August 2005 Archives

It was only a matter of time:

Religious leader blames hurricane on gays (from The Advocate)

An antigay activist group based in Philadelphia says that the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina reflects God's judgment on New Orleans for hosting the gay Southern Decadence party. In a statement issued Wednesday, Repent America described “homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets” at the annual event, which draws some 125,000 revelers to the Big Easy each Labor Day weekend. “Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” said Repent America director Michael Marcavage. “May it never be the same.”

Marcavage is a notorious foe of gays. He and three other Repent America members were charged with felonies last year connected with a demonstration they staged at Philadelphia's gay pride observance. A judge dismissed all charges in February.

The head of the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church responded to Marcavage's assessment of the tragedy. The Reverend Doctor Cindy Love said she doesn't believe God punishes anyone with natural disasters. “I really believe that the use of scripture in this way is an affront to the life and love of Jesus Christ,” she said.

May the leader of Repent America himself discover genuine repentance.

Not a lot of time to write or reflect the past few days. Plus the issues I've been mulling over have been somewhat too personal to discuss directly here.

I've been working my way through Paul's letters again, a book or a few chapters at a time. If you ever found them dry or difficult, I wholeheartedly recommend taking a fresh look at them in one of the modern translations, such as The Message. I view Paul not as a patriarchal oppressor but as a much misunderstood (and possibly queer) pastor and prophet. If you pay attention to what he really says you will know what I mean.

Today's reading brought me to this passage. I've been struggling with the issue of community and what it means to be faithful in community.

If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care--then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. --Philippians 2:1-4

If there has been an inward change, our outward lives must begin to look like this. God knows it is not easy, otherwise we wouldn't have to be reminded of it so many times in the Bible.

It's interesting that Darrell Grizzle should ask, in Gay Spirituality & Culture, 'What is Truth?' I think truth is both absolute and relative. Absolute in that there really are fundamental (not fundamentalist) truths, at least in the abstract sense, such as God is love, or it's wrong to take an innocent person's life. Relative, in the sense that none of us can perceive truth absolutely, and so our understanding is always relative to our social location, perspective, disposition etc and that we apply our understanding of truth provisionally and not absolutely in daily life. This is not the same as moral relativism, or as Darrell says:

“If we never stand up for what is true – if we never speak our truth with conviction – we slip into a kind of moral vacuum, where every viewpoint is given equal weight, no matter how harmful the consequences of those viewpoints may be to others.”

This was in reference to Pat Robertson's latest outburst, and how we might, as Christians, respond. The reason it's interesting to me that Darrell should ask this question is that I was at church earlier this evening, and a passage from 1 John was quoted that stuck in my mind:

We can be certain that we know God if we keep God's commandments. Anyone who says, “I know God,” but doesn't keep God's commandments is lying, and doesn't have the truth. But if anyone obeys God's word, in that person we see God's love truly made complete. This is how we know if we're in God: If we claim to live in God, we should walk as Jesus did. –1 John 2:3-6

I've read this over and over this evening. To me it's saying that we can only find truth by following hard after God. This means living in love with one another and “walking as Jesus walked”. Easy to say but hard to do when confronted with the disorder and evil and confusion that abounds in this world.

It seems to me that Jesus had no trouble calling a spade a spade, or a corrupt religious establishment a 'brood of vipers' (Matthew 12:34) or 'white-washed sepulchres' (Matthew 23:27). Yet he also commanded us to love our enemies, turn the extra cheek and go the extra mile. This is a hard task for a lot of us given how religion has been used to abuse and oppress us. But I don't think we can really speak the hard truth with power unless we ourselves are truly living in God's love. Love without truth might be sentimentality, but truth without love is hypocrisy (and leads ultimately to totalitarianism).

Genuine prophets in any age speak with such power because they really speak the truth in love. Think of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus.

I hate what people like Pat Robertson stand for, the vile things they say and do. I wonder deeply whether such people can ever glimpse the loving God I know through the dark cloth of self-righteousness they have wrapped themselves in. I pray that they will, and I have faith that God can really do anything. But loving one's enemy does not mean ignoring or tolerating the evil that they do. Truth and love both require that we resist evil.

USATODAY.com - Pat Robertson calls for assassination of Hugo Chavez

“You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson said. “It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.”

Like I said last posting, blessed are the peacemakers...

World Community Mourns Tragic Loss of Brother Roger, Taizé Founder

Terrible news about a true prophet of peace: Brother Roger Schutz, founder of the Taizé community and one of the world's leading ecumenical figures has been killed. The Taizé are an ecumenical community working for reconciliation among churches and between people. Brother Roger helped persecuted Jewish refugees during the Nazi period as well as migrants and the poor in developing countries.

Matthew 5:9 - Blessed are the peacemakers.

Last week the Metropolitan Community Church of Greater New Orleans was evicted from their home in the Project Lazarus hospice. The hospice is owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, which claims it decided to terminate the lease because of MCC's “teachings...on the issues of same-sex marriage” and blessing of same sex-unions.

“This particular group blesses gay unions, which we do not support,” the Rev. William Maestri, a spokesperson for the archdiocese told the Times Picayune newspaper. Maestri said that if the lease were continued it could create the impression that the Catholic church is either indifferent or in support of the teachings of the MCC.

Supporters of the Archdiocese's position went so far in at least one case as to question whether MCC is a Christian church at all:

Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy, defended the archdiocese, saying that since the hospice Lazarus House is their private property, the “church was acting within its legal rights to terminate the arrangement” ...

Crampton was “struck” by MCC's “pretense of being a Christian denomination.” He added: “I would suggest that merely saying it does not make it so, and that in fact, it is nothing of the sort.”

I want to talk about something that has been on my mind lately for various reasons. Do you ever notice how when God wants to get a message through to you it can come through multiple channels and in different ways until you begin to see it more clearly?

The following struck me as I was listening to it the other day on my iPod. It's from a recent sermon at the Cathedral of Hope by Rev. Mike Piazza:

Transformation is always the result of an encounter with God.

In fact, to have an encounter with the living God and remain unchanged is what I think Jesus meant when he said that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was the only unforgivable sin.

It isn’t unforgivable because God refuses to forgive us, but the soul that is so hardened and cynical that it no longer responds to the gentle brush of the Spirit cannot experience grace even when it is offered. That is a grave emotional and spiritual condition.

I'm tired of hearing all this talk in mainline churches about 'unity', as if it were the greatest and most precious gift of God to the church. The church has never experienced unity in it's two thousand year history, if by unity we mean conformity of thought and practice.

Yet once again we hear self-congratulation and clerical mumbo jumbo about the supreme importance of unity over love - this time from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America after they voted today to continue tolerating gays and lesbians as less than full members of the body of Christ.

In the first resolution, adopted by a vote of 851-127, the ELCA stated that “its members, congregations, synods, churchwide organization, and agencies and institutions -- be urged to concentrate on finding ways to live together faithfully in the midst of disagreements, recognizing the God-given mission and communion that we share as members of the body of Christ.”

In other words, the invitation to 'journey together faitfully' essentially means affirming the status quo (where the marriages and/or holy callings of GLBT members of the body of Christ are not recognized as such by the church) -- and semantically reducing the profound struggle for justice and love to one of 'disagreements over controversial issues'. As if we were talking about obscure and academic theological disputes, and not the lives and life struggles of real people who continue to be oppressed every day by institutional religion.

In a recent comment a pastor asked me about the title of my blog, and whether by 'prodigal' I mean wasteful, as in the parable of 'the prodigal son'. In truth, the title is a reference to the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, found together in Luke 15 and therefore meant to be read together.

'Which one of you with a hundred sheep, if he lost one, would fail to leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the missing one till he found it?'

Luke 15:4 (New Jerusalem Bible)

'But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we will celebrate by having a feast, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.”'

Luke 15:22-24 (New Jerusalem Bible)