Leap of Faith

Desmond Tutu, both Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town South Africa, wrote an Op/Ed piece for the Washington Post on March 12, 2010.  In it, he writes:

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity — or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.

He’s writing in response to the current situation in Africa whereby some African countries legislation is being proposed to institutionalize hate towards LGBT people and unofficial violence appears to have a blind eye turned to it.   I love Mr. Tutu’s thoughts on God’s mind on who is accepted by God and who isn’t?

“But they are sinners,” I can hear the preachers and politicians say. “They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished.” My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?

This reminds me a bit of the scripture, 1 John 2:2 (NET)

and he [Christ] himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for the whole world.

The key term is whole world.   God’s “box” of who is in the world is considerably bigger than ours and He is regularly challenging us to think about that.

You can read the entire text of Mr. Tutu’s editorial at the Washington Post here, “In Africa, A Step Backwards on Human Rights“

Christmas has morphed quite a bit over the years.   It’s original meaning of course is found in The Incarnation, the coming of Christ Himself to the earth, as He voluntarily humbled Himself to come to earth through the virgin birth.  Now a days, Christmas is celebrated for alot of reasons.  In many places it’s the celebration of The Incarnation of Christ, in others it’s the celebration of the “spirit” of giving, or maybe the “spirit” of commerce?

Actually the facts of the true meaning of Christmas are pretty sobering.   Joseph and Mary, having travelled by foot to their hometown for the census, there wasn’t any place to actually stay.  Maybe they got their too late given the slow journey what with Mary pregnant and all.  And what a pregnancy!  She carried the Child of God.  What’s not talked about much in that part of the story is how great a guy Joseph was to not divorce his betrothed. That’s right, they weren’t married. She had a child out of wedlock and Joseph had every right to ditch Mary but, he didn’t.  Sure, he had a dream and that was a real message from God, but, instead of brushing it off as a some bad fish for dinner, Joseph actually believed what God was saying to Him.  And so, he and Mary were heading up to Bethlehem for the mundane chore of census taking and tax giving.  Ho Hum.

But while on the surface it was ho hum, what was really happening was amazing.  The Christ Child was to be born.  Mary, is a great example of a regular, teenage girl who doesn’t really know what is happening to her, but, she’s okay with it since she trusts God.  She’s willing to say”ok I don’t really get this, but, I do know this, I trust God and this whole baby out of wedlock thing is WAY against my religion and the social norms of my day, but, I’m going with it since I trust You (God)” (see the Bible, Luke 1)

How many of us might be better off if we said the same thing, “I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but, I’ll go with it, since I trust You”.  We might have alot more life in our life!    And who knows what blessing we might bring to others here in the present…what Christmas you or I might bring to someone as Mary and Joseph did in the past….even though in the begininng we have no idea where the end will be.

“Could You Believe”, published in 1999 by Twila Paris, is my current favorite new hymn.   Beautiful, meaningful words, a challenging message for believers while uplifting our Saviour and a call to be authentically ourselves all delivered with Twila’s clear, compelling voice.

Hear it on LaLa: Could You Believe

He was a friend to sinners
He was a gentle man
Beautiful, humble master plan
His voice could pierce the darkness
Quiet an angry sea
I hear Him saying follow me
I look in your eyes and I tell you these things
But somehow I know that it’s hard to believe

Could you believe if I really was like Him
If I lived all the words that I said
If for a change I would kneel down before you
And serve you instead
Could you believe

He was the Lamb of mercy
Undying hope of men
Waiting for love to come again
He is the light of heaven
Radiant Prince of peace
I Hear him saying, “Follow Me”
I look in your eyes and I tell you these things
But somehow I know that it’s hard to believe

Could you believe if I carried my own cross
If I saw that the children were fed
If for a moment I held my opinion
And quietly led Could you believe

I am meant to be a pure reflection of the truth
So above it all I pray that I will not obscure the view

Could you believe if I stood here transparent
And through me you could see his eyes
Could you believe if you saw right inside me
and there was no disguise
Could you believe if I was really like him
If I lived all the words that I said
If it was clear that I held in my heart
What I know in my head
Could you believe, could you believe
Looking at me, could you believe
Could you believe?

Twila Paris, 1999,  from album, “True North”

This might be one of the single best sermons on repentance I’ve ever read or heard.  Delivered by Pastor Candace Chellew-Hodge, a writer and pastor, she explains repentance and it’s relevance in life.   Candace, from her bio, is “a recovering Southern Baptist and founder/editor of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for GLBT Christians. Her first book, Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians, published by Jossey-Bass is now available at http://www.bulletproofbook.com.”

What almost every critic of LGBTIQA Christians misses is this:  Christ doesn’t care who you are;  He cares what’s in  our hearts and he cares how we live.  Since coming out I’ve met alot of people in our community whom I, as a former lay preacher, would have thought twice about.  But it’s nice to know that God was patient, even with me, as I learned our community isn’t that different from any other community.   And as I learned I was in no ways perfect (and still am not) I did learn about repentance in the process.  Pastor Candace’s sermon sums it up best.

So what about our sermon already?  Here’s an exerpt, I hope you get a fresh cup of coffee, as I did, and enjoy it completely:

Just this past week we inaugurated a new president. Many liberals – and even many conservatives – expect a lot from this man. Some even expect him to work miracles and move this nation very quickly in the direction they’d like to see it move. The story of Nineveh is a reminder that the best way to change this nation – the best way to lead our modern day Nineveh to true repentance – is by changing ourselves.

In this story God shows us that if we want change – we have to initiate it. By the time the king gets around to sending out a proclamation – it will be too late. We cannot wait for the king – or the president – to tell us what kind of changes need to take place in this world. We already know. We’ve already heard God speaking. Love has already come to town and we don’t need the president to tell us to jump that train or catch that plane. Real change – change that improves the lives of everyone from the banker to the beggar – doesn’t come from the top down. If the past eight years has taught us nothing, it should have taught us that those at the top are most concerned with those at the top. For real change to come to the least of these – the least of these must be the agents for that change.

If you want the hungry fed, feed them. If you want the homeless housed, house them. If you want equal rights, fight for them. If you want the prisoner visited, go visit them. If you want the naked clothed, clothe them. Don’t wait for a presidential decree or for Congress to pass a law. When love comes to town, the least of these understand their task – there is no “us” and “them” – it’s some of us for all of us.

Jonah’s message to Nineveh is just as urgent for us today. “Your time’s almost up. Get moving.”

There’s alot more in her sermon and I hope you are blessed, just as I was    You may reach her Sermon, “When Love Comes to Town” at Whosoever magazine here.

(photo courtesy of  Grey Blue Skies Photos)

Is Jesus asleep in the boat or are you and I asleep?  I received this sermon from the Christian Magazine, Whosoever,  titled, “Jesus, Wake Up“.  And loved it.  The text that forms the basis of the sermon is from Matthew 8:23-27 (NET Bible)

As he [Jesus] got into the boat, his disciples followed him.  And a great storm developed on the sea so that the waves began to swamp the boat. But he was asleep. So they came and woke him up saying, “Lord, save us! We are about to die!” But he said to them, “Why are you cowardly, you people of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it was dead calm. And the men were amazed and said, “What sort of person is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him!”

Some backstory and context for you:

• The Disciples were professional fisherman by trade.  They knew the Sea of Galilee well
• Just prior to this event, the Disciples had seen Jesus: Cleanse a leper (Mt 8:1), Heal a Roman Army Centurion servant (Mt 8:5), and heal Peter’s Mother-in-Law (Mt 8:14).  So they had seen what kind of power their simple friend and teacher, Jesus, had.
• Since the boat held all the disciples, it was probably very large
• The disciples followed Jesus even though they did not know all about him yet.

So what about the sermon?  Well it’s great, and you should click over to take a read with your afternoon latte, but here are some teasers:

• We can’t blame ourselves, however, if we often forget who holds the greatest power in our universe. As we survey our world, we see many opulent displays of human power – nuclear weapons, terrorist bombs, loaded guns, and armored vehicles. These are certainly powerful enough to bring destruction to our world and perhaps annihilate our world all together. Yet, not one of them is as powerful as the God we serve.
• We are like the disciples who, panic-stricken, accused Jesus of not caring about their fate.
• Thomas Merton tells us that “to keep ourselves spiritually alive we must constantly renew our faith. We are like pilots of fogbound steamers, peering into the gloom in front of us, listening to the sounds of other ships, and we can only reach our harbor if we keep alert.
• When things are going well in life it’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security, believing nothing bad can befall us again. We have fallen asleep at the wheel and we awake in a panic when the storms of life begin to blow. We wonder where God is and if we have been abandoned to the waves that threaten to capsize our boat. We accuse God of being asleep – leaving us to be swallowed up by our problems.

Is Jesus asleep or are each of us?  Read the sermon at Whosever to find the answer.  Click to the Whosoever site at this link here: “Jesus, Wake Up!”

(Photo courtesy of Shayan’s Photos)

Now this is something I never expected to see, “New studies demonstrate welcoming congregations are more active on social justice and LGBT advocacy“.    First some background about my experience.

My experience in Evangelical Church circles had been a mixed blessing on social justice.   On one hand there was a tremendous life of the church on Sunday. Vibrant and moving worship.  Excellent preaching and teaching.   Strong support for most members. Miraculous answer to prayer at times.  And effective children’s ministry.  But the lack of actual practice of Micah 6:8, the social justice piece of the gospel, was troubling:

6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you: He wants you to promote justice, to be faithful, and to live obediently before your God (NET Bible)

It’s such a big part of the Gospel I often wondered, “shouldn’t we have more attention on that piece?”

So the headline “New studies demonstrate welcoming congregations are more active on social justice and LGBT advocacy” really caught my eye, and the results even more so.  Check these out:

• More than half of clergy in welcoming congregations reported that the welcoming process helped their congregation to witness and act on other social justice issues. In describing this effect, one welcoming pastor said the church is more active in “the plight of the oppressed and marginalized” because of the church’s welcoming process.
• “One of the most exciting findings from this study is the direct connection between being a welcoming congregation and involvement in other social justice issues,” says the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, Institute for Welcoming Resources and faith work director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Our surveys demonstrate that the welcoming process makes a meaningful difference. Welcoming congregations are on the front lines in economic justice, homelessness, racial justice, immigration and other important areas of religious witness.”

Now granted, the survey does focus on churches who are welcoming and affirming of the LGBT community already so perhaps there is some bias.  I wonder what the effects would be on a broader range of churches.  Still, I found the connection between a church being welcoming and affirming and being more open to helping the oppressed and down trodden unexpected.  Perhaps opening our hearts to one group makes cold hearts thaw towards others.

You can read the press release on the study at The Task Force’s website here.
If you’ve got enough coffee left, you can read the whole study at the Institute for Welcoming Resources website here.

Oh and if  you are in Massachusetts, a great welcoming church for Christians is First Presbyterian of Waltham.   There are others too, if you do a search on you favorite search engine under “Open and Affirming” you should see a list.  Keshet is a good choice to find resources if you are Jewish.

(Graphic image courtesy of Bemky and used under Creative Commons License)

I could probably post alot on this topic but I’ll leave the info for our readers over a nice cup of coffee or cocoa. In a nutshell, one of the largest and most influential Evangelical Churches, Willow Creek Community Church, has concluded that homosexuality is not a sin. It’s part of who you are.

While that may seem self-evident, it’s a major deal for a church like Willow Creek to admit it.

This happened during a meeting that none other than Julie Nemeck attended at Willow Creek. You might remember Dr. Nemecek, she’s both an experienced pastor and educator who was booted from her job in Michigan for being trans.

Here’s a quote from the story on her blog:

For our part, we were surprised and pleased that Willow Creek’s own 30-year study of homosexuality has led them to conclude that: (1) Sexual orientation is unchangeable. and (2) Sexual orientation should not keep someone from being received into their church. They acknowledged that 6 of the 7 verses used to condemn homosexuality are irrelevant; really referring to other things.

You can read the full story at Julie’s blog at her story, “Soulforce, Willow Creek and Me“.

Their story is pretty amazing and really goes back to something that we miss sometimes as Christians and as transgender people: God isn’t so much concerned with who we are but in our resultant behavior; our character. Are any of our behavior Christlike or not? Are our behaviors and actions showing we are redemptive and healing in our relationships and still uncompromising, and, though very much imperfect, disciples?

For me, it’s important to remember my behaviors are a reflection of my individual heartfelt desire to “give back”, in a sense, to Christ for His sacrifice for me on the cross and my personal acceptance of His sacrifice for my sins. My behaviors can’t earn me God’s love but they can show how much I love Him by loving others.

It’s easy to forget that in Jesus’s day, He was considered an out there radical bent on destroying the government and the powers of the day. He was considered a major league weirdo and threat! And though He was a radical, even a surface read of the Gospels shows you how redemptive and healing His behaviors were. What a great example He left us.

You can learn about SoulForce at this linkie love here. Photos of this historic meeting are at SoulForce photos here.

Christmas, the birth of Christ, the savior, isn’t just for shoppers. While it’s true the 25th of December is likely not the precise date of Jesus Christ’s birth, the celebration of His incarnation is one of the most important celebrations in Christendom. And this is not the same as celebrating a religeous right political action win. This is about celebrating the birth of God incarnate who actually came for all the world….men and women in all the beauty of their diversity.  You can bet your Christmas fruitcake He did not come for a political party.  So, with that in mind, we have brewed up a few links on, Christmas:

• Merry Christmas; The Incarnation: a post we did last year on this wonderful day and what the meaning of the season is
• God’s Diversity Christmas: is a wonderful post on God’s audience by Julie Nemecek
• Give Mary Credit: Over at Heartlight, they give us a short, neat reminder about Mary’s faith as a woman
• Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?   Is a well documented, historical and analytical perspective on this topic

Merry Christmas to all our readers, coffee swillers and general hanger-oners from us at Beck’s Cafe.

Dr. Julie Nemecek has some interesting thoughts on the conundrum that our President, George Bush, may be finding himself in with The Matthew Shepherd bill slowly making it’s way to his desk.  The bill, which many of our reader’s already know about, makes violence against people due to their gender or gender identity, a federal crime. It’s good protections not just for the transgender but also for, as the bill states, hate crimes against persons due to:

Section 2 Findings…actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim…

So if your transgender, it’s protective and it’s also true if your disabled. That’s right, the disabled are in fact a group even more subject to hate crimes than transgender people. Sadly, they can’t hardly speak for themselves at all. Thank God all we have is GID. Check out these factoids on hate crimes focused on the disabled:

• In 1994, due to the growing prevalence of studies and massive anecdotal instances of hate crimes against people with disabilities, the category of “disability” was added to the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990
• The U.S. Office on Crime Statistics reported in 2002 that in many cases, crime victims with disabilities have never participated in the criminal justice process, “even if they have been repeatedly and brutally victimized.” (the victims are often afraid of retaliation from the perpetrator; even the caregiver)
• disability-based bias crimes are all too frequently mislabeled as “abuse” and never directed from the social service or education systems to the criminal justice system. Even very serious crimes — including rape, assault, and vandalism — are too-frequently labeled “abuse.”

(data on hate crimes against the disabled from Civil Rights.org and UCLA Berkley Newsletter, “Flawed FBI reporting system undercounts disability hate crimes“. )

So back to President Bush and his conundrum. Dr. Nemecek sums it up nicely, at her blog, when she says, ”

He doesn’t need to ask “What would Jesus do?” because he has a more certain answer in asking “What DID Jesus do?” That answer is simple. Jesus befriended and sought to protect the oppressed of his day from the attacks of the religious right

In Jesus day, the Pharisees were a sect in the Jewish faith who would have been part of the religeous “right”. They were those who, in His words were:

• (vipers) “You offspring of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” (Matthew 3:7)
• (hypocrites) “But woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You keep locking people out of the kingdom of heaven! For you neither enter nor permit those trying to enter to go in. (Matthew 23:13)
• (unjust) “But woe to you Pharisees! You give a tenth of your mint, rue, and every herb, yet you neglect justice and love for God! But you should have done these things without neglecting the others. (Luke 11:42)

Jesus didn’t say that what the Pharisees taught was wrong…it’s how they lived and lived among the people that was wrong. It was their oppression of the people and unjust actions. That’s the conundrum President Bush has. To not sign the bill means he’s choosing to not protect the oppressed and siding with a vocal religious right. It doesn’t take a leap of faith to see that’s what Jesus did, protect and advocate for the oppressed, it just takes doing the stuff Jesus did.

(Bible references are from the Net Bible)

When our children were growing we often wondered if their faith in Christ, something we had always nourished in them with the same care as we took care of their bodies, would flourish in public schools. Most of our friends opted for private Christian schools as nurturing grounds for their children’s education. We could never afford such a luxury, feeling instead that a faith that grew in the real world, no matter how questioned, would be stronger than one without tests. Afteral, Jesus had taught us that we were in the world but not of the world (John 17:14-15). That said to us that we had to stay in the world, not hide from it. We can’t say for sure that such an approach is always the best though. Afterall, poor public schools do exist and a private education, Christian or otherwise, might be the best option. But we now have a little data to backup what we had always felt in our gut.

The Denver Post reported, in the September 24th edition, the results of a study performed by the University of Texas that,

higher education is not the secularizing influence many Christians suspect it to be…Texas researchers found that college students were less likely to lose their religion than others in their age group, 18 to 25 years old.

Interestingly, 24% of those who never attended college said that religion had become less important to them compared with only 15% of those who did attend college. Could college make you smarter and more religious? We certainly didn’t think so as we saw our little birds flutter from our nest. But we felt that we and our public school, had taught them to think for themselves. It turns out that thinking about your faith is what this is all about. And at U.S. Universities, where the percentage of atheists and agnostics teaching are three times as high as the general population, a UCLA study found that,

79 percent of college students surveyed believed in God, 69 percent prayed and 81 percent attended some religious services.

Teaching of all kinds makes kids think about who they are, who they are becoming and what they believe. That sounds healthy not damaging. This quote, by Church of Christ Minister Mark Wylie, from the Denver Post article, might be the best lesson here,

“You have to let college students explore,” Wylie said. “They are incredibly spiritually active and vibrant.”

But, he concluded, they don’t like a hard sell from any side of the debate; I think alot of us fall into that category these days.

Speaking of thinking, another writer, named Caryn Lemur, has penned some outstanding articles to help Christians and non-Christians alike, think about what it means to be transgender in the midst of their faith. It can be a damning paralysis to be Christian and be transgender (perhaps this is so for all faiths) but Caryn’s essays will help you to think critically about this topic. That is if you need to think about it at all.

To read the Denver Post article; “Study: College campuses may nurture faith”, click to the Denver Post HERE.
To read Caryn’s “Essays For The Thinking Christian”, please visit her site at this link HERE.