In Case You Missed It ...

and really, I don't see how you could have, my middle child has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds in support of a documentary film project that expands on his student film, Crooked.
Crooked explores the music, musicians and instrument makers along Virginia's Crooked Road heritage tourism trail that winds through Southwest Virginia.
The culture of Old Time music, along with Bluegrass, is thriving in small towns and crossroads throughout the area, and Crooked tells the stories of the folk who keep folk music alive.
I served as "producer" of Crooked, which meant that when there was a bill to be payed I produced the wallet! But this time around, because it's no longer a school project, I'll get to help out with some of the writing, editing and interviewing that go into documentary film making. More than that, I'll get to spend a whole lot of time with our middle child, who is a talented, funny and fascinating young man. I'm really looking forward to that part of the journey!
To make this film on the level we believe it can be made we need some better tools than we had last winter -- refurbished, low-end video camera and borrowed computer! That's why Martin launched the Kickstarter campaign.
I won't be using this blog in relation to Crooked, but we have launched a film blog -- Crookedfilm -- where we'll chronicle the making of the movie, share footage and photographs and stories from the road, and generally keep in touch with folks who have supported this project.
Check back on that blog from time to time to see how we're progressing. And, if you like and are able, please support us on Kickstarter right now. That part of the project closes out in two weeks, and the way Kickstarter works, unless we meet Martin's goal (just $4,500) he won't receive any funds at all. So support the film if you like, and please share it with as many folks in your networks as you can.
Thanks so much!

If I Could Carry a Sword I'd Never Be Bored ...

Or, why I watched Robin Hood instead of the debate last night!
First off, kudos to my old friends, The Four Guys Standing Around Singing, for the best song ever about Robin Hood, from which I shamelessly stole the title of this post. Other lyrics I recall from way back then include, "Oh, I wanna do good like Robin Hood, I wanna be a tree swinging man."
I'm willing to bet that if you gave either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama the choice to be Errol Flynn instead of president, they'd be pulling on green tights in a New York minute. After all, who wouldn't rather be Robin Hood than just about anybody else?
So, when presented with the choice of curling up on the couch with my beloved and our two still-at-home kids to watch Robin Hood or going off alone to watch the presidential debate on line, it was a no-brainer. Truth be told, I would have taken a far lesser offer. Maybe even a trip to the dentist.
I hate the debates. I don't learn anything useful from them and I don't think anyone else does either. No presidential debate has ever changed my preference or even my opinions about candidates.
I watch them knowing who I prefer and what my vote will be. Because of that, I find watching somewhat akin to watching my favorite baseball team try to hold on to a lead in the ninth inning. Will my guy hold on, or will he blow it? Except, debates are no where near as entertaining as baseball. When was the last time you saw Mitt Romney stretch a double into a triple? Oh, sure, he stretches the truth like Bryce Harper stretches an extra base, but it's simply not as much fun to watch.
When was the last time you saw Barack Obama break off a knee-bending curve ball? Sure, he's thrown his supporters more than a few curves over the past four years, but it's just not as much fun as watching Stephen Strasburg strike out the side on nine pitches.
If the debates had some other value, like maybe helping create a more informed citizenry, then they would be worth my time. But they're just made-for-TV spectacle, and they're not even very good at that.
So it was on to Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood, which carried more political clarity than most debates. The Robin Hood myth is, of course, all about equitable distribution of a society's resources in a time of radical, structural inequality when the rich have set the rules to fix their position on the top of the social hierarchy.
Sound familiar?
Robin takes the time, in Errol Flynn's version, to show the effects of a skewed tax and finance policy on the poor and destitute. Romney and Obama both try to pitch their case to the broad middle class, and neither mentions the poor very often at all.
I was, by the end of the evening, much more well entertained by Errol Flynn than I would have been by the debates. More than merely entertained, I was more informed, as well. At least, that is, informed in the way that the prophetic voice informs.
As Walter Brueggemann suggests, "odd voices of discernment, mostly poets and unwelcome dissenters who had a sinking feeling in their gut [...] found words that unnerved the city; because they offered a shrill reminder that even slick logos do not change or nullify the facts on the ground in the city" (from the essay "Every City a Holy City," in Disruptive Grace).
No, Errol Flynn did not set out to be "prophetic," whatever we take that to mean. But Robin Hood at least shed light on the facts on the ground: poor people who are victims of an unjust economic system.
The facts on the ground all around us remain unchanged and unaddressed in the current campaign: a broken economic system, a broken political system, and millions of broken lives. To say nothing of drone warfare, climate change, and a host of other deep and structural problems that neither candidate wants to address. These are the most pressing questions of our age, and the silence about them is remarkable.
Maybe, if I could just remember the rest of the words to that song ... something about taking from the One Percent ... no, that's not quite it. Oh, well. Never mind all that. We only made it about three quarters of the way through the flick last evening. Maybe tonight we'll find all the answers to the questions that Jim Lehrer couldn't ask last night.

A Rant Too Long for Facebook

OK, then, just this week I preached the following words in a sermon

“Never ever ever read the comments on any even vaguely political article on any web site. Ever.”

I call that “David’s Rule for Internet Serenity,” and I went on to invite the community to refrain from cynicism and hate-filled rhetoric, to find gratitude in every possible moment, and to keep silent unless our voice improves whatever context or conversation we find ourselves in.

Then this morning, in a simple scroll through Facebook, I ran across this comment:

I think the point is that we should not be forced by the government to feed those who are unwilling to work for their food. I regularly give food to those in need, of my own free will. I don't want the government telling me how to spend the money that God gave me. Only God has that right.

As you might guess, the comment came in a response to a status posted in the wake of Mitt Romney’s ill-considered remarks about the 47-percent of Americans who, he said, “believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.”

The comment, made at a fundraiser and leaked on tape this week to a reporter, reflects what is, in my experience, a fairly widespread belief among affluent Americans about the unwashed masses of poor folks. I’m not going to try to unpack Romney’s words or the misinformation imbedded in them. Lots of folks have already done so. You can find one excellent analysis at the Atlantic.

I am studiously avoiding the comments on any article about Romney’s remarks, and I’m just as studiously avoiding engaging on Facebook, a social circle I inhabit for fun and to stay connected with friends and family in distant places. Oh, sure, I’ll make the occasional snarky comment in response to a political statement from time to time, but I really try to avoid arguing on line because it goes around in circles and just makes me angry without changing anything other than my blood pressure.

Incarnational theology, if we take it seriously, should teach us that minds only change when hearts have been touched. Hearts don’t get touched in on-line arguments, they only get touched in face-to-face encounters and relationships.

Nevertheless, sometimes writing matters, if for no other reason than to clarify one’s own thinking. I do not for a moment delude myself into thinking that clarifying my own thoughts will clarify anyone else’s; and I cannot resist the snarky insistence that some folks’ thoughts need clarifying.

I’m not even talking about Mitt. I’m actually bothered more by the Facebook comment, and, in particular this part of it: “I don't want the government telling me how to spend the money that God gave me. Only God has that right.”

As I noted already, Mitt’s comments would make me angry if they surprised me at all, but the truth is he’s simply reflecting an attitude that is deeply imbedded in the consciousness of many wealthy Americans. I no longer have the capacity to be surprised by that.

But I remain constantly surprised by the notion that God is a heavenly ATM dispensing cold, hard cash to deserving souls and thus nobody but God can tell a deserving soul how to “spend the money that God gave me.”

To be honest, my first question is always, “where the hell is the line for that, ‘cause I gotta get me some!” Seriously, where is God handing out money?

I should also be fair and note that the Facebook comment does not say, explicitly, that the person is deserving, but I am going to extrapolate from the idea I so often hear in such arguments that “God helps those who help themselves.” Accordingly, a just God would not be giving out money to the undeserving, who, at least according to the gospel of Mitt, seem to believe they are victims entitled to food and are doing nothing to help themselves. 

I extrapolate because if God is just handing out money willy-nilly to any old soul lucky enough to know where the line is then the money is an undeserved gift, that is to say, a handout.

So, is God handing out gifts willy-nilly to any old soul?

In a word, "yes." Everything I have is a gift, beginning with life itself and a planet that sustains that life. We call it grace, and it comes in all kinds of forms. The God I know as the author of that life, the giver of the gift, the God of grace, has, in fact, already told me, as it were, how to spend what I’ve been given: give it to the poor. Scripture is pretty decidedly clear about that.

In a secular, more-or-less democratic society one of the ways we do that collectively is through public programs that support the poor. In an obviously different context, that's more or less the case that Calvin made in favor of civil government. There is plenty of room to argue about the best and most effective ways to do that, but to suggest that the government has no place in the process of providing for the least of these our fellow citizens seems, at best, unrealistic in a nation of 300 million people, and, at worst, a pernicious, selfish deception based on an equally pernicious self-deception.

A Day of Atonement

This is from a sermon I preached five years ago this month. I just ran across it in looking through some old files. It struck me as remarkable appropriate for the present time, despite the obvious datedness of some references.
God looks across the vastness of God’s own creation at what human beings have made of it: what once was a luscious and verdant garden has become a dark and desolate space devoid of life – and we might take note of the fact that present-day Iraq is said by some to have been the home of the Biblical Eden. Thus the righteous judgment of God is plain: I have turned away and will not turn back. I will leave you to your own devices. You have made yourselves destroyers of worlds, now live with what you have destroyed. We can think of this on a geo-political scale or on scales more local and personal – from international relations to interpersonal relationships, from the betrayals of kings and presidents to our own acts of betrayal.
That is the judgment of God: to grant us the freedom to dwell in the hells of our own creation.
And perhaps the greatest sin of all is the choice that we make – over and over and over again – to remain there. We make an idol of our present pain and refuse to consider the possibility of a future otherwise. We trust in surges of economic or military might and are blind to any other power or possibility. Our myopia denies the gift of imagination that God has given us, and, indeed, denies the very God who gives it.
In spite of all of that, God does not stop in judgment, but acts with love and mercy to invite creation into redemption.
Indeed, the prophetic oracle to which Jeremiah responds appoints him not only to “pluck up and pull down, to destroy and overthrow,” but also to rebuild and to plant. The city – the polis – has failed by every measure to live into the covenant community that God calls forth – the community of compassion and celebration, the community of shared suffering, shared burdens, yes; but also the city of shared wealth and resources and harvest and celebration. The utter failure to live into that vision – the vision of the commonwealth of the beloved – is the occasion for the prophetic pronouncement of God’s judgment.
God’s judgment is simply this: any city that fails to live into that promise, that vision of authentic community – any city that fails that project fails, plain and simple.
We live in just such a time; we live in just such a city; we live in just such failure; we stand under just such judgment.
Jeremiah’s words bear repeating:
“From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. They acted shamefully, they committed abominations; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord” (Jer. 6:13-15).
Let us say it plain, that the people may understand: from the least of us to the greatest we pursue the outrageous gains of speculative markets; we buy the i-thises and i-thats that, by their very names, underscore the market’s utter disdain for authentic community; we strive mostly to assure our own place on the ladder of success without blushing at the fact that our incomes are 45 times or more the median global per capita income and many more times more than that of the least of these our sisters and brothers in the global commons; and we sit idly by while our nation engages in wars fought to ensure that gap remains firmly in place – all while our leaders promise us “peace, peace, and security, security,” but there is neither peace nor security for we stand under God’s judgment.
But the story does not end in judgment. We are called, in the tradition of Jeremiah, to imagine a future otherwise, to imagine a new Jerusalem and to call it forth even at this late hour.
The pivot point arrives for Jeremiah at the moment he realizes that repentance is possible, that the present time may be redeemed and transformed because the future belongs to God. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” When that day comes, “then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy.”
Why such hope? How can such a promise be spoken in the midst of desolation? Because the future belongs to God – “to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God,” as Paul sings in doxology.
The future belongs to the God made known to Christians in the one who welcomed the tax collectors and sinners into his presence; the one who understood the fundamental value of the least of his sisters and brothers in the household of God; the one who knew that no measure of worth or accomplishment or power or success makes anyone 45 times more valuable than anybody else; the one who knew that no surge in violence could ever bring peace in a world where some still champion economic and political systems that define such vast disparities of wealth as the just results of an invisible hand.
That very God calls us now to be quite visible counterweights on the scales of justice.
Our pivot point has arrived. Even in the present darkness, the time for light and more light has come. Repentance is possible and the present time may be redeemed.
A day of atonement lies before us.
Now the dictionary defines “atonement” as “reparation for an offense or injury,” and a certain conservative orthodoxy holds that such reparation was made through the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. I don’t think much of that orthodoxy. I don’t like what it says about the possibilities of human life, I am disgusted by what it suggests about God, and I cannot abide the way it simply dismisses the life of Jesus as mere prelude to his death.
But I do like the word. I like the suggestion, imbedded in the word itself, that we can be at one with God, that our purposes and God’s purposes can come together in reconciling love.
That possibility is the pivot point upon which Jeremiah’s prophetic vision turns, and it can be the point upon which the present time turns as well.
How can I stand before you and make such a claim, given all I’ve just said about unjust economies and unjustifiable war? How can I stand here having laid out what can best be called the case of humanity’s fall, and suggest that redemption is at hand?
No logic can explain it, no calculus account for it, no economy comprehend it. This is a moment that calls for that larger perspective I mentioned at the beginning – a kingdom perspective.
For if we are who we say we are – children of a loving God; and if we believe what we say we believe about that God, then we must sing with the psalmist,
”The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations!”
The reign of God announces a profoundly different kind of kingdom, not so much about power as it is about covenant fidelity – about steadfast faithfulness, about a Godly power that is concerned not with the acquisition of more power but, instead, concerned first and foremost precisely about the condition of those with no power. Imagine our rulers putting such concerns first – imagine Republicans and Democrats concerned not with who controls the Senate but with how the hungry are to be fed, not with who will win the White House but with how the sick are to be cared for, not with the culture wars of Red and Blue but with how a just and lasting peace can be constructed. This is not to say that there are no important differences between the parties, but it is to call deeply into question their quite similar relationships to the question of power.
That same psalm that sings kingdom praises recalls the nature of God and of God’s power, telling us that this God “keeps faith for ever, executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, loves the righteous, watches over the strangers, and upholds the orphan and the widow.”
We are called into relationship with this God. We are called to trust this God before any princes and rulers, any Democrat or Republican, and even and especially against the lure of so many socially constructed idols: militarism, consumerism and every other “ism” that tempts us to put our trust in something less than ultimate, something other than God. And we are called to put first in our lives the same concerns as this God puts first – precisely the concerns that all the false gods ignore or belittle: justice, welcome of strangers, compassion for the outcast and marginalized, shalom for all creation.
That is how we become at one with God. That is how we mark a day of atonement. That is how we live kingdom lives. That is how we claim for ourselves the promise of Jesus that the kingdom of God is among us, within us, here and now, in this very place at this very moment.
Trusting that truth, then, I am able to say confidently that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. And thus I trust that though the arc of the moral universe is mighty long, it does bend toward justice. Though the nations tremble under tumult of war, the time of the prince of peace is at hand. The time for peace is at hand.

Morning Circles

Sunrise. Roosters calling. Coffee in hand.
I walk a labyrinth freshly mowed in the grass.
Bare feet in the dew, one foot in front of the other.
Steam rises from the mug.
Morning is not broken and I have no need to fix it.
In time I see the prints from where I've been.
The past leading out before me.
Feet covered in clippings,
I'll leave a trail of memories all over the house today.

The View from Pittsburgh. July 2012.

If you visit Pittsburgh, among of the first things you notice are the beautiful bridges that cross the three rivers shape the city. In a city of bridges, then, it was sad to watch bridges burned in actions of the assembly and the words of some of its participants, but at almost the same time it was a joy to watch new bridges being constructed through both faithful action and dynamic worship.

In terms of actions I turn to the newly formed “Presbytery of the Twitterfeed” – which met at #ga220 – for the best summation I saw: “#ga220 let’s discuss how to discuss this for four hours, do parliamentary craycray, discuss for two hours, then vote to do nothing.” And that’s pretty much the “report from GA.”

Seldom have so many confabbed for so long to get so little accomplished.

On the closely watched items of particular concern to More Light Presbyterians, the results were a mixed bag. On same-gender marriage the assembly, against the recommendation of its committee on marriage and civil unions, defeated an overture that would have changed the wording in the worship directory section on Christian marriage that defines marriage as between “a man and a woman” to “two people.” (That is the measure that National Capital Presbytery declined to endorse earlier this year.) The assembly also declined also to offer an authoritative interpretation of our Constitution that would have offered protection from prosecution in church judicial courts to pastors who preside at same-gender weddings in civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage is legal.

Rather than take any firm action, GA has asked the whole church to study the matter for the next two years.

On the other hot-button issues before the assembly they voted down the assembly committee on Middle East concern’s most controversial recommendation on divestment of holdings in three companies – Hewlit-Packard, Caterpillar, and Motorola – that continue to do business with the Israeli defense forces in the occupied territories. GA did endorse a boycott of Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories’ products and dates from Hadiklaim, both companies produce their products in the occupied territories in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

I was disappointed but not particularly surprised by these votes. After all, this assembly installed my friend and neighbor, the Rev. Tara Spuhler-McCabe as vice moderator on Sunday morning, after the moderator election last Saturday evening, and then sat back and watched as a conservative drumbeat mounted against Tara for presiding at a same-gender wedding in the District this spring. When the noise reached an ugly level, Tara decided, on Wednesday, that to continue as vice moderator was too much of a distraction to the assembly so she resigned.

In that atmosphere, there was simply no way that deep discerning was going to occur. In truth, sometimes the assembly struggled to maintain simple civil discourse.

In the midst of the anger and hurt and exhaustion and disappointment that follow on such decisions, it’s important – essential, even – to note the good, but often overlooked work of the assembly; and it is fundamental to who we are to lift up the mighty power of God evident in worship at the assembly and, sometimes, in the committees themselves.

In terms of business that reminded me of God’s powerful presence: the 220^th General Assembly endorsed the interim report on discerning God’s call to the Presbyterian Church to consider the question of aligning ourselves with the historic peace churches with respect to questions of violence. That effort, which lifts up a truly profound possibility of transformation in the church, began with action in my session.

The assembly also turned back, by margins of roughly 3 to 1, efforts to roll back the ordination standards to the days of G-6.0106b. GA also endorsed the new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism. The revisions removes the phrase “homosexual perversion” that had been inserted through the use of the New English Bible rendering of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, a translation that added the phrase not found in the original Greek.

The assembly also spoke a prophetic word to the church and the culture around several financial and economic issues. We have been instructed, as congregations, as individuals, and, I’d argue, as church-related organizations, to look carefully at lending practices of the financial institutions with whom we do business. If they are part of the problem of predatory lending and usurious interest then we are part of the problem, too.

Scripture throughout warns against financial practices that victimize the poor and the economically marginalized precisely because such practices erect insurmountable barriers to justice and thus to community, and, fundamentally, such barriers to community are also always barriers to communion with God.

The gospel passage used in each worship of the assembly was Mark 2:1-12, the story of the paralytic whose friends cut a hole through a roof to get him close enough to Jesus to be healed.

Pittsburgh’s Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community drama team reconstructed the story set in a contemporary Presbyterian church whose elder-in-charge-of-greeting cares more about the appropriate appearance of the church and its members than about sharing the gospel. Appropriate, in her eyes, clearly meant white, middle-class, straight and clean cut. After offending several visitors who didn’t quite measure up to her standards, the new minister shows up. The new minister is an African-American woman – the horror! The new minister invites the elder to accompany her down to the city where, she says, she’s met Jesus living under a bridge. The elder-in-charge-of-greeting is dumbstruck, resists until she falls down exhausted, screaming “don’t take me to Jesus; I have to go to church!”

That enactment of the gospel led to the preaching of elder Tony De La Rosa, a partnered gay man who opened his sermon welcoming his mother and his mother-in-law. Tony, who is interim executive of the Presbytery of New York City, really could have sat down at that moment.

Instead, he preached a powerful, poignant and prophetic word to the assembly calling upon the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to dig through the ceiling and break down the walls to help the outcast, the broken, the sin-sick get to Jesus.

Years ago I brushed the dust of Pittsburgh off my feet because the folks in positions of power in the church there didn’t care to hear what I felt called to say. It was a joy to return barely a decade later to witness a married gay man preaching the word of God to the General Assembly of the church.

We have still a long way to go, but the arches on the bridges of Pittsburgh bend gracefully across three rivers to carry the rich and the poor, the struggling and the lost, the wondering and the redeemed across to the other side. Those graceful bending arcs of steel reminded me last week that the moral arc of the universe does, indeed, bend toward justice. When we do the work of love it bends the whole world round, and it will carry us on to the other side.

Here I Stand, With Tara

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) this afternoon failed to endorse an assembly committee's recommendation to send to the church's regional bodies (Presbyteries) a proposal to change the denomination's constitutional worship directory definition of marriage. The change would have replaced the words "a man and a woman" with "two people."

While I am a strong and outspoken supporter of marriage equality, I don't think this measure had a chance to pass in the presbyteries, and I'm not going to miss that fight. We will stand in the struggle, and continue to do what God calls us to do -- including blessing the Christian marriages of same-gender couples regardless of what the state or the church calls them. I will continue to end such services saying, "I declare that, in the eyes of God and of this church, you are married! Y'all can kiss!"

 
From my Facebook page from earlier in the week: It's time to stand in solidarity with Tara Spuhler McCabe. But, first, a word from our daughter, who, when she heard that Tara is being brought up on charges for marrying a lesbian couple said, simply, "I thought she was already married." A little levity before some ecclesiastical disobedience.

I am thinking of that scene from the end of "In and Out," when all the high school kids stand up and say, "I'm gay." So, I'm standing up to say that I have officiated at same-gender services on more than one occasion. 

Though this pastoral work did not involve signing legal documents (because the state of Virginia will not issue marriage licenses to same-gender couples), I have declared same-gender couples to be married in the eyes of God and the gathered community of the church. 

Oh, and I knowlngly ordained married gay elders years before the denomination blessed that action. Who else out there among my Presbyterian colleagues will stand up and declare their participation in the exact same activities that Tara is being so cruelly attacked for?

It is time to declare: here I stand, I can do no other.

A Pastoral Perspective on Marriage Equality

I suppose there’s something appropriate about coming out at a More Light event, so, by way of full disclosure, although I am a pastor in National Capital Presbytery, which includes the marriage equality District of Columbia, I serve a congregation in Arlington, Virginia, and, last time I checked Virginia was a lot further from marriage equality than we are from the District.

So I wondered why Michael invited me to be on this panel. At first I thought perhaps he was hoping that I would take a bit of pressure off my neighbor in Arlington and our new vice moderator, Tara Spuhler-McCabe, by outing the rather long list of friends and colleagues in National Capital who have officiated at same-sex weddings.

Sorry to disappoint, but I honestly have no idea. I do know that pastors who serve Virginia or Maryland congregations can, with only a modicum of DC bureaucratic hoop jumping, get licensed to officiate at weddings in DC.

But that’s really not at all what I want to talk with you about, because almost six years ago, Clarendon adopted a policy that precludes its pastor from signing marriage licenses for any couple. We did this because the church is not in the wedding business; we’re in the Jesus business.

So these days when I talk with couples – straight couples or same-gender couples – about celebrating their covenant promises to one another, we spend a lot of time talking about Jesus – about what it means to follow Jesus in the context of a marriage, about how love of partner is related to and informed by love of God, about how God’s covenantal promises to us may shape and inform the promises we make to one another, and about how the role of the church with respect to that is to invoke God’s blessing on sacred vows and the relationships we promise to have and to hold.

Soon after we made that decision, a young woman came to worship with us one Sunday morning. In speaking with her after worship, she shared that she had come to Clarendon to “check us out” on behalf of friends, a lesbian couple who were afraid to come and worship because they were not sure that “all are welcome” really meant “all.”

The friend read a flyer at church describing our policy on marriage, talked with me and with some members of the congregation and understood clearly that her friends would be welcomed with joy. Our policy is part of our witness to God’s radically inclusive love.

A little more than a year after that, I was blessed to bless the union of two lovely young women, Lisa and Heather, and sometime soon I’ll get to baptize their beautiful daughter, Ava.

I’ll never forget their wedding day – a perfect spring day at a gorgeous Virginia winery! After the service, I was approached by Lisa’s brother – who, I’d been forewarned, was not really comfortable with his sister’s sexuality, and had a lot of questions and concerns about this whole same-sex union thing. I was a bit wary when he told me that on the ride up from SW Virginia his daughter had asked, “daddy, will this service be on the news?”

I chuckled and said, “thank God, no” thinking, “what a hassle that would be” and wondering just what he was getting at in telling me this.

He cut me off saying, “you know, it should have been. That way everyone could see how perfectly normal and ordinary this is.” It was a profound and holy moment because what he was really saying was, “that is my sister, and I love her, and I want her to be happy.”

As I think about pastoral concerns and the question of marriage equality, I have to admit that one of my chief pastoral concerns is for my colleagues. I want all of them to be able to experience such ordinary joy and such holy moments of transformation, and I don’t want any of us to have to worry about our ordinations simply because part of the Jesus business calls us to walk with couples – straight and same-gender – into the wondrous, blessed journey of covenantal promise and married life.

Thank you.

Not Here You Won’t

Last evening National Capital Presbytery had a discussion on marriage. That’s certainly not news, though, as was noted in the introductions to the discussion, “it is long overdue.”

Because it’s far too late to make news, I won’t bore you with the “positions” that were articulated. At this point, most of us can make all of the arguments whether or not we agree with them. Courtesy of Pew Research Center we did see some interesting demographic data that no doubt surprised many members of the Presbytery if for no other reason than how the facts underscore how rapidly the culture is changing around us with respect to marriage.

The facts and the arguments are more or less interesting, I suppose, depending upon your knowledge base and opinions, but the tone of the evening was far more fascinating to me than the content. Because we were not debating an issue to be voted upon, the discussion had no winners or losers, and thus the evening felt far less anxious and stressful. Perhaps the fact that no votes were taken also meant that some stridently partisan voices (like mine) were quiet. For the most part, the “the usual suspects” did not lead, but, instead simply participated around tables to which we were randomly assigned.

After various perspectives were offered (that’s the not-news-worthy part) we were invited to talk with others at our tables prompted by a set of questions, the first of which was:

• Where did your understanding of marriage come from?

At my table, that question prompted reflections about our respective parents and our own marriages, and that’s when the evening got interesting and profound. One person at our table grew up Roman Catholic and has been married for 29 years to a woman who grew up in a Presbyterian congregation in Alexandria. When he went to his priest to ask about getting married in the church, the priest said, “not here you won’t.” When his fiancé went to her pastor to ask about getting married in the church, the pastor said, “not here you won’t.”

Many of us at the meeting last night have performed weddings for couples who come from different faith backgrounds. The differences can certainly be hugely significant, but for most of us that significance would be the beginning of the conversation not the end. We can scarcely imagine saying “not here you won’t” to a straight couple that comes to us seeking, for all the right reasons, to get married in the church. But that is precisely the word that gay and lesbian couples hear from the church all of the time: “not here you won’t.”

Another person in our small circle noted that, as an African-American woman married for more than four decades to a white man, she had experienced first-hand the resistance to changing attitudes about marriage and that her husband had been threatened more than once because of their marriage.

Then she went on to tell us a remarkable, uniquely American story of change. Her great-grandmother, whom she had known and whom she remembered from her childhood, was the daughter of a woman produced by a union between a slave and slave-owner. She noted that “folks who aren’t supposed to be having sex have been doing it for a long time, and it’s nothing new!” She went on to tell us that a few years ago the white descendants of that slave-owner had tracked her family down when doing genealogical research, and that now they hold a joint family reunion of the sons and daughters of former slaves and the sons and daughters of former slave-owners.

At the time when those two family lines first crossed no one could have imagined their joyous reunion just a few generations later. Indeed, had the slave and master sought to be wed, every church in the land would have told them, “not here you won’t.”