Life with God in the 1p.pl.abs.

Life with God in the 1p.pl.abs. The Dover Church
January 8, 2012 –Epiphany
Scripture: Isaiah 60:1-5, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12

When I went to seminary, I was already a pretty well formed individual. “Set in my ways” would be another way of putting it. I had chosen Faith, Health and Spirituality as my area of concentration, with a vision of myself in perfect peace, happiness and harmony, plugged into God and living shalom every day in every way. I was going to be faithful, healthy, and spiritual. What I didn't know was that the first step was getting de-formed, off track, up-set and un-plugged from my set ways of being, thinking and seeing. To my great surprise, my first two years seemed to be one memorably disturbing and uncomfortable classroom experience after another. My friends, this morning I may just make your skin crawl.
For starters, in my spirituality classes I was the only student with a beard, a pickup truck with a kayak on top, and a dog up front. Normative in Boulder, Colorado, but not at seminary. Beard, truck, boat and dog aside, I was often the only man in my classes. Gender aside, I was often the youngest. Age aside, I was often the only Jesus person amongst fervent Unitarians. Faith aside, everyone else seemed to know each other well enough to kiss and hug and talk about people they all knew... and I didn't. In short, I was an outsider, a stranger, and not necessarily a welcome stranger.
So there I was, a strange stranger feeling really strange, in my class on prayer, a weekly 4 hour seminar/hands on practicum, and the instructor says, “we are going to learn how to practice gratitude. Get into groups and start sharing all the things you have to be thankful for.” “I can do that,” I thought. Being a pretty linear, point A to point B, get the job done kind of guy, I started to make a list in my mind while someone else in the circle went first. And she started in on a long, drawn out, narrative rivaling War and Peace about this person and that person and this thing and that thing. After a while I had to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out, “Wanna know what I'm gonna be thankful for? The moment you stop talking about yourself and give someone else a turn.” But I didn’t blurt, for which I am eternally thankful. You see? The exercise is still working for me.
And then there was “Embodying Your Joy.” “Today we are going to embody our joy by dancing, moving, whatever, in ways that communicate, unleash, express, and unlock our deepest joy.” I knew the waltz, the fox trot, the polka, even the Mexican hat dance, but “embody your joy”? Mrs. DeFalco never taught us that in 5th grade. Guys like me were never taught “embody your joy.” And there I was, the embodiment of a cigar store Indian, standing stone-faced in the midst of a bunch of leaping, spinning, laughing, singing and hugging, joyous classmates.
And the day I wanted to just die, which was appropriately titled “Lament.” “Today we are going to share our personal Lament, our most intense experiences of sadness, despair, tragedy, loss, failure.” And I prayed, “In your great mercy, O Lord, strike me down right now with a heart attack or seizure, that I might be plucked by medevac from this pit.” Talk about just about the last place I wanted to go. The place where I hurt most deeply was so far off my list of desirable destinations that I didn’t even know where it was. It took me about 20 minutes to find it and another 20 to put it into words, which was unpleasant enough, but when my turn came to stand up and read my lament I thought I was going to vomit and fall down, my stomach and legs were trembling so.
Obviously I survived the curriculum. I even came to love it as I saw how I was awakening to a life I had never even imagined before. Just about everything you ever hear me preach is only possible because of the reality check I went through in seminary. Before then, I was pretty much a stranger to myself. Being a stranger to myself, how could I possibly introduce myself to God?
Speaking of strangers brings us to Epiphany, the arrival of the kings in Bethlehem. Unlike our Christmas Pageant portrayal, those kings were foreigners in the eyes of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, in the eyes of every other Jew in Bethlehem that first Christmas. Foreigners were by definition dirty, polluted and contaminating, to be shunned and avoided, the kind of people we get uncomfortable just being near, strangers we don’t want to touch or be touched by. Imagine your worst nightmare of a person. That’s the kings in our story. And God’s love, in the form of a star, shines through all that darkness of disgust, fear, distrust and ignorance to welcome in these outsiders. On Epiphany God’s love went from an invitation- only family reception into a universal celebration. God’s love became first person plural absolute, as in we and us, and with absolutely everyone on the inside, no exceptions. God loves everyone and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Can I get an Amen?
Of course, most people know the tragic history of how we Christians have loved our Kings and failed to live Epiphany. We saw the star and went about kicking everyone else out of the light. First it was our Jewish brothers and sisters, the very people who gave us life, who had to be crushed or converted. Then it was the Gentiles, non-Jews who were not Christians, the Kings and others like them, who had to get in or get lost. Then it was people of color, black, brown, yellow and red, who were not quite as fully beloved children of God as the rest of us. Brown people like Jesus, Joseph and Mary for example. Speaking of Mary, the mother of God, let’s not forget women. From the male church leadership point of view, women were born to stand in the shadows of the men upon whom that star shone. Oh, and we can't possibly leave out our love of damning, persecuting and killing our Christian brothers and sisters who live their faith differently than we do. It’s enough to make anyone cringe. And in this generation, our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, children, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors, coworkers and friends, are told that they are dirty, immoral, defective, deviant, untouchable, unclean, outsiders, because of who they are. I have heard church folks tell them “God loves you but hates who you are.” If you can parse the logic of that, how God, who is pure love by all confessional standards, can both love and hate the same person completely at the same time, please let me know. You know what I think: “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.” No exceptions. No limitations. No qualifications. Life with God in the first person plural absolute.
Which is one of the reasons why I love our church. The last thing we do in our covenant is promise “to be kindly affectioned one to another.” In the larger United Church of Christ, of which we are members, the phrasing is a little different: “Open and Affirming.” Open and Affirming has focussed on welcoming gays and lesbians in particular, for the simple reason that they are the last group of people left who know that they are really not welcome in most churches that don’t specify that they are. "All are welcome" on the church sign usually doesn't mean them. After discussion, discernment and change, churches declare themselves open and affirming and hang a rainbow on their sign, so that all people know they are welcome.
You would think that an Open and Affirming, liberal New England seminary would be a place of safety and welcome for everyone. Faith, Health and Spirituality...can't get any more warm and fuzzy, non threatening than that. And we all know that Unitarians are even more vehemently inclusive and welcoming than we UCC folks. Yet I didn't fit in. They knew it and I knew it and all the rhetoric about O & A or kindly affectioned didn't make a bit of difference. For the first time in my faith life, I was a stranger, an outsider, not quite kosher, and the absolute necessity, the inescapable faith imperative for being Open and Affirming of all people, no exceptions, became clear to me. As long as anyone, any group of people, is not enthusiastically welcomed to be full front line participants in our faith and fellowship, none of us are truly safe. Here's the irony, as long as we know that we are keeping them out there because of who they are, we will never be safe in here to love God, our neighbors or ourselves because we will rightly assume that some of who we really are might well be too hot for all the perfect people in the church to handle. You know, all those purple haired tatooed kids off at college, the marital difficulties, learning disabilities, eating disorders, history of family tragedy or disgrace, drinking problems, lay offs, financial problems, business failures, bad sense of taste, strange political opinions, and all the other quirks that make us human which just might go public and cause us to fall from grace in the eyes of other church folks.
Right now you may be having one of my seminary experiences, disturbed and uncomfortable, not sure you like this, worried that you or someone you like will get up and threaten to leave the church or tell me that this sort of thing splits churches. I know. I hope, however, that you can see what astoundingly great Good News Epiphany is for folks like us in a town like ours where we all live under enormous pressure to be, of all people, Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. Instead of being yet another private perfection club, which, I should point out, is a heresy, we can, as Brian McLaren puts it, be the church and all come out of our closets. If we became Open and Affirming of all people, no exceptions, if we allowed ourselves to live a life with God in the first person plural, we, us, no they and them on the outside, absolutely, then we could all relax into ourselves, our neighbors and our God and enjoy life for a change. Now that sounds a lot like thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, to me.