RE: How did it get this way?

Derrick, I kept picturing you with your Bible, poring over commentaries, working hard to get it right, get a word out to reach someone in need. I kept thinking about the platform of preaching, especially for LGBT folks. Thinking about how, when we are permitted, we send out our words from a pulpit and then they are out there – out there to be received by bodies in whatever fashion they will be. What an honor, what an incredible responsibility.

And then I saw this:

Right there sitting on my counter next to my coffee, right there on the front of the New York Times the heading, “Foe of Gay Marriage Says Its Nothing Personal,” with a picture of Ruben Diaz Sr., a New York State Senator and Pentecostal minister in the Bronx. Right up in my face at 7:30 a.m. All that incredible hypocrisy right up in my face as I sit next to my 6-year-old daughter while she eats pancakes.

Another man with a platform, this one on the front page of the Times.  A man who tells the reporter that of the two brothers and a granddaughter and the various other folks in his life who are gay, “I love them. I love them…but I don’t believe in what they are doing.” “I love them. I love them,” he says as he actively tries to bar same sex marriage from getting to the floor of the Legislature.  And I think, no, no, that’s not love, honey, that’s greed. You want what you want from them. You want what they give to you and how they enhance your life, but you don’t want what makes them happy for themselves.

No, preacher, that’s not what we do – we don’t just get to take what we want from folks and ditch the rest. No, in love, we don’t decide that when we’re uncomfortable with what makes that person tick — what is their soul’s essence – we don’t  decide that we’re going to deny it. In love, we don’t pretend that sexuality, the very fiber of what makes us human, is superfluous to our relationship and that our efforts to limit that aren’t “personal.” No, no Mr. Senator, that is not love, that’s greed. That’s taking what’s not yours to have.

“I love them. I love them…but I don’t believe in what they are doing.” What are we doing?

This is what I’m doing: I’m sitting next to my daughter while she eats pancakes.

And I’m going to seminary. I’m sitting in classes and working at a church and trying my best to figure out what God has in store for me.

This is what I’m doing: I’m working hard at reading scripture, praying scripture, doing research in the library and then confronting the reality of the congregation seated in front of me. Folks of all different ethnicities, shades, and sexualities; some folks who are barely making ends meet, folks who have lost jobs and countless hours of sleep, others who are sitting in the lap of luxury; some riddled with health problems, others living in difficult, loveless marriages; folks whose lives are full and those whose are broken; folks who come to church to hear some good news, others to be in company; folks who need more time in their lives, more time and less to do. I’m standing periodically before folks from all different walks of life with all different reasons to both praise and curse God and I’m doing my best to minister to them. That’s what I’m doing.

Then I’m going home to a partner whom I’ve shared a bed with for 12 years and with whom I have two amazing children. I’m going home to love her. I’m going home to work out all the stuff of this difficult world, to find solace and relief and comfort and…did I mention the love part? I’m going home to her to refresh my spirit so that I can go back out into the world and do what God continues, despite myself, to call me to do.