Today, Nov. 4, 2012, Monroe Congregational Church in Monroe, Washington, USA celebrated the ninth anniversary of it officially becoming an Open and Affirming Church. Below is the sermon I gave on that occasion this morning.
Whither Thou Goest
An ONA Anniversary Meditation
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 4, 2012
Scripture: Ruth 1:1-18
Let us pray: May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O
God, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
Nine years ago this week our church became officially Open and
Affirming. I’m sure all of you know what
that means (except perhaps for visitors), but it is good to remind ourselves of
it. To be Open and Affirming means first
of all that we accept all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender
identity. But it means more than we
accept. It means that we affirm all
people in their God-given humanity even—or rather especially—when some aspect
of their humanity is different from the majority of humans and even—or rather
especially—when that aspect of their humanity has led the larger Christian
church to reject and condemn them and their loving relationships. Our being Open and Affirming says to God’s
people who thought that they could never find a spiritual home in Christianity
because of their God-given sexual orientation or gender identity “Yes you
can.” You are welcome here in this
Christian church. You and your committed
intimate relationships are affirmed here in this Christian church. You are loved here in this Christian church
just as you are, and we welcome you into our fellowship to share in our
ministry. More than that, we invite you
to become part of us so that we will no longer make any distinction between you
and us; for we are not who we are without you.
It might not be immediately apparent that the story of Naomi and Ruth,
the first part of which we heard this morning, is a biblical foundation for the
Open and Affirming movement in the United Church of Christ, but I think that it
is. In that story the Hebrew woman Naomi
has two daughters-in-law who are not Hebrew.
They are Moabite, that is, they belong to a neighboring people of whom
many Hebrews had a very low opinion.
When the husbands of all three women—Naomi and her daughters-in-law
Orpah and Ruth—die, Naomi begins to return to her Hebrew homeland, to Bethlehem
whence she had come to Moab. She tells
Orpah and Ruth to return to their families’ homes and not to come with her to
Bethlehem. That’s what Orpah does,
making a choice that made perfect sense and for which we should not condemn
her. Ruth, on the other hand, stays with
Naomi, and as she does she delivers one of the Bible’s most beautiful and
moving statements of loyalty and devotion.
We just heard it in the New Revised Standard Version, but I’ll recite it
here in the King James Version, for many of you have probably heard its first
line in that version, perhaps without knowing where it came from. Ruth says to Naomi: “Whither thou goest I will go; and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall
be my people, and thy God my God. Where
thou diest will I die, and there I will be buried; the Lord do so to me, and
more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”
And you’re probably asking what does that have to do with Open and
Affirming. Perhaps this true story will
help clarify the matter. There used to
be a flower and gift shop on the corner of Lewis and Main here in Monroe. Several years ago Jane, as most of you know,
was serving Sunnyslope church in Wenatchee while I was serving as pastor
here. We went into that shop one day and
got talking with the owner. When she
heard that we were married to each other but were living most of the time on
opposite sides of the Cascades she said:
“Isn’t it supposed to be ‘whither thou goest I will go?’” She was, as nearly as we would tell, innocent
of any knowledge that in the Bible that line is delivered not by one spouse to
the other but by one woman to another, by Ruth to Naomi.
I don’t mean to suggest that the relationship between Ruth and Naomi
was romantic or sexual. There is no
reason to think that it was. Nonetheless,
in Ruth the Bible lifts up a relationship of devotion, loyalty, and love
between two women as something sacred, something of great value, something to
emulate. We didn’t tell the woman with
whom we were speaking that the line that she apparently took to express the
heart of a marital relationship was spoken by one woman to another. For all I know, the shock of learning that
truth might have done her in. Be that as
it may, the story of Ruth and Naomi tells us that what matters in a human
relationship isn’t gender but loyalty, devotion, and love.
It’s less apparent, but Ruth is
relevant to our identity as an Open and Affirming church in another way as
well. Some scholars believe that Ruth
was written after the Israelites had returned to their homeland after their
time of exile in Babylon. At that time
their leaders were placing great emphasis on ethnic purity and on maintaining
the Israelites as distinctly different from the non-Hebrew people near and
among whom they lived. As part of that
effort they forbid Hebrew men from marrying non-Hebrew women and even made them
divorce non-Hebrew wives and send them and their children away. Thus at Ezra 10:10-11 the priest Ezra says to
the people “You have trespassed and married foreign women, and so increased the
guilt of Israel. Now make confession to
the Lord the God of your
ancestors, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land
[that is, from Gentiles] and from foreign wives.” Ezra was trying to restrict marriage. He was trying to enforce a strict and narrow
definition of marriage. He was like a
prior day American racist of the kind that passed laws in many states against
mixed race marriages, laws that the US Supreme Court struck down as
unconstitutional in 1967.
The author of the story of Ruth and Naomi didn’t have the power to
strike down Ezra’s decree against mixed ethnicity marriages, but he could and
did lift up a powerful cry against it.
In the story, Ruth is one of those foreign women. She is a Moabite not a Hebrew. As the story goes on she marries a Hebrew man
named Boaz. She has a son with him, and
through that son and that son’s offspring she becomes the great-grandmother of
no less a personage than the exalted King David. King David, for many the greatest Hebrew man
who ever lived, had a non-Jewish ancestor.
So much for the evil of foreign wives.
So much for restrictive definitions of marriage. So much for discrimination against any of
God’s people.
Any time people try to restrict God’s love, they misunderstand God’s
love. Every time people point to others
and say you are less because you are different, they misunderstand God’s people. That is the principle behind the Open and
Affirming movement. That is the
principle that this church affirmed in 2001 when you adopted our mission
statement, with its Open and Affirming commitment. That is the principle that we affirmed in
2003 when we became officially Open and Affirming. Since then our Open and Affirming commitment
has renewed our church. It has given us
our core identity. It has created a spiritual
home for people who thought that a Christian church could never be a spiritual
home for them. It has supported and
given hope and strength to people with gay or lesbian family members who some
in the family struggle to accept or even cannot accept.
In 2003 we became pioneers in Sky Valley. We led the way. We took a risk for justice, for what is right. That’s worth celebrating. That’s worth lifting up and proclaiming
anew. So let us celebrate today, but let
us not wallow in self-congratulation or become complacent. There is always more to do. There are always more of God’s people to
welcome and to affirm. Our work didn’t
end in 2003 when we became Open and Affirming.
It had only just begun. So let us
continue that work, confident that as we do so we are truly and rightly
witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to God’s love for all people. Amen.
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