The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ 17His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ 18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ 19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
If Jesus were here today, do you think he would tell evangelists like James Dobson and Pat Robertson to stop making his house into a market place against homosexuals? Did you know that anti-gay religious right organizations are a million dollar industry? Prejudice and discrimination, hate and encouraging division in the Church is a multi-million dollar market place. Yet, organizations such as the National Organization for Marriage and Focus on your own Family, promote the anti-gay agenda as doing the "Gospel" thing, at huge profits.
In all kinds of churches throughout this country, many of them have book stores and gift shops to help raise money to keep church doors open. There are those who would suggest that these kinds of things are similar to the money changers outside the Temple that Jesus threw out in the Gospel reading for today. I would suggest that selling books and other items to help us identify and better understand our faith is not quite the same kind of thing.
The idea that church-based organizations can be created for the purpose of promoting discrimination against homosexuals or any group of people so as to make a profit and look good to others is most definitely something that Gospel preaching Christians might want to look at. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people come to the house of God to offer their loving relationships, their struggles to come out and live honestly and openly as women and men of Faith. When religious-based organizations run campaigns against LGBT people, same-sex marriage and transgendered people and asking Christians to donate money to use against any group of people, it is far from a charitable cause.
Yet, even as LGBT Christians, we too need to be careful where we put our hearts and what we bring to the house of God. We need to bring to God our brokenness that is often the result of civil and religious oppression so that the Holy Spirit can heal us with her gentle graces. The holiness of God is as much like a Father's loving embrace and a Mother's gentle touch and caress of God's children. We need to bring to God our quest to make the world a better place for LGBT people and their families. However, we must be careful about bringing in with us the attitude that refuses to forgive those who hate us. The Gospel calls us to love those, yes even those who do not love us. God knows that forgiving others who hurt us is difficult. Do we think that Jesus crying out "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) was easy for him to do? Ok, Jesus was God so therefore God could forgive all of us. Yet the God who forgave us, also has the power help us forgive others. We have to ask God for that grace that we may want to forgive. It may take us a while to ask for that grace, but it is a grace we all must ask for from time to time.
Today as we continue our journey through Epiphany we are called to examine what we bring with us to the house of God, as we pray for those who bring hate toward us as LGBT people to the house of God. Our relationships, our struggles, our happiness and our hurts must come to the house of God, so that God can help us at the point of our need. However, we must be careful that we also bring a heart willing to experience conversion and a new openness to the power or God working in our lives. This Season of Epiphany is about being open to new things taking place in our midst. A new Star led the three kings to the newborn King, the Baptism of Jesus was a new beginning in Salvation history, and the water changed into wine tells us that an old way of thinking about God's abundant goodness has past and a new manifestation of God through Christ has begun. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people must always be open to God's power working to doing new and wonderful things through us to help bring about justice and equality in a world that is still stuck in prejudice and discrimination for LGBT people.
How will we allow God to do new things in us in God's manifestation through Christ today?
Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. (Collect for the Second Sunday after Epiphany: the Baptism of the Lord, Book of Common Prayer, Page 214).
O merciful Father, who taught us in your holy Word that you would not willingly afflict us, look with pity upon the sorrows of the people of Haiti, the LGBT Community here and in Uganda and Rwanda for whom our prayers are offered. Remember them, O Lord, in mercy, nourish their souls with patience, comfort them with a sense of your goodness, lift up your countenance upon them, and give them peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for people in trouble or bereavement, Book of Common Prayer, Page 831).
Look with pity, O heavenly Father, upon the people in this land who live with injustice, terror, disease, and death as their constant companions. Have mercy upon us. Help us to eliminate our cruelty to these our neighbors. Strengthen those who spend their lives establishing equal protection of the law and equal opportunities for all. And grant that every one of us may enjoy a fair portion of the riches of this land; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for the Oppressed, Book of Common Prayer, Page 826).
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