OM DETTA AVSNITT
This is a little different view from the one that I'm used to when I'm here. So welcome and thank you for the opportunity.
Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. I love those words from Mary Oliver, and I love being here to talk about the music of our movement. Making music is an act of creation. What draws us to its sound? On this reconciling Sunday, we celebrate what we have learned from our music. You've heard some of it already this morning, and it really preaches.
It was really easy to write the sermon because the songs kind of do it for you. I will always be grateful to people like Julie and Rush and Mark Millar and the many others, who have lent their gifts to this movement. We associate music we like with where we were when we first heard the songs. Linda and I frequently talk about snack bar songs.
And what we mean is those songs from the 1970s that played on the jukebox in the Wesleyan College snack bar.
Every time we hear one, it brings back this image of this small college snack bar with a jukebox over in the corner that served the best bagels in cream cheese you will ever have. And where we made and met some lifelong friends.
More recently, my siblings and I have been going through my mom's belongings. We came across some records a few weeks ago that have to have been her mother's, because they weren't people my parents ever listened to. We laughed at Lawrence Welk and Charley Pride and other memories of things that we heard at my grandparents house. The image it brings is of 15 plus relatives in my grandparents five room house, most of us pre-teens, and lots of noise and laughter.
We pulled out the Kate Smith Christmas album to play this Christmas.
Music accompanies us throughout life. No matter the occasion, it gathers us in and holds us. It feeds our memories, offers solace, and provides great joy. It reminds us that we are not alone in a way that words cannot. It takes us out of ourselves and places us inside something larger, larger, a congregation, a movement, a denomination.
A people, and a promise. That feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves is what we call all. And this movement is no stranger to that. Or I don't know what Charles Wesley would have had to say about today's LGBTQ justice movement, but we Methodists should not be surprised that movements have a soundtrack. We inherited a theology that was sung.
Charles Wesley didn't simply write songs for people who already knew what God was doing. He gave people language to imagine the freedom that God was calling them toward as Methodists. Justice movement might just be a part of our DNA. So in Ginger sent me the theme and the scriptures for the day. I was kind of excited, but I also wondered how I could fit it all into one sermon.
I'm still a little worried about that. There's material for a sermon series in this scripture, so I took a step back. The first thing I did was write down everything that the music of movements, plural, meant to me.
And the one thing that stood out from all of that, from all of the words I wrote down, is the word connection. Because the music of a movement helps people, individuals, become a people, a people with a common vision and a common goal.
The music of the movement is part of the connection that I was just referencing. It teaches us to hear a future that is not here yet. For the reconciling movement. It was imagining a church where queer folks called the ministry could authentically respond to that call, and where same gender couples could be married in church sanctuaries by their pastors.
At foundry, we can celebrate that our own Reverend T.C. Morris or Morrow. Excuse me. Tse is serving her first appointment today. Her path from seminary to appointment was long, and I remember the year that she and Joey Heath Mason were told no. Linda and I were fortunate to be married here ten years ago, as gender just mentioned ten years ago this November.
Not everyone in all United Methodist churches was that fortunate. In 2016, after the 2024 General Conference. The knows are happening less frequently and we can be grateful for that. The texts we read this morning, taken together, are powerful, creating a kind of theology. In my words, that theology is remember, our stories, resist structures of oppression, belong and create something new.
The Psalm draws us in with its promise of new life. Sometimes we sing because something has changed, and sometimes we sing because we believe something must change. The invitation is to sing a new song. The music of the reconciling movement connects us through the hard work and exhaustion that movements bring, captures our spirits, gives hope, loves us, and has long provided the strength needed to keep going.
For some, that road has been over half a century long.
We sang. All are welcome. Before we were draw the circle wide. While the welcome was still narrowing. A place at the table while we stood on the other side of locked doors. I am a child of God. While this church was telling us we were less worthy, we sang The Future before the United Methodist Church was ready to hear it.
And we weren't always particularly patient. The letter to Ephesus was written to Gentiles, not to Jews. Verse 14 connects Jews and Gentiles in one group under Christ Jesus, breaking down a wall of hatred and hostility. Paul's, or more probably Paul's disciples letter, brings up an image of breaking down walls. But the author doesn't say that Christ convinced the people on one side to be nicer to the people on the other.
And it doesn't say that they formed a committee to study the wall, to see if it needed to come down or stay up. It doesn't say that they created a strategy group to refine legislation to get removal of the wall approved. He doesn't say that. They put up a sign that says, all are welcome on this side of the wall.
Paul says Christ broke down the wall. And then he says something that's even more notable. He talked about why did it to create one humanity, not a slightly improved version of what was already there, but something that was inclusive of Jew and of Gentile. So if you try to make a corollary to our movement, our wall was doctrine, policy, tradition, fear, being told we were welcome as long as we left part of ourselves at the door.
And finally, the all too familiar. Just wait one more quadrant and will help you get the language removed.
I think we heard that during my time for two quadrant.
Some of those walls came down in 2024. We celebrated. We're healing from the wounds of the last 50 plus years. The rest of the walls are crumbling. The hostility within and between parts of the church is crumbling with them.
The denomination has recently launched a new vision with three parts love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously. The invitation from our Scripture today and from this new vision is to come into this place and let your presence change us. The welcome is extended from just. Hello. We're glad you're here to. Hello. We need you. The church needs your gifts, your voice, your experience, your theology, and your questions.
No matter who you are and God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy. As we celebrate our reconciling anniversary this morning, our halls are full of LGBTQ plus Christians who have willingly shared their gifts, often within a local church or denomination that was unwilling to acknowledge their humanity, their full humanity. Yet we remain full of hope, joy and love, and willing to serve in other capacities for decades.
Our music has its roots and movements that have long been going on much longer. Every time I pick up the African American heritage him in a lot of Sunday, that foundry uses it. I know that the songs we sing will bring as much of a message to the world as the sermon that morning.
Movement. New music teaches us. It inspires us to continue showing up through the exhaustion and tears, reminds us that walls will crumble and that freedom will break through. There isn't a reconciling United Methodist, who can't name multiple Mark Millar songs, or who doesn't check to see if all the verses of a place at the table that is being sung that morning has all the verses in it.
For gay and for straight a place at the table a covenant shared a welcoming place, a rainbow of race and gender and color. For gay and for straight. The chalice of grace. It is exasperating at times to realize how freely LGBTQ plus Christians gave of their gifts, and how freely the church accepted those they needed or wanted.
But withheld the acceptance of others.
When Lindy and I were attending a church in Florida. They decided that as lesbians, we could not serve in leadership roles. It couldn't define a leadership role, but they decided we couldn't serve in one. They then decided that Lindy's leadership of the shut in ministry was not a leadership role, so she could continue leading that team. What that really meant was we tried for three weeks to find somebody else and nobody said they would do it.
So will you please keep doing this?
I wish I could tell you we were the only people who had experiences anything like that. But with the General Conference in 2024, God created in the United Methodist Church a new community in which the old divisions no longer decide who's welcome and who belongs. Congregations are admittedly still adapting and will be for a while. We're an institution, and it takes time to shift institutions.
Collectively, though, we are creating a church that cannot imagine itself without all of us. Instead of a church that welcomes all of us but only tolerates some of us, an authentic welcome is intentional, unstated, and stated visible part of the DNA of the congregation, not dependent on budgets or ministry priorities.
It doesn't tell the oppressed to wait just one more quadrennial or one more budget cycle, and will do something about it.
With the actions of the General Conference in 2024. The image of bringing down the wall became real. I can hear the lyrics to Marty Hogan's All are welcome. All are welcome. All are welcome in this place. And now the work must evolve. From extending a welcome to anyone coming through the doors. To creating a new church. One where the welcome is radical and authentic.
Connection gives us a strength to remember and name injustice. The courage to keep advocating for those on the margins and creates a community that makes us strong.
It makes me wonder what music will sing us into the future.
Our music is really already doing just that. We may need to write a couple new verses for some of our hymns, but our music is already doing that. We're still drawing the circle wide, and we always will be. There's not a point where we are going to check the box and be done. No matter how much we want to, that moment will never arrive.
The music of the reconciling movement has helped us remember who we are. Resist what denies God's love. Connect us to one another and imagine the church we have not yet become for over 50 years. So we're pretty good at this.
And look at thinking about the new song we need now. We should be asking us ourselves some questions. What does justice look like? We've been talking about it for 50 years, but what does it look like? What does reconciliation look like when we are helping create the church? So we're not just asking to be included. We're helping to build something new.
What does love look like when it isn't asking for permission?
Let that sink in. I and foundry my question for all of us is how will we engage in creating that new church?
We had a large impact on what got us here. But how will we engage in creating the new church?
When we open the service today, Ginger referenced Mary's song A Song of Liberation, about a reordered world. Mary's really singing about a revolution. Freedom is the promise, the hope for the future. Mary is still singing and we have much work left to do. The letter to Ephesians isn't just about tearing down a wall. It is also about building something new, creating a new thing, a new thing that cannot be built without all of us.
You cannot simply mean the same church with different paragraphs in the Book of Discipline. If it did. If so, all we did in 2024 was erase some paragraphs, some book. Then we have a new book.
But if the people who were once separated by the wall now build the church together, God will change all of us.
Foundry. For 31 years you helped sing this wall down. I am grateful for all of you. The wall did not crumble by itself. We all spent many long hours in strategy groups and legislative sessions. But I am grateful for this congregation. I'm grateful for the invitation to be here today.
