Immanuel Lutheran Church, Holden, MA
Reconciling in Christ Sunday

It is so wonderful to be back here, to see people I’ve missed and learn what’s going on in your lives. I’m really glad I said yes, when Pastors Josh and Sara asked me to come. Especially because my first instinct was to say “no.”

It surprised me at first, and I had to sit down and think about why. The weather was the obvious culprit; I live in Texas now, and two weeks back, we had a “record-breaking” one inch of snow. One inch. And the whole city shut down. For five days. It’s moments like this that force me to remember how much of a Yankee I am. The South often feels like a foreign land.

But if I’m honest, that’s not the reason I was hesitant. I wondered, too, if it was a feeling of tokenism. I don’t want to be remembered in Immanuel’s history as “the gay pastor.” There were wonderful things that we did together, in the seven years I was here, and I don’t want them to get erased in the process.

But I quickly realized that, no, I know you better than that. My time as your pastor was marked by weddings and funerals, youth events and choir anthems, sermons and celebrations. Boiling my entire person down to one characteristic, is something that some parts of the world would do, but it’s not this congregation’s way of life. Over seven years, we became a lot more to each other than that.

And then I realized. On this Reconciling in Christ Sunday, as you celebrate the way that the Holy Spirit has worked in and through all of you to shape an explicit welcome to people who the church has, traditionally, rejected— Well, the truth is, I just don’t “feel” like I’m “gay enough” for this event.

Aside from God’s strange gift to me of a higher-pitched voice, I don’t appear as different, in my gender or sexuality, to most people. I have hobbies that could give it away—I like to knit, and don’t care much for football—but none of that is conclusive. I just don’t fit the stereotype.

I haven’t exactly spent a lot of time in the queer community, either. The most time I’ve spent with other people outside of gender norms was in seminary, pastor school—which is about as counter-intuitive as you can get. I don’t do gay things, whatever that means. I don’t work on gay advocacy or march in parades. In fact, personally, I’ve really only had one romantic relationship in my life so far—and I’m 45, which in gay years is several hundred years old. Falling in love is falling in likelihood more every day.

And that one relationship was a disaster. His name was Nicholas. And let’s just say that he had some issues. We met in 2014, and lasted about a year and a half, before I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and broke up with him. It didn’t help that he lived in Boston, and making the hour drive back and forth from here every week was miserable.

It’s funny, looking back on it. He and I were together for eighteen months. While I was your pastor. And I don’t think very many people here knew.

So that also needed some thought, as I was preparing to be with you this Sunday. Why did I never mention the one romantic relationship I’d ever had with the people I cared about most? Why did I live here for seven years, and tell stories of my own life in my sermons, and never mention my sexuality? It’s not like it would have been a surprise. It was no secret. Those of you who were here, you all knew, but I never talked about being gay.

And you all loved me. I could have said. But I felt, for seven years, like I couldn’t say. Like it would just be better if I kept it hidden away, so nobody got uncomfortable. You did hard work in calling me to be your pastor. I didn’t want to take advantage of that hard work, or force you to keep doing it. My closet had a glass door. You all could see in. But I was happy in the closet.

There are two parts to our Gospel reading today. The first relates pretty clearly to what I’m talking about. “You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus teaches. In English, we use that expression to refer to someone who lives a simple, hardworking sort of life. It didn’t have that meaning, though, when Jesus said it. He’s really thinking of salt, the condiment, the way it brings out flavor in food, the way it was treated as an especially precious commodity. You, Jesus says, are precious, and you give the world its flavor. You make the world worth living in.

“You are the light of the world,” he says. You shine light on everything around, you illuminate it, you reveal the beauty of God’s creation. You help us see what God wants us to notice, to see God’s presence in this world.

So why would you hide that light under a basket? What, honestly, is the point of a light that doesn’t shine on anything? Of course, in ancient Israel, they didn’t have light bulbs. Oil lamps were an open flame. Put a basket on top of that, and it will burn the basket to ashes, and then everyone will see the flame whether you want them to or not.

And have you ever heard of salt that loses its saltiness? It can’t. It’s a mineral, a chemical construct in a crystalline formation. There is no way to stop it from being salt.

A lamp cannot be covered. Salt cannot lose its flavor. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. So good luck hiding in the closet. Your light will shine on others, Jesus says, like it or not, and they will see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven.

It’s rude of Jesus, maybe, to follow that up with rules, words about God’s Law. We often think the Law is for guiding our lives. We think that God will punish those who don’t keep it. We think that the Bible is an acronym, and stands for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” But we think wrong.

For ancient Israel, the purpose of the Law had nothing to do with being good or sinful. Instead, it was about holiness. They believed that God lived in the temple in the heart of Jerusalem. And God is holy, immeasurably holy. They would say God was holy like we say God is love—as if that were the very definition of God. They were afraid that, if they weren’t holy enough, then the world would get too dirty and God wouldn’t want to live among them anymore, to be present in the world.

The Law was a set of rules, not about how to avoid sin, but about how to keep things holy. That’s why there are things in the Law that are good! When blood is emitted during the menstrual cycle, there’s nothing sinful about that. That’s part of how God created people. But that blood is part of the process and potential of life, and if that life comes out of the body, where it can’t produce more life, Israel believed that’s a net loss of holiness.

So when Jesus says he has come not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, he’s saying he will make it so nothing will ever make God want to take his holiness and leave. And when he says not one letter of the law will pass away, he’s saying he will ensure that there is a place for the entirety of God’s holiness here with us. The scribes and Pharisees worked to keep the world holy. Jesus doesn’t condemn their work. He makes it so they never have to work again, so that none of us need worry about holiness ever again.

This is why Lutherans believe, according to the fourth article of the Formula of Concord, one of our confessional documents, that our righteousness comes not from our good works, but from our connection to God. We cannot be un-holy. Because we have been baptized in Jesus, who is holy.

It is unfair for me to call myself “not gay enough.” I am exactly as gay as God has made me. It is unfair for me to hide my full self under a bushel basket, or use it as if it has no flavor. God has created me, my full self, as holy. It is unfair for me to hear people praise me, throughout my ministry, here and elsewhere, for being so authentic, and then withhold a part of myself, no matter how big or small that part is. Because that part, all the parts, even the ones that make me or someone else uncomfortable, in my baptism they were made holy, and are still being made holy, every moment of every day. Back then, I could have told you about my personal romantic life, at least those details that wouldn’t have been “oversharing,” and the feeling that I couldn’t was absurd. You are better than that; you have all been better than that to me.

And not only was all that unfair, but it was impossible. In my travels, I saw that— in a world that is a lot more closed-minded on this issue than we are. In Bolivia, I heard my colleagues preach sermons about those terrible gay people. They wouldn’t have wanted me in the country if they had known. But there were a few people I worked with who did know, who heard those sermons and reached out to care for me afterward, who affirmed who I am and what I was doing among them. And in Malaysia, dating would have sent me to prison for twenty years. Yet in the conservative seminary where I taught, when I was almost found out, the staunchly anti-gay seminary president stood up for me before the board of trustees, and then invited me to stay another year.

And here. After seven years of ministry avoiding it, here I am, preaching about what it means to be a gay pastor, to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ while not being entirely willing to hear it for yourself. The world has always told me that, no matter how much I love Jesus and want to be part of his community, well, that Gospel isn’t really for me. Maybe I’d just be better off if I kept my mouth shut and tried to blend in. And you, beloved children of God, you would not let me. You have plucked the basket off of my lamp, and opened up the closet door, and forced me to come out here in the light and be seen. That is what your Reconciling in Christ process has done. It’s not that you have affirmed my sexuality. You have affirmed my humanity, my baptism, my holiness, and what God’s holiness is doing in and through me.

When I first came here, back in 2010, after the lengthy call process and vote, I received a card from a member of this congregation. It had simply one word on it: Yes. And now, more than fifteen years later, you are all repeating that same word. I may have thought, at first, that I should say no. But I could not. Because you had already said yes.