A Message from
Rev. Nancy L. Wilson
Moderator of Metropolitan Community Churches
 
Released: 13 March 2008
Re-Published: 21 April 2008
 
Dear MCC Friend:
 
MCC is on the ground floor of a new U.S. movement that is now called the North American Convocation -- a wonderful coalition of more than 25 LGBT welcoming congregations and organizations, including MCC, The Welcoming Church movement, the Fellowship, Unity Fellowship, Dignity and many others.
 
The North American Convocation will hold our first conference in New Orleans during September 4-7, 2008.
 
This will be a first-of-its-kind North American Convocation of pro-LGBT Christians that will cross racial, theological and cultural lines. The conference's purpose will be:
 
1) To train a next generation of spiritual activists to take on the challenges of building the Beloved Community;
 
2) To make our voice heard, together, two months before one of the most important U.S. national elections in history;
 
3) To come together with an action plan, in a city that has suffered so much from racism and neglect, a city that is a sacred place for MCC and the LGBT community.
 
Everyone is welcome and invited to participate in this convocation. I will be there, along with many other MCC leaders from all over the U.S. If you care about the social justice agenda, and love working in an ecumenical and multi-cultural context, this will be an event you will not want to miss!
 
I hope you'll plan to join me in New Orleans during September 4-7, 2008 for the historic North American Convocation. To learn more, visit http://www.manystoriesonevoice.org/.
 
Today, I also encourage you to take a few minutes to read the sermon below. It was delivered earlier this year at All God's Children MCC (Minneapolis, Minnesota) by Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, one of the organizers of this Convocation.
 
In the sermon below, Rebecca poignantly shares from Rev. Troy Perry's account of the 1973 New Orleans fire that claimed the lives of so many LGBT people, including many MCC members.
 
Her sermon reminds us why New Orleans is sacred ground for our September gathering -- and how far we still need to go to achieve justice and inclusion .
 
Grace and peace,
 
Rev. Nancy L. Wilson
Moderator
Metropolitan Community Churches
www.MCCchurch.org
 
P.S.  MCC staff member Angel Collie and I are recruiting 20 MCC youth and young adults (17 to 28 years) to attend this conference at a reduced registration and with some limited scholarships. If you are interested in this unique, powerful opportunity to learn, worship, and strategize with others from 25 LGBT-positive Christian organizations, contact me at RevNancyWilson@MCCchurch.net.

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"Called to Follow"

TEXT: Matthew 4:12-23

Originally delivered by Rev. Rebecca Voelkel
on January 27, 2008,
at All God's Children MCC, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
_______________________________________________

SERMON:
 
I didn't know any of their names, nor their ages, nor the families they came from.
 
I didn't know what their races were.
 
I didn't know anything about them.
 
All I knew was that many of them were members of an MCC Church and it was 1973.
 
Probably they were queer, but I don't know that for sure.
 
But my mind's eye has drawn a whole picture…
 
One young man was quite short and muscular. He wore those short sleeve cotton button-down shirts with the plaid designs with beige docker pants and those brown work boots. He had come to New Orleans from Biloxi in order to be able to be away from his family and pass. He had been raised in a Roman Catholic home and his grandma had given him his rosary when he made his first communion. He carried it in his pocket and often absentmindedly fingered its beads when he was thinking or praying.
 
One older lesbian was a social worker for several of the State's parishes. Her job was to work with single parents, to help them apply for food stamps, WIC monies and other federal support. She was the first woman in her family to go to college back in 1935, back before the war.
 
And then there's the man who brought the flowers to church every week. He had a small garden behind his home in the Ninth Ward. His partner lived on the block behind him and they were careful to not spend too much time together outside. He had used the seeds he gathered every fall to plant a garden in his partner's yard, too. So he spent a lot of time tending and nurturing the two plots.
 
They were all ordinary, regular folks doing ordinary, regular things.
 
Our Scripture reading for this morning shows us some other folk. But in this biblical story, we get a few more details. There are two sets of brothers: Simon and Andrew, and James and John.
 
We know that James and John are the sons of Zebedee and that they were probably like many other men in their town. They worked in the business their father had inherited from his father. Because the area had a sizable population, drawn to the maritime climate, as well as a military presence and a good number of folks traveling through, business was good -- demand was always high for fish. It didn't make them wealthy, but it supported both of their families.
 
In my mind's eye, I see James, John, Andrew and Simon living in predictable patterns of life. There is routine every day -- when they get up, when they eat, what they wear.  And there is seasonal routine -- when the fish spawn, when the weather is the coldest, when the weather is the hottest.
 
Our text makes them sound quite ordinary, like regular folks.
 
But our story is anything but ordinary or regular. In the midst of the daily and seasonal routine -- repairing nets for some, casting them for others -- the extraordinary happens.  Jesus comes to them, to their location, uses language that speaks to their condition, and issues an invitation,
 
"Follow me, and I will make you fish for people."
 
Now, this is amazing enough. But what I find even more amazing is that all four of them answer immediately. With seemingly no qualms, all four drop what they are doing and go.
 
I have often wondered what this encounter was like. How was it that they were able to make their decisions so quickly and then act immediately? What was it about that encounter that allowed them to do that?
 
Did the brothers, encountering Jesus, have their hearts "strangely warmed?" Did they have an intuitive sense that this was what they needed to do?  Had they sensed a kind of un-ease for years and then, encountering Jesus, just knew that this was what they had been waiting for?
 
I don't know how, but they were able to say yes to following Jesus.
 
There are two things to be said about this.
 
The first is that several of the commentaries I read in preparation for this morning talked about the grace that God shows us by not revealing right away all of what our saying "yes" might mean. Andrew, Peter, James and John knew that they were leaving what they had known, their families and their businesses. But they had no idea what heights of joy nor depths of pain awaited them. They knew they could say yes to one small step and that they would be led to more yes-saying as their strength and faith grew.
 
For now, they said yes simply to following Jesus. 
 
I find this a very helpful realization. Jesus' call to discipleship doesn't start with a demand that they leave their families in the knowledge that crucifixion and martyrdom await them. Instead, they are able to say yes to participating in the healing of people, which is the first thing they do when the follow Jesus.
 
The second thing to note, however, from our text today has to do with what will eventually be revealed to the brothers and to all of us as the core of Jesus' call.
 
Our Scripture opens with Jesus getting word of the arrest of John the Baptist. His mentor and friend is now in the hands of the authorities and, Jesus knows, John will soon be executed. Upon hearing this news, our text says that Jesus withdraws" to Galilee. On hearing the news, Jesus does not move toward Jerusalem, the center of religious and political power, he withdraws to the far reaches of the country.
 
Jesus, too, has received a call that comes in phases.  Eventually, his mission will be to enter Jerusalem to challenge the powers that be. But not now.  For now, he moves away from danger to what is relative safety.
 
But relative safety does not mean he isn't preaching a radical message. Instead, upon arriving in Galilee he begins his ministry there with the message, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
 
Unlike John's message of repentance, which is more about personal piety and one's personal life, Jesus message of repentance is tied to the message of the kingdom of God. Jesus ties his message to that of the Hebrew prophets of old by linking repentance to the kingdom.
 
In the prophetic tradition, the kingdom of God was clearly a message of justice, of equal distribution of wealth, of radical hospitality to ALL of God's children.  
 
Jesus' message of repentance is about turning one's life and actions around so that who you are and what you do is about making this world a more just and humane place. In other words, it's about making the world more like God's kin-dom.
 
But there's one more point to be made. Jesus' ministry of calling for turning toward the justice, equality and right relationship of the Kin-dom of God stands in stark contrast to many other movements of his day. Most of those, in Jesus' day, who hearkened to the prophets of old were calling for violent overthrow of the Roman oppressors. Jesus' call is clearly a different kind of revolution.
 
In our time, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was able to articulate this wisdom of Jesus' call in this way:
 
"The ultimate weakness of violence
     is that it is a descending spiral,
          begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
     Through violence you may murder the liar,
          but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish truth.
Through violence you murder the hater,
     but you do not murder hate.
          In fact, violence merely increases hate...
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
     adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
          Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
 
As Peter and Andrew, James and John and all the other women and men who follow Jesus begin to understand this, they begin to recognize the power of what they have said yes to. They have become part of a movement that transforms the world with radical acts of non-violent love.
 
Each of them remains an ordinary person -- but they are no longer doing regular, ordinary things. 
 
In June of 1973, the MCC church in New Orleans had just moved its worship space from a small bar called The UpStairs Lounge to the front of their pastor's home. But the UpStairs remained a sacred space for community building, singing and enjoying life.
 
On Pride Sunday of 1973, about a third of the congregation was with friends and chosen family marking the day together in their former worship space, The UpStairs. 
 
For many of them, Pride Sunday was a palpable symbol of all the spiritual work they had done to be authentic and honest about who God had called them to be. They had heard Jesus' voice and had sought to align their lives with his message of justice and equality.
 
This party was part time in the bar and part celebration of truth-telling. And because the congregation had just recently moved its worship space elsewhere, the room still held the feel of the sacred.
 
In my mind's eye, I see the young man, dressed in quintessential dockers, hand in pocket fingering his rosary beads as he talks with another young man from Mississippi, who is new to town.
 
I see the lesbian woman and the gay man sitting at a table with other MCCers laughing about the day and all the things they'd been through in years past before they came out.
 
They were ordinary, regular folks enjoying the fruits of their hard spiritual work…
 
But they lived in a time and place -- not unlike our own -- when the forces of violence and hatred were strong. And as they celebrated who God had called them to be, someone poured accelerant on the wooden steps leading to The Upstairs, lit a match and rang the bell. In less than 20 minutes they were all gone.
 
Oh, joy -- hold inside our hearts
And cradle our despair
That we might see reality
For yesterday we were in a dream
But today we are aware
 
REFRAIN
Oh, brothers and sisters of New Orleans
Hold on to what you know
The Lord will never leave our side
Our love will make it so
These deaths must tell us of the journey
We have yet to go.
 
Yes, we will share in sorrow
For the missing friends above
But we will weep the more for those
Who cannot see God's love.
 
REFRAIN
 
Oh, we must fight but not with fists
For what we know is right
Shout out the words that must be said
And keep them in our sight
With truth and love until the time
No one need fear the night.
 
REFRAIN
 
Oh, brothers and sisters here with me
Hold on to what we know
The Lord will never leave our side
Our love will make it so
These deaths must tell us of the journey
We have yet to go
Oh, brothers and sisters here with me
Hold on to what we know.
 
A young woman who had just come out and was a member of the MCC in Boston sang these words to herself and to her congregation in the weeks following the New Orleans fire.
 
In the face of the murder of her brothers and sisters, she knew that her coming out, her saying yes to Jesus' call, her desire to follow and make others fishers of people meant that the power of non-violent, radical love had to be what she clung to. She didn't know when she originally said yes -- to her own authenticity, to her faith in God -- she didn't know when she originally said yes that she would be faced with such a difficult hour. 
 
But God's grace was with her at every step and when she was faced with responding in hatred or responding with love, she knew love had to be her answer.
 
My friends, we live in a world that constantly tempts us to live in the closet, to act out of hatred, to respond with violence upon violence. 
 
But each of us individually has known the power of God calling to us -- to claim our true selves -- as queer, questioning, LGBT, allied, intersexed, beloved children of God. 
 
And we, together, have known the power of God calling to us to be fishers of people, not soldiers in an army of violence, but healers in a movement of justice.
 
There may be pain ahead.
 
The forces of hatred may strike.
 
But, ultimately, Love's power will indeed prevail.
 
May we have the courage and chutzpah and the creativity to say yes.
 
Amen.
 

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