Last night, Demetrius and I attended the Integrity Eucharist at which Bishop Gene Robinson was preaching.
I’m glad I was able to attend, and I am thankful to my husband, who, as I have mentioned, is not especially religious, for agreeing to spend date night (it’s been ages since we’ve had a respite provider lined up) going to church with me. The event was so crowded that we ended up in the overflow room downstairs from the church. At first, the sound wasn’t working, but thankfully that was fixed before it came time for Gene’s sermon.
It was a delightful surprise when Bishop Gene Robinson came down to the basement to distribute Communion to the overflow crowd. There was something just, well, cool about receiving Holy Communion from the man who is a big part of the reason I am an Episcopalian today.
More thoughts on that here and a full transcript of Gene Robinson’s sermon is posted at Faithful Ohio.
Sermon transcript Part I
Here’s the end of the sermon, the “bonus” part after Gene said, “This is where the sermon should end.” He addressed the sermon, by the way, to his GLBT brothers and sisters, but allowed that those of us who were “homosexually challenged” were welcome to listen in. 😉
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That’s where the sermon should end.
However… (laughter)…I’ve worked really hard for you this convention, and I’m asking something in favor. I’m asking you to sit here just a few more minutes, so that I can share something with you that I really want you to hear. Something that I believe will serve us all well in the days ahead.
It’s an answer to a question I’ve been asked countless times, and I must say, an awful lot in the last 24 hours since my big showing on Larry King Live (laughter). More than one person has come up to me today and said, “How do you do what you do? How do you seem calm and loving even when insults are coming your way, even when Holy Scripture is being flung in your face like mud?”
So tonight, I want to share with you my secret.
This is about as close, outside of Scripture, this is about as close as you’ll ever get to what makes Gene Robinson tick. I want to read from the other book that changed my life. I can pinpoint the moment my life and my ministry changed. The moment I became willing to risk everything for the Gospel, and for Jesus, who is the Word.
The book is old, it’s probably out of print. It’s called Embracing the Exile by John Fortunato, published, believe it or not, by our old Seabury Press. (Oooh!) Don’t you just love that?
John helped shape Integrity in its earliest days, and he went through a bruising, nasty, and very public ordeal when he and his partner tried to have their relationship blessed in their local Episcopal church. He endured all the hatred and vitriol you might expect such an event would incur in the world and Church of 25 years ago. In the opening and closing chapters of the book, he describes getting up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, in pain over the abuse heaped upon him by Christians and nonChristians alike for loving another man, and having the audacity to want the Church’s blessing on their relationship.
Sitting there alone in his living room in the dark, he had a vision. Or was it in his imagination?
John describes it this way, and I quote:
I was sitting there, and God was sitting there too, on the couch, right in front of me. It was very peaceful and dark, but I could see him. He was bright, and we were talking.
I was saying, “You know, sometimes I think they’re right, that being gay and loving a man is wrong.” God smiled and said quietly, “How can love be wrong? It all comes from me.”
But I was a wreck, you’ll remember. It was going to take more than that! “Sometimes I just want to bury that part of me,” I said, “just pretend it isn’t real!”
“But I made you whole, ” God replied, “You are one as I am one. I made you, in my image”.
I knew he was trying to soothe me but I had just been through four months of good Christian folk trying to cram down my throat that I was an abomination, so all this acceptance was getting me just little frustrated. (Laughter) So I tried again…
“Your church, out there, says that you don’t love me! They say that I’m lost–damned to hell!”
“You’re my son,” God said in a way that was both gentle and yet so firm that there could be no doubt of his genuineness. “Nothing can separate you from my love. I redeemed you before the beginning of time. In my Father’s house there is a mansion waiting just for you.”
I started to fill up. “”What do I do with all this?” I asked, weeping now, and clenching my teeth, at my wit’s end trying to have it all make sense. “What do I do with them?”
And in the same calm voice, God said, “I’ve given you gifts–share them. I’ve given you light–brighten the world. I empower you with my love–love them. “
That did it! After all I had been through, I had had it with sweet words. Who was he trying to kid? I pounded my fist in exasperation and cried, “LOVE them?! What are you trying to do to me–can’t you see? They call my light darkness! They call my love perverted! They call my gifts corruptions! What the hell are you asking me to do?!”
There was silence. God didn’t move a muscle, though his gaze was much more intense. And with a voice filled with compassion, a voice that enveloped me with its love, God spoke:
“Love them anyway,” God said. “Love them anyway.”
“Love them anyway?!” I moaned. “But how?”
“You begin just by being who you are,” God said, “a loving, caring, whole person, created in my image, whose special light of love happens to shine on men, as I intended for you.”
“Is that all?” I asked fearfully.
God shook his head. “No. You must also speak your pain, and affirm the wholeness I have made you to be when they assail it. You must protest when you are treated as less than a child of mine. “
“Is there more?” I asked. “Yes,” God said gently, “And this is the hardest part of all. You must go out and teach them. Help them to know of their dependence on me for all that they really are. And of their helplessness without me. Teach them that their ways are not my ways, and that the world of their imagining is not the world I have made. Help them to see that all creation is one as I am one, and that all I create, I redeem. And assure them, by word, and example, and work, that my love is boundless, and that I am with them always.”
“You know they won’t listen to me,” I said with resignation. “They’ll despise me! They’ll call me a heretic and laugh me to scorn! They’ll persecute and torment me–they’ll try to destroy me! You know they will, don’t you?”
God’s radiant face saddened, and then God said softly, “Oh yes. I know. How well I know.”
I heard his words, and something irrevocable changed in me. I went numb. Now I knew. Now I understood. And it was as though large chunks of who I had been began falling away, tumbling through time and space into eternity. I just let them all fall.
No fear now. No resistance. No sense of loss. All that was dropping away was unnecessary now. Extraneous. I began to feel light and warm. Energy began to surge through my whole being, enlivening me as though I were a rusty old turbine that had been charged up and was starting to hum.
Then two strong, motherly arms reached out and drew me close to the bosom of All That Is, and I was just…there. Just being. Enveloped in Being. And we wept…for joy.”
As Gene concluded, he was choking up again, and in an automatic, almost Pavlovian way, tears welled up in my own eyes. They are doing it again as I transcribe this…
My dear beloved brothers and sisters in Christ…..all we are asked to do, by the God of all creation, is to love them anyway. No matter what gets said this week or next, no matter what resolutions get passed or not, no matter how soon or how long it takes for us to find justice, we already have God’s love, and all we are asked to do in return is to love them anyway. All of them. And then trust God to do the rest. Amen.
Amen! and applause