Sermon for 2003 Bishop’s Convocation

Convocation Sermon - October 21, 2003
Margaret G. Payne, Bishop

When I was very small, growing up in Philadelphia in a tiny row house, with Jewish neighbors to the east of us and Roman Catholic ones to the west, there was a big, tattered book that lived on our breakfast room table. It was old, with the spine worn out from opening, and it had jelly spots on it.

It wasn't clear to me then what it was, but there were two things that I knew for sure: first - that you had to drink coffee while you were reading it, and second - that it made my parents happy. Even if they were grumpy or angry with me before they read it, they were different afterwards. As I got older, I came to understand that the book was a bible, and that my parents read parts of it at the beginning of every day.

Later in life, I began to realize that people use the bible in all different ways. One family, as far as I could tell, used it as a very spacious coaster on their coffee table. Another family used it for an activity that they called "bible dipping". Whenever they had a big question, or were facing a problem, one of them would open the bible in a random fashion, close their eyes, let their finger fall somewhere on the page, and take that sentence as God's word of advice for their present dilemma.

More recently, I have discovered that some people use the bible like a club - they try to beat people into submission to the law, which apparently has been revealed especially to them through several verses of the bible that - amazingly - coincide with their own opinion.

It is also not uncommon to observe people use the bible like a free ticket to a smorgasbord - finding verses that seem to give permission for everything, so that you can fill up on freedoms, until there comes an obesity that renders a person unfit for a disciplined life of faith.

Personally, I have always thought that the bible, the written Word of God, is more like a kaleidoscope - we look through it toward the light of God shining in Jesus Christ, and we turn it this way and that, not to find a particular view or vision that we favor, but so that we are blessed with the astonishing, shifting, colorful, grace-infused pattern that is the way that the light of Christ falls upon our weary and fragmented world.

Recently, as I was re-reading one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's books, I was reminded for the 1,786th time of my parents' wisdom and faith. For even though my mother did not finish high school, and my father only completed 5th grade, they had advanced degrees in how to use the Word of God, and so Bonhoeffer only repeated for me what my parents had lived, and taught me as I was growing up.

In his little book, Meditating on the Word, which explains why he believes that Christians, and especially seminarians, should spend one half hour each morning meditating on a passage, or even a single phrase or word, from the bible, he says that we cannot be instruments of God's Word if we use the bible like a club, or ticket to cheap grace, or as an intellectual pursuit...or only just to prepare sermons.

God's Word, communicated through our reading of scripture, must be placed within our hearts at the beginning of each day so that it can teach, guide and transform us, so that we will be "doers" of the Word, and not "hearers" only, or "preachers" only.

You can read the whole book if you want, and I recommend that, but I especially wanted to bring it to our attention today the idea that our Lutheran hermeneutic is simply the tool that we Lutherans use to pry open the Word of God - it is the beginning, it is the Lutheran lens on the kaleidoscope, but the power of God's Word, the living of it, can only happen when we allow it to penetrate our hearts and spirits, and dwell there.

Bonhoeffer says: "I do not treasure God's promise in my understanding, but in my heart. It is not to be analyzed by my intellect, but pondered in my heart."

Personlly - I love intellectual activity, I adore academics, and I believe that learning is not only satisfying, but critical for the life of a pastor and the life of faith.....but......unless God's Word is something that we ponder - daily and deeply - we will not be equipped to do it or preach it.

I have spent a lot of time in the last couple of years pondering scriptural passages on reconciliation, and so the texts for this evening, especially the one from Ephesians, had been rambling around in my heart long before I sat down to write this sermon.

Whereas the gospel tells us how important reconciliation is - that we should be willing even to interrupt worship to accomplish it - Ephesians tells us that it is the body of Christ that enables it to happen. It is Christ crucified that brings together those who are far apart, it is the cross that breaks down walls, it is the blood of Christ that washes away hostility and gives the hope of reconciliation. Unless our conversation about sexuality takes place at the foot of the cross, in the presence of the risen Christ, we are doomed to hostile and unending polarization.

Do we love this particular expression of the Body of Christ known as the ELCA well enough to do the hard work of reconciliation? Or do we prefer to love our own opinion? Reconciliation is not a synonym for compromise or faithless capitulation.

Desmond Tutu has said: "Some might think that reconciliation is a soft or easy option. It does not mean crying peace, peace where there is no peace. It always costs something....look at what it cost God." Reconciliation cannot happen apart from the cross. God has given us the ministry of reconciliation - in every issue and every corner of the world. As I have struggled to understand the true reconciliation that might be possible in this potentially divisive issue of sexuality - a reconciliation that honors the Word of God and the consciences of those Lutheran Christians who are bound to differing interpretations of the Word of God - something has emerged unexpectedly for me. I believe that it is a way into a deeper understanding of God's will, and an authentic pathway to reconciliation, and that is a deep sharing of the human suffering that is taking place around this issue.

When I accepted the call to serve as the Chair of the ELCA Task Force for Sexuality Studies, I expected a lot of reading and listening I expected anger, fear, threats and weariness. But what I didn't expect was all the suffering that I would encounter.

This summer one of the pastors in my synod called me, to say thank you for our church's effort to raise the issue of homosexuality, and to insist that people talk about it. He was involved in the pastoral care of two lesbian women who were partners, one of whom was a member of his congregation.

Within his congregation there is some disagreement about this issue, as there is in every single congregation in the ELCA - and if there is one which you think is single- minded on the subject, that only means that the majority has managed to intimidate and silence the minority.

But despite the disagreement, the congregation had embraced this couple, and loved and supported them, although the member's partner was Roman Catholic and and struggled mightily with the condemnation of her family and church.

Struggled so mightily, was so filled with self-loathing, nearly mad with the strain of it, that during the night before her parents were due to arrive from Florida to visit her she climbed up onto the roof of the home that she shared with her partner, doused herself with gasoline, and put a match to her clothing.

She lived for two days, and when she died, she left behind a grieving partner, and congregation, and especially inconsolable was the eleven-year-old daughter of her partner, who had just recently found love and stability in her relationship with her mother's partner, and was doing much better in school. So much suffering -- "If one member suffers, all suffer together"

We are the Body of Christ, and no matter how many different models of the church we use that help us to understand institutional reality-- no matter how we may rearrange that model - splitting, merging, downsizing, upsizing, reorganizing, revitalizing - we live together in the mystical reality of being the Body of Christ in the world.

We are the Body of Christ, and individually, each of us is a member of it, and we are called to share the suffering, and the suffering is not all at one end of the spectrum of opinion on this issue.

Also, this summer, my phone rang one morning with a warning from one of my pastors.

She was planning to be present at the blessing of a same-sex union of a member of her congregation - she had decided not to do it herself -and she was calling to warn me that the "irate mother" of one of the young women was planning to demand to see me to find out what our church believed and taught about this matter.

Next, came the call from the irate mother, and, much as I felt like saying that I had an important pot luck supper to attend on the afternoon when she planned to be in town to see me, I agreed to meet with her. And it turned out that she wasn't an irate mother after all, just a broken-hearted one.

First, we looked at the bible together, and she was open to the possibility that maybe there could be other interpretations of scripture, though she wasn't there yet. Then she showed me a file filled with letters from her daughter- letters that suggested to me, even without her prodding, a young woman with a fragile, wavering sexual identity -- but for sure, a daughter who loved her mother deeply.

And she told me many other details about her daughter's journey - a confident child and beautiful young woman who endured an abusive first marriage that interwove the language of faith with emotional destruction, then a time of great uncertainty, then the love of a woman, who was strong and safe.

The mother said finally to me - I think I could make peace with this relationship if I knew for sure that my daughter is a lesbian, but no one else is asking that question - as far as I can tell she has received only permission, but no counseling from the church.

We prayed together - and talked about ways to stay connected with her daughter, and I hope some day to find out the end of the story - whatever that might be. But that mother's face is embedded in my memory, because it, too, along with the faces of those who have suffered violence, hatred, and exclusion, was an icon of suffering - "If one member suffers, all suffer together"

If we truly live out of this mystical reality of being, together, the Body of Christ, and individually members of it, and if we believe that we take into our bodies the bread and the wine that joins us with Jesus' suffering in the mystery of the Eucharist then we do not have the luxury of turning away from any of the suffering. And I am increasingly convinced that the growth of shared suffering in the Body of Christ is the only doorway that will open into a resolution of this issue.

When I met with our most recent round of interns last year, they listened carefully as I tried to describe my desire for their participation in this study, and my endless exhortations on the importance of listening.

One of them said to me: "So, you're asking me to love the church more than my own opinion of scripture?" And, as I thought about it, that's exactly what I was asking.

And I ask that of you, also. I would not ask that if I did not know for sure that faithful Lutheran brothers and sisters, for whom the Word of God is the heart and center and guide and judge of all that they do, disagree about the meaning of scripture with regard to homosexual sexual activity.

Perhaps we should be less inclined to stake out the territory of our personal opinion, and more willing to insist on the growth of compassion on all sides of this issue so that we can begin to work our way toward reconciliation.

When I first began this work, I realized that somehow I had to find a place to stand that was more sturdy than the quicksand of my own human opinion. I have told people that God equipped me for this call by giving me the gift of no personal opinion - but that's not exactly accurate. Instead, God helped me to set aside my opinion so that I could hear other voices better, discern fear beneath anger, and share all kinds of suffering.

Henri Nouwen has written about the call to be deeply available to others, especially those with whom we differ, and acknowledged how difficult it is:
To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

The fact is that to give up our preoccupation with evaluating others feels like death - it's the death of the sense of self-importance that reassures us that we, surely we, know what is really right. I am not asking you to change your opinion - you should take every opportunity to explain it, explore it more fully, and share it with others. But I am asking you to set it aside enough so that there will be a chance for compassion to grow.

If we remember our baptism each morning, and each morning we die to self and live to Christ, we choose, each morning, the grief of the death of our opinion, so that we can be fully alive that day to compassion.

And, each day, we are called to choose the spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of reconciliation, to guide us and keep us from becoming instruments of the Evil One, who is longing to divide, destroy and dismember the Body of Christ.

My prayer for us, here in the New England Synod, and for the entire ELCA, is that we may all become ambassadors of God's reconciliation, so that our church may become what Desmond Tutu envisions - an audiovisual aid to show the possibility of reconciliation to the whole world.

May it be so with us. Amen.