Happy Thanksgiving!

Most people get it wrong.

We sinned, people say, and this caused a separation between us and God.

Not so.

God created a distance between us and God—and this allowed us to sin.

This is clear even in the symbolic language of the story of Adam and Eve.

God places the forbidden trees in the midst of the garden—tells Adam and Eve not to touch them—and leaves the garden.

They must make a choice. To be human is to choose. To be human is to have freedom to choose.

It is the seeming absence of God that allows Adam and Eve to try the fruit.

The Garden of Eden was like heaven. We cannot grow as human beings in heaven—and God wants us to have this human experience.

So, God has placed us here—and given us a little distance.

Like the mother who knows her child will never learn to walk if she carries him all the time.

She puts him down and steps back, watching him at every moment.

This is Kierkegaard’s analogy: He says the mother must be both fully present and seemingly absent at the same time.

The child will fall as he learns. He will get some bumps and bruises. But the child will learn to walk.

Kierkegaard is actually talking about God.

God is always with us.

But God has given us the freedom even to deny God’s existence.

It must be this way—if we are to be human.

If we are to have the freedom to grow in grace and understanding.

We must choose love—in a place where love is not always easy.

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The Christmas Show

Sat., Dec. 16, 6:00 p.m.

Someone wrote me to say: “The only place for women in the church is sitting in pews with their heads covered.”

According to Paul, God doesn’t even see us as male or female, Jew or Gentile. And God doesn’t see people as gay or straight. This from a near-death experience:

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When I got to heaven, I asked about my sexuality. I had been concerned all my life. The angel directed my attention to a large screen.

On the screen, I saw two points of light engaged in intimate relation. The angel asked which was male and which was female.

I said, “I don’t know.”

The angel said, “That light is what God sees, for God sees the soul. Gender is a temporary thing. It will not always be with us.”

The angel said God never makes a mistake in the way we are made.

And God knows how each of us will be challenged and how we will be blessed.

We are called to grow spiritually as we are.

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So—Jesus was being literal when he said we are the light of the world.

Some folks want gay people, women, people of color, immigrants, and many others to put their light under that “bushel” Jesus talked about.

But Jesus told us to shine–all of us. Shine–as we are, where we are.

God doesn’t abide by the labels we put on people.

God doesn’t see Baptist, Methodist, Muslim or Jew—nor American or foreign.

God just sees his children—fighting over labels that don’t count.

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Fun silent auction and bake sale tomorrow—10:00 to 2:00. Come!

Silence Can Be Harmful

My sermon title for Sunday: What Jesus Said about the Gay Issue.

Do we really have to talk about this?

Yes! We do!

Silence is part of the problem.

We have let the bigots set the agenda. The preachers who know the truth have been afraid to say the truth.

Some preachers were shocked when their United Methodist congregation voted to leave the UMC.

But so many of these preachers had never led their people toward the truth.

The Gospel must be proclaimed! We must be willing to speak God’s unconditional love for all people.

We must make it clear that, with God, there is neither “male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free.” Nor gay or straight.

These are not categories that God cares about.

We must be willing to say that Paul was wrong and Jesus was right on the issue.

But did Jesus even talk about it? Yes!

And quite clearly.

We will look at the passage called “Jesus’ definition of marriage” this Sunday.

What he ends up saying is really interesting: that one size does not fit all. He lays down the rule and then says it can’t apply to everyone.

Why? Because people are different.

People come in a variety.

People have different needs.

The law was unbending.

But love meets us where we are and takes us to where we need to be.

This Sunday at 11:00—and after that on recording.

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No concert this month.

Christmas Show in Dec.

Communion This Sunday

Matthew tells us that Jesus amazed people by talking as “one having authority, not as the teachers of the law.”

Jesus didn’t quote scripture before he spoke.

He even contradicted scripture at times: “It was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I say to you…”

Jesus would say “amen, amen” before he spoke, not after. (That’s the “verily, verily” of the old King James version.)

He was declaring what was coming to be true before he said it—and with reference to no authority beyond himself.

And Jesus said things no one had ever said before.

Things like: “Love your enemies.”

Search all the ancient writers for that idea. You won’t find it. It is certainly not in the Old Testament.

“Love people that do not love you,” he said. “Love those who persecute you.”

He pushed an entirely new concept of God—a God who “is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked.”

People had never heard anything like that before—and most of them didn’t like it.

Most people don’t like it today. Most Christians don’t like it.

That’s why people cling to biblical inerrancy. This allows them to lift the old images of God over the God we know through the teachings of Jesus.

It’s like Jesus said: “When people have tasted the new wine, they say the old is better.”

Jesus is not all that popular. Many Christians pay little attention to him.

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Sermon on the Sunday after this one: What Jesus Said about the Gay Issue.

Did he talk about it?

Yes, of course.

Our Old Sins

Westover Plantation still stands along the James River in Virginia. It was built by William Byrd in 1730.

My ancestor, Capt. Daniel Lewellen, lived across the river.

Mr. Byrd is famous for having kept a diary, one of our best sources for colonial life in Virginia.

I found one passage very interesting. Byrd said that after dinner one evening his wife and her sister were arguing over the inerrancy of scripture.

It’s an old argument.

My ancestor and Mr. Byrd went to the same church, also still standing.

And both owned—bought and sold—enslaved human beings.

Another ancestor, Jessee Lewellen, was a Baptist preacher. He started a church in North Carolina around 1830.

It is still there.

And although a preacher, Jessee owned three people.

As a biblical inerrantist, he could justify that sin.

One of his sons, Jessee Jr., just like Abraham in the Bible, had a child by a woman he owned.

Which leads us to Beverly, our black cousin in California. She is planning a big family reunion next summer in Mississippi.

Our black and white family–all together.

Except for cousin Sam.

He appeared on a family zoom call with a Confederate flag behind him and he used the “N-word.”

Like the old buildings in this narrative, the evil of racism still stands, with its sister sin of homophobia.

And if you are a biblical inerrantist like my ancestors, you can justify any sin you want.

But if you listen to Jesus above all, the old sins must go. His love is our hope.