What follows is a sermon preached by Plainfielder John Hartman, an old friend, whom many of you may know as a founder of FOSH (Friends of Sleepy Hollow). In the early 1980s, John and I were among the founders of RSVP, Plainfield's first organization of gays and lesbians.
John is in his second year of seminary and looks forward to ordination to the priesthood at the end of 2008. The sermon was preached yesterday in the Chapel of St. John the Divine at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern University. The PRIMATES referred to in the sermon are the archbishops who lead the Church in each country or Province of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion has approximately 77 million adherents worldwide, next in size among Christian bodies to the Roman Catholic Church.
While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.”
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
-- Matthew 20:17-28 (New Revised Standard Version)
+ Grace, mercy, and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Good morning sisters and brothers in Christ.
But Jesus answered, "You do not know what you are asking."
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ASKING.
Jesus said this because a mother asked him to place her one son on his left and her other son on his right. Jesus responds however, saying that it was not his to do. As I read this Gospel reading from Matthew the one thing that resonated with me was this line, this short sentence.
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ASKING.
I felt drawn to this line, these eight words, because many years ago I was asked to join Christ at his side and where I thought the only answer I could give him was:
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ASKING.
"Being part of the Anglican Communion is very important to me," said The Rt. Rev. Mark Sisk, Bishop of New York and former Dean of Seabury, "but if the price of that is I have to turn my back on the gay and lesbian people who are part of this church and part of me I won't do that."
THE PRIMATES DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE ASKING.
"In recent times, we have spent too much of our time, talent and treasure," said Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies**, debating if we ought to deny some people a place at the table to which Jesus calls us all.
THE PRIMATES DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE ASKING.
"The Gospel summons us to a unified effort against the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, hunger, poverty, human rights violations, and the degradation of women and children," said The Rt. Rev. John Chane, Bishop of Washington, and yet he continued, "the Primates behave as though quashing dissent on issues of human sexuality were the central calling of the Christian faith.
"Under no circumstances will I support a moratorium on the consecration of individuals living in same-sex relationships to the episcopacy and under no circumstances will I enforce a ban on the blessing of same sex unions."
THE PRIMATES DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE ASKING.
More than 42 years ago I began asking -- discerning -- what I believed was a call to ordained ministry. I was a senior in high school, quite active in my church, St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania. My pastor, the Rev. Alfred Sandrock, who just died a few weeks ago, asked if I might be interested in becoming a pastor. He made me quite a proposition, saying that he knew there was scholarship money available to cover most of my undergraduate and seminary work. He even hinted that he could get me into Franklin and Marshall College -- F&M -- in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Following F&M he said, it would be easy to enroll in the Lancaster Theological Seminary. Both F&M and the Seminary were and still are affiliated with the United Church of Christ.
Needless to say his encouragement gave me reason for serious pause. But, at the time I knew something that Pastor Sandrock didn't. I knew that I was queer. I use that word intentionally because in the mid-60s the word gay was not part of our vocabulary, and the word queer was used in its most derogatory sense. And, in the mid-late 60s, a queer man from a conservative small town in Pennsylvania Dutch Country was not encouraged at all to aspire to any ministry of any church that I knew.
At this time the United Church of Christ was less than 10 years old, resulting from a merger of the Congregational Christian Church and the much more conservative branch, of which I was a member, the Evangelical & Reformed. Then, the United Church of Christ was not the inclusive and liberal church it is today.
So although Rev. Sandrock encouraged and pursued me, I found myself incapable of saying to him:
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ASKING.
I walked away from any further conversations about becoming a minister. I walked away because I was scared about being found out that I was queer. I was 17 years old and scared to death about my future. Scared about how my family and community would react to learning of my sexual orientation.
"It has always seemed to me that if we accept gay and lesbian people as full partners in our church we have to be consistent on matters of marriage and clergy," said The Rt. Rev. William Smith, Bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut. "We can't advocate two classes of church citizenship: one for heterosexuals, one for homosexuals. Church unity is important but you can't compromise on basic principles of conscience. I'm not willing to do that."
THE PRIMATES DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE ASKING.
Nothing sums up my own feelings about the Primates communiqué more than what was said by The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Dean and President of the Episcopal Divinity School, who said … "Enough is enough. If the Anglican Communion must separate over this fundamental issue of human rights, then so be it."
THE PRIMATES DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE ASKING.
For me the issue boils down to inclusiveness … human rights … social justice … sexual equality, and my sheer inability to compromise on those issues.
I am 59 years old, I had built up a good career over the last 35 years before coming to Seabury, and I had a comfortable lifestyle. But Christ called. Christ calling me said, John, you've been ignoring me too long, you've pushed me aside just too many times.
The first time Christ called, some 42 years ago, I walked away from him. I walked away in shame for who I was. I walked away scared of how I might be treated. I walked away from Christ and my own cross. I said:
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ASKING.
Now Christ, who stayed with me and always stays with us; Christ, who never gives up on us; Christ, who only sees us in love; has again asked me to stand with him at the cross. And this time I will not walk away.
I wonder now, What are you going to do? Are you going to stand with Christ in this season of Lent getting ready to follow him to the cross? Are you going to say, like so many in our church are saying, "Enough is enough, I will not compromise on the vital issues of human rights, social justice, and sexual equality."
Allow me to be bold and probably presumptuous and ask you to join Christ and me at the cross and say to the primates.
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ASKING.
By the Grace of God. Amen.
**The House of Deputies, composed of lay and clerical (non-bishop) members, is part of the governing structure of the Episcopal Church, along with the House of Bishops (to which all bishops belong). They meet every three years in General Convention to conduct the business of the church in the United States.
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Dan's experience with the Church is somewhat similar. My formative years were in the fellowship of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, a body of German ethnic background but closely allied to the Methodist Church, with which it eventually united to form the United Methodist Church. (I had the added twist of being catechized in the Roman Catholic Church -- the Baltimore Catechism, mind you!, pre-Vatican II -- thanks to my father's second wife being a Catholic.)
I, too, was drawn to the ministry -- at an even earlier age -- and warmly supported by my pastor and congregation. From the earliest moment, I had known ministers in the church who were gay, so simply being gay did not appear to be an impediment, although in those days (the 1950s), absolutely no one discussed these matters openly.
I left the church in the 1960s, not over being gay, but because I felt the church in which I found myself was not meeting the challenges of the era and to which I was committed -- civil rights, the Vietnam War and the fight against poverty and hopelessness in America.
When I came back to the church in 1985, I was drawn to Anglicanism because it combined the warm fellowship of my evangelical childhood, an embrace of reasoned discourse in all things, and classical worship which ties it with the Church in all places and times.
Though I spent several years discerning whether I was indeed called -- again -- to the ministry of the Church, the realization finally dawned on me that it was Plainfield to which I had been called. No more, no less.
-- Dan Damon
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