The Stranger in Our Midst
Part 4
Or is it? Is the acceptance of everyone into the full fellowship and service of the church a done deal? Or are there still classes of people our religious training teaches us to exclude, unless they become different from who they are? That was the second question Peter and those first Christians had to face. After gulping hard, the church could swallow the baptism of Gentiles so long as they became Jews as well as Christians. In other words, you couldn’t be Christian and remain Gentile. You were welcome to be Christian, but if you were Gentile you had to change. Or at least try! It was that second question they fought out at the first Council of the Church in Jerusalem. The decision was that you could be both Christian and gentile at the same time. Get it? Got it! Good!
I’ve taken time to spell this out because this message was at the center of the legacy that Joel left us. I know that for three reasons. First, as already indicated, I know it from the text he chose for us to read. But second, I know it from an incident that happened during the night before he died. His hospice nurse, Carmen, sat up with him during the night while he slept. That night, he suddenly spoke aloud, saying, We are all God’s children, aren’t we? Then after a period of silence, Joel said, Can I hear a Yes or Amen to that? It was vintage Joel, in both content and form. That was his message to us.
I also know this for a third reason. Joel carried the burden of this news in his heart because he knew so many needed to hear it. Gay and lesbian people like himself, who feel excluded by the church because of its own religious traditions, need to know that another part of that tradition includes the recognition that God’s voice is sometimes heard in contradiction to the church’s voice. The church also needs to hear this, so that it might respond to what it regularly asks God to do for the church: where it is in error, correct it.
Joel’s concern for this message was clear in a devotional he wrote in 1988 on the Parable of the Prodigal Child. When the church relates that story to the gay/lesbian population, it usually understands it to mean that homosexuals are those who have left their heterosexual homes for a life in the far country of deviance. The church, like the waiting father, is eager for them to come home and will welcome them if they come to their senses and return to heterosexuality.
Joel read the story in quite a different way. For him, the church has left its gospel home of inclusiveness and wondered into the far country of exclusiveness. But that does not mean we should give up on this church. He sees gay/lesbian Christians as the loving ones, waiting to welcome a wandering church home when it comes to its senses. He wrote to encourage us to do so, by saying: How shall waiting lesbians and gays view their relationship with the church? There has been a break, a resounding “no” from much of the prodigal church to any form of partnership or familial bond. But is it No. period or “No-dash? No. period means that the relationship is over. It is dead, period. Go back inside the house and stop worrying about the ungrateful kid. No- dash, on the other hand, means the relationship is incomplete. There is more to be said after the dash, no matter how long the intervening silence. No- dash means believing, hoping and trusting that the prodigal will come home. It means waiting for the church to “come to its senses.”
That was a courageous thing for a young man to say who, at the hands of the church, had just been denied ordination into the ministry to which he was called by God and for which he had academically prepared himself. But even though the church hadn’t got it yet, he still encouraged us to wait in love. I quote: Love puts a dash behind every No. period and waits. For gay Christians, God’s love is the power of punctuation, the power to turn No. period into No- dash and to wait expectantly for words of reconciliation. The parable . . . says “Hope, believe, wait, love. There is more to be said. This show is not over yet. Just you wait.
We can hear in these words, even in the midst of personal hurt, the sense of mission Joel lived out in his life and continues to share with us, after his death, here today. The God of grace we know in the gospel had captured his heart and his mind in a way even personal hurt could not take away. It flowed out of the vision he had of a God who includes all as children in the household of faith.
In his Certification for Ordination Exam Joel wrote this: The kingdom is the destiny of the whole cosmos, the big party God is planning and to which everyone is invited. It is the fulfillment of all those great scripture passages: the lion lying down with the lamb; death being swallowed up; the lame leaping; no more war anymore. Even if it kills God (and it did, the cross), even if it kill us (and it does, baptism), somehow God is going to get everybody to that big banquet feast (resurrection, the kingdom, new life). I want to continue to be a messenger and means of God’s invitation, to share the good news of God’s “Yes,” to live a courageous and comforting life of faith, to incarnate Christ and the kingdom, for my neighbor, to die and rise daily. This is my “mission”.
Some years before his death, Joel quoted those words in a letter to a friend. Two weeks before his death, the friend quoted them back to Joel in a good-bye letter, saying, I thank you for these inspiring words. May you find satisfaction now in having accomplished that mission in a significant way . . . May your leave-taking now itself be a part of the mission. In this message Joel left us, his leave-taking was a part of his mission. In this strange gay man dying from AIDS, we encountered the Stranger in our Midst. Through him Jesus speaks to us again: Hope, believe, wait, love. There is more to be said. This show is not over yet. Just you wait.
Prayer
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent. Create and make in the Church a new and contrite heart, that lamenting its discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered members and clergy, it may receive from the God of all mercy, perfect forgiveness and peace; through Jesus.
Paul W. Egertson, Ph.
Paul W. Egertson, Ph.
Minneapolis, Minnesota -- April 17, 1999
An advocate whose eldest son is gay, he chose to participate in the ordination of a lesbian pastor in Minnesota i 2001, eight years before his denomination officially opened its doors to gay and lesbian clergy in committed relationships. In the storm of controversy that followed the ordination, Egertson resigned at the request of denominational leaders a month before his term would have expired. After the resignation, the synod assembly named his as Bishop Emeritus. People speak highly of his courage, advocacy and leadership as a pastor and teacher.
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