Leaping

On July 10, Pride Day, openly gay
NH Episcopal Bishop 1/. Gene
Robinson preached to a diverse con-
gregation that packed St. Paul is
Cathedral in Burlington. Following is
the text of his remarks.

or many people, you and I are
Ftheir worst nightmare. Earlier
today, you and I walked the
streets and celebrated together, proud
and unafraid. Gay men, lesbians,
bisexuals, transgendered and God
knows who else, not begging for —
but claiming equality, recognition and
freedom, and celebrating the people
we were created to be. Black / white /
Latino and Asian, male and female,
rich and poor, fat and thin, buff and
flabby, closeted and in-your-face, out
and not-so-out, rural naive and urban
cool, timid and bold, celebrating what
many people think we ought to be
ashamed of. Gathering strength from

one another, singing our songs, mak-

ingour campy jokes, acting’ as if
“who we are” is the most normal
thing on earth. Today, the love that
only a few years ago dared not speak
its name, will refuse to shut up. And
for lots of folks across Vermont, and
across this nation, it’s their worst
nightmare.

We come here to celebrate!
And to remember how far we’ve
come. Oh, I know we’ve got a long
way to go; there is still much to do.
There’s still too much violence and
prejudice and disease; too little justice
and too much hatred. But oh how far
we’ve come! And in our impatience
to claim our full and rightful place as
citizens of this land, we need to stop
and celebrate how much has been
accomplished.

There is hardly a line of
work in America that doesn’t now
have a gay professional association
working for equal rights and treat-
ment in the workplace. Many of us
who are partnered now enjoy the
same employment benefits and privi-
leges that our married co-workers do.
Many of us have shared with our
families the truth about who we are
and have found love to be stronger
than shame, and we enjoy an honest
relationship with our families that we
never dreamed possible. The State of
Vermont, as you well know, passed
into law the most sweeping civil
acknowledgment that our families
ARE families in every sense of the
word, due in no small part to the fact
that a lot of straight, small town, mid-

   

ut in the mountains

Unashamed Before God

 

robinson I

dle-America, state legislators got to
experience the abusive tactics and
corrosive hatred that have so long
been used against us, and then did
what was right rather than what was
expedient.

And now, the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court has declared there to be no
impediment — indeed for there to be a
civil right — to marriage for ALL citi-
zens of the Commonwealth, not just
its heterosexual citizens. Could any of
us, a few years ago, dreamt that we
would see this in our lifetimes?! Oh,
we’ve come a long way! And there is
much to celebrate.

But still, we are a real
nightmare for many of our brothers
and sisters in various faith traditions.
And what we celebrate and proclaim
here today is far more unnerving to
our religious establishments than our
marching in the streets of downtown
Burlington: That we are worthy to
hold our heads high as gay folk —
NOT because we’ve merely decided
we are worthy, but because God has
proclaimed it so. That we are loved
beyond our wildest imagining by a
God who made us the way we are and
proclaimed it good. We proclaim
today that we too read our Torah,
Koran, Bibles, and other holy scrip-
tures, and through the voices of their
many witnesses, we hear God’s voice
~ NOT saying “You are an abomina-
tion,” but rather, “You are my
beloved.” We lay an equal claim to a
God who loves us as we are and who
redeems us from our sins — sins,
which do NOT, by the way, include
our being gay. And we come here
today, laying claim to our full mem-
bership — our FULL membership — in
the family of God. What a blessing to
us — and what a nightmare to some!

Permit me to read one of
the most astounding stories from the
early church, one of those magnifi-
cent moments in the early days of the

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Church. [Acts 3: 1-10] Peter and John
and the “man lame from birth” were
the religious establishment’s worst
nightmare. In the early days of the
Church, soon after Jesus’ resurrection,
the disciples are amazed to find that
they were able to do marvelous things
in his name. On this day, Peter and
John have stopped to notice a beggar
at the gate going into the Temple. The
beggar asked for alms, but Peter says
“I have no silver or gold, but what I
have I give you; in the Name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, stand up and
walk.” He not only walks, the scrip-
tures say that he jumped up and
entered the Temple with Peter and
John, literally “leaping and praising
God.” Healed from his crippled state,
this nameless beggar points to and
praises the God and His resurrected
Christ, who through Peter’s touch,
has granted him a whole new life.

Why was this a nightmare
for the religious leaders? Not just

because this healing was ‘done in the " ‘

name of this Jesus whom they had
tried to do away with, and who
seemed to be more powerful and dan-
gerous dead than he was alive. But
because this man’s healing turns their
world upside down. Let’s face it: This

the temple, inside not outside, leaping
and dancing and praising God for his
healing. And in that same moment,
the Jewish authorities see the demise
of their power over him. This man
would NEVER go back to begging,
never settle for sitting at the periphery
of religious life, never see himself as
anything less than a child of God.
What a nightmare!

And the Jewish Council,
knows that “it is obvious to all who
live in Jerusalem that a notable sign
has been done through them,” and
horrified that this cripple-made-whole
has become an irrefutable witness to
the power of the risen Christ. And
they foolishly warn Peter and John to
speak no finther of this Jesus — to 
which Peter and John utter some first
century equivalent of “HEL-LO!” A
nightmare for these religious leaders,
whose neat and tidy grip on life was
crumbling before their eyes.

Not all of us subscribe to

" the stories of the Christian New * ' * '

Testament, but you and I know this
story. You and I have been that lame
beggar, believing what the church,
synagogue or mosque told us: that our
infirmity made us unacceptable to
God; that we were responsible for our

The love that only a few years
ago dared not speak its name
will refuse to shut up. And for
lots of folks across Vermont,
and across this nation,

it's their worst nightmare.

beggar knew his place in the uni-
verse. He had been assured by the
priestly powers-that-be that he was
paying a price for his sins — or if not
his, then the sins of his father. Here
was a man who had become so accus-
tomed to begging, and to the shame
he felt, he hardly remembered how to
hold his head up anymore. And then
along comes Peter, and in one
moment, the beggar is healed — not
only from his lameness, but from the
oppression he’d so completely bought
into. This man, rendered unclean by
his infirmity, and who knows that his
place is only at the gate of the temple,
suddenly realizes that his place is IN

own shame; and that we dared not
come any closer than the gate of the
Temple. And then, for you and me
and other religious gay folk, someone
comes along and touches us in the
Name of God, and we are no longer
crippled, no longer victims of our
own oppression, no longer estranged
from the God who made us. And so
we come here today — INside the
“temple” — to shout and leap and
dance and praise the God who has
saved us and made us whole. And
though we too are warned to stop our
shouting and to go back to our place
outside the gates, like Peter and like
the lame man, how can we NOT tell

 

the story of our own salvation at the
hands of a loving God?! We have
tasted God’s liberation of us — and
that toothpaste is never going to go
back into the tube!

It would be nice to be able
to stop right there — but there’s one
more thing. Good news like this
always has a price. We have been
given the gift of “new and unending
life in Him,” but it comes with a
responsibility. You and I have spent
the better part of today with lots of
folks who don’t know God, who
don’t know that there is an eternal
source for their self-affirmation, who
don’t know that real happiness and
peace comes from the wholeness that
only God can give. They have been
so hurt by their communities of faith,
it is the last place on earth they’d
look for healing and wholeness. To
these, bur lesbian sisters and gay
brothers, you and I need to come out
— about God. If we don’t tell them,
who will? - ~ 
And many of us will be
returning to our places of worship
tomorrow with people who still want
usto be begging at the gate, still
ashamed of our infirmity, still on the
periphery of the Faith. But the people
of first century Jerusalem, even the
Jewish leaders, could not deny that
the beggar’s healing was “of God,” a
notable sign of God’s saving grace in
his life. You and I are called to live
OUR lives in ways that make God’s
saving grace undeniable. And you and
I need to come out to them as well —
about God. You and I need to tell the
story of our salvation at the hands of
a loving God in such a way that they
can recognize that the God WE know
is the God THEY know. Don’t simply
talk about being gay. Talk about how
God has come into your life and
touched you and healed you and
loved you so much it makes you want
to leap and dance. Only then will
their hearts be warmed. Only then
will God have a chance to heal
THEIR infirmity.

We’ve got a lot to celebrate
today. We are loved by God beyond
our wildest imagining. It is time to
walk and run and leap and dance and
praise God — gay and straight, young
and old, male and female, people of
every color of the rainbow. This is no
nightmare. This is God’s dream com-
ing true! V

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