Last night my partner Jason and I attended a service of the Holy Eucharist at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on the Hill in St. Paul. The Mass was to pray for the upcoming election of the new Bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota to be held this weekend. The Eucharistic Liturgy was organized by Integrity USA, the Episcopal Church's organization that seeks the full inclusion for LGBT people into the life and ministry of the Church.
The Mass was magnificent with music, incense, choral singing, preaching and a full welcoming of everyone to the Eucharistic table. Rev. David Norgard the President of Integrity USA was the preacher for the Mass. Rev. David Norgard was the first openly gay Priest to be ordained back in the early 1980's. Rev. Norgard gave an outstanding sermon which you can find on Integrity's blog site.
I would like to highlight and share some of the statements made from the sermon.
"I was the first openly gay person to be ordained in the Diocese of Minnesota. I “entered the process” (as people say) shortly after the General Convention of 1979. (You can do the math in your heads, if you like, but I’m not going to do it for you.) It was the convention that declared – in typical Episcopalian fashion – that it was “inappropriate to ordain practicing homosexuals at that time.” The good people advising me and supporting me then were determined not to let that non-binding resolution transmute into a concrete barrier. So the question put to me was: Should I tell the truth about being gay? Or, in the interest of being expeditious, should I rather wait and let the truth about who I was come out, as it were, later? At the time, it was not courage but simple naïveté that prompted my question in response to the question: How could I build a solid Christian ministry upon the foundation of a deception? I just could not get past the simple reasoning repeating in a loop in my mind to any of the much more sophisticated theologizing others were proposing. As I understood it, Christian ministry meant adhering to a twin ethic of love and justice. Justice is always built on the truth. Therefore, Christian ministry also must be built on the truth. It would occur to me much later, by the way, that justice and truth together equate to integrity."
"Coming out does not make life easier…but it does unequivocally make life better. Telling the truth and seeking justice, while painfully difficult at times, are inherently better options for living than their alternatives because they are the constellation that leads us on the path toward integrity. And as the psalmist says, “No good thing will God withhold from those who walk with integrity.”
"So we learn to live in an in-between time. Joy abounds but it is not yet complete. Times, they are a-changing, but they still lead us through valleys of shadow and –as Matthew’s mother knows all too well – even death. We know that while our own diocese has nominated for election to the episcopate someone who is out there are other dioceses, some near here, whose bishops will not permit the good news from Anaheim even to be announced, much less celebrated or acted upon. Prejudice, the antithesis of integrity, really is a malignancy of the soul. It is no mere intellectual error. So, it will not be excised by a single brave act or legislative victory, however definitive. It will only die out gradually through a constant application of truth and justice."
"Paul, the patron both of this church and of this city, understood that. That is why he said what he did in writing to the Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” And that is why he also said: “Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.”
"Over twenty-five years ago now, a quarter of a century, a naïve young gay man sat in the office of the Bishop of Minnesota and decided that it was just not the way to go to deceive people about who he was in order to minister in the name of One known as the Way and the Truth and the Life. The truth was that he had fallen in love with a person of the same gender and everything about it felt right and good. And by the way, after thirty years, he is still with that same good man today.
But as he quickly learned and not just once but time and time again, as gay and lesbian people, our ministry has never been about proclaiming ourselves. Rather, it is a matter of being unwilling to hide the truth, particularly the truth about the way God has made everyone, including us – we who are at once very much the same and a little different from our straight brothers and sisters. And that must continue always to be the essence of our message, the truth we must both tell and seek, proclaim and honor…that a loving God, out of love (and with some good humor and good taste) created all things…and behold, without exception, they are very good. Amen. "
The Gospel for this Liturgy was John 15:1-11. My very favorite verse in this entire Gospel Reading is verse 5. "I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." I am picking up here because I truly believe that we cannot achieve the goal of justice for equality for LGBT people in political and/or religious circles without looking to God to lead us in the way of truth. The resistance to homosexuality is religious based, therefore it must be dealt with on religious terms as well as political.
Those who have been violated by clergy, laity and others in churches and I share your grief because I am one of them. It is wise and good to look for and find our place within religious communities that welcome LGBT people. Our sexual orientation is God's gift to us and we should make use of it to do good things. In those places where we can enter into constructive and helpful dialogue, we indeed should. In places where we can help people understand what being gay means, we should tell our stories. Where people are hurting, we need to hurt with them. Where we and others can experience healing, we need to place ourselves there.
May all who are able to come to the fountain of life, come and find in Jesus the well-spring of eternal life. And do not let anyone tell you that you have no place or right to be there. God has given us the call and it is God who will do God's work in our lives, if we will only accept the invitation.
"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 full 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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