First Reading: Isaiah 49: 1-6
Islands, listen to me! Pay attention, distant peoples! Yahweh called me before I was born, and named me from my mother’s womb. God made my mouth a sharp sword, and hid me in the shadow of the hand of the Most High. The Almighty made me into a sharpened arrow, and concealed me in God’s quiver. The Holy One said to me, “You are my Servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” I had been thinking, “I have toiled in vain, I have exhausted myself for nothing!”—yet all the while my cause was with Yahweh, and my reward was with my God. Thus says Yahweh, who formed me in the womb to be God’s Servant, who destined me to bring back the children of Jacob and gather again the people of Israel: “It is not enough for you to do my bidding, to restore the tribes of Leah, Rachel, and Jacob and bring back the survivors of Israel; I will make you the light of the nations, so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Second Reading: John 1: 29-34
The next day, catching sight of Jesus approaching, John exclaimed, “Look, there’s God’s sacrificial lamb, who takes away the world’s sin! This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘The one who comes after me ranks ahead of me, for this One existed before I did.’ I didn’t recognize him, but it was so that he would be revealed to Israel that I came baptizing with water.” John also gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and she came to rest on him. I didn’t recognize him, but the One who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘When you see the Spirit descend and rest on someone, that is the One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ Now I have seen for myself and have testified that this is the Only Begotten of God.”
God, grant us wisdom to understand that our calling comes from You and is designed according to Your holy plan. Let us not grow weary as we seek to become a light to the nations! Amen
On a week when doing what my grandmother used to call “resting on our laurels” would seem perfectly appropriate, God uses Isaiah to challenge us anew—to say, don’t get comfortable—in fact, only now are you ready to hear my call. And this challenge is so vital, so crucial to who we are as a congregation that this sermon is in two parts—so, know ahead of time, that I will continue my meditation on God’s challenge begun this week into next.
In our reading today, Isaiah, chapter 49, we hear Isaiah’s belief that God called him to be a prophet even before he was born. Isaiah says that God named him and designed him to be God’s servant. That God has called Isaiah to this great prophetic role is so clear that his words take on special meaning to all those who hear him. And then Isaiah surprises us and says “I’m not only for those people of Israel”—those tribes named in our scripture today—“No!”, says Isaiah, “God is calling me to be a light to the nations—to the whole earth!” And so we read these words and hear this call after the celebration of the greatest day in our history as a church—but God says to Isaiah and to us, “It is not enough!”
In 1976, the founder of MCC Churches, Troy Perry preached a sermon entitled “God Has Called Us, God Has Spoken, the Message is Clear” at the close of the UFMCC General Conference. That was just 8 years after the first MCC church service was held in Los Angeles. He proclaimed, “We’re at that place now where you are calling us to be true to the vision that you have given us. That vision is to teach and to preach that you love all people right where they’re at. And I am suggesting that we are still in that place.” I am sure that Rev. Perry is as saddened as the rest of us are that we are still, still, in 2011, still in that place.
Let me tell you part of why this is so sad…while we are rejoicing, many of our folks remain in despair. Even our young people—numbers generally accepted indicate that around 30% of the young people WHO SUCCEED in their suicide attempts are LGBTQ young people. And the call of many conservative religious and social groups to young people to turn away from who they know themselves to be causes pain and despair beyond belief. Their outreach offers no hope of acceptance—only the false offer of adopting the appearance of heterosexuality or lifelong abstinence. These groups argue that so many young people are committing suicide because they have been told by people like us that our lifestyle is not chosen but created by God and so they believe that they will never be able to become “normal” heterosexuals. Suicide seems a better choice than accepting themselves as God made them to be. We all, straight, gay, allies, see the challenge in the faces of these precious young people.
Some say that we have inflated those numbers and there are “that” many young LGBT people dying because of torment, rejection, and bullying. To those people, I want to scream, in behavior, not so politically or ministerially correct, “What is the matter with you? If one young person dies because they have been rejected or brutalized, that is too many. The hundreds of young people who take their lives every year because of confusion, rejection by family and friends, and fear that God will not accept them either, is a tragedy beyond our ability to truly take into our hearts. But take it into our hearts, we do indeed!
The national organization Lambda, long recognized for its work for equality for our community notes that “in the United States, a teen takes their own life every 5 hours because they are gay, lesbian, or transgender, and cannot deal with the added stresses that society puts upon them”. This means that before most of us get home today, at least one young person will have died while we gathered with our family and friends to worship a God who gave us Jesus to show us the measure of divine love and concern that is present through God’s grace. WE MUST SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF RADICAL ACCEPTANCE AND LOVE WITHOUT CONDITION before the next child dies. We must be a light to the nations.
You all know me by now and you know that I am headed somewhere—going to ask you to respond. And you are right, I’m going to ask you to stand with me and be the light in this time, in this place. I have gone through my own “surely you don’t mean me, God” and “Surely you don’t mean Open Circle”. But I cannot escape the voice that calls to me and to us as God’s people just as Yahweh called Isaiah..calling us to be a light to the nations… Listen with me to the voice of God calling us to care, to SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF RADICAL ACCEPTANCE AND LOVE WITHOUT CONDITION now in our community, in our world. We must not shun this great work, because the forces of hatred, and persecution rage long and loud in our land.
I believe with my whole heart that we have been called in this place at this time for a purpose—and that is to SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF RADICAL ACCEPTANCE AND LOVE WITHOUT CONDITION to all our brothers and sisters, young, middle age, and old, who have not heard or cannot believe that God loves and accepts them and that we love and accept them.
Tomorrow we celebrate the life and work of one of the world’s great prophets, Rev. Dr. King; and it is incumbent upon us to hear his words, in light of the many challenging and controversial issues we face today. Today, however, we are still in our celebration of our own affiliation as an MCC church; and the Founder and prophet of MCC, Rev. Troy Perry, does not shrink from calling us to this great work. Both of these prophets had dreams. Listen briefly with me to them both. First, Rev. Dr. King, in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize: “I have the audacity today to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered [people] have torn down [people] other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day [humankind] will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will shall proclaim the law of the land….I still believe that we shall overcome.”
Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, who spoke so eloquently to us last week of our place in this world, this week, has this to say about the connection between the dream and Metropolitan Community Churches. “MCC, in solidarity with so many others, we are the keepers of an amazing dream that must not die! MCC was born in the year Dr. King died, and the choice is ours to keep hope alive, to speak up for peace, for non-violence, and for the kind of inclusive justice that will heal our world. Dr. King's memory does not belong to this nation or to one community alone, but to anyone who will offer their gifts and lives to that vision.”
And now listen to Rev. Perry from the same sermon I quoted earlier, “This is my dream, I shall come to the City of God, to [the] Kingdom, knowing I shall be totally accepted as myself, sharing my ‘being somebody’ with all gay people everywhere. I dream of that time when all people who are gay, all who are hiding it, will step forth freely into the light of truth, total acceptance and understanding…I dream that we can all come out of hiding, that we can all stand tall and walk with our heads held high…” Gay or not, I believe that you can all see the glory of Rev. Perry’s dream.
These two dreams, not so different, though one more specific that the other, are worthy dreams for us today. I think that both of these men hoped that we would need neither to preach nor to hear a sermon such as this in 2011. But they would both be equally proud that we are who we are. For we know that God still calls, we still listen, and we act with faith in the One who calls us to bring light to the world. Amen and amen.
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