Full Circle, with Tears and Joy

"By and by, when the morning comes,
When the Saints of God are gathered home,
We'll tell the story of how we've overcome,
and we'll understand it better by and by."

I began this blog 4 years ago, in the aftermath of the passage of Prop 8 in California, when the country took a turn towards equality in its election of Barack Obama as our president, while some of our states took a sharp turn away.

On Tuesday, my home state of Minnesota took a turn towards equality when we voted down a similar amendment to our constitution by a margin of 52-48%, the first time any state in the union overturned an effort to dehumanize LGBT people in its state constitution. We shouted and laughed and wept tears of joy.

But underneath it all, for me at least and I think for many others, were another kind of tears. These are tears for those who didn't make it to see this day, who died of AIDS and suicide, those young people who didn't make it to see their high school graduations like Justin Aaberg, whose death pierced my heart as it pierced the hearts of many. The following is my reflection on this experience:

TEARS. 

What I hear and feel most deeply around the defeat of the anti-gay marriage amendment in Minnesota is how deep it has hit so many of us in our souls, and how that power has come out of our eyes through those gentle drops of soul-rain. 

Having to prove one's humanity again, and again, and again to those who deny it is not only tiring, not only demeaning, not only frustrating. It is also deeply sad. It is sad for me and it is sad for those who cannot be moved, whose binders and blinders are so thick that they cannot see what is in front of them: LOVE. 

And that makes me sob like a baby.

And I think, man, I've been at this for 25 years, what about those who have hit this soul-draining homophobia for 35, 45, 55, 65, 75 years, those who died who never had a moment like we had on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when this cursed proposed amendment took a header down the stairs of history?

What about those who deal with multiple stigma being put on them from the outside of their beautiful bodies and souls that grows inside them like a mold that grows out of control, about those throughout the world who do not have time to worry about their sexual orientation oppression because that is too much of a first-world problem, about those who have scarce dared to tell another soul what is most on their heart? 

What about those who suffered in silence or out loud, those young people who were made to feel like villains for being who they were, who were physically, spiritually, and sexually abused, who took their lives rather than living another day in a world that they felt could do nothing but hate them?

And then I see them: The Saints of God.

Those who are streaming in from all times and from all places, who have been washed in the tears that Jesus has for those who have undergone torment not only *in* his name, but *under* his name. Those whose faith has been kicked down the stairs along with their bodies, spirits, and souls, all the while those who are doing the kicking are repeating: JESUS, JESUS, JESUS, seized with anger or laughter or just plain blank-slate horror in the name of the Lord.

And the Saints stream in from all times and from all places, singing in the name of LOVE. 

And they know. 

They understand. 

They in glory shine. 

They have seen what there is to see. 

And they have overcome.

By and by, when the morning comes. When the saints of God are gathered home. We'll tell the stories of how we've overcome. And we'll understand it better by and by. 

"Festival of Lights," © 2000 John August Swanson

Remembering October 11, 1998

Part of why I always get a little sick this time of year is what happened 14 years ago. I'll never forget sitting in the little room I was sleeping in then in Manhattan, thinking about the boy who was dying in Laramie. After he died the next day (October 12, 1998), signs went up all over the West Village/Chelsea that said "Bring Your Anger." At the time I thought that message wrong, but in retrospect, I've rarely been angrier than I was when Matthew Shepard was beaten to death. That night there was also a peace march held around Union Square, which I missed, but instead I had my own peace march up 8th avenue, and the candle somehow stayed lit.

So much has happened since 1998, but in some senses, little has changed. The fight against Gay and Lesbian families in Minnesota with the marriage amendment is a classic case of how it is still acceptable to find any rationale necessary to try to defame, diminish, and even destroy us. But our humanity, and the integrity of our families, triumphs over the darkness contained in chants of "religious liberty" and "protect our children," because the One who created and unites us also gave us those parts of ourselves that are most human. And for me, like for Matthew, that part is gay.

No matter what some Christian voices say, God loves what God created, and nobody, of no denomination, of no ranking, of no nationality, of no level of wealth, of no language, political persuasion, education level, or any other factor can separate us from the love of God.

15 for 15 VII: Pride, or Anti-Pity

"What have you done today to make you feel proud?"  --Heather Small

"You can take away my job, my vocation, my marriage, my home, and my life, but you can't take away my pride." --C. W.

I.

"I'm on my way, can't stop me now.  And you can do the same."  Pride may be one of the seven deadly sins, but frankly, there are a lot of deadly sins that are not counted among these seven sins, such as hate, fear, and pity.

I say, let's redefine these deadly sins.  What have you done today to make you feel proud?

To say I'm fan of Showtime's series "Queer as Folk" is an understatement.  When my friend, David, a fellow Minnesotan and a life mentor, first lent me his recorded episodes on VHS tapes back in New York City more than 10 years ago, I knew I loved this rag-tag bunch of metro-homosexuals.  It is sexy, edgy, real, funny, semi-pornographic at times, but that is the reality of our lives.  No apologies, no regrets.

Just now, I finished watching the series finale (the last scene is in the link to the above quotation), which ended with the song above--"What have you done today to make you feel proud?"  Not "make me feel proud."  Not "make God feel proud."  Not "make your parents, your teachers, your employers feel proud."  But you.  The very you who is reading this sentence right now, and who is typing it.  Because feeling proud is something new every day, like God's manna from heaven, something not just to re-live, or re-make, but something that comes up as a requirement for us to live as flourishing, loving, proud, and fierce human beings.

II.

I've taken a few weeks' sabbatical on this series of writing 15 reflections on 15 years of being out.  In the meantime, I visited the scene of my coming out, my alma mater, Lawrence University.  I hadn't been there in nearly 10 years, and many people have come and gone since then.  Many buildings are new, many people are new, but as I approached college avenue and rode past Main Hall, the cobwebs fell from my eyes, and I saw the place that was so formative in my life--not just my intellectual life, but my emotional life, and the life that I found worth fighting for after so many years of fear.

Every corner of this university, especially the Conservatory of music, had a memory, or many memories.  The friends I made, the friends I lost, the people I loved, hated, the people I passed who have themselves passed on to another dimension, those places that are now silent, that used to be the center of activity.  "Mozzi sticks!!!"  I could hear one saucy Union kitchen lady yelling as I waited for one of the dearest friends in my life that I haven't talked to now in 10 years.  Now, silent, a closed door, like that friendship feels.

But pride is on the other side, waiting to open the door.

I wasn't exactly proud of myself when I got to college at age 18.  My parents were proud of me, and for that I'm both grateful and fortunate.  The pathway to 18 and beyond is filled with so many possible wrecking points, that in some ways I think it is a miracle that as many people make it to that one, lone spot as do.  But the hardest times do not pass when one makes the first forays out onto one's "own."

It's coming to own one's own that can present some of the tightest spots of our lives.  And the road there is lined with those who have made it only part of the way, not because of their own faults, but because others made the road so damned impassable.  But the road is not *necessarily* impassable. There are angels who can help you get through, if you can open your eyes when they are most tightly closed and see.

And we need to help those angels along, and to be those angels of our better natures.

III.

I put writing this entry off because in many ways it is the hardest one to write.  The time I've taken getting here mirrors the time I've taken getting to any place in my life where I can be proud both of who I am, as well as what I've done.

It's hardest, sometimes, to cut oneself some slack, let alone others.  In fact, I think we often treat ourselves with harshness that would make us go to the mat for our friends and loved ones if we saw them being treated the same way that we sometimes treat ourselves.

So pride is not such an easy thing, for a number of reasons, for a number of people.  Being told you're worthless, scum, lowest of the low, perverted, wrong, abnormal, sick, damned, and a whole host of other horrible things, seems to sink in with some time, and sinks us.  A lot of people who are not themselves LGBTQ have experienced this kind of soul-murder.  So why does so much of the animus come to those of us who are LGBTQ?

Because, I sense, we expose the beauty and diversity that is each person's in this life, that so many are afraid will give them such fulfillment, that it will literally blow their minds.

People are diverse, they're not of one mind, they know themselves often much better than they are known, in short, people are not on one standard track of being recognized, comfortable, productive, and beneficent to themselves first, as well as to others.

And the LGBTQ community, as far as we are a community, is the exemplar of this diversity.  While our sexuality, "lifestyles," and the choices that we make to live more fabulously every day make us part of who we are, we live, each of us, being "repairers of the breach," reconcilers, and living those lives away from the quiet desperation that makes people die a death much worse than that of the body:  the death of their spirits in their limited time in this life.

IV.

Those who wish to say that our relationships, that our lives, in all their color, do not count as much as theirs, miss one of the greatest gifts of this brief life:  that life does not all have to be the same, and that we have agency in making of our lives what God would, I don't just think but am certain, want us to make of our lives:  as absolutely much as we can.

Many of those who couch their opposition under the name of the God of all life, look at gay pride parades and festivals as the exemplars of our shame:  leather daddies, open sexuality, sodomites laughing and parading their difference through the streets, people who are one step away from taking us all down the fast road to hell.

Well, I have a message for these purveyors of doom:  those who fear the rainbow are bound to be crushed by it.  Not crushed by the triumph of "fag enablers," but by their very own, human, and misguided fear.  And that makes me pity them, although I know that fear as well as they do.

I remember my first pride well, in the summer of 1998 in New York City.  It was the first time in my life that, for just a few hours, in a small part of the world, I felt like everyone in the world was LGBT or Q, where nobody had to explain anything about what I had felt all my life, where I could feel, even if briefly, the home that is so common to so many people, where I came home from a lifelong exile.  And that feeling is not something to fear, but to celebrate.

This pride is the pride that we take in our own lives, in our own feelings, in the exultation that each of us and a human being can feel in our humanity, not in the humanity that is imposed upon us, but in what we ourselves know is our truth.

V.

Pity, not humility, is the antithesis of pride.

I know pity well--I'm prone to self-pity, one of my deepest flaws.  Self-pity, in feeling that I have not made enough of my life, that I have not attained my calling as a minister of the Word of God, that I have not sustained a long-term relationship or marriage, that I have not yet peaked in the arc of my living, afflicts me as it does many, and seeks to quash the beauty that my life can, and often does, have and has to give.  This feeling of self-pity almost kept me from going back to Lawrence, the goal of which was to celebrate the awesome life and contribution of one of the most fabulous Lawrentians ever, our late archivist, Carol Butts.

I am eternally glad that I opposed the poisoned source from which these impediments derived, to avert what would have been a true pity:  missing out on this fabulous celebration and reunion.

I was proud that day that we gathered Carol's family, friends, and colleagues, to celebrate her memory and contributions, as she has so long deserves.  I only wish she could have been there with us to enjoy a well-deserved honor.

Now, this is hard to say, but I think it is the truth:  LGBTQ people are often trained more in pity than we are in pride.  We are made the victims of people who cannot accept the truths of their own lives, let alone the lives of others, and we cry out altogether too often in the pain that others inflict on us, and that we inflict on ourselves. But we also shout from the rooftops, and within the halls of power, that God indeed does love us in equal measure, that we are human in equal measure, and that our relationships are equal, not because we fight for them to be, but because they just are.

I had the chance to be proud for a while last week, in the midst of fighting against a vote by the Minnesota State Legislature to hand off for the people to decide what rights we should all have under the law.  I am grateful to Rep. Debra Kiel, freshman representative of district 1B, my home district, for hearing me out.  I hope truly that she thinks and prays about what I had to say to her.

The most important thing I had to tell her was this:  We are equal in our humanity, and we are equal in our baptisms (those of us who are Christian), but we are not equal under the law, and the law is very important, and something that our representatives, such as herself, have in their hands.

Hundreds who protested this anti-gay constitutional amendment made me proud, standing, singing, and shouting for our rights at the very door of power.  Organizations like OutFront Minnesota, Project 515, and the new Minnesotans United for All Families, are all helping to gather the power of our communities around making justice for all families a reality in Minnesota.

A few Republican representatives made me especially proud, most notably Rep. John Kriesel, whose experience in the war in Iraq, and particularly serving with a gay soldier who was killed, made him see that this anti-gay amendment must be opposed at all costs.  (His speech is here.) He said "I'm proud of this, because this is the right thing to do."  And he was absolutely right.

My parents, each in writing their representatives, made me proud as well, just one of many times.

VI.

Pride is not just doing what you're told.  Pride is knowing that you are worth more than others say you are, that your worth is from a source beyond yourself, beyond your own family and community, beyond your own accomplishments, from a source that reaches out to all of humanity, the wonderful and the awful, that for those of us who believe reaches to God and comes from God.

This kind of pride feeds our lives and gives them meaning.  It's not a sin.  The hate that challenges who we are, that hate is a deadly sin, literally.  And that is what Jesus came on this earth to oppose.

We hit the mat for a moment when the MN State Legislature passed this sorry bill (a.k.a. SF 1308 and HF 1615).  But we are not going to stay down.

We're going to kick such ass on this anti-marriage amendment.  Not because we're going to be louder, tougher, and more determined than those who oppose our relationships, but because we're simply going to love them more than they hate us.

We are going to love their scared selves into a place of salvation.

Jesus is not going to come down from the sky to save them from us, but, rather, Jesus is going to work through us to redeem them, until there is no more "us" and "them," but only "we."

And that's something to be proud of.

An Open Letter to Jim Wallis on LGBTQ “Civil Rights.”

I am taking a break this morning from my meditations on coming out, which shall continue soon, to express my disappointment in Jim Wallis & the Sojourner's Board's decision not to run an ad supportive of LGBTQ people submitted by the Believe Out Loud campaign.


10 May 2011


Dear Jim,


I was among those who were disappointed by your response to the Sojourners Magazine’s “editorial” decision not to run the Believe Out Loud ad that is supportive of LGBTQ Christians.  Unfortunately, a lot of people who call themselves progressive seem to have taken this as an opportunity to give you and Sojourners the old heave-ho as having anything to do with progressive Christianity.  This is unfortunate, as was your response that attempted to backtrack and promote a position that is, in fact, contrary to the one that you and Soujourners has taken with this ad.  You state:


"Given the time Sojourners is now spending on critical issues like the imperative of a moral budget, the urgent need to end the war in Afghanistan, and the leadership we are offering on commitments like immigration reform, we chose not to become involved in the controversy that such a major ad campaign could entail, and the time it could require of us. Instead, we have taken this opportunity to affirm our commitment to civil rights for gay and lesbian people, and to the call of churches to be loving and welcoming to all people, and promote good and healthy dialogue."  (This is taken from your longer response, found here.)


The Believe Out Loud ad is merely proclaiming that we, too, as LGBTQ people, should be welcome in Christian churches of our choosing, and that we have as much of a place in pouring forth our ardent prayers, and bearing the mutual burdens of our brothers & sisters in Christ, as those who would keep us from the altar and deny us God’s means of grace.  Although many could agree with the feeling of being excluded or looked at funny when they newly enter a church, this is especially the case for LGBTQ people. 


It is unfortunate to see that words mean more than actions to you and the Sojourners Board in this case.  Not only because you seem to think that the only urgent needs lie outside of the realm of sexuality, but because you would say that you’re in favor of civil rights, while seeming not to care that millions of individuals are using the name of Jesus to torment and even to kill LGBTQ persons here and throughout the world. 


This is a teachable moment, Jim.  It is a moment in which you can publicly state that what is happening in Minnesota with our legislature near a vote to ban same-sex marriage in our constitution is wrong not only from a civil standpoint, but a moral one as well. 


This is the moment in which your voice should be the voice calling Uganda to account for its seeking to introduce a law that will lead to a holocaust of LGBTQ lives in that country, and should be condemning the use of Jesus’ name to condone and even initiate the deaths to come in that country.  Is this something that would embarrass you to say, and detract from your work of justice in other areas?


It saddens me to say, Jim, that your words of support have no currency with those to whom they would count as long as your actions do not match them.


But, if you wish to be helpful, but cannot be, Jim, don’t worry:  We are working tirelessly to liberate you and thousands like you who do not yet feel you can help us, for reasons of controversy or whatever other business considerations you might have. 


We are also tirelessly working to liberate the Gospel of Jesus from the hands of those who would use it to condone violence here and throughout the world.  Because it is a matter of justice that the Lord of Life not be used as the Demon of Death. 


You are needed, Jim, and so is Sojourners.  The welcome of the Christian Church here and throughout the world is not ornamental to the cause or justice, nor is it merely a civil matter.  The name of Jesus is at stake here, as are the lives of those who could perish under it.   


I will be praying for you.


In Christ,


Chris Wogaman
Minneapolis, MN

15-for-15 IV: Gaining My Religion

"God hasn't brought you this far just to let you go now."
                                               --Loretta Hernton

I.

Somehow, I got dragged back into church after foreswearing it for Aristotle.

It was going to be so neat and tidy:  Let God be whatever God was supposed to be, which I supposed wasn't much, pray when I really needed something somehow expecting that would work, and stay in my rational mind as well as I possibly could.  That was my "lifestyle choice" for a good long time.  Looking back now, I mouthed the words of atheism, but my heart wasn't in it.  It was like me trying to be heterosexual.

This is not to say that atheists, agnostics, humanists, and persons of dozens, if not hundreds, of world religions do not have a heart, and, indeed more of a heart than I.  But I could never have come to the religious belief I have without being openly gay.  Indeed, some of the most "Christian" people I know, and some of the better theologians, are atheists, and some of the beastliest things I've seen and heard have been done in the name of Jesus.

I've always been a doubter and a sceptic when it comes to faith.  Indeed, faith without doubt is like pig iron; it is brittle, and breaks at the least trial.  Doubt to faith is like the carbon that turns iron into steel, making it strong and pliable enough to shift without easily falling down.

II,

In college, I never felt like the church was any place for me to be.  After I left home, I left the church as well, as many young people do, except to earn some money playing organ or piano for services here and there.

My family attended a Methodist church quite faithfully, each Sunday, so it was a part of my upbringing.  In fact, I've not lived a day without being baptized, as I was baptized the very day I was born.  It was a lifestyle choice, yes, first made by my parents, and then myself.  But I never wanted to be a part of the "Christians" that I saw at college, because I knew that their company was no place for the likes of me.  But "my religion" has become far more than a casual choice or accident of birth.

Strangely enough, in coming to understand the part of myself that had to come out of the closet, especially in the context of what really mattered in my life and in the universe from my vantage point, I couldn't escape the many elements that had affected my life through religion.  Yet, even though I am certain I never went to a church service in which the pastor or priest said that homosexuals were going to hell, somehow I got that message through the air, or the airwaves, because enough other people were saying it:  God condemns gays.  I know that to be a lie, in some cases very carefully manufactured for maximal political effect, but it was a lie that helped keep me in the closet.

My first summer in New York, where I have lived 5 years of my adult life, I recall a subway evangelist (there were many) approach me on the uptown platform of the A train at 42nd Street.  He said to me, "Do you have Jesus?"  I answered, and can still clearly see and feel what I felt when I said it, "I already know I'm going to hell."

That frame of mind, however, is not where I would stay.

III.

As someone who went through seminary, I learned how to tell my "faith journey" while standing on one leg, like Ayn Rand claimed she could do and recite her whole philosophy (which I'm sure she could).  And not only did I go to one seminary,  but two:  Yale Divinity School/Institute of Sacred Music for my "Masters of Divinity," a title to this day that makes me laugh with images of donning leather and picking up a whip to recite the Word of the Lord, and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, which granted me a CATS, a Certificate of Advanced Theological Studies, which sounds like something between a pet and a medical procedure.   Altogether, I became a Master of Divine Cats who could whip out a faith journey narrative like last-minute pancakes for unannounced company.

My path was somewhat untraditional, lacking a particular influential mentor, but common as well to others who went to seminary.  I was raised in the church, left the church, left God, found out that I hadn't left God, got peppered with dreams and "coincidences" that forced me to think about God, as well as felt an increasing desire to know more about religion, to experience more, to become a pastor, at which I would have laughed when I was in college, and, after a time, to go to seminary.

I first came back to the church in Harlem, at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church on the corner of 145th and Convent Avenue.  There was a big pink cross up in front, and a fiery preacher, Minister Grant, who along with the choirs made the Word of God come vibrantly to life.  They let me use their piano to practice as I hadn't one of my own at the time, and it helped get me in the door on a Sunday morning when I wasn't doing anything else in particular.  Piano of God #1.

Later, after I moved north of Harlem, I found the Lutheran church down the street from where I lived while looking for a piano to play.  Piano of God #2.   Something seemed to be at work to unite the place where my heart resided during my teenage years, in music, and where it was starting to find itself more and more, in a wider place within my being.

My interest in Greek, my undergraduate major, led me to pick up a Bible for the first time in years when I was shopping at the Chelsea Salvation Army in New York one Saturday afternoon.  The teller gave it to me, saying, "We don't sell Bibles; just take it."  The beautiful Greek characters brought the Scriptures to my mind fresh and alive, and made me want to know and experience more.

When I picked up that volume and looked at the title page, I saw the name of Bruce Metzger, who had led the committee that edited that Bible from the Greek manuscripts. Since he was still living in Princeton, where he taught for many years, I resolved to go and meet him.  This desire led me to my first experience at a seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary.  Before that visit, I hadn't even much of an idea what seminary was.

A dream during my visit to that seminary convinced me that I must go to seminary, but not yet, so soon after coming back to the church.  I later learned that I dreamt a verse from the Book of Jonah (also found in Psalm 42):

and the flood was round about me;
all thy waves and thy billows
passed over me.  (Jonah 2:3; RSV)


I passed through the overwhelming flood in that dream, which I had seen Fantasia-style, in the 3rd person, encapsulated safely in a gleaming crystal case.  The waves rolled a mile over my head, but I was safe, as the waves all went over me.  I woke feeling as though I had been washed deeply, like in a steam bath but without the sweat.  It was as though I had been baptized again.  It was if I had been Jonah, running from God, and right into the belly of a whale.

In these formative years, I learned to appreciate the energy and deep commitment of those in the National Baptist tradition at Convent Avenue.  I also spent time with extremely conservative Mennonites; formed a small Bible study in which I translated the Greek version of the week's Gospel passage, complete with long footnotes describing theological concepts; took several courses at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian's Center for Christian Studies; discovered writing poetry there through a course on Modern Poetry and the Book of Hours; celebrated communion every day at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on my lunch breaks; and hung out at Union Theological Seminary, all while starting to worship at a Lutheran Church.

Perhaps most powerfully, every morning in New York, I would also shut my eyes and pray on the A train on the way to work, envisioning myself encapsulated in a ball of light.  Everyone in the train was part of that prayer, wishing them peace, healing, and love.  It was the only time in my life I can say my prayers were regular and absolutely transformative.  Not so after seminary.

IV.

Religion in America seems often to chase LGBT people away with dreadful visions of a tortured afterlife based on our particular "sin" in this life.  I believe instead that these religious voices are simply making for a tortured life for us here on earth, and have nothing to do with the possible afterlife.

Shortly after my denomination, the ELCA, voted to allow open and partnered LGBT people to serve as ordained clergy in 2009, a series of articles popped up on the LGBT news-blog Queerty.com written by Lutherans about the changes voted in, which many in the church had been working hard to get enacted for many years.

Given the voices of hatred towards LGBT people from people calling themselves "Christian," it is no wonder to me why many would be forced away from the church, indeed run screamin.  Personally, after the last several years of waiting for a church and wondering if this vocation to the ministry will ever pan out, or if I will just look like I was aimlessly drifting for 10 years, I can genuinely empathize with the feeling that churches can seem at best irrelevant and at worst actively, vocally, and indeed politically harmful, even deadly in their narrow and rigid messages of wide sin and narrow salvation.

So why go back to a religion that has spent so much energy on actively opposing me and millions of LGBT people?

Because God bewitched me, "jokester that she is," as one of my clergy acquaintances says.

V.

The brain in me that worked so hard to keep me in the closet for my first 10 years of knowing I was attracted to my same sex, which worked so hard on problems of philosophy, music theory, and politics, which reached out to the farthest reaches of the universe and tried to reach beyond, to the other side of the universe into whatever might be beyond, and that dismissed the possible reality of God, ended up taking a back seat to my gut and to my heart after I came out.

Why do we do what we do, think what we think, and feel what we feel?  When I was younger, I thought that we human beings functioned best when we did not let our emotions get involved, but used as pure of reason as we could, unclouded by the irrational heart. But when my heart and mind connected, which I strongly feel was not until after I came out for the first time to other people, I dropped my insistence on pure reason, and learned I was a gut sort of person.

The heart has its own knowledge, the brain its own, the gut as well, the soul another, close to the spirit.  If all lie in separate containers all the time, and do not converse, they can grow lonely, proud, and dictatorial, as each of us becomes without the benefit of kind and challenging human interaction, hearing various points of view, and feeling closely how our opinions affect the lives of others.

God works through our minds, but surpasses the bounds of reason.  Sexuality, as well, cannot be the sole concern of one organ over another.

In coming out, I set myself on a path to connect with God in a way that never would have happened if I'd attempted to make sense of life with whatever share of reason I was given between my ears and behind my eyes.

And that path is not over yet.  God hasn't brought me this far just to let me go now.

Christ Without a Cross Dies Twice

"For me, kind Jesus, was thine incarnation,

thy mortal sorrow, and thy life's oblation;

thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion.

for my salvation." --Johann Heermann tr. Robert Bridges

I.

Our culture denies death. Our culture denies death's power by saying that it is nothing, only a change. Our culture denies death's sorrow by making of it a celebration. And our culture makes of death's horror a cheap cologne that smells more like bacon than decomposition.

The challenge of Christ's death and resurrection is the greatest gift that the Christian church can give this culture, indeed any culture. But Christ without a cross, especially among his followers, dies two deaths: the actual death, and the death of relevance, for Jesus as just another man who died, another sucker whom the state overpowered, another dupe of the Caesar, no matter how many nice things he did or good things he taught, is doubly dead.

II.

The doctrine of atonement, the idea by which the death of Jesus makes good for the sins of the world, for our sins, is problematic for many to say the least. The idea that this act of Jesus, casting aside his Messianic crown for us, was in fact an act of divine child abuse, God killing God's own son, or the act of a political prisoner alone, seems to me fairly pervasive.

One powerful idea given me in seminary was that instead of a Mel Gibson-style pornographic torture fest, Christ's torture and death on the cross was an interchange of God's justice for our constitutional human injustice, happening through Jesus as through an electrical conduit. More than a felix culpa, a "happy fault," that "allows" God to build something better out of our faults, this interchange is an exchange of all that is just in God for all that is unjust in a creation that goes its own way. We get a better deal.

III.

I'm hardly a heavy-duty theologian, or a student of literature and art and cinema who can quote all of the concepts that I'm referring to here in the history of human achievement. But it seems pretty clear to me that many in the church, uncomfortable as we are with death, might seek to hide Jesus's death behind bunnies, eggs, candy, and parades.

What is an age-appropriate explanation of the crucifixion and resurrection to children? I'm by no means an expert, but talking directly about Jesus dying, and God bringing Jesus back from the dead, seems like it could be very powerful for those whom we often forget about when tragedy happens, because it seems even more difficult to explain it to children, who know something bad when they see, hear, feel, and experience it.

It seems to me that Christ without a cross dies twice, as I said above: his actual death, and the death of his relevance to us as Christians and to our or any culture, time or place. Our culture is not exclusively Christian, but it is one to which we might share a word from this perspective of death and resurrection, and at that a word of hope. Jesus without resurrection is Jesus without hope.

Perhaps we are ashamed because we cannot explain God's place in evil, either the evil of the crucifixion or the evil of natural disaster, war, famine, and other engineered acts of evil that we humans perpetrate on other humans?

Perhaps it is so difficult to believe in the resurrection that it is easier to sugarcoat it than try to explain it to others, much less ourselves and our own people? I can't say I understand the death and resurrection of Jesus all that well, but something in me believes beyond the need to sugarcoat my own impending death with the cross, to use the cross as a means of escape from reality, as must appear to many who do not share this same belief.

A church that sugarcoats the death and resurrection of Jesus with the candy of culture may well be as odious as a believer who uses the cross to deny his or her own death. But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said famously in Cost of Discipleship:

"As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death--we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls people, he bids them come and die....In fact every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life. The call to discipleship, the baptism in the name of Jesus Christ means both life and death" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 89-90. New York: Macmillan, 1959, Touchstone ed. 1995).

There is a broader point of forgiveness and mutual burden-bearing to Bonhoeffer's message here, but the necessity of death, and of death in Christ for a Christian, is of central moment.

Any version of Christ that can escape the tomb without the cross is not the Christ. Any version of Christ that gets caught in torture without the work of God in resurrection from the tomb is not the Christ. But my sense is that our human tendency is more to liberate Christ and ourselves through him without taking the hardest steps to and through the cross.

IV.

I wonder if a failure to encounter Jesus in all of his shame on the cross, around the crucifixion, and jumping right to the resurrection, may not be an element of what has chased people away from church by the droves?

Not only has there been a cultural shift since the 1960s that shows a marked decline in the relevance of church in much of American society, but perhaps the church itself has aided in people leaving it through downplaying its own relevance through its core concepts, and through becoming a place of trying to make people feel good about themselves in a way that a gin and tonic could do much better.

As a kid, and as an adult, direct talk has engaged me much more than beating around the bush. I don't want to hear about a Jesus who is merely a glory-machine, triumphing over death without experiencing it. That kind of Jesus doesn't make much difference to me or anyone else.

I want to hear about a Jesus who went all the way, who experienced everything I have experienced, and who came through it in a way that I can know meant a lot to him, not only an insignificant key change in the tune he was whistling, but a whole shift in the reality of what death and our relationship with God means to me and to humanity.

We crucify Christ again by forgetting the cross. We crucify Christ again by forgetting the tomb. We crucify Christ again by forgetting the resurrection. It is only with each of these elements, and by accompanying Christ in these places, and in teaching this to our children, and in insisting on our reality to the wider culture, challenging first its denial of death, that we respect most profoundly the God who has given us Godself in human form, and who has loved us so much that even death can't separate us from God.

Loving Jesus, the tomb awaits, but not yet. Nor your glorious resurrection. Not yet. Keep me for a moment from it, that its power and glitter not overwhelm me. Keep me for a moment with you in death's embrace. Amen.

(Photo credit: http://www.mrbramesblog.org/2010/07/weekend-in-new-york-part-1-cloisters.html)

A Spontaneous, Inexhaustive Lutheran Credo

One of my friends posted a question on what her statement of "What Lutherans Believe," and in thinking of it, I was struck with a flurry of spontaneous Lutheran credology. My favorite statement here is the last. Here it goes:

• Lutherans believe that Christ is the center and the center will hold.
• Lutherans believe that no sin is original--they've all been tried before.
• Lutherans believe that Christ showed his true colors on the cross, and we showed ours, yet God is above all seen in a rainbow of all colors.
• Lutherans believe that "Love your neighbor as yourself" does not mean to keep using Jesus' name to attack that neighbor for any reason whatsoever.
• Lutherans believe that the New Commandment doesn't supplant the 10 Commandments, but rather interprets law through the prism of the Gospel.
• Lutherans believe that God forgives you first, and then you respond with works of charity and compassion out of thankfulness, rather than trying to buy God's favor through good works, which doesn't work anyway.
• Lutherans believe that faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit and not a work that one Christian is better at than others.
• Lutherans believe that humans are not fully good or fully bad, but fully both.
• Lutherans believe that Jesus, and not Rob Bell, emptied hell of all sinners past, present, and future.
• Lutherans believe that human beings struggle and are not perfect.
• Lutherans believe three solas ("alones"), grace, scripture, and faith, but these are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive.
• Lutherans believe that doubt is an asset, and not a liability, to faith.
• Lutherans believe that Jesus really is present in communion, not just a memory.
• Lutherans believe that God is gracious, even in judgment.
• Lutherans believe that the Holy Spirit works today, and that God was not buried in the Bible.

And, most importantly:

• Lutherans believe that God is still speaking, even if some Christians never shut up.

Anoka/Hennepin: Tear Down That Wall (of Deadly Homophobia)!

In the last year, 7 young people in the Anoka/Hennepin School District have committed suicide, 3 directly related to being or being perceived as LGBTQ. The wall of silence, also known in the district as "neutrality," is creating some strange fruit hanging from the trees up there.

Because, although they say that these youth committed suicide, they were actually killed by those within their community, their schools, their churches, and in other contexts that should rather have held their tongues than spouted wounding words. It was merely a sleight of the District's hand that made it look like the young people killed themselves.

What a sleight of hand the Anoka/Hennepin School Board pulled by saying that the sexual orientation policy had to do only with curriculum, and not with bullying! As though they weren't able to see a connection between the wall of silence they created, the bullying by students, teachers, pastors, some family members, and other "concerned citizens," and the deaths that resulted.

The Anoka/Hennepin School Board had such a problem with hearing the truth about their policies in their August 23, 2010 meeting, that the recording of those proceedings was somehow glitched or lost. This was the meeting at which the mother and friends of Justin Aaberg, one of the gay youth who committed suicide in that district, spoke from their hearts about how his death affected them, and how the district is still a dangerous place for LGBTQ, and even hetero, youth.

This is a Berlin Wall moment.

The wall of homophobia that was built around these youth, the wall of hatred and bureaucratic nonsense that was built around those for whom sexual orientation was not the main factor in their deaths, must be toppled once and for all.

Anoka/Hennepin School Board, what is keeping you from saving the lives of your students? Is it the mis-named PAL, Parents Action League, which hides itself behind a wall of anonymity? Which cries about receiving hate mail, as though it has not been out to engender it? Which claims as its motto, "Education, not Indoctrination," when what is meant by indoctrination is enacting measures that will stop gay kids from killing themselves?

Anoka/Hennepin area Churches (of the variety that preach against homosexuality), is it your contention that God wants gay and lesbian kids dead? Do you believe that the heart of the Gospel is in Leviticus 20:13? Do you pride yourselves on the success of this message over that of the saving Gospel? Because the Gospel SAVES; it does not KILL.

To paraphrase Psalm 13, How Long, Anoka/Hennepin, will you lay waste to those who did you no wrong?

How long will you taunt, spit at, beat up, and terrorize young people who did nothing but get up and go to school?

How long will you preach that God is a super-terrorist, that the fulfillment of the Gospel is death of those you believe God would oppose, that Jesus was more concerned with where a person's penis was put than where a person's heart is?

How long will you justify yourselves with policies, when coffins continue to be draped in a sea of tears?

How long will you say that it is a "lifestyle choice" that leads to these deaths, when no different or discernible "lifestyle" was at the root of the hatred, terror, and brutality that actually led to these deaths?

How long will you seek your seat of power in a young man's coffin?

How long will you lose the evidence of your wrongs? (Update: video of the August 23, 2010, Anoka/Hennepin School Board Meeting, is now (9/12/10) available. See Tammy Aaberg at 15:20 here, and listen to subsequent explanation by the School Board Chair, and further testimony of abuse around the Neutrality policy.)

Consider, and answer me!

Answer for those who have fallen, and those who will continue to fall as long as your feet drag!

Answer for those families you have helped to tear apart, and those lives you have ended!

Answer for those careers you have threatened to end because your people have wanted to provide some small measure of support or solace!

Answer for those people who will hear the word "Jesus," and see a man with a gun!

Hear those, O God, who call out to you "Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, 'I have prevailed.'"

Hear those, Anoka/Hennepin School District, whose voices are still crying out in pain.

Hear those who want only to live their lives in peace.

Hear those who want only to live another day, to see another sun rise.

Hear those who want only to love those who are in their hearts to love.

It is time for you to choose:

Your policies, or your people.

Your ideas, or your youth.

Your bullies, or your innocent.

Choose wisely. God is watching.

Reflections on the Word: Readings of April 11, 2010

“[Jesus said,] If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” –John 21:23

In amongst Thomas’s doubting Jesus’ resurrection is this fascinating line: forgive (release) sins and you let go; hold on to them, and you keep your grip, on both the sins themselves and the person who has sinned. This word for “retained” relates to the Greek word for power, κρατέω, seen, for example, in the word “democracy.” Holding onto the sins of others gives you power, but also takes power from you. Releasing these sins gives freedom to you and to the sinner over whom you have power.

Forgiving God, give us the freedom to release our grip on the judgment of others, and on ourselves. Judge us alone with grace and understanding, in the light of the resurrection. Amen.

© 2010 CW

Wake Up and Smell the Spikenard!

Sermon on John 12: 1-8; Salem English Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN; March 21, 2010

[Note: the scent of spikenard was an essential part of this sermon as it was preached. It is available in essential oil form, or could be found cheaper in Indian groceries, as the plant is harvested mostly in India and China. I used essential oil and both diffused it throughout the worship space, as well as passed it around the congregation in its bottle for people to get a closer smell.]

Let us pray: Creating God, you have given us our five senses to appreciate your wondrous world around us. In this Lenten time, help us to walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering to you. Send now your Spirit into our midst, we pray, that we might come closer to that blessed and eternal mind of Christ. Through his name we pray, Amen.

I.

It seems so basic to living, these five senses that we are given. Some live with challenges to them, some live without one or more of them. One constant throughout life is that we experience the world through the senses we have. And yet it seems rare that we stop to appreciate our senses in their relation to our faith lives and journeys.

Age may dull or sweeten some of our senses. Surgeries or other correctives may fix flaws and allow us to see or hear what we have been missing. We might lose one or another sense through illness or injury. The sight we might have relied on more as a young person may grow into deepened sense of hearing in later years as that sight fades. We might develop new tastes that we never thought we would have, or lose such basic abilities of sense that we always thought we would have. Senses, so basic, are yet vital and changing.

This week, one sensuous line from today’s reading particularly struck me: “and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.”

Here in the house of Lazarus, Jesus was being prepared for the last and most difficult leg of his journey to the cross. This moment in Jesus’ life is so important, that it appears in all four Gospels, although with some significant differences in each account. Indeed, only here in John do we get this detail: “And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.”

In John’s telling of it, Jesus is being given a dinner party in his honor after raising Lazarus from the dead, which he had just done to the glory of God. Mary and Martha are there, and Lazarus himself, quite the greatest miracle of Jesus’ brief ministry. Those who mourned Lazarus have been comforted by his being raised from the dead, and many are now believing that Jesus is indeed the son of God through this very miracle.

Mary does what Mary does best—she immediately goes to sit at the feet of Jesus. But this time, she goes way overboard, and pours a whole jar of expensive perfumed oil on his feet—more than an extravagance—and something that probably made everyone present gasp in surprise. I can hear more than one of them saying “What is this woman doing??!?” Indeed, Judas feigns moral outrage at such an apparent waste. But no, this is no wasteful time: it is the time of anointing the “anointed one” with precious oil to prepare him for his ultimate, inexorable fate.

II.

“And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.”

Smell seems to me the most neglected of the senses. If you were given the choice of what sense to keep, your sight, hearing, or smell, I cannot imagine many would sacrifice sight or hearing for the ability to smell. And when have you ever heard of one who provided “nose-witness testimony” in a court of law? We can be just as mistaken in what we think we have seen, as in what we think we have smelled, so why is it not given equal status as eye-witness testimony? We know the geniuses of painting and sculpture, of music, of cooking and cuisine, but who are the smell geniuses? Where is their place in the pantheon of human greatness?

In contrast to the great importance placed on all other senses, I would say that smell is the most evocative and powerful of all our senses, reaching the deepest parts of ourselves, bypassing our rational understanding and going straight to the most elemental, animal part of ourselves, awakening deep memories, or opening up new worlds in our imaginations.

When I think of it, this last week was the first time I’ve ever gone out of my way to get a particular fragrance, when I ordered through the internet some essential oil of spikenard, the smell that you are smelling now, the one which filled the house that Jesus was in.

I got excited thinking about being able to make that deepest of sense connections with the place where Jesus was that night. Because, think about it: even though the house itself can no longer be seen, the voices of Jesus and his friends can never be heard, the dinner can never be eaten again, and the feeling of Mary’s hair wiping in the ointment can never be felt exactly in the same way, the two things that exist still about that night, besides the eternal living Christ, are what was written about it, and this particular scent. What we are smelling now is without any doubt the same scent that Jesus smelled that night, a smell that no doubt stayed with him through that last, memorable week of life as we know it. Through this scent, we enter into the mind of Christ in a way no other experience can bring us.

III.

“And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.” Smells can fill a space, in pleasant and unpleasant ways, much like light and sound, transmitting barely-visible particles from their origin to deep into our bodies. Smell transcends time and space with an immediacy that no other sense can match.

Take a moment in your imagination just to be with Jesus in this time and place, imagining what it would be like to be there with him, what the light, flickering low that evening, lighting less of the house than the smell would reach, with those surprised guests who thought they saw something wasteful, when actually they saw Jesus in life being prepared for death. Let the sense world of this scene come alive to you as I read this passage once again.

[Read John 12: 1-8]

Question: How does your sense of smell, or your other senses, help you on your journey of faith? What scents particularly make you come alive, or link you to other times and places?

Reflections on the Word: From Lectionary readings for 3/21

“Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” –John 12:3

The beautiful smell that pervaded Lazarus’ home was that of Jesus’ death to come. The sense of smell is perhaps our strongest and most meaningful; it goes to our deepest places and memories. What about your faith life engages your sense of smell? For some, incense powerfully symbolizes God’s presence. But for many of us, this sense goes unused in spiritual practice. Why is that? What prevents multi-sensory worship?

Creating God, you have given us our several senses with which to engage the world around us. May they help us to appreciate the splendor of your creation, more and more each day. Amen.

Reflections on the Word for 3.7.10

“Jesus asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” --Luke 13: 2-3

Reflection: “Repent or perish” frankly scares me. Lent is about reflection and change, but my unease persists around these words, because as soon as I repent, I sin again. This is the human condition. Jesus says here “their sins were no worse than yours, but you all must change.” We are often aware of the need to change, but the means can still elude us. “Lord, have mercy” remains our refrain each day.

Prayer: Lord, you love your entire creation, and hate not that which you have made. When we stray, gently correct us, that we may live into the promises you have made, which remain faithful even when we are not. Amen.

© 2010 CW

A Sinful Man

“But seeing this [great haul of fish], Simon Peter fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, because I am a sinful man, Lord.” --Luke 5: 7b-8

I.

This line has struck a chord with me this week, after using it in the devotional you may find below this entry. It comes only once in the Gospels, here in Luke Chapter 5, and is yet one of those compelling, heartbreaking, transient moments that shows us how one of the disciples really felt about himself in relation to Jesus.

We ask so often, what would Jesus have thought of this? What would Jesus have done? What would God want me to do? Here we find out.

To Peter’s statement, Jesus says, as he so often does, “Do not be afraid.” He follows it up with the famous line from this passage, “ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἀνθρώπους ἔσῃ ζωγρῶν.” Now things are different, Peter. Now, from this point on, you will be catching people.

What was the fear that Jesus was responding to in Peter’s reaction? His fear of the fish? His fear of what he would do with his life? Or of being sinful?

I have a great fear of being sinful. I am afraid of driving people away if they get to know me too well and don’t like what they see when they look too close. Is this not a pretty common fear, the same one that Peter confesses to Jesus? It is a rather silly and condescending fear. Of course I am sinful. Duh! Like anyone isn’t? simul iustus et peccator, simultaneously saint and sinner. This is the human condition.

There is no intimacy without honesty. And yet, I think a great block to an intimate relationship with Jesus is a fear of confessing who we really are in all of our glory and shame, to our very creator, who already knows these things about us. As though being honest with God will somehow scare God away?

Yet this is just how people have been taught to be before God: clean, upright, upstanding, and stultifyingly nice.

The next reformation of the church will be one of honesty.

“Go away from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord.” I am a man who is, by his nature, a sinner. Unclean. Unworthy. Unjustified. Nasty. Dirty. Out of the norm. Out of bounds. Out of control. Out of luck. Dingy. Ditchy. Switchy, and itchy. I am shady and skanky. Ridiculous, rank, and somehow *less* than holy.

Christian self-abnegation is no more attractive, nor particularly any more effective, than any other variety, just because it is in relation to Jesus. Peter begged Jesus to leave him because of his sinfulness. But Jesus said, “No, Peter, you have some work to do.”

II.

I have often felt like this sinful man during my process of feeling called to the Lutheran ministry. I have been this sinful man. And those along the way have at various times assuaged my sense of sinfulness, and ratcheted it up at others.

I have been waiting for three years for my first call as a minister in the ELCA. In that time, I have received not one interview. My training is the same as my colleagues who have been ordained and in churches for years. My vocation has been tested according to the same standards, and certified according to the same standards. It has not, however, been affirmed by the same standards.

“Go away from us, Chris, for you are a sinful man.” You are an open homosexual. You are defiant in the way you present your sexuality, the way you lead with it. We think our churches will just conclude that you are a sinful man.

This is the reality of what I have felt and at times heard from this process since I was assigned for first call. Not from each of those involved in it, because there have been some wonderfully supportive people, who have affirmed what Jesus said, “There is work yet to do.”

It is easy to get self-righteous, to let the chip on my shoulder, more embarrassing than any other kind of sin, lead, as it were.

Go away from me, Lord, for I have been a proud man, whose pride has not been in you but in my own accomplishments. Go away from me, Lord, for I cannot pray consistently, but I can tell people what I think is wrong with what they are doing. Go away from me, Lord, for my heart wanders far from you.

These are things that should make Jesus go away from us? That would make God cast us off?

III.

Sin is not the definer of who is in or not in relationship with Jesus. And Jesus is not going to depart just because we ask nicely, ashamedly, or any other way.

Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.” Luther puts it another way—“sin boldly! But pray more boldly still.” Pray as if you expect Jesus to stay, rather than to run away.

I’m about as inconsistent of a pray-er as it gets. I do much better when in monastic community, which I have had the pleasure to be on a few occasions for weeks or months. But I don’t know that this is my calling.

I get pretty raunchy at times with Jesus. I just let it all hang out with the Lord, because let’s face it: Jesus knows us already. We ain’t got jack to hide from Jesus, particularly the sinful sides of ourselves that we hide from each other.

“Come close to me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Come closer to me, let me speak my truth to you, which you have given me to live. Give me the words to speak it to others, and to give them the space to speak their truth to me. Speak your truth to me, which is above all others. For however we understand things, your understanding is greater. You are the source of our love, hope, and reconciliation.

Reflections on the Word for 2.7.10

“And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’”

--Luke 5: 7b-8

Reflection: Sin was thought of in Old Testament times like a disease that could be spread. This is seen in Leviticus and other books of law, and some today still feel this to be the case in their moral concern. Peter worried about contaminating Jesus with his sin. But Jesus came to show not so much that our sin is strong, but that his love is stronger than our sin. Forgiveness first, then repentance.

Prayer: Lord, cast us not off from you as sinners, for sinners we are. Yet take us in as those you have redeemed for your own love’s sake. For though our sins may overwhelm us, they cannot overwhelm you. Amen.

© 2010 CW

Note: I'm not sure if I've posted any of these here yet. I write them for the church newsletter of the church where I work. Since I tend toward long-windedness, these brief reflections are a valuable exercise in being concise! I will try to include them going forward.

Blast Some God-forsaken Closets

"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

--Harvey Milk

I.

Prophetic words only become so when experience proves them. Sometimes that experience comes soon, and sometimes it takes lifetimes, deathtimes, and a lot of mundanity and action in between.

Tonight, Gus Van Sant's biopic of Harvey Milk premiered across much of the nation, including at the art deco landmark theater, the Uptown, which is 3 blocks from where I live in Minneapolis. It's a fabulous movie, and I hope it wins wide crossover support, like Milk himself did. Go see it if you can!

But it reminds me that there's been a movement for equal gay rights for many, many years now. It is growing closer to winning certain inalienable rights, those rights which cannot be "alienated, surrendered, or transferred," according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Alienated. A word that stands alone to describe the condition of a human being without community, whose community has been taken away, or has cast her out.

Human beings are alienated when their rights are abbreviated, rescinded, withheld, or just plain laughed at, particularly when these rights are supposedly inalienable.

One might say there's a big difference between rights being surrendered and rescinded, voted down, taken away, trampled on by the big wheels of popularity. Since when are rights open to a popular vote?

Prop 8 passed. Prop 6 was defeated *thirty (30) years ago*. What's wrong with this picture? The same tactics were used then as now, only then they didn't work. Why now?

II.

Milk's words were prophetic. He was assassinated. And yet the bullet did not shatter all closet doors.

It was in carefully-crafted closets that Prop 8 developed its power, because the authentic voices of faithful gay and lesbian people that opposed it were too few, unheard, or just plain silenced.

"Milk" helped to make the point that the "leaders" of the movement at the time considered Milk's unabashed faggotry too much, too out, too embarrassing and provocative to change minds and win people over. They were wrong, and 30 years later, they are forgotten. What about the people who are our leaders today? Who even are they? And where are they in the church? God’s forsaken some closet doors, so let’s hear about it.

My church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, supposedly prides itself on inclusivity and living the words of Christ, but instead supports closets more than it supports gay and lesbian people living openly, unafraid, and completely mundane lives.

It was these closets that helped pass Prop 8.

Church closets passed Prop 8. And I don't mean closets where the communion plates and candles are kept, the choir robes and the acolytes' torches, the stale wafers and banners, the vestments and other finery that helps make church what church is to people, no matter their traditions.

I mean those closets that "well-meaning" persons of power and privilege throughout the church put their pastors in in order to "not disturb the waters."

I mean those closets that bishops put their pastors into when they make them choose between being pastors or being people.

I mean those closets that suffocate the very people who wish to serve Jesus and his people, who love their people and would lay down their lives for them, but who are given the command by their church to sacrifice their humanity instead of their lives, to bury themselves in their service, and to make themselves less than 3/5 human.

III.

Church closets passed Prop 8, because without the enforced silence of great numbers of gay and lesbian people of faith, the lie would stand revealed, and this is the lie used against us: that we are out *en masse* to harm children and families, that we hate God, and that our families and relationships are not of equal worth. Once this lie is shot to the ground as it should be, the case against full, equal civil rights for gay and lesbian people would fall to the floor and only a handful of people would vote against equality for us and our families.

It is clear that we need a voice around which to unite, like Harvey Milk’s. Such voices exist, and some of them are calling out with similar words of anger, hope, and kindness. Milk said, "You gotta give 'em hope," and he was right.

Hope comes from realistically dealing with anger, meeting it with love, and directing loving anger into constructive paths of action.

Anger can drive hope in a way that nothing else can. Because anger points out the space between the words that elevate and the actions that denigrate.

Anger can drive hope 12 blocks down Market Street to City Hall and blow open closet doors without bullets. It can fill those 12 blocks with thousands and thousands of people to grieve and remember when bullets are brought to bear. And it can turn apathetic hearts to action that makes certain dignity doesn't go down without a great fight.

IV.

It almost seems like movements are most effective when they are small but well-organized, when a thousand people can be called together in fifteen minutes (as was said in “Milk” the movie), when the soapbox is just a foot off the street.

So what is our organization to be? What our voices? And what is impeding them? How can we organize to blast those closet doors off and find the liberation that just about any of us can struggle to achieve, hope that a boring financial worker can transform into a brilliant political career, and hope that any couple may have the same mundane respect for their relationship as any other couple?

What shape will this movement take, that will give hope to millions of gay and lesbian people who are still told that their relationships, that their lives together and their individual lives, are at best second-class, and at worst worth destroying?

That hope is out there, and it lies in the prophetic future that will prove the dreams of thousands of people and hundreds of years, to be free, to live in a state of basic, human respect, in which you don't have to choose between your work and your husband, your calling and your family, your integrity and your willingness to make this world a better place.

You gotta give 'em hope. You gotta love your people, too. Let's do it. Tell me your ideas for this movement, for finding voices, for channeling loving anger, for acting in ways that are not just a blip on the nightly news, but change hearts and minds, and finally, change laws.