Domes - Our Monthly Newsletter
The
following sermon was titled “Circles” and was preached on January 9, 2005. The
scripture reading on which it was based was Acts 10:34-43.....
My grandfather was a kind and generous man, and a devout Christian. He prayed
every day. There were always candles burning in his room, and his dresser and
the wall behind it were covered with icons. Some people said he was like a
saint.
Once when I
was living in his house for part of the year, I invited my best friend to come
home with me after school and meet my family. As we approached the house my
grandfather came outside. He took off his slipper and shook it at us and said,
“What are you doing? Get that colored out of here. Get out!”
My
grandfather’s behavior surprised me, but it really wasn’t so unusual. That was
the early sixties and there was so much prejudice in this country. Many schools
and universities had not been integrated yet. There were white and black
restrooms, restaurants, neighborhoods -- even churches. It was illegal in many
places for a black person and a white person to marry.
One of my
friends -- a minister -- attended a large Methodist church in the south. He
said that’s where he learned about Jesus Christ. It’s also where he was taught
that black people were inferior, lazy, and immoral. The deacons had a plan if
“they” should ever show up on a Sunday. They’d be put in certain seats, in the
colored section. And someone would stay close to the phone, ready to call the
police if necessary.
We’ve come
a long way since then. And if we’re prejudiced here at Dunbar, we hide it
pretty well -- though on most Sundays a stranger could walk into our church and
think that we’re segregated. In a neighborhood that has a good mix of white and
black, we’re almost all white.
But
generally, we’re an open church and we try to affirm the differences that make
each of us unique. And that’s good because differences tend to divide people.
Not long after Jesus died -- not even twenty years -- the church faced one its
biggest challenges. It started when Peter baptized someone who wasn’t a Jew.
What was worse, the man Peter baptized was a Roman soldier -- he was one of the
enemy. The Pastoral Relations Committee called Peter to Jerusalem and said,
“What are you doing? You can’t baptize a non-Jew!”
And Peter
preached one of the earliest sermons that we have on record. He said that he
realized, in a dream, that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone
who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” In his dream, Peter
saw a large sheet come down from heaven, with many animals on it that kosher
laws said were unclean. And he was commanded to eat these animals -- to break
the Biblical laws that had guided him his whole life. God told Peter that these
animals were clean. Suddenly, kosher food was not a requirement in Peter’s
religious life.
Ever since
Cain, the farmer, killed his brother Abel, the shepherd, the human race has
struggled with prejudice and hate and intolerance. By our nature, we tend to
loathe someone who is different from us.
One of the
missions of our church is to remove from each of us this stain of hatred and
intolerance in whatever form it takes, whether our hate is motivated by a
person’s race, culture, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Recently the
delegates from our denomination approved “A Resolution In Support Of The Civil
Right Of Legal Marriage For Same-Sex Couples.”
I was happy
they did that, because, as a people, we’ve hated gays and lesbians for a long
time and couldn’t stand the idea that they should enjoy the same rights and laws
and social status that we (straight people) do. Some us who were more tolerant
said, “Sure, let them have a civil union -- but for God’s sake, don’t let them
call it marriage. Because they’re not like us -- they’re not equal to us. And
if God made them that way -- well -- God makes mistakes too, right?”
But I was
glad that the UCC took this bold position of actually saying that gays and
lesbians are equal to straight people, and are as entitled to marriage as “we”
are. I wondered, though, why it took so long for a church to fight for their
rights when, as a group, gays and lesbians have been so persecuted -- throughout
history. Even our president doesn’t understand that our sexual orientation,
like our skin and hair color, isn’t something we choose, but a gift from God.
Why has the
church waited for two-thousand and four years after Christ to come to the aid of
gays and lesbians and fight for their civil right of legal marriage? Some
people say, “Look -- it says right here -- Homosexuality is a sin!” But they
forget that Jesus broke many “Biblical” laws because they were wrong. Laws of
the Sabbath, purification, and diet; laws governing interaction between men and
women, and between Jews and foreigners. Just because something is “in the Bible”
doesn’t make it right. Sometimes the Bible is wrong. And thank God we’ve
realized that, or we we’d still buying and selling slaves!
Peter broke the kosher laws and he baptized a Roman
soldier. What laws do we need to break? People draw circles and
punish and hate those who stand outside. But we will make our circle larger,
even if we have to break laws and conventions to do that. We will make our
circle include everyone -- because that’s what God does. It’s the work
she’s given us. If you want a really good description of good and bad
laws, and laws we should follow and laws we should break, then read Dr. Martin
Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” That’s an inspired piece
and as good as any of the apostle Paul’s epistles. I know that Dr. King
would be marching today, if he were alive, to support the civil right of legal
marriage for same-sex couples.