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The Good News Written

Teachings of Sylvanus

From now on…return to your divine nature. Cast from you these evil deceiving friends! Accept Christ, this true friend, as a good teacher. Return to your first parents, to God and God’s Wisdom, from whom you came into being.

Galatians 3.25-28 (NRSV)

²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Luke 8.26-33 (NRSV)

²⁶Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. ²⁷As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. ²⁸When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me” — ²⁹for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) ³⁰Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. ³¹They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. ³²Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. ³³Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

The Good News Proclaimed

Preached by the Reverend Doctor Robert Griffin at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, June 27, 2010.

The Letter of Paul to the Galatians is often called the Magna Charta of Christian liberty.  Because of the urgency, Paul in this particular letter suspends his normal greeting and gets right to the point of addressing the question at hand of whether Gentiles must become Jews before they can become Christians. (I don’t think a GPS program has been made yet that can navigate this route of point A to B).  The church of Galatia in Asia Minor, which Paul had traveled to previously and setup, was being infiltrated by certain teachers declaring that in addition to having faith in the teachings Jesus, a Christian was obligated to keep the Mosaic Law.

What is the Mosaic Law?  Depending on how one looks at it, the Mosaic Law could be about the observance of the 10 Commandments which could be a summarized version for the 613 commandments which are statements and principles of the law and ethics contained in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.  The 613 commandments make up a long list of rules about dress, food preparation and restriction, how one should travel, how to greet a stranger, making sacrifices, those laws that deal with sex, work, worship, relationships, and the list goes on and on.

And our epistle reading this morning is a mere glimpse of the Apostle Paul setting the record straight.  Paul, once a persecutor of the church and an executer of those that would follow the teachings of Jesus, he himself now a convert has come onto the scene to proclaim that anyone can be Christian.

Paul was reminding them that since you have come into your own faith through baptism, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you, are one in Christ Jesus.” What Paul is doing is reminding the community that they need not any longer be divided over the role of the law in their lives.  Paul in his own way was attempting to unshackle a community that felt bound by law, tradition and ritual that separated rather than called them together. He went on to remind them that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, been meek and that against these there is no law.

I only wish various places around the world, including this country would take a note from this message of Paul and understand that some things you just can’t legislate. For example, no legislation has ever been able to abolish the reality of mutual adult love, commitment, and attraction. Sodomy laws and anti-gay marriage proposals will never change the reality that all people have love to give, all people deserve to be loved, and some of us are naturally going to share that love with someone of the same gender.

Over 2000 years ago, Jesus talked about love and grace and compassion transcending legalistic religion, and Paul, too, taught that love and grace and compassion were not only superior to understandings of religious law, he understood that love and grace and compassion were in fact the fulfillment of spiritual law. When we love genuinely, we are doing all that the law ever tried to get us to do anyway. And still, we all too often default to a kind of legalism that continues to keep us from celebrating our oneness, our equality, in Christ.

Paul, from the margins of his society, preached a message of love.  He did so because there were some who doubted that love, compassion, and hope were enough…they were tempted to fall back on the false security of legalism; and he encouraged them to “stand firm” in your freedom and “do not submit again to the yoke of” of the past.  Do not worry about who is in or who is out; do not worry about who is circumcised and who isn’t. Do not worry about who is Jewish or Greek, male or female. Do not worry about the law because all of it is summed up a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Paul, from the margins of his society, preached a message of liberation. His point about liberation was about looking at things that we need to be free from.  And I would dare to point out that freedom can sometimes be a frightening thing.  We all want it, but it comes with obligations and responsibilities.  I learned that lesson early on in life .  I remember my senior year in high school back in Alabama, being the baby of 14 siblings, I was told by everyone what to do, and in the last few month prior to graduation, liberation was in sight, at this point I was pretty fed up with folks telling me what do.  So fed up that in my senior year that when I met that wonderful Navy recruiter I decided to not wait until after graduation to enlist, I wanted liberation so bad that I entered the delayed entry program to ensure that liberation from Alabama would come and come it did.  I remember when I told my dad that I had joined the navy his first response was, “well son, there are no ships around here and I’ve known for a long time you were not meant to stay here but see the world. “ Of course, seeing the world came with the obligations of adulthood and with responsibilities which no one else but me could bear, good or bad.  My point of departure for liberation had come, I was no longer just Alabamian, I was not longer seen as the baby that needed taking care of. I was finally free, but free meant responsible, and the excitement came with some fear. Of course my mother reminded me as I left for the Navy to remember my values, including to treat people the way I would want to be treated, and she said, “I know that my babe will be OK.”

Liberation means being responsible for ourselves. Not blaming others for our feelings, our choices, our attitudes. Liberation means taking responsibility…not blaming others when things don’t go well, and not expecting someone to come swooping in and fix everything when things are difficult. Freedom means we have work to do, and mistakes will be made, and that can be a little frightening. But no matter what, God loves us, and ultimately, we’ll be OK.

Paul, radically motivated this community to be a different kind of community.  I believe that this church was the church that Paul had his coming out experience in because he proclaimed it to be a new day and a new church for which future generations would learn how we ought to be in community with each other.   Asian theologian and friend, Patrick  Cheng, points out in the Queer Bible commentary that  “it is not surprising that the promise of radical equality in Galatians 3.28 resonates strongly with [GLBT]Christians and [our] allies.” Cheng says that “in other words, not only is there no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but there is no longer straight or queer.”  We are all one in God! On this last Sunday of Pride Month, we all make up the rainbow community and no one gets left out.

Pride month has been a designated time of celebration for the GLBT community and our allies. Just as Paul was reminding the church he had founded, we need to remind ourselves of our history and be thankful that in October of 1968 Rev. Elder Troy Perry embarked a mission to build a spiritual home for those in the GLBT community and our friends and supporters when other houses of faith were turning us out and away from worship and sacraments.   Those were the places that had not received the good news of Paul to share love and to remember that we are all united in God. Troy Perry’s efforts led to the founding of the Metropolitan Community Churches which have literally saved lives through our message of hope, inspiration and liberation. We have a church home to call Sunshine Cathedral where we live into being a progressive, positive, and practical community. We are Troy’s vision come to life. We are Paul’s vision come to life. We are Jesus’ vision come to life.

And let us not forgot that we are who we are 365 days a year.  I am African American and proud not only on Martin Luther King day or in Black History month, but year round, every single day. And I am, just as I am, as a same-gender loving person, made in the image of God and blessed by God not just in June which is a month for Gay Pride, but 365 days a year. If you are a woman, if you are Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender…whatever you are, know that what you are is a blessing and be thankful for it all year long. We are each a gift to our world. We each have the opportunity and the responsibility to be our authentic selves so we can be our best selves so we can make our world a better place.

As noted writer Chris Glaser says, “the promise of equality in Galatians 3.28 transcends the bashing and skirmishes in the mainstream church over LGBTI  people. Indeed, if there is no longer male and female in Christ Jesus, then it does not matter to God which gender we love, which gender we are, or which gender we believe ourselves to be.”  Similar, Kathy Rudy says that, Galatians 3.28 “calls us to create a world in which Christian faithfulness and not gender or sexual orientation is the primary and only measure.”

My friend, transgender activist and former MCC minister Justin Tanis, says on the subject of this scripture that this passage “paints for us a vision of a world beyond gender, in which there is room for infinite variation and infinite grace.”

Now I don’t know if Paul knew that his action would turn the church upside down? I don’t know if Paul knew what he was doing when he started this simple little church in Asia Minor, but I believe that God was at work, because as you read Galatians you will discover that there is a place for everyone.  When Paul declared we are all one in Christ he laid the foundation for breaking down barriers and building up hope.  We can summarize Paul’s message to the Galatians today by saying that the issue that you thought was an issue, circumcision, it is not an issue.  What is important is that we recognize that we are part of a new creation where we value community and unity.  Where we know and live out the meaning of loving our neighbor as ourselves.  We do the justice work of working to make the world a better place.

For the LGBTI community and our allies today, let us live as if our lives, our world and the church has been turned upside down and there is chaos all around us AND knowing and believing that in that chaos God is, we are not alone, and that we are building new communities and families,  where we let go of the past, where “we challenge the hetero-normative values of the world”, where we work to dismantle those things that separate us and we give of ourselves in continuing to build a place where all are welcome.

I believe that what matters in the end is “not our queerness or unqueerness”, but rather a new discovery of the richness of who and whose we are. In that enlightened awareness, let us affirm that we are all one in God and nothing can separate us from the divine love God because what God has set free is free indeed!  Hallelujah. Amen!

The Good News Affirmed

I will work to love myself more!

I will treat others the way I wish to be treated.

I will live with more joy!

I will live in peace!

I trust in the divine goodness that I Am!

Audio readings and sermon (http://sunshinecathedral.org/sermons/audio/20100627_1.mp3)