Liberal and Affirming

A couple of months ago I was asked by a respected colleague if I would like to speak at one of their weeknight worship services.  These services are supposed to be more casual, open to the public, and for the broader community more than for the congregation itself.  In fairness, he sent an email to all of the local faith leaders with whom he has a relationship in our community, asking if any of us would be interested in speaking.  I am a raging extrovert and I love public speaking opportunities.  I said "YES".  It would be in May.  I had time.  But I immediately began to think about what I might share there.  I thought I would talk about the Wittel Farm Growing Project, which I started and direct.  We farm a 40 acre piece of land in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County.  We plant, grow, and harvest with volunteers.  Last year about 500 volunteers served on the farm.  Everything we harvest is donated to Lancaster County food relief organizations.  We work with about a dozen food banks and pantries.  So I thought maybe I would tell the story of the farm and my leadership there.  (I left the family farm to follow a call to ordained ministry.  20 years later, I'm farming to fight hunger. Never thought I would put my farming experience to use in the church and community.  God has a sense of humor).  I love to tell this story and invite people to imagine how God might call them to use their gifts and experiences in life to serve neighbors.  Maybe I would mention what its like to be called to grow food, care for the land, and serve the earth during a time of climate and ecological crisis. Knowing that some evangelicals don't believe in climate change or a Christian call to Earthkeeping, I wondered if that would be acceptable or even heard. I believe that we learn when our perceptions and understandings are challenged.
A couple of weeks ago, my colleague emailed me.  He was embarrassed and apologetic.  It seems that I was the only faith leader who said "yes", but his worship team said "No thank you".  They did not accept my acceptance of his invitation because I am a liberal and I have taken an "affirming" position on social media regarding LGBTQ neighbors.  They did not want to affiliate with me.  Even when my colleagues assured them that I wouldn't seek to offend them, that was not enough.  They were worried that my presence in their building would be perceived to align them with a liberal supporter of LGBTQ rights, participation, and full inclusion in the Christian community.
My first response was, "Hey, a free evening!".  My second one was lament at how deeply divided the church has become in this culture.  We cannot be in the same room with one another when our biblical morality causes conflict.  We prefer the comfort of like-minded or "right-minded" friends.  The enemy is anyone who doesn't think like me or believe what I believe.  We focus on the things that separate us instead of the things that unite us, that we hold in common.  This is part of what is killing the church in the west.
I notice in the gospels that Jesus holds company with synagogue leaders and Pharisees, Samaritans and sinners.  He brings people together who supported Roman policies and hated Roman policies.  He was rejected and ejected from the synagogue.  He protested in the temple.  He debated religion with scholars.  He healed and included people kicked to the margins of society.  He challenged economic and ethnic norms that created inequality, poverty, and wealth.  He told people to give without expecting anything in return.  He fed hungry people without demanding employment.  He favored the underclass, the disadvantaged, and the overlooked.  He touched families that experienced grief.  He made people's broken lives whole.  He sought to give them a chance to live.  He longed for God's heavenly kingdom to be manifest on earth in the human community.  He enacted justice, liberation from suffering, and merciful inclusion of every marginal person.  From children to mentally ill ethnic non-Jews.  Jesus was a liberal in his social policy of love--of neighbor, enemy, God and one another. 
I am labeled in the community as a "liberal pastor."  And apparently that is bad, unchristian, unfaithful, evil.  If "love your neighbor as yourself" is a liberal policy, then what does it mean to be a conservative Christian? I am tired of the "evangelical conservative Christians" having the public microphone and telling the world that a Christian thinks and acts and sounds like them.  And that their values and concerns are exclusively Christian.  And that their moral judgments represent the whole Christian church. And that real Christians vote Republican and love Trump. I am tired of one-issue evangelicalism whose lithmus test for authenticity is the size of your church, the wealth and fame of your preacher, and your stance on sex and abortion.  (Related issues).  What of the Christians who led the abolition of slavery or civil rights or opposed the death penalty or oppose war or serve the poor or welcome the refugee or offer healing or serve the earth?  What about the Christians who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and  house the homeless?  Liberal Christians or progressives or the Christian left must build and announce a counter narrative, an alternative to the gospel of prosperity and exclusion that is poisoning the air we breathe and the waters in which we baptize.  I am a white, educated, cis-gendered heterosexual Christian man and I experience the privilege that offers me all the time.  I have voice and vote and leadership experiences and get- out- of- jail- free cards and access to people and places and things.   I'm usually the host of the meal and the head of the table, not the unwelcomed guest.  I can't even imagine what it is like to be excluded because of my race or gender or sexual orientation or religious faith.  But I am willing to become an ally, a friend, and a companion to those who do experience exclusion and oppression and hate because of who they are.  I am willing, because I'm a liberal or progressive Christian.  I'm willing to fight with and for people who are treated like crap by the church and the policymakers. 
I don't like labels, but I would rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.  I do believe in full inclusion, welcome, and the beloved status of every person.  I do believe the church is supposed to be a sanctuary for marginalized and oppressed peoples, minority groups, and those without the power to secure their own rights and protections under the law.  Black and brown bodies, women's bodies, LGBTQ bodies, addicted bodies, mentally and physically ill bodies, asylum seeking refugee bodies, poor and hungry and homeless bodies---these matter to God and to Jesus and to the church he builds.  I see how the church has harmed people by excluding them, rejecting them for who they are, and denying them a relationship with God.  I would bet that the church makes as many atheists as the world makes. People don't believe in a church whose god is abusive and hateful and inaccessible.  People long for a God who frees people from their captivity to prejudice and hatred.  A God who frees people to serve others, to experience the fullness of life in community, in which they are accepted, loved, respected, and cherished.  I intend to serve that God--the God of the prophets, the God of Jesus, the God of the apostles.  If love and grace and inclusion make me too liberal, then I will wear that!  Yes, I am a liberal pastor.  I stand in the long biblical tradition of the prophets and in the life of Jesus Christ; I long for the full and complete freedom and inclusion and vitality and health of every living person, every living thing in God's good creation. Until all are free, none are free.  To be free is to be accepted as God made you.  To be free is to be you.  To be free is to have agency and safety and access to sufficient provision.  To be free is to live without fear, without discrimination, without the threat of violence.  To be free is to have choice and to choose life, to choose mercy, to choose service, to choose to embrace others as beloved siblings.  Call me what you want, God has called me beloved child and servant.  Nothing matters more. 
    

Justice Doing, Mercy Loving, Humble walking Faith in God

Justice doing is

Sitting at lunch counters and on buses in seats reserved for whites only;

Suing one’s master for freedom from slavery;

Leading your people on an underground railroad,

Going to jail for riding the whites only trolley car and going to the supreme court;

Marching from Selma to Montgomery across deadly dangerous bridges;

Standing up and telling the truth to powerful men until freedom is won for all;

Justice doing is

Marching and protesting and writing letters and campaigning and calling up your congressman or senator or governor to speak your mind on behalf of those who know injustice;  It is a demand that power serve the vulnerable, the least, the marginal, the small. It is a demand for the truth in politics and an end to corrupted self-interest. It is a demand for environmental protection and climate action to save the planet from greed and gluttony and abuse.  It is children marching to end gun violence in schools and children marching for the planet and children leading us to do what is right, even when it isn’t easy. 

Justice doing is

Going to rallies in Harrisburg on buses with strangers who become friends because our cause is the same, our hope is the same, our hearts are the same---until those who are wronged are given every right, we will keep up the fight for justice;  

Justice doing is inclusion and compassion and holiness and bodily presence, a blessing of rightness in a world full of wrong.  It is knowing what is right and acting for the right and demanding that what is right for me and for the white man and straight woman and for the wealthy family is also right for the black man and woman, the gay man and woman, the trans man  or woman, the poor man or woman. Justice doing is a courageous demand for freedom and equality and human dignity and opportunity and reparations for generations of wrong. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  

Mercy loving is

Feeding and clothing and housing the hungry, naked, homeless poor.  It is generosity that relieves suffering by giving some of what I have to you so that you have what you need. It is good samaritan funds spent to keep a family housed or the lights turned on or the heat working in winter.  Mercy loving is holding space for someone to grieve, to fail, to struggle and to stay with them in it. It is empathy for the strugglers, whose lives are too hard, because isn’t it hard for all of us, aren;t we all strugglers on the journey?    

Mercy loving is 

Opposing the death penalty and mandatory sentencing that robs our humanity and destroys black bodies, guilty of blackness if nothing else; and encouraging rehab for almost everyone because everyone has pain and everyone suffers and bleeds.  It is to want affordable health care for everyone because health is not about money. It is to welcome the asylum seeker and the refugee fleeing suffering in search of mercy; it is to oppose public policies that detain and imprison brown children and deport brown parents and reject entry to a better life for black and brown peoples. Mercy loving is to reject war and militancy as the first resort in global conflict or global conquest.  It is to insist that people matter more than profits and bottom lines.    

Mercy loving is

Caring for all the creatures like God cares for all the creatures; it is to adore pets and reduce ones impact on the planet and to be concerned about the planet’s health and to consider the needs of all living things when I leave my house and go out for a walk.  It is to plant trees and flowers and meadows and feed the birds and the bees and the bats and the butterflies. It is to reduce waste and single use plastic and the throwaway consumerism that kills so much, including the soul; It is to give a little extra to save the Koala and the Polar bear because they have value too; Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.

Humble walking is a stroll, a meander, a  hike from my ego-centric self-indulgence toward a self-emptying, subsistence on God, the earth, and the others walking beside me.  It is the insistence that we depend, that life depends, that everything depends on some things we cannot do or accomplish or make ourselves. Humble walking visits the homebound and shows up at gravesides and sorts clothing and packs food and cooks breakfast and doesn’t ask what’s in this for me? Humble walking is worship; Because humble walking is walking toward and with someone else, and God is walking there too.  It is not arrogant strutting or mean tweeting or wealth boasting. Blessed are the meek for they alone will inherit the whole earth!  

What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.  Amen.   

Jesus did four things

I’ve never been arrested.  Not yet. 2020 might be the year.  I feel it coming. Sometimes you have to get arrested for change to come.  Christian history is full of arrests for the cause of justice and freedom and mercy.  John the Baptist was no criminal. John the Baptist’s arrest is a consequence of the Roman occupation and the oppressive policies they used to control the Jewish population in Palestine.  He was arrested for calling out, publicly shaming, or protesting the bad behavior of a certain political ruler--Herod Antipas. Jesus’ public ministry began as a response to John’s arrest.  And he begins to preach John’s message. Knowing that it was John’s mouth that put him in jail, he shouts it anyway! Change is coming, God is near! Change is coming, God is near. Change is coming, God is near.  He takes up John’s work, but he doesn’t stay in the predominantly Jewish south. He goes north to the Galilee of the Gentiles, so called because of the mixed population there. For over 800 years, northern Israel was ethnically mixed.  Judea and Jerusalem were much more Jewish. Israel was segregated, north and south. Some Jews were prejudiced against other Jews, and then there were the Samaritans. This is when oppression causes the oppressed to see themselves as inferior and divide themselves from one another.  It is always the powerful’s rule to divide the conquered in order to diminish them and weaken them, to hold them down.     

Jesus takes John’s message to a mixed community of Jews and non-Jews. Because suffering underneath was and is not an exclusively Jewish situation.  

Jesus invites fishermen to follow him.  He suggests that their skills as fishermen may become instruments of God’s work.  Their everyday skills and tasks could be applied to the mission field. They’re going fishin’.  Fishermen know the fish don’t come to you. You got to locate the fish, net the fish, catch the fish, clean the fish, fry the fish. Now I’m getting hungry.  And maybe that’s part of it. Are we hungry to connect with others? What’s our net? Where are the fish? Is the message so meaningful to us that we want others to hear it, know it, experience it?  And fishing is full of hard work and failure. You try one spot, nothing. Try another spot, nothing. Try another spot, jackpot! Go back there the next day, nothing. Fishermen know how to fail and keep going.           

Jesus’ followers observed that Jesus did four things.  He went throughout Galilee; teaching in the synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom; curing every disease and sickness among the people.  These four things, Matthew says, characterize Jesus’ activity.