The Proclaimed Word
Preached by the Reverend Canon Durrell Watkins at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, February 3, 2008, at the 8:40 and 9:50 am services.
I battle weight… though lately I have not so much battled weight as I have
formed an alliance with it. I’ve looked into the eyes of Prime Minister
Cheesecake, and I’ve seen his soul. I’ll spend three months losing 15 or 20
pounds, and then three weeks gaining it all back. It’s OK; I’m not depressed…
except when I’m dieting. I just love food. And strangely, exercise doesn’t
come as naturally to me as snacking does. And about half my family members are
given to corpulence…so it’s genetic, right? These factors all conspire against
me to make sure my weight exceeds 200 lbs more often than not. So when I talk
about God’s feast, or the Banquet of Love, or having room at the Table… I
speak with authority, conviction, and with the voice of experience.
Sophie Tucker, herself not a small person, is my role-model… she claimed
and celebrated her girth and insisted that she was in fact the last of the Red
Hot Mamas. She would even say, “The one thing I’ve noticed girls, and you can
store this under your domes — the married men who follow me around have skinny
wives at home.” If you can’t fix it, feature it. Sophie was very good at that.
Well, I want to talk a little this morning about the welcome feast, the
love feast… it isn’t fattening, and in truth, you can’t over indulge. It was
that great old saint of our faith tradition, Auntie Mame, who wisely said,
“Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.” It’s true...
the truth of life, of divine life, is that it offers unconditional and
all-inclusive welcome. We all need it, and we probably won’t feel whole
without it. The trick is learning that it is here for us, and taking advantage
of the gift.
In 1989 I was at a Country & Western dance club in Dallas, Texas. In a dark
corner of a bar I walked into for the first time, I looked down at a table and
there was a brochure that had been photocopied on an office copier. It was a
grainy black and white copy of a tri-fold. The brochure said simply,
Homosexuality & Christianity
and on the back of it was the name and
address of a church: Metropolitan Community Church (MCC).
I can’t exaggerate the power of that discarded, photocopied brochure. Over
the next several months I must have read that thing a hundred times. That
folded up bit of paper invited me to enjoy the feast of life as the person I
was. It quoted some scriptures and it referred to psychological and
sociological studies, but what it really did was invite me to consider and
explore the possibility that I was exactly the person I was supposed to be,
and that as the person I was I had gifts to offer my world. That brochure
affirmed my sacred value and in my spirit was my own magnificat… my
soul magnified the goodness of life that was expressing through me. That
brochure invited me to explore spirituality with a bold and radical honesty
seldom found in Christian churches.
I don’t know who took a brochure and bothered to photocopy it. I don’t know
who left it behind in a loud, smoky club. I don’t know why out of the entire
establishment, I happened to pause right where that brochure was. I don’t know
why I bothered to pick it up, and take it home, and read it over and over
again. I don’t know why, but I know that because I did, my life is very
different than it might have been otherwise. I discovered the excitement and
the freedom and the joy of exploring my spirituality. I had always had
questions, but they were accompanied by guilt or fear. Now it occurred to me
that the questions were more important than the answers. MY questions were
part of MY quest, and this little brochure let me know there was a place for
me and my questions and my quest, and that offered me such hope and such
empowerment and such validation that the genie has never been put back in the
bottle. I resonated with Paul’s statement to the Galatians, “For freedom
Christ has set us free.” For the first time, I associated religion with
freedom, which is what salvation now means to me.
Later, as a member of a Metropolitan Community Church, I would hear a
minister on the staff or our church pray during worship. Rev. Carol West was a
charming and winsome person who prayed beautifully. And I noticed in the early
nineties that she would always conclude her prayers by saying, “And as always,
we pray for a cure for AIDS.” That was amazing to me. We did multiple funerals
every week for people with AIDS in those days. Urban life was a battlefield,
and wounded soldiers were dropping in our midst every day. Medicine was not
yet offering much hope, and most churches were either ignoring the AIDS
crisis, or daring to call it divine punishment on particular groups of people.
But in the church that I found though a discarded brochure, a charming woman
would stand in front of a packed house and very gently say, “… we pray for a
cure for AIDS.”
Having HIV/AIDS didn’t exclude one from our church. In fact, we brought the
virus right into our public prayers. That felt so welcoming. That felt so
encouraging. That felt so comforting. Just to know there was a church that
would stand with you without judgment that would dare to hope against hope
that things could get better — even as they seemed to be getting worse. There
was a place that celebrated, not merely tolerated, not ignored, not condemned,
but celebrated the gay man, the lesbian, the bisexual, the transgender person,
the non-homophobic heterosexual, the skeptic, the interfaith couple, the
person with AIDS. There really was a spiritual home for all people, and that
seemed new and exciting and miraculous to me.
I’ve been part of MCC for 17 years this month… almost my entire adult life.
I’ve been part of churches with as many as 2,000 members, and with as few as
50; I’ve worshiped in churches in sleepy, suburban bedroom communities and in
bustling urban metropolises. And in each of these wonderful places, people
would find their way home. Aching from a divorce, abandoned by their parents,
or by their children, angry at their former churches, lonely or scared or
searching or curious, fighting for their dignity or for their lives as our
friends in Jamaica are doing… they would come in and find SOMETHING that
proved to be a lifeline. I believe that something can be called “Welcome”.
What people continue to find in our churches is a place that doesn’t condemn
them for where their journeys may have taken them, but that instead says to
them, “Where’ve you been? Welcome home!”
By calling ourselves progressive here at the Sunshine Cathedral, we mean
that we are spiritual seekers who understand our Ritual Communion Meal to be a
representation of an ancient vision of God’s feast for all people. By allowing
people to come home, to be who they are, to love them just as they are and to
pray for them and with them just as they are…that’s healing. That’s
miraculous. That’s why we are here… to affirm YOUR sacred value, to say
whether this is your first time here or your thousandth time here… WELCOME
HOME!
In chapter 55 of Isaiah’s prophecy, that welcome is made quite explicit. We
heard the first few verses earlier this morning, but let’s listen to a bit
more of that text. Hear these words of Isaiah 55, and hear them as if they are
the word of God directed at you as the people of God… hear these words as if
they were meant to affirm and bless you… hear these words as if they were
intended to fill you with hope and joy, because I believe that is exactly what
they are. Isaiah 55 reads:
ALL you who are thirsty, come to the water! You have no money? Come,
receive grain and eat. Come… drink wine and milk. Why spend your money for
something that doesn’t build you up? Why give your wages for what doesn’t
satisfy? Listen to me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare.
Come to me… I will renew with you the everlasting covenant… Seek our God who
may still be found, call on God who is near… Turn to God for mercy... for just
as the rain and snow come down from the heavens and do not return there till
they have watered the earth, making it rich and fruitful, giving seed to those
who sow and bread to those who eat, so shall my word be that goes forth from
my mouth; it shall not return to me void, but shall do my bidding, achieving
the end for which I sent it. YES — in Joy you will depart, in peace you will
be brought back; Mountains and hills will break out in song before YOU, and
all the trees of the countryside will clap their hands for you.
That’s the message of Isaiah 55.
ALL… COME… GO OUT WITH JOY… RETURN WITH
PEACE… BECAUSE THE WHOLE UNIVERSE CELEBRATES YOU.
That’s what a
contributor to Isaiah’s prophecy believed. It’s what Jesus believed. I hope it
is something that you will at least consider.
The Feast of Love is prepared for YOU… no matter what you believe, no
matter who you are, no matter where you’ve been… the grace represented at this
table never runs out and it is never withheld from anyone. Even if you don’t
want the bread or the wine, the love that those elements represent still
enfolds you and that divine love celebrates the beauty and the goodness that
you are. Just as you are, you are the reason we celebrate today. Hear the Word
of God saying today, “Welcome Home”. This is the Good News. Amen.