How Much Do You Love?

This week has been a pretty big week for the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered community as the U. S. Supreme court heard not just one, but two crucial cases that addressed Marriage Equality for Gay and Lesbian Americans.

It’s a day that many of us never thought we’d live to see.

During his second inaugural address, President Obama mentioned the importance of equality for the gay community, some of us old activists got a little teary, because frankly, many of us never thought we’d live to see the day that the sitting President of the United States would ever say anything positive about gay people.

Denis and I were discussing this over coffee, at the Queen Bean, with a young friend of ours. We talked about having been fired for being gay, about having beer bottles chucked at us during gay pride marches.

And for me this conversation really brought a lot of my adult life into focus.

I came out as a gay man during the height of the AIDS crisis. I came out in a world where I could be fired, thrown out of my apartment and arrested for dating who I was attracted to.

And now we have a President who openly supports gay marriage and two court cases being considered by the U. S. Supreme Court.

And yet it’s not a done deal.

The thought, the dream of full equality for myself, and those in my community, is almost too precious to me to look at fully, for fear of disappointment.

Today for our Christian friends and neighbors, it’s Easter.

This is a big holiday for them, as so much of their theology rests on the story of Jesus’s death on Good Friday and his resurrection on the 3^rd day, Sunday.

I want to talk with you a little about this story.

But first a little background information.

For those who are not familiar with the Christian New Testament, it was assembled in its current form in the year 383, or 397 at the latest.

In this Christian New Testament, there are 4 Gospels. Three of them are known as the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. John is the Gospel written wholly in Greek, and follows a lot of the same material that are shared in the other three gospels.

All of the Gospels are meant to have been recorded by an Apostle of Jesus of Nazareth, though scholarship suggests that the earliest that John could’ve possibly been written was 50A.D, and more likely closer to 100 A.D.

There are some differences though between the Book of John and the other Gospels, one of them being that Jesus had a brother named James.

Another difference, one that I want to lift up today, is the existence of “The Beloved Disciple.”

When I first heard rumors and whispers about the question “Did you know that Jesus was gay?” I will admit to you a certain irritation. I thought, “what deranged gay activist decided to start this rumor just to upset the Christian Right?!?” The very statement “Jesus was gay” felt like a hand-grenade to be lobbied into the crowd of those who were already working diligently to take my rights away.

And then I read a book by a professor from the Chicago Theological School, a straight, married grandfather, Methodist minister, theologian and scholar of the New Testament, Rev. Theodore Jennings. Jennings’s book is called “The Man Who Jesus Loved.”

In it Jennings makes a very compelling argument that Jesus may have had a same sex, intimate relationship with this person, known as the Beloved Disciple, who many say is the very man named John, who wrote the book of John.

In the Gospel of John, the very last act that Jesus of Nazareth does before dying, is that he transfers the responsibility of the care for his mother, Mary, to this Beloved Disciple.

John 19: 25:

25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman,[b] here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

After this, Jesus says “I am thirsty” and he is given sour wine to drink, and then the last recorded words of Jesus of Nazareth are “It is done,” and thereafter he dies.

Rev. Jennings posits that this transfer of responsibility for the care of his mother, Mary, when Jesus has at the very least one brother, James, is the first indication that the question of the relationship between Jesus and the Beloved Disciple warranted further investigation.

By now you may be wondering why I’m giving a sermon about gay Jesus on Easter.

I want to step away from that question, because I was using it as sort of a set up to the real question for this morning “What do you love so much, that you can’t look at it in it’s fullness?”

After Jesus’s death, according to the Gospel of John, it is the women who go to take care of the body of Jesus, which is the completely normal thing for women to do in the first century in the Middle East.  It is the women who discover the rock is rolled away from the tomb, and they who tell Peter, aka the First Pope, and the Beloved Disciple that the body is missing.

Naturally, Peter and the Beloved Disciple rush to the tomb, and the Beloved Disciple arrives there first.

From the Gospel of John,

³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 

Even though the Beloved Disciple reached the tomb first, he did not go in, he merely peaked in. It has been suggested that the Beloved Disciple didn’t go in before Peter, out of deference for Peter’s position as the man who Jesus designated to carry on his work.

It has also been suggested by some scholars that the Beloved Disciple did not go in out of fear.

If Jesus and the Beloved Disciple were really a beloved pair, what would stop the Disciple from rushing in first as he clearly, according to the text, beat Peter to the tomb?

Have you ever been in the position that you are so in love with an idea, with a person or a dream that could not really bear to see it in its full truth?

Have you ever ignored little red flags in your head about taking a job, or going on a second date with someone, because the job or the person was so appealing?

If you have, you have let yourself not see someone in their fullness.

I think this is what happened to the Beloved Disciple.

Think about it for a moment.

Consider yourself in the position of the Beloved Disciple, as expressed by Jennings, for a moment. This man you love, who you believed in, who spoke of eternal life, and wanting you to stay alive until he returned….. this man just died two days ago, while you stood at the foot of the cross where he was placed, in the hot sun. You stood with the women, the only man who went to the foot of the cross with them, and he looked down at you and said, “Take care of my Mother.”

What if he was wrong? What if eternal life isn’t his? What if he died, and now if you look into that tomb, and you see his body, he really is dead, and there is no future for the two of you.

If that’s true, what else had he been saying that wouldn’t be true?

You have followed this man for a couple of years, believing in his message of love, and now it all crumbles.

Or….

What if what he said was true. What if his body is gone because he ascended to Heaven to be with his Father? What if there is eternal life, and what if I live eternally, but I don’t see him anymore?

What if the Beloved Disciple was too enmeshed in grief, fear and possibility to face this tomb, which surely force him into some sort of conclusion?

When have you been in a situation where you have loved too long, too deeply, too completely that you cannot face a truth about the one you love?

Or an idea so precious to you, that you are both afraid of it coming true, and it not coming true, because you’ve spent so long, so many days, weeks, years in the liminal space of that question, that the space between answer a and answer b has itself has become comfortable, and the resolution to that question is not comfortable, and not familiar.

And the resolution to that question may not, in fact, be the resolution you desire.

And to live in the liminal space is safer than having to deal with the possibility that what you wanted won’t be coming to fruition.

Now that the U. S. Supreme Court has heard the arguments on the Cases of California’s Prop 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, the liminal space for these two questions seem to have an expiration date,

a ticking clock,

and then the truth will have to be faced.

A bolder, stronger person may have done what Peter did, he charged into the tomb, even though the Beloved Disciple beat him to the door.

But the Beloved Disciple is the one who may be easier to relate to, since his very human fear, kept him from charging in and having all his questions answered.

Can you relate to the Beloved Disciple may have been feeling, almost 2,000 years ago on an Easter morning?

Anticipation has the power to be filled with breathless anticipation, but also it can contain such heart wrenching anxiety.

Anticipation can be our companion to such frivolous questions like: “Will I be on time for this meeting?” and “I wonder if that sweater I saw last week is still on sale?” To questions like “What if I am pregnant?” and “Please, please, please, let the doctor say the word “benign.”

Or the question the Beloved Disciple may have asked so long ago “Is my Love for the all the ages, or am I now I alone?”

May, as you live your life, you take time to sit in the in between places, those liminal spaces where possibility, sweet or tragic possibility, lives.

For that space in between is also sacred.

As we wait for the decision of the Supreme Court, let us not forget to enjoy things that are happening between now and the when then, there is life to be lived, surprises do happen.

Today let us remember that to have someone, a friend, a cousin, a partner, love you is to have someone forgive you your bumps and bruises, your odd quirks, your shortcomings.

Is one form, one very human form, of redemption.

And perhaps it is true that to love and have been loved is a form of eternity.

May your days be blessed with the love of companions; friends and family collected along the journey of your days. May you, also be a blessing to them.

Amen.

© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and Given to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County,

March 31, 2013

Spring Equinox

Each year about this time, the Earth re-awakens. Everywhere we look, we can see evidence to new life and renewed life.

Just a few weeks ago, I saw the very first blooms on the trees, and now the Valley is full of new flowers, new leaves and small, yet still growing, almonds, walnuts and other produce for which this area of the country is famous for.

As a tween, though we didn’t have that name at the time, I first discovered the Greek story of Persephone, her Mother, Demeter, Hades, and a pomegranate seed.

Already, I had been having my doubts about what much of what I was being taught in church, and this story of a Mother’s sadness and vengeance didn’t seem, to me, any more outlandish than other stories I’d been told.

The truth now as I understand it, is that our planet is on an axis, and as we orbit our own Sun, the seasons change.

It’s perhaps less romantic than Demeter’s rage, but probably truer.

As Demeter allows the Earth to re-awaken each Spring, she offers a sort of redemptive moment. She releases her anger and sorrow, and she keeps her promise, that the Earth will continue to bear fruit and feed us.

This week begins Passover for our Jewish friends, and today is Palm Sunday for our Christian neighbors.

In the narrative of the Exodus, the Bible tells that God helped the Children of Israel escape slavery in Egypt by inflicting ten plagues upon the ancient Egyptians before the Pharaoh would release his Israelite slaves; the tenth and worst of the plagues was the death of the Egyptian first-born. The Israelites were instructed to mark the doorposts of their homes with the blood of a spring lamb and, upon seeing this, the spirit of the Lord knew to pass over the first-born in these homes, hence the name of the holiday. There is some debate over where the term is actually derived from. When the Pharaoh freed the Israelites, it is said that they left in such a hurry that they could not wait for bread dough to rise (leaven). In commemoration, for the duration of Passover no leavened bread is eaten, for which reason it is called "The Festival of the Unleavened Bread." Matzo (flat unleavened bread) is a symbol of the holiday.

For Christians, Palm Sunday is the Sunday that begins the last week of Jesus of Nazareth. Many may know this story and many may not. On Sunday Jesus came into Jerusalem, choosing to enter from the East gate, which had some cultural significance, and on Monday Jesus clears the Jewish temple. This is where the final trouble begins.  Thursday of that same week is called “Maundy Thursday” by our Christian friends. Maundy refers to the washing of the feet of the poor. After washing the feet of the poor, Jesus and his disciples share the Last Supper, after which he is betrayed and arrested.

On this Friday, known as Good Friday, I will be taking part in two interfaith services, representing this congregation in the wider community. Just after noon on Friday at the  First United Methodist Church the Interfaith Clergy Group that I belong to will jointly lead worship.

On Friday evening, I will be taking part in the Ten brae service at the UCC College Avenue congregation. If you’ve never been to a Tenbrae service before, it is a moving from light into the darkness of mourning, following the story of the death of Jesus of Nazareth.

And what are we, as Unitarian Universalists to make of this time of year?

A very strong legacy that we still enjoy, dating back to the early expression of our faith was the Transcendentalist movement of people like Emerson, Fuller, Alcott, Hawthorne, Melville and the like. It makes perfect sense then for us to turn to one of our own, Henry David Thoreau to offer us some things to consider. From his book Walden, the chapter called “Spring,” Thoreau wrote:

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.

We loiter in winter while it is already spring.

In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world;

but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is  [his] exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten.

There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hillside echoes to no vulgar jest.

You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from [him] his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors- why the judge does not dismiss his case- why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint, which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.[1]

As the Earth turns around the Sun, so must we, creatures after all made of the same stardust at the Sun, turn as well. 

Just as we rejoice in the returning sunshine for longer days, while we are still feeling nostalgic for it, before the hot days of July and August are upon us once again. Just as we rejoice in the natural pattern and rhythm of our planet’s trip around the solar system, we should ourselves be prepared to turn,

toward forgiveness.

For the beings who share our lives with us,

and for ourselves.

As humans, we are often so difficult to interact with. We can be so demanding and unforgiving. We can hold onto hurts for long periods of time, harming NOT that person who hurt you,

but continuing to harm yourself.

Take this weekend, this vernal equinox, and give yourself the gift of forgiving those around you that you love,

and those you only sort of like,

and even those who you merely put up with.

A few weeks ago I quoted the Buddha by saying that holding on to anger was like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.

Instead, I recommend to you, that you choose life.

If I may, I’ll quote a lyric from the Broadway show “Chicago.” You can like the life you’re living, you can live the life you’d like.”

As the world is re-awakening, after Persephone’s return, and Demeter allows the Earth to wake yet once again to life, this is a grand time to consider where you are with forgiveness and redemption.

If we’re to go with the myth of Demeter, when her daughter is returned to her, you can see that she settles her upset and anger, allowing Life to renew, redeemed from the anger of one mother goddess.

We stand, together, at this equinox as we do every year. The equinox is a time of balance and shifting. We are on the cusp of one season or the other.

It is not only during an equinox, or a solstice, that we stand balanced between one thing and another, but because of their place in the natural order, the natural calendar of things, we pay a little closer attention to that balance.

This week, as the sun rises a little earlier each morning, and the sun sets a little later each evening, ask yourself “What am I on the verge of?”

What am I on the verge of becoming?

We are ever on the verge of becoming something new, because the universe is constantly unfolding before us.

We are made of the same stardust that created the heavens and the earth.

Why wouldn’t we also forever be on the verge of becoming something new?

As you walk through your life, take time to notice the new born animals in the world, take time to marvel at the blossom and the small fruit that’s just beginning to grow.

And ask yourself, what am I, at the ripe of age of whatever that is, what is waiting to burst forth from me, and how will that beautify the entire universe?

May the blessings of spring be upon you.

May your crops, be they actual plants or computer files, grow and be plentiful.

May our harvests in the fall, reflect a good start to Sping, and a lot of hard, but good work in the Summer.

---

[1] from Walden, Chapter 17, Spring.

From You I Receive

Good morning.

It’s good to be home.

This morning I want to talk with you about Hymn # 402.  Will you sing it with me?

From you I receive, to you I give, together we share, and from this we live.

It was way back there that I first heard this hymn, and it seems a fitting theme for my first return to this congregation as an ordained minister.

Because from you I did receive. I received a warm welcome in the Autumn of 1996.

And I continued to receive. When my relationship with the man who brought me here ended, this church helped me. When I didn’t even have a glimmer of an idea that I might have the potential to become a religious leader, the wiser souls than I in this congregation asked me to serve on the Religious Education Committee. And from there I entered into church leadership, and then heard my call to ministry.

A call I must say that has lead me to work in churches in England, Canada and that far off foreign land known as California.

When I officially joined this church as a member, signing the membership book in April of 1997, I want to say it was the 14^th, I took it very seriously. And I tried to give. Which wasn’t always easy.

For most of my time as an active member of this congregation I was a very underemployed person. I was either working a job and a half and trying to pay for classes at the City Colleges, or I was a full-time student, or seminarian. There was a brief shining moment when I finished my bachelor’s and had a real, adult job, and when that happened, I did pledge what I thought was a “respectable” amount. And by that I mean I felt like I was no longer a junior member of the society because I could pledge “big boy” money, like a grown up.

Mostly though, I gave with labor. I moved a lot of chairs and tables, I was on a lot of committees, I sang a lot of songs and taught a lot of classes.

These gifts are also valuable.

Together we share:

As I said recently to the congregation that I serve in Modesto California,

There are Sundays each year that ministers dread.

Pledge Sunday is one of them.

Some of you may have heard me say that one of the greatest losses in my life as I became a minister was the ability to talk about my faith, and what it has done for me, without the person hearing this story hearing not my words, but a sales pitch.

Pledge Sunday is similar.

No matter what I say today, no matter how much time I spent crafting phrases and doing research for this sermon, there are those who will hear nothing but the following words:

We need you to raise your pledge.

So for those who were waiting to hear those words, there you have them. And now I want you to forget them.

I have said in the past that Church is not about money, but money is the oil that allows the machinery of church to run.

Church is not about money, but money is the oil that allows the machinery of church to run.

Time was that I used to pay my pledge every year when I got my tax return because that was the only time I had any extra cash. It wasn’t much lubricant for the church’s workings, but it’s what I could offer.

And from this, we live.

This church is a lively, vibrant place, full of wonderful people, and truth be told sort of famous and infamous around the Unitarian Universalist world.

We are known far and wide for our racial diversity and for our attention to that. We are known, widely, as having a Unitarian Cathedral.

I don’t think that this church would be so well known if it didn’t live deeply with itself. And by that I mean, we live in each other’s lives. We visit each other when we’re sick, we offer to help each other in many ways. Together we have sat with the dying, holding their hand until their last breath, and rejoiced in a new baby, born into the family.

We live deeply together.

We live deeply together because this church home is very important to our lives. For some this church is essential and central to their lives. There are people who have organized their lives around the love they feel in this church. 

I know this because I have been one of them.

When I hinted to Rev. Barbara that I would be in town this weekend, and that I really, really wouldn’t mind at all if I were invited to preach, she graciously invited to me preach. And for that I thank you, Rev. Barbara.

Then later, when we figured out the theme for today, I was like “Really? I have to go home and preach about stewardship? I have so much to say to these people that I love and miss so desperately, and I get stewardship? I’ve already preached on stewardship this year! This is like being told there someone has slipped in a second Mother’s Day into the calendar!”

But then I realized that, truthfully, it’s actually a wonderful thing for me to talk with you about. Because now when I talk with you about stewardship I have, literally, a more global perspective then I did when I was here 48 Sundays a year.

A gentleman named “D. Sutten” wrote these words:

Some go through life getting free rides; others pay full fare and something extra to take care of the free riders.  Some of the free riders are those who make an art of “knowing the angles,” others are rascals, others lazy; but some really need help and could not ride unless they rode free.  I don’t spend much time worrying about the free riders; but I am a full-fare man, first and last.

Some of you may not know this, and some of you may have forgotten this, but I am a collector of quotes. I have been collecting them since I was 14. Long before computers entered households, I sat with a spiral bound notebook and recorded quotes that spoke to me.

Long before I’d even heard of Unitarian Universalism, many of the quotes I collected came from both Universalists and Unitarians. So clearly, when I walked through those doors back there for the first time, it was a natural fit.

The reason that I’ve chosen to quote Mr. Sutten to you is because in every pledge drive there is the elephant in the room about money. And I’m going to speak some truth to you.

If anyone is going to speak the truth to you about this, it might as well be me. Because you know I love you, and I love this church, and because you know I won’t be getting any kick-backs from this sermon, I can tell you the truth and you can trust me.

There are people sitting here this morning who are better off than others. We all know this. I told you earlier that I gave the minimum possible pledge every year for almost all of my active years here because it’s all I could afford.

So for those of you who are struggling to get by, I want you to really hear my words and feel them in your heart: You are welcome here. Your contributions matter. No, they may not be the biggest numbers in the list, but you are part of a larger whole, and your part does matter. You are equally valued as a member of this community.

I wouldn’t lie to you.

As Mr. Dutten says “Some of the free riders are those who make an art of “knowing the angles,” others are rascals, others lazy; but some really need help and could not ride unless they rode free.”

Unless you are a rascal, or are making an art of knowing the angles, you are doing your honest, level best for this congregation, and that’s all that can be reasonably asked for.

And it will be gratefully accepted.

The rest of the quote speaks to those who are not currently on the margins of society:

Some go through life getting free rides; others pay full fare and something extra to take care of the free riders.  Some really need help and could not ride unless they rode free.  I don’t spend much time worrying about the free riders; but I am a full-fare man, first and last.

There’s a phrase that I first heard from Wallace Rusterholtz. “Noblesse Oblige.” For those, like me, who don’t speak French, it means “nobility obligates.” Its come to mean that to be of means obligates one to care for those with less means.

Wallace used to tell me that his greatest concern about our American Society was that the sense of noblesse oblige was not being passed down from generation to generation.

From this idea of his, I have been sort of watching to see if he was right. He wasn’t right about everything, but he was right about many things, and this is one of them.

As a society, we’ve bought into the idea that we deserve all that we have, and that it’s our right to have the biggest tv, the fanciest car, and the like.

I’d say a rather more healthy view is that it is a privilege to have these things.

At home I drive a 26 year old Volkswagen Convertible. I bought it last year, on my 44^th birthday. Truth be told, it may be the saddest mid-life crisis car ever purchased.

But I love it.

It is a privilege to have that car, old as it is, without air conditioning… but the top goes down and I live in California!

So the reason owning this car is not a right, but a privilege? Because I could choose it.

I worry that as those of us who have struggled to move from the place where we accept just the smallest scrap tossed at us because we had to, from that place we move to places like choice, we feel like we deserve these things, that we have earned them.

Truth be told, the fact that we can chose is a result of grace.

There are plenty in the world with the same level of education as you who don’t have the choices we have. And because somehow the universe has given us grace, by that I man has treated us more gently than they, we have more choices.

This is a truth that Mr. Sutten recognizes.

He doesn’t waste his precious time worrying about who the rascals are, he knows that there are those in the system whose lives haven’t been as filled with grace as his has been, and he feels a duty to, a duty he seems happily to be fulfilling, a duty to pay full-fare.

Mr. Sutten says “I don’t spend much time worry about the free riders; but I am a full-far man, first and last.”

But clearly, he has spent some time worrying about those who utilize free bus passes. And he realizes that though there may be scamps and rascals, he, as a person with economic security, has a responsibility to those who have less access to power.

By not spending too much time, though, he frees himself from the attachment to what these rascals are doing, and who among us would not benefit by doing the same?

My beloved friends, this morning I am encouraging you to consider, deep in your heart, the mission, the history and the future of this congregation which has given me and others so much meaning in their lives.

As a whole, as a body, the congregation will raise the money it requires to continue operations and build on the legacy of our forebears. How you, as an individual, take part, relies on your own sense of community, duty and responsibility.

Before I step down, I can’t help but engage in a little personal privilege, and I hope you won’t mind.

I am up here preaching to you today because you helped to make me who I am. I am out in the Central Valley of California, in the Almond Capitol of the world, because you helped me to see the potential I had.

My life is become a success because of what I received here, what I have given here, what we’ve shared and how we’ve lived together.

In my ministry, I speak of you often. I think of you often. And when I am not at home, I miss you terribly.

May this church forever continue to be place where the lost can be found, where family does not mean you have the same grandparents and where we inspire each other with acts of kindness, truth telling, hugs, tears and laughter.

Amen.

© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and Delivered to

The First Unitarian Society of Chicago

March 17, 2013