Monday, June 30, 2008

Blessings & Farewell

How Does the Creature say Grace
How Does the Creature say Thanks
Yesterday was a very special and very sad service for me at CWM. I know, they all are very special... and I'm a cryer. With blessings and farewell, we gave thanks to God and worshipped with the Spirit as we celebrated my move to a new church as the pastor.
I believe that this is the first time that a member of our church has been appointed to serve another church directly from membership. Of course, people under appointment have always been part of worship attendence and interns have moved to different types of ministry and there are several people in the ordination process who are members.
Even though I helped to write the new Book of Discipline, I'm still pretty foggy on what exactally is up with my 'membership' now. I believe that I am a member of the Annual Conference as "pastoral supply without sacramental authority." Then in September I will become a "liscenced local pastor pending certification." Sounds spiritual.
But for now I say thank you to God for the ways that I have grown and changed as a member of Cambridge Welcoming Ministries. I know that there are so many others as well who say thank you to God for the ministry of this church. I will certainly deeply miss regularly attending services and I look forward to my new relationship with CWM. Some of that will be through the blog... in two weeks watch for daily updates from Jurisidictional Conference.
Peace and power,
Will Green
Pastor
St. Nicholas United Methodist Church, Hull, MA

Friday, June 27, 2008

CWM This Week

This Week at CWM

Weekly Worship
Sunday June 22nd at 5 PM
CWM Upper Room
14 Chapel St.
Somerville, MA

Join us for worship. Rev. Kirk Van Gilder and Will Green will be preaching together as we send Will off to ministry in Hull.

Coming Events

Somerville ArtBeat
Saturday July 17th
Davis Square
Somerville, MA

Join the CWM mission crew as we host a table in Davis Square for the ArtBeat festival. Folks are needed from 10 AM to 5 PM to staff the table, hand out buttons and do art projects with the kids.

CWM Summer Queer Film Festival

July 12th - August 23rd
CWM Upper Room
14 Chapel St.
Somerville, MA

Join us on the following Sundays after worship to watch and discuss films as part of our new Queer Film Festival. Mark and Elizabeth will be facilitating the discussions.
July 12th - Before Stonewall
July 26th - After Stonewall
August 9th - Fish Can't Fly
August - 23rd - For The Bible Tells Me So
Keep up to date with the happenings at CWM through our facebook calendar.

Mission and Service Opportunities

College Avenue UMC Food and Diaper Pantry
All year round many families call on us to help them with food & diapers. Please help us replenish our food & diaper pantry. Here are some food suggestions: Rice, beans, pasta and pasta sauce (in jars or canned) Canned meats (tuna, turkey, chicken and ham) dry cereals, oatmeal, pancake mix and syrup, soups packaged or canned (single & family size) (examples: chicken noodle, chicken & rice, beef stew, etc.) Macaroni & cheese packaged, canned raviolis and spaghetti (single & family size). Please no cream of mushroom soups or canned vegetables, we have plenty. Canned potatoes we will accept. Diaper sizes needed 2-6

Donations can be left in the church office on Sundays.

Ecumenical Welcoming Conference
September 4-7, 2008
New Orleans

Designed as a leadership development event, this ecumenical conference for those in the welcoming movement offers rich Bible study, challenging and profound worship and praise, genuine relationship building across and amidst our differences, concrete skills building, reflective and incisive theological analysis and strategic action. Click here for more information.

Speakers include:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Rev. Angela Denise Davis ► Rev. Dr. Miguel De La Torre ► Bishop Yvette Flunder ► Rev. Debra Haffner ► AmberHollibaugh ► Rev. Dr. Horace Griffin ► Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson ► Rev. Tiffany Steinwert ► Rev. Rebecca Voelkel

Friday, June 20, 2008

CWM This Week

This Week at CWM

Farewell Service in Celebration of the Ministry of Gary Nettleton
Sunday June 22nd at 5 PM
CWM Upper Room
14 Chapel St.
Somerville, MA

Join us for a celebration of the ministry of College Ave. pastor, Gary Nettleton, on the occasion of his retirement. Rev. Scott Campbell will be preaching in Gary's honor.

It is a POTLUCK Sunday, so bring your favorite dish to share.

Coming Events

Somerville ArtBeat
Saturday July 17th
Davis Square
Somerville, MA

Join the CWM mission crew as we host a table in Davis Square for the ArtBeat festival. Folks are needed from 10 AM to 5 PM to staff the table, hand out buttons and do art projects with the kids.

CWM Summer Queer Film Festival

July 12th - August 23rd
CWM Upper Room
14 Chapel St.
Somerville, MA

Join us on the following Sundays after worship to watch and discuss films as part of our new Queer Film Festival. Mark and Elizabeth will be facilitating the discussions.
July 12th - Before Stonewall
July 26th - After Stonewall
August 9th - Fish Can't Fly
August - 23rd - For The Bible Tells Me So
Keep up to date with the happenings at CWM through our facebook calendar.

Mission and Service Opportunities

College Avenue UMC Food and Diaper Pantry
All year round many families call on us to help them with food & diapers. Please help us replenish our food & diaper pantry. Here are some food suggestions: Rice, beans, pasta and pasta sauce (in jars or canned) Canned meats (tuna, turkey, chicken and ham) dry cereals, oatmeal, pancake mix and syrup, soups packaged or canned (single & family size) (examples: chicken noodle, chicken & rice, beef stew, etc.) Macaroni & cheese packaged, canned raviolis and spaghetti (single & family size). Please no cream of mushroom soups or canned vegetables, we have plenty. Canned potatoes we will accept. Diaper sizes needed 2-6

Donations can be left in the church office on Sundays.

Ecumenical Welcoming Conference
September 4-7, 2008
New Orleans

Designed as a leadership development event, this ecumenical conference for those in the welcoming movement offers rich Bible study, challenging and profound worship and praise, genuine relationship building across and amidst our differences, concrete skills building, reflective and incisive theological analysis and strategic action. Click here for more information.

Speakers include:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Rev. Angela Denise Davis ► Rev. Dr. Miguel De La Torre ► Bishop Yvette Flunder ► Rev. Debra Haffner ► AmberHollibaugh ► Rev. Dr. Horace Griffin ► Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson ► Rev. Tiffany Steinwert ► Rev. Rebecca Voelkel

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

TranSpire

Check out the new blog, TranSpire, a web space dedicated to celebrating the lives and ministry of trans people in communities of faith.

"Join us as we work toward developing faith communities that embrace fully the gifts and lives of trans people. Let's do more to recognize trans people than mourn for those who have been murdered once each year at Transgender Day of Remembrance - let's learn to celebrate together the lives and contributions of trans people.... The announcement above is from our first annual celebration. We welcome you to host your own TranSpire service. More to come..."

Monday, June 16, 2008

This Is the Day

This is the day our God has made!
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

This is the day that thousands of faithful, loving couples will celebrate their long awaited weddings as the California Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage goes into effect at 8 PM EDT.

Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin will be the first couple to tie the knot in San Francisco, waiting over 55 years for their partnership and love to finally be made legal. First married during the Winter of Love in San Francisco when same-sex marriage licenses were issued but then later nullified, Lyon and Martin are looking forward to this evening's service as a sign and symbol of both their lifelong love and advocacy. The two of them, along with six other women, founded the first national lesbian advocacy organization in 1955. Now, half a decade later, they celebrate just one of the many fruits of their labors as they marry.

This is the day our God has made! We should rejoice and be glad in it for faithful couples are celebrating mutual love, commitment and equality. Just as May 17th, 2004 has gone down in the history books as the day marriage became equal in Massachusetts, so also will the world remember June 16th. These days mark the moments when justice prevailed and marriage became more meaningful for all...heterosexual and same-sex couples alike.

Although this fall there will be a ballot initiative seeking to nullify these Californian marriages, the Spirit of equality is sweeping through our nation. It will not be long now before all will enjoy the right to marry who they love.

Our faith tradition tells us that in the end love is always more powerful than hate. And so, today we celebrate this victory of love in our midst and glimpse for a moment the kin-dom of God made real in the life and loves of these Californian couples. Thanks be to God for their faithfulness, love and commitment!

This is the day our God has made!
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

New England Annual Conference Wrap Up

This year's New England Annual Conference wrapped up yesterday morning after four days of discernment, celebration and holy conferencing. Highlights of the conference included:
  • Raising over $50,000 for Nothing But Nets
  • Welcoming the Vermont UM churches into our conference come 2010
  • Reconciling rainbow stoles with profits going to support Nothing But Nets
  • Passing prophetic legislation on issues of immigration, HIV/AIDS, and racism
  • Creating a Conference Diversity Sunday
  • Establishing an Anti-Racism Steering Committee
  • Mandating anti-racism training for pastors and churches with cross cultural appointments
  • Inspiring lectures by Rev. Barbara Lemmel
  • Reconciling Ministries Scholarship Presentation and Essay Contest
  • Holy Conferencing on issues of Human Sexuality
  • Commissioning Church and Society to write a new statement of Human Sexuality to supplement the Book of Discipline Par. 161G
  • Prophetic words from retirees including Jonathan Almond, Arlene Bodge, and Gary Nettleton
  • The Environment/Climate Change video from the Global Warming Task Force and pledge forms to take back to our lovcal congregations
For more news from New England Annual Conference, click here.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Radical Welcome

Do you know what it is like to feel accepted and affirmed? Do you know what it is like to walk into a room and feel wholly loved…not for anything you have done or said, but simply for who you are? Do you know what it is like to be completely, absolutely, unconditionally welcomed?

I suspect there are a few, special moments in all our lives we can remember of just such moments of unconditional love, acceptance and welcome. For me, this memory comes early. I was no more than 3 years old when my mother’s friend Brenda took me to church for the first time. It was a Halloween party for the Sunday School and I was dressed up in a frilly white dress and bonnet with my grandfather’s cane wrapped in blue crepe paper disguised as a shepherd’s crook…I was Little Bo Peep.

I remember walking into the church fellowship hall still apprehensive of being far from home and in a new place. I did not know any of the kids and I was afraid no one would like me. But my fear of the unfamiliar did not last long. The moment I stepped in the door I was overwhelmed by attention from all the sweet old church ladies. They fawned and fussed, hugged and kissed. They took me by the hand and led me inside. All day long I passed from lap to lap and lavished with attention and love and of course, my fair share of candy!

Now, I am sure, since this was in fact a Sunday School party, that there must have been other children there that day, but in my memory I feel as if I was the only one! Why else would I have felt so loved and special, so welcomed and accepted? The women did not need to tell me about Jesus, they showed him to me with their affection and care.

Over the years as I have thought back on this day, on my first introduction to the Church, I never fail to be amazed at a love of this community to welcome a child they had never met before, whose parent’s did not go to church, and who had never heard of Jesus. None of that mattered. They loved me because I was God’s child and that’s all they needed to know.

This is the memory that comes to me every time I hear the scripture we read this evening from Mark.

“Then Jesus took a little child, lifted her up and put her among the disciples, saying to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me…’”

That day in the fellowship hall of this church, I knew what it felt like to be that child welcomed by Jesus, lifted up among many and lavished with unconditional love.

It seems a little odd to preach about welcome in this particular congregation. After all, it is here in this community where every Sunday at 5 PM for the past four years we have heard these words: “At Cambridge Welcoming Ministries all are welcome…whether you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, straight or questioning, you are welcome here!” Talk about preaching to the choir!

We are indeed a ministry founded on this notion of God’s unconditional welcome for all, particularly for those, like that little child, left at the margins of society. Over these almost six years we have welcomed all sorts of people into our community. We remember that first group of daring disciples gathered in the upper room, praying and planning and preparing for our very first service. We remember the great crowd who gathered on September 29th , 2002 as we inaugurated our ministry and the brave 11 souls who came the following week. We remember the solitary visitors to our first bible study, “Religion is a Queer Thing.”

We remember the homeless, those both literally and figuratively without a home, who found warmth and welcome at CWM over the years. We remember the anonymous guests who have come and cried among us, finding refuge for but an hour. We remember the young and the old who found love here…the youth mission team who celebrated God’s inclusivity with us in song and Betty, our 80 year old member, who when she was told we were gay church, said, “well, that’s just lovely!”

Over the years, we at CWM, have worked diligently to witness to the welcome Christ extends to all through our ministry from the margins. In this way, this passage suits us well.

But if we were to read Jesus’ proclamation here in Mark as only a mandate to welcome those at the margins, we would be missing much of his point. For Jesus, is not simply concerned with welcoming the outcast and marginalized, though that is the beginning point of much of his ministry. Rather, Jesus is concerned with subverting the entire social system that creates categories of outcasts to begin with.

When we read this passage, we must be careful not to overly romanticize the scene with notions of cute little children and loving disciples, turning it into a safe, sweet sentiment of generic love. Jesus is talking about more than tolerance, more than acceptance, more than mere invitation. We cannot forget that this entire scene is prompted by the disciples’ argument over who is the greatest.

Jesus is talking about power.

In answering the disciples’ question about greatness, Jesus confronts popular notions of power. Then, just as now, power in the world is defined by domination and hierarchy. It is coercive power over others, whether through physical, economic, political or social means, that benefits few while subjugating many. This type of power creates divisions and categories, allowing some in, while keeping others out.

In this passage, Jesus is clear that these definitions of power are ultimately false. True power is not grasping for domination or maintaining a socially constructed hierarchy. Rather, true power is reaching out in love on behalf of others. True power comes from compassion, care, and concern.

Jesus’ re-definition of power is shocking. When he says the greatest is to be the servant, that is a startling contrast. To find power in the weakest and lowliest of social statuses is radical!

Let’s be clear, it is not that being oppressed and dominated brings salvation, but rather the willingness to give of one’s self that leads to the realization of God’s vision of peace and justice.

Jesus turns our social perceptions of power on their head, revealing power in vulnerability, compassion, and caring, rather than in brute force, coercion or sheer might. True power in God’s commonwealth is rooted in love and service.

This passage calls us not just to welcome those on the margins and in our own communities, but, like Jesus, to subvert the very structures of the social hierarchy that oppress and divide God’s people. If we merely offer a welcome to others without challenging the systems of power that keep them on the margins, we do nothing to further the vision of Christ in the world.

As people at the margins, we often find ourselves struggling to be let in. Banging on the doors of the institution, we long for full inclusion.

Yet, we must be careful, lest we fall into the very systems of oppression that keep us on the fringes and do nothing more than substitute one privileged group for another. Jesus taught us that vengeful retribution does not bring forth the kin-dom. We cannot win our place at the table at the expense of others. We cannot simply replace the ruling class of the rich, with the ruling class of the poor, or the ruling class of the conservatives, with the ruling class of the progressives.

When we allow ourselves to be caught up in these retributive, apocalyptic images of a vengeful God exercising the ultimate power over of destruction, we give in to a lack of faith. Retribution comes as a last resort when we abandon the belief that God’s vision of peace and justice can come through radical love, inclusion, compassion and service.

Jesus is calling us to dismantle this whole system that includes one group only at the expense of another. We cannot use power the way it has been used against us. Like it or not, we are called to a vision of power rooted in love and service that does not allow us to exclude others for our own benefit, not even the ones who despise and demean us. And that, by God, is not easy.

As I think about that early welcome I received as a child, that welcome that embodied for me the love of God and set me on a path to follow Jesus, I am reminded that the women who welcomed me that day, are the same women who now sit on the opposite side of the picket line from me at state houses, at general conferences, at judicial councils. You see, the church that first showed me Christ’s welcome is a member of the southern Baptist convention, a denomination that not only excludes GLBT persons, but also does not recognize my orders as a woman. While so wonderfully welcoming of me as a child, I wonder if this congregation would recognize my new flock.

Yet, it was there where I learned what it meant to be welcomed. Our faith lives, whether I like it or not, our forever intertwined. We have been knit together in the Body of Christ and I cannot, no matter how tempting, cut this congregation off from my faith journey.

I believe that we are each called to wrestle with the complexity of life in the Christian community. It is messy. Lines of division break down when we no longer cling to definitions of power based on domination or hierarchy.

How do we relate to one another with this new definition of power? What does it mean for us to be connected to the very people who seek our humiliation and exclusion? What would it look like for the welcome to be turned on its head? For us to welcome the ones who hate us? How do we teach lessons of welcoming in the context of our lives????

It is not in embracing our victimhood, or allowing ourselves to be martyred, or even in tolerating hateful theology and policy in the empty name of “inclusion,” rather, it is rooted in this radical re-definition of power that calls us to extend an irresistible welcome of compassion and service that breaks down the barriers between us, fostering unimaginable reconciliation and peace.

Christ is calling us beyond our welcoming to witness to a new way of being, a new way of living and loving that subverts old systems of dominating power and ushers in a future community marked by radical inclusion, service, compassion, justice, peace and the power of love.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Annual Conferences Asked to Step Out for Equality

Today is the first day of the New England Annual Conference where we will gather clergy and lay representatives from Maine to Rhode Island to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit in leading the Church. As we gather this week for holy conferencing in the Wesleyan tradition, we are reminded by Rev. Gil Caldwell, a member of our conference, of God's call for equality in both the world and Church alike. In a recent commnetary for UMNexus, he writes:

"Who in The United Methodist Church “steps out” to remind the church of its biblical and Discipline-based commitment to a God-given human equality?

I raise this question because in recent years a series of State Supreme Court decisions and governors’ actions remind us that equality lies at the heart American democracy. The recent decision of the California Supreme Court to affirm equal access to “marriage unions” for same gender couples is a 2008 action comparable to the 2006 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court that declared the same thing. Governor David Paterson of New York has ordered state officials to honor same-gender marriages that have taken place elsewhere.

Yet our UMC, which answers to an even higher power than the U.S. Constitution, actively denies equality in the church to some.

Specifically, the United Methodist Book of Discipline declares that homosexual persons are of sacred worth. After declaring that, however, the Discipline restricts the ways that these persons are able to live out their sacredness. LGBT people are not allowed to be ordained to the ministry, nor to have their unions solemnized in United Methodist churches by United Methodist pastors, nor even to have church funds available to help make others aware of the injustices they suffer.

Martin Luther King, Jr. asked: 'Why is the Church always a taillight rather than a headlight in society?'"

More...

Monday, June 09, 2008

Pride Reflection

I am a rare and mythical creature. No, I’m not talking about being a straight ally. But if possible, I may be even rarer than that. I am one of those rare and mythical beings that actually enjoyed high school. It’s true. I loved high school. I was on both volleyball teams, and the dance squad, I was involved with the drama troupe, and attended every dance the school hosted. Not only that, but I was heavily involved with my church. St Rose of Lima Youth Group was my second home. St Rose was an extremely liberal Catholic church in Maryland. If I wasn’t at school doing any of the activities previously mentioned, I was at St Rose either running the drama program, being one of the back up singers for the ‘house band’, going to youth group or religious education, or helping plan for the retreats and service camps we ran.


St Rose was a huge part of my high school experience, and also a huge part of helping me really find myself. Or at least, part of myself. St Rose was the first place in my life that I finally felt like I belonged. That I wasn’t the loser, or the outcast, or the ‘new girl’. It was the first place that I felt I was accepted for being me, and I never had to be anyone else. And like I said, it truly felt like my second home. Even when I went off to college, for the first couple of years, I would joke that it wasn’t a trip home unless I went to St Rose. But, as I started to discover more of myself at college, St Rose started to feel less and less like home, and more and more like foreign territory. It wasn’t until I figured out that I was gay, and that St Rose was unique in its welcoming nature, that I really figured out why St Rose was starting to feel less like home. Once I figured out I was gay, I realized that I was an outsider at the one place I felt accepted and safe. None of my friends from home were gay, and none of my friends at college understood my connection to St Rose. Not only did I feel alone, I felt abandoned. Abandoned by the one place I thought would always be there for me. And without a religious support system outside of St Rose, I felt like I had no where to turn but away.

So I turned away from my affiliation with religion and replaced all the love and pride I felt for being Christian with bitterness, shame, and sarcasm. I started to join my friends at college when they made fun of religious people, even though on the inside I felt like I was making fun of myself. Once I graduated from college, these feelings didn’t go away. I desperately wanted to find a community that would accept both my relationship with God and my desire for a relationship with a woman. I moved around a lot, and not only did I move to places that had no gay community, but also I never made friends with people who were religious. So I was constantly struggling between these two aspects of myself. I still maintained contact with my friends from St Rose, but they all stopped going to church either during college or afterwards for a variety of reasons. So our once yearly get togethers were the only time I was around people who accepted my relationship with God and understood it.

And then, about two years ago, I moved to Boston. And a week after moving my roommate from college was killed in a car accident overseas. I was grateful that I still had a relationship with God, but now more than ever I desperately needed a community to support me and help me cope with my grief, but was unwilling to admit that to myself. I started to withdraw into myself and not talk to anyone because I knew they wouldn’t understand. The only times I really interacted with people was at my job, and it was through that I met Mark. He would casually bring up his church every so often at work, and my initial knee-jerk reaction was, I don’t want to hear about church. I don’t need it, and don’t want to experience that abandonment I felt before. But Mark kept bringing it up. And how great everyone there was, and how open and welcoming his church was. And then he mentioned that his pastor’s name was Tiffany, and I started listening a little more. Growing up Catholic, I always wondered why women couldn’t preach, so hearing of a female preacher was intriguing to me and eventually Mark convinced me to come with him to a Cambridge Welcoming service. And from that first service I knew I had found my community. One that accepted me for who I am, and one that not only understood my relationship with God, but encourages me to strengthen that relationship, and understands when that relationship gets strained sometimes. Cambridge Welcoming opened my eyes events like Pride and other gay communities in Somerville and Boston. Pride was the first opportunity I had to publicly reconcile two previously disconnected aspects of myself, being gay and being Christian. For the first time I was part of a gay Christian community.

I started my journey similar to the colors at the beginning, very separated and lonely and angry and hurt, but through God’s love found a community where I can feel whole again. I am proud again. Not only of being a Lesbian, but also of being Christian. I watched a movie recently and the opening line was “A lot of people ask me when I first knew I was gay. Fact is, I don't know. But what I do remember, what I can recall, is when I first realized it was Okay: It was when I met these guys. My friends.” This community helped me realize that it was Okay. And are not only my friends, but my family. And I am forever grateful for that.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Sexuality and Religion: Talking About the "T"

This month the Martin Marty Center published an editorial by Melissa Conroy on the issue of religious response to transgender persons. Describing a recent report on NPR about transgender children, Conroy explores the conflicts that arise from rigid religious narratives about creation, sex, and gender. In closing she prophetically writes:
"As I listened to the NPR program, I was powerfully affected, not just as a sympathetic human, but also as a religion scholar. I wondered if these children would ever know that it is not that their bodies or minds are 'wrong,' but that the narratives of our culture are too limited for their bodies, their minds, and indeed, even their fantasies."
Far too often own inability to imagine beyond the narrow confines of a static tradition blinds us to the possibilities and power of the Divine working in and through the diversity of Creation. By refusing to look beyond what has always been to what is and could be, we not only cut ourselves off from each other, but also we cut ourselves off from God.

Re-imagining religious narratives is an essential part of being faithful, for it is only in and through exploration, challenge and questioning that we come to know the Divine.

* Thanks to Dave over at 7Villages for referring me to this article!

Thursday, June 05, 2008

CWM This Week

This Week at CWM

Celebration of Rev. Dr. Aida Irizarry Fernandez
Saturday June 7th from 3 PM to 7 PM

St. John’s Korean UMC at 2600 Mass Ave Lexington , MA

Guests are invited to bring cards, photos and other items for a scrap book. Please remember to RSVP no later than May 30 by calling Josephine Sierra at (978) 682-8055 x200 or by sending an e-mail to Josephine at met@neumc.org.

Somerville Pride Celebration and Communion Service
June 8th at 5 PM

Chapel at College Ave. UMC
14 Chapel St.
Somerville, MA

Join us as we celebrate the beginning of Pride Week with an ecumenical service. Joining us will be our friends from Clarendon Hill Presbyterian, College Avenue UMC, First Congregational Church of Somerville, and Unity Church of God.

CWM is hosting the potluck supper to follow, so bring a BIG dish to share!

Coming Events

Boston Pride
Saturday June 14th starting at 10 AM
Old South Church in Boston

Join CWM as we celebrate Pride. We will begin by joining the Pride Interfaith Worship at 10 AM at Old South Church. After the service, CWMers will gather outside the church to line up for the march. We will march as a congregation.

Farewell Service in Celebration of the Ministry of Gary Nettleton
Sunday June 22nd at 5 PM
CWM Upper Room
14 Chapel St.
Somerville, MA

Join us for a celebration of the ministry of College Ave. pastor, Gary Nettleton, on the occasion of his retirement. Rev. Scott Campbell will be preaching in Gary's honor.

CWM Summer Queer Film Festival
July 12th - August 23rd
CWM Upper Room
14 Chapel St.
Somerville, MA

Join us on the following Sundays after worship to watch and discuss films as part of our new Queer Film Festival. Mark and Elizabeth will be facilitating the discussions.
July 12th - Before Stonewall
July 26th - After Stonewall
August 9th - Fish Can't Fly
August - 23rd - For The Bible Tells Me So
Keep up to date with the happenings at CWM through our facebook calendar.

Mission and Service Opportunities

Somerville Pride Volunteers Needed
Sunday, June 8th at 2:30 PM
Chapel College Ave. UMC

Volunteers are needed to set up our worship space and fellowship hall for the evening's service. Please email Tiffany if you are available to help: tsteinwert@cambridgewelcomingministries.org

Boston Pride Volunteers Needed
Saturday, June 8th at 10 AM
Old South Church in Boston

Volunteers are need to march with our CWM banner and hand out our Religion Is A Queer Thing buttons. Please email Tiffany if you are available to help: tsteinwert@cambridgewelcomingministries.org

Many Stories, One Voice
Ecumenical Welcoming Conference
September 4-7, 2008
New Orleans

Designed as a leadership development event, this ecumenical conference for those in the welcoming movement offers rich Bible study, challenging and profound worship and praise, genuine relationship building across and amidst our differences, concrete skills building, reflective and incisive theological analysis and strategic action. Click here for more information.

Speakers include:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Rev. Angela Denise Davis ► Rev. Dr. Miguel De La Torre ► Bishop Yvette Flunder ► Rev. Debra Haffner ► Amber
Hollibaugh ► Rev. Dr. Horace Griffin ► Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson ► Rev. Tiffany Steinwert ► Rev. Rebecca Voelkel

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Voting on Love

Yesterday the LA Times reported that the anti-gay constitutional amendment in California has officially attained enough votes for it to be put on the ballot this fall. The proposed amendment would write discrimination into the California constitution, defining marriage as a union between "one man and one woman." In effect, if passed, this amendment would undo the historic decision of the state Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.

Given this development, in November Californians will not only vote on who is worthy to be president, but who is worthy to be loved. It seems an odd use of our democratic electoral process to subject people's personal lives and loves to the ballot.

I have little doubt how a referendum on interracial marriage would have turned out in the 1950s here in America. Yet, miscegenation laws, those banning interracial marriage, sex and even co-habitation, were never put to a vote. Rather, it was through a historic ruling of the United States Supreme Court, Loving v. Virginia, that finally declared such laws unconstitutional. Far from "judicial activism," this ruling demonstrated our nation's collective wisdom that it is never right or fair or ethical to subject the rights of the minority to the votes of the majority.

And, yet it seems we as a nation have not learned our lesson...for here we are again voting on the right to love. As a person of faith, I continue to be dismayed and disheartened by the way in which those in my own community abuse our religious tradition to deny other people the right to love. It is clear that the opposition to same-sex marriage is firmly rooted in religion-based bigotry which masquerades heterosexist discrimination as religious truth.

The fact of the matter is that religious communities are not of one mind on the issue of marriage and sexuality. For Christians, we must admit that even in our own sacred Scripture there is a variety of perspectives and beliefs about the institution of marriage. Far from the concocted notion of "one man-one woman," marriage in the Bible was often polygamous and included the right for the man to own concubines. And yes, own would be the right word, for "biblical marriage" was an economic contract between two men in which property was exchanged. The wife was often one of many women owned by the husband. Remember Abraham and Sarah and Hagar? How about Jacob and Rachel and Leah and Bilhah? Of course, these are not the stories the religious right likes to remember in the contemporary debates over marriage.

Yet, I believe that despite these cultural backlashes same-sex marriage will one day be a normal part of everyday life. Studies reveal that this may be nothing more than a generational issue. As LGBTQ people continue to tell their stories, share their lives and be proud of who they are and who they love, our culture and society will also become more open, more accepting. Anna Quindlen asserts that it is not ultimately the courts and legislatures that will decide this issue. Rather, it will be the friends, family and neighbors of same-sex couples who. witness their love and are moved to advocate for equality. Quindlen writes,
"Someday soon the fracas surrounding all this will seem like a historical artifact, like the notion that women were once prohibited from voting and a black individual from marrying a white one. Our children will attend the marriages of their friends, will chatter about whether they will last, will whisper to one another, "Love him, don't like him so much." The California Supreme Court called gay marriage a "basic civil right." In hindsight, it will merely be called ordinary life."
May it be so.

Monday, June 02, 2008

LOST and Found



“A tiger don’t change its stripes.”

The scene we just watched is from an episode of LOST, the television series which just aired its season finale this week. The show follows a rag-tag band of survivors from the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. Stranded on a remote South Pacific island, the castaways discover they must not only deal with the demonic mysteries of the island…like charging polar bears, giant talking birds, hidden hatches, and a dangerous group of Others…but they must also, and perhaps more importantly, deal with the mysterious demons of their past.

Through a series of flashbacks it becomes clear that this band of survivors carries secret sorrows and hidden sins that often haunt them more than the island itself. A brief survey of the community reveals dead beat dads and resentful children, murderers and con artists, drug addicts and renegade vigilantes, even an African warlord and an ex-torturer from the Iraqi Republican Guard. Lost in more than one way, they struggle to make their way home as they grapple with who they were, who they are and who they hope to become.

Can a tiger change their stripes?

This motley crew of marginalized, outcast and modern day sinners seems little different than that crowd gathered around Jesus in the parable we read this evening. Luke is careful to set up the story of the Prodigal One within a specific context. Jesus is at table (again), sharing a meal the text tells us with “tax collectors and sinners,” folks who, in general, were not wanted in polite society. And, as if to underscore the point, Luke makes sure to mention the grumblings of the Pharisees and scribes, the cultural and religious leaders, who scorn and mock Jesus for his choice of friends. “Can you believe this Jesus welcoming and eating with sinners!!”

Can you believe this Jesus? Well, as readers of the gospel, I suppose we can because this was after all fairly typical of Jesus (especially as portrayed in Luke!). Eating with the outcast and marginalized was par for the course if you were going to hang around this Nazarene. But, it was not merely Jesus’ association with the sinners that the Pharisees and scribes found troubling. Few would have objected to Jesus turning up at such gatherings to announce repentance. The problem was that Jesus’ association with the least, the last and the lost was not just an evangelistic ploy, entering the den of iniquity only to call the wicked to repent. Jesus was not about sandwich board predictions of armageddon.

The problem was that Jesus put the loving first, rather than keeping it until after repentance. This was no “I-love-you-but-hate-what-you-do” pseudo- gospel. Jesus was, indeed, accepting these people as people, not writing them off, nor avoiding them. Jesus treated them as people who matter, people who God loves, people who God forgives and includes.

And so, it is here, around this table of lost but loved souls that Jesus begins to tell stories. And what stories does Jesus choose in this setting? Stories about what? Stories about the lost, of course: a lost sheep and a lost coin. All stories that resonate with the daily experience of those gathered. And then Jesus tells this story, a story of family strife, greed, resentment and regret.

Arrogant young child insults parent, leaves home to make a fortune, hits rock bottom, and goes home. The parent, not knowing anything but that the child is coming, abandons cultural norms of parental dignity, and runs to embrace the child. The parent has no idea why the child is returning…forgiveness and love in this parable are offered before repentance.

On the surface of the parable the message is basic: if a parent loves that much, why can’t you think about God being like that? God already loves you, God already forgives you…no matter who you are, no matter what you have done, God loves you and forgives you.

The story of the Prodigal One helps us understand that for God love comes before repentance. This is not, however, cheap grace that abandons all moral and ethical standards in favor of an anything goes attitude. Love comes before repentance precisely because God knows forgiveness is only part of what it means to find redemption. It is just one stop along the way as people begin to turn their lives around and seek the Divine once again. Forgiveness only matters to the extent to we allow it to transform our beings, shape our lives and change our stripes, so to speak.

The tale of the Prodigal One is not a story about who we are, but rather who we are becoming.

Sister Joan Chittister has said that this parable:

“is not really about three separate people at all -- a parent, one dissolute child and one faithful child. Clear as these figures may be, they are at the same time more caricature than character, more types than persons. Who has really met any of them in toto -- the parent who is always loving, the child who is always worthy, the son or daughter who is always wanton? Down deep we know that we are a spiritual jumble of all three breeds -- the loving parent, the spiritually sophomoric adolescent, the demanding critic. We know that every day there is a choice to be made among them. The real temptation, in fact, is to assume that we are only one or the other of these inclinations, as if whatever we do once defines us forever. But that's far too facile an answer for something so complex as life. The fact is that it is our daily, momentary, continual choice among them that, in the end, will determine the very nature of our souls.”

When we begin to see life as a process of becoming we understand that being lost is never a permanent state. There is nothing that we can do, or say or even be that can permanently cut us off from God. Every day we make choices, some bring us closer to the Divine, others farther away. Sin, after all, is a turning from God. And all of us are guilty of doing that at some point in our lives. God knows it is easy to do. But turning from God is never a permanent existential condition, for we all have the ability to turn back…in fact, the Divine is always calling us back….just like the loving parent who welcomes home their wayward child. Life as a process of becoming offers us the opportunity to become more than we are by allowing God’s love and forgiveness to shape and transform our lives.

This is what I love the most about the series LOST. It depicts this process of becoming in the lives of a broken and battered people. Trapped in their own static self-identities, the castaways find themselves imprisoned by images of who they are based on the perceptions of others, their families, their friends, their communities.

“A tiger don’t change their stripes.”

Coming to the island they bring with them tarnished reflections of who they are. Each of the characters see themselves through the shaming lens of others…Sawyer, the con. Kate, the fugitive. Jack, the dutiful son. Hurley, the unpopular fat guy. Michael, the dead beat Dad. Ana Lucia, the bad cop. Claire, the reluctant mother. Charlie, the drug addict. Sayid, the torturer. Shannon, the unwanted. Jin, the abusive husband. These self-identities threaten to keep them trapped in a cycle of bad decisions and hurtful acts.

And yet, the island provides all of them an opportunity to confront the sins of their past, whether real or perceived, and offers them the chance to see themselves in a new light. Mysteriously attuned to the troubled past of all its inhabitants, the island speaks to the survivors in dreams and visions, pushing them into strange obsessions and dangerous quests, delivering healing, forgiveness and redemption in the most unexpected ways.

By re-living the sins of their past, the island offers the survivors a real opportunity to not just receive forgiveness, but to allow that forgiveness to radically transform their lives in concrete ways.

While it is never easy and there is no clear moral or spiritual trajectory of progress on the island, the survivors encounter their past in ways that empower them to change the way they are living right then, right there. Kate’s reconciliation with her abusive father leads to a renewed relationship with Sawyer. Hurley’s acceptance of himself empowers him to reach out, care for and love Libby. Charlie’s confrontation with his addiction liberates him from his own self-destructive path. Jin’s sense of powerlessness and regret reawakens his love for the wife he has neglected and abused and transforms their relationship into one of equality, respect and mutual love.

And, of course, there is Sawyer who as we saw from the clip above continues to con his way to power on the island. Yet, even Sawyer finds moments of redemption. Even Sawyer allows the forgiveness of the island and the community to transform his being and lead him into becoming a new person.

This clip comes at the end of an episode where Sawyer has struggled through flashbacks to become something more than he was, than he is. Here we find him talking to Jack his arch-rival on the island who represents all the Sawyer thinks he isn’t. Despite their ongoing conflict and the power of the secret Sawyer holds, watch what he does…




In a moment of grace, Sawyer allows the forgiveness and love which he has received to shape and transform his life, to offer a glimpse of reconciliation and grace to Jack, to pass the forgiveness along in tender and unexpected ways.

You see, the hardest part of forgiveness is not about God’s forgiveness at all. We already have been forgiven. The hardest part is allowing that forgiveness to shape and transform our lives. This is exactly what happens in each episode of LOST. While each character’s’ journey of becoming is never straightforward, each episode reveals a glimpse of grace, a fleeting moment of redemption in which we see how forgiveness, whether by one’s self or by another, leads to radical transformation.

Sometimes science fiction has a much more realistic vision of human experience than traditional religion.

Jesus loves the tax collectors and the sinners first because he knows that that love is the necessary pre-requisite to true repentance and meaningful redemption. We must first forgive ourselves, first accept God’s gift of grace, first allow God’s love to permeate our souls. Only then can we find true forgiveness and redemption in our day to day lives.

Redemption is not something that comes on the other side of death, but rather something that emerges in and through real concrete moments when we allow the presence of God to be made manifest in our actions, relationships and lives. Real redemption is when we begin to turn our lives around and seek the Divine once again. Our repentance is our openness to God’s grace and forgiveness, not merely in seeking it, but in allowing that grace and forgiveness to shape the very contours of our lives…to live that forgiveness in the world.

Sister Joan Chittister writes:

“Life is a progression of struggles meant to be endured, a succession of stumblings from which we are meant to learn, a cycle of events meant to be drained of every insight, every glory that life has to give. This is the part of us that knows that life is not a series of mindless sins, nor is it simply a series of hard-garnered graces. It is a high wire act between the two that is meant to give us heart for those around us who have yet to negotiate the contest.

Always, from somewhere subterranean in the human soul comes the call of the Loving Parent, the one who knows the way of human development, who knows that the nature of the human being is to be fully human -- read: fully frail -- and who therefore forgives wrongs. This is the part of us that calls us beyond ourselves to perfect love for the rest of the world that is just as stumbling and just as sincere as we are."

In the end, we have no proof that the erring child reformed and stayed home. We have no surety that the perfect child ever escaped the trap of jealousy and resentment. We have no proof that the parent was not hurt time and again by both of them. The story of the Prodigal One is not over, for we have yet to see what each of the characters becomes. What will they do with the forgiveness they have found?

A tiger don’t change its stripes, but it might just possibly change its life.

What will you do with the forgiveness you find?