We were catching up. I filled him in on my church judicial process, and how tired it was making me feel. He told me about his health problems and some of the losses he had recently suffered in his personal life. But then, with a confident smile on his face, he said, “You know, we should never complain, because the Bible says: Suffering produces endurance…” I could tell by his expectant expression that he expected me, as a minister, to recite the verse right along with him and not to stumble over the words. With his help I got through it. We chanted together: “…and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

I’m so grateful for that conversation now, as I prepare for one more step, hopefully the last one, in my long journey through the church judicial system. It took a verse I knew and just lodged it a little more firmly in my brain, so that it comes back to me at a time like this. 

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

You can read it off the bulletin cover. Let’s say it together...

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

One of the peculiarities of being in a leadership position in the church, and now being in the middle of an ongoing national news story, is that whatever I go through is very visible to other people. Mostly, whatever happens to me, you all see it. And I know that when the larger United Methodist Church practices discrimination against gay and lesbian people, everyone in this congregation takes it personally. But I’m not suffering. Thanks to this congregation, I still have a roof over my head, an income, health insurance, a pension, and meaningful work to do. I still have a great relationship with my partner; just the other day we celebrated our fifth anniversary. We have a great dog and two wonderfully cranky cats. I am exhausted, but on balance my life is very good.

On the other hand, every day I see suffering that usually puts my own fatigue in perspective. Another peculiarity about being in pastoral ministry is that you see a lot more pain than you might otherwise see. I see good people who are poor getting beaten down by a welfare system, a public school system and a criminal justice system that often seem about as irrational and unfair as they can get. I see members of this church whose struggle to find meaningful work and a decent income just goes on and on and on. I see people torn apart by the illness and suffering of their loved ones.

I want you to pray for me and for the whole church in this coming week, but I want you to keep a sense of perspective also. If you want to pray for our quote-unquote side to quote-unquote win, I can’t stop you from doing that, but please don’t pin all your hopes on the Judicial Council ruling in my favor. I’m more and more aware that prayer works, and at the same time I am less and less inclined to try and tell God how to do God’s job.

Next week the Judicial Council will consider some legal and fair process issues that are important and meaningful and affect my life and ministry, but because of the way my case has evolved to this point they will not be making a watershed decision about the morality of excluding qualified gay and lesbian persons from ordained ministry. That larger question is not really before them at this point; the questions they will be considering are more along the lines of whether it’s possible for a person to have a fair trial under the existing church laws as they are written. Whatever they may decide, the struggle for full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in The United Methodist Church will continue. The church has a long way to go and so it will probably be a long struggle, but it’s a struggle that will ultimately succeed. Whatever happens next week, a ruling in my favor or a ruling against me, God will use it to bring about the changes in us and in the church that God wants to see.

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

But the hope God gives us is a hope in a larger unfolding of grace and goodness transcending the immediate present. The hope God gives us is a deep confidence that the whole world is held in loving and compassionate hands, and that even the things that go so terribly wrong are being transformed into instruments of healing and justice.

In the last few months, you’ve given me the opportunity to travel, and visit churches in other cities that may not yet have embraced full inclusion for gay and lesbian people, but are open to hearing my story. It’s been exhausting and amazing.

Outside of St. Louis, Missouri, I met with about a dozen people on a Friday night in a large, affluent suburban congregation. Their Pumpkin Patch raises more than four times as much money as ours. Even as I spoke, one of the men in the group peppered me with questions that made me wonder if he was angry at me or hostile toward me.

He asked me what I thought about passages in the Bible like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and didn’t I think the Bible condemned homosexuality. I took a deep breath because in my experience this question is often not an invitation to dialogue, but the beginning of an effort to verbally beat me into submission. I told him I would tell him what I thought about those passages if he was truly interested in hearing it. He said he was.

I said that to me the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was a story of strangers and guests being threatened with gang rape, which the Bible condemned and I would also condemn. I told him that the way I read the Bible it condemns many sexual behaviors that I would also condemn, like cult prostitution and sexual abuse of children. I told him I didn’t think the Bible said anything about the kind of relationship I have with my partner: a mutually respectful, loving, committed relationship between two adults of the same gender. And I held my breath.

There was a pause. And then he said, “Thank you. That’s very helpful. I never heard that before. I really appreciate it.” 

In Pittsburgh, I met a conservative United Methodist who believes homosexuality is wrong, but has been making a sincere effort, for the past seven years, to be in relationship and dialogue with others who have an opposite point of view. He told me this story.

A couple of years ago, the Reconciling United Methodists in Western Pennsylvania brought forward a resolution at Annual Conference that he could tell was their effort to propose the mildest, least inflammatory legislation they could imagine and try to get it passed. It did not speak of changing church law. It only spoke of acknowledging the pain caused by antigay hatred. 

This conservative pastor watched as one colleague after another rose to speak against the resolution with a strident passion. But he looked at the resolution and saw that there was nothing in it with which he disagreed. He was sitting behind one of the folks who had sponsored the resolution, and watched her sinking deeper and deeper into her seat with each speech. He watched her sigh deeply, and move as if with great weariness to go up to the microphone and speak in defense of her resolution.

He touched her on the shoulder, and said, “Let me do this.” He went to the microphone and spoke in favor of the resolution. He said there was nothing in it with which he disagreed. He said it was wrong to vote against a resolution because of who proposed it, not because of what it actually said. 

I asked him how his conservative colleagues had responded. He said that some of them had “broken fellowship” with him over that resolution. I thought then that this conservative pastor, while he had not been won over to a position of full inclusiveness, must be at least beginning to understand something about the pain of gay and lesbian people of faith who experience broken fellowship all the time.

There are ways in which the wrongness of our church law, and my up-close and personal experience with its wrongness, is being used by God to produce endurance and character and yes, even hope. No matter what happens next week, no matter what the Judicial Council decides, I am still a United Methodist and I am still in ministry here at FUMCOG. I think that no matter what, there is still a meaningful ministry for me in The United Methodist Church and I am only beginning to see what that might look like.

Of course, as I said, I have to keep my own suffering in perspective. So I have another story, from outside my own experience, of ways God is using the terrible things that happen to bring something new and beautiful into being.

Lately, we are always telling you stories from St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, the only Reconciling Congregation in New Orleans. We can’t help it. Bruce Dinwiddie, the pastor’s husband, keeps sending me these incredible accounts. Although he doesn’t have an income right now, he also sent a tithe of his FEMA check to my legal fund.

Here is the latest from St. Mark’s. This is from a letter that Anita Dinwiddie, the pastor, recently sent to St. Mark’s members in diaspora by e-mail:

Precious Ones,

Tonight, God's presence was palpable as 140 volunteers from South Carolina, most of them college students, gathered in our beautiful church for their culminating worship experience before their return home tomorrow morning. From the moment of the arrival of the crew who had spent the afternoon preparing the meal - delicious vegetable soup, cornbread, and banana pudding - until the final benediction, it truly was a mountaintop experience for everyone.  Those with cameras were taking pictures of the sanctuary, and over and over I heard "what a beautiful church!"  My cup is so full tonight - spilling over with the grace poured out tonight as hymns were sung - almost lifting the rafters, as joys were shared, and as I received on your behalf their words of affirmation for the ministry of St. Mark's and how just being in this place had touched them.  When the campus minister asked if they might come to St. Mark's for their closing meal and worship, I felt honored that they chose us.  The five beautiful volunteers who had worked so hard on Saturday had been so impressed with the church and our ministry, they shared it with everyone that evening.  Many remarked to me that they felt so blessed to be able to come tonight and experience for themselves what they had heard from those five volunteers.  And those precious five were so delighted to be back, their smiles lit up the sanctuary as they walked in and came up to give me a hug.

I was asked to open the worship time with prayer and then to share something about our ministry and the church's history.  I told them about the work that St. Mark's has been doing long before I arrived and that I could not take credit for the ministry.  I also told them how much God has blessed me by allowing me the privilege of serving with you in ministry.

I did not know that there would be an offering collected, but the campus minister, Lane Glaze, asked those who were able to make an offering to do so and then announced that the offering would go to the ministry of St. Mark's. 
Not only was our offering plate full, the basket on the table in the back was also full.  Bruce and I felt so humbled. These precious children of God who had sacrificed time, energy, and financial resources to minister to those in our community who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina, dug deep into their pockets to see that the ministry of St. Mark's continues to be vital!  WOW!  I wish that each of you could have been there to experience God's glory in evidence at St. Mark's this evening.

But for my case, we wouldn’t even know Bruce and Anita Dinwiddie. It just so happened that Bruce sent me several supportive email messages during and after the trial, and I finally got around to answering his messages shortly before the hurricane. And now we all get to be in relationship with St. Mark’s and share in the wonderful things that are happening there as they try to rebuild a congregation and a city.

Even the terrible things that happen, God is using to build a more just and compassionate and beautiful future. We are never immune from suffering; but suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Amen.