Still Walking With the

I was going through some old files this morning and came upon a sermon that got me fired from a job about five years ago. As the congregation I currently serve announces a new policy concerning weddings and holy unions (we will no longer function as agents of the state in an unjust system that unfairly denies to same-sex couples the full legal rights and recognitions of marriage), it struck me that the words from half a decade ago remain pretty fresh. It's a little long for a post, but I am wondering again, as I consider a job lost years ago, "was it something I said?"

Almost 40 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave voice to a vision. He articulated a dream that many of us still share: a dream of a beloved community, a community gathered at table, a community, he said, where “black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” would be able to sit together at one table and sing together in one voice: free at last, free at last.

This morning, I want to suggest to you that the work of dreaming is not yet done; the vision of the beloved community is not yet realized; there are yet more places to set at the table of brotherhood … and sisterhood. I have a dream today to share with you.

You see, I am utterly convinced that if Dr. King were alive today, his roll call to the table would have sounded something like this: black people and white people; sisters and brothers, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, gays and straights … singing together, free at last.

Dr. King claimed that his vision was deeply rooted in the American Dream, and so it was. But his vision was also deeply rooted in gospel truth. In expanding his dream today, my vision is deeply rooted in the American Dream. It is deeply rooted in Dr. King’s dream. And it is deeply rooted in gospel truth, as well.

Now some might say it is a risky rhetorical strategy to lay claim to the American Dream at a time when there is shrinking support in legislative halls for expanded protection for gays and lesbians. And some might say it is risky strategy to lay claim to Dr. King’s vision and image knowing full well that King was quite conservative with respect to sexual politics. And still others might say it is risky strategy – indeed might charge that it is heretical -- to lay claim to gospel truth when the church seems bent on narrowing its vision.

Nevertheless, as our denomination debates an amendment to our church constitution that would bar our ministers from performing ceremonies of Holy Union between same-sex couples, the Sunday of the holiday weekend honoring the life and memory of our nation’s greatest prophet of freedom and justice is the right time for some risk taking. It is the right time to say “no” to Amendment O.

So let’s examine these three rhetorical risks and see if we can uncover together a prophetic truth that outstrips all rhetoric just as it touches real lives in our churches.

The first risk is the easiest to answer. Even in the midst of our deepest divisions about church polity, the Presbyterian Church has stood firmly for full civil rights and protections for sexual minorities. We do not struggle there. We proclaim with one voice – albeit a bit of a weak one from some quarters in the church – that all Americans are entitled to their full claim on the American Dream. So my vision is deeply rooted in the American Dream.

The second risk is a bit tougher, because here we are moving into the realm of interpretation. King died before the sexual revolution made it remotely possible for gays to leave the closet and lay claim to full civil rights, much less full ecclesial ones. But in choosing this day to speak to these issues, I am in pretty good company. Members of Dr. King’s family, including Coretta Scott King, and many of his closest aides have argued persuasively that Dr. King’s vision of the beloved community was evolving at the time of his assassination, and they believe he would have been out front in the march toward justice for sexual minorities.

In his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King answered his white clergy critics who had called him an “outside agitator,” saying, “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.”

For Christians, any understanding of justice must be based on love. Dr. King understood this and preached it often. In his letter from jail, King challenged the church to join the struggle, because his dream was founded first and foremost on that gospel truth of justice based on love.

Unfortunately, in the midst of the current crisis, it is precisely the church that is framing issues of justice on a legalistic interpretation of a handful of passages of scripture, while ignoring the very real pain suffered by individuals who are locked out, left behind, ignored, scorned and even hatefully spited because of their sexual identity. And this injustice is done in the name of a certain conception of the gospel.

So my most risky rhetorical strategy is to lay claim to that same gospel truth. But truly, this is the only claim that matters.

Now some will argue that scripture is clear with respect to issues of homosexual behavior. Those who disagree with me – and let’s be clear: there are many who do -- will point to the Sodom and Gomorrah story, to the Leviticus Holiness Codes, and to Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Corinthians as the seven citations of the Biblical witness against homosexuals. There are almost as many interpretations of these passages as there are interpreters. And the interpretations vary widely with respect to meaning, context and centrality of the passages.

But without dragging through the mud of exegesis here, let us at least agree that what’s going on here is precisely that: the interpretation of texts. I am interpreting several this morning: the “text” of the American Dream; the “text” of Dr. King’s dream; and the “text” of gospel truth. We cannot come to any text – holy scripture or the Sunday Times – without interpreting.

Let us also agree that the central text at stake – the Biblical text – is inherently a living text. It is the live word of the living God, as the theologian Walter Brueggeman puts it. And the evangelical truth of scripture is focused on and lives out of its main claims not its lesser claims, as Brueggeman argued last fall at East Liberty. The dispute lies here: what is central, what is provisional in scripture?

The sodomy of the Sodom and Gomorrah story, the particulars of the holiness codes, the examples in Romans and Corinthians are lesser claims, just as those passages that for so many years were used to deny women their rightful and ordained places of leadership in the church are lesser claims. Issues of context and translation support that claim strongly although we do not have the time this morning to trace out the arguments.

Indeed, as the Methodist clergywoman Maurine Waun writes, “The pain of sexual minorities is, at this moment, so ponderous and so enormous that the church is missing the mark by not even daring to look beyond the scriptural debate toward the hurts and issues of persons who are bravely and genuinely struggling in their everyday experience.”

No matter where you stand on Amendment O, or on ordination standards, these genuine struggles – and this deeply felt hurt – compel us to be welcoming and open to individuals in this house no matter what their sexual orientation.

Looking beyond the scriptural debate, however, does not necessitate looking beyond scripture. Our passages this morning from Amos and Isaiah are central. They are central to my sense of call and ministry. They are central to my understanding of justice. They are central to my understanding of gospel truth.

We must come to these texts with imagination. We are called to do so, and we do so all the time. Through our faithful imaginations the live word of the living God moves beyond itself in ways that were previously unavailable to the community of faith. Dr. King imagined a beloved community in which, as Amos said, “justice would roll down like water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Dr. King dreamed that “every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall me made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” Now Amos, in chapter 5, and Isaiah, in chapter 40, were not thinking about Martin Luther King having a dream … but he did.

And now, so we are called to dream, to catch the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing afresh and anew and carrying us toward the beloved community. We stand, on this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday Sunday morning, in a long line of heroes of the faith who have caught the wind and walked with it.

Congressman John Lewis, who, as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in August of 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial delivered the speech preceding Dr. King’s, relates a story in the introduction to his memoir of the Civil Rights Movement. Now you should know that John Lewis is, along with Dr. King, one of my heroes of the faith. Lewis was born less than 100 miles from where I was born. And this story goes back to his rural Alabama roots. Let me read it to you:

On this particular afternoon – it was a Saturday, I’m almost certain – about fifteen of us children were outside my Aunt Seneva’s house, playing in her dirt yard. The sky began clouding over, the wind started picking up, lightning flashed far off in the distance, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about playing anymore; I was terrified. I had already seen what lightning could do. I’d seen fields catch on fire after a hit to a haystack. I’d watched trees actually explode when a bolt of lightning struck them, the sap inside rising to an instant boil, the trunk swelling until it burst its bark. The sight of those strips of pine bark snaking through the air like ribbons was both fascinating and horrifying.

Lightning terrified me, and so did thunder. My mother used to gather us around her whenever we heard thunder and she’d tell us to hush, be still now, because God was doing his work. That was what thunder was, my mother said. It was the sound of God doing his work.

But my mother wasn’t with us on this particular afternoon. Aunt Seneva was the only adult around, and as the sky blackened and the wind grew stronger, she herded us all inside.

Her house was not the biggest place around, and it seemed even smaller with so many children squeezed inside. Small and surprisingly quiet. All of the shouting and laughter that had been going on earlier, outside, had stopped. The wind was howling now, and the house was starting to shake. We were scared. Even Aunt Seneva was scared.

And then it got worse. Now the house was beginning to sway. The wood plank flooring beneath us began to bend. And then, a corner of the room started lifting up.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. None of us could. This storm was actually pulling the house toward the sky. With us inside it.

That was when Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands. Line us and hold hands, she said, and we did as we were told. Then she had us walk as a group toward the corner of the room that was rising. From the kitchen to the front of the house we walked, the wind screaming outside, sheets of rain beating on the tin roof. Then we walked back in the other direction, as another end of the house began to lift.

And so it went, back and forth, fifteen children walking with the wind, holding that trembling house down with the weight of our small bodies.

More than half a century has passed since that day, and it has struck me more than once over those many years that our society is not unlike the children in that house, rocked again and again by the winds of one storm or another, the walls around us seeming at times as if they might fly apart.

It seemed that way in the 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement, when America itself felt as if it might burst at the seams – so much tension, so many storms. But the people of conscience never left the house. They never ran away. They stayed, they came together and they did the best they could, clasping hands and moving toward the corner of the house that was the weakest.

And then another corner would lift, and we would go there.

And eventually, inevitably, the storm would settle, and the house would still stand.

But we knew another storm would come, and we would have to do it all over again.

And we did.

And we still do, all of us. You and I.

Children holding hands, walking with the wind.

Today in the church we are buffeted by winds of strife. That wind, that strife, threatens to tear the house apart. The splinters are evident already and when the wind of strife blows them they strike deep wounds into individuals in the house.

But we are called, by another wind, to join hands, to walk with the wind and to hold the house together. For in the midst of the wind there is a dream. In the center of the house rests a table. And around the table, we can still be gathered: black folks and white folks, Protestants and Catholics, gays and straights -- one people sharing one hope, one faith, one Lord. Free at last. Free at last.

Happy Christmas

To everything there is a season, and the calendar says it’s the season to say, “season’s greetings, and God bless us, everyone!”

Hannah at the Hall of Fame

 Hard to fathom, but it’s almost Christmas again according to the calendar on the kitchen wall. That particular calendar came from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown where Cheryl and I took Hannah last June to celebrate her 13^th birthday. Yes, having failed miserably to pass along to two sons my lifelong love affair with the summer game, I have raised a baseball-loving daughter – and what a great year it was for that in these parts!

We live our days, as you probably do, according to many calendars and the baseball calendar is one among them. Of course, according to the Mayan calendar, you might never get to read this at all if I don’t rush on quickly and get this year posted to the blog. So, according to the calendars …

Mike, Cheryl and Clark

The travel calendar was full of lots of small jaunts: the five of us spent a grand long weekend at a house on Virginia Beach in early spring; Martin and I journeyed down the Crooked Road to record what became his senior project; Cheryl and I joined a couple (Clark and Mike) from church for a long weekend on the Outer Banks where Clark and I ran a half marathon (while Cheryl and Mike created a fantastic breakfast for the conquering heroes!); Cheryl and I had another lovely short trip through Virginia’s wine country to celebrate our 30^th (!) anniversary; I attended General Assembly in Pittsburgh in early July; and the whole family journeyed to Chattanooga in later July. Other travels crossed onto other calendars, as you’ll see.

The academic calendar saw one major milestone: Martin graduated from Wakefield High School in June! With appropriate fanfare – which is to say very little for our introverted middle child – we trooped down to Constitution Hall on a steamy summer evening and witnessed Martin march across the stage that famously barred Marian Anderson from performing. Wakefield has to be one of the most racially and ethnically diverse public schools in the country (and the one where President Obama delivered his Faux-News-controversial“back-to-school” speech a few years back), so it was fun to sit in those seats and imagine the 1930s Daughters of the American Revolution revolving in their graves! One of the “just-plain-cool” aspects of life in metro DC is how often the ordinary parts of life intersect with momentous pieces of American history.

Martin

Immediately after graduation Martin headed of for a few days at the beach with his girlfriend’s family and then decamped for camp. He spent the summer on the staff at Hanover, following in his parents’ footsteps as a counselor on those sacred 600 acres outside of Richmond. At the moment, Martin is taking a gap year before entering the U of Mary Washington next fall. The gap year is filled with a fantastic, crowd-funded film project documenting the music, musicians and instrument makers along Virginia’s CrookedRoad. This father-son filmmaking project has taken us to the stage of the Carter Family Fold, the workshop of internationally renowned guitar-maker WayneHenderson, and the dance floor of the Floyd Country Store. Early in 2013 it may take us all the way to meet and interview Ralph Stanley. We thank many of you for supporting the project and look forward to a red-carpet debut next spring!

Bud at the beach!

Martin will be following his big brother’s footsteps at UMW from which Bud will graduate next spring. He has spent a busy, focused year of study and work. He spent the summer living back home while completing a fine internship experience at a small, DC-based tech firm. During the summer he had a paper accepted at an international academic conference, and traveled to Melbourne, AU, to deliver the paper the week of Thanksgiving. Those experiences may point him toward graduate school, and his Christmas break is being filled with applications to Georgia Tech and UC Santa Cruz. He’s focused on those schools first for their digital gaming programs, but also high on the qualifying factors: good ultimate teams! The lad is mad for Frisbee, and travels extensively to play tournaments up and down the East Coast as president of UMW’s men’s team club. He is also mad for Monica (as are we), his girlfriend of several years, and the two of them joined us for a trip down to Chattanooga over the summer to visit with the southern grands, aunts, uncles and cousins. A truly lovely time was had by all, as the bucolic pics indicate.

Hannah on the beach

The academic calendar saw Hannah begin her final year of middle school, which means we’ve now attended the last school music concert that will include beginning musicians – no more Hot Cross Buns! In the way of gifted and talented 8^th graders, Hannah is a busy kid: soccer, band, model UN, honors society along with various volunteer service activities keep the family calendar a crowded mess. Add the baseball schedule to that (and we are counting the days till spring training) and you’ve got some joyous chaos. Hannah and I made it to about 10 Nats games last season, and we were in the seats for the sad end of the season as the hometown boys came up just a bit short in their last playoff game. The girl suffered a couple of bouts of “baseball fever,” a strange malady whose only known cure is skipping school to ride bikes to a big league game.

the whole crew

The work calendar continues more or less apace for Cheryl. She is now in her 10^th year at the Library of Congress, and still calls her work “the best job in the world.” Even as I jot these musings, she is anticipating a call from the Library’s human resources department with news that her job – a “not to exceed” appointment that expires soon – has been made a full-time, permanent position … at least until the whole institution falls off the fiscal cliff! (UPDATE: she got her job!) Cheryl continues to teach teachers how to use the Library’s massive on-line resources, to write and edit content for their blog, and to represent the Library at various conferences around the country. She spent some quality time in Vegas this fall, but we heard nothing about it because what happens in Vegas …. Actually, she was impressed by the sites, amused by the lights and saddened by the hopelessness that feeds the place and that the place feeds on. And work was, well, work.

My work calendar has changed rather dramatically this fall. Beginning in September I went to 3/5 time at the wee kirk. That freed up the church’s budget such that we were able to hire, for the first time in anyone’s memory, a church administrator, and, beginning next month, we’ll add a part-time Christian educator to the ministry team. More changes are coming, and I believe we’re finally living into the promise that drew us to Clarendon almost a decade ago.

in Seattle

It’s amazing to me to write that … a decade ago. Now my own calendar has turned to a new page. I don’t know what the next page will look like. The transition to a new schedule kicked off with a month-long study leave in August. The highlight of that time was an amazing writing retreat out on Vashon Island. It was the first time I’ve ever been to the great northwest and I loved it! No humidity! No mosquitos! Volcanoes! Oh, and coffee shops on every corner! I got a huge amount of writing done, and this fall I completed the first full draft of a novel. In addition, I’ve been recording a cycle of songs (with Martin playing a variety of instruments including violin, mandolin, banjo and dulcimer), and trying to get through a long list of house and garden projects. At some point the household budget will make demands on this calendar and I’ll be looking for a second part-time gig, but for now I’m taking the time to do some creative work that I’ve longed to do for years.

The liturgical calendar continues to be the dominant one in our lives. This season of Advent, of preparing our lives for the coming again into them of a light that no darkness can overcome, challenges us to seek out the light that shines forth in each soul, including our own broken ones. As the great Leonard Cohen put it in Anthem, “there’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” So, as the calendar turns to another year, pay particular attention to the broken places because, as the story of Jesus reminds me, that’s where the light will shine. Let your light shine brightly, because the world needs still more light to break forth.

Grace and peace to you all.

Hymn for the Storm

Here's a hymn I wrote after coming home from Katrina cleanup. It seems pertinent this week. Feel free to use it.

Amidst the Storm (copyright David Ensign, 2006)

When raging storms push forth a rising tide,

When rain and wind leave nowhere left to hide,

We cling to branches of the tree of life.

Alleluia.

Foundations crumble on the shifting sand.

We search for hope across a broken land.

Amidst the raging storm we seek God’s hand.

Alleluia.

The homeless wonder through the city’s street.

They seek small shelter from the scorching heat.

Amazing grace would be so cool and sweet.

Alleluia.

When on our own we cannot seem to start,

But neighbors are God’s feet and hands and heart

It is as if You’ve made the waters part.

Alleluia.

The captives will taste liberty again.

The suffering find a balm for deepest pain.

The blind will see, the voiceless lift the strain:

Alleluia. Amen.

Tune: Engelberg

Storms Make Theologians of Us All

“Seriously. What is wrong with some folks?”

That’s the Facebook heading this morning on a link to an article about a conservative preacher who is blaming Hurricane Sandy on gays and lesbians.

Chaplain John McTernan (and I can’t quite figure out where the title comes from) opens a blog post with this broadside: “God is systematically destroying America.” He goes on to recite the litany of drought, heat and major storms of the past year or so, pausing to note that “last August, Hurricane Isaac hit New Orleans seven years later, on the exact day of Hurricane Katrina. Both hit during the week of the homosexual event called Southern Decadence in New Orleans!”

In the manor of those who troll grand conspiracy waters, McTernan is big on date coincidences, noting also that Sandy is striking precisely 21 years after the “Perfect Storm,” and helpfully pointing out some numerology along the way by dividing 21 into 7 X 3 to remind us of something about the Trinity.

I do love a good “hand-of-God-conspiracy,” especially when it comes with dates and numbers that can sound vaguely Biblical!

Sure, the guy is nuts and massively offensive, and it’s remarkable that he can get any attention at all. I know plenty of crazy people with nutty ideas who never make the news, so hats off to the chaplain for figuring out how to grab attention.

But, seriously, what’s wrong with some folks?

Actually, nothing at all. In the midst of storms, most of us become theologians of what sort or another depending, of course, on the nature of our God and our sacred texts. While the chaplain is an offensive jerk on so many levels, he is also just playing into the fundamentally human desire to understand events whose power defies human scale and human control. If we stand under some satisfactory explanation of the event then we have at least the illusion of control. The explanation doesn’t have to be true or accurate, it just has to provide a mental or emotional shelter from the storm.

The chaplain’s rant does not surprise me at all. Neither did the next thing that appeared in my Facebook feed after the link to his craziness: an appearance by Bill McKibben laying the blame for Sandy on climate change.

"It’s really important that everybody, even those who aren’t in the kind of path of this storm, reflect about what it means that in the warmest year in U.S. history, ... in a year when we saw, essentially, summer sea ice in the Arctic just vanish before our eyes, what it means that we’re now seeing storms of this unprecedented magnitude," McKibben says. "If there was ever a wake-up call, this is it.

I’d certainly choose that explanation over the chaplain’s, and it does have the advantage, as an argument, of conforming to the predictions of climate scientists. Of course, those same scientists almost universally say that it’s impossible to identify climate change as the precise cause of any specific weather event.

I believe climate change is happening and that human activity is driving it. I also know it matters not a bit to the weather whether or not I believe it. But whether or not climate science is correct, appealing to it in the way that some activists do in the midst of storms is not that much different from what the chaplain has done. Sandy is huge and beyond our control. Any explanation provides at least an illusion of shelter from the storm.

Just as climate activists reflect the image of scientists in their arguments, McTernan is reflecting an image of God in his. Activists will turn to the image of disinterested researchers and peer-reviewed scripture, whereas McTernan lifts up an image of God reflected in the scriptures of his people. It’s not the only image of God in scripture, to be sure and, I’d argue, not even the prevailing one, but it is an image of God found in the Bible.

Scripture carries multiple images of God, which should come as no surprise because scripture is written in many voices, by many authors, in a range of social contexts over the course of centuries. Whatever one thinks about the nature of God – the same yesterday, today, tomorrow … or the God of process theologians – it is surely in the nature of human beings to lift up the image of God that most conforms to their own worldview. Moreover, the nature of human being – if one can speak of “human nature” at all – is surely complex and contradictory, and thus it should come as no surprise that the Bible is also complex and contradictory.

As my friend Tim Beal put it in his recent book, “The deep biblical contradictions between liberation and oppression, love and hate, cure and poison, are also deep within us” (TheRise and Fall of the Bible, p. 160).

Tim makes that observation just before asking, “Why is there undeserved suffering in this world? This is not a problem for nontheological people, who can justifiably respond, why wouldn’t there be?”

Why is Sandy blowing the hell out of the East Coast today? Why have more than 60 people been killed by this storm? Storms make theologians of us all, because we all want a more satisfying answer than, “why not?”