The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Durrell Watkins at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, June 15, 2008.
The bible is full of odd stories; but “odd” isn’t necessarily bad.
For instance, it is odd for the church to celebrate every year a tale about
an unwed and temporarily homeless mother having a baby in a barn. Odder still
that story is the one used to assure us that God is with us!
It’s odd to claim that a crucified peasant lives on somehow, and that his
transcendent life enriches and empowers our own. It’s an odd claim, but one
that that has energized Christians for centuries.
It is odd for a persecutor of Christians to have a mystic vision of the
Cosmic Christ followed by a personal conversion that leaves him as the single
largest contributor to what would become our New Testament! And yet that is
the story of the Apostle Paul.
It was odd on October 6, 1968, for a defrocked Pentecostal gay minister to
have church with 12 people in his living room; and odder still for that tiny,
unlikely church to grow into the now 40-year-old, world-wide Metropolitan
Community Churches movement that includes the resplendent Sunshine Cathedral.
It is odd for a church to decide be more welcoming by saying we won’t
condemn you for your difference, neither will we make you invisible by
pretending we don’t notice your difference.
I had a friend once who said, “I never think of you as gay.” And I said,
“Then you don’t think of me as who I am. You’ve erased my reality to
accommodate your comfort, which is as homophobic as if you called me nasty
names.”
It’s odd to summon the courage to say: We don’t condemn difference, neither
do we ignore difference; here at the Sunshine Cathedral we celebrate
difference!
It is odd that the last bastions of patriarchy feel so threatened today
that they must try to write discrimination into state constitutions to keep
liberty and justice for all
from being realized. Their desperate act may
delay justice but it will not ultimately deny it.
So when I say that I love odd stories, please hear what I really mean. In
the odd, the unlikely, the peculiar, the unusual, the unprecedented, Something
wonderful is often at work. In the midst of the odd, we may just find God.
In Genesis 17 we learn that the patriarch Abraham is 100 years old and his
wife, Sarah, is 90. Then in the following chapter, Genesis 18, we read about
God accompanied by two messengers calling on Abraham and Sarah. If I were 100
and angels came knocking on my door, I might start to panic a little bit. But,
as I’ve told you before, I’m a worrier.
God and angels making a house call: the story is already a little odd. But
as the story progresses we discover that God and company promise that
90-year-old Sarah will become pregnant. Sarah, the story says, laughs out
loud; but the joke’s on her because in chapter 21, 90-year-old Sarah gives
birth to Isaac.
Now, if this were a news report, I’d have to call it tabloid journalism.
But it isn’t journalism, and it isn’t history in a modern, social scientific
sense. It is a sacred story, a story that is intentionally odd as a way
of saying that long after we have given up on ourselves, God has not given up
on us.
Is the story factual? I have some doubts; but is it true? I believe it
absolutely is!
It’s odd to have hope when life seems hopeless.
It’s odd, ridiculous, sometimes even laughable for people to dare to hope
when despair would seem the more reasonable response.
But as queer, as odd as hope can be, the biblical witness calls us to be
the oddly hopeful of the world.
That’s why St. Paul reminds us, “We know that affliction produces
perseverance, and perseverance [produces]… character; and character [produces]
hope. And such a hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been
poured out in our hearts through the holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Now, the Sarah story isn’t all bubble gum and balloons. First of all, she’s
going through pregnancy at 90... what will the other couples on Canasta night
say? Never mind the morning sickness, and the actual difficulties of labor.
Then, there is Sarah in her mid-90s chasing Isaac around in his “terrible
twos”.
And then there is the unforgivable moment that her husband takes the child
of her old age and is willing to make a human sacrifice of him because he
believes that’s what God wants.
And, there is the time when Sarah, to protect her own privilege, oppresses
her African servant, Hagar.
There are lots of twists and turns in this story. Hope doesn’t mean that
life will be easy, or that we won’t make mistakes, or that disappointment will
never come our way.
But, difficulties can produce the kind of character that leads to hope, and
hope doesn’t disappoint.
Circumstances will disappoint.
People will disappoint.
Institutions will disappoint. The Florida Lotto disappoints me twice a
week!
We will even disappoint ourselves.
But hope doesn’t disappoint.
Hope simply reminds us that possibilities still exist and that God still
cares. And sometimes, that’s all we need to experience a miracle in our lives.
Whatever you are facing today, I can’t promise that it will work out the
way you want as fast as you want. But I can promise that because of the love
of God being poured out into your heart, there is reason to hope. This is the
Good News. Amen.