The Same Old Lesson to Learn.

Read the Bishop’s pastoral letter, then:

+“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This glorious soliloquy from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome has offered hope to the outcast for generations. As the Church, and the world, has battled to decide who is in and who is out, who is acceptable and who is not, this passage from today’s Epistle leads us to realize that, whatever the barrier, we have no right to erect it when it comes to church membership, or the offering of the sacraments. Today, as stated by Bishop Franklin, yet another human barrier has fallen. Once again, the love of God trumps bigotry, fear and hate.

Whenever a barrier is knocked down, people become anxious. Anxious because new is scary and different can be uncomfortable. For some of us, the law for marriage equality, and our Bishop’s pastoral response to it, is a source of great jubilation; for others, it’s a source of worry and concern.

But in reflecting on this development the past few weeks, and in considering how our work in this place can reach out to those so long injured by the church as institution I realized something:

“the more things change, the more the stay the same.”

I had a history professor in college, Dr. Schutte, who said, “History repeats itself because people change. We keep having the same battles over and over again because each generation needs to learn these lessons for themselves.”

And so, every couple of decades, a new barrier is identified, and change occurs. As the Bishop said, first it was race, then gender, now, sexual orientation. Presiding Bishop Edmund Browning, in 1981 (coincidentally the same year my History professor made her statement) pronounced “there shall be no outcasts in this Episcopal church.”

For 30 years we’ve been trying to live into that promise, learning the same lessons along the way. And for 2000 years we’ve been trying to live into Paul’s statement to the church in Rome, learning the same lessons, along the way. And Paul was trying, as we continue to try, to live into Jesus’ commandment that we love one another as he loves us…learning the same lessons along the way. Since the beginning of time, we’ve been trying to live into God’s deepest desire for us: that we work together, in spite of our differences, in spite of our fears regarding those differences, that we work together to love one another, just as God loves us….learning the same lessons along the way. But to learn these lessons we have to stretch, we have to get uncomfortable, we need to change.

In the church (and in the state of New York) today it’s Gay and Lesbian people, 30 years ago it was women, before that it was deaf people, before that it was people of color…. back in the days of Paul it was this new sect of Christian Jews, breaking the barriers of the Temple Jews. It’s the same lesson: God loves everyone and everyone is welcome at God’s table. We’re still stretching, we’re still learning, we’re still uncomfortable….

And at the forefront of this stretching, this learning, this increasing discomfort stand people taking the lead… Men and women who break through and, at great personal risk, pave the way for others. Our church calendar honors many of these trailblazers, Absalom Jones, the first African American Priest, Henry Winter Style, the first deaf priest, Barbara Harris the first woman bishop, Gene Robinson the first openly gay bishop.

The Bible, too, is full of such barrier breaking people. From Abraham to Noah, from Moses to Elijah, from John the Baptist to Jesus. And then there are the women: Sarah and Hagar, Miriam and Deborah, Ruth and Naomi, Mary and Martha of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles and, of course, the young woman who said yes, the woman who was by Jesus side from his birth to his death, from his Resurrection to his Ascension ,Mary the Mother of Jesus, the God-bearer. These women stretched boundaries, made others uncomfortable and brought about change….they stepped out of the familiar and the expected…what they did was new and this unfamiliarity, this “out of the box” behavior, left the main stream culture feeling insecure, unsure, afraid.

And when insecure, unsure and afraid those in control, those settled into the familiar, often lash out….in anger and in fear. It happened to Hagar, it happened Ruth and Naomi, it happened to the Mary’s. It happened to Absalom Jones, to Henry Winter Style, to Barbara Harris and to Gene Robinson.

New and unfamiliar is threatening. We, as human beings, categorize things…we process things according to what we know. And when something isn’t familiar, when it (or she or they) doesn’t/don’t fit into a pre-set category, we’re thrown off balance, and being off balance is threatening, and uncomfortable and scary.

Our anxiety when it comes to change, our discomfort when it comes to different, is nothing new.

It happened with the Jews and the early Christians two millennia ago.

It happens with refugees.

It happens with different races, it happens with different cultures.

It happens with men and women, with straight and with gay.

It happens with liturgies, it happens with the time of church services, it happens with new priests, new parishioners.

And it happens with the advent of marriage equality in our state and in our church.

I share with our Bishop the hope that as we delve into this unfamiliar territory of marriage equality…and then when we delve into whatever barrier is next identified and then broken down…that we remember Paul’s loving reminder, that we learn this fundamental lesson of humanity: that nothing, no one, no thing, will ever keep us—all of us---from the love of God as given to us through Jesus Christ. Because that love the love which fits us like a glove trumps all fear, all discomfort and all anxiety. Every single time. +