Fourth Sunday in Easter: Good Shepherd Sunday

5/15

Butts. And an orange.

The doors open. Steps swept. Jim arrives with the bulletins. Rachel. The Santiagos. The church is  arriving. Amy excited to find the Beckstein back again.

We say our opening Alleluias. I point to the rainbow flag hanging from the balcony. Say we’ve more reasons to say Alleluia today.  After 33 years, More Light has finally won.  Friday the Westside Spirit photographer had come to take photos for the story. Me. And the rainbow flag. The rainbow stole Leila had made for me. The photographer remembers coming to photograph me the year I won the Westy award for community leadership,  from the West Side Spirit. (What year was that?)  It’s good to remember that time. Our work with homelessness. But this, this is the end of a long journey.

All week long on the internet there’s been a growing list of saints who fought this fight and died before it was won.  From this church, Bob and Evelyn Davidson. The pastor who pushed for the More Light declaration by the congregation.  Irene Zvonik, who fought on from her wheelchair even as she lost limb after limb. How Janie Spahr flew in for her funeral.  My mentor Rod Martin and his wife Jessie, who I lived with on Riverside Drive in 1982-1983.  Matt English who was to follow me in Tulsa and died all too young from AIDS, abandoned by the Board of Pensions. Our great night at the House of Blues in New Orleans. How they rolled out the red carpet for him. And the guys from Asleep at the Wheel played Miles and miles of Texas for him. The list of names goes on and on. I remember names and faces over 30 years. Brings tears. Help ever, hurt never say the House of Blues. I think of the church. If only. 

So this is Good Shepherd Sunday. Fourth Sunday after Easter. Every year. Why? Maybe because somehow it goes directly to what Resurrection living is all about. 

In the book of Acts, there’s this amazing passage: 

⁴All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 

Does that sound familiar? Remember from each according to the their ability to each according to their need? 

Who was all? Who was any? All we know is that the People were  filled with awe.

It all makes me think of my college friends. How some dropped out and some after graduation went and started a commune in New Mexico.  They were filled  with idealism. Eventually the goat ran away, the well ran dry and everyone was gone. When I finally came out that way, there was nothing left but stories. 

In 1973-4 I worked at the University of Bridgeport. My friend David worked wit the Jewish students there. He and a close circle of friends, his chevra, became a garin, a seed to go Israel and rebuild a kibbutz abandoned during the 1948 war.  At Gezer. When I went to visit him in 1978, he told me that he was living his dream, that it was from each according to the their ability to each according to their need? 

Everyone worked in the fields and shared other work. There was a common dining hall. A store house for everything from ice cream to watches, when you had need. Three cars shared by everyone. A children’s home where all the kids slept at night. If you wanted something special like a tv or stereo, the community would vote. 

Last summer I was back. The children’s home is gone.The common dining hall boarded up. Each family has its own car. Owns their own home. Works in Tel Aviv or somewhere else, the fields leased. What’s left? Well shared ownership of resources, a decision making process, but...

So, Acts...Did it ever really happen? Commentators argue about this. It’s an ideal. A myth. Of course it couldn’t....they say. Well, I’m not sure. 

You know, monasteries were able to make this work. Some brotherhoods, like the Franciscans. Or the German Bruderhof.  And today there are  intentional communities that seek to live this out in spiritually based communities. Our friends at Stony Point are creating  three intentional communities, communities of living faith, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. 

This life style, It was a sign...

They worshipped in the temple, the tall steeple churches. And they broke their bread, lived out their fellowship at home. They did not live separated from the broader community...this corrupt generation.

What we read about  last week, this corrupt generation... where personal acquisition defines a person, property value a church.

For the early church, this was Resurrection living,  the Abundant life....living out the  Good Shepherd life in community...

Earlier we read the 23rd Psalm. 
¹ The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. ²   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
(What does makes mean?)
he leads me beside still waters;^{* 3}   he restores my soul.^*He leads me in right paths^* for his name’s sake. ⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley,^*  I fear no evil; 

(what that would feel like...to live just  one day, afraid of nothing. People who are unafraid can’t be intimidated, manipulated.)

for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff—
   they comfort me. 
⁵ You prepare a table before me
  in the presence of my enemies;you anoint my head with oil;

(that’s not about religion or ritual, it’s about sensuality, like Mary wiping Jesus‘ feet with her hair...)
   my cup overflows. 
(like the beer ads where they run out and the guy opens up a cell phone ap to keep the party going..) ⁶ Surely^* goodness and mercy^* shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. 

It’s a demonstration of how we’re supposed to live. I remember  when I went to negotiate on behalf of the denomination with the Middle East Council of Churches. It was in Cyprus. We’d start work at 8 am. Work until noon. Have a good lunch. Siesta from 2 to 4. Then work again until 8 when we’d have dinner in the seaside restaurants. Every time your cup was empty, the cup was filled again.  If a cigarette was pulled out it was lit. No plate ever left without food.  Abundant living.
To dwell in the house of the Lord...forever...
Did you know that in Jesus’ time, the shepherd imagery was already nostalgiac? That everyone, even the farmers, slept in side the city gates? Only the shepherds lived outside. The imagery goes back to  a nostalgiac memory of their nomad days. Of the days of David.  And in a real sense connects Jesus with the margins as well. 
^{What is our sign? What is it about our life that might draw people to us?That would be immediately understandable? Well, next Saturday is supposed to be the end of the world. Judgment day. That would make  next week Left Behind Sunday.  I’ll see you then.}
As I finished my sermon, I saw Ted walk in. He’s here for the open rehearsal of As It is in Heaven. Then Danielle arrives with some business items for the Session. Another bathroom, electricity in the boiler room, they kind of thing.
Ludovica and her producer arrive for the play. I am more than annoyed that I have to be in a meeting instead. Dealing with our future. With worst case scenarios. Ecclesiastical machinations. Need to prepare for a heavy meeting Monday afternoon. Like I said, more than annoyed. 

direct from Mc Alpin Hall

Does anything ever change?

5/13

Spend the morning with John working on budget and business plan issues. Stephen and Teddy (no vintage Ruth era ball cap today) to negotiate our agreement with Woodshed. Still trying  get both Sacred Center and Woodshed in the house.  Even offer to them my own office if it will make  a difference.  We’ll think about each other’s proposed changes. Get back together in a week. See if we can finish it up.

A woman comes in. Claims  to have tripped and fallen on the sidewalk. (Oh no, not again.) Has a black eye. Took me outside to show me the place on the sidewalk where she fell. I explain to her that we’re working with the city on the whole sidewalk issue. She has a a cab waiting. Working on a documentary about her life as a holocaust survivor. Smiles and says maybe she could screen her film here. I explain to her that’s exactly the kind of place we want to be  in the neighborhood.  We will continue the conversation. Leaves in her cab. 

I find two men in the church. Older. Looking around. Look retirement age.  The white haired man goes off on a semi-rant. About landmarking. The size of my congregation. How this building will all come down, you’ll see.  How people don’t fear God anymore. Think God is a friend. 

Danielle has developed two rolls of film she found. I look at the pictures. An amsterdam Avenue Street Festival, years ago. I see the enthusiasm. People who have left over the years, for various reasons. Moved away. Literally. Or just in spirit. Children who are now so much older.  A bit if sadness fills me for a moment.

Introduces me to his partner.  Thinner. Wirier. Glasses. Walks with a limp. A subcontractor. Worker in the trade. Has a lot to say about the roof. About slate. The white haired man speaks of  Catholic churches. Names two priests. I know them both. Have a deep friendship with one of them.  The men have  all kinds of ideas. Want to help. We take their information.  We’ll see.

Danielle and I work for two hours on the Centre website, rewriting copy about the concert series, the artists, organizations involved. It’s better when we’re done. How do we get the paypal account happening? It’s late in the day. I wish the week were over. I miss Grace.

5/14

Saturday morning. Danielle and I there to let in Larry the electrician. Figure out what needs to be done.  And to meet with session members who had met with the Administrative Commission the Monday before. Danielle has found a stack of old books from the 1800's. Old handwritten Session minutes. Records of weddings. Baptisms. Funerals. A mid seventies mission study and report to Presbytery. Concerns about finances. Membership size. The mission study before Bob Davidson. Does anything ever change? Do these cycles just keep repeating themselves?

Marsha and Jim arrive.  Figure out what to say to our session Sunday after church.  Feelings are running high.  Later in the day, between a wedding rehearsal and a wedding, I stop in to pick up my Book of Common Worship. It’s very quiet. 

A two bottle day

5/12

Back to the steps, the office, after a long day away. Meeting with Marsha to make Session plans. Long meeting with John around budget and business plan. The Living Wage rally at City Hall. Meeting with two old friends, mentors. Back at the office, Megan from the West Side Spirit has come to talk about the 10A vote. She has not been here since our night on Ritual Space.

Grace is with us one last afternoon.  And in Mc Alpin Hall, Three Graces is already at work. So we go to the theatre for conversation. I explain our Presbyterian way of doing things, a bit novel for someone form a Catholic tradition. Go through the same story I told the DNA reporter yesterday.  Add my embarrassment that the US military was ahead of us on this one. Look, for a Catholic, she says, you guys are way progressive. 

I’m thinking of every daunting  challenge that faces us now. Outside on the steps I notice two empty bottles of  Romanoff vodka. I can relate. I can relate. 

Strange duet

5/10

Jack hammers pounding. Drills. Caterpillars. Concrete being mixed, poured. The city is hard at work right in front of the church. Working on the drain systems for the streets that get flooded all the time. The noise is maddening. 

city at work

city at work

 Jon walks in the door. The former second chair bass player in the New York Philharmonic, just recently retired. He is the creator and founder of Very Young Composers, a program that works with young musicians to find the music that they already have within them. And Jon has been my son Micah’s bass teacher. 

 It’s so much a musical version of what Steve is doing with video and Sylvia with theatre. The educational theory is very much in line with the principles of the Centre.  Jon will soon be heading to Venezuela to work with El Sistema, the program that produced Dudamel, the new conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. (And where  Juan might be working now.) El sistema says that they are not a music education  program but one that uses music
 as a medium for social transformation. I give Jon the complete tour as well. 

Somewhere in all this is the makings of an  is the makings of what could be a significant after school program. Music, video, theatre. Alone and collaborating together. Each one exploring that frontier where ethics and esthetics, beauty and justice meet. Where people become the subjects of their own history. 

Tom has arrived with Penny. She is the local community board official in charge of coordinating with the city public works projects in the neighborhood. We are meeting with a team of city engineers and others to talk about the sidewalks.  Soon the crew arrives; Ahmad, Pierre and Noriberto. We will debate what the city is and is not responsible for . And who is if they aren’t. Seems we’re going to have to go to the pictures, the record of before and after to determine that. Danielle lets them know that she’s got her own set of pictures. So we will go downtown to see the pictures, see what will happen next. The three enter into the sanctuary, just to see it. For Ahmad, a sense of awe. He points to a window. Compares to a similar type tradition of Persian glass and metal works. 

Outside has been this incessant din of street work. Inside, Grace has come back to practice, to play some more. This has become a sanctuary for her.  She has brought Danielle a beautiful wooden fan. Outside, Jackhammers, the sound forcing  its way into us. Inside, Grace. It’s a strange duet. 

After 33 years: Hallelujah, Amen

5/11

Today is a day to take a moment. Feel good. Celebrate. Last night during yet another emotionally exhausting Presbytery Council meeting, we got the word. The 87th Presbytery had voted yes. Overture 10A had won. The restrictive language of the constitution removed. The ban against ordination  of lgbtq folks over. Interim Executive  Presbyter Tony de la Rosa teared up a bit. This is my emancipation he said. 

The reporter from DNA Info has come to interview me. It’s a story that needs to be told.  We go into the sanctuary. Grace is back, her music filling the space. I point to the rainbow flag hanging over the balcony next to the Christian flag.  “That’s been there for 33 years,” I say. 

We go into Mc Alpin Hall, where Three Graces is rehearsing As It is in Heaven, the play about Shaker women. I tell the story. The 1978 General Assembly in San Diego. The fateful moment when the committee voted that yes, homosexuality was per se sin. The action that would ban unrepentant practicing homosexuals from ordination. (My friend Chris joked Practicing? I thought I was rather accomplished.) John Connor making the motion for a grandfather clause protecting those already ordained. My friend Richard Evans crying over coffee, saying,Well, I’m Welsh.  The Moderator inviting my friend Chris from my Yale days to pray for the Assembly, as if that somehow could soften taking away what God had already given. 

And how in September 1978, in Tulsa, Oklahoma where I worked, I would hear of a congregation in New York City that had passed a More Light statement declaring itself open to lgbtq people at every level of leadership. What a beacon of hope that was. The name was a reference to what John Robinson, spiritual leader of the pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Colony, said to the Pilgrims as  to the pilgrims as they set sail on the Mayflower.  Robinson had urged the pilgrims to be open to new religious teaching, and:

...if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it, as ever we were to receive any truth by his Ministry. For he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word.

No teacher yet had perfect knowledge of God, Robinson said:

"For though they were precious shining lights in their Times, yet God had not revealed his whole will to them; and were they now living," saith he, "they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light as that they had received."

How the  hymnwriter George Rawson (1807-1889) had used Robinson's speech as the basis of his hymn "We Limit Not the Truth of God," with the lyric:

We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind --

By notions of our day and sect -- crude, partial, and confined

That universe, how much unknown! that ocean unexplored

For God hath yet more light and truth to break forth from the Word.

Eternal God, Incarnate Word, Spirit of flame and dove,

enlarge, expand all living souls to comprehend your love;

and help us all to seek your will with wiser powers conferred

O God, grant yet more light and truth to break forth from the Word.

The movement spread from congregation to conngregation  and across denominations throughout the country. I explained how that declaration brought lgbtq people from as far away as 40 miles to worship at a church where they felt welcome. Even as the Upper West Side Lesbian Gay Association had found a welcome place to meet at West-Park after having been turned down everywhere else. 

And so with the onset of the AIDS crisis, the congregation experienced the trauma of death. How one man restored the Tiffany window in honor of his partner, renaming it the Steven Window. How the God’s Love We Deliver meals on wheels program for persons living with AIDS was born in the West-Park kitchen. And how the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, another ministry born at West-Park, would create the Michalski AIDS residence, named for former West-Park member Ben Michalski.

How the bitter merger fight of the mid-1990’s led to those who had supported the merger moving to Rutgers Church so that the legacy of the original More Light founders now belonged to two churches. How Rutgers and West-Park became the joint offices of the emerging organizing/advocacy/action group Presbyterian Welcome in 1996.  And how in 2003 at  the 25th anniversary of the More Light statement people gathered at West-Park from around the country and celebrated while Councilmember Gale Brewer read a proclamation from the city honoring West-Park for inspiring this movement and pioneering in gay marriages. 

Gay marriages. West-Park’s reputation as gay friendly and also bilingual led to us becoming a home for latino gay marriages.  Every year since I’ve been here I do half a dozen or so latin gay marriages, more women than men. Usually one Catholic, the other Pentecostal. Feeling marginalized from their latin community, their churches and even a white professional dominated lgbt community.  Until now, I’ve always had to explain that we Pressbyterians ultimately were no more welcoming. 

I told the reporter that was our legacy. She asked about today. I said that was our commitment to people at the margins. Immigrants. Homeless. Our support of the Saigon Grill workers. It’s our obligation to stay true to that call. 

Walking  back through the sanctuary, I look at the rainbow flag again. Thirty-three years, I say, a long journey. 

She takes a picture of me on the steps, holding one of the rainbow stoles knit by More Light members and worn at General Assemblies to show solidarity with those who could not be ordained. The last time she took my picture, we had just lost the landmarks fight. You’re not scowling, she says, you’re actually smiling.

Hallelujah. Amen.

actually smiling

(see story at dnainfo:  http://www.dnainfo.com/20110513/upper-west-side/gay-clergy-victory-followed-33-year-fight-by-uws-church )

* * * * 

Off to meet Ted and Mim to discuss legal issues, strategies.  An increasingly vulnerable situation.

Danelle has added a small arrangement of flowers to a glass on our desk. Grace’s music continues to come from the sanctuary. Feels comfortable. Like a home.

* * * *

Original More Light Statement

In September, 1978, West-Park Presbyterian Church became the first Presbyterian Church to openly welcome all persons of all sexual identities to fully participate in the life of the church, including ordained leadership. The Session adopted the following statement:

In harmony with the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, West-Park Church affirms the civil rights of all person. Further, in keeping with our General Assembly’s guidelines, this community of faith welcomes as members homosexual persons who both seek and have found Christ’s love.

This local congregation will not select one particular element from a person’s total humanity as a basis for denying full participation and service in the body of Christ. Nor will this community of faith condemn or judge our brothers and sisters who declare their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and promise discipleship to Him. We affirm that in meeting each other in Christian love. God’s spirit frees us all to live and grow, liberated from the oppression invoked upon us by ourselves and others.

Within this context, West-Park Presbyterian Church reaches out to Christian and non-Christian homosexual persons with a ministry of support, caring and openness—a ministry in which the creative, liberating power of the Holy Spirit rules and guides.

Third Sunday in Easter: Osama bin Laden, Mother's Day, and Jesus

5/7

I sit in the office alone pouring through legal documents. Trying to figure out how we got left unprotected by insurance in this slip and fall case when our company went bankrupt.  The Administrative Commission wants to meet with us on Monday night. Sounds and feels ominous.  Mim and I met with Gale Brewer. Trying to get to the big money. While there’s still time. The one year anniversary of our landmarking is approaching.

5/8

I sweep the steps. Light the Christ candle. Put on my alb.  Get ready and wait. It’s Mother’s Day. Jim come in and drops off the bulletins. He’s off to Queens to see his mother. I know many of our Latino members will be gone to the cemetery. For awhile, I sit and wonder. Will this be the day? Will this be the one when finally no one shows up? When I  will be alone? Rachel is the first to arrive. 

Then a woman walks in with her dog. She’s from the projects. Talks about a construction crew of formerly homeless people. Says that I should contact them. Tell them Big Bertha said to call.  The young man from Wall Street who’s just back from an  ecovacation in Nicaragua comes in. Then Hugo and Arcadia who are Nicaraguan come in. We are gathering.

I take off my alb. Pull up a stool. This is going to be a casual day.  We chant. We sing. We pray. Then take turns reading the scriptures. I talk about it being Mother’s Day. Though it’s always been a tradition to honor mothers, I know that it can be hard for those who never have been. Who wanted to be. And yet we have all had mothers. Some good, some bad, sone indifferent. And those who have mothered us. The day is what it is. 

I have to begin by talking about how it’s been a week of Osama bin Laden. I’m still  trying to come to grips with this story. Still thinking of victims, families, those survivors from that day. Remembering Kate and her witness and our opposition to the death penalty.  How Bin Laden’s time is already past. How the people of the Middle East are taking history int their own hands. 

How everything else remains the same The war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan will bot end any sooner. And what’s going on in Libya? And what does any of this have to do  do with resurrection living?

Maybe this. Peter in his sermon says. “...save yourselves from this corrupt generation...” Couple of issues here. Is this reformed theology? Can we  really save ourselves? And is this generation truly corrupt? Any more so than any other? I think of my son in Berlin, the news he gets from Europe, from al jazeera. Others view us differently than we view ourselves. 

Random irony. It says that on this day, 3000 were saved...as many as were lost at the World Trade Center on that terrible day. So, what did that scene look like? Like a stadium? Like the Billy Graham Crusade I went to as a kid?

Here’s the good news...The doors are now open. Unlocked. The disciples are unlocked. They are out now. Doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Their listeners, we’re told, were cut to the heart...

And so I wonder...are we unlocked yet? Out yet? Doing what we’re supposed to be doing? Or are we still walking on the Emmaus road walking with a Jesus we don’t recognize?

Marsha wants to know what got them to get out of the locked room, to stop being afraid, to go out again. What happened? Well, the Holy Spirit happened. The answer’s not quite satisfying. What does that feel like? 

He tries to explain it to them....was it not necessary..he asks for the holy one to suffer and die? Hugo is smiling. Was it not necessary? he says. And I understand.. He was unarmed. Hugo says. It’s not about comparing bin Laden and Jesus. It’s about authorities and executions. Was it not necessary?

Their hearts were burning...(lots of heart stuff today). And in the end, they knew him in the breaking of bread. We should have had this lesson  last week. When we shared communion. There are some commentators who believe that  the actual resurrection, the disciples’ experiencing the resurrection, took place when they broke bread together and felt Jesus’ presence with them again. Our risen Lord was made known to us in the breaking of bread...  In our 1970’s worshipbook, there was a liturgical use of this passage as the standard communion referrant, not the ‘“last supper” passages.

In the end, that is where resurrection living happens , where we truly break bread together. 

After worship, the session sits down together. To prepare for the AC meeting Monday. Marsha and Leila will also represent us  as well as Jim and Hugo.  We will listen. We will see where this is going.

I’m going to make a Mothers’ Day celebration. Beginning with Barney Greengrass.