Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 24, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

This is not the sermon I had intended to give this morning. Actually, this is the third sermon I came up with to give this morning. You can be really thankful that I’m not giving the first sermon I thought of. Actually, you can thank the Wednesday morning lectionary group for talking me out of that one. It was about the paradox of how God is present in our experience of the absence of God. I actually believe that to be true, but my thought on the subject was so abstract that even I wasn’t sure it wasn’t mere sophistry. So be thankful you’re not getting that one. You aren’t getting the second one either, although not because that would have been a bad one. It would have been about how God is always there reaching out to us, waiting and wanting to connect with us, even when we don’t reach back. I believe that too, and that is the theme of this sermon as well as that other one I never wrote. But this one is different than that one would have been because of an experience I had this past Friday evening.

Friday evening my daughter Mary and I went to a concert of the Seattle Men’s Chorus titled “Scared Faithless.” For any of you who don’t know, the Seattle Men’s Chorus is made up of and is run by and for mostly gay men. It is a significance force in Seattle’s gay culture, and it is one of the premiere men’s choruses in the country. Its musical director is Dennis Coleman, who is also the choir director of our sister congregation Bellevue First Congregational UCC. The general theme of this concert was gay and lesbian people’s experience with religion and the churches. In particular it faced the pain that characterizes so much of that experience with honesty, compassion, and on several occasions with humor. Early in the concert, for example, a man playing a Fundamentalist, Bible thumping preacher railed against the abomination of eating shellfish, something Leviticus condemns as strongly as it condemns male homosexual acts. Someone held up a sign that read “God Hates Shrimp.” The “preacher” roared that that crab claw that you dipped in butter with a touch of garlic may be the same claw that drags you down to eternal damnation! It was very nicely done. Throughout the course of the evening individual members of the chorus would step forward and tell their personal stories of their experiences with religion or their present attitude toward it. Two of them stand out for me, and this sermon is different from the one I had planned because it is built around those two stories.

The first story: A man whom I don’t know stepped forward. He said “I’m an atheist.” He said that for him the most important thing for all people is to honest. Honest, he said, about what we know and what we don’t know, what we can know and what we can’t know. He said he doesn’t like terms for his position like atheist, agnostic, unbeliever, and so on because they are negative. They say what he is not. He said he much prefers words for his position like reasonable. He said he believes that if everyone would just be honest perhaps we could be truly open to what he said is “really there.” His view of religious faith is clear from his remarks. To him it is unreasonable and dishonest. It claims to know things it cannot know, and it believes in things that aren’t “really there.” It was clear he has never read my book, but then since that book hasn’t been published, and I don’t know him, I don’t see how he could have. His remarks were warmly received by what I sensed to be a significant and enthusiastic minority of the large audience at McCall Hall—which to me is still the Seattle Opera House.

The second story: This one came from my colleague Stephen Hadden, pastor of Tolt Congregational Church in Carnation. Stephen is openly gay and sings in the men’s chorus, his membership in the chorus being something I didn’t know about him until he stepped forward on that stage Friday evening. He said that he left the church of his youth when he discovered his homosexual orientation. He found what he called a large mainline church that he joined because it had a large and exciting music program. Eventually however he was asked first to leave the music program and then to leave the church because of his orientation. Eventually he found the UCC, which has ordained him and is benefiting from his gifts for ministry, a blessing both for him and for the church.

On the way home after the concert I told Mary that I wanted to use the concert as a basis for my sermon on Sunday. She said that depends on what the lectionary is. When I told her about our passage from Isaiah 65 she said “that works.” And she’s right, of course. She usually is. In that passage, especially in verses 1 and 2, God speaks of how God yearns for connection even with those who do not seek God. Verses 1 and 2 read:

I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said: ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that did not call upon my name. I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices….NRSV

I invite you now to take a look with me at how those two vignettes from Friday’s concert interact with these verses.

First the atheist. The most interesting thing about his remarks for me was that his objections to religion have nothing directly to do with his experience as a gay man. They were the objections of secular Western culture generally. His objections were more epistemological than anything else, that is, they were grounded in an understanding of how we know what is real. When he said, or at least strongly implied, that religion claims to know about things it cannot know he was limiting our way of knowing to the way we know things about the physical world. When he said that he prefers to be called reasonable rather than an atheist he was saying that religion is unreasonable. There’s an assumption in that remark that reason is limited to the logical, or perhaps to the scientific. This man’s well-articulated objections to religion are the objections of Western rationalism generally. They reflect a dominant strain of thought in our culture, a fact that was reflected in the warm reception his remarks received from at least a significant minority of the audience.

This man represents “those who did not ask” and who “did not seek” God of Isaiah 65:1. He represents a nation that does not call on the name of the Lord. Yet Isaiah 65:1 tells us that God yearns to connect with this man and with the hundreds of millions of people like him all over the world. His narrow understanding of the nature of reality and of how we know that reality has cut him off from the reality of God. Yet that reality is still there, reaching out to him, yearning to connect with him. God holds out the Divine hand to him. Should he ever feel the need of God, and should he find a way to open himself to the reality of God, God will be there reaching out for him, ready to receive him with open arms.

Next the gay pastor Stephen. His experience is almost, but not quite, the exact opposite of the atheist’s. He did not stop seeking God, but the institution that to so many people represents God and God’s word and will on earth stopped seeking him. Those who claim to know the truth of God, who claim to present God’s truth to God’s people, rejected him. But he did not stop seeking God. He would not let the hostility of those who claim to be God’s representatives stop him from seeking the God that I’m sure he felt (rightly) was always seeking him. Stephen and God found each other in the United Church of Christ, a church that does not stand in the way of anyone’s connection with God.

Friends, these two vignettes from the Seattle Men’s Chorus concert drive home for me how vitally important it is for us to continue to be who we are in this place. For the atheist we can be a place where religion is reasonable and honest. We can present a faith that does not claim to know what it cannot know but that reflects our spiritual experience of the reality of God, an experience that is every bit as valid as our experience of physical reality and at the most fundamental level not significantly different from it. We can make Christianity accessible for those find the dogmatism and the anti-intellectualism of so much of American Christianity not just unappealing but downright repugnant. We have an answer to this good man’s objections to religion; and whether he ever hears those answers or not, we need to keep preaching them loudly and strongly to a culture that so badly needs them.

For God’s gay and lesbian children we can be that spiritual home that nurtures and supports their connection with the God who yearns to connect with them. We can be that for all whom the church has rejected, not just gay and lesbian people but divorced people, mentally ill people, differently abled people, anyone against whom the church has spoken a word of judgment rather than a word of God’s compassion and grace. Some of you know how important that ministry of ours is because you have found a welcome and an affirmation here that you never thought you’d find in a town like Monroe or perhaps in any Christian church anywhere. Some of us know how important our ministry is because we have heard your stories and shared your joy in finding this church.

So, my friends, let us keep our hand to the plow as we plant seeds of God’s grace for all people in this place. This evening at the second installment of Martha’s Kitchen let us welcome the homeless and the poor, those who are God’s special favorites. Let us continue to reach out to all whom the church has excluded and to all who reject the church because of the ones the church rejects. Friday night I heard the stories. I heard the stories of the pain that unwarranted judgment and exclusion cause so many of God’s children. And I heard the stories of the joy that comes when they find a place where they may freely reach out to the yearning God who ever reaches out to them. What we’re doing here is important. What we’re doing her matters. Relying on God’s grace, let us continue the good work we have begun. Amen.