We started attending Bethlehem when I was six. I remember a
friend telling me she’d show me every nook and cranny of the church. At this
point, I think I may have outpaced her.
I grew up in this place with Bill Harman and Ray Hartzell at
the pulpit. Every time I preach, Loie Michaels tells me she heard me channeling
Ray – I’m trying as hard as I can, y’all. Growing up at Bethlehem taught me
what it is to be one of many. It taught me to understand myself as part of a
larger whole. As part of this congregation, this city, this synod, this church,
this nation, this world.
Growing up at Bethlehem made me weird. It made me so weird
that the Christian Club at my high school asked me to leave, because my diverse
viewpoints were disruptive.
It made me so weird that my college freshman roommate, who
came out of an oppressive religious community, confessed to me that maybe
Christians weren’t all bad.
It made me so weird that I was the only Lutheran member of
the California Lutheran University Secular Student Alliance.
It made me so weird that I am comfortable singing praise to
God in Spanish and in Swahili.
It made me so weird that I march through San Francisco and
rally on street corners and phone bank and canvass for progressive candidates
and causes while wearing my clerical collar and my rainbow pectoral peace sign.
It made me so weird that I find myself not just willing but
determined to follow the example of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and
demand of my church and my nation that we uphold our belief that we are all
created equal.
Pastor Laura has me up here because I am a living breathing
past, present, and future of Bethlehem Lutheran Church and of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America. What’s fun about this metaphor is that the future
of this church does not look like its past. And it hardly looks like its
present, frankly. A good pastor once told me that the ELCA’s biggest problem is
that our radical theology is trapped in our conservative practice.
Here at Bethlehem, we do our best to unleash that radical
theology by taking our practice outside the walls of our sanctuary and into our
world. That’s where the future of the church is.
Jesus of Nazareth led a church without walls. Jesus and the
disciples and the apostles and the generations that followed proclaimed a
coming kingdom that turned the one they lived in upside down. And they did it
without an office and without a newsletter and without bylaws. They did it by
loving the Lord their God and by loving their neighbors as themselves. They did
it by feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and healing the sick and
freeing the captive and advocating with loud, public, prophetic voices for
those who were silenced.
Growing up at Bethlehem made me so weird that I believe that
we as a church can still do that. There are still hungry people and homeless people
and oppressed people in this country and in this world. And if I learned
anything from Bill and Ray it’s that we are called to act with justice. We are
called to love tenderly. We are called to serve one another and to walk humbly
with our god.
So let’s walk.