Sunshine Cathedral Sermons

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The Good News Written

Psalm 27.1-6, 14 (NLT)

¹The Lord is my light and my salvation —
so why should I be afraid?
The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger,
so why should I tremble?
²When evil people come to devour me,
when my enemies and foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.
³Though a mighty army surrounds me,
my heart will not be afraid.
Even if I am attacked,
I will remain confident.

⁴The one thing I ask of the [God] —
the thing I seek most —
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
delighting in the [God’s] perfections
and meditating in [God’s] Temple.
⁵For [God] will conceal me there when troubles come;
and will hide me in the sanctuary.
[God] will place me out of reach on a high rock.
⁶Then I will hold my head high
above my enemies who surround me… I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy,
singing and praising the Lord with music.

¹⁴Wait patiently for the Lord.
Be brave and courageous.
Yes, wait patiently for [our God].

Luke 13.30-32, 34-35 (Lamsa)

³⁰[Jesus said] “Behold, there are some who are last who will be first, and there are some who are first who will be last.” ³¹In that very day some of the Pharisees drew near and said to him, “Get out and go away from here; for Herod wants to kill you.” ³²Jesus said to them, “Go and tell that fox that I cast out demons and I heal today and tomorrow , and on the third day I will be finished… ³⁴O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, murderess of prophets and stoner of those who are sent to her! How many times I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you were not willing! ³⁵Behold, your house is left to you desolate; and I say to you that you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is [the one] who comes in the name of [our God].’”

The Good News Proclaimed

Preached by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, February 28, 2010.

Last will be first. First will be last.
A message of hope. A message of liberation. A message of empowerment. A message of inclusion.

Causes a stir, doesn’t it? We want what we want, but not for “them”.

Did you know —
Sunshine Cathedral is home to a social services agency that provides counseling and elder care and youth groups. We don’t make money on those services. Most of those services are offered at no charge, and other than a grant that provides for the cleaning of the elder care center, we receive no money from the social services ministry. Those services are subsidized by the tithes and offerings of those who worship at the Sunshine Cathedral.

Some of you will remember the mass wedding we did on the lawn about a year and a half ago in protest of Amendment 2 and in celebration of same-gender love.

We provide worship in two assisted living facilities, in the virtual world of Second Life, for those who are incarcerated, for our friends in Jamaica, and three times every Sunday in this room. We also share much of our morning worship service with the world on the internet.

At some personal risk, we stand up to brutal, even lethal homophobia in Jamaica.

This church is a consistently generous contributor to local food banks.

We raised money quickly for disaster relief in Haiti.

We provide a home for not only our worshiping community but for two smaller worshiping communities, and for other community organizations such as the Gay Men’s chorus.

We speak up and speak out for marriage equality, for our gender variant, gender queer, and transgender sisters and brothers.

With the offerings of time, talent, and treasure, we are very intentional about creating a place of welcome, celebration, and affirmation so that people will have community, hope, self-esteem, and the skills to improve their own lives. Every time we do a holy union, a wedding, a concert, a memorial, a class, a media interview, or go out to speak at a community function or a local university, we are offering hope and healing; we are sharing the light with the world.

We provide a place of unconditional welcome for everyone from bear boys to leather daddies to log cabin republicans to lip stick lesbians to chap stick lesbians to retirees to left of center social activists to heterosexuals who just like who we are, what we stand for, and what we do.

We provide a spiritual environment where Protestants and Catholics and Pentecostals and positive thinkers and new agers and agnostics and humanists and questioning seekers can all come together and celebrate diversity in the bond of common respect and affection. Even though we are a Protestant church, we may not look Protestant enough for some, we may not look Catholic enough or Pentecostal enough or secular enough for others… but we aren’t trying to recreate the places that we left… we are trying to create a place where we get to be affirmed and challenged and embraced and loved and motivated… no matter where come from or where we happen to be in this moment. We aren’t locking ourselves into a moment; we are nourishing ourselves for forward movement.

We provide written materials, online programming, and onsite classes to help people grow in spiritual maturity.

We provide a place of welcome and celebration for lovers of the arts and we use the arts from opera to jazz to cross-gender impersonation to Broadway show-tunes to film to comedy to sacred organ music to reach out to as many people as possible to say, “whoever you are, there is a place for you.”

We have people who are celibate, who are monogamous, and who are openly and unapologetically non-monogamous… and we say the same thing about and to each and all of them… YOU ARE PERSONS OF SACRED VALUE, MADE IN THE DIVINE IMAGE, FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT OF LIFE AND YOUR LIVES ARE HOLY.

Ours is message of hope, of liberation, of empowerment, of inclusion. Know how much you are doing simply by supporting this place… your presence, your prayers, your financial contributions, your volunteer efforts make all of that and more possible. When people ask why we don’t do more, I wonder if they know what all we are doing? And we can do more… all it takes is more time, more money, more passion… and we are each free to give any of those wonderful gifts at any time.

Of course there is more to do… and we will. We will grow into all that we are meant to be and all that we are called to do.
We’re in this for the long haul. As we grow spiritually, we’ll grow in other areas of our lives and things will just keep getting better and better.

The people who are used to being first, may have to give up some privilege from time to time… to follow Jesus’ message of loving liberation. I am a highly educated, professional, white man. I have a lot of privilege… What will I do with that privilege for the sake of including and empowering and uplifting others? Do I hoard my privilege, or do I share it, knowing that will diminish the advantage I have been unfairly given so that others can have the chances I’ve been given? Do I dare? And if I won’t, do I dare suggest that I am in any sense a follower of Jesus?

The people who are used to being last, get to hope for and ask for and work for the chance of being first sometimes… to follow Jesus’ message of living liberation. Renouncing some privilege for the sake of others; and speaking up for ourselves when we have been treated unjustly… these are both traits of committed followers of Christ.

Now Herod, the establishment, may not like that we threaten the status quo. Of course Herod wouldn’t like that.
Herod is where he is because things are the way they are. If systems have privileged him and those like him, why would he be interested in changing any of that?

The idea of sharing power “with” doesn’t appeal to the one who is accustomed to having power “over.” But the Jesus way is the justice way, and the status quo that privileges some while ignoring or demonizing others is just not good enough. The last will be first and the first will be last… at least sometimes. We must remember that followers of Jesus are meant to be facilitators of fairness.

Listen to these words by a follower of Jesus, a modern day prophet of justice and martyr for the cause of Christ… the cause of liberty and justice for ALL, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
“A right delayed is a right denied.”
“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
“Those who accept evil without protesting against it are really cooperating with it.”

Why do we care about homophobia in Nigeria, Uganda, or Jamaica as well as in the US?
Why do we care about peace?
Why do we care about the right, not the privilege, but the right of every person to receive the best health care possible?
Why do we care about challenging and changing language that privileges maleness or whiteness in our worship services, and hopefully, in every area of our lives?
Why do we want to care about all who have been disadvantaged, left out, overlooked, demonized, or wounded?
Why do we care about promoting the Golden Rule instead of any institutionalized dogma?

Are we heterodox? Unorthodox? God I hope so… orthodoxy is a religious word for the status quo, and that is something Jesus worked hard to change, and challenging the status quo was something he was even willing to die for. Are we at least willing to live for it?

Jerusalem had long been decimated by the time Luke is writing his gospel. But in its day, Jerusalem was the religious epicenter for Jesus’ spiritual tradition. With that in mind, Luke puts these words in Jesus’ mouth, “O Jerusalem, you killed the prophets (those who challenged the status quo, those who spoke truth to power, who demand justice for those who had been left out)… How many times I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you were not willing.” That mother hen image, reminding us of Lady Sophia, divine Wisdom from the book of Proverbs, or of El Shaddai… the almighty breasted one, the mothering image of God we find in the bible… Jesus, using inclusive imagery and language long before MCC adopted inclusive language as its official policy in 1981, says, “Religious people… who haven’t always received those sent to you who tried to help you live into your promise and potential — How often I have longed to gather you all together like a mother gathers her babies… I lovingly wanted to help you be more than you knew you could be. But you just weren’t willing.”

Are we willing? Are we willing to follow Jesus’ hope that we might be more than we’ve ever been? Are we willing to say, “I’ll work not only for my freedom, but also for yours, even if it costs me something”? This Lent, I’m not asking you to give up soda and ice cream… in fact, I feel a trip to Krispy Kremes coming on right now. I’m not asking you to give up swearing… most of my favorite words only have four letters. No, I’m calling us to do something much more significant… to follow Jesus in the ways of love and liberation. Are we willing to be Jesus’ little chicks, growing into proud hens and roosters of justice and liberation in our world? Are we willing to be the light of the world? If we are, then our very existence IS the good news. Amen.

The Good News Affirmed

My hands are God’s hands.

I am God’s light in the world.

I am blessed to be a blessing.

I am part of a church that makes a difference.

And I make a difference.

Amen.