NOTICE TO ON-DEMAND WORSHIPPERS
In order to expedite posting the worship services here on our website, we are reducing the transcript to just the scriptures used and the message. Union Grove UMC in partnership with Southland Books & Cafe, began holding Second Sunday Community Church in January 2023. Second Sunday Community Church takes place at 3 p.m. ET the second Sunday of every month, meets in-person at The Bird & The Book, and is also live-streamed on Facebook. Holy Communion is offered at every Second Sunday service. If you are worshipping on Second Sundays online whether during the live-cast or through on-demand viewing, you are encouraged to have bread and juice or wine available as you watch the service and to participate in communion just as if you are present with us.
SCRIPTURE READINGS
God, open us to hear and receive your scriptures today as you would have us hear them, understand them as you would have us understand them, and to act upon them as you would have us act upon them.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
*Scriptures this morning come from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.
MESSAGE – Something Old, Something New
Rev. Val
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer, and may you see fit to use me as a vessel from which you pour out your Divine Word.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Last week at our regular Sunday morning worship, I spoke about “Let Freedom Ring.” One of the scriptures in that message was from the Book of Matthew: Matthew 10:40-42
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
The passage is about hospitality. About how we greet and treat one another. I don’t know about the rest of you hear, but if I were to fill out one of those “how was your stay” cards like hotels use … I’d have to give this country some low marks. We are not very hospitable, and it seems like it’s getting worse instead of better.
It used to be better … maybe not so much here in the US … but within this faith of ours, it used to be better … Dorothy Day said, “A custom existed among the first generations of Christians, when faith was a bright fire that warmed more than those who kept it burning.
In every house then a room was kept ready for any stranger who might ask for shelter; it was even called “the stranger’s room.”
Not because these people thought they could see a trace something of someone they loved in the stranger who used it, not because the man or woman to whom they gave shelter reminded them of Christ, but because — plain and simple and stupendous fact — he or she was Christ.”
Imagine a world where every household kept a “Strangers’ Room” fully expecting that not only would they need it, but that they when they needed it, it would be for Christ. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? In this day where everyone is suspect? In this day where there are more outcasts than there are acceptable or privileged.
Matthew 10 speaks to us of hospitality … of the importance of hospitality even to strangers. In those days, stranger usually meant a foreigner. Today, stranger still means foreigners, but it means much more. Today stranger means anyone who looks, speaks, identifies, loves, or lives differently. Today stranger is coming to mean outcast, unwanted, unworthy, and suspicious.
That doesn’t leave much room for Christ … that brown-skinned middle eastern Jewish fellow who spoke Aramaic and wore sandals and long gowns. He’d definitely be suspect these days … and with his affection for little children and the way he worked? He’d be one of the first accused of grooming and indoctrination!
But that’s not Christianity to feel that way. That’s not the way God feels about God’s children. Father Richard Rohr understands the heart of Christianity as God’s loving solidarity with all people and with reality itself:
“Through Jesus Christ, God’s own broad, deep, and all-inclusive worldview is made available to us. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the point of the Christian life is to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by the cross, which is God’s great act of solidarity instead of judgment. This is how we are to imitate Jesus, the good Jewish man who saw and called forth the divine in Gentiles like the Syrophoenician woman and the Roman centurions who followed him; in Jewish tax collectors who collaborated with the Empire; in zealots who opposed it; in sinners of all stripes; in eunuchs, pagan astrologers, and all those “outside the law.” Jesus had no trouble whatsoever with otherness.
If we are ready to reclaim the true meaning of “catholic,” which is “universal,” we must concentrate on including—as Jesus clearly did—instead of excluding—which he never did. The only thing Jesus excluded was exclusion itself.
… The only thing Jesus excluded was exclusion itself. We may need to start putting that on t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, license plates, and protest signs! But I digress …
Transgender priest Shay Kearns provides an example of God’s inclusive solidarity with eunuchs, sexual minorities in the time of the prophet Isaiah:
In Isaiah 56:3b–5 … the prophet says, “And don’t let the eunuch say, ‘I’m just a dry tree.’ The Lord says: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, choose what I desire, and remain loyal to my covenant. In my temple and courts, I will give them a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give to them an enduring name that won’t be removed.”
It’s a word of comfort and hope. A word of healing…. Eunuchs are told they will be given an enduring legacy. This piece about being given an “enduring name” rings loudly for many transgender and nonbinary people, especially the ones who have claimed new names…. This also rings loudly for the many people who have felt excluded and cut off from entry into religious spaces because of their gender diversity.…
The message of the eunuchs is that the boxes don’t work. They aren’t fit to live in. They will likely kill us if we stay there. The freedom to move between spaces and worlds, the freedom to claim all of who we are, the freedom to be is what we are called to. The message of the eunuchs also calls us to look around and ask: Who is being excluded? Who is not welcome? Who is there no space for? That list of people and those names that come to your mind? The message in Isaiah 56 and from the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 says, “There is space for them in the kingdom of God, too.”… They don’t need to change to be worthy; they are made worthy by wanting to be included.
Anyone who desires the water is welcome.”
Anyone who desires the water is welcome … Paul warned the church at Corinth about things they were doing that indulged themselves while shaming the poor, the outcast. God said, through Isaiah, “There is space for them in the kingdom of God, too.”… They don’t need to change to be worthy; they are made worthy by wanting to be included.
Anyone who desires the water is welcome.”
Isaiah 56 is pretty clear. Why then are so many people acting so inhospitably? And Isaiah 56 isn’t the only passage that addresses it.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:28
For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it. — Matthew 19:12
Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture [Isaiah 56:3-5] he told him the good news of Jesus. And as they went along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What is to prevent my being baptized?” And Philip commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and Philip baptized him. — Acts 8:35-38
Before the we reach the stories of the enfolding of the Samaritans and of the Gentiles into the Church, we have the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch. It is interesting that when he meets Philip, the Eunuch, most likely a Jew who probably knew that Deuteronomy excluded him from the covenant, was reading the prophet Isaiah, which envisions the inclusion of eunuchs. Unlike Peter, who needed a vision from heaven to cross the boundary of including Gentiles, Philip needed no prodding to know that the Spirit was calling him to include eunuchs in the Kingdom of God. Philip proclaims the Good News, the eunuch believes and is received into the family of faith immediately by Baptism. Thus the first boundary that was broken down in our Baptism in Christ was not one of religious differences or race, but one of unusual gender conditions.
The story of our redemption is a story of returning us to our original blessings. The goal of the Christian life is not for us to feel alienated from our True Selves, from one another, from all creation, and from God, but instead to be restored to a state of connection and the original sense of “rightness”. Transgenders, in seeing that the relationship between their persons and their bodies is incongruent and in seeking to create a congruency where one didn’t exist before, are in a real sense fulfilling the mandate of Genesis in a way that people without Gender Issues are not capable of doing. Transgenders are people who are able to continue the task of creation and to take up the task of subduing the earth to make it fruitful within their own bodies. In a real sense, then, Transgenders have a direct and powerful connection to the creation as creatures made in the image of God, for this connection is within their own beings!
If God calls us to be farmers, shopkeepers, house-wives, lawyers, craftsmen, pastors, laborers, or whatever, God expects us to find fulfillment in that calling. If something stands in the way of that inner fulfillment and satisfaction, it stands in the way of our ability to serve God and God’s world well in our calling. A sense of Vocation would drive us to remove whatever barriers make it difficult for us to fulfill our calling. If Gender Dysphoria keeps one from being who they truly are and fitting into the reality around them, then it keeps them from serving God to the best of their ability. Vocation then demands that the individual do whatever they can to change this Gender Dysphoria. We now know that the body’s gender can be changed to fit the mind’s gender, but the opposite cannot be done. [emphasis added]
Fr. Shay Kearns, whom I mentioned earlier, gave the following message one year on the Transgender Day of Remembrance:
Some scholars have said that the eunuch is the closest biblical example we have to modern transpeople [sic]. Whatever the case, eunuchs were outcasts from society. They were denied a place in the holy assembly. They were looked down upon and despised. And yet here God is saying that they will be given a name that is better than sons and daughters. Friends, this is good news to transgender and gender non-conforming people. We know what it means to have names chosen for us that don’t fit, or to be called names that are hurtful. We also know what it means to choose names for ourselves that represent all of who we are. And we honor one another by using those chosen names even when others refuse to.
But to have an everlasting name; one that will not be cut off; this is hope for those of us who feel like outcasts. This monument is hope to those who have been killed and to those who worry they will be forgotten. This passage brings me great comfort: to know that I am a beloved son of God and that God gives me an everlasting name, even if my family rejects me, even if the church doesn’t want me, there is a place for me in God’s eyes. This isn’t just some cheap hope. I don’t offer it as a placebo, to say that we should stop fighting for our place at the table, our place in society and the church. Instead I offer it as a raft in the ocean for when the fight gets too hard. I offer it in response to the fearful hallelujah. I offer it because it’s the best I have to offer. We are beloved children of the Universe and no one can take that away from us. We are beloved children. We are beloved.
While all this has spoken of transgender folks, it is applicable to all gender identities and sexualities beyond rigid, binary hetero-normative thinking and in direct contradiction of the various passages quoted to support the slate of hate legislation passed in so many states.
And it is the failure to recognize passages such as those quoted today for many who have left the church entirely or who are in the process of deconstructing, a process one friend has said is much like being reborn.
I’m not unfamiliar with deconstructing. I feel that, in order to do Methodism correctly, one must constantly deconstruct. There is always new information, new data, new discoveries, and then there is evolution. Deconstruction is what prevents me from being stuck in the ancient past, what helps me stay open to learning and ultimately loving my neighbors. I’m still struggling with the love your enemy thing … just an honest observation and confession, but I’m trying.
So it is no surprise to me that people are falling away from the universal church in droves … the universal church has been saying, teaching, preaching, doing some harmful, hateful, hurtful things.
But … there’s a but in everything story, isn’t there? … But … I don’t see this as a falling “away.” I see it as a falling into … or at least an opportunity to fall into … to fall into a better, more pure relationship with God … to fall back onto the path we call The Way of the Cross … to fall out of the guilt and shame and never worthy mindset and into the new “I am worthy, I am loved, I am accepted, I am a child of God” mindset. To fall into the Way, the Truth, and the Life … and into the open arms of Christ.
And so … God takes something as old as time … in the old times called Eunuchs … makes them new, and gives us an opportunity to become new by accepting it’s all part of God’s great plan and to grow closer to God in the process.
Amen.
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