Free at Last! Free at Last!

Kerry was having a severe allergic reaction. She called her wife, then rushed toward the elevator to get to the hospital.

She died in the hallway.

She then found herself headed toward a white, limitless Light. A loving and gentle force drew her toward it. But her journey was interrupted.

She was stopped by her deceased grandparents. They were luminous and beautiful and she knew them immediately.

They wanted to tell her they were sorry. They now knew something they had not known in the world. Her family had caused her to live her life in fear.

Her family and her church had told her she was going to hell for being gay. She rejoiced that they now accepted her.

But her grandparents had some bad news for her. It was not her time.

Kerry wanted to stay in this abundant love. She wanted to get to the Light.

And she did.

There before God, “in deepest humility,” Kerry said, “I uttered seven words: ‘I’m gay, will you still love me?’”

God’s words to her changed everything: “You are my child. I love you, I love you, I love you. Go back and tell them.”

That’s what she has been doing, as have other gay people who have had near-death experiences.

Just this last week, the United Methodist Church at its General Conference got out of the hate business. We removed the anti-gay words placed in our Book of Discipline in 1972.

The chains that bound us have been broken. “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Free to live the Gospel of God’s unconditional love for all people.

Let us rejoice!

They Know Not What They Do

I found it in a shop in a small Texas town.

It was a ceramic piece depicting a cross with an American flag. Hanging on the cross beam was a gun in a holster.

The motto: “My God, my gun, my country.”

“We sell a lot of those,” the shopkeeper said.

Does the maker of this piece know anything about Jesus? What about the shopkeeper selling it?

And what about those church people who support a man of vengeance for high office.

Do they know Jesus?

Can you be a Christian and ignore the heart of the gospel message?

And what is that core message? It is that God loves all of us all the time—no matter who we are or what we’ve done.

God loves even his enemies. That includes you and me from time to time.

And here’s the rest of that core message? We are to love like God loves.

We, too, are to love our enemies.

In Matthew 5:46, Jesus tells us to love those who do not love us.

Hurting people is out.

Vengeance is out.

So, what of those millions of church people who support a man of vengeance for high office?

Have they never heard the Word? Or have they heard it and rejected it?

I think they have never heard it—not from the pulpits in their churches.

This is where we need to remember what Jesus said from the cross:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I think many people who claim the name of Christ don’t know who they serve or what he stands for.

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No Bowls of Wrath

I remember an old Nichols and May routine from the 60s.

Mike Nichols played a man desperate to make a call on his one and only dime. Elaine May was the telephone operator.

He said to her, “Please don’t jiggle something with your elbow and make me lose my dime.”

She replied, “Sir, we don’t work with our elbows.”

I heard a preacher reading from Revelation the other day—the lines about God pouring bowls of wrath on humankind.

God doesn’t work with bowls of wrath.

I used to play the preacher game: Try to find something good to say about Revelation.

It’s in the Bible! It’s part of the canon!

Yes—and a theologically useless book. Tell it like it is. It’s a mess.

And it was not written by the author of the gospel and letters of John.

Unlike them, it is written in very poor Greek.

The worst thing about Revelation is that it contradicts the teaching of Jesus that we are to love our enemies for God loves his enemies.

In Revelation, God hates his enemies and treats them with unspeakable cruelty.

Like pouring bowls of wrath on them.

It has Jesus riding in on a white horse cutting off the heads of sinners.

We all know what Jesus does. He dies for sinners. All of us.

It is impossible to affirm the content of Revelation and also affirm what Jesus taught us about God.

The God we know in Christ is the only God there is. And God doesn’t work with bowls of wrath.

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Jesus Got God Right

We can know God.

Millions of people have actually met God.

They have encountered God in experience.

Consider this from Bill Wilson, founder of AA. In a moment of desperation, he cried out to God to show himself:

Suddenly the room was filled with a bright white light. I felt an ecstasy beyond words. All about me and through me was a wonderful presence. I thought, so this is the God preachers talk about.

Here God answered a prayer both obviously and immediately.

I’ve had this happen to me a couple of times.

Every encounter with God gives us information about God. Every mystical event, every NDE, tells us something about God’s nature.

So, I began to wonder:

What kind of God would we come up with if we looked only at information from experiences?

I began work on my book, Discovering God. (Not yet published.)

I would set the Bible aside, set aside my own theology, and be entirely open to the God we meet in experience.

My book examines over 100 profound stories of personal encounters with God.

And what kind of God did I discover? A God of infinite love—the God we know in Christ. I even ended up at the Cross and the Resurrection.

I did not discover the rough and vindictive God of Revelation and some Old Testament passages.

That God does not exist.

In experience, we meet the God revealed in The Sermon on the Mount.

Experience tells us Jesus got God exactly right.

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Sunday, May 5, is Special Giving Day at St. Matthew. I invite your gift.

The Body of Christ

I was unable to serve Communion Sunday due to a hip problem (now gone). The assistant pastor and our lay leader served.

This allowed me to sit and watch as people knelt (and stood) at the rail to receive the sacrament. And I was struck by the spiritual beauty of the congregation.

“This is truly the Body of Christ,” I thought.

We received a new member who lives in Idaho. He was in town for the big eclipse show on Monday.

Obviously, Chris will not be driving in each Sunday for worship. He watches online and sends his offering by mail.

He is one of our faithful people, part of our church family. Now an official long-distance member.

A woman, Barbara, visited on Good Friday. She came with a clutch of these little articles in her purse. She had waited for an evening service.

Family matters make it hard for her to come on Sundays. She watches our services and will be reading this.

She loves St. Matthew.

A couple told me after worship recently, “Without Friday’s Word and this church, I don’t think we would have a church right now.”

Someone who joined recently said, “I was looking for a church that preaches a loving God.”

The people of St. Matthew know they are in a church that stands for something.

In reading the Bible, we put Jesus first. He sets the agenda as we read the rest of the Bible.

Everyone at St. Matthew is smart enough to know that gay people are just people who happen to be gay. God doesn’t care.

Give us a visit.

I’d like to meet you.

Worship–11:00 a.m.