Luke 18:1-8
"Getting the Message"
A sermon preached by Martha
Juillerat
St. Luke Presbyterian Church,
Wayzata MN, March 3, 2002
[3-4-02]
What are the GLBT members of our PC(USA) saying
after the defeat of Amendment A?
One strong, clear statement was offered by Martha
Juillerat, director of the Shower of Stoles, in a sermon preached on
Sunday, March 3. It was a call to stay, to work, to be courageous,
because "this Presbyterian Church has the potential and the
resources and the power to change the world. We have the hands to feed
a hungry planet, the arms to rebuild its cities and the feet to march
by the thousands for justice and peace. I believe that this church can
and will be resorted to greatness. That is why I am still here, and
that is why I will never, ever give up."
No one has the right to sit down and feel
hopeless. There is too much work to do.
Dorothy Day
Never, never, never give up.
Winston Churchill
Every year about this time I get into a deep blue funk for about 48
hours. It comes at about the same time every year, usually around the
beginning of Lent, although sometimes as late as Holy Week. This is what
some folks refer to as the legislative season in the Presbyterian
Church. Constitutional amendments are passed down from our General
Assembly to be voted on by the 175 presbyteries across the country. 87
of those presbyteries must pass an amendment for it to become the law of
our church, or in the case of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
members of our church, a majority of the presbyteries would need to vote
to repeal existing laws that discriminate against us and deny our calls.
And so every year we wait for the presbyteries to decide our
ecclesiastical fate for another year. And it's just about this time
every year that that 87th presbytery casts its vote.
Usually my annual 48-hour deep blue funk begins on a
Tuesday, since that is when most presbyteries hold their meetings. But
this year it began on a Monday. Monday Feb. 18th, to be
exact. That morning I logged onto several internet sites and read that
86 presbyteries had voted against Amendment 01-A, the amendment that
would have eliminated the ban on GLBT ordination from the Book of Order.
Only one more presbytery would have to vote in the negative for this
measure to be defeated. It would undoubtedly happen the next day, since
many presbyteries were scheduled to vote that Tuesday. Only one more
left to vote. It came a little earlier than usual this year.
Now, I am well into my second decade of work on these
issues, and the years do offer some perspective. I know that we're in
this thing for the long haul. Discriminatory practices aren't reversed
overnight. For heavens sake, it took generations for most of us
Presbyterians to start allowing people of color to sit in the same pews
with us. Some Presbyterian churches still won't allow it. It took a
hundred years for us to allow women in our pulpits. And, of course, many
Presbyterians still won't allow that, either. So in my head I know that
this will take a long time, and we will need to just keep picking away
at these issues, for another generation if need be, until the church
gets it right.
I know all that in my head. But once a year, right
around this time, it hits me like a body blow right to the gut. Because
in the end this is not just about polity or church politics: it's about
me; it's about us. I'm no longer ordained because of this nonsense. Many
of my friends are no longer ordained, or are unable to work. Many of my
friends are just plain gone from this church, gone for good. Once a year
that knowledge gets down into my bones, and I just have to sit with it
for awhile.
This year, it hit me on a Monday morning. Later that
afternoon I went to the YWCA in Uptown. Sometimes it's good to go find
some fitness machines to punch up, you know what I mean? So I went to
the YWCA. In the lobby was a display honoring Black History Month. And
there, written on a great big white board, was this quote from Martin
Luther King, Jr.:
We will have to repent in this generation not
merely for the vitriolic words and actions of bad people, but for the
appalling silence of good people.
That didn't help my deep blue funk at all. In fact, it just turned it
into a slow, angry burn.
Two days later the vote had come and gone. My partner
Tammy and I sat down for breakfast about an hour before dawn. I lamented
to her that I was preaching on this Sunday, and I had to prepare a
bulletin. At that moment, I couldn't think of a single thing that was
left to say to this church.
Tammy reached across the table and pulled over a
Volunteer manual for Common Hope, a community development project in
Guatemala working with the poorest of the poor. Tammy and I will be
going to Guatemala in a few weeks to work with Common Hope. Still
munching her cereal, she simply opened to a quote on the first page of
the manual, from Dorothy Day:
No one has the right to sit down and feel
hopeless. There is too much work to do.
And that was the end of my 48-hour deep blue funk.
~~~~~~~
Listen for the Word of God, from Luke 18:1-8:
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to
pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city
there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.
In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying,
'Grant me justice against my opponent.' For awhile he refused; but
later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect
for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant
her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming
here.'" And Jesus said, "Listen to what the unjust judge
says. And will not God grant justice to God's chosen ones who cry out
to God day and night? Will God delay long in helping them? I tell you,
justice will be granted to them quickly. And yet, when the Holy One
comes, will this one find faith on earth?"
The day after the vote of the 87th presbytery, the Louisville
Courier-Journal quoted Joe Rightmeyer, executive director of the
conservative evangelical group Presbyterians for Renewal, as saying
this: "I'm hearing increased optimism that with the weight of this
vote, those who have pressed for a change in the ordination standards
will get the message."
Yep, we got the message. The message is that we can't
sit down, because there's too much work to do.
We need to kick around in the ashes and get the fire
of our convictions burning hot again. We need to let this church know
loud and clear and right now, that we aren't going anywhere, and that
our work won't be done until every single one of us is welcome at the
table, and not just at the table, but in these chairs and in this
pulpit. We will need the fire of our convictions to call this
denomination back to being the great church that I remember it being.
There are those among us who, in the past couple of
years, have spent great spiritual energy and even more money writing
confessions about sexual purity and recruiting congregations to submit
to moral litmus tests. Shame on the church for wasting its resources
this way! There is far too much work to be done! For while some would
fret over the writing of purity codes, there are children in every
corner of this country that need to be fed and clothed and tutored and
mentored.
In this past two weeks there have been some who have
been quoted as saying that the church has spoken clearly on GLBT issues,
and that the time has come to start taking judicial action against More
Light churches and other congregations that have adopted statements
contrary to the church's current policies. Shame on the church for
allowing such vindictiveness! Is this how we want the Presbyterian
Church to be seen in the eyes of the nation, as a church already
declining in membership that would nevertheless choose to shut down
dozens of its own churches and alienate thousands of its members? There
is far too much work to do for this kind of mean-spirited activity. For
while some would choose to use their resources tearing apart our houses,
there are so many houses waiting to be built. There are houses waiting
to be built for Somali families in Minneapolis and Hmong families in St.
Paul. There are a whole string of churches not far from here at all that
are in desperate need of rehab work and repairs. There's a plot of land
in the mountains outside Antigua Guatemala waiting for nearly 200 houses
to be built, and there's another plot of land in Haiti waiting for a
well and a clinic. There is an entire town in Mississippi waiting to be
rebuilt. We can't be wasting our time and money tearing down when there
is so much to be built up!
There are some among us who would work diligently to
cut off funding to campus ministries, particularly organizations for
college women, thinking them too liberal and too accepting of GLBT folk.
Shame on the church for being so selfish! There is too much work to be
done among young people. For while some would limit our witness on
campuses, we need to be in colleges and seminaries all across this
country to let young people know that the church is a place of welcome
for them, all of them. We are the church - we are the
church and so are they. This is God's church and this is our church and
we need to build it together, strong and proud and welcoming and free.
We don't have time to sit down and feel hopeless.
There is way too much work to be done. For we need to do the hard work
of calling this church back to greatness.
There are three important points for us in the
story of the widow and the unjust judge: persistence, courage and faith.
First, Luke says that the parable was told as a
reminder to pray always and not to lose heart. The words of Winston
Churchill come to mind: "Never, never, never give up!" We have
heard some say, and are already hearing some say again, that we should
give up the fight, or that we should give it a rest and quit bothering
the church with our pleas for justice. But we know how this plays out:
The same groups that call for a moratorium on legislation are the same
ones that are calling for judicial action against our congregations, and
are also the ones that are actively pursuing charges against GLBT
individuals and those who have ordained them. We know how it goes, and
so we will never give up. We will pray without ceasing, and we
will keep badgering this unjust judge year after year until justice is
granted.
Second, we must have courage. The parable is
about praying into action, the witness of one woman's great courage in
the face of a frightful oppressor. See what happens here: The widow
doesn't just go off to a safe place to pray for the day when justice is
served; she marches right off to the courthouse and goes nose to nose
with the judge, day after day after day. Now, he's a powerful man, and
is known for his harsh treatment of others. As a woman she had no legal
rights, and there is no court of appeals here. The judge could easily
slap her into jail and she would have no recourse whatsoever. And so it
took guts to do what she did! Prayer-filled, Spirit-filled guts. If we
are to call this church back to greatness, it will take prayerful
persistence and it will take some serious, risk-taking courage.
Finally, it will take faith. A transitional
sentence at the end of this parable asks if faith will be found. It is
the most important question of all. Each one of us will have to answer
that question for ourselves. I can only speak for myself, but here's
what I believe. I believe in a God who is just and merciful and, above
all, loving and kind, a God whose arms are wide enough to embrace all
of us with unconditional love. I believe in a Jesus who
embraced those whom the Pharisees had labeled sinful and impure, a Jesus
who showed us the way of love and compassion. I believe in a Jesus who
rejected the Pharisee's long lists of laws and moral codes, and who made
faith the only condition for a seat at this table.
And despite everything, I believe in this church with
all my heart. I believe there is great Spirit-filled strength in this
community. I believe that this Presbyterian Church has the potential and
the resources and the power to change the world. We have the hands to
feed a hungry planet, the arms to rebuild its cities and the feet to
march by the thousands for justice and peace. I believe that this church
can and will be restored to greatness. That is why I am still here, and
that is why I will never, ever give up.
There is much work to be done. Bring the strength of
your convictions, bring all the faith you can muster, and a good, sturdy
pair of work boots, because we will be working this day and the next,
and all the days that follow until justice is served and all are free.
