What an honor to stand before you tonight – as a human being, as a gay man, as a deacon, priest and bishop of the Church.  This event tonight is many things:  it’s a pep rally; it’s a celebration of what has happened, what is happening, and what we pray will happen; but mostly it is what EVERY eucharist is – a giving thanks to God for God’s great goodness in creation, for Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our redemption, and for the Holy Spirit’s continued work and inspiration and guidance and advocacy in our midst.  How could we not be thankful for the miracles we see unfolding about us every day?

I hope you will permit me to address this sermon to my brothers and sisters who happen to be gay, or lesbian, or bisexual, or transgendered Episcopalians.  But I invite those of you who are…(shall we say) “homosexually challenged (!) to listen in and see if there isn’t something here for you too!  If there’s not, then I will have failed miserably.

 This is not the time to talk of legislation, of strategy and advocacy.  This is the time to listen to our hearts, to come to this table praying that we be delivered from coming “for solace only, and not for strength, for pardon only, and not for renewal.”  It’s a time to remember – with humility and resolve – that no matter how much is being asked of us by this Convention, God always asks us for even more.

 We find ourselves beginning the long season of Pentecost, that season when the Spirit of the Living God comes to us as wind and fire and breath.  Come, Holy Spirit, our souls inspire!

 Mac McLeod tells the story of a priest in a large church in Florida who decided to dramatize the Holy Spirit coming like wind, in a particularly spectacular manner.  He got the engine out of one of the boats used in the Everglades B an airplane propeller attached to a big gasoline engine B and mounted it in the choir loft which was in the back of the nave.  The wind from the propeller would blow out across the congregation when the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit was read.

The priest and an usher gave it a dry run on Saturday afternoon, and although it was incredibly noisy, it worked well  and promised a spectacular effect for Sunday morning.  On Pentecost morning, the lector read, “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house.”  At that exact moment, the engine coughed once and then howled into life.

But on Sunday morning, things were different.  The choir members were in place and they had not been there for the practice run, and the sudden screaming gust of wind sent sheet music and bulletins flying out over the congregation.  Hair-dos in the congregation came unglued and hair streamed out from faces.  The preacher’s sermon notes were gone with the wind.  A hairpiece flew toward the altar like a furry missile.  It was like in the play “Green Pastures,” when the Angel Gabriel looks down from heaven and says to the Lord, “Everything that was nailed down is comin’ loose!”

 And that’s just the way it is with the Spirit.  It’s that part of God which refuses to be contained and confined to the little boxes we create for God to live in, safely confined to the careful boundaries we set for God’s Spirit.  The problem is – and the miracle is – God just won’t stay put.  And God won’t let you and me stay put, content to believe what we’ve always believed, what we’ve always been taught, what we’ve always assumed.  Change is not just something to be wished upon our enemies – but something God requires of US as well.

THINK of the things you and I believe and think today that we could not have imagined years ago!  We used not to be outraged at black folk being made to drink from separate water fountains, women not being deputies to this General Convention nor priests standing at God’s altar, differently-abled folk not able to get into our churches.  Our change in thinking didn’t come as a result of our own work, but the work of God’s Spirit, blowing through us like wind, calling us away from our narrow thinking and more nearly into the mind and heart of Christ.

More importantly, remember how we used to think of ourselves!  We believed the Church when we were told we were an abomination before God, that our relationships – indeed our lives – were intrinsically disordered, that we were second-class hangers-on in the Church of God, loved perhaps, but “only if.…”  And then the Spirit of God blew through us like a mighty wind.  We heard God’s calm and loving voice above the noisy din of the Church’s condemnation.  And we were saved, made worthy to stand before God through God’s Son’s sacrifice on the cross.  Quite literally “born again.”  And our lives changed forever.  THINK of the joy we have come to know because of the Spirit’s work within us. 

St. Peter was horrified in his dream to hear God saying, “Don’t be so picky about what people eat!  Care more about what’s in their hearts.  My Word is broader and deeper than that, and I am going to be calling people unto me whom you have thought to be unacceptable in my eyes.  But you’ve been wrong, and I’m going to show you a different way.”

Is there ANY doubt in your minds that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and calling God’s Church to open itself to all those whom Jesus loves?!  We don’t worship a God who is all locked up in scripture 2,000 years ago – but rather, a God whose love knows no human bounds.  Now, lest you think I’m talking about “THEM” loving US, let me remind you that the Spirit of God wants US to love THEM, too.  Indeed, the Spirit of God longs for, yearns for and DEMANDS that there cease to BE “us” and “them.”

 God calls us to the hard work of compassion for our enemies.  Some people quarrel with my use of that characterization, but we do have enemies. It’s a word that Jesus used.  The hard part is following Jesus’ own command to LOVE our enemies.  Not to like them, not to be paralyzed by their opposition, not to give in to their outrageous demands, but to love them nevertheless.  To treat them with infinite respect, listen to what drives them, try our best to understand the fear that causes them to reject us, to believe them when they say they only want the best for us.  That’s hard work, and we can’t do it without God’s own Spirit blowing through us like wind, breaking down OUR walls, causing our assumptions to “come loose,” and reminding us that they too are children of God, for whom Christ died and through whom they will be saved. 

 So what are we to do, here at this General Convention and beyond?  Once again, let us return to the stories of the first century Church and its witness, which ultimately brings us here as the Church of the 21^st century.  Look at what they did.  They didn’t denigrate their enemies, they didn’t doubt that their enemies were children of God.  Rather, they spoke of God’s love for themselves and what Jesus Christ had done in their own lives, breaking loose the bondage of sin and death which keeps us all from the abundant life promised by the Savior.  By word and example, they proclaimed what God had done in THEIR lives, and then let the Spirit do the rest.

And so, our job here at this General Convention and in the days ahead is what it has always been:  to proclaim with boldness and clarity, NOT what WE have done, but what GOD has done in us.  Our lives must be lived with such joy and vibrancy and trust in God, that all will come to see that we are indeed, along with all of humanity, children of the Most High.  That will be the only thing that will change hearts.  It’s the only thing that ever has. 

Would you indulge me with a few more minutes, to share with you one more thing?  To drag this sermon out longer than any sermon should go?  I want to share with you something I want you to know about me.  Something I want YOU to hear.  Something that I believe will serve us well.  It’s in answer to a question I’ve been asked countless times, most recently in the last 24 hours:  “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?”  Tonight, I’m going to share with you my secret.

I want to read from the “other book” (besides the Bible) that changed my life.  I can pinpoint the moment my life, my ministry changed.  The moment I became willing to lose everything for the Gospel and for Jesus who is the Word. 

The book is Embracing the Exile, by John Fortunato, published in 1982, by our own Seabury Press.  I don’t think it is even in print anymore.  John helped shape Integrity in its earliest days.  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 that 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 non-Christians alike, for loving another man and wanting the Church’s blessing on their relationship.  Sitting there alone in his living room, in the dark, he had a vision.  Or was it his imagination?  John describes it this way:
 

            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.  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 just getting me very frustrated.  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 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’s 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,” he said.  “Love them anyway.” 

            “Love them anyway?” I moaned.  “But how?”

            “You begin by just 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’ve 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 work and example 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, “O, 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.”         [pp. 15-16, 126-127]
 

            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 and after, 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 is to “love them anyway.”  ALL of them.  And trust God to do the rest. 

AMEN.