Easter Is An Unshakable Hope.

Give thanks in all circumstances…Do not quench the Spirit.  Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. (1Thess 5:18-22)

Test everything, even scripture.  Yes, test even the scriptures.  There are things the biblical writers say that are not the word of God.  Is it the word of God that allowed slavery?  Is it the word of God to demean, diminish and defame women?  Is it the word of God to demean, diminish or defame anyone?  Test everything and keep only what is good and throw out everything tainted with evil.

Creator God,  give me the discernment to not be fooled by evil disguised as good.

(This is an encore post, from last year.)

Betsy wrote:

“You put out the idea about having to change the way we look at God, from time to time.

In this post you say we are made in the image of God and that we are spiritual and sexual.

Does that mean that God is sexual?”

I replied:

“Thank you for stirring the pot, Betsy. “Does that mean that God is sexual?”

I know our sexuality is a gift from God.  I also know that Jesus of Nazareth was fully human and therefore was a sexual being.  If you believe, as I do that Jesus was/is the Christ, then yes God is a sexual being.  Beyond that, I believe, the question is unanswerable.”

 ”Is God Sexual?” What do you think?

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.   Genesis1:31 (NIV)

Spirituality and Sexuality - Some view them as repellent to each other as oil is to water, ‘They do not go together,’  they claim.

 Yet, we are, in our humanity, both spiritual and sexual beings.  “So God created humankind in God’s own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27; )  It is by God’s design that we are both spiritual and sexual. We can’t be one without the other. 

  Like the  Live Oaks trees in the picture above, we are of the physical, rooted in the earth which nourishes us to grow strong and upright toward the light.   The earth nourishes us both physically and spiritually, offering us glimpses of the nature of God. Who among us has not seen the divine as we witness the birth of another being, walk a forest path, climb a mountain, or contemplate a sunset? Like the earth, sexuality offers us glimpses of the divine – who among us hasn’t seen the divine in our soulmates eyes, or cried out to God in our lovemaking?  If it were not for the love of God, could we express the love we physically share?  

We are rooted in the earth, which nourishes us, just like the trees. Yet, we seek the spiritual, growing toward the light of God.

 Sexuality and Spirituality, God created us in this image “…saw all that he had made, and it was very good…” (Gen.1:31)

Note: This is an “encore post” first published last year.

 We hold onto images of God,  ourselves, and others, even when they become  burdonsome.  We hesitiate let go of  them  because we know that new  images might require a conversion on our part, a change which we are not sure we want to make.  Only we can decide to quit carrying oppressive images of God and at the same time accept new, images of God, self and others.

  Most of us cling to the image of God that we acquired as a child or adolescent, because it helped us make sense of our lives.  However, no  one image of God is the whole truth — God after all is infinite! For example, as a child we may have believed that God would answer our prayers in life threatening situations.   But what happened to my image of God when I prayed for a very sick person who then died?

 If I have a single image of God and this is contradicted by a new and painful experience in my life, in a sense, I have the same options regarding my image of God as I have when I outgrow a pair of shoes:

• I can continue to wear the same shoes, even though they hurt my feet  — ‘why is my good God punishing me?’

• I can go barefoot — become an atheist or an agnostic

•  I can find shoes that fit — allow my image or images of God to match my understanding of God , the way my life has revealed God to me.

To choose the third point, I must reexamine everything,  even the Scriptures.  What do the Scriptures teach me in light of my life experience?   “What meaningful and instructive things have I overlooked?”  This choice requires an effort on our part to go beyond what we were taugh as a child. It requires a commitment to continual growth regarding both my image of self and of God.

                         Creator God, open my mind and eyes, my heart and my spirit, to accept the revelations that you have prepared for me.

This is an encore presentation of my September 4, 2010 post.

Related articles

• You Are NOT The Image Of God, But You Are Made In God’s Image (jamaljivanjee.com)

The whole gospel is a vision for ushering in God’s kingdom – now, not in some future time, and here, on earth, not in some distant heaven. What if two billion people embraced this vision of God transforming our world – through them? Imagine it. Indeed, what if even two thousand people took their faith to the next level – what might God do? Two thousand years ago, the world was changed forever by just twelve.

It can happen again.

Richard Stearns; President of World Vision U.S.

(from The Hole in Our Gospel)

“He taught the “narrow way” as opposed to the broad way of convention and tradition. Both his life and his message were subversive and modeled the metaphor of death and resurrection as a way of life. Discipleship was not about knowing new things or subscribing to certain theological statements or positions, but about the never-ending process of dying to an old self and being reborn into a new one. The evidence of this rebirth was not a clever argument or allegiance to a certain rabbinical school. It was made obvious by a new way of being in the world. Good Friday and Easter are therefore not isolated events. They are the twin polarities of wisdom – as we constantly die to the bondage of blindness and are reborn to the light………………This way of “being” was open to the mystical, or the “sacred,” and was so grounded in pure compassion that Jesus could not be around the sick or the broken without attempting to heal them. Because such wisdom can make the scales fall from our eyes, it often produces what French philosopher Jacques Lacan calls “la douleur de voir trop clair (“the pain of seeing too clearly”). Opening oneself to this disparity between the world as it is and the world as God intends it to be leads either to despair or to the calling of a prophet – a greatly misunderstood vocation in our time…..The kingdom of God is not a press conference, or a resolution, or a short course on how to be eloquently indignant. It is a table, laden with grace, at which the social maps are all redrawn. The guest list comes straight out of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

 Robin Meyers – from Saving Jesus From the Church

I read this quote on another blog (lifebrook.wordpress.net) and want to share it here with you. It says so much about what is ailing the church today and it reminded me of this sermon I wrote a few months ago: 

Broken, Bleeding, and Blessed

“We have not abandoned ‘traditional values,’ we are merely recovering and reclaiming an essential piece of the foundation of classical Christianity! We claim it every time we bring all of who we are to the altar in praise and thanksgiving of the God who created us, redeems us and calls us good.”

 Text: Mark 5: 21-34Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.  She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse.  She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”  Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.  Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” 

 In Jesus’ time a lot of things were considered unclean.  The list is long and it is found, not surprisingly, in the book of Leviticus, Sometimes referred to as the book of abominations.  It says that to be unclean is to be unholy, unfit to enter the temple and therefore unfit to be in the presence of a Holy God. 

 To be unclean was to be untouchable. To touch someone deemed impure, such as a bleeding woman or a corpse is to defile yourself and make yourself impure, or unclean.  In this system things were clear and everyone had an identity.  But Jesus messed the whole thing up.  Which is just like him, Jesus the rabble rouser.

     Today’s gospel text is about Jesus touching people he should not be touching.  It is a picture of Jesus defiling himself and breaking society’s rules about purity.  Jesus made all the wrong people worthy to be in the presence of a Holy God.

 This is an appropriate text for this Sunday, the Sunday before the ‘Feast Day of the Unclean,’ otherwise known as Pride.  It is fitting that we read THIS text as we sit here today in anticipation of the Pride Parade next Saturday. 

 It is appropriate because the parade will be made up of today’s unclean: transvestites and drag kings and queens,  transgenders, and all stripes of the rainbow people. This is a parade of people who, our society treats like bleeding women and dead girls.

     Our culture needs to have the clean and the unclean.  We need it – to know who we are. 

 Now I’m not a fan of “The Simpsons.”  I’ve never really watched the show, but I understand there is well known episode of the Simpsons titled “Homer-phobia.”  In the story, Homer’s wife Marge befriends  an interior decorator voiced by gay film director John Waters.  He and Homer become friends until Homer finally suspects his new friend is gay.  The John Waters character tries to tell Homer that he is gay for most of the episode until finally Waters finally says, “Homer – I’m queer.”  Homer replies, “You can’t call YOURSELF queer. That’s our name to make fun of you and we need it.”

 We need “those people,” whoever “those people” are to you, to point to and make clear our own identities:

• intolerant conservative or the immoral liberal
• the filthy poor or the filthy rich
• the atheist or the Evangelical.

 We live in a world of binaries:

• good and bad
• black and white
• sane and insane
• joy and sorrow

     If you are familiar with the gospel stories, you might remember Luke telling that Jesus comes upon a naked homeless man in the wilderness.  A psychotic man who in his day was considered demon possessed.  Jesus heals the man and people from the city come out to see what has happened and they find the demon possessed man clothed and in his right mind. 

 You would think that the people would be happy that the homeless psychotic had been healed, but Luke tells us they were furious and asked Jesus to leave.

 As long as that man was insane, the townspeople did not have to look at their own insanity.  Jesus comes and turns their binary system, their system of purity on its head and they were angry and fearful.  They needed that person to be what is un-holy, so they could  feel right about themselves and feel right with God. 

 Jesus took something precious from them.  He took away their identity in relation to who they proclaimed unclean. 

     But Jesus, the rabble rouser that he is, would have none of that.  He  touches everything we deem impure, defiling himself again and again.   

  Jesus is about showing us the Commonwealth, or the Kingdom of God.  Jesus’ promise of abundant life brings healing and that healing disorders our identities.    To be healed is to be changed and to be changed by Jesus is to be changed forever.  The change that comes with healing can create its own wound.  Change can create its own wound.

 For twelve years, that bleeding woman was untouchable.  That must have been a very sad and lonely existence.  However, that is who she was, the untouchable bleeding woman, unworthy of even worshipping God. 

 I wonder what her life looked like after her encounter with Jesus. I wonder if it hurt to be healed.   Like frostbite, when a patients blood rushes back into the extremities it is excruciatingly painful. 

 It is actually more comfortable to allow parts of ourselves to die than to feel them have new life.  It is actually more comfortable to cling to the identity of being unclean because it is what we are used to, it is an identity. 

 While everyone else needed to call this woman impure, they needed to call her unclean, to call her unholy, Jesus called her daughter.  In that one word Jesus tells her who she really is and even if that word caused pain as it surged through the parts of her that had been deprived of love and life– child of God is what she is.

     Any old identity we cling to, after we have encountered Jesus, becomes nothing less that an idol for us to worship.  It is not the word or will of God.  Let me repeat that.      Any old identity we cling to, after we have encountered Jesus, becomes nothing less that an idol for us to worship.  It is not the word or will of God.

 The radical Commonwealth of God that Jesus ushers in destroys the systems that say who is clean and who is unclean.  In the radical Commonwealth of God anything that I have used to define who I am, and anything I used to define everyone else is, other than the gospel is going to be taken away. 

 It’s hard to loose your identity, it hurts!

      To loose whatever it is you cling to: money, status, education, marginalization, victimhood, political correctness, moral superiority,  career, what ever it is, to loose it hurts.  However, that old and comfortable identity can never offer what Jesus offers; it can never love you like your God loves you. 

As a matter of fact, an identity can not love you at all.

 These things we choose to keep us safe and comfortable they will never confirm the only identity that really matters…the only identity that brings us healing, wholeness and salvation. 

 When our impurity and isolation touches even just the garment of God it all falls away.  We no longer remain who we say we are, or who society says we are, or who our families say we are.  We are, as the Apostle Paul tells us, a new creature in Christ.  You have a spanking new identity.

 Then what?  Where do you go!?  What do you do!?

The formerly unclean know who they are, but society takes some time to catch up: the world still sees them as unclean.  So where do they go?

       I like to think that the bleeding woman got together with the lepers, the prostitutes and tax collectors, and all  the others who had an encounter with Christ.  I like to think that they gathered together, much like we do, here at MCC, gathering to eat together and sing of God’s love, and God’s grace and salvation and remind each other that we truly are new creatures, worthy creatures, new to the understanding that God calls us good.

 Like you and me, they had a new purpose, a new calling on their lives to speak to those others that did not yet know that God also loved them.  I think God’s love gave them the same sense of Pride we have. 

 It gave them a sense of pride that allowed them to get together and march right down through the center of town as a witness to both, those who judge, and those who are judged.

   They lived in a world that wanted them to remain the identified problem.  They lived in a world that wanted to give them an identity based on something false, and small, and insignificant to God.  In a world where it’s feels safer and easier to cling to marginalization and victimhood like a warm sweater. 

 So, they probably felt drawn back every day to being what they had been because it’s familiar and comfortable.  And don’t  we all want comfort when we are the object of scorn and ridicule?  Don’t we all feel put down when the most commonly used insult in America’s schools is “Oh, that’s so GAY.”  And don’t we find it sad that LGBTQ people can not openly serve in the military.  And are we not enraged when teenage children are bullied to death because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, and the authorities watch and do nothing.

Our culture continues to consider its LGBTQ citizens expendable.  And how do the vast majority of Christians around the world react?

 They inform us that we are sick and in need of healing, some even say we are deserving of death!  They say we are abandoning the Church’s ‘traditional values.’

Yet, when I look back across the history of the church, Christ’s church, it seems to have made a wrong turn somewhere.  The Church, while in search of righteousness, has lost its humanity.  

 As far back as the second century AD, Iraneus of Lyon, one of the revered Fathers of the Church, and one of the first great systematic theologians, said:  “THE GLORY OF GOD IS THE HUMAN PERSON FULLY ALIVE”

“Fully alive” … isn’t that what we are when we embrace rather than deny our sexuality? Isn’t that the Good News we offer in counter-point to a culture that tells us we are unclean, untouchable”?

We have not abandoned ‘traditional values,’ we are merely recovering and reclaiming an essential piece of the foundation of classical Christianity!

We claim it every time we bring all of who we are to the altar in praise and thanksgiving of the God who created us, redeems us and calls us good.

Yes, LGBTQ people do need healing,  just like the broken and bleeding woman  needed healing.  Our people, and maybe some of you need healing of the belief that you are less than clean and holy.  We queer peopl need healing of the shame and guilt that has been heaped upon us for God only knows how long.

 So, yes the bleeding woman and the lepers and the maniacs, the tax collectors, the prostitutes and the others who encountered Jesus, they felt out of place in their new identity.  Therefore, I believe they became a community, a community of the broken, bleeding, and blessed body of Christ. 

 It is in being broken, bleeding, that we understand and can share the tension between the sorrow put on us by the world and the joy of God’s healing. 

 It is in being broken, and bleeding, that we are finally blessed.  It is in being broken and bleeding that we remind each other of the Gospel which rings with both joy and pain as it rips away that unhealthy stuff to which we cling.

A poet wrote:

I carry a notebook in my mind.

It has a black cover, the pages are

brown with coffee stains and if

you were to taste the paper, you

would find it infused with the

salt of tears; Whole chapters

written in tears that come in waves,

briny truth from beneath the musk

folds of my inner being, truth that rises

from the  eternal source I call God.

I listen often, breathing long,

slowing down, letting go,

going deep through the constant

buzz and hum of my mind that is

thunder next to the quiet whisper of truth.

Sometimes, for a brief moment in

the silent space between my

thunder, I catch a piece of God

that reveals itself in tears of both

joy and sorrow, the invisible ink

that salts my notebook.

 I hope that the bleeding woman and the other healed freaks got together on a regular basis because it is only in this way that we remember who we really are.  No longer unclean and impure, but beloved children in the presence of a Holy God who made us and calls us good.

 When Tears of joy and sorrow come together like a hot and a cold storm front and creates thunder, this is where we most often meet God.  This is where healing takes place, in the broken places.

 And we have the opportunity to be part of that healing ministry: today as we claim our proper place as sons and daughters of God, and next weekend as we participate in Pride, be joy to someone’s sorrow, let the thunderclap of God create a storm that heals the broken, stops the bleeding and blesses others.

Go out and counter the sorrows of the world with the joy of Christ.    Amen

“

Sermon Mar 27, New Life MCC, Norfolk,VA                                                                                           

John 4:5-42

This is the last Sunday of Women’s History month and this in many ways is a woman’s text. For me to preach on today’s Gospel lesson is difficult, and in some ways altogether wrong.

As a man, I cannot possibly understand the feelings of a woman as an outcast. If anything, I a man represent most of which has held women on the outside.

   This woman at the well, was dependent on a man for her identity as a human being. She is a woman who has suffered the end of five relationships with 5 men and is tentative about the one she has now.  And so she is alone.  As a man, I can not begin to understand those things.

 However, she is also a Samaritan in a world where Jews are supreme.  She and her people are outcasts. In this story were cast in today’s world, they might be immigrant Mexican workers, illegal aliens, or as some tea party pundits might say, they could be people from New York City, or Los Angeles, or worse yet, Hollywood! 

In today’s world the outcast might be Muslim, and to bring it close to home for us, the outcast might be queer.   Now that is an outcast group that we can all identify with, even our straight friends. 

 She knows the life of an outcast to the point where she goes to a well far away from the city at a time of day when no one else will be there.  For her, the well was not a place to gather with other women to share the news. It was not  a time of camaraderie to be lifted above the drudgery of every day life. This woman knew that she would have likely been the subject of that conversation and gossip that the other women had when they gathered around the well.  So she stayed away, losing the only human contact that might give her life significance.  

 This is much the same as the bullied gay children who become so isolated that out of loneliness and self-loathing they do all kinds of harm to themselves up to and including suicide.

Yes, we LGBTQ can identify with this woman as outcasts.

 Jesus sees all outcasts through the eyes of love, he sees an outcast, desperately thirsty for something more, for love and relationship.

Jesus accepts her as a person loved by God, and he gives her the living water she craves, love, relationship and acceptance.

 Jesus acknowledges her life as it is, just as he does with each of us.  He accepted her inspite of her poor life choices with the likely consequences, and just las he does with each of us, Jesus loves her without condition.

 There are several sermons in that aspect of this story.  But there is something else going on here, Jesus is addressing something about the very nature of religion and that is the focus today – Finding Jesus outside of religion.

 Let me tell you an interesting dynamic I am experiencing as I move into my role as Preacher and soon to be pastor.  When someone asks what I do, I see all kinds of reactions.  Discomfort with their behavior, discomfort with what they then expect from me, or perhaps discomfort in that they feel I might be judging them. 

 Not so different from what you sometimes experience when you tell people you are a ‘Christian’… or even that you go to ‘church.’ Is it?

Suddenly there is something on the table that defines you, and defines you in relationship to them.

 At the heart of the matter is the nature of religion, religion as it’s generally experienced and related to in our current American culture.

Religion is a term that in itself can be neutral. In it’s most basic use, the dictionary says it is simply “an institutionalized or personal system of beliefs and practices relating to the divine.” (Encarta)

But today in America religion has become something that emphasizes dogma, ritual, tradition and moral superiority.  

Religion, for many Americans has become an outer shell of tradition and moral certitude that is empty on the inside.

“Religion” holds a strange dynamic – it’s both dangerous and safe. It is dangerous in that we may not trust what that religious person` thinks of us and what they believe we should adhere to.

On the other hand it can be a safe way to frame a discussion because we can externalize our religion and let it be merely a cultural or traditional  thing that has no real impact or transformational power for our lives.

 It is much safer to talk about Jesus in the context of religious traditions than to discuss who he really is and what he really said and did.  This challenge has always been the challenge regarding Jesus.

Lets go back to the story and look at how Jesus speaks to the woman.  I’m going to paraphrase this from the message bible.

 He’s sitting by the well when a Samaritan woman comes alone to the well.  Jesus asks her for a drink and she is shocked that he would speak to her- “How come you a Jew are asking me a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?”   Remember Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.

Here Jesus is speaking to her deep spiritual need. Through the Spirit’s leading he helps her see that he understands the deeper thirst of her soul.

  And she responds by asking him questions – “Sir you don’t even have a bucket, so how are you going to get this living water?”  You see she resists looking into the depth of herself, where Jesus is taking her.   And then resists it even more by asking a safe religious question.  “Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it?” 

 Jesus doesn’t even attempt to answer her religious question, instead Jesus transcends being contained in religious tradition.  He doesn’t enter into the religious history and dialogue, that she has opened. 

 He instead says, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again.  Anyone who drinks the water I give them will never thirst again – not ever!”  He ultimately makes clear that he is the hope she is waiting for.

 What a fascinating encounter,. fascinating because I think this conversation is still going on today.  We may want to talk about spiritual life but instead we talk about church, the next fundraiser, or the food pantry, or the potluck dinner. or game night.  

We ask each other or whether we saw the Discovery Channel show  about some obscure aspect of religion… or hear about the recent religious leader who’s been found in a money or sex scandal.  There is nothing wrong discussing these things, but they should not be a substitute, or a way of avoiding a deeper spiritual life.

We often use them to keep the transformational probing of Jesus out of our religion.  After 2000 years of religious forms of “Christendom” that bears his name…. we often use the form of religion as a shield to separate us from a risen and relating Christ who transcends all that has been developed and done in his name.  

And we know, much evil has been done in his name, and sadly atrocious and appalling things continue to be done in the name of God.

And because of that, one of the most common sentiments heard today is  “I don’t believe in  organized religion.”  Many people say they value spirituality…. but want nothing to do with organized religion.   

 This anti-organized religion sentiment is SO understandable. But if we reflect on it a bit, I think it becomes clear that the core  of the anti-‘organized religion’ movement is not that people mistrust organization.

 We organize our lives in countless ways.  So it’s not a distrust of organization.  It is, I believe a distrust of human authority and power and control.  Religion has a history of subjugating its people in those ways.  So it is a mistrust of human authority and control which operates within the structures and organizations.

 Because of our American liberties, distrust of absolute and abusive authority is in the fabric of our being.      

Today we are disgraced by all sorts of corruption and hypocrisy in the entire fabric of our lives, our public servants, workplace exploitation, political & corporate corruption, scandals, divorce, abuse, etc, and we see this hypocrisy and abuse of power in the church as well. 

This leads people into a misguided sense that being independent of anything organized is to be ‘free.’   This holds true for religion as well – it is the common belief that to be free from organized religion is to be free.

I believe we need to be able to have a vision of our own relationship with Christ that is outside of the religious framework.  Without a vision of Christ outside of religion, how will we be able to share our vision of Christ with our non-church friends?

 Remember that Jesus never started “Christianity” as a new religion.

Instead of constructing a religion, Jesus spent most of his ministry deconstructing the meaningless religious rituals and the outdated and misused religious traditions that stood in the way of God.  He fought to strip away the trappings of religion – to get where? 

 He stripped away the trappings of religion to clear the way to God. 

 He deconstructed religion to reveal its core purpose, that God seeks to restore relationship with all of God’s creation, that God seeks to restore relationship with each of us. 

 When I say each of us, I don’t mean just us in this room or even our larger LGBTQ community.  I mean that Jesus did what he did to make the restoration of each and every spirit that moves inside every beating heart on this planet.   

God never started “Judaism” as simply an exclusive religion.   God was working through a people to rescue and restore the whole world. 

Just as God never intended for followers of Christ to become an exclusive Christian religion. 

 Remember way back at near the beginning of our epic human journey with God, God told Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

Galatians 3:8 says, “The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith.”   

Initially Jesus was simply the fulfilling of what God had begun through the Jewish people.  The simple truth is that Jesus never called people to ‘become Christians.’     

What is Christ’s primary and ultimate call to the lives that encounter him?
“Follow Me” – Follow equals direction, Me equals center.
It is a call towards Christ as the center and involves direction.  Our Christianity, our religion, the way it is practiced here in the United States  does not reflect the Christ-Centered life.

 Jesus tells this woman that the time has come when the Jews will not have to worship God at the temple in Jerusalem, and the Samaritans will not have to go to their Holy Mountain to worship.  He says the time has come to worship God in the spirit seeking truth. 

 Jesus stripped away all of that dogma of religion and freed us to go to God through our spirit.  He stripped away all of the traditional trappings of religion, like fancy temples, powerful clergy.  He stripped this stuff away and allows us to be able to go to God as our true selves.  We no longer have to hide from God behind the rituals of a religion. 

 Christianity was never intended to be a religion. It is not a moral or ethical code, nor is it a set of beliefs, and,  it is not simply a program for solving life’s problems.

 When Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Parent except through me,” he was not speaking of himself as a man, he was speaking of himself as the Christ. 

 He was not creating another human institution, he was breaking us from being bound by our humanness and opening up our spirit and clearing  a path for us to follow so we all might find God’s spirit through our spirit. 

 That is our salvation, that we are no longer bound by our humanness.

Christianity was never intended to be a religion; the intent and purpose of Jesus is the reality of God coming in the form of the Spirit to restore each of us to God – to allow our true selves to find God through our spirit, not through hollow rituals, and meaningless traditions.

Jesus set Christ’s spirit free in the world, he stripped away the bonds of religion and gave us a vision and a hope beyond the confines of our existential physical selves.  Jesus gave us the freedom to Fly!

C.S. Lewis  wrote,  “I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though we try to make Christianity all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond.” – Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity. pg. 130

As followers of Christ We can shift the emphasis from conformity to external religious prescriptions and traditions, to that of spiritual formation centered in relationship to God through the spirit of Christ.
Jesus denounced and defied the human exploits of religion. He was an expert in how we manipulate religion and how we allow religion to manipulate us.

  As His followers we can become those who re-present Christ to the world. As fellow travelers,  we can help re-present both the problem of religion and the person of Jesus who transcends it.

 We can do this through helping shape the truth of the problem and by telling stories that represent Christ’s response – Our LGBTQ stories.  

 We LGBTQ followers of Christ need to tell our stories of our transformation that happened outside of religion.  Sharing your story of finding Christ outside of the church that booted you out the door because of your sexuality, is best way to catch the attention of the “I don’t believe in organized religion” people.

Religion acts as a heavy death shroud surrounding and containing the breath and spirit of life.

Religion becomes belief and anything people believe in can divide them.

Religion divides us, and breaks us down into groups  of us and them:

Gay and straight  -  Muslim and Christian -  Black and White – Rich and poor.

 The creators of our country introduced us to freedom of religion and we think of it as a great cornerstone of our Democracy.   But long before the American Revolution, remember, there was a greater revolution, a non violent revolution, the revolution of the liberation of our spirit to find the spirit of God – The revolution of Jesus setting us free. 

  It is a revolution that we must continue every day so in our human nature we do not bury it under our attempts to categorize it, to ritualize it, turn it into tradition and then, in turn worship tradition, instead of worshipping God.

 Religion involves imposing beliefs on people and trying to control them. 

Worshipping in Spirit and seeking Truth, on the other hand is the living water that gives life, not death.   

 Jesus makes grace and compassion as the very center in which we should relate to each other.  Worshipping in Spirit and seeking Truth, allows us to move outside our differences with others.

 It is a continuous challenge for us to look at life through our spirit selves instead of our physical selves.  The struggle of life over death is a daily struggle.  So, I leave you with this question, Today, will you choose to follow your religion, or will you choose to follow the Spirit, seeking Truth?    Amen.