the one who knows the heart, fully understands and does not condemn you? That grace outweighs condemnation, and love is more important than sin?

Could it be that you’ve been avoiding thinking about God for fear of the consequences, only to realize that God’s Spirit may be your best friend and advocate as you go through the coming out process?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Homophobia, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

May 12, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I am exploring the idea of a Taizé style of contemplative worship as an alternative serviceion cooperation with Deacon Roberta Morris of the American Catholic Church.

Taizé is a small village in France near Cluny. The ecumenical community of Taizé was founded in 1940 by a Swiss man, Brother Roger, who was of Lutheran and Catholic roots; his father was a pastor. During World War II, with the help of his sister and other friends, they practiced a ministry of hospitality for anyone fleeing the terrors of war. Taizé was very near the demarcation line which divided France under Nazi power. Before long, friends in Lyon were simply giving the address of Taizé to all who needed refuge.

According to the Taize website, “their desire was to create a community of hospitality and trust for people from all over the world, and particularly a place of refuge for those from Eastern Europe.” Taizé is truly ecumenical and European because it has refused to be limited by the labels of the past. Brother Roger thought that Taizé’s mission or vocation was to be a “parable of community,” a small but visible sign of reconciliation.

I am mindful that this is how our own congregation is growing. Whether we realize it or not, we are a small community near the demarcation lines of various conflicts, struggles and even culture war. We are practicing a ministry of hospitality and trust. We are a Reconciling in Christ congregation. And —although we are a Lutheran church— in another sense we are neither Evangelical nor Catholic but a little of both. We offer compassion, food, spiritual nourishment, refuge, and a place where anyone seeking God may be at peace.

As a community, we are neither black nor white, gay nor straight; not rich or poor, although our community has individuals who fit those labels. Our purpose is to reflect the will of God and the mission of Jesus for whoever comes here.

Brother Roger continued to serve as the prior or abbot of the community from 1944 for six decades until his death in 2005 as a martyr. At the age of 90, he was murdered by a mentally ill woman who attacked him with a knife. Brother Roger wrote some 14 books, and co-authored three more with Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Today, May 12, is the birthday of Brother Roger, who was born in 1915.

The Taizé Community today has more than 100 brothers from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds and from more than 25 countries, who live in community. Since the 1950’s, young people have been visiting Taizé from all over the world. Some weeks, there are as many as 7,000 gathered from 70 nations. Taizé has become a model of ecumenical spirit, Christian renewal, prayerful contemplation and service. All over the world, churches of different denominations hold Taizé prayer services including silent meditation and its simple music.

Prayer by Brother Alois. On Easter 2009, Brother Alois offered this prayer in the Church of Reconciliation in the presence of the brothers and thousands of visitors.

Risen Jesus, like Mary of Magdala, who on Easter morning stayed close to the tomb, we say to God our expectations, our unresolved questions, and sometimes our helplessness. You, the Risen One, you come towards us humbly and call us by our own name.

To each one of us you say, “Go towards those who have been entrusted to you. Tell them that I am risen. Pass on my love by your life.”

And as we communicate the mystery of your resurrection, we understand it more and more; it can transform our lives.

So I believe that if we move with commitment toward those who are given to us—entrusted to us—it will transform our community life. We must not just talk about faith and love. We must model what we believe God is working in us. We must be the change we believe God asks of us—not only the change within each of us by repentance and faith, but the change within our shared life as love, welcome, hospitality and reconciliation. The stronger our parish community becomes, the more we model Christ’s love within the larger church: not drawing sharp demarcation lines, never turning people away, never tiring of showing compassion and hospitality.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, Catholic matters, Faith, Living by Grace, Spirituality, History, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

May 11, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I talked about Christian Baptism recently—and I’m yet undecided whether we still need to divide ourselves on whether we baptize infants or only “believers”– after the age of accountability or decision. Plenty of teens make a decision for Jesus just before their gonads begin to fire, and suddenly the Christian life seems so much less interesting than everything else. I don’t think that is the dividing issue among Christians.

What bothers me (and I will come back to Baptism either here or on the Gay Catechism site), is that Baptism, with its rich symbolism (cleansing, freedom, repentance, turning, light, fire and Spirit, death and life) raises questions about getting in to the Realm of God. Baptism is the gate to the Christian life.

If Baptism is an “entrance exam”, and all Christians pass through it at some point, it is not a filter to keep out Lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender applicants, largely because we are not always aware of our psycho-sexual selves when we are teenagers or before. (It would be an interesting study of Baptist denominations if they are having more trouble over making the decision to be baptized because teens and pre-teens are now more aware of homosexuality than they were a generation ago.)

But it’s obvious that many Christian groups would like to keep LGBT people out, like an insurance company wanting to know if we have a pre-existing condition so they can deny coverage.

Conservative Christians have an answer for everything, so they tell us that we are backsliding, that we have fallen from grace, that we can lose or have lost our salvation, … whatever, as if there is another, higher standard —a sexual standard— or a qualifying exam that LGBT people categorically fail even if we or our parents made a baptismal decision for Christ. “You can’t be gay and be Christian!!” they insist. But we are gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual and we are Christian. Because the only qualification anyone can have to “be a Christian” is to put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior. Everybody who believes in Jesus and is baptized will be saved (Mark 16:16; Acts 16:31).

(Of course, narrow/strict Christians like to point also to Matthew 3:7–8: ” But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

But “bearing fruit” is not an entrance requirement. Living the Christian life is the result of God’s grace and the believer’s faith through the help of the Holy Spirit. I can’t help wondering if the reason this kind of harsh attitude is used on LGBT people is grounded in the idea that we literally don’t bear fruit (ignoring the pun)– we don’t have kids.

If propagating the Christian faith through biology is “bearing fruit” for the kingdom of God, bringing up one’s own kids in the Christian faith is “low-hanging fruit,” if you ask me. It’s the easy way out to assume that raising a family is a measure of merit.)

But why do some Christians set up another standard, beyond simple faith, to filter out others? Because some folks don’t like Everybody and they can’t stand the idea that Everybody who believes in Jesus could possibly be acceptable to God. If they can set a higher standard than God sets, or than Jesus sets, and make people believe there is such a standard, they can keep out the undesirables, the riff-raff, the minorities (and in our times, that means the sexual minorities).

The Gospel’s standards are not impossibly high. Most important, they are not based on achievement or merit but on faith — especially the faith of those who would have no other merit.

And the shoddy thing, which fundagelicals and ex-gay ministry people seem to practice, is to create a secondary standard, an entrance exam designed for them to pass that others cannot. Let me explain:

Some modern scholars have suggested that today’s homosexual is the Bible’s eunuch, and have drawn connections with Matthew19:12 and sexual orientation. In the Law of Moses, the eunuch is categorically excluded from Israel (Deuteronomy 23:1); i.e., “You can’t be a eunuch and be an Israelite!!” By definition a eunuch cannot sire children, cannot “bear fruit.” Yet Isaiah 56:3–5 argues against the Law of Moses: “For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” (Again, ignoring Isaiah’s pun.)

So it is convenient to insist that to really be a Christian you also have to do something which is impossible, that “precludes” a whole category of people from the Christian Club and keeps it pure.

If heterosexuality were really the most important sign of righteousness which God demands of all people, as the Right insists, they are creating a standard which demands virtually nothing from those to whom heterosexuality comes naturally, and categorically lock out sexual minorities. (Sounds a lot like Matthew 23:4 and 13, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. . . . woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.”)

In effect, they ignore the demand of all disciples to practice self-denial but expect complete self-negation from us. It would be bad enough if the Right pushed these views as mere opinions, but they attempt to give them the authority of God. When I think of all the people who have suffered spiritually, deeply, because of such stuff, it is beyond mere hypocrisy. It is evil.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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

May 4, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Yesterday it was my privilege to preside at the baptism of a little girl, on the occasion of her first birthday. May 3 will truly be a memorable day in her life. Surrounded by her parents—good and thoughtful young adults—and four sponsors, and other children, it brought back memories of these special family celebrations from past generations.

Baptism for many Christians is not a big deal. Almost a superstition to some who are not particularly active in church, baptism is something that parents “have done” to their child, and then most often because grandparents are breathing down their necks.

For LGBT Christians, however, Holy Baptism is something we should be genuinely excited about, because it is one of the foundation blocks of our claim to a place at the table of the Lord, even if some groups have developed strange views along the margins of this ancient rite (”Aborted Babies Go to Limbo“).

Baptism is the true entrance rite into the Christian faith. There are no other layers or levels of membership. For most all Christians, Baptism is where God takes a risk on human beings who may or may not turn out to be what God expects. It doesn’t matter if the church practices “infant baptism” or “believer baptism” at the age of discretion or discernment as a young teen, no one except God above can know how the person who is baptized will turn out.

[photo: infantbaptism-Lutheran.jpg]

Will this young life blossom or wither? Will this new member of the body of Christ wander, or become lost in life, or stay obediently close to home? Will this person be a heterosexual “conformist” or a sexual minority?

For those right-wing Christians who insist that homosexuality is a choice, for example—and many of those church groups also practice “believer baptism“—maybe they should move the age of accountability up to the mind-20s when many people finally come out. At least you would know if the newly baptized person is gay or straight!

The point of course is that God knows, and yet no thunderbolts seem to zap anybody’s church steeple or baptistry — not the traditional and liturgical churches who inch by inch are moving toward openly welcoming LGBT people, and not the born-again churches who think that God hates us, and not the super-mega-churches, either.

Regardless of denomination, we all accept people for baptism without performing a litmus test on their sexuality. That’s because we don’t know when and where sexuality is first discerned in the individual’s spiritual and emotional development. And we all think our baptismal practices are the correct ones even if other Christians get it wrong. We all offer prayers and blessings to the effect that God receives this new person into the fold as a precious daughter or son in the faith, and so as a sister or brother in Christ.

I think God laughs! I think God has a big belly-laugh at those who believe that can keep out or push out or freeze out or disfellowship anyone who is baptized into Christ. Because it just isn’t possible. All who believe, and are baptized, are part of the household of faith. ” There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4–6).

So for all the quarreling and posturing and angry schisms because somebody is trying to let the homosexuals into the church of Jesus Christ (or consecrate one as a bishop!), it might be best just to remind everyone at once that it’s too late for noisy arguments and rants and ultimatums. We’re already inside!

We were born in the church, and baptized in the body of Christ. We are not clamoring to get in to this troubled, archaic institution. We are already here, already baptized, already part of Christ’s missionary force in the world. Those of us who are LGBT have already “infiltrated” every Christian denomination there is, simply by being who we are and who we have been since we grew up—lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or anything else.

So relax. God knew it all along!  And, by grace, God lets each one slip by!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace | Print | 1 Comment »

April 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The Daily KOS (thanks for the link, Sarah), has a whole list of wacky readers’ comments about the first days of gay marriages in Iowa. These three jumped out at me:

“straight people don’t want gays to be promiscuous but they don’t want them in a legal committed relationship either…”

Somebody else wrote: “That’s because they don’t want us to exist. Their ideal world doesn’t have gay people in it at all - we’ve all been exterminated. Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing on this issue. Mostly. “

And somebody else replied: “For people who don’t want us to exist… they certainly think about us a lot.”

They certainly do! The reactionary movement coming from the (mostly Religious) Right seems obsessed with us! For example, the blog at Gay Christian Movement Watch (”Because God has called us to holiness”) is an extensive and persistent rant about homosexuality. The “About” page states that it is “a cutting edge Christian ministry whose mission is to monitor, analyze and publish (MAP) the activities, leaders and public theological positions of the ‘gay christian movement.’”

To me, it may be the cutting edge of a very dull knife.

The blog and other materials there seem to be the work of one man, an African-American in the Atlanta area who touts his escape from homosexuality. He markets his e-book this way: “a man who lived to tell, Touching A Dead Man traces the path of a young boy’s life through childhood rejection, growing up black and COGIC and the pain of his darkest secret: homosexuality. With courage, the book paints a moving portrait of life at its best and worst: sexual violence, longing for fatherly relationship and eventual self destructive living as a gay man.”

Acronym: Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal holiness movement – pretty serious, no-wiggle-room, don’t-screw-up, guilt-rich theology. Yep, that would be a tough place to grow up gay.

Can somebody help DL Foster with the rest? It seems he is a self-made poster child for the ex-gay ministry crowd. I certainly empathize with the other pains and sorrows he may have experienced: childhood rejection, growing up black (in our racist society), sexual violence, longing for fatherly relationship and eventual self destructive living.

But, excuse me, Rev. Foster, none of that stuff is inextricably or directly linked to being gay or lesbian (or bisexual or transgender) and none of it is linked to being LGBT/Christian. I haven’t written my book, yet, but I can share here that I didn’t grow up with childhood rejection. I am of European not African extraction (but I am of parentage tainted enough that Hitler would have hunted me down). I have never been a victim or perpetrator of sexual violence. My relationship with my father was just fine, and with God even better. And I haven’t gone through any self-destructive living, probably because I didn’t have a moralizing, guilt-inducing church to teach me to hate myself, doubt my own good judgment, and obsess about whether I would burn in hell for having my mostly-vanilla flavored hopes and desires to love someone and be loved in return.

Instead of all Foster’s drama, I remained steadfast with Christ, in a church (Lutheran) that totally ignored all sexuality when I was a child, was terrified of it when I was a college student, and has been dancing around homosexuality ever since. I discerned that I was gay (did not choose to be) while in seminary, respectfully stayed in my closet for more than a dozen years, came out gradually, avoided drugs and promiscuity, and met my life partner with whom I am still closer than ever more than three decades later.

“Look! Oh my God, no!  There’s another gay Christian!! I can’t believe it!”

So the implied argument of this minister, who is obsessed with keeping a “watch” on the Gay Christian Movement, is that living the homosexual life is a disaster, which he characterizes as that of a “dead man.” I can’t speak for him, but I can speak for my homosexual life: I have grown emotionally and spiritually. I have found incredible strength, character, love and compassion from all kinds of LGBT people, both religious and not religious, which I believe to be the work of God’s spirit active in our world. I believe that my chance meeting the man with whom I have shared my life, home, and faith was truly a gift from God. And I know, as the Gospel clearly says over and over, that God’s love has been here for me, and for countless Lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender Christians, all along even if we didn’t notice it. I know that we are justified, reconciled, or “saved” not by our good works or by painful or melodramatic episodes of repentance, nor by total sexual abstinence, nor by profound guilt or shame, nor by self-loathing, nor by trying to change our orientation, but only by the grace of God. I will stand by what I read in the New Testament:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God— not because of works, lest anyone should boast. . . . But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinance, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thus bringing the hostility to an end.” Ephesians 2:8–9, 13–16

Here’s the core of the “Gay Christian Movement” —and let me paraphrase that passage:

• We claim this grace as being given to us, too, as it is to all Christians and all other human beings.
• It is not our doing—not the accomplishment of any Christian— that we are loved by God for Christ’s sake. So there is no boasting about making the “right” moral choice of heterosexuality (because we know perfectly well that you can’t choose to be heterosexual any more than you can choose to be Lesbian/gay, bisexual or transgender; one can only choose to make peace with our sexuality as one of God’s gifts in our life).
• Heterosexual Christians, especially right-wing conservative ones, may think that we who are not heterosexual are “far off”—wandered, lost, estranged—but we, like they, have been brought near to God. Do you get that? We don’t approach God. God comes our direction in Christ, and brings us near.
• And this is accomplished not through our efforts or our self-denial or self-doubt or self-hatred, but through Christ.
• Many ultra-conservative voices, like Rev. Foster, insist there is a “culture war” ( a thinly veiled view of a religious war, an Armageddon) going on which they must win. But, hello!, Christ is our peace. It’s a done deal. Christ has already ended the culture/religious war for us, making all Christians one.
• He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, so don’t even try to put up another one, okay?
• How did he do this? By abolishing this constant appeal to commandments and ordinances (they only appeal to the commandments and ordinances which they cherry-pick out of the Bible because they self-righteously think they are obeying all those things but we aren’t!).
• There is one new humanity now, folks, not just one new Christianity: there is one new humanity because God, in Christ, unilaterally decided to accept us, love us, and be reconciled with all of us, and bring all this stupid animosity and hostility to an end. The so-called culture war ended on the Cross!

In other words, Reverend, get over it. There are thousands, millions, countless LGBT Christians out there who keep faith with God even while you continue to “watch” what we’re up to! There are countless numbers of us out there who praise God, love Jesus, and do what he commands us to do:  love one another, show compassion and mercy, feed the hungry, visit the sick, welcome the homeless, and go to those in prison. While you are busy “watching” what we’re up to, we simply try to do what Jesus would do.

And when it comes to the Christian lifestyle (yes, that is a lifestyle! a choice!), it really doesn’t matter which gender someone happens to be capable of loving. There is no commandment to “get heterosexual,” Rev. Foster. And while you may think we are called to holiness, I know we are called to faithfulness. We are not justified by any feeble version of “holiness,” yours or ours. We live by grace alone!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Coming Out, Living by Grace, Faith, LGBT Christian, Ex-Gay | Print | No Comments »

April 24, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

In my (frequent) moments of self-doubt, I wonder about whether my stress on grace and unconditional love are swinging the pendulum too far to the other side.  But then, which way should the pendulum swing, anyway? Haven’t we—in both church and society—had too much of pendulum-swinging, of one reformer or strong leader or personality cult person trying to jerk the wheel of the big ship out of the hands of the Holy Spirit and re-chart a course?

Personally I am fed up with pollsters asking their little select sample (subject to error plus or minus 3.0% points) whether this country is going in the right direction or the wrong direction. Why do we have to keep trying to change course when none of us can speak with certainty or authority? And especially in the Christian church, I am put off by such when I think others perceive me as being naive or overly pious when I insist: Jesus Christ has set the course for this church for all time; who are we to think we must constantly wrestle for control or go at each other for taking us “off-course”? If we are following Jesus, how can we get lost?

But I’m also mindful of powerful witnesses like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who cautioned the church about “cheap grace“– pronouncing the love of God and consolation of religion without also calling us to discipleship, without warning believers that there are costs involved in following Jesus. In Bonhoeffer’s case, there was enormous cost—the cost of his life in fighting the greatest evil of the 20^th century.

In my ministry, I am reaching out constantly to people who have not really ever heard grace pronounced at all. Wherever their Christian roots, it seems, all were fertilized with the same burning mixture of fire and brimstone, of dire warnings pointed at them like a shotgun. Where was any “consolation of religion”? They have felt beaten up, criticized, warned, preached at, condemned and completely rejected for failing, or “backsliding, or not measuring up in one way or another, to the high moral standards that some other human being thinks they must reach in order to be loved/saved/accepted/welcomed.

And I have met so many of these people in recent years that maybe I’m overcompensating — confidently announcing the unconditional love of God in Christ for all people.

How can I do that? Didn’t even Jesus put conditions on his own disciples? “If anyone would come after me, let them take up their cross and follow.” How can we pretend to be disciples if we do not take up (carry) a cross just as he did? Even in this Easter season, there is still a cross awaiting all true Christians. And to pretend to belong to Christ otherwise is the ultimate hypocrisy. Right?

The theological problem here is one of directionality. I cannot teach that we must achieve certain prerequisites or conditions before God loves us enough to assure us of our forgiveness. Then discipleship becomes a lifelong qualifying exam, which after all we might fail. But in truth that is more of a description of Islam’s view of the Judgment Day than of the Christian view. The Gospel teaches that

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:16–19)

Is that “cheap grace”? Is that liberal pablum? No, it is the Gospel according to the First Letter of John, which is keenly aware of the struggles and conflicts that ride along with discipleship and acceptance of the Lordship of Jesus.

But if we worry or obsess that we can only approach God through our suffering and the personal cost of discipleship before we have any assurance of love and grace, that is backward.

In fact true discipleship results from our assurance that we have already received grace without qualifying for it—with no inherent right to it, no merit, not even a down-payment. It is God who is willing to risk giving us the grace before discipleship rather than as a reward.

Of course, I am most mindful of this when it comes to the struggle of lesbian and gay people—and more recently bisexual, transgender, queer and every other kind of sexual minority as we may define ourselves—to be heard and to be offered a taste of God’s grace, without first promising to and submitting to personal and emotional and psycho-sexual castration in order to somehow please God. Christians who demand this of other Christians have their theology twisted and they themselves need to be born again again.

In the Gospel I know –and the only one I know is written in the Scriptures that all Christians read, and I especially rely on the writings of the Apostle Paul— there are costs of discipleship, but circumcision is not a requirement in advance. We do not need to cut off our true selves, our sexual or gender identity, our orientation, our very being. We do not need to deny ourselves the very thing that makes us human and in fact that Christ calls us to utilize in proclaiming our discipleship: our ability to love.

In the Gay Catechism I will come back to this, and other matters of sexual ethics, because I know that the early church’s conflict over the requirement of circumcision is probably the best analogy we have today with which to evaluate the anti-gay and anti-sexual requirements which some Christians insist must be imposed on us, or we cannot be saved. But Paul says emphatically,

“Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:2–6)

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, History, Living by Grace, LGBT Christian, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

April 20, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

A few days ago I began thinking more seriously about how to walk alongside those who are either wounded, disaffected, or keeping their distance from the faith in which they once made a home. In my ministry, most often this is the Catholic church. Will they ever again find a home in which Christian discipleship can be lived out.

This is especially true for LGBT people who are often brutally harmed by the Christian church. But they are not the only ones. I meet a large number of other people, for a variety of issues and reasons— divorce and remarriage, abortion, abuse of church authority, refusal to ordain women, or too many questions with condescending or absolutist answers— have felt estranged from the church. Later, some feel drawn to find a faith expression, a spiritual home, but are at a loss. Complex social studies and entire books deal with this. But as a pastor in a local church, “book learning” about the disaffected usually is not really helpful to me.

I have learned simply to listen— and hopefully to listen well, so that what I have to offer neither offends or frightens those who are drawn by the spirit of God. And most often, people need to be heard, more than to be told the perfect word or ideal teaching or doctrine or even word of welcome. They have life experiences which have shaped both their spirituality and their sense of alienation or estrangement, but traditional religious structures have not always made room, or opened up, or offered to listen. Because I care, when I hear these stories, I try to walk with or walk alongside those who are at a distance, or outside of the faith community which I serve.

Servant of God Archbishop Oscar Romero, “San Romero” to the people of El Salvador.  The process of beatification was begun for him in 1997.

Lately I have found a word from another church context— “accompaniment,” which probably dates back to Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador. (See, for example, this article by Jim Barnett, O.P.) In accompanying, especially disaffected Catholics (or other Christians— fundamentalist or Missouri Synod Lutheran or Jehovah’s Witnesses or whatever) I learned quickly that I cannot erase the pain or dissolve the hypocrisy, straighten the contorted view, or re-work the hierarchical logic that has been imposed on people’s real lives and contributed to their alienation. I cannot make the Catholic church whole and well anymore than I can fix what is wrong with the Lutheran Church. And in my own heart I too hurt because these Christian communities, in particular, are not one church community, but many. When it comes to Lutheran and Catholic— although progress has been made, these two world communions have “dinked around” almost my entire adult life trying to find delicate and respectful ways to talk to each other. They have affixed important signatures to well-written and carefully nuanced documents.

But in Jesus’ high priestly prayer of John 17, he prays that his followers will be one. He didn’t say “Take a thousand years to get pissed with one another, and the next thousand years to consider kissing and making up.” What part of be one don’t we get?

So my accompaniment is to walk alongside those who express to me that they are wounded by their experiences, and if appropriate, to welcome them into the temporary sanctuary of an evangelical catholic community which believes itself to be “involuntarily and only temporarily separated” from the one universal church (“Evangelical Catholic?” April 14).

Regardless of the snail’s progress of Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue, or Lutheran-Anything Dialogue, the truth of one’s spiritual system comes down to how we accompany one another at the community and personal level, not at scholarly international conferences. I make no claim to be an ecumenical expert or an important theologian, but I think that the contribution of my ministry is every bit as important as that of the greater minds appointed by councils or a church magisterium to represent formal positions and historic points of view.

What comes to mind is the Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 26, taken from Luke 24:

Classic scene of the road to Emmaus by Robert Zund

This text amazes me. It is beautifully composed to help the reader see Jesus in the Eucharist – that sign of oneness in Christ and in one another that is really only a reality at the local community level. But I also find something quite personal in this passage which scholars don’t tend to notice: One of these two disciples is named Cleopas. He and his companion invited Jesus to stay with them for the night in the village of Emmaus to which they were walking, and he agreed.

Emmaus by Velasquez

The scriptures give us no other information about the identity of Cleopas (he was not one of The Twelve). Since it appears that Cleopas and the other man shared a home, to which they were returning when they met Jesus on the way, and where they shared a common table and would both spend the night, I cannot help wondering if, well, … you know. Were they “a couple”?

Another interpretation of the Emmaus moment.

But would the Apostles back in Jerusalem have approved of this? Did they even know? Would the presence of Cleopas and his friend in the community of disciples have caused a huge controversy, a “split”? Would the Apostles have called an entire collegial assembly to decide whether it was okay for two disciples to share a home, or spend a night together under one roof?

Luke’s treatment here, and throughout the Acts of the Apostles, seems to indicate that the earliest church did not hold its members back until an official council could vote on things. Individual believers just moved forward (like “street prophets“?), and after the fact, the Apostles and the church as a whole didn’t vote these movements up or down. What they did was recognize the presence and power of the Holy Spirit as active in the situation, and on that basis gave their blessing and assent.

Why must we be so constrained by the magisterium, the structure and institution (can it ever really be “infallible”?), that individual Christians feel they must move out of one household and into another to be prophetic or just nurtured or to live out discipleship? Or feel they must leave all faith behind for good? Why must any of us suffer the spiritual catastrophe of being a “recovering” Christian of any label? Or ex-Christians for life?

It is a cliché that “the Church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.” But who is walking with the wounded?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, Doctrine, Catholic matters, LGBT Christian, Faith, Spirituality, Living by Grace, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

April 9, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This being Holy Week, I am in a refelctive mode about the very core of our faith and our ability to proclaim good news.  Below is an article I wrote more than a year ago, and put it on our pamphlet rack.  Of all the materials put there, this one disappears most frequently. Maybe we should stop promoting ourselves and our programs, and just tell people About Jesus.

About Jesus and Our Faith in Him

We are not ashamed to tell you the real reason we’re here: Jesus Christ — who is the One for whom this and all Christian churches and communities exist. We want everyone to know some things about Jesus that many web sites and many churches neglect to say:  Jesus is God’s gift to humanity. The Holy Scriptures reassure us that Jesus came into this world for one purpose – to give his life for our sake – and to call us to come home to God, whom he vividly portrayed as our heavenly Father. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not be lost but have eternal life.” —John 3:16This congregation is an open, affirming, welcoming, reconciling church, not because of liberal tendencies and wishy-washy beliefs, but because Jesus was open, affirming, welcoming and reconciling in his life and ministry. He, too, was criticized for not being strict enough, or religious enough, or pure enough. In every case, he brushed aside that criticism because it misses the point.

  We proclaim and teach God’s grace, for Jesus’ sake. Yes, there are many strict, dour and condemn-ing words found in the Bible. But we are convinced by the Gospel (which means “Good News”) that God’s most important message in those inspired and ancient pages is the message of unconditional love and grace. God’s Word for us is always an invitation, not an ultimatum. Jesus is God’s Word in the flesh, the one who came to seek those who are lost, not to condemn them. For nearly 500 years Lutheran Christians have taught this based on the clear testimony of the Scriptures: that we and all human beings are justified in God’s sight, not because of our good deeds or best intentions, but because of God’s grace which we receive simply through faith in Jesus. No one earns God’s love. No one’s strict behavior or most diligent abstinence impresses God.

   We read and study the Bible, so we know about God’s wrath—repeated over and over in the law and the prophets. But, for Jesus’ sake, we do not need to run from God. Jesus encourages us to draw near to God’s “throne of grace.” We do not need to live in shame or fear of eternal damnation. One word often paired with “wrath” is “saved.” Christians like to talk about being saved from God’s wrath! Some Christians like to rely on good deeds (like silver stars pasted on a chart in heaven) to save them from wrath. They claim their good works like achievements, so they look down on others as under-achievers! But we know that the whole world was saved from God’s wrath by one single event: when Jesus gave his life for all upon the cross. He put a “stop” to the wrath, the suffering, the threat of eternal punishment, and the folly of religious “good works” with his own blood. Our blood and tears mean nothing, because his blood and tears were everything.So the full and true Gospel of Jesus is one of grace, not of condemnation. We claim the unconditional love of God, and try to live in a manner which is appropriate as God’s beloved people. We know it is not necessary to spend our whole lifetime worrying about whether God loves us, for Jesus clearly said so.  The message of grace is this: if we humbly recognize that we have wandered away from God’s love (and yes, every human being has sinned in ways which are big and small), all we need to do is to wake up to this: God still loves us; God has not abandoned us; God is seeking us, and wants us to come home. In this waking, seeking, returning and coming home, God’s grace awaits us in full measure. All is forgiven, because of the Cross of Jesus Christ.God hates no one! The love of God is not cancelled or erased because of human foolish-ness, excesses or willful errors. The church of Jesus Christ is a community of recovering sinners – we are not “saints” in the sense of “perfect people.” We are just those who know our need of grace, and have found the One whom God sent to announce love, reconciliation and peace to the world.How do you imagine Jesus? Although every artist for thousands of years have portrayed him, there are no photographs of Jesus. Every disciple, mystic, saint and believer has used his or her imagination. Yet through the testimony of many Christians —beginning with the letters and narrative stories in the New Testament itself—we have an enduring portrait of this amazing person. Jesus forgave, healed, taught, served, embraced, wept and bled for others.  Even more important than how we see Jesus is how he sees us! He saw the world upside down from the way people usually see it, with the hungry well fed, and the poor and oppressed liberated. He didn’t condemn those whoseexcesses and errors caused them shame. He stood between an adulteress and her would-be executioners. He pleaded with his followers to show mercy, to provide for the least important people, and to forgive everyone—even hundreds of times—and to do greater things than he was doing. In his last hour, he forgave those whose “duty” was to put him to death.   So, if Jesus is so gracious, loving, non- judgmental and accepting —whom the Scriptures tell us is the very image and presence of God Almighty in the flesh—then why is it that Christians are often so angry and threatening? Why are Christians “at each other’s throats” with criticism and condem-nation? Why are churches so competitive? Why does the general public have a positive view of Jesus but a negative view of “church people”? Given the huge difference between Jesus and his followers, does anybody think it is Jesus’ fault that he doesn’t resemble us more closely? Sadly, no, it is we who do not resemble him! Human beings are the victims of our own excesses, and this is certainly true when spirituality is dominated by religiosity.  Who is the real Jesus?At its worst, the medieval church was obsessed with sinfulness and guilt (which, it taught, sent Jesus to the Cross) it expected people to live with lifelong guilt, shame and sorrow, and to avoid every possible thing that might lead to committing a sin. The high morality of the earliest Christians quickly changed from being a self-discipline to a whole system of laws, sanctions, penalties and penitence—ultimately leading to capital punishment for sins.  Now the church in our times is getting lost in its own enthusiasm for marketing and “selling” Jesus the way products are sold. Jesus has become the most over-advertised and over-exposed individual in history! He is being re-made in our cultural image! Hundreds of “feel good” mega-churches have followed marketing consultants and produce a television show worship event featuring praise, optimism, glory and self-congratulation, mixed with American patriotism.Their testimony is often all “about us and How Great We Are for believing” rather than “about Jesus and how changed we are by his grace and forgiveness.” This modern “church” seems to have forgotten the call to discipleship, the call to “take up your cross and follow” the Jesus who humbled himself and accepted death to redeem the world.

Like medieval times, “successful” churches today seem to be all about puffing themselves up and building an empire of wealth, influence, and public respectability. So we need to ask ourselves, as a Christian community, whether we are following Christ closely enough to notice those for whom he stopped and stooped: the poor, those without hope, “sinners” who were rejected by others, strangers, foreigners and outsiders, prisoners, widows, the sick and dying. There is no “glory,” wealth, empire or self-congratulation that comes from this.

  But if we are really moved by and impressed by Jesus, then to serve God faithfully and to follow Jesus faithfully means to serve the people whom Jesus always puts in our path. “For I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” —Matthew 25:40The “bottom line” for a Christian congre-gation is that we are seeking out the lost and the least, with humility, as we try to be disciples who follow Jesus.God bless you as you seek to follow Jesus!

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April 5, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

This is not a blog about gay marriage. Indwelling Spirit is about a lot of issues affecting LGBT people who are trying to follow Christ, and to remain in fellowship with other Christians who either reject us and hate us, or at the least are suspicious of us.

But we take the news of the day, and play the ball where it lies. In recent months the news has been jammed with the aftermath of Proposition 8, which (temporarily) dash the hopes of California becoming and staying the third United State to legalize same-gender civil marriage.

The news of my day has changed things, at least for a time. My lawfully-wedded spouse Carl is in the hospital, having suffered a disastrous fall on Saturday. He has four fractured vertebrae, one of them serious, and two fractured ribs. It appears now that this will not require emergency surgery, but what is coming next is still quite unclear.

Carl was climbing a tree in order to do some quick pruning in preparation for Palm Sunday. Now w have both missed the Palm Sunday service entirely, instead watching the hours tick by in the Emergency Room. At this hour he is completely immobilized with a neck brace, until the results of his MRI can be evaluated by a neurosurgeon.

Yet in the midst of all his pain, Carl has been capitalizing on our civilly-married status. Coming out all over again, he makes sure that each doctor or nurse attending him understands that I am his “husband”—a term I have yet to get used to when applied to myself, even though we have been a couple for decades. In fact, last October’s National Coming Out Day was the fourth time we have tied the knot in a ceremonial way.

After waiting in the rain overnight in front of San Francisco’s City Hall in February 2004, a quick view of our happiness.   The Lutheran magazine later mentioned us and our best friends in a news brief, “Married in the State of Grace.”

“He is fulfilling his marital vows,” Carl tells the nurse matter-of-factly, “to take care of me in sickness and in health.” As much as I have advocated for stable, permanent relationships among lesbian and gay couples, and now carried the flag for Marriage Equality in the streets and in my church (NoOn8Church.org), there is something almost monumental in just living as a married couple and in effect holding our heads up high as a married couple. Not just when the television station showed up at our wedding reception, but when we have to call the nurse (again) for some pain medicine.

The Supreme Court may speak any day now on whether it considers our pre-Prop 8 marriage “legal.” That nasty ballot measure insisted that only a marriage between a man and a woman is “recognized” in California regardless of when or where contracted (not the exact wording).  A month ago, the Justices closely questions attorneys on both sides in the oral arguments about what “recognized” might mean, and what it was intended to mean in the wording of Proposition 8.

But I am here to tell you that my marriage is recognized in our local Emergency Room, as it is in the congregation and the supermarket and the neighborhood and in our extended family circle. Ultimately, Proposition 8 cannot erase recognition for those who know that they have tied the knot securely and have already claimed their rightful status as “married.”

But please pray for Carl, and for all of us who have to keep coming out and claiming rights until the rest of the state “gets it.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in LGBT Christian, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Living by Grace, Spirituality, PRAYERS, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

April 1, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

A New Your Times web story yesterday reports that Newt Gingrinch [cf. John 19:22] has become a Catholic – converting from his native Baptist roots.

Katharine Q. Seelye’s headline is revealing: “Gingrich Gets (a New) Religion.” Is she referencing the fact that a lot of us were unaware that Newt had any religious faith. This was the political pit bull of the 1990s and, IMHO, the role model for Karl Rove. I wonder if Catholicism will bring any compassion, humility, restraint or civility to someone with more of a reputation for confrontational politics.

In the late Richard Neuhaus’ last book Catholic Matters, he makes the claim that (while Protestant churches are shrinking) Americans are converting to the Catholic Church at the rate of 200,000 a year. His book carries no footnotes, so we cannot know the source of his statistics.

Here in the wild west, it seems people are converting to no religion at a faster clip, but Neuhaus’ claim set me thinking. Is the Catholic faith so attractive that, after a strong 500 year strand of Christian tradition, people are leaving the various Protestant folds and returning to Rome?

Neuhaus was a conservative Lutheran pastor for years before he himself converted to Rome and entered its priesthood. His book is passionate boosterism for authoritative Catholic tradition, especially linked to the idea of a prevailing magisterium: the pope, cardinals and bishops as protectors and defenders of the faith. As a historian, Neuhaus is weak, and overlooks centuries of pathetic to despicable behavior on the part of the Roman hierarchy. (Not that any Protestant historical record is spotless.)

Neuhaus’ “growth” statistic stands in relationship to his claim that 63 million Americans claim to be Catholic. It would be more accurate to say that the Church claims them, keep tabs on every infant baptism, for example, but probably is not watching adult defections very closely. Be that as it may, 200,000 conversions would account for less than one-third of one percent growth.

I don’t want to belittle conversion, any time it happens, because it may mean that a person is now taking the new faith more seriously than she or he had taken the old faith. And I don’t draw a harsh or sharp line between Christian traditions. It is the same Lord we put faith in, even if our own faith practices morph or move on to a different expression.

But in the stories I am told — by people coming into my own congregation—the Roman church still expects and requires individuals (for example, who are about to marry a Catholic partner) to become Catholic and to raise the children Catholic. The Protestant “weakness” is that we don’t require any such thing. We don’t lay on anyone a moral obligation to attend Mass, for example, or dozens of other requirements. Maybe we are wimps, but maybe we emphasize God’s grace as completely outweighing church requirements.

But indeed does that mean that 200,000 people a year are quite content to come under a system of obligations and requirements? That they were not content with the freedom of the Christian life under grace? It would take more than a statistical approach to understand what is true here.

In my own parish, more than half of those who are coming into our community are coming from a Roman Catholic background. For one reason or another (divorce and remarriage, conflict because of sexuality and homosexuality, disaffection with church legalism, a personal search for meaning or a very individual experience of pain or abuse) they can’t or do not want to go back to the Roman church. Since Lutherans consider ourselves to be “Evangelical Catholics” we ought to be able to bridge this shift, and to show sympathy and understanding for anyone who is trying to find a spiritual comfort zone in our communion or another.

I am just grateful that the Gospel itself, and the pull of a faith community, still draws many people back from inactivity or lack of spirituality to a deeper sense of self, humanity and God. In an Associated Press story in March carried by 365Gay.com, the number of people with no religion continues to grow. And in the posted comments on the Daily Beast’s list of other well-known Catholic converts, a lot of anti-religious drivel abounds.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, Catholic matters, Living by Grace, History, Public Affairs, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

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 »

February 26, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I overheard some dear parishioners last week chuckling about what they planned to “give up” for Lent. The list included succotash, sky-diving, etc. Very sacrificial. On the other extreme, one person is giving up all sweets except natural fruit. Sweet.

Is this what we ought to do in order to prepare to celebrate Easter (one popular explanation of why Lent is kept)? Does this imitate the Christ who went into the wilderness for forty days to wrestle with demons? (His own, or The demon?)

One Holy Week years ago in seminary, I tried to fast just from the close of Maundy Thursday’s evening service until Easter morning. It didn’t work. I cheated, because I also had a huge amount of work to do to be ready for the liturgical observances in the seminary chapel for the Triduum Sacrum.

Not my seminary community, but you can read about their Triduum Sacrum here.

I am more of the mind now to make light of giving up things. Especially if they are things to which I fully intend to return after the season of Lent. If Jesus struggled with the Devil in the wilderness for 40 days, it is clear that he came to find the spiritual strength to forego power and wealth, etc., forever. In token of that, giving up chocolate for Lent seems pointless and trivial.

(But for fun, you may want to check out this: “Dear Jesus, in Honor of Your Death, I’m Giving up Facebook…for 40 Days.”) This unidentified blogger is irreverent but insightful. Wish I knew who he is.

Here are some suggestions, if you want:

• Give up something you won’t go back to on Easter Sunday. Like try giving up some money for a worthy cause. (Your church can sure use it.) The cause or church you give it to in fact will use it, so there’s no chance you will get it back. Thus it’s a real sacrifice. Sacrifice is very different from postponed pleasure.
• Try taking something on for Lent instead of giving something up. Take on a discipline which requires effort or commitment from you. Examples: write letters to people you have meant to stay in touch with. Visit people who are in the hospital.  Pray five times daily like the Muslims. Read something on paper rather than on the screen. Plant more vegetables than you can ever eat with a clear plan to give away your surplus. Feed the hungry. Visit the homeless.  Eat your vegetables.
• Test out a self-discipline which is really hard, and actually resist bragging about it. Examples: promise yourself not to be cynical, resentful, or testy for 40 days. See how long it takes for friends and family to notice a change in your behavior.
• Write down your resolves and disciplines and seal them in an envelope dated for Easter Monday. Put in the bottom of your sock drawer. The point? To see if come April 13 you have completely forgotten the self-discipline you had selected now.

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January 5, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Do you remember the expression, “The Perfect is the enemy of the Good”?  People will never get Good stuff done if they are only satisfied with Perfect. The lust for Perfection makes us unsatisfied, even angry with what is Good.

I have seen this in people’s lives — in the search for that Perfect boyfriend or husband material, in endless shopping sprees, in home improvement projects that went 200% over budget, you name it.  Most of all I see it in how people treat people.

This seems to be an endemic trait with gay men, especially. The image I have of the “best little boy in the world” is someone who grew up trying to be Perfect in order to be loved and accepted.  Even before we could understand why we wouldn’t be loved, why we might be rejected, we intuitively started striving to be Perfect.

And as we got older and began to suspect “it” at the deepest levels of our consciousness, we hoped maybe that if we were Perfect in every other way, somehow our variant sexuality could be overlooked or condoned.

(I use the term variant sexuality because it is non-judgmental.  I have spent too many years deflecting criticism of what others defined as deviant sexuality.  The denotation of “variant” and “deviant” is practically the same — meaning something that varies or deviates from a “norm.”  But the word “various” does not have the same connotation as “devious.”  But, hey!  Am I just searching for the Perfect adjective because of a lifelong habit of not being satisfied with a Good adjective?).

At some point maybe a dozen years back I began to try to unload this Perfectionism.  Was it an acquaintance who told me I was a Perfectionist?  And I argued, Perfectly of course, that I am not a Perfectionist.  It’s just that other people are all such slackers!  But like heavy baggage with no handles or wheels, I began to set down this Perfectionism.  I have just as much right to breathe the air on this planet as all other living beings.  I do not have to earn my right to be a live and be myself anymore than I have to “earn” God’s grace (which after all is defined as a “gift”).

As the years go by, of course, I’ve never gotten completely free of Perfectionism, mine or others’ stifling desire to be better, superior, ultimate.  As a friend recently said of the gay people in his congregation, “it’s never done until it’s overdone.”  I’ve gotten sucked into projects or jobs with other people who are obsessed with Perfectionism, and will bring the Good to a grinding halt if it can’t be Perfect.
Perfectionism seeps into relationships, I have found, when I do something Good (a good deed, a good job, a good time, or a good look) but my friend or spouse or co-worker almost subconsciously points out that it might have, or could have, or should have been done better.  And the words of a wise counselor of years ago come back to me:  Don’t “should” on people!

The Perfect devalues the Good. And the Perfect guy looks down his nose on Good guys. But since none of us is actually Perfect —not in God’s sight and not in one another’s finely -tuned tastes and sensibilities—we keep up a pretense of Perfection, or the pursuit of Perfection, which deep down is eating away at our humanity, eroding our self-esteem, and poisoning our friendships, intimate relationships and loyalties.

But shouldn’t we always strive to be “better” human beings?  I think that’s the Calvinist Sunday School lesson which so many little gay boys internalized like homophobia (and as gay men wind up pouring out of their memories on therapists’ couches).  Well, perhaps.  But maybe being a “better” human being would actually mean to better accept people for who they are (think:  Serenity Prayer), to better know my own limitations, and to make the world a better place just by getting Good stuff done in my life rather than being blocked by a desire for the Perfect.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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December 25, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I’m still trying to get out a decoration or two at this hour — why bother, except that we are expecting a couple of dinner guests, lonely hearts who had no other place to go. Ordinarily I wouldn’t take time to blog on Christmas Day.

But after a rich and rewarding Christmas Eve service last night, I am still thinking about those who have no other place to go or to be on this day, to give and receive some love.

Fortunately, we had enough gifts come in last night so that I will be able once again (our fifth year) to take our annual gift cards to the 24 young people at the Jeff Griffith Youth Center in Hollywood. This is a residential program for runaways, throw-aways, kids who are trying to get back up after a hopeless descent into drugs or other addictions, even street prostitution or crime. Their stories would break my hart, except for the tangible love and spectacular results that the Center gets in helping youth get the life skills and job applications it takes for them to be self-sufficient and self-respecting.

But there are so many others out there. The Jeff Griffith program only has 24 beds, and the number of homeless street kids in Hollywood and Los Angeles is fearful — by some estimates in the thousands.

And I am thinking about the tens of thousands of LGBT people (and those for whom the four initials do not describe their life experience and self-understanding) who may be alone at Christmas simply because they have no one who listens, no one who understands or wants to understand, their hearts and the psyches.

The trouble with Christmas as many people see it is as the ultimate family holiday — where people who fit nicely into conventional families get to celebrate their normalcy and belonging, to the exclusion of those who don’t fit or don’t even have family.

But the Christmas Gospels tell a story which doesn’t support this, and tugs at our hearts to be open to those who aren’t in “conventional” families. (Of course, what is conventional nowadays, when more than half of all marriages end in divorces?) The Christmas Gospel tales touch on all the things that “nice” people want to forget or avoid, especially at the holidays.

• Mary and Joseph weren’t married. Were it not for Joseph’s willingness to swallow his pride and to avoid his legal rights to have Mary severely punished, Jesus would have been illegitimate.
• There was no room for them. The night Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph were far from home and actually homeless.
• Where were their friends? Where was Mary’s mother, for Christ’s sake? The story implies the two of them had to deal with the birth themselves, in a dirty stable. Obviously, they were not economically prepared for this birth, the sudden travel, the lack of accommodations, the dirty conditions.
• Within a short time (weeks?) the “Holy Family” had to flee for their lives. They became political refugees in a foreign land, in order to avoid the genocidal and evil King Herod, who had all the infants of Bethlehem murdered out of jealousy of a potential rival.
• Most of all, they had to trust their own visions and dreams — their own discernment that God was working a great deed and a wonderful miracle through their faithfulness. That is the Christmas Gospel in a nutshell.

None of us knows 100% if God is working through us, either, unless we trust our own discernment. I haven’t been sure since launching this blog—primarily to reach out to LGBT Christians and others—that it is a god thing to do, or worth the effort. But then I checked the web statistics, and see there have been over 29,000 unique visits. That totally humbles me. It sort of worries me that I must personally probe more deeply, asa gay Christian, to discern what God is already doing that I should be a part of.But today God is doing what we understand so beautifully: God is coming to us again, and it is a gift of pure grace. If we can only discern this grace (Christ is a gift, life is a gift, we are God’s gifts to others), we can turn the world upside down. And we can find the home, family, warmth and welcome, that so many people do not have today. Quoting Mother Teresa—which I saw not in some pious book but painted on the wall of a nearby restaurant on Vermont just a block from our church—”Noone can help everybody, but everybody can help some one.”

We can be God’s gift to another person—to listen, to understand, to welcome, to uphold when lonely and confusing times in her or his life seem overwhelming. Forget the stuff and the gift wrap and the tinsel. Be the gift someone is longing to receive.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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