What It Means to be MCC: Social Justice 5-12-13

What It Means to be MCC: Social Justice    5-12-13

God, today we focus on your work in the world beyond our comfort zone.  Convict and convince us to listen to your command to go into all the world and preach your Gospel of peace and reconciliation.  Grant us ears to hear, hearts to change, and words from you.  Amen

            For many years MCC has been known as the “gay church.”  But, even as our congregation reveals, we are so much more than that.  In the last two Sundays we have looked at two of the four core values which inform our ministries as an MCC church.  First we looked at what it meant to be a community of love and last week we took a look at spiritual transformation through the eyes of Lydia, one of the early church leaders.  Today, we come to Social Justice.  For those of you who have had the opportunity to see the wonderful film, “Call Me Troy”, you will remember the footage of our founder, Rev. Elder Troy Perry, walking in the early LGBT marches, calling for justice and placing MCC squarely in the middle of the work for human rights for LGBT folks and for all people.  This work and the work that has continued in MCC has earned us the title: “the Human Rights Church”.

            As the Human Rights Church, MCC has developed a philosophy of ministry.  We believe that as Christians we are called to : “stand in solidarity with those who are marginalized and oppressed, be partners in working for change, be witnesses who call attention to Human Rights abuses, be a voice in the international community for justice, lift up new generations of remarkable, far-reaching spiritual activists, build on hope and create our future.

            Our passion for justice is built on a solid scriptural basis.  We know through the history of the Hebrew people that God is a God of Justice and Righteousness.  In the sixth chapter of the writings of the prophet Amos, we hear:  “And what does the Lord require of you?—to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”   We know that God, our Creator, is the defender of poor and oppressed people everywhere.  Jeremiah says, “’let the one who boasts boast about this:      that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord”.  Our passage from the First Letter of John this morning reminds us of this, My children, our love must not be simply words or mere talk—it must be true love, which shows itself in action and truth. This, then, is how we’ll know we belong to the truth…”

            Our Human Rights Protocol contains some “baseline standards” from which we can learn much regarding international and local human rights work.  First, to only go where we are invited and to assume we have a lot to learn.  As we listen to our hosts, we begin to forge partnerships.  We always want to be able to respond when requested, and to be flexible to the realities and differences in establishing churches internationally. 

MCC is approached by people and organizations from around the world
asking for our assistance and support. Prioritizing our response is critical in managing our resources and responding to cries for justice around the world.  Thorough assessments are utilized to determine the potential for success.  This coincides with our efforts to learn all we can about the culture and the country.  As we walk humbly with our God in these efforts, we acknowledge that we are never more expert than the people in the communities themselves.  As we listen and learn, we forge partnerships in the region.  While we want to be able to respond when requested, we always want to be flexible to the realities and differences in establishing churches internationally.  It is difficult for us to understand sometimes the concern for safety.  Human Rights work helps us to understand the culture and the issues and to build trust.

Initially, our global justice work became organized under the Moderator’s Global Justice team of MCC.  The purpose of the Moderator’s Global Justice Team of Metropolitan Community Churches is “to be an agent of change by building bridges that liberate and unite voices of sacred defiance.  While transforming history, we seek to live the Good News of the Gospel”. 

            In the beginning, this team had a five-year vision.  Among the work they wanted to accomplish was the establishment of LGBT mosques, the formation of an MCC Social Justice Council with members from as many nations as possible, the development of a Global Justice Center with staff to provide training, the insistence that LGBT issues be on the table at every Human Rights gathering, and to work for anti-violence/hate crimes legislation on a global basis.  Additional work includes a multi-language “virtual church”, an increase of financial resources, and dialogues with Catholic and Orthodox communities.  

And then, something amazing happened.  Just one year ago, the Global Justice Institute was founded.  The Global Justice Institute is a joint project of MCC and The Fellowship.   Both denominations took an extra offering at Easter and ear-marked it for the development of the Institute.  Fellowship Bishop commented, “We’re partnering in the Easter Offering Campaign because justice work is Jesus’ work. Whenever we stand with the oppressed, the marginalized, the rejected, the persecuted, we stand with Jesus and we minister to Jesus.”

And, just like that the Global Justice Institute became a reality.  Just this past Easter, Open Circle contributed over $500 to the Global Justice Institute in a record-breaking year, as more MCC churches participated than ever before.  We are a church that is on fire for Human Rights and Justice whether it be at a local school board meeting or in Uganda, Pakistan, or the former Soviet Union.  Even before the establishment of this Institute, MCC’ers had done amazing things in equally amazing places.  Rev. Elder Dr. Nancy Wilson reminds us of all that we have already done.  “Together, we’ve supported our brothers and sisters across Eastern Europe as they made historic advances for religious freedom and human rights. We’ve joined hands with MCCers across Central and Latin America as they trained a new generation of spiritual leaders. You have helped plant indigenous ministries in Southeast Asia that are challenging injustice and intolerance, and your gifts continue to provide support for lesbian and transgender communities in Pakistan. You helped underwrite the first LGBT conference in Russia and publish the first book about LGBT spiritual rights in the Russian language. You helped create safe space for Ugandans, who face daily threats to freedom and life. And you made it possible for MCC to boldly march in the first-ever gay rights marches in such places as Jamaica and Romania.!”

            The purpose and charter of the Global Justice Institute is impressive.  As our voice in the world, the “Global Justice Institute will:

• Serve as an umbrella organization to efficiently and most effectively carry out the social justice ministries to which MCC has been committed since our earliest days.
• Create a safe space for spiritual activists who are fighting homophobia and transphobia.
• Effect societal change through a three-pronged strategy of theological reconciliation, economic development and positive press coverage for LGBT peoples.
• Serve as a joint ministry of MCC and The Fellowship, the Global Justice Institute will provide solidarity and support where people are still marginalized and persecuted.
• Speak truth to power and will add our voices and resources to those of people who seek justice, freedom and equality.
• Carry out its work while embodying the core values, mission and principles of MCC.
• Create partnerships with indigenous groups and human rights organizations to achieve its objectives.
• Build on what MCC has already accomplished in Pakistan, Uganda, Eastern Europe, Jamaica, Asia and so many other places.”

The Global Justice Institute knows that we are doing our work in a world which encompasses, among other things, “volatility, a gap between the haves and the have-nots, advances in human rights, and escalations in violence, loss of culture; violence as commonplace, the need to understand pluralistic concepts of religiosities, escalating fundamentalism, funding much of the violence, increasing need to attend to Global Warming, increase in anti-Semitism and racism, corporations dominating the economies, leading to poverty, HIV on the rise in many places, shifting perspectives on gender and poverty and identity, denial of cultural values, and terrorism. 

Let me tell you one final story.  Uganda remains one of the most challenging environments for LGBT people to live open and productive lives.  Male Samuel is a 26-year-old sugar cane grower whose, family abandoned him when he was just 11 years old.  He is gay.  To support himself, he began his own sugar cane business–growing the crop and selling it to retailers. He currently rents 3 acres of land and employs 13 people, some gay and some straight, who work together for the common good of their families and villages. The Global Justice Institute is partnering with Male to expand his business and his opportunity to hire more workers. Our investment of $1500 US will allow Male to rent 2 more acres of land, hire 6 new workers, 4 of whom will be members of the LGBT community of faith we help to support, and put a new roof over his storage barn. With the new land and new workers, Male will be able to increase his production by 66%.

We will continue to make a difference as MCC churches throughout the world.  May God honor our efforts and increase their effectiveness.  Amen and amen. 

What It Means to be MCC: Spiritual Transformation 5-5-13

God, we yearn for more of you in our lives.  Speak to us of your love and longing for us to turn more and more towards you.  May my words and our thoughts be only of you.  Amen

            My name is Lydia—at least that’s how you know me.  Really, they never recorded my name.  I was the “Lydian woman” from Lydia in Asia Minor.  I, just like some of you, am a “woman of purple”.  I ran a successful dyeing business and I specialized in all hues of purple.  Don’t you just love purple?  It’s a color of many variations, each one more beautiful than the next.  Only the richest of the rich canould afford my purple cloth and trim.  It was delicate and handmade.  Oh, forgive me.  I’m not here to sell you my fabrics; I’m here to tell you a story.

            I’m from Greece; although, at the time of this story, I was living in Philippi.  I had a nice house and a fine family; although my husband died when my youngest was just a tiny thing.  At first, I thought it would be too hard to survive; but, I made it work by building up my business.  At the time of this story, I was really quite successful and well thought of in my community.  I was lucky, I guess.  I found something I liked to do and did it as best as I could.  Anyway, I wasn’t looking for my life to change.  I was perfectly happy with the way things were going.  I had a good relationship with God, or so I thought and I wasn’t seeking anything special to light up my heart.  While I hadn’t actually converted to Judaism, I certainly thought they were on the right track and I often listed to their teachers teach.  All was well and I was fine.  I suppose now I know that I was satisfied with the status quo—that it had really never occurred to me to wonder if there was something more to life—I was rich, my children were growing up, and life was good. 

            Then, something amazing happened.  I had gone down by the river to the quiet place where the women gathered to pray and worship.  It was a lovely spot, so peaceful and tranquil—we just loved our times there—such a sisterhood we had together all worshipping God.  On one particularly lovely night, a man named Paul and his entourage including Silas and that nice young man, Timothy, came upon all of us who were present singing and praying.  Paul told us the most incredible story.  He told us about Jesus.

            He said that just a few years ago, there was a man named Jesus who was from Nazareth and who walked from place to place healing people and teaching them about a new way of living.  He explained that this new way of living was all about love—God’s love for us being shown to the world through this man, Jesus.  At first, I didn’t understand all that Paul was telling us—seemed too good to be true.  But as I listened, I felt my heart growing more and more open to the truth of what Paul was telling me.  Something strange happened to me and I found myself becoming quiet inside, listening to all that Paul was telling us.  How could it be that yielding to God’s complete love could so thoroughly change who we are and who we want to be? 

            Paul told us that God loved us so much that Jesus was sent to teach all the people all about a new covenant.  You see, even those of us who had been drawn to Judaism from another religion believed in Yahweh, a God who had a lot of rules that we had to follow or risk being punished.  Even so, everything about this God made sense to me.  I mean, how could you not believe in a God who created the color purple?  So, I thought I was very religious; but, I guess I had a lot to learn.  Paul kept talking about how changed your life would be if you followed the teachings of this Jesus.  I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to upset my spiritual “apple cart”, if you know what I mean.  But, as I listened a strange thing began to happen.  My heart seemed to grow lighter.  I felt something calling to me saying, “I love you, I really love you.  Let me show you how different your life could be if you really let me love you.”  It took me awhile to understand that this something was God—the same God who created the earth, the color purple, and me.  I wish I could really explain to you what this invitation really felt like; so, I’ll try.  It seemed to me as if the first message was that I was ok, truly ok, to be just the way that I am.  I didn’t feel like I had to change who I was though the message pulled so much at my heart, I found myself wanting to let it in and allow God to change me.

            This Jesus, according to Paul spoke about a new way of being religious—a way that meant that you loved your neighbor just the way that you loved yourself.  Everybody was welcome, even the sick, and the poor, men AND women, and children most of all.  It seemed as if the primary message of this man Jesus had to do with justice and equality inside the new reign of God.  We were so used to fighting battles and winning or, in some cases, losing wars, that this was amazing news to us.  Jesus was a shepherd of all the people who loved God and loved him.  How I wish I could have seen Jesus for myself.  Paul told us, though, that when we opened our hearts and allowed God to make changes in how we thought and felt that it would be as if we had seen Jesus with our own eyes.  All of this happened so fast as if I was transformed in a heartbeat.  Of course, now I know that once God starts to work in your heart, unless you stop the process, God continues to work in your heart throughout your whole life.   All kinds of things happened in the years between then and now.  God kept showing me how much I was loved AND how much I had to learn about truly living in the spirit.  But, let me finish my story before I go there.

            Anyway, after we women listened to Paul and Silas, I made a decision to be baptized.  I asked all of my household to be baptized with me and they were.  We were baptized by Paul into this new life.  Afterwards, I invited all of the people, men and women, who were with Paul or who knew Paul to meet and to stay at my house.  But, I left the choice up to them.  I said, “If you have judged me to be faithful to Yahweh, enter and stay at my house.  In fact, I guess I was a little pushy, I wanted them to enjoy my home and have a nice place to stay.  Later, when Paul was writing letters, he sent one to the church that had grown up around the people who first believed.  He said, “I thank my God always upon every remembrance of you in every supplication of mine for all of you, as I offer my supplication with joy, because of the contribution you have made to the good news from the first day until this moment.”

            You know, Rev. Carol asked me to talk to you about “spiritual transformation”.  I never really thought about how all the changes came about in my life.  I just know that once I allowed God to begin to work in my heart and I began to put some real time into developing my understanding of who I am and who God is, I began to feel differently about so many things in my life.  Spending time alone with God, meditating, singing, praying opened up my heart even wider.  I don’t think I really believed that God truly loved me until that day when Paul was telling us about Jesus and the change that He wanted to bring into the world.  And coming together with all the others who believed and loved was wonderful indeed.

            About the only thing I meditated on for the first couple of years was learning to truly love my neighbors which meant, of course, that I had to learn to love myself.  Now, that was a lot harder than I thought.  I wasn’t like a lot of the women in my time.  I couldn’t really afford to be.  I had to be smarter and think faster and, yes, be a little ruthless to build my business.  In that process, I had forgotten who I was, a simple woman, a lover of purple, who utilized the gifts that God gave me to build a pretty successful life.  But, suddenly that wasn’t enough.  I wanted more of the peace that Jesus promised and I wanted to spend more time in quiet, maybe even silent prayer and praise. 

            God offers you this opportunity to learn to trust God and grow in your knowledge and love of God as I was offered.  Spiritual transformation is no more than that—spending time in God’s presence, soaking up the love, offering yourself to God, and entering the process.  I have to go, now, but don’t forget to look for the color purple on your way home.  A God who created the color purple is a good God indeed.  Amen and amen. 

“What Does It Mean to be MCC: New Community—New Love” 4-28-13

“What Does It Mean to be MCC: New Community—New Love”  4-28-13

God, your teachings show us that without love, our actions gain nothing.  Pour your blessed gift of love into our hearts, so that as we are made alive by your Spirit, we may know goodness and peace.  Grant us the gift of sharing your love with all your children in the world.  Speak to us and speak through me, today and always.   Amen.

                As you know, we are now only months away from the 2013 General Conference.  You will be well represented and if there are others of you still in deciding mode—let me remind you that you have only two days to register at the early bird rate.  So, as we prepare for the General Conference; and, because we have many new and old members and friends for whom MCC is a new experience, I thought it a good time to review or introduce what it means to be MCC.  MCC has four core values, Inclusion, Community, Spiritual Transformation and Social Action, and we will spend the next four weeks looking at each of those.  Then we will explore some of the other aspects of MCC beliefs as they relate to us as individuals and as a church.  These sermons will continue right up to the time of General Conference and should give us quite a good foundation for participating in and understanding all that is going on at the Conference. 

                As I looked at the scripture passages chosen for today, I was immediately drawn to the Core Value of—“Community” defined by MCC as “offering a safe and open community for people to worship, learn and grow in their faith…. We are committed to equipping ourselves and each other to do the work that God has called us to do in the world”.  This core value fits perfectly with Jesus’ words to his disciples.  Jesus, after washing the feet of the disciples and identifying Judas as his betrayer, gives these words to those disciples who are gathered around him.   “Since both I and God have been glorified, I will not be with you much longer.  You cannot go with me where I am going.  So, I am giving you a brand new commandment which will define you as my disciples.  Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.  This is the way people will know you belong to me.” 

                This is no easy love—no romantic love—and no tough love—eye for an eye kind of love.  This is a love your enemies love, a love even those who hate you love, and a love that is as strong as the God from whom we receive the ability to love in the first place.  In this modern culture, we throw the word “love” around to the point to where we have no true sense of the profundity of the love to which Jesus is calling us.  Rarely, do we even get close to loving with this kind of intensity or completeness; but, when we do, miracles happen.  Since we, as Jesus’ disciples are about the call to love one another, we create communities and we create a sense of community. 

                Now, it is important to differentiate between the two.  As purely a sociological term, a community itself may engender no sense of community at all.  It may be just a section of town or country that is somehow distinguished from another section.  These communities may be defined or described in positive or negative ways.  There was a time when everyone raised in the South knew exactly what it meant to be from the “wrong side of the tracks.”  New Yorkers have lots of communities—the “Upper West Side, SOHO, the Village, etc.”  The Villages may take the concept of “communities” to the extreme—people more often than not describing themselves as from a particular village or north or south of 466.  Jesus is not speaking of this kind of community; although, throughout history, communities of like-minded folks have often grown up around a sense of Christian discipleship.

                Jesus is describing a sense of community that is defined by a love so extreme that it mirrors the love that Jesus has for us.  This love brings with it a challenge that is not found in our casual, cultural definitions of love.  This challenge, according to Episcopal priest, Rev. Suzanne Gutherie is the “call to ever widening ever expansive circles of love”, the call “to live and die for love” and the call to love “embodying the equalities of gentleness and generosity”. We will know that we are maturing in love, according to Gutherie, because “our love and our actions have no boundaries.” Jesus, when he called it a “new” commandment was emphasizing the radical difference between this kind of love and the kind of love we usually experience in the world.

                Here is where we connect with the UFMCC Core Value of “Community”.  If the primary purpose of the value of community is to offer a safe and open place (physical, emotional, and spiritual) for people to worship, learn, and grow in their faith”, we must courageously ask ourselves how to do that.  We need look no further than Rev. Troy Perry’s experience in the very first days of MCC.   After it became clear that there was not only a need but also a desire to begin to add some organization to this blossoming new church effort, Rev. Troy says, “We decided upon such standard procedures as the one for communion. It would always be an open communion. We would always state that it was. We would extend an invitation for all to come to the Lord's table. We would prepare ourselves by an open act

of confession. We would ask for absolution, and it would be granted. We would then participate in the act of supping at the Lord's table, by taking bread dipped in wine. We utilized the books of worship from the Episcopal, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches as well as those that members of the congregation wanted considered. We experimented and we accommodated. Ours was a working church, an active, growing church. We knew that the worship of God comes from the heart. We felt that the diversity and the freedom and the real sincerity of worship would bring us together in unity. It has.”  This is, in its truest sense a description of how MCC would live into Jesus’ call to love one another. 

                We note what was most important to those pioneer MCC’ers.  The first, and it remains so for us as well, is that communion is to be freely available to all.  Every week you hear me say that there are no rules or regulations to which you must first adhere in order to be welcome. And every week I wonder if there are those of you who struggle to believe that it is so. Notice that the books of worship that were  utilized by those early worshippers were taken from many traditions. They “experimented” and then, in an act of love, they “accommodated”.   The “diversity”, “freedom” and “sincerity of worship” resulted in unity.  We, forty-something hears later, would do well to think on these things in the context of the community mandated by Jesus.

                Scott Peck, noted author of The Road Less Travelled, calls us to think about the phases of building community.  Community, he notes, is a set of conscious actions.  Peck gives us four stages of building community which I think apply to Open Circle and help us describe and analyze the growth TOWARD community by any young church or in any church when a sense of community has died and needs to be jump-started once more.  In The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, Peck  lists 4 stages.  It would be interesting to take a poll and discover where each of you would place Open Circle. 

                Stage One, he calls “Pseudocommunity”.  This beginning stage is “when people first come together, where  people try to be nice, and present what they feel are their most personable and friendly characteristics”.  We might, just might, be a little beyond that stage.  The second stage occurs when “people move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough to present their "shadow" selves”.  He calls this phase “Chaos” because it is a difficult stage to live through. 

                The Third Stage he calls “Emptiness”.  Moving beyond all those harried and hurried attempts to fix, heal, or change the chaos stage, this stage is visible “when all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness, common to us all as human beings”.  It is out of this emptiness that True Community evolves.  Listen to his description of the fourth stage:  “True community [is] the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community”.   Peck describes this stage as “glory” and  it “reflects a deep yearning in every human soul for compassionate understanding from one's fellows”.

                As we express that yearning in our souls and embrace the yearning in others’ souls for “compassionate understanding” we become more truly the church that Jesus calls us to be.  A church built on the love that Christ calls us to embrace will not only be open and safe for all, it will be free from judgment and self-righteous refusal to embrace all who enter the sacred circle of faith we call Open.  As we learn more and more about the Metropolitan Community Church, may we use these experiences to also learn more about ourselves and our relationship with the love of our gracious and all-embracing God.  Beloved, love and let yourself be loved.  Amen and Amen.