Ash Wednesday

“Rend your hearts and not your garments.” Joel 2:13

“We are so damn proud of our humility!” The mother of my childhood best friend said this, though not to me. She had muttered it under her breath at church one Sunday in my mother’s presence, and my mother mentioned it approvingly in a family conversation. I’ve forgotten the context, but there are so many churchly occasions for which it would be appropriate that it doesn’t really matter.

Today many of us will attend, even lead, Ash Wednesday services. Pious sentiment will be running high, a flash flood in the spiritual desert. It will make us feel good to feel so humble. Some of us will have the opportunity to proudly display ashes on our foreheads. People will speak in hushed, gloomy, somber tones as clear evidence of their reverence. Oh, how godly we will be!

I wonder if a more godly sign of penitence for Christians might be to rip up and burn our books of church polity. It could be a way of saying that, as useful an instrument as each may be, they are merely a human attempt to order God’s grace, which spills all over the place like rain and sunlight on the just and the unjust.

Some of us will respond that church rules and laws are good things, they just need reforming. I would think the prophet Joel considered the heart a good thing, too, but he heard God calling us to rend it, to tear it asunder, to demonstrate our repentance. Rending church polities might remind us that we need to repent of our order that has denied the supposed disorderly access to Jesus. Jesus didn’t get along too well with the religious lawyers of his day, who brokered the grace of God according to their own polity, the Law of Moses.

May your grace surprise us with its resistance to pride and prejudice.

I had planned to offer this today long before last week’s debacle of the United Methodist Church continuing its anti-gay policies in its own church polity. I have been grateful to work alongside so many United Methodists on progressive issues, from demonstrating at the Nevada nuclear test site and travelling to Central America in witness of justice and peace to editing Open Hands, a magazine for congregations welcoming of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, founded by the Methodist Reconciling Congregation program. I grieve with them today and all LGBT-positive people in every religious tradition and denomination whose polities attempt to refuse the grace of God to LGBT people.

This meditation is found on pages 222-223 of my 2001 book, Reformation of the Heart, daily meditations for Advent, Epiphany, Lent and Holy Week. Please use today’s post as you wish, as is advised of every post on this blog. Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, which remembers Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness after his baptism, undergoing temptations. For a creative variation of this biblical story, see last week’s post.

P.S. My friend Chris Iosso was inspired by this post to write one of his own that “connects the dots” of so many issues plaguing our world: http://justiceunbound.org/carousel/lent-and-unrelenting-brutality/

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2001 and 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Front Porches

Luna takes her "sabbaticals" on our porch

when her porch gets too busy.

Wade and I spend a lot of time on our front porch. We each have fond memories of front porches. As a child in Indiana, Wade used to sit with his paternal grandmother on her front porch, munching saltines topped with butter while watching cars and people pass by. My Kansas relatives would apologize that there was nothing to do in their small town, but, as a youth, I loved just sitting on their front porch reading. “Nothing to do” was an invitation to enjoy the quiet, to relax.

My family porch in California was not large enough for chairs or a swing, but Mom used to enjoy sitting on its concrete steps, and that’s how I often remember her as I left for my own homes, whether in New Haven, Philadelphia, West Hollywood, or Atlanta. And it was there that a non-English speaking Asian neighbor left a vase of flowers on the day of her funeral, twenty years ago this week, in memory of their friendship around their gardens.

Wade and I recently had stonework put on our front porch columns followed by new handrails. Wade said it made it look like a new house. The skillful Mexican stone mason’s name is Javier, a variation of Xavier, which, I found in my friend Cleve Evans’ Unusual & Most Popular Baby Names, comes from a Basque word that means “new house”!

Historically, I’ve been told, front porches served to keep neighbors in touch. We too enjoy seeing the kids going to and from school, greeting neighbors walking their dogs (or, in the case of our pastor’s family two houses down from us, their dog and their cat, Luna, who follows along), watching runners and walkers, bicyclists and those riding the trendy scooters filling Atlanta neighborhoods.

Porches seem to be a particularly Southern thing, and so it seemed natural for our new church start, Ormewood Church, to organize “porch groups.” And, in worship, we sit in clusters as we might do on a porch, to facilitate discussion of the question for the day. Btw, I’ll be guest preaching there this Sunday.

I sometimes do my morning prayers on the porch, with coffee of course, and almost every late afternoon Wade or I find ourselves reading or watching something on our tablets, sipping wine and munching chips or crackers. We welcome the occasional neighbor or friend who might join us, most likely on weekends.

What surprises us is that more people don’t use their front porches. Nearby is a very toney neighborhood with fabulous and sometimes wrap-around porches, but when we walk that way, it feels like a ghost town. Maybe they have to work harder and longer to afford their pricey homes. I suggest this as a possible reality, not a critique.

Just as we apply what we learn in school or church or on the job to the rest of our lives, what we learn on our front porches may be helpful as we encounter people and pets elsewhere. Relax. Recreate. Remember. Reach out. Invite. Welcome. Listen. Pay attention. Appreciate our environment. Lift others in prayer. And thank God.

Our front porch, Winter 2019.

Please hold the United Methodist Church in your prayers as it meets in St. Louis this week to discern "The Way Forward" regarding the full welcome of LGBT Christians!

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Reform or Revolution?

An 80-year-old Nicaraguan told us this was her first 

opportunity to vote for the candidate of her choice. 

Her red-inked thumb shows she has been to the polls.

Pat Hoffman, a spiritual guide for me, turned to me during a particularly dry presbytery meeting in the 80’s and asked, “Chris, would you like to go to Nicaragua?” Without missing a beat, I replied, “Sure! Can we go now?!” Anything to escape an ecclesiastical wilderness.

A word about Pat. We wrote our first books together, mine being Uncommon Calling, about LGBT efforts to reform the Presbyterian Church, and hers being Ministry of the Dispossessed, about ministry among the farmworkers of California. We met for lunch every couple of weeks, exchanging and reviewing each other’s books, chapter by chapter. Sometimes we met for tea at Trump’s (yeah, really!) in Beverly Hills; we couldn’t afford their formal tea, but we found we could share a pot of tea and two scones in its stylish bar for a total of $10.

Pat was helping organize a group of twenty Presbyterians, Disciples, and United Methodists under the auspices of Church World Service to witness Nicaragua’s first free and fair election after deposing the despot Somoza, occurring the same week as Reagan was seeking re-election while illegally funding the contras—the counter-revolutionaries who opposed the Sandinista government. A U.S. warship sailed menacingly off Nicaragua’s coast while we were there, and we heard two sonic booms each day as U.S. spy planes flew low overhead.

A Maryknoll sister (left) briefed us on what 

was happening. Pat Hoffman is in yellow.

There are many stories to be told about that trip, including the one when we decided to “crash” the American election party at the U.S. Embassy, where we had earlier met with a diplomat explaining what we considered misguided U.S. policy—after which Pat, with a mischievous smile, asked me, “Is he one of yours?” I laughed, realizing her “gaydar” was as astute as mine.

Anyway, about ten of us crammed into two tiny taxis and showed up election night outside the gate of the highly fortressed U.S. Embassy.  The taxi I was in arrived first, so I jumped out of the car and ran up to the gate. As quickly, I was met with bayonetted rifles of several soldiers running out of the waterless moat that surrounded the embassy! To the soldier at the gate, I explained why we were there. He put me on the phone to his commander inside, who politely explained that the party was not at the embassy itself, rather at a hotel, and that it was “by invitation only.”

A few days before we had been welcomed at the Nicaraguan election festivities, which required no such invitation. There we joined hundreds of Nicaraguans in an open soccer field listening to American music as election results began to trickle in—but only after walking through unlighted downtown areas of Managua destroyed by a devastating earthquake years before, never restored because Somoza drained the economic aid that came from other countries. In the darkness, we had to avoid manholes missing their covers.

Me, sitting beneath Che Guevara.

The reason I bring this up is all the talk about “revolution” in this current election. A history professor with us explained that Nicaragua had experienced a true revolution, but by contrast, she shared many historians’ view that the so-called “American Revolution,” was actually a rebellion, because it did not turn upside down the class system, putting “lower” classes, however defined, in charge. It was still largely governed by wealthy, educated, propertied white men.

I was a little peeved at her for disillusioning me about our seminal American event, but I saw her point. Still, our Founding Fathers and Mothers did set in place a system potentially “of the people” that would radically transform the government, society, and culture. Yet we are a representative democracy, not an absolute democracy.

So it gives me pause whenever the word “revolution” is tossed about so loosely as it has been this year. I had felt uncomfortable when activists in my own LGBT movement claimed ours was a “revolution.”  I thought it was too audacious and unrealistic to believe our activities could turn things upside down, as it was said of the first Christians (see Acts 17:6).

Others of us viewed our efforts more modestly and humbly as reformers. The system, both church and government, provided opportunities for reform, and look what the LGBT movement has accomplished in a generation!

Of course, self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” get the lion’s share of press, but in so many cases, the reformers deliberately sculpting our institutions accomplish more in the long run. Self-proclaimed “messiahs” lead to disillusionment because too many followers don’t have the patience to do the hard work—including voting in midterm elections, campaigning for down-ballot candidates and issues, paying attention to so-called “lowly” offices like school boards and town councils, networking with other movements.

Even revolutions require reformers, as we have witnessed in Nicaragua since that election day in 1984. In my journal on the trip, I wrote: 

Election Day

Sunday, Nov. 4 

It’s like watching the birth of a child, the blossoming of a fruit tree, the first green after winter. It’s one of the most exciting experiences I’ve witnessed. Not just history. Not mere accomplishment. It is hope in action—not a fait accompli, not an ultimate answer, not the promised land—but a signpost along the way. And that’s just it—along the way. Nicaragua is moving—its people are moving. I am grateful to watch from along the way, instead of being in the way or far away.

 Where people are on the way, God’s Spirit is at work.

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Copyright © 2016 and photos Copyright © 1984 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author, photographer, and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

"Don't You Want Me?"

Hobbes hangin'.

Last week, the day before a spiritual program was to begin, I was asked to take care of all the meals. Though it was last minute, I rearranged my week to accommodate the request—happily, because I enjoy serving in this way, especially those tending to their souls and the souls of others.

On one of the several daily drives to and from the site, tears came to my eyes when the radio played Ed Sheeran’s pop song, “Photograph.” I have come to associate the song with our dog, Hobbes, who died last July, specifically the line about a loved one’s photograph:

So you can keep me

Inside the pocket

Of your ripped jeans

Holdin’ me closer

‘Til our eyes meet

You won’t ever be alone

Wait for me to come home.

You see, I keep the above photo of Hobbes on my cell phone inside the pocket of my blue jeans. Every time I check my phone, she looks at me with those eyes, eyes that wanted me always.

The song that immediately followed on the radio brought up a different kind of grief, The Human League’s song with the plaintive refrain, “Don't…you…want…me?” I remember dancing to it during afternoon tea dances on the deck of the Boat Slip, a popular gay bar in Provincetown, in the summer of 1982. I spent a few days there with friends after yet another defeat at a Presbyterian General Assembly, that year, in Hartford, Connecticut.

What was particularly disheartening at that G.A. was that Bill Silver (the candidate who occasioned the denominational debate on the ordination of “avowed, practicing homosexuals”) and I had consulted the Stated Clerk on a strategy that he subsequently arranged to torpedo, now that he knew our plans. Bill felt so betrayed, he ripped off his visitor badge and tossed it over the balcony, yelling at the gathering that he would have nothing more to do with the church. He never attended another G.A.

At the time, we could not know we were at the precipice of a soon to rapidly-descend rollercoaster called AIDS. The devastation we felt at that national church convention was nothing compared to a disease that could strip us of whatever dignity we were trying to embrace, a disease that would accentuate our loss of spiritual support from the church. Many, many years later, Bill too succumbed to it, but without ever losing his feisty spirit and sardonic wit. Bill died with more integrity than many of us will see.

Like “Photograph,” the song “Don't You Want Me?” is about a yearning love, a love translatable to an institution like the church.

“Don't…you…want…me?” The song’s repeated, wistful questioning became the question of a generation of LGBT people.

And now, in our senior years, it still seems relevant. Earlier that morning I had looked through a couple of church publications, recognizing names of peers who have done well in the church, attaining positions openly LGBT Christians of an earlier time could never aspire to.

“Don't…you…want…me?” I realize old age plays tricks on our perspectives, that many seniors have the same question, as younger people, and yes, the church and culture, move on, unaware of the cost older generations have paid to make things better.

I thought of how excited my mom was when Tom Brokaw heralded “The Greatest Generation” that saw the world through the Great Depression and WW II. “Somebody’s finally giving us the credit we deserve,” she told me, and Brokaw’s book was the last book she was reading when she died at age 84.

A similar generational gap is explored in a touching article, “What My Mother Sees in Hillary.”

Prompting these reflections last week was the awareness that openly LGBT United Methodists were once again experiencing rejection during their 2016 General Conference, meeting in Portland.

In my view, that denomination’s attempt at globalization has meant throwing its LGBT members under the proverbial church bus. Not all cultures are as welcoming as Western cultures in regard to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Thank God that the denomination that ordained me in 2005, Metropolitan Community Churches, takes its “good news” of LGBT welcome to every country it serves, even at great risk.  That’s an example to follow! And I am grateful that, in 1982, the Hartford MCC pastor then, the Rev. Steve Pieters, offered visiting activists the welcome denied us by Presbyterian polity.

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Quoted lyrics copyright © by Ed Sheeran.

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Multiculturalism Cuts Both Ways

“A People of Many Faces” is one of the more intriguing sections of Pope Francis’s The Joy of the Gospel, having to do with cultural incarnations of Christianity. “We would not do justice to the logic of the incarnation if we thought of Christianity as monocultural and monotonous,” he writes.

Earlier he states, “The history of the Church shows that Christianity does not have simply one cultural expression, but rather, ‘remaining completely true to itself, with unswerving fidelity to the proclamation of the Gospel and the tradition of the Church, it will also reflect the different faces of the cultures and peoples in which it is received and takes root.’” Here he is quoting John Paul II.

The direction of his argument appears to be that Western culture should not impose our cultural values on other cultures, affirming “it is not essential to impose a specific cultural form, no matter how beautiful or ancient it may be…we in the Church can sometimes fall into a needless hallowing of our own culture, and thus show more fanaticism than true evangelizing zeal.”

Quoting John Paul II once more, he encourages us “to work in harmony with indigenous Christians,” because no culture or tradition has a monopoly on Christian expression.

Progressive Christians would applaud that and have tried to apply that in attempting the globalization of our respective denominations and traditions. In my view we do so at the risk of compromising our own cultural values. The equality and rights of women as well as of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender women and men immediately come to mind. 

The faltering Anglican Communion over women priests and gay bishops and the recent disappointment of the United Methodist General Conference to change its policies on LGBT Methodists serve as examples of the imposition of the values of other cultures, failing to respect Western and specifically American culture, which have “evolved” on both issues.

A step further: the logic of Pope Francis’s argument would also culturally contextualize conservative Christians’ reliance on church tradition regarding the place of women, the definition of marriage, and the treatment of sexual and gender minorities.

“We cannot demand that peoples of every continent, in expressing their Christian faith, imitate modes of expression which European nations developed at a particular moment of their history, because the faith cannot be constricted to the limits of understanding and expression of any one culture.” And here again the footnote doesn’t cite the progressive Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, but John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia.

Countless books, articles, and dissertations have been written that document how church tradition on issues of concern to progressive Christians has been held captive to previous cultural understandings, misunderstandings, and prejudice. The competition between the less egalitarian and more dualistic Christianity of Rome and the more progressive Celtic Christianity is but one example of how Christian cultures collided early on.

The Bible counters culture well: “Behold, I am doing a new thing.” “You have heard it said of old…but I say to you.” “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” “For freedom Christ has set us free.” “Do not call unclean what God has called clean.” “God shows no partiality.” “Why should my liberty be determined by another’s scruples? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I condemned for that for which I give thanks?”  

“New occasions teach new duties,” as the hymn “Once to Every One and Nation” proclaims. We may learn from other cultures, but multiculturalism cuts both ways. Other cultures may learn from us.

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Posts referencing Pope Francis:

A Common Touch

Whose Resurrection Was It Anyway?

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.