Triad Pride Prayer Service, Non-Lectionary

A non-lectionary sermon (!)
(Yes that means I chose these readings myself!
And Yes that means I chose a psalm that is not otherwise in the Lectionary
Because it is "difficult" to preach on!)


Isaiah 49:14-21
Psalm 55

Preaching with Triad Pride, 2009
Greensboro, NC

"Lift up your eyes all around and see;
They all gather,
They come to you."

-From the Book of the Prophet Isaiah

In the name of God, who made us, and saves us, and will not leave us alone, AMEN.

In the Summer of 1982 we were terrified.
Many of our friends and lovers were deathly ill
And news reports telling of a new gay cancer
Were confusing and contradictory.
Some in the media talked of GRID
Which stood for Gay related immune deficiency
And the CDC even referred initially to 4-H disease
So named because it seemed to affect
Hemophiliacs, Haitians, Heroin-addicts, and Homosexuals.
In the hospitals, we were confronted with equal amounts
Of fear and confusion, but there
it was also paired with stigma and bigotry.
Our resources were not apparent to us.
But there was a number you could call for support
And this number linked directly
to the home phone of Rodger McFarlane.
That Summer, Rodgers tiny New York apartment became
The hub for a deluge of desperate phone calls
That were then directed to the medical, legal, and counseling
Resources that were so desperately needed.
McFarlane had placed himself in the critical center
Of a gathering, ominous storm.
Earlier that year, he had walked into the headquarters
Of the newly formed Gay Men’s Health Crisis
Which then consisted of a handful of men
One of whom, Larry Kramer, seeing that government and medical
Response to the growing crisis was stalled at best
had issued a rallying cry
For gays to come together to provide a quick retaliation
To the new disease.
McFarlane, who worked as a rehabilitation therapist in the local hospitals
Found himself in a position to lend his expertise of the system
To those whom the system was avoiding.
He also lent his organizational skills-
Finding the appropriate office space for the rag-tag group of young men
And building up the structure of a professional non-profit
And, perhaps most importantly
He lent his home, and phone
To what would ultimately become the Information Hotline of the GMHC
A hotline that to this day
continues to provide counseling and support to persons with HIV/AIDS
McFarlane was later appointed the first paid executive director of the GMHC
As with most gay organizations since the dawn of time,
There were some disagreements about how to run things.

Ultimately, Larry Kramer was too extreem for the group.
His political agenda involved going after the mayor of NYC
And other public and health officials for not responding to AIDS
As the epidemic that it was.
A favorite practice of his became outing public figures who he felt
Avoided assisting the AIDS crisis because they were closeted.
He left the GMHC, calling it politically impotent.
In 1987 he founded ACT-UP, a radical gay activist group
Which promoted grass-roots efforts to raise awareness about
And demand immediate and proper treatment of HIV/AIDS.
In the early history of HIV/AIDS
Rodger McFarlane was the pragmatic counterpoint to Kramer’s rage.
Through steady funding efforts and organized programs
The Gay Men’s Health Crisis became the working model
For community based health-care support for every city in the nation.
Essential resources like the Hotline were joined by the Buddy system
In which people of all genders, gay, lesbian and straight
Volunteered to To give their support and bedside care
To AIDS patients in hospitals and at home
Who had otherwise been entirely abandoned by friends, family members, and lovers.
City after city adopted these necessary and intimate practices of care
To make up for the care which many medical communities were reluctant to provide
To gay people.
As McFarlane himself cared for 100s and 100s of friends dying of AIDS
These practices would become his lasting legacy
Particularly, McFarlanes legacy is documented
in a book called The Complete Bedside Companion
In Which he guides family members and caregivers
Through all the necessary medical, legal, and emotional points
Of a loved one’s approach toward death.
Earlier this month, Roger McFarlane took his own life.
A statement released by his family and friends said that McFarlane
Could no longer continue dealing with heart and back problems
Which followed a broken back in 2002.
He was 54.
In him we have seen one of our greatest heroes, one of our most giving Advocates,
a true cause of the Pride our community gathers to celebrate at events like these.

Rodger McFarlane was and Larry Kramer continues to be
well acquainted with the rage, abandonment, and betrayal
that we read of in Psalm 55.
Though the two men had very different approaches to using that rage
In the world.
"Hear my prayer, O God,
do not hide yourself from my petition.
Listen to me and answer me;
I have no peace, because of my cares.
My heart quakes within me,
and the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling have come over me,
and horror overwhelms me."
Many of the psalms express their fear of the enemy
And plead to God for the safety of escape
or to rain his righteous destruction upon the forces that close in-
But Psalm 55 is heartbreaking in its focus.
"For had it been an adversary who taunted me
then I could have borne it;
or had it been an enemy who vaunted himself against me,
then I could have hidden from him.
But it was you, a man after my own heart
my companion, my own familiar friend.
We took sweet counsel together
and walked with the throng in the house of God."
This kind of betrayal is familiar to us.
It recalls the childhood friend whom we might have confided in
Only to find them spreading rumors about us the next day at school.
This kind of betrayal recalls the Church of our upbringing
Who formed us in a relationship with the abounding love of God
Only to instruct us later in shame, and degraded worth.
We have been betrayed by Presidents and other politicians
By family members and employers
But this litany pales in comparison to the experiences of those
in the first deathbeds of AIDS.
Beds where many were left to die alone
Abandoned by family members, friends and lovers
Who feared the stigma and contraction of the unknown disease
Betrayed even by their own bodies
Which had promised such sweet assurance of being Beloved
In a hateful world
Only to deliver with poison instead.
The psalmist,
confronted with similar terrors, cries to God to hear his prayer:
“Listen to me, and answer me.”
Kramer issued similar petitions,
In every extremist, galvanizing, media hogging way he could
not to God,
But to those about him: to wake up to the realities of their
Second-class citizenship in the American goverment and medical community.
The psalmist,
confronted with similar terrors, cries to God for escape,
“Oh that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.
I would hasten to escape
from the stormy wind and tempest.”
For many,
McFarland and his army of volunteers
Embodied the presence necessary
Not for escape
But for grounding their experience of death
In real company, and real care that would have otherwise been absent.

It is the Summer of 2009, and we are disappointed, angry, grieved
But much of the terror is gone.
We grieve the passing of Roger
While we celebrate his abounding gift of life to us
We grieve yesterday’s court ruling in California
While we celebrate the victories we’ve claimed in Iowa, Connecticut, Maine
40,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS appear in this country each year
Some of us live with HIV
Or are caring for friends and family with it
But the operative word here is "live"
We live with it.
The early days
When everyone we knew was dead or dying are gone for us.
As is the urgency with which we fought the system for our care.
A lifetime has passed, it seems, since then,
And most of us either feel confident that our people
Are getting the services we need.
Or simply do not possess the language to address and question it
Having missed the universal pervasiveness of its inception in the 80s.

In the Book of the Prophet Isaiah
We hear of a new day emerging for Zion-
The Holy city of God.
From the darkness of her abandonment.
Zion cries out, “The Lord has forsaken me,
my Lord has forgotten me.”
And the Lord to show her otherwise
Directs her gaze beyond herself:
“Lift your eyes all around and see;
they all gather, they come to you.”
And there before abandoned Zion
There before Zion of the solitary deathbed
Before Zion who saw no aid in her darkest hour of trial
Is the vision
Of all her multitude of children
Now grown, now thriving, now full of life.
“Who bore me these?” she gasps
“I was bereaved and barren;
I was exiled and rejected.
Who brought these children up?
I was left all alone, where have they come from?
This land we thought was devastated is now bustling with life.

We, in this room tonight
Are the very same blessing of life
given by God to a formerly barren land.
And as you go to events this weekend
I challenge you to look around yourself
And see in the festive faces of your friends and community
the children which the Lord brings home to Zion.
We, no matter what our age, or gender, or orientation
We are the children AIDS has made.
We are survivors who took benefit
From the medical rights fought for by ACT-UP and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis
We are among those who took the earliest cues of the movement for chastity
We are among that generation born after AIDS
Who were educated by the public initiatives like Triad Health Project
that taught us to value our own safety in relationship
Our very life
Is the gift of God and years of righteous anger and back breaking work
For justice.
We, in this room tonight,
Are the very same gift of life.
Reared up and remaining from this most desolate time in our history.

In the Book of the Prophet Isaiah,
God presents this gift of new life to bereaved, abandoned Zion
As if her own children were exquisite jewelry to put on
As if the gift of generations were a wedding garment
To bind up Zions wounds.

And now God is giving us to be the same.
God is blessing us with more life
That we may honor with that life
The struggles which came before us.
How we will show that honor to our forebears
To activist caregivers like Rodger McFarlane
Cannot be given too high a priority in our current agenda.
The fullest expression of gratitude for all we have been given
Can only come as we acknowledge their outrage at injustice
And their immediate response to a need for basic care.

Our current excitement over equal marriage laws
Is very important
Getting many people involved in the work of justice for the 1st time
But it cannot remain an end unto itself
It must be the gateway for more.
We must not forget the continued injustice and need for care
In those places which are beyond our separate units of companionship.
There is still non-discrimination legislation to pursue
Adequate sexual health curriculums to advocate for
And new populations in our own country
Going through the same motions with AIDS that we did two decades ag
Our forebears waged a war on ignorance and death itself
And we must seek out the dying and unknown
if we are to honor that fight that gave us life.
Even as we expend our vast resources on wrestling our right to marry from conservative America
Our kindred around the globe are still wrestling for their lives.
In Iraq, recent feelings of openness led many gay people to
Congregate in public spaces
Only to be slaughtered one after another,
often with their families consent.
In Iran being gay is a crime
Frequently punished by decapitation.
Where boys are lined up, hooded, and hung.
Libiya, Nigeria, Jamaica, Ghana.
What little AIDS leaves alive in our world
Hate and murder are in full force to swallow up.
Our government- or any government- has yet to speak out on
this kind of violence.
Of forebears waged a war on ignorance and death itself
And we must seek the dying and unknown
if we are to honor that fight that gave us life.

In this room,
I am sure there are many veterans of this fight
Even as there are those among us just beginning.
Begin with Psalm 55 if that feels right
Begin with the betrayal and the outrage
Listen closely to it
And see if you can discern where it is coming from.
Begin with this group of people gathered here
With the people you will see tomorrow or the next day
And look at them with the startled eyes
Of a Zion once in ruins,
Who never had expected to see such joy, such life
In such a barren land.
Begin with the booths you are sure to find this weekend
Triad Health Project, Equality NC
Begin with their email listservs and contact your representatives
When they tell you to
Begin with Google,
Look up Southerners On New Ground
Look up Changing Attitudes Nigeria.
Begin wherever you can
And DO whatever you can
To place yourself as the exquisite jewel you are
Upon the body of this people
Who have survived- who have THRIVED.
And May the God of All Justice, Of All Strength, All Comfort, & All Joy
Grant us the power and Spirit that was in Christ
The power that was in Rodger McFarlane
To be present to the unknown and the dying
And to carry them with us to a place of safety and new life.
AMEN!

Year B, Easter 7: Flipping Coins

Year B, Easter 7
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19

"Happy are they whose delight is in the law of the Lord.
They are like trees planted by streams of water,
Bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither;
Everything they do shall prosper."

-From Psalm 1, and from the Acts of the Apostles:

"[The disciples] prayed and said, 'Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship.' And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthais."

In the name of God, who made us, saves us, and will not leave us alone, AMEN.

How do we discern the will of God?
How do we know what God wants from us?
What God wants us to do in the world?
We ask ourselves this question frequently
And for good reason.
Every day when Christians pray
Our Father in Heaven
Hallowed be your Name
it comes quickly followed by the words
Your kingdom come
You WILL be done.
Not OUR will, God, but yours.
The idea that we are acting on behalf of,
or at least in tandem with the will of God
weaves itself in and out of our everyday decision making.
Not only at the highest Church level
Where our meetings convene with prayer
And elaborate committee systems are constructed
To ensure some kind of divine consensus
But at the individual level as well.
Who hasn’t stood at the brink of a big decision
A job offer, A new home, A medical choice
Without wishing to know if this is what God wants for us.
Hell, some of us can’t make it through the grocery store
Without wondering if God wouldn’t prefer it
If we purchased the paper products with the highest
post-consumer waste percentages for the sake of
greening God’s good Earth.
Most of us are just lucky if we don’t go so far as to take it upon
ourselves to determine what God wants for others too,
But the risk is there, and real-
Because we Christians consider ourselves
To be veritable experts on discerning the will of God.

In fact, when we gather together we make discerning
the will of God one of our greatest priorities.
In less than two months the national Episcopal Church
will gather for its triennial General Convention
And representatives from all over the country and beyond
Will gather
To try and discern collectively
What God wants for the Episcopal Church.

How do we do it?
How do we know what God wants?
How do we discern the will of God?

Most of us pray
When we have a big decision to make.
We might read scripture
We might consult our friends and advisors
And listen to them carefully for the
right-sounding path to emerge.
But this entirely rational sounding method of discernment
Is occasionally replaced by what we might call more
hasty approaches.
“Give me a sign!” our people have been known to cry
Perhaps when faced with a dining room table full of bills
Unsure of which one will garner our resources first.
And in those moments
Something as chance as the flicker of the light overhead
Might be readily snatched up as the “sign” we needed
To know that the electric will take prirority this month.
We all know the logic.
God obviously wanted me to go shopping today
Because this parking space just happened to appear up front.
God has obviously ordained his blessing on the young man
I met last week, because we both drive the same car
And so on.

Once, when I was fifteen,
I was trying to discern whether or not God had made me gay.
It was starting to become apparent
That there was something about my growing body and mind
That did not fit in with the expectations I had been raised with
And I was terrified.
One afternoon, I closed myself into my room and prayed:
“Dear God,
Please don’t make me gay.
There is so much work I want to do in this world
So many good things that I want to do for you
And if I’m gay, that will just be one more thing
that will get in my way and mess everything up.”
Then, I got out a quarter and said,
“So God, I’m going to flip this coin,
And if its heads, I’ll know that you want me to be gay,
And if its tails, I’ll know that you haven’t made me this way.”

When the coin landed on tails
I decided that God wanted to speak through the best out of three.

While this may seem like an almost endearing way
For an adolescent to determine God’s will for him
Its a little more disconcerting to us modern readers
When essentially the same method of discernment shows up
In our reading from Acts this morning.

This morning we find the disciples
having just returned to Jerusalem from their last earthly
parting with Jesus, who,
After commissioning them to continue his work
in the world, then departed from it by means no less grand
than flight.

The newly minted Apostles have a great amount of work
before them
And first on their agenda is replacing Judas among the twelve.
In other words, the Apostolic Church is not yet days old
And already there are issues of polity and hierarchy to be
dealt with:
Who will be IN the inner circle of leadership
And who will be OUT.
The choice is between Joseph called Barsabbas also known as
Justus; and- Matthais.
(If you ask me, any candidate alternately known by any one
Of three names at any given time
kind of has the cards stacked against him from the outset.)
Both men nominated for the job seem to be equally qualified.
We are told that both were present for each stage of
Christ’s earthly ministry, all the way from
John’s baptism to Christ’s ascension.
So who would it be?
We, the modern readers, are left to wonder
If there wasn’t enough time for panel interviews
Or at least some background reference checks;
Because ultimately, instead,
the Apostles make their choice by praying to God
to make his will known,
and then casting lots: throwing dice.
The first major decision of our infant church
Is here embarrassingly reduced to what we might see
As a matter of chance at least
And a heretical use of divination at the worst.
Incidentally, neither of the two men are heard from again
in the Bible,
Matthais at least is granted his own feast day
in our calender of saints
As for Joseph, called Barsabbas, known as Justus-

I would propose that he be appointed as the patron saint
Of anyone who has ever gotten the short end
Of a Church discernment process.

It would be funnier if there weren’t such a gruesome ring
of truth to it:
For while the mission of these disciples
would lay the groundwork for a global church
And while many and diverse means of discernment
Would be employed in that process
At times, it seems,
When it comes to discerning the will of God. we as a Church
Act with little more finesse and grace
Than a couple of adolescents in an attic
Hovering over a Ouija board.
As a corporate body that claims to carry out the will of God in the world, our discernment of that will has been at times as chance an encounter as rolling dice-
as arbitrary as casting lots.

What else can you call the selective reading of scripture
That has put our Church in a position
Where we claim to embrace the broad reach of Christ’s
welcome to the world
But fall short of consecrating bishops
Or blessing unions that pose a threat to the broader
global culture we are aligned with?
What else but an arbitrary condescension to the ties
we have chosen to maintain.
What else can we call the news that came out this week
Of the Church run schools in Ireland over the past century
Residential schools in which tens of thousands of
Irish children were sexually, physically, and emotionally
abused by priests, nuns and the laity

Where, the report states, “A climate of fear, created by
pervasive, excessive, and ARBITRARY punishment
permeated most of the institutions
where sexual abuse was endemic.”
What else but a Church whose moral alignment in the past
century has been capricious even as it pretends to be
absolute.
There are less extreme examples of course, which in the end
are no less harmful.
There is the level of commitment we as a Western Church
Are willing to make to serve our brothers and sisters
in Africa, in South America, at home.
Any work that falls short of the extreme example of Christs
complete solidarity with the poor
But allows us to give what we feel we are able--
Allows us to maintain the arbitrary balance we’ve determined for ourselves
Between what we are willing to part with
And the degree to which we wish to staunch the swell of
poverty, pollution, war, and other by-products of the
capitalist system that keeps us secure.
What is the line between feeling like we are contributing
As much as we can
between FEELING like we are GROWING as much as we can
And what God really wants of us
What, but a line drawn by chance encounters
along the path of least resistance.

We would like to think better of ourselves.
We would like to think that we are making these decisions
That we are moving forward as a Church and as individuals
By prayerfully considering the will of God.

But the truth is that we are human and deeply flawed-
Even with the Spirit of God surging through us.
And at times we are as fearful as those first disciples must
have been
When their master finally left them to make all the big decisions
alone.
And the truth is that it doesn’t take a popular, virulent atheist
To see that in fumbling through discernment
our Church has been responsible for some of
the most egregious offenses to human dignity our world
has known.

But the amazing thing
The unbelievable thing,
is that God in Christ founded this feeble, flawed, institution of ours,
to be the earthly body of his word and work ANYWAY.
Knowing that the disciples who had followed him in all his
earthly travels were faulty in their own right,
simple fishermen trying their best to grasp at
the mystery shared in Christs presence:
Peter with his doubts
And the rest with their misunderstanding
KNOWING these disciples as human complete with human
faults
Jesus prays ANYWAY in the Gospel we read
To send them into the world as he himself has been sent by God.

Given the flawed and failing nature which the disciples have
demonstrated thus far in the narrative
THIS is a remarkable trust.
“Holy Father” Jesus prays in the Gospel
“protect them in your name that you have given me
so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Every year at Advent and Christmas, we marvel at the mystery
Of the incarnation
The mystery that God would make his presence known
In the vulnerability of human flesh, a child no less.
But the mystery,
the AUDACITY, of God’s incarnation continues here as well
In this prayer of Jesus, in his commissioning of the disciples
In his willing departure from the work which he began.

Some handful of back broken human souls
Who, for all the breadth of their mission to the world
Stood, for a moment at least, around a game of dice
To determine the direction of their next steps.
This is who Christ chose to make his mission to the world incarnate- enshrined yet again in the vulnerable flesh of humanity- us, the Church.

And how then are we, the Church, to choose what is right
To discern the will of God in our work.
How are we to participate in the inbreaking of God’s kingdom
Rather than the theologically sanctioned violence which
is so easy for us to slip complicity into?

With closeness to God, Jesus invites.
May they be one, as we are one, Jesus prays for the disciples
and prays for us.

In this prayer, Jesus does not speak of discernment
But of the closeness with which he experienced God
whom he called Father.
As close as two that in reality are only one.
May they be one as we are one.
As close as Jesus is to God
As close as the tree is to the stream of water which gives it life
In the Psalm we sang this morning
As close as we are called to be to in Christ with God.
In Christ’s incarnation,
God showed God’s own closeness, and oneness
With the suffering of our sin and fallen state
And in inviting the disciples into that very closeness in turn
Christ establishes a second Incarnation just as reckless
as the first:
An incarnation of God’s word and work among the world
At the hands of normal human beings
Infused with the Spirit of God incarnate
Left to discern where that closeness might lead
For better, and as we have seen all to well at times, for worse.

How do we discern the will of God?
I would suggest that we do not discern the will of God
Any better than the tree discerns that its life is in the river it is
planted by.
This tree that we hear of in Psalm One
This tree that we are invited to BE
By planting our own lives close to the streaming wisdom
Of the Torah of God, of the Psalms of God, of the Word of God.
The tree does not discern what quality of water it is
Saturating the ground beneath its roots
The tree does not even choose for itself
What method might be best to bring that water to the world.
The tree is simply fed by the water which sustains it
And GROWS
As it is MADE to do.
Take, eat.
This is what God wants.
To be our food
To be our sustentation.
To be as close to us as water in a tree
Pressing out against our fruit in its due season.
Pressing out in the fullness of our being
In the fullness of Christ’s joy made complete.

Perhaps in the chance encounters we stumble through
In the greatest glory and the darkest pain
In all our strained attempts to hear what God is calling for
As often as our hasty leaps of faith
Perhaps even in lots cast by the disciples in the first days of their mission
We can work to see a radical faith
That not only because, but also in spite of our greatest efforts
God will continue to be revealed.

So here we are: casting lots and calling committees,
busying ourselves with the business of determining
how much of God’s will we are willing to work with

And here too is the Grace of God-
pulsing through our lives, through our words, through our touch
in spite of ourselves,
weaving inbetween our good and bad decisions,
striking out for the new kingdom of God’s redeeming love
all the while.