The Rule of St. Benedict is said to be a rule for beginner's. It is a rule for those of us who so often go off our course and need to know where to start over. It sounds a lot like life. It can sound an awful lot like the struggle for civil and human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. We achieve successes and after a time we can so easily loose the rights we have gained. For example the State of Virginia who's new Republican Governor McConnell signed en executive order causing State Employees who are LGBT to lose their employment protections. Today as we begin the season of Lent, we might want to spend Ash Wednesday in prayer for the State of New Hampshire. The House is going to vote on New Hampshire's newly established marriage equality laws.
Activities such as these reminds us of an interview that Cleve Jones had with Anderson Cooper on CNN just before the National Equality March last October 11th. In that interview activist Cleve Jones mentioned how hard the LGBT community works to gain equal rights protections, but so quickly are those rights rescinded by those who organize against LGBT rights. The old saying is quite applicable here, one step forward and two steps backwards.
Lent is a time for prayer, alms-giving and fasting. It is a time to refocus our lives on the promise of God's salvation through Jesus Christ. It is also a season during which we take a look inside our own hearts and lives and challenge ourselves to grow closer to God. There is the age old idea of giving up things during Lent. People try to quite smoking, eat a little less, give up favorite foods or habits. Those things are not bad, but they really do not capture the entire meaning of Lent. I like to think of Lent as a time for adjusting our attitudes. Giving up things while often quite difficult does not begin to address the problems we have. Changing our attitudes, now that takes the work and it is all too easy to over look.
How might lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people observe this Lent in a way that is transforming of not only ourselves, but also others? How might this Lent be a new beginning for LGBT people as we work to address the old prejudices of conservative Christians and politicians? How can we as LGBT Christians spend this Lent so that we can affect society and the Church so that changing the atmosphere of prejudice and discrimination over sexual orientation and gender identity/expression becomes a priority that cannot be avoided?
What I am about to offer is my own suggestions. My readers are free to use or not use them as they see fit. But I do believe that the readings for Ash Wednesday offers us an opportunity that we should not overlook.
First, we are told by our Gospel of Matthew 6:1-6, and 16-21 to exercise our prayer and acts of piety in a way that glorifies God and not ourselves. Among the many things we can use Lent to do is to spend some quiet, personal time with God. We need to focus ourselves on God and ask God to renew with in us how we see ourselves and how we think God views us. Among the attitudes that needs to be altered is to understand that God loves us unconditionally and all-inclusively. It is all too easy to take events such as what happened in Virginia, New Mexico, what is going on in Uganda and other places and assume that because conservatives in both religious and political circles must mean that God also sees us as corrupt and just poorly formed or informed. We must spend some time asking God to renew within us a new understanding and attitude towards ourselves. We will be challenged to love ourselves in places where we have formerly been told to hate. We will be moved to see how much God really values everything about us to the point that all that self-hating stuff, just has to go. We cannot receive this Spiritual energy if we do not place ourselves in the Presence of God so as to spend some time with that renewable energy resource.
In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians we are told that now is the time and day of salvation. (See 2 Corinthians 5:20b to 6:10). Today is the day to encounter God in new and exciting ways. The opportunity to deepen our relationship to God through our relationships to other people is given to us in the here and now. The hour to recommit ourselves to the work of equality and justice for ourselves and other minorities is here. LGBT people are still understood as second class citizens. If you are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgendered, as I am a gay person who believes in Jesus Christ and God's message of salvation through Christ, we are looked upon by religious conservatives as people who have taken the Bible out of it's context. We have misapplied the message of Jesus Christ and his Gospel. Today is the day to be a messenger of a new and all inclusive Gospel that says all are welcomed and loved by God. Today is a day to remind people that Jesus Christ came to call those who are arrogant and proud of being saved by Jesus Christ to a conversion of heart that calls for humility. Today is a day to remember that we are all sinners and we all have those things about us that separate ourselves from God and one another. LGBT Christians are those who have been Baptized into Christ Jesus and his death and resurrection. LGBT believers and followers of Jesus Christ are Christians who live and die by the Cross on a daily basis, and rise again through the promise of Easter Sunday. We accomplish this message by cooperating with God's message of salvation. We perform the ministry of evangelism by remembering all who are marginalized and stigmatized by society and the Church. When we speak up when society and the Church are committing outrageous injustice we are standing with Christ who stood by and with those who are considered different and challenged his contemporary listeners to a new understanding of everyone around them.
As I promised through my blog this past Monday, LGBT people can experience and grow during this season of Lent if we will remember to spend some much needed time meditating and standing by the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Cross is where all prejudice and hate found it's match, by being made as real as was humanly possible. On the Cross a horrific hate crime was committed. Love was crucified in the name of religious and political agenda's. The One who was crucified there was Jesus Christ, God made human. God experienced discrimination for having loved everyone, regardless of what the rules of the religious establishment of his time. At the Cross, Jesus experienced total isolation and denigration because he loved God and every human person totally, completely and without exception. His unique way of loving others earned him condemnation and shame by the community that should have embraced him.
LGBT people can bring our pain of having been ostracized by our families, friends, work places and churches to the Cross. We can cry out in the most bitter pain and God is right there with us. God connects with our pain and God walks through it with us. God embraces us through the outstretched arms of Christ nailed to the Cross. We do not have to feel our shame alone. We do not have to accept the false guilt that the religious right imposes up on us. NO, we can and we must accept that Christ died on that Cross for LGBT people, because God loves us unconditionally as God loves all people. The Cross is the Book that assures us of God's unconditional and all-inclusive love. On the Cross our shame and guilt was murdered when Christ was killed. On Easter Sunday, LGBT people with Jesus Christ rose again with new life and a renewed sense of purpose. Because in the Resurrection new life begins and so did we start a new.
As we begin this Lent let us all spend time asking God where do we begin again. Each of us will have a different starting point. In Jesus Christ we are all one body, yet diverse and unique. In Christ we will be made whole and holy, and we will succeed.
Activities such as these reminds us of an interview that Cleve Jones had with Anderson Cooper on CNN just before the National Equality March last October 11th. In that interview activist Cleve Jones mentioned how hard the LGBT community works to gain equal rights protections, but so quickly are those rights rescinded by those who organize against LGBT rights. The old saying is quite applicable here, one step forward and two steps backwards.
Lent is a time for prayer, alms-giving and fasting. It is a time to refocus our lives on the promise of God's salvation through Jesus Christ. It is also a season during which we take a look inside our own hearts and lives and challenge ourselves to grow closer to God. There is the age old idea of giving up things during Lent. People try to quite smoking, eat a little less, give up favorite foods or habits. Those things are not bad, but they really do not capture the entire meaning of Lent. I like to think of Lent as a time for adjusting our attitudes. Giving up things while often quite difficult does not begin to address the problems we have. Changing our attitudes, now that takes the work and it is all too easy to over look.
How might lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people observe this Lent in a way that is transforming of not only ourselves, but also others? How might this Lent be a new beginning for LGBT people as we work to address the old prejudices of conservative Christians and politicians? How can we as LGBT Christians spend this Lent so that we can affect society and the Church so that changing the atmosphere of prejudice and discrimination over sexual orientation and gender identity/expression becomes a priority that cannot be avoided?
What I am about to offer is my own suggestions. My readers are free to use or not use them as they see fit. But I do believe that the readings for Ash Wednesday offers us an opportunity that we should not overlook.
First, we are told by our Gospel of Matthew 6:1-6, and 16-21 to exercise our prayer and acts of piety in a way that glorifies God and not ourselves. Among the many things we can use Lent to do is to spend some quiet, personal time with God. We need to focus ourselves on God and ask God to renew with in us how we see ourselves and how we think God views us. Among the attitudes that needs to be altered is to understand that God loves us unconditionally and all-inclusively. It is all too easy to take events such as what happened in Virginia, New Mexico, what is going on in Uganda and other places and assume that because conservatives in both religious and political circles must mean that God also sees us as corrupt and just poorly formed or informed. We must spend some time asking God to renew within us a new understanding and attitude towards ourselves. We will be challenged to love ourselves in places where we have formerly been told to hate. We will be moved to see how much God really values everything about us to the point that all that self-hating stuff, just has to go. We cannot receive this Spiritual energy if we do not place ourselves in the Presence of God so as to spend some time with that renewable energy resource.
In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians we are told that now is the time and day of salvation. (See 2 Corinthians 5:20b to 6:10). Today is the day to encounter God in new and exciting ways. The opportunity to deepen our relationship to God through our relationships to other people is given to us in the here and now. The hour to recommit ourselves to the work of equality and justice for ourselves and other minorities is here. LGBT people are still understood as second class citizens. If you are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgendered, as I am a gay person who believes in Jesus Christ and God's message of salvation through Christ, we are looked upon by religious conservatives as people who have taken the Bible out of it's context. We have misapplied the message of Jesus Christ and his Gospel. Today is the day to be a messenger of a new and all inclusive Gospel that says all are welcomed and loved by God. Today is a day to remind people that Jesus Christ came to call those who are arrogant and proud of being saved by Jesus Christ to a conversion of heart that calls for humility. Today is a day to remember that we are all sinners and we all have those things about us that separate ourselves from God and one another. LGBT Christians are those who have been Baptized into Christ Jesus and his death and resurrection. LGBT believers and followers of Jesus Christ are Christians who live and die by the Cross on a daily basis, and rise again through the promise of Easter Sunday. We accomplish this message by cooperating with God's message of salvation. We perform the ministry of evangelism by remembering all who are marginalized and stigmatized by society and the Church. When we speak up when society and the Church are committing outrageous injustice we are standing with Christ who stood by and with those who are considered different and challenged his contemporary listeners to a new understanding of everyone around them.
As I promised through my blog this past Monday, LGBT people can experience and grow during this season of Lent if we will remember to spend some much needed time meditating and standing by the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Cross is where all prejudice and hate found it's match, by being made as real as was humanly possible. On the Cross a horrific hate crime was committed. Love was crucified in the name of religious and political agenda's. The One who was crucified there was Jesus Christ, God made human. God experienced discrimination for having loved everyone, regardless of what the rules of the religious establishment of his time. At the Cross, Jesus experienced total isolation and denigration because he loved God and every human person totally, completely and without exception. His unique way of loving others earned him condemnation and shame by the community that should have embraced him.
LGBT people can bring our pain of having been ostracized by our families, friends, work places and churches to the Cross. We can cry out in the most bitter pain and God is right there with us. God connects with our pain and God walks through it with us. God embraces us through the outstretched arms of Christ nailed to the Cross. We do not have to feel our shame alone. We do not have to accept the false guilt that the religious right imposes up on us. NO, we can and we must accept that Christ died on that Cross for LGBT people, because God loves us unconditionally as God loves all people. The Cross is the Book that assures us of God's unconditional and all-inclusive love. On the Cross our shame and guilt was murdered when Christ was killed. On Easter Sunday, LGBT people with Jesus Christ rose again with new life and a renewed sense of purpose. Because in the Resurrection new life begins and so did we start a new.
As we begin this Lent let us all spend time asking God where do we begin again. Each of us will have a different starting point. In Jesus Christ we are all one body, yet diverse and unique. In Christ we will be made whole and holy, and we will succeed.
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for Ash Wednesday, BCP, Page 217).
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