God, in your presence we find energy and motivation for
action. Awaken our hearts completely,
let us hear your word. May the words
that I speak and the meditations of all our hearts bring us closer to you. Amen
In
MCC we declare that we have a purpose or, purposes. We state, “As God’s liberated people, we
boldly...Reclaim our Holy Identity At MCC, we believe that even
in our humanness, we are holy. We are liberated from other people’s
definitions of who we are. We are made both body and spirit. We
believe that our sexuality is a holy gift from God so we no longer distance our
bodies from our experience with God...
You
know, and I don’t think this will come as a surprise to any of you, MCC is very
much like John the Baptist, a ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ both in the LGBT
larger community and among progressive, forward-thinking people who mostly
claim to be ‘spiritual, but not religious’.
Article after article, and book after book are being written about the
incongruity between spirituality and the religious institution we call
‘Christianity’ in all her many expressions.
I don’t know about you, but this concerns me. It concerns me most of all, not because of
some traditional concept of salvation as linked only to eternal life, but
because I believe that the basic tenets of Christianity—particularly those
related to relationship—still have much to say and bring to the rather enormous
task of healing humanity and protecting the earth.
We
all know about the modern crisis related to identity theft. We have developed all kinds of methods to
protect our identity from being ‘stolen’ by unscrupulous people lurking in
every corner of the internet, going through our unshredded trash, and watching
over our shoulders in stores. I am
stating today that I believe that those of us who still claim Christianity
among our expressions of spirituality have had our identity stolen and it is
time to take it back—back from those who want all Christians to look just like
them, back from those who want to use Christianity in the name of bigotry and
shame, and, back from those who would seek to deny anyone based on any
human-made ‘code of conduct’ from the ability to form, grow and fulfill a right
relationship with the source of all being.
When faced with one of those bigots in my presence, I fight the urge to
scream, “Who do you think you are—to define my relationship with God or, in
your mind, lack thereof?” And then I
remember the futility of such a question—they believe that they possess some
divinely given right to judge me, my behaviors, and the person I choose to
love. Given that, my rage-filled
question becomes redundant.
Here’s
what else I believe: I believe that God
did not give those same people the right to determine what is Christian, or
godly, or acceptable in God’s sight.
They have, in many ways, stolen God’s identity. And, so, when we reclaim our ‘holy identity as
children of God’, we help the world to see a different God—a God who
continuously and truthfully calls us to right relationship. What does all this have to do with the
“Trinity”? It reminds me of those phone
commercials where the kids are asked if faster is better or if doing two things
at once is better. They always answer
with the obvious ‘yes’ even if their childish explanations seem fanciful. I particularly like the one little boy who
thinks his grandmother would like to be able to run like a gazelle. I always wonder if I’m the only one who
identifies with that. Explaining the
Trinity is a little like that—or kinda like this—what is better a God who we
can only experience in one way, or a God who we can experience in three
ways? You’ve got to know those kids
would answer the latter.
So,
what are the three ways we experience God and how do all those ways help us
reclaim our holy identity, not just for ourselves, but for the world. Now, let me acknowledge up front, that I
don’t go for some of the more traditional understandings of the Trinity—nor
would most of you expect me to. And, I
certainly do not go for any explanation of the Trinity that leaves out half of
the world’s population. I, and many
others, see the first element in the Trinity as the Creator and Creation
itself. We cannot separate Creator from
Creation—once we do, we give ourselves permission to violate the Creation and
falsely believe that that violation has no impact on our relationship with the
Creator. Now we may all understand
Creator in our own ways—for some a traditional understanding and for others, a
more expansive and all-embracing understanding of Creator as the Source of all
action, energy, and positive growth. I
invite you to move beyond specific definitions of Creator or Creative Being and
focus on the relationship itself. When I
value the threefold relationship between myself as part of the Creation, the
Creative Being and all that shares this Created Space with me, I begin to find
myself on holy ground. I stand on holy
ground because the very creator of that ground has invited me into right
relationship. And I joyfully
accept.
Secondly,
we experience Divine Creation through the model of relationship, Jesus
Christ. I firmly believe that Jesus did
not walk on this earth to simply make us feel good. You often hear me give thanks for Jesus who
showed us what it is like to be a Child of God.
At the time of Jesus’ baptism, God proclaimed: “This is my beloved one in whom I am well
pleased.” As we grow spiritually and
welcome all that we are called to be, we become “the beloved” along with Jesus
and all the other Children of God. What
is it like to be beloved? It is about
pushing the boundaries of our relationship with all that is sacred further and
further until we begin to understand the nature of right relationship with all
that is. Jesus’ teachings show us what
children of God ‘do’. They love
unconditionally. Then reach out to
others. They pray and meditate on all
things holy and they maintain open communication and right relationship with
the Source of all being. Being beloved
means that we are treasured by creation itself.
There are no words to explain the moment when, standing before the
ocean, or high atop a mountain, when we look up and feel all of creation
celebrating because we are there in the midst—both a part of all that is and
one with all that is at the same time.
And
then there is the third element—the Spirit.
This Spirit, which “blows as it will” is all around and within us. The Spirit is above us and below, circling
around us and pulsing through our very veins every moment of every day. The presence of the Spirit invites us to know
that all of life is sacred—that there is never a moment when we are not a part
of all that is. This presence invites us
to move in right relationship with Creations itself, with all the other
“beloveds”, and with ourselves as part of creative power and energy. If we truly allow ourselves to break through
the boundaries that we have erected and have been built for us, we cannot help
but embrace our identity as beloved children of the universe, of the source of
Creation, and creation itself. We can
look at nature for answers to our troubling questions. Look at the birds—do we ever wonder whether
or not the bluebirds and cardinals chose to be such? Why then, do we wonder about people? Did some choose to be white or brown or
black? Did some choose to be straight,
or gay, or bi, or trans? When we place
those questions squarely where they belong—in the discussion of the right
relationship between Creator and Created—the answer is so obvious as to render
the question unnecessary.
Every
year more and more books are written in an attempt to “redefine God” or to make
the Gospel more accessible to Gay folks, women, senior citizens or whatever
group feels left out of contemporary understandings of spirituality. Have you ever asked yourself why so many
people today refuse to identify with religion, preferring to call themselves
simply spiritual. I think about it all
the time and wonder where we, who have such a rich and wonderful heritage of
sacred space and holy ground—I wonder where we have gone so terribly
wrong. Some of the ‘wrong-ness’ is
obvious: wars fought in the name of any
religion, terrorism in the name of religion (and note that I am speaking as
much about the bombings of abortion clinics by the Right to Lifers as I am
about home-grown terrorists or foreign interlopers), hatred and bigotry,
genocide, heterosexism, misogynism, discrimination and violation of the
earth. God does not condone those
actions as they are not in tune with the right relationship between Creator and
creation. We may blame God for those
actions, but I believe we are wrong when we do.
I also believe that whatever you call the source of all creation is in
pain along beside us when these events occur or are ongoing.
In
the midst of our three-fold experience of all there is, we are invited into the
divine movement, divine dance, if you will, of this sacred time and place. We are holy, created as we are—no explanation
necessary—and become one with all there is. We grow, we change. We expand our understanding; and, sometimes,
modify our beliefs. As we are led by the
Spirit—the one in whom we “live and move and have our being” we allow ourselves
to feel the belovedness of all creation.
And, as we do, we become vivid, brightly painted selves engaging in
right relationships with others, with God, and with ourselves. Our holy identity is then, and only then,
evident to the world. May we seek to
open our hearts wider and wider and our minds deeper and deeper as we say to
the world, “I am a beloved child of the universe, and both creator and creation
rejoice that I am. May we long to help
others step into this beloved place and may we celebrate a God of creativity,
love and action. Amen and Amen
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