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John 20:19-31, 1 John 1:1-2:2 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples met were locked for fear of their own people, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Isn't that just like Jesus, to appear not when we're out in public putting our best face forward, not when we're wearing the masks of confidence and of having it all together that we inevitably wear when we're trying to make a good impression and succeed, but rather to sneak into the private spaces where those masks are down? Isn't it just like Jesus to come and be with us in the locked rooms where we are most afraid, and to say, "Peace be with you?" I have not met Jesus walking through Annual Conference with hundreds of other pastors all wearing a public mask of competence and piety. But I do know Jesus in my inmost self. Jesus comes to me in the relationships where I experience my human brokenness most intimately, and in the personal times of prayer where I am simply myself before God. It all started on April 12, 1970, at First United Methodist Church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I was three months old. A pastor held me in his arms, sprinkled me with water, and said, "Irene Elizabeth, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." And placed a hand on my head and said something like, "You have been born of water and the Spirit. May you live as a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ." And so, before I learned how to put up any defenses, I was introduced to a friend who would always know me better than anyone. My first memory is of walking to church with my mother in Webster Groves, Missouri. I practiced my numbers as we passed our neighbor's hedge, touching the shiny green leaves and counting out loud. We were late to church, and my mother must have said something to the nursery teacher about my learning to count and how that had slowed us down, because the nursery teacher asked, "Was she counting the cracks in the sidewalk?" My mother said, "No, she was counting the leaves on the trees." The church is my first memory, my family, my home. It's the Sunday School teachers who taught me to sing "Jesus loves me" and gave me pictures to color of Jesus healing a sick child or feeding the crowds. It's my mother and father teaching me gently, over time, more by example than by anything they said, that I was very important and special and loved no matter what, and yet also not the center of the universe, as week by week they re-oriented themselves to a larger reality of goodness and grace. When I was little, God and Jesus were as real to me as the other members of my family, and I could talk to them about anything. I suppose that kind of vibrant childlike faith is always bound to founder on the shoals of life. I can think of a number of times when I thought my faith was dead, when I closed the door and retreated into the small world of the rational and the plausible. But each time, Jesus showed up, a living presence on the wrong side of the door where he had no reason to be. Each time, my relationship with him became more vital, more mature, than it had ever been before. When I was fifteen, I went to Germany for a year as an exchange student. I had started to wonder if my faith was real, or just something I thought was real because I'd been taught to believe it. I knew that I would be away from my parents' insistence on weekly church attendance, and I thought I'd see what it was like not to go to church on Sundays. But my host family knew from my letters that I was Methodist, and they had sought out one of the only two Methodist churches in Munich. To be polite, I had to go at least once. The next thing I knew, I was more involved in church than I had ever been at home. I went to youth group on Saturday nights, to Bible study on Wednesdays, to two services on Sunday mornings. I made friends who wrestled with me over the meaning of Scripture and the demands of faith. At Bible study, we sang and prayed together and Jesus seemed close enough to touch. Right when I thought I was outgrowing my faith, it became my own. When I was a student at Bryn Mawr College, and I came to understand that I was a lesbian, it seemed for a while that I would have to choose between being true to myself and being a Christian. I knew that my sexual orientation was no more likely to change than the color of my eyes. So, quietly, I just stopped going to church, and dropped out of the campus fellowship group. I thought it was no big deal; doesn't everyone do that in college? But my junior year, when a friend suggested we visit some churches that might welcome us as young lesbians, I was willing to go along on a visit to FUMCOG. I was only planning to come one time. But I felt embraced. And, just as in that church in Germany in high school, I found myself becoming more involved, more committed, than I had ever been. I became the assistant teacher for the confirmation class, and I loved it. The taste of ministry I got at FUMCOG was significant enough that I even decided to apply to seminary. I thought I had developed a mature faith. But God had still more painful growth in mind. As a student at Union Seminary in New York, I experienced a crisis of faith so profound and agonizing that I hope I never go through anything like it again. I don't know exactly what brought it on. It may have been my struggle to come to terms with my calling and the church's discrimination; it may have been my loneliness and my search for a community; it may have simply been a normal young adult identity crisis. In any case, I arrived in New York full of hope and expectation, but before long I started to wonder why I was even there. When I tried to pray or worship, I felt like I was just going through the motions and there was nothing inside. I began to feel as if God had abandoned me. I stopped taking communion because it didn't seem to mean anything anymore. It got so bad that I couldn't even set foot in the chapel without bursting into tears. So I dropped out of seminary. Technically it was a leave of absence, but I really didn't think I would ever go back. Slowly, I put together a different kind of life in New York, finding a job in publishing and a small apartment in Brooklyn. I got involved in AIDS activism, trading life in the church for life in the broken heart of the gay community. I learned a thing or two that would come in handy later, like how to run a meeting, and what not to say to a person who is dying. And Jesus showed up there, in the midst of that life in New York. I finally learned how to pray again, not because I was trying to be pious but because my grief and anger dragged it out of me. I began what would become a lifelong discipline of praying the Scriptures, but for a long time the only part of the Bible I could stand to read was Psalm 102, because it was as relentlessly sad and angry as I felt. Eventually, I signed up for seminary courses again, although I wasn't really sure why I was doing it. I told myself I needed the student loan money to pay the rent. The whole story of how I came to begin the ordination process in the United Methodist Church, despite its discriminatory stance, is a longer story than I can tell today. But one day, when I had almost enough credits to graduate from seminary but was still in denial about it, I experienced a call to ministry. I didn't even particularly believe in the kind of call experiences you sometimes hear about, that can be identified with a particular date and time. But then I had one. I was working on a newspaper article about gay and lesbian spiritual leaders in New York, interviewing four different pastors and rabbis, all of whom had found ways to be integrate a healthy honesty about their sexual orientation with a powerful, effective ministry. I guess the combined effect of all those unapologetically gay, deeply spiritual pastors finally got to me. On my way to one of the interviews, it was as if I heard an inner voice saying, "I don't want you to write about this. I want you to do it." Not long after that, I had a profound experience of knowing, of feeling, that Jesus loved me; why it took so long to get that through my head, or maybe to get from my head to my heart, or why it suddenly became so clear right then, I couldn't tell you. But there was Jesus one day, not a visible or physical presence, but a living, spiritual presence, right there in my apartment. I could almost hear him saying, Peace be with you.The first letter of John says, "We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life." I have seen and touched and handled the word of life: in childhood Sunday School classes; in heartfelt prayers and songs and heated discussions about the Bible as a teenager in Germany; in the process of healing and growth that deepened my relationship with my parents when I came out to them; in donuts shared with twelve and thirteen year olds trying to figure out what the great traditions of faith have to do with them; in friendships with men and women with AIDS, driven to fight for their lives; in the stunning, holy, invisible presence of Christ in my Brooklyn apartment. I'm not telling you something I've read about. I'm telling you something I know because it has happened to me. Jesus is alive. Jesus slips into the places where we are closed off, lonely, and angry. Jesus is with us, whispering, "Peace be with you." I don't doubt Jesus so much anymore. Maybe it's because my work as a pastor so often takes me into the very places where he is alive and at work. I get to be with families in the midst of struggle and crisis. I get to be with folks who are lonely and grieving. I get to lead Bible studies where people wrestle with the great texts and what they mean for us now. I get to baptize babies, and sometimes even adults. I get to break the communion bread. Just by seeing what a pastor gets to see, knowing what a pastor gets to know, Jesus has become in a way more obvious to me, as if he has been there all along in the locked rooms of people's lives where they are most afraid or searching or angry or joyful. Sometimes, leaving a hospital room or a funeral parlor or the communion rail or even sometimes a pastoral conference with a confirmation student at the Dairy Queen, I wish everyone could be where I am and see what I see. The risen Christ is so vivid, so present, especially in those moments when the masks are down and people are really themselves before one another and God. It is that clear sense of the risen Christ that leads me to this point today. As the first letter of John goes on to say, "God is light and in God there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with God while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus God's son cleanses us from all sin." I want to take that experience of the risen Christ out of the locked room, out of the closet, and into the world where everyone can see it. I want to walk in the light so that Christ might be revealed in my life. I know that, by telling the truth about myself, I risk losing my credentials as an ordained United Methodist minister. And that would be a huge loss for me. But I have realized that not telling the whole truth about myself has been holding me back in my faith. I have come to a place where my discipleship, my walk with Christ, requires telling the whole truth, and paying whatever price truthfulness requires. I don't feel afraid. I feel that God is with me. I feel that I'm doing my best to follow Jesus, and to walk as he walked. I know that God will take care of me. I know that God will bless my truth-telling and my risk-taking as God has blessed my ministry. I believe that somehow, in my taking this step together with FUMCOG, the life and light of Christ will shine in the world. And that's what really matters to me. As we enter into this time of risk and uncertainty together, there are a few things I want to tell you. First of all, I want to tell you about a very important person that most of you haven't had a chance to know. That person is my partner, Chris Paige. Chris and I have lived together in a covenant relationship for two and a half years. More than anyone else in my life, Chris embodies grace and love and discipleship for me. Because of my relationship with her, I am a better, more faithful Christian. I am deeply grateful to her for the daily practice in loving and being loved, and forgiving and being forgiven, that constantly deepen who I am as a person of faith. Chris is a person of deep theological wisdom and insight, and a true spiritual partner in ministry. You may have noticed my sermons improving since about October of 2000, and that's due at least in part to an expert theological consult that I'm sometimes able to get at seven o'clock on Sunday morning. She prays for me. I am proud of her ministry as publisher of The Other Side, a wonderful progressive Christian magazine to which you should all subscribe. I pray for her. Chris is understandably nervous about becoming known as a "minister's wife." I have promised her that she doesn't have to wear a big hat unless she wants to. It is important for you to know that Chris is an active member and a leader at her own church, Tabernacle United Church in University City, where she has important relationships and responsibilities going back eight years. While Chris will come to services at FUMCOG from time to time, Tabernacle will continue to be her spiritual home. I know that you will all want to get to know her, because she's wonderful. But please give her time to get to know you, and understand that she does have her own congregation where she will continue to worship on most Sundays. Second, I want you to know that I am not all alone up here. In getting to the point of taking this risk, I have had wonderful support from FUMCOG's Staff-Parish Relations Committee, the lay leaders, an amazing support committee that has been working with me for the past few months, and the Administrative Council. In the past week there has been a flood of supportive phone calls and notes and e-mails from all of you. But, outside of my partner and my family, the most profound support of all has come from my colleagues. Melody Porter has been a great source of encouragement ever since she came to us at FUMCOG. Other members of the staff have also shared kind words and thoughts and prayers and listening ears as I have been working my way to this day. But you especially need to know that no one I have ever worked with has been more unconditionally supportive or more willing to listen and share this journey with me than Fred Day. We have been talking together about my sense of calling to take this step since before Fred even officially came on the staff, and he has never once flinched from the professional risk this represents for him as well as for me. From Fred I have experienced nothing but respect for my ministry, and tremendous freedom to follow my conscience and my calling. Fred, thank you. I also need to say a word to you about the larger United Methodist Church, and particularly our Annual Conference and our Bishop. They are not the enemy; they are my family. When I came out to my parents in 1990, I did not expect them to understand right away. There were tears. There was pain. It was hard. We needed therapy. But I never considered applying for a transfer to another family. Much like the church, my parents raised me. They loved me my whole life. That relationship is irreplaceable, and well worth the pain of living through change together. I have met with our Bishop. It was not an easy conversation, but it was a loving and respectful conversation. I can't tell you that he completely understands, embraces, or affirms my desire to serve the United Methodist Church as an openly lesbian clergywoman. But I can tell you that he understands and accepts that I am trying to follow Jesus in the best way I know how. We both hope that there will be some way to deal with the conflict my disclosure brings to light that allows for dialogue and growth and makes room for the Holy Spirit to be at work in our midst. I don't know if we will find such an alternative path or not. But no matter what happens, the bishop is not the enemy. He is my brother in Christ. Finally, FUMCOG, I need to say that I worry about you, and how you will handle all this. I love you, and I have no doubt that you will continue to accept and embrace me. What I worry about is your tendency to rush to the barricades, to get out your posterboard and protest buttons before you've adequately sorted through your own feelings, before you have prayed and reflected and listened for God's voice in the midst of all that is happening. I can't predict how the larger church will handle my telling the truth about myself, but it is entirely possible that events in the months to come will make you angry and frustrated. You will be tempted to look for an enemy to fight. You will be tempted to rush into political organizing without proper spiritual grounding. You will be tempted to make big speeches before you've fully heard what God is saying to us in this moment. Please remember to slow down. You're a great church for protest marches. You're not always so great at casseroles. But this situation may call for casseroles. Our address is [removed]. We're not vegetarians but we like vegetarian food, and we have no food allergies. Seriously, though, as the situation develops it will be more important than ever for us all to be together, to break bread with one another, to slow down and listen to each other and really be a community. That's how we'll figure out how to be faithful to God and to one another. That's how we'll notice the risen Christ breaking into the midst of the fear and concern and anger, bringing hope and joy and new life right where we are. Many of you have already asked what you can do to support me. I have an idea that might be crazy, but I'll put it out there. At some point in the future -- I don't know when, it could be months or even a year from now -- it is very probable that charges will be filed against me, which would be the first step in a church judicial process that could lead to the loss of my credentials. What if, sometime the week that charges are filed, every household in this congregation made a casserole, and took it to another household to share? What if, when delivering the casserole, you just stopped to talk for fifteen minutes about your feelings, maybe even to say a prayer for one another? Or if praying out loud feels too unaccustomed, you could just hold the other person or family in your thoughts while you're slicing up onions or opening a can of beans, remembering God's enormous compassion for the persons for whom you are preparing the food, and attach a little card to the casserole dish saying, "I prayed for you today." Then, some other night that same week, you could let someone else make a casserole for you. That's just one idea. You are creative and smart and you will probably think of better ones. But just suppose we recognize this time not just as a time when I will need to be supported and cared for, but as a time when all of us will need to support and care for each other, when all of us might be hurting and sad and angry, and each of us could use a concrete and edible sign of God's love? Yesterday I shared this idea in a meeting, and Jerry Rardin added, "Maybe there should also be a casserole for the person bringing the charges." I think it will be powerful if the witness we offer to the larger church is not the witness of choking on our own righteous anger, but rather the witness of learning, more and more, how to love one another, and how to recognize the risen Christ in our midst. I am getting ahead of myself, though. Right now, we are sharing a joyful moment and I am truly amazed to simply be in this moment with you. After all, here I am, for this Sunday at least, and perhaps for many months to come, your openly lesbian, fully credentialed, United Methodist pastor. I am excited to be able to give you the gift of my whole self in the fullest expression of my ministry, for however much time we may have. Celebrate with me. Jesus is alive. Look, here he is in our midst, even though the door was locked. Peace be with you. Amen.
About Rev. Stroud's decision to annouce her sexual identity Her "Walking In The Light" sermon (including video excerpt) Bishop Weaver's interview about Rev. Stroud's decision The United Methodist Book of Discipline's stance on homosexuality Essay by Jamie Stroud, Ph.D. (Rev. Stroud's mother) Additional links for gay, bisexual, lesbian & transgender rights activism Visit Beth Stroud's own website (bethstroud.info) Copyright © 2004 Video Vérité. All rights reserved
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