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Gay Accepting Sermon - Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

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peterw
 
Joined in 2007
October 29, 2007, 14:37

😀 This is the text of a sermon preached in the Episcopal Grace Cathedral in San Francisco by the Dean, Father Alan Jones on 9th September.


I was privileged to be in the congregation at the time and found it to be one of the most gay friendly sermons I have ever heard, particularly one from a main stream church


September 9, 2007

BACK TO BASICS

We look back to basics on this Sunday when we celebrate the life of this extraordinary

congregation. The mystery at the heart of things is expressed in Jeremiah 18: 1-11 –

the image of the potter – the sovereignty and majesty of God. We have to give up the

illusion that we are in control. Remember always the call to repentance. Beware of our

arrogance at placing ourselves at the center of things. “Man proposes. God disposes.”

This is why we are called to question the structures of the world and to count the cost.

A Hassidic rebbe – his faith intact after going through the holocaust — was asked:

“Seeing what you saw, did you have no questions about God?” He replied: “Yes, of

course I had questions. So powerful were those questions, I had no doubt that were

I to ask them, God would personally invite me to heaven to tell me the answers. But

I prefer to be down here on earth with the questions than up in heaven with the answers.”

Very Jewish. Very Anglican! Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “Faith lies not in the answer

but the question – and the greater the human being, the more intense the question.”

Ours is a community that deepens the questions (that’s why we will never be a

mega-church!) and for a very good reason. Think of the cruel certainties of believers

(both secular and religious) have done great harm over the centuries – not least those

who appeal to the authority of the Bible, the Church or the State.

Let’s look for a moment at the Letter to Philemon about a runaway slave – Onesimus.

Onesimus has shown up on Paul’s doorstep and has been converted by Paul who decides

to send him back to his master. The letter is a masterpiece of Church diplomacy. Notice

that St. Paul doesn’t question the institution of slavery although he wants Philemon to treat

Onesimus as “more than a slave – a beloved brother”. The Bible takes slavery for granted.

That’s why there’s endless argument about what the Bible means for us today. The Bible

is for slavery? Right? Well – not quite!

This should make us not only question the whole issue of slavery but also the way we

approach the authority of Scripture. Before the Civil War the abolitionists’ attempt to

build a case against slavery based on Scripture failed miserably. Their opponents shot

them down as speciously distorting it. “A new argument had to be found: from conscience.”

The Bible, as they interpreted it, was no help….

Listen to this about slavery: John Henry Hopkins (1792-1868) Episcopal Bishop of

Vermont wrote that he could “imagine no transgression more odious in the sight of God,

and more sure to forfeit His blessing, than the willful determination to distort His revealed

Word, and make it speak, not as it truly is, but as men, in their insane pride of superior

philanthropy, fancy that it ought to be . . . If it were a matter to be determined by personal

sympathies, tastes or feelings, I should be as ready as any man to condemn the institution

of slavery, for all my prejudices of education, habit, and social position stand entirely

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opposed to it. But as a Christian, I am solemnly warned not to be ‘wise in my own conceit’

. . . I am compelled to submit my weak and erring intellect to the Authority of the Almighty.”i

The same kind of nonsense is being spouted about homosexuality today, and by Bishops, all

supposedly based on the authority of Scripture.

We seem to have learned nothing. In 1866, (note the year!) the Holy Office of the Inquisition

responded to an inquiry from Ethiopia with this instruction: “ . . . slavery itself, considered as

such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be

several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators

of the sacred canons.” Stephen Schloessler SJ comments, “This passage would be disturbing in

any context, but its date makes it thoroughly chilling. . . . In this juxtaposition as in others

throughout history, the moral vision of the agnostic (or atheist) puts the overly-presumptuous

Catholic teaching authority to shame.”

One more example – this time about anti-Semitism and the power of the Church. Canon 68

of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 states, “We decree that [Jews and Saracens] of either

sex, in every Christian province and at all times, are to be distinguished in public from other

people by the character of their dress . . .” This decree was followed up a dozen years later

by the Synod of Narbonne: “In order that Jews may be told apart from others, we decree,

and we order it most emphatically, that in the center of the breast (of their garments) they

shall wear an oval badge the width of which shall be the measure of one finger and the height

one half a palm.” This provision would be reiterated in a sixteenth-century papal provision

and then once again reinstated in a 1775 edict requiring men to wear a yellow-colored sign

on their hat and women on their uncovered hair. Here, then, at the Fourth Lateran Council,

are the founding origins of the Nazi’s yellow Star of David. That spirit is still alive, for

example, in Poland, where an anti-semitic priest with his own radio show has yet to be

disciplined by the Church!

We think we speak for God but Jeremiah safeguards the unbridgeable gap between humanity

and the designs of God who is the Wholly Other . . . . Or more plainly: “when you talk about

God, just remember – you really don’t know what you’re talking about.”ii This is the message

of Jeremiah. This community guards the mystery, keeps the questions open.

Now add to this a very difficult Gospel reading from Luke 14: 25-33 about counting the cost.

There a large crowd and the demand hate father and mother! Did Jesus really mean that or is

the Gospel writer trying to get our attention, to grasp the cost of this new life, this new freedom?

Jesus speaks of building a tower and the importance of having the right foundation. We have to

count the cost. What about discipleship – the giving up of all possessions for the sake of a greater

freedom? It’s as if Jesus is saying, “The world isn’t as you think it is!”

These are appropriate and vital themes as we celebrate the life of this extraordinary community

and congregation. The stewardship of our life! Where God is calling us at this time and in this

place?

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I believe, first we’re called to witness to God’s inclusion of all in the commonwealth – no

more slavery, no more racism, no more subjugation of women, no more homophobia! No

more of these wickednesses and tyrannies based on spurious claims to the authority of the

Bible. We’re called to reasoned belief; and, we’re called to count the cost and to pay up!

This is our vocation here at this cathedral.

Never forget that we are called to reasoned belief. Our faith is reasonable. The fundamental

blasphemy of fundamentalism (any fundamentalism) is that it claims to know the mind of

God. The saving element of religion is awe/praise before the mystery. This “praise” is also

the basis for social justice and political action – awe before the transcendent in whom we

live and move and have our being. God gave us minds. Let’s use them.

But we live in strange times when many are attracted by and to authoritarianism. Even

atheism in this regard functions as a religion. Atheism has its own mullahs. There is an

aggressive secularism as well as fanatical religion which tolerates no opposition. In human

affairs no one has the last word and in religion, no-one speaks for God – not even the prophets,

not the Pope or the Southern Baptist Convention. At best, they speak about God.3

A great danger today is that many Christians separate faith from reason and nature as it impacts

the issue of homosexuality. We now know that homosexuality is a normal variant in nature.

This should temper our reading of the Bible, just as the development of our understanding has

moved us to see the evils of slavery and the subjugation of women – both of which are embedded

in the Bible. When faith is separated from reason and nature it becomes a self-authenticating

phenomenon that invalidates all other perspectives.” The tragedy is that it can often override

conscience and simple decency. “You can’t argue with that! It’s in the Bible!”

I wonder what the nineteenth century Bishop of Vermont would say if he were alive today?

Something like this? “When it comes to blacks, women, gay people . . . . If it were a matter to

be determined by personal sympathies, tastes or feelings, I should be as ready as any man to

condemn the institution of slavery, the subjugation of women and the evils of homophobia,

for all my prejudices of education, habit, and social position stand entirely opposed to it. But

as a Christian, I am solemnly warned not to be ‘wise in my own conceit’ . . . I am compelled

to submit my weak and erring intellect to the Authority of the Almighty.” The trouble is, who

gets to say what the Almighty has in mind?

Yet we are not without resources. We look at the cross. We share in the Eucharist. And surely

we see a trajectory in Scripture and history – and the trajectory is inclusion and justice. That is

our pilgrimage together.

We have to deal with counting the cost and paying the tab. Listen to Michael Foot, for a long

time a Labor MP in the British House of Commons: (Be warned! He’s angry!) “We are here

to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves.

That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble

economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of the initiative. I would answer: to

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Hell with them. The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves.

They always do.” This is unfair and not completely true but with enough truth in it to sting –

the sting of the gospel, the sting of thinking and feeling. Caring for the orphan and feeding the

needy, freeing the enslaved – all at the center of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Love really

does make the world go round.

Part of counting the cost is our recovering a proper humility. We need to sober up. God is the

potter, we are the clay. Think of the now-monstrous scale of the human enterprise, in terms of

the Earth’s ability to accommodate it. Increasingly, it cannot. Cultural evolution is a runaway

train. The facts are by no means widely appreciated but they are available, and they are remarkable.

Our brains aren’t built to cope with the scale and apparent limitlessness of the human project –

hence our depression, our obesity, and our unhappiness. Ronald Wright puts the same point

differently: “We are running twenty-first century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000

years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.” The terror and

the violence. The greed and the depression.

So we are at a big cross-roads and this Cathedral has a vital part to play in the drama. Human

history is marked by many such crossroads. What makes this one different? It’s size and speed.

It’s fast and it’s global. Cultural advance is costly. It’s not that we’re worse than our ancestors –

it’s just that there are more of us and the rate of change accelerates. “Adding 200 million people

to the planet, after Rome took thirteen centuries; adding the last 200 million took only three years.”

“Each time history repeats itself the price goes up.” Charles Dickens wrote in Hard Times –

“Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death was to be a bargain across a counter.”

Here is the challenge, the cost. Are we able, willingly, to simplify and scale back our life-style?

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see

themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. This

helps to explain why American culture is so hostile to the idea of limits.” (The myth of progress

persists. The notion is that the economy is infinite and, therefore, sharing is irrelevant. It isn’t.

Hope for our generation lies in our recovering a sense of the commonwealth under the mercy

of God.

Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal in his 2003 book Our Final Century wrote: “The odds are no

better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization . . . will survive to the end of the present century

. . . unless . . . “ we count the cost and learn the secret of love, which in practical terms means

our giving more generously and being willing to see a greater redistribution of wealth and

resources as essential.

Making the transition from short-term to long-term thinking is costly but it’s the road we are

called to follow. The Way of Jesus. The Way of the Gospel.

What a great time to be alive! Yes — These are good themes as we celebrate the life of this

extraordinary community and congregation. Where is God calling us at this time and in this

place? I believe, first we’re called to witness to God’s inclusion of all in the commonwealth;

second, we’re called to reasoned belief; and, third, we’re called to count the cost and to pay up!

Give generously and give imaginatively.



magsdee
Disabled
Joined in 2006
October 29, 2007, 15:25

Interesting sermon and one that covers many things, thankyou D



Anthony Venn-Brown
 
Joined in 2005
October 30, 2007, 14:41

relevant to the thread in the discussion forum


“TRUTH BE TOLD”



Anthony Venn-Brown
 
Joined in 2005
January 31, 2008, 23:31

thought you might enjoy this


http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/20763.htm


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