Sermon 05.05.2024: For As Long As It Takes

Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly,* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Sermon Text

Tell me about despair, yours. And I will tell you mine. [1]

A Witness to the Resurrection 

This is my resurrection story. In 2000, I had been HIV positive for eight years, all of it borrowed time. [2] I moved to the Bay Area to die. I didn’t want to worry my fiends or my family. I didn’t want to be a burden. The new treatments were still in the wait-and-see stages. Now it seems ridiculous, but back then, I just wanted to crawl away like an old cat that leaves home to find a place to die. The only real thing left for me was my faith. 

While waiting to die, I heard about a church in the Castro District. Since I had Sunday morning obligations serving a church in the South Bay—it was not going well—I drove up to the City late on a Sunday afternoon, located the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) [3] on Eureka [4] Street, and with great apprehension, this sad old cat crawled up into the balcony, looking for a good place to call it quits. 

The evening service was led by a team of former evangelicals, whose goal it was to reclaim the Christian tradition for those who had been discriminated against by the “mainline” church. I noticed an IV medicine pole attached to a man on the front row, at what was probably his last communion service. The place was packed to the rafters. Energy everywhere. A piano played softly, and a somebody started singing, slowly like a torch song. What a friend we have in Jesus, / all our sins and griefs to bear. / What a privilege to carry / everything to God in prayer. [5] 

The band shifted into high gear. Tambourine players started shaking it for the Lord. A woman [6] in short shorts jumped up to direct the big gay gospel choir, her ponytail swinging in perfect time. O what peace we often forfeit / O what needless pain we bear / All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer / What a friend…! 

Something melted inside me. Is this what unity feels like? I had forgotten. And just when I needed it most, the Holy Spirit reconciled me to the people of God. 

Later in the service, I went down for communion. “What’s your name?” the server asked. She fed me the elements and prayed something like, “Victor, may you finally see yourself the way God sees you, loved and whole and probably? fabulous, I mean, I don’t really know you. Uh, amen.” If felt like my first real communion. That night, all the walls fell down. I heard a call to ministry, and I knew that what life was left in me was not solely my own. I stand here over twenty years later a witness to the resurrection. And I want to help you find yours. 

Love, Paul & The Corinthians 

This passage is read at many a religious service because of its beauty. Weddings. Funerals. It always works. The 13th Chapter of First Corinthians is the little black dress of scripture—appropriate for any occasion. [7] Let’s set it in context. The church in Corinth was a nascent movement, about twenty years old. [8] Contrast that with us; Calvary will celebrate 170 years this July—over 8 times as old. What would you think of a twenty-year-old religion founded around 2004, that urges it adherents to consume the body of its founder? We have to show up and wrestle with all this religious stuff to discover its deeper meaning. No one can unwind the mystery of communion for you, but you and Jesus. 

Last week as Rev. Joann Lee preached, Paul urged the Corinthian church to recommit to the love of Jesus. Stop following the apostles, the baptizers, the worship leaders, the domineering personalities—and fix your full attention on Christ. That was the scripture last Sunday. Remember that for the Early Church, salvation meant being together with the Holy Spirit. [9] It was about here and how, paradise today. Enough shalom for today. 

In First Corinthians, Paul rails against those who do harm to one another in sexual ways. The people were practicing the same sins of Sodom. Instead of welcoming the strangers God sent to them, they violate them. And church, listen. Every stranger is sent here by God. 

In the time of Nero (who ruled during First Corinthians) as it was back in the time of Sodom—sexual assault was normalized. It was used to establish power over. Power over the weak or the different, power over women, children and strangers, power over an enemy, power over the competition. It was so normalized [10] that Paul equates rape with the power over gained through greed. And the exploitation of non-citizens by those lucky enough to be born citizens. (Paul was a citizen. Jesus was not. [11] Jesus was a subject.) The age-old citizenship power play is why members of this church testified before the Board of Supervisors a couple weeks ago, asking them to house immigrant families who come to this sanctuary city. [12] Welcoming the stranger is a Christian core value. 

Into that context of misplaced devotion, sexual assault and normalized exploitation, Paul writes words of transcendent beauty. But Chapter 13 is also a guide for discerning the motives of others. If there’s no love in what someone is saying, it’s just noise says Paul—and there’s a lot of unloving noise in this world right now. It’s easy to stir up fear and hate. Any schoolyard bully can do it. Love, the adult choice says Paul, requires faith and hope and effort. Love is a choice. Love is the Jesus choice. Be like Jesus, even if it’s confusing. We won’t understand it fully until we meet Jesus face to face. Then we will see clearly. Then we will understand. 

Love & Communion 

Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, at the end of a road, lies my hometown: Plainville, Georgia. The name “Plain” says it all. Now in my sixties, I can see that the plainness of Plainville is also its virtue. Though most our of 300-person hamlet were Southern Baptists, my family was Methodist. Everybody is a snob about something. 

The Plainville Methodist Church of my childhood was suspicious of communion. Some local members of the John Birch Society, like my dear Aunt Gretna, worried that communion could lead to communism or worse, Catholicism. We feared Catholics because we didn’t know any. Finally, in high school, my dear friend Laura invited me to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. My parents said okay, reluctantly. When they asked Laura what it would be like, she said, “You know, normal stuff, some devil worship and at midnight we’ll sacrifice a live chicken.” Southern humor at its finest! 

The Methodist bishop sent a New York-born preacher to our congregation, a proverbial lamb to slaughter. Dead pastor walking! A Yankee in the hills of Georgia. How could God let this happen! And yes, our new pastor, Parson Lash, had some radical ideas, unlike the beloved Parson Larson before him. Parson Lash had the youth group do skits during worship. How irreverent! Then, he announced that we were hosting an evening worship service with the AME church, that is, the Black congregation down the road. We’re just not ready for that! That Sunday night, we learned that nobody, Black or White, was ready for it, but we showed up, and we tried to love one another. And God bless Parson Lash for challenging us. 

Everyone knows in their bones that love is the right thing to do. 

Everyone knows deep down that equality is the virtuous goal. 

Saying we love the people we feel superior to and maintain power over, that’s not love. 

One day, the parson discovered an old set of silver trays and little shot glasses. He took them as a sign to bring back communion. Next he’ll have us praying to idols and singing ave Maria! Some Methodists had stopped attending already because of his son’s unbridled behavior during worship. Others didn’t like the way his wife dressed. Others were convinced that the Yankee sounds coming from his mouth were not English. I can't understand a word he’s saying. 

My mother even skipped a few Sundays when this Agent of Sherman insisted on something he called “passing the peace” — forcing everybody to shake hands and act surprised that the same old people were back for church. She was most vexed by this. “Why is he doing this? We all know each other already, too well. I don’t need to say hello. I don’t need to shake everybody’s hand. It’s not like I’m running for office!” My mother was the best. And thus, in the fiery civil unrest of the sixties was forged a custom: we would celebrate communion only when forced. 

Like every church, every group of humans, we shared a lot with the early congregation in Corinth. We were divided on how to move through the world outside the doors of the church. How were we to coexist lovingly with the descendants of the people who had been treated so horribly by our great-great-grandparents? How were we to let go of the idol white supremacy, our unearned power over? Power over is a sin, whether or not we acknowledge or examine it. 

Here is the conundrum, or is it a paradox? You decide. The parson thought he was helping us to love one another, but we thought he was forcing his will on us, the very thing Paul says not to do. He could’ve tried to bring everybody along with the program. He could’ve shared his heart with the people he was called to serve. He could’ve gotten some buy-in from the people. It could've been beautiful. Or did we require his surprise attack methods of ministry? He felt an urgency we chose to ignore. 

Christianity is a mutual ministry. It requires faith and hope, but it won’t matter without love. When we celebrate communion, we are choosing to proclaim the love of Jesus for as long as it takes: until [13] the hungry are fed, until the poor are no longer persecuted, until immigrant children no longer live unsheltered in this City of Billionaires, until caring people engaged in peaceful civic actions are not considered terrorists, until there is a two state solution, until the poor are considered worthy of respect, until everybody has good pavement in their neighborhoods, until everyone has access to a grocery store, until greed is no longer fashionable, until until every church called “Christian” is an actual house a prayer for all people. [14]

“Communion,” Mary Luti writes, “is our uprising. At the table we take a stand.” [15] Jesus’ ancient command “remember me” involves doing so, literally, “against amnesia.” [16] We remember him in opposition to the forces that want supremacy or havoc for the sake of ego and profit. We will practice communion for as long as it takes because evil, hate and chaos show up for practice on time every time, plotting new ways to confuse God’s people about the love of Jesus. One person even said at a big convention, “The turn the other cheek stuff” isn’t working for “us” anymore, and the crowd of alleged Christians cheered. [17] They want us to forget we ever knew Jesus. But we will be gaslighted into mass amnesia. No one can prevail against Jesus! No one can prevail against those who have experienced his reconciliation, tasted his grace, and drunk of his love. 

In honor [18] of the United Methodist Church, these words from Methodism’s co-founder John Wesley: [19] 

Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can. 

Amen, amen, and amen. 

[1] from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html> 

[2] HIV is the virus that, left untreated, leads to AIDS. Unlike the 1990s and early 2000s, HIV can now be well-managed through anti-retroviral medication (ART) and is now considered a chronic disease, like diabetes. Currently, there is no cure. However, treatment compliant individuals, like yours truly, carry no transmissible amount of virus and are HIV-safer than individuals who are not taking ART therapies. <https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324321#life-expectancy> 

[3] Like the early Corinthian church, MCC was a new way to freedom-in-Christ back when I discovered it. MCC was founded by Rev. Troy Perry in 1968 in Los Angeles. MCC as an ecumenical, interfaith Christian denomination (Venn diagram not included). After seminary, God gave me what I prayed for. I was ordained in the (now global) MCC denomination to the position of associate pastor for the historic San Francisco congregation. Eventually, I would serve as their interim head pastor until October of 2013. I began a new ministry at Calvary Presbyterian Church (USA) on December 1, 2013 with endorsements from Metropolitan Community Churches < https://www.mccchurch.org/landing.html > and the United Church of Christ < https://www.ucc.org/ > denominations. The Presbytery of San Francisco acknowledged my ministry at Calvary in 2019. Equality on paper is not as complicated as equality practiced by and on actual church people. 

[4] Learn more about MCC-San Francisco with Lynne Gerber’s beautiful When We All Get to Heaven podcast, details and more: < https://www.heavenpodcast.org/> 

[5] A live recording from an MCC-SF worship service in the late 1990s, The Worship & Praise Team of MCC-SF opening the service singing “What a Friend We Have In Jesus” < https://louandvictor.net/victor/music/What-A-Friend-We-Have-In-Jesus.mp3>. 

[6] The ineffably gifted Wendy Tobias. 

[7] Being an anti-fashionista, I consulted with Tony Bravo of the SF Chronicle to make sure little black dresses were still appropriate for most occasions. He said yes, depending on the neckline (and I assume, the hem). 

[8] Jesus was crucified around the year 33. First Corinthians was written around the year 53. Both of these dates are, of course, always up for discussion in the academy. 

[9] Rita Nakashima Brock, Early Church Historian 

[10] This resource is about much more than homosexuality and private conduct, sexual aberration (especially rape) in the Bible outlines the history of Power Over. < https://mccchurch.org/files/2016/08/BibleandHomosexuality.pdf> Notice Mary Tolbert’s words especially. 21st century consensual relations and modern revelations of gender are not covered in our sacred text—but Love is, explicitly. 

[11] Although widely-accepted due to his Jewishness, opposition to empire and his torture and execution by empire, the historicity of Jesus’ non-citizenship remains up for discussion. < https://historum.com/t/is-jesus-christ-a-roman-citizen.134847/> 

[12] Although the BoS were receptive, thousands of children in SF remain homeless and sanctuary-seeking immigrants languish on the City’s opaque and confusing wait lists.

[13] Inspired by “How Often? Until” by Mary Luti, Do This: Communion for Just and Courageous Living, The Pilgrim Press, 2024, page 167. 

[14] Isaiah 56:7 

[15] Do This, page 2 

[16] Ibid. 

[17] Baptist News Global, December 18, 2021: <https://baptistnews.com/article/donald-trump-jr-tells-young-conservatives-that-following-jesus-command-to-turn-the-other-cheek-has-gotten-us-nothing/> (available in many other online sources)