From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

This week I was scheduled to write something about an old liturgical custom that we pick up during Advent called the Last Gospel (the reading of the Prologue to John’s Gospel at the end of each Eucharist). 

I’ll write about that in the future. I promise.

However, it feels more important to speak to the intersecting horrors that occurred in Colorado Springs earlier this week. The first and obvious horror was the shooting itself—at a gay bar. It was an act of terror—terrorism—directed at a community by someone who has been radicalized by the steady drumbeat of anti-LGBT anger that has been stoked not just in recent years but for as long as I can remember.

This is the second horror that we saw unfolding: the vicious dehumanization of our neighbors. Sadly, churches have too often been willing accomplices in this horror. 

It does not take too much imagination or insight to look back at the steady drip, sometimes flood, of stories, statements, speeches, or the like that build toward spasmodic acts of violence. Segments of our culture have become toxic bubbles within which people swim in a constantly self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating melange of subtle and gross dehumanization that are part and parcel of an outrage industry that makes its money off our anger.

We are right to be angry. But let us direct our anger appropriately.

We are right to be angry that LGBT folks cannot dance without fear.

We are right to be angry that their right to live, to love, and to be loved are under constant legal threat.

We are right to be angry that our faith has too often been the fuel for the outrage machine that stokes the political terror and physical violence.

Anger is different than rage. Anger can be metabolized into something more— into compassionate action. Rage is the outward expression of un-metabolized anger. It’s the immature explosion of unexamined fear/disgust/loathing and more. Rage is not Christian. 

Anger is not, in and of itself, Christian either. But the longing for justice is. And that longing can only come from looking honestly at the state of the world and demanding more of ourselves, our leaders, our communities, our media, and our churches. Any honest look at any of these will reveal to us the grooming of violence against LGBT folks.

“You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Reading this one line of Scripture (and it is difficult to read any one line in isolation of course)—the God who knows us and inspires our creation and guards us in the womb must be a God who longs for our protection when we are most vulnerable. Yet, that vulnerability does not end when we are born.  

Indeed, to be Christian must mean that life is absolutely precious and must be tended and cared for in all the ways a civilized society can manage. The vulnerability we all share as human beings is particularly acute among those who are LGBT.  

They find their worth questioned and their dignity undermined in ways that I never will. The God who knows us in the womb must, I assume, know wherever we may find ourselves on the gender and sexuality spectrum. They were knit together this way and long to live as God has brought them into being. The God of creation—the God of new birth—imparts an inherent and inviolable dignity as we are made of the very likeness of God. 

The intricacy of God’s working in and through us begins with the Word—in the beginning. Our longed-for birth comes out of a creation that is, like Christ himself, held in the heart of God from the beginning of time. We are in the beginning—we are with God—at rest in the fullness of Christ’s own being as heirs of an eternal promise that stretches before our consciousness.

The God of grace knows us as part of his created order from the very beginning and calls us good—and the Church cannot excuse or ignore the rage-filled violence we’re seeing too much of in places where the innocent gather to find safety and acceptance.

The Church’s call is to protect the vulnerable—to protect that which God has called into being. Of course, through our own fault and through the fault of others, we will be drawn into a web of sin and sin-stained choices. War, poverty, famine, and more are all part of sinful cycles in which we are caught up.  

Yet, through it all, God calls us to be faithful witnesses that his mercy endures. That his love is made manifest. That the Body of Christ can heal a broken world. 

May God transform our anger into something more—into compassion. May that compassion (literally the shared passion/suffering) stir a commitment to not ignore the dehumanization of our LGBT neighbors, friends, and family but to see it for what it is: a sinful destruction of the dignity, lives, and worth of folks born beloved by God.

I suppose, in a way, this is about the Last Gospel (the reading of the Prologue to John’s Gospel at the end of each Eucharist). It’s an old custom that was a reminder that at the end of worship, we arrive at the beginning—at the birth of Christ in us, too. It was a reminder that the Christian story is one that always circles back to the coming among us of one who was God’s Love given infant form. 

The passage begins simply enough, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” It continues, “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

May the light shine in the darkness and by its light may we see ever more clearly the image of God revealed, again and again, in those most vulnerable.

May the light shine in the darkness—for the darkness will not overcome it.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert