Good Fruit

I'm a week or two late on this.   Please don't hate me.  Recently, I barely suppressed squealing in church.  Yes, the woman who doesn't like to clap in rhythm during 'gospel' pieces for choir nearly burst out with a YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS  when she found out her bishop voted to approve a resolution proposing tentative rites for a same gender blessing for the Episcopal Church.   I stifled myself and settled for grinning like my dog when he's just discovered how to open the lid on a trash can filled with things I would prefer he not chew on.

I am reminded of the last time something like this happened in my church.  I'm sure that was worse than this is going to be.  I say that because I figure there can't possibly be anyone who is more offended by a rite for sex couples than the people who were so freaked out by a gay bishop in New Hampshire that they created a splitter denomination.   I can't imagine it.  I hope I don't have to.  Just in case it turns out I do, can everyone who appreciates Bishop Ed doing this click on his name and send him an email telling him so?    The news lightened my load considerably and gave me hope that this good news wasn't going to turn into a diocese wide fiasco.

Good things are hard to do sometimes.  People don't like change.   Episcopalians in particular do not like change.  You should hear what people say when we use other-than-what-we-always-use service music.  I can't sing it, I don't know it, it sounds like a bunch of seagulls screeching in there and did we mention it's different and we actually have to pay attention??    We've always done it this way.   We've always handling homosexuals by winking, nodding, and pretending they aren't there.  We don't want to actually talk about it because then I'll have to confront my feelings on the subject.

I think that's the biggest problem we had when Gene Robinson was approved as the bishop of New Hampshire.   People were forced to confront how they felt about homosexuality because it made the news.  Fox News, in particular, made it sound like we had just approved the ordination of a dirty, overly handsy, parishioner molester priest to the bishopric.   I heard the inside story:  That was only inappropriate touching if the priest is gay.  If that were inappropriate touching the rest of the time, I've been molested by an army of filthy dirty priests and and didn't even realize it.   I suppose if I think back very carefully, a handful of them *might* be gay and I just wasn't paying attention.  People were responding to the words Episcopal Church with:  The gay church?  

Never mind that we had two token gay people in our congregation at the time and even though we were small, we didn't even have 10% of our congregation made up of homosexuals, we were the "gay church".  By this point in my life, I wasn't offended by this except by the inaccuracy of the statement.   My best friend isn't straight.   Many of my college friends were gay.   Gay, and faithful Christians.   I made a snide remark about only having two and answered the question with a yes.  

I heard from other people that it was embarrassing.  That they didn't know what to say when their business associates asked about it.  They didn't know what to say?   I suppose the words "Yes, that's my church and I didn't much like the decision but New Hampshire wanted him as their bishop and General Convention decided to give their consent." never popped into their minds.    They had to confront their own feelings about something that happened in their denomination, and they didn't like it.  We all had to think about what we believe.

I have been in their shoes more than once.   I grew up being taught (though no one much dwelt on the subject) that homosexuality was wrong.  I didn't know why, except that the Bible supposedly said so.   God, finding my intolerance obnoxious I suppose, decided to show me otherwise.   I was confronted, repeatedly, with good fruit from supposedly bad trees.   I saw the Holy Spirit working through gay men.   I saw it and I felt it.  I had spent enough time with the Pentecostal types to recognize it.  I wasn't stupid.  I knew what I was seeing.  I was being confronted almost daily with good fruit from people who were supposedly living in sin.   People who were supposed to be intrinsically disordered to borrow a phrase from the Roman Catholic Church, and doing God's good work here on earth.    It didn't make sense.  Especially since Jesus was the one who put that phrase into my vocabulary:

Luke 6:43“For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. 44“For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush. 45“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

The passage drives it home.  They wouldn't be doing these good things if they were bad guys.  I had to figure  this out.  These men weren't struggling with their sexuality.  They weren't fighting the evil inside to keep from being attracted to other men anymore than I was fighting my own attraction to men.  They weren't good trees fighting off a case of blight and producing fruit in spite of it.  They were good, spiritual fruit producing fruits.


It took me a while to get it but I did.  It wasn't easy.  I didn't like it much.  God won out.  I finally figured out that my feelings, about other woman hitting on me, were misplaced.  No, I didn't understand, but I'm not gay.  I'm not supposed to.  I don't have to.  A friend of mine once told me a fellow parishioner told him that what goes on in his bedroom makes her sick and my response that he should asked her who in the church she enjoyed fantasizing about.   I don't know about her, but I don't go to church to think about sex, and I laugh a little when it comes up because it makes me a little uncomfortable, but here's the thing:  Every single time someone gets married in church, we're bringing God into our sex lives.   Every single time.  Sex is part of who we are.  It's part of that nominally uncomfortable metaphor of the Church being the Bride of Christ.  It shows up in the nativity story when Luke points out that Mary and Joseph weren't living together when she became pregnant.   It's there.  The assumption that there was sex when there wasn't gets made an issue.  Your body is a temple, according to Paul, and a person should be careful what one does in a temple.  How one does it to be specific and with whom.  


So it makes sense that when homosexual people set out to create their own families with their partners they want the Church's blessing.  They want an outward and visible sign of what God has already down in their lives and this is a good thing.   It's a door opening.   It's a way for aunties (me) and mothers and fathers to have something to tell their kids to cool it and wait for something more special and permanent.   This is a good thing. 


A very good thing.  Yes, we're all going to have to confront our feelings about it.  It might be painful.  There will be hurt feelings, foot stomping, maybe even a little embarrassment.   I would suggest not attending one of these rites if that is the case.   I don't suggest leaving either.  We already had a gay bishop in New Hampshire and a woman as our primate.  If a liturgy you don't have an occasion to use being added to the list of things no one is asking you to use or attend or officiate over freaks you out, maybe you need to do some soul searching.   We'll still love you.  
    

Put on your big girl panties and deal with it

"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 26 It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; 28 just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

The buck stops here. The leader takes the blame. If the economy's in the toilet, it's the president's fault. If a big oil company spews millions of gallons into the ocean and it doesn't get resolved instantly, it's the president's fault. If my boss makes a mistake...no wait, it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes, as they say, "it rolls downhill" but not always. It was bad intelligence. It was bad information. "My girl is new and didn't know what she was doing." If the preacher was better, the church would be full. If it weren't for the National Church, that couple would still be here. It's the gays fault. If those people wouldn't cruise Van Buren, we wouldn't have an oil addiction (but I can still own a car). If someone other than me...

If someone other than me would just do something we wouldn't have this problem. I half understand the urge to crucify the leader when things go wrong. After all, it fulfills their professed role of being a servant of all, doesn't it? They take the blame, we put someone new in, and begin the cycle all over again. Membership swells for a bit (curiosity killed the cat), international relations get better when it becomes apparent we've replaced the dumb country bumpkin model, the oil seems to slow down, and Tony gets his yacht back. Then the economy doesn't instantly rebound and everybody starts remembering that the president's black and a democrat, the old guard tightens their grip on the church again (you're not really old enough to be in alter guild, are you?) and the international community gets their feelings hurt that we're slamming their big oil company they've heavily invested in and calls our criticism something it's not.

The problem remains the same until something changes. The problem will remain the same until the leaders underneath the leaders realize what they're doing to make the situation unattractive. The problem will remain the same until we stop looking for someone to pin this situation on. While I do agree that the president needs to figure out 'whose ass to kick' in the gulf, I don't think that's always the situation. Especially when it's everybody's and nobody's ass that needs kicking.

The 'leader' is just one person. They can't do everything. There's a reason that not everyone runs around with a crown on their head. A wheel isn't good for much without spokes inside it, is it? If something needs done, someone needs to do it but not necessarily the priest or the president. President Obama has no military experience---so he should get smart people who do have military experience (and don't mouth off to the media) to advise him on how best to handle that situation. Every Sunday school class does not have to have clergy teaching it. The fact that people aren't having babies fast enough to fill those classes isn't the fault of the clergy either. (It's my fault, actually, for being single and not having popped out 2.5 kids by now.) People can't stay 15 forever---and everything goes in cycles. Even totally awesome people go off their nut once in a while and decide there's just one thing they can't handle---even if the alternative they choose seems far worse to most of us.

So images aside, can we let our leaders be our servants instead of our scape goats for a while? Can we work with them instead of deciding if they don't put up they need to get shut up? Can we quit singing "November is coming" long enough to roll up our sleeves and get this country moving again

Can we?