Call and Response A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC February 10, 2019

Call and Response

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC February 10, 2019, the fifth Sunday after Epiphany. “This Is Us” series.

Text: Isaiah 6:1-13

 A long time ago, in a place called Judah, there was a King named Uzziah who reigned for 52 years. During and after good King Uzziah’s reign, Judah rebelled against God’s ways (Is 1:2).  Injustice, greed, hypocrisy, lies, arrogance, and power grabs were everywhere (Isaiah 1, 5).  Still, while Uzziah was alive there was relative stability—at least you knew what to expect.  But then Uzziah died.  That year must have felt like things were falling apart, like nothing made sense, leaving people in shock—like when airplanes fly into the World Trade Center or when a gunshot ends the life of a prophet or a president.

In the year that King Uzziah died—around 738 BCE—a guy named Isaiah went to worship…maybe because he was a regular attendee or maybe because when everything is hitting the fan sanctuaries tend to get full.  Whatever brought Isaiah to the temple, I wonder if, looking back on it, he ever wished he’d have skipped church that day…

Why?  Well, first of all, Isaiah experiences God’s glory and a flying choir whose “Holy, holy, holy” seemed to make the whole temple shake and fill with smoke. We might imagine this would make Isaiah bliss out or get his praise on.  Instead this vision elicits a searing awareness of Isaiah’s own lostness and unclean lips (another word for “hypocrisy”).  Isaiah comes face to face with his smallness and sin. That’s never fun.

And that un-fun awareness is met with the divine-vision-version of a common scene in movies, in which the villain of the piece plucks a burning coal from a fire with tongs and draws near the person’s face in a menacing way. In this instance, the coal is not meant to do harm, but to symbolize a purification from sin—it’s a sign of mercy!  Remember the refiner’s fire?  All I can say is, “ouch!”

And then, if all that weren’t enough, convicted and forgiven Isaiah (bless him, this was some day in church!) hears a question from God that likely haunts him for the rest of his days:  “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  This is like the template for bad church servant leader recruitment through the centuries:  God doesn’t provide a position description. There’s no term of service or goal clarity or outline of supportive relationships and feedback loops, no clarity around the budget for the ministry. 

 Even so, Isaiah—all purified up and ready to speak—blurts out “Here I am, send me!”

Only then does the picture start to emerge:  Isaiah is called to speak to the people of Judah in such a way that they will not open their hearts and minds and arms to God.  Instead, they will continue along their merry way—their way of denial, hypocrisy, greed, injustice, and self-destruction, hurtling toward ruin…

We see Isaiah start to wake up to what he’s signed up for as he asks, “How long, O Lord??”  And the answer comes: Until nothing but a tiny, holy seed of the nation is left…

Sometimes things have to get to a very bad place before we are ready or able to change, to turn toward a new way of life, to do things differently, to repent. [Hello, United Methodist Church!]

And Isaiah, before he even knew what he was doing, signed up to prophesy to a people seemingly intent on self-destruction…

Isaiah shows us so much of the prophetic call. //  That call begins with being humble enough to know our own sinfulness and weakness—and the systemic sin in which we swim (“among a people of unclean lips!”)—and to allow not only God’s light to reveal it but also God’s love and mercy to heal it.  Humility keeps a prophet from thinking she’s somehow better than “them” and always aware that “There, but for the grace of God go I…”  Isaiah also shows that the prophetic call is to keep reminding people of God’s love, God’s way of justice, God’s faithfulness, God’s desire for relationship—even when people can’t or won’t receive the message.  It’s to continue doing the hard and loving and just thing even when we find ourselves crying “How long, O Lord!” or—with Fannie Lou Hamer—“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!”

And as we continue our “This Is Us” series, I want us to claim and respond to our prophetic call as Foundry Church, starting from a place of humility.  We know we are far from having it all together as a community.  There are gaps and gaffes that happen here and there and now and again in all sorts of ways and places—at every level of our fellowship.  And, thanks be to God, as United Methodists, grace is a centerpiece of our theology and so we believe, by grace, we are  always “going on to perfection!”  We are humble enough to never claim that we are already there…even as we re-commit to do and be better today than we were yesterday.  We also call upon the power of Spirit not only to reveal our hypocrisy and sin but to heal it and to show us how to truly repent.

And while we know that we are always working our growing edges as a congregation, we also claim the power God gives us to speak and witness in prophetic ways.  Our strategy at Foundry is to focus on several key initiatives, realizing that focused resources can make larger impact.  We make long-term commitments, are determined to go deep in the work of effecting systemic change, and only put ourselves fully “out there” once we know what we are willing to risk and sacrifice for the sake of those with whom we stand. 

One of our long-term commitments is to stand in solidarity with our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer siblings and to provide leadership within the United Methodist Church in the fight for full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the life and ministry of the church.  Foundry has long sought to create a welcoming and safe space for persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities through what we say, how we look, by adapting our physical spaces, and   through advocacy and public witness.  In 2010, Foundry made a deeply-discerned commitment to practice marriage equality in principled defiance of the restrictive rules found in the United Methodist Book of Discipline.  At Foundry, families representing a rainbow of configurations are truly and fully part of this family. And while we celebrate this as a gift, we also proclaim this as simply the way it should be everywhere.  But it’s not this way everywhere.

Currently, the only members of God’s family who are systematically, legislatively excluded from certain roles and blessings within the United Methodist Church are LGBTQ persons.  This is not to say that systemic racism doesn’t still plague our denomination at every level.  This is not to say that gender and culture and ability bias is not present within our congregations.  It is simply to say that since 1972 statements and rules within the Discipline have denied ordination and Christian marriage to our siblings who are LGBTQ.  Pastors are officially prohibited from performing same gender weddings and congregations from allowing these ceremonies in their buildings—under threat of trial.  And, regardless of gifts, graces, and clarity of God’s call, LGBTQ persons are excluded from Elders and Deacons Orders—they officially “shall not be” ordained. 

We all know that you can’t legislate morality—if we could, the United Methodist Church would be purged of racism, sexism, and lots of other things.  We have clear statements denouncing such prejudices and legislating inclusion and affirmation for every part of the human family…except LGBTQ family members.  We can’t legislate changed hearts and minds, but legislation—laws—provide protection and preserve dignity.  As a wise colleague and civil rights leader said to me as we talked about this yesterday, “Laws fix behaviors immediately, and attitudes eventually.  If a law changes, behavior changes.  If it’s illegal for me to deny you a seat on the bus, then when you get on the bus, I can’t keep you from sitting down.  If I don’t want to sit next to you, I can stand up.  The bus is going to keep on rolling and I may get tired; I may eventually realize that I’d rather sit back down, that sitting next to you doesn’t mean whatever I was taught.”[i]

One critical objective for Foundry over many years has been to remove the discriminatory language related to LGBTQ persons from the United Methodist Book of Discipline. Leading up to the 2012 General Conference, there was great hope this would finally be accomplished. What followed was one of the most bruising and discouraging General Conferences folks remember.  In 2016, things came to a head with the movement to exclude and deny exerting the full strength of its power…I—together with the more than 30 lay people from Foundry who were there—witnessed what felt like the church careening toward a very bad place.  And then, in what could only have been movement of Spirit, the body took a breath and voted to do something new. The Commission on a Way Forward was the result, a diverse group charged by the bishops to study and discern a way forward that allowed for as much contextuality in ministry as possible and as much unity as possible. And then came the special called General Conference that will begin in 13 days in St. Louis, Missouri.  I am one of six clergy delegates along with six lay delegates from the Baltimore-Washington Conference who will join a body of 865 elected delegates from the U.S., the Philippines, Europe, and Africa to vote on how we as a denomination will be in ministry with and for the LGBTQ members of our churches and of our local communities in the future.  Knowing this historic moment would occur this year, Foundry’s Management Board named our engagement with this work among our strategic priorities for 2019.  Today and next Sunday there are opportunities to learn more about General Conference, The Book of Discipline, and Foundry’s engagement in this work over many years. I encourage you to participate, to write your prayers on a prayer flag that will be taken by members of Foundry as a visual witness in St. Louis, and to pray…

What I want to say to all of you today is that our commitment to remove the discriminatory language and provisions from the Book of Discipline is strong as ever.  Along with this objective, I also believe that holding the denomination together as much as possible is also critical to our solidarity with LGBTQ family members; church unity is important not for the sake of “saving an institution,” but so that churches like Foundry can continue to be lifelines for United Methodist children, youth, and adults who may be members of churches that don’t fully embrace them or, worse, that actively reject them.  I am encouraged by the ways that faithful United Methodists are working together across what have been previously uncrossed boundaries to move us toward a more inclusive, grace-filled, and just Church, grounded in scripture and in our true Wesleyan theological heritage.  I am hopeful for what might be accomplished at the special General Conference at the end of this month. 

And I also want to say that no matter what happens in St. Louis, Foundry will still be Foundry. Our ministry will still embrace and support all people, we will continue to worship God with our whole being, to ground and guide our witness in challenging study, to care and pray for one another as one family in Christ; we will continue to speak love into places of hate, to practice inclusion even if bad church law demands exclusion, to risk our own security for sake of the oppressed, to give fearlessly to support those who are denied what they need to thrive.  We have been called to offer a prophetic word and witness to the world and we will continue to respond—humbly, peacefully, and in the power of God’s love.  No matter what.

How long?  Even to the point of nothing being left but a seed…and if that be the case, we will roll up our sleeves and till the soil, trusting God for the rest.

 

 

[i] Rev. Jesse Jackson