The lifelong journey of learning presents more than a few surprises along the way. For me—even after many years of formal education, two advanced degrees, more than twenty-five years of teaching graduate students, and all the many daily and informal ways that we all learn from our interactions with the world around us—I really wasn’t prepared for how many times I’ve had to learn how to read, and then relearn it, again and again. I’m not referring to the fundamentals of recognizing the arrangement of letters into certain words; I mean the ongoing process of interpreting those words and deciphering what someone is trying to communicate with particular phrases, from pedestrian prose to soaring poetry.
Learning how to read takes deliberate effort over time because the way we read is shaped to a very large extent by our personal and social contexts, including our family histories, our socio-economic status, and so much more. We have to read those contexts in addition to reading a text in our search for meaning. And even a very familiar text can suddenly carry a different kind of meaning when we read it in a different location or circumstance. Phrases, slogans, and symbols all have their own contextual histories as well, and sometimes we can find ourselves repeating those phrases without knowing their histories, perpetuating (usually unintentionally) some social wounds. Common expressions like “sold down the river,” or “cakewalk,” or “peanut gallery,” for example, all come from the history of institutional slavery or Jim Crow segregation (the “peanut gallery” was the highest level of theater seating where Black people were forced to sit, like being at the back of the bus). Even more common are ways of describing something negative with the color “black” (when someone is “blackmailed,” or “blacklisted,” or disappears metaphorically into a “black hole”), which can perpetuate the notion that whiteness is good and blackness is bad—the foundation of white supremacy.
Learning and then relearning how to read obviously makes a difference in a religious tradition in which we read from a collection of sacred texts. Those texts of the Bible come from a wide range of cultural contexts and which have been received in various ways by people in varying contexts for many centuries, all of which makes reading the Bible quite challenging. I’ve been thinking about all this as we launch into LGBTQ Pride Month. As we all know, we have inherited a long history of using particular passages from the Bible to condemn or exclude LGBT people, which can make those of us who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender cautious and even hyper-vigilant about religion itself. It’s not always possible to predict in advance what kind of a biblical passage might trigger memories of harm and trauma; a biblical passage might not appear to have anything to do with sexuality or gender, but it might prompt memories of a community that hurt us.
In our current lectionary cycle, we will be hearing quite a bit from the ancient Hebrew prophets in this long green season after Pentecost. That prophetic tradition can be bracing and invigorating, sometimes challenging and befuddling, and very rarely dull and boring. In addition, the occasionally excoriating language used by these ancient prophets can sound like the scolding voices of modern preachers who have denounced LGBTQ people and our relationships either from the pulpit or in public. In addition to hearing from one of those ancient prophets this coming Sunday, the first Sunday in Pride month, we will also start hearing from Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is one of the texts frequently cited to condemn lesbian and gay people. Less obvious but still important, we will hear two healing stories from Matthew’s account of the Gospel on Sunday as well. Stories of restored health are naturally hopeful and heartwarming—except when we remember how religious leaders sometimes insist that “homosexuals” need to be “healed” of their same-sex attractions. For some people, any story about any kind of healing in a religious context can trigger that kind of memory. Like I said, lifelong learning is often a process of learning how to read, and then re-read, again and again.
As we journey through this LGBTQ Pride Month, I would encourage us to keep in mind the religious complexities of Christian traditions, including the entanglements of religion with the wider culture—not only concerning sexuality but also gender, and still more, race and ethnicity, as well as our ecological commitments. All of these are deeply intertwined, and they are often linked in public discourse with religious language. Yes, all of this quickly becomes quite complex indeed, but we don’t need to become experts on all these issues to be faithful to our Gospel witness. Just remember this: even modest and simple gestures of hospitality (which all of us can offer) can make a big difference for people who might be unsure of a religious welcome. Creating a hospitable community is actually a vital component of our shared witness to the Gospel of God’s transformative love and grace. In that light, I’m so grateful to be serving as a priest and pastor in this parish where the rhythms and postures of hospitality come so naturally to this community—so let’s keep reminding each other that these efforts really do make a difference, and often far more than we will ever fully realize.
Dates and Notices
- The Third Annual Jazz for Justice street party to kick off LGBTQ Pride Month happen THIS Friday, June 5! Mark your calendars as we welcome back the Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra from 5:30—9:00 p.m. We will close Grand Street in front of the parish hall lawn; food trucks, beer, wine, and soft drinks will be available, as well as dessert! Invite your friends and neighbors! This is a wonderful celebration and opportunity to stand (musically) in solidarity with all of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender friends and neighbors! (In case of rain, the festivities will move inside!)
- Scripture and Sexuality is a topic that tends to shape conversations (and sometimes confrontations) at LGBT Pride festivals. As people of faith, we should always be prepared to give sound religious and spiritual reasons for our unqualified embrace and welcome of LGBT people—including our approach to the Bible in that welcoming posture. Next Sunday, June 14, following the 10:15 liturgy, we will review ways of talking about the Bible for the sake of welcoming LGBT people, including strategies for engaging with people who object to such postures of Gospel welcome.
- The Rev. Deacon Rebekah Taylor officially began her time with us on June 1 as a part-time consultant for our digital ministry project. Together with building our music program, cultivating our online presence and digital community is an important strategy for our congregational development and for making a greater impact on this shoreline community. Rebekah will also be engaging in liturgical ministries and pastoral care work, integrating these into our digital community as well.
LGBTQ Pride Month, Black History Month, and the Season of Creation, have become important markers for us in this parish for how our liturgical formation shapes us as bold witnesses to the Gospel in the wider world. While these three markers are distinct and enjoy their own integrity, they are also deeply and mutually informing—racial categories are always gendered, for example, and human sexuality is never generic but always inflected with ethnicity and cultural customs, and all of these play a vital role in how we think and act ecologically for the sake of life on this planet. (The image below of artist Frida Kahlo can remind us that Kahlo was mostly unknown in her lifetime except as “the wife of Diego Rivera,” and that she was both physically challenged and that she also identified as bisexual—one of the more “invisible” identity markers—and nearly always enfolded her portraits in images from the wider world of nature.)
It’s both challenging and invigorating to keep such a big picture in view! Among the several important ways we can engage with these efforts and with each other, our Sunday morning liturgy is one of the most obvious. I try to keep this in mind in my preaching, and in the work Sander and I do with music (including the selection of hymns), and also in the range of options available to us for the texts and rituals used in worship itself. How we pray makes a lasting impact on how we live, in other words, just as who we are shapes our experiences of the prayer and worship we offer. We also live at a time when religion itself is treated with deep suspicion (and rightly so in some cases!) and we cannot simply assume any shared or self-evident meaning for our inherited traditions. All of this informs my weekly plunge into the lectionary texts, prayer book rubrics, liturgical options, and overall tone for the sermon. As we observe (and I hope also celebrate) LGBTQ Pride Month, I would invite us to attend carefully to how we are praying together on Sunday morning and how this can shape our shared witness to the Gospel—I’ve included some further notes about this below, especially for the sake of underscoring what we believe as a source of the healing God calls us to offer in a world of pain.
Fr. Jay
A Community of Care
Please let us know how we may pray for you—concerns as well as celebrations—and other requests you may have as we strengthen our bonds of care and compassion with each other here in western Michigan and with those around the world in need of prayer.
Notices:
- Jay’s friend Holly Quarles has now entered into hospice care after nearly nine years of battling brain cancer; please keep her, and her husband Stephan and her son Maxwell, in your prayers, as well as Jay and others here in Saugatuck who have come to know her and love her.
Prayer Requests
- The United States of America—for a restoration of peace and for a renewed commitment to the common good; for an end to systemic racism and violence; for social and economic justice; for a courageous engagement with ecological renewal and healing.
- For an end to violence and a lasting peace with justice throughout the world—in the Middle East (especially in Iran, the nations of the Gulf region, and still also Gaza and the West Bank), and in Ukraine.
- The mission and shared ministry of this parish, for pastoral insight and ministerial discernment for the clergy and lay leaders, especially the Vestry and our various Ministry Teams.
- For the Bishop Search Committee of this Diocese of the Great Lakes, for divine guidance in preparing a slate of candidates, and for discernment among all those who might feel called to serve.
- Lynn, Mary Ryder’s cousin.
- Katelyn, for comfort and healing.
- Holly Quarles, and her family, for courage and comfort.
- Mary Saba, for healing.
- Frank Lindsay, for healing.
- Sky and Dale Ann Suydam, for resilience and courage.
- Kevin Martin, for healing and renewed strength.
- Susan Gaunt, for renewed strength and healing.
- Ruth Vanden Bosch, for resilience and healing.
- Mike Mulcahy and Chris Seidel, for comfort and strength.
Special Occasions in May
Do we have your special occasions on file? Would you like to prayerfully celebrate your baptismal anniversary? Ordination anniversary? Let us know what you would like us to remember with you and we’ll post it!
Birthdays – May
Mike Mulcahy 05/07, Margaret Mason 05/13, Scott Morrow 05/13, John McMahon 05/15, Mary Ryder 05/21, Jane Underwood 05/21, Chris Seidel 05/22, James Lamb 05/25, Bub (Edward) Pazier 05/25, Peter McGregor 5/27, Kathryn (Kitty) Beecken 05/28
Wedding Anniversaries – May
Steve and Janice Williford 05/08, Mike and Heidi Campbell 05/10
Common Prayer for Shared Ministry
Notes on the Liturgy from Fr. Jay: “Seasonal Adjustments”
I consider myself theologically conservative, and also liturgically a traditionalist. More than a few people find it surprising when I say this and think I must be joking. But it’s true. This is also true: I am socially and politically liberal. I don’t often embrace such categorical labels, which I think are mostly too blunt and unwieldy to be constructive, but I do think it’s important to note that my grounding in classical Christian traditions is precisely what inspires me to live as an activist for social and economic justice; they are thoroughly intertwined, one posture because of the other. This framing of my own approach to Christian faith and practice matters for many reasons, why I sometimes make seasonal adjustments to the texts we use for Sunday morning worship; I do not do so lightly and I try my best to do it thoughtfully, and always for substantial pastoral reasons. Those pastoral concerns likewise spring from my theological conservatism, which is to say, my commitment to the formative character of theology. For the sake of that commitment, it’s important to realize that merely repeating phrases or reciting prayers by rote will not advance our shared formation as God’s people, which those prayers and texts were designed to facilitate.
Consider, for example, the sermon I offered this past Sunday on God as Trinity, which likely introduced images and ways of speaking about God that were unfamiliar to many—and yet they all came directly from historical traditions (and even some theologians who have been canonized as saints!). My hope in preaching in that way (one hope among many) was that our recitation of the Nicene Creed after that sermon would feel more lively and provoke deeper engagement. The creed itself matters, not least in how it forms us in particular ways, but I worry that the creedal language has become so familiar and some of it so obscure that it does not do the job that a creedal statement ought to do for our Eucharistic liturgy—and that “job” includes shaping us to live in particular ways as God’s people in the world. Repetition is thus both necessary for ritual and also risky; familiarity can sometimes interrupt formation.
I think all of this is particularly important to address at those times of year when we might anticipate having significant numbers of guests during Sunday worship, like we probably will in this LGBTQ Pride Month. For all of these reasons, during the month of June we will be using an alternative creedal statement at the 10:15 liturgy based on a set of texts recently developed in The Episcopal Church, some of which have been adapted from revised liturgies of the Church of England. I’m inviting us to do this not to “replace” the Nicene Creed but rather for the sake of reflecting a bit more deliberately on why we include such statements in worship to begin with: to help strengthen the link between faith and action. Language matters, in other words, and the language we use for prayer and worship matters significantly, at all stages of our faith development, and for our shared ministry. Or more simply put: it’s because the traditions we have inherited matter so much to me that I sometimes make seasonal adjustments to those texts—I don’t want us to take them for granted, especially since they are meant to form our witness to the Gospel of God’s transformative love in the world.
