I believe this church’s support of gay and lesbian clergy is best understood within the historical structure of this faith community, and as part of the breadth of its response to God’s Love.

When you weave threads together to create fabric, the warp threads are the lengthwise threads, giving the fabric its structure. As we weave our faith community together, the warp threads represent the continuity of the church’s relationship with God over time. The horizontal or woof threads in a weaving provide the texture. As with expressions of faith in a community, these horizontal threads can change over time as the weaving develops.

A significant number of our families at Woodland Park United Methodist Church mark first became involved here in the 1950’s, and some prior to World War II. To single out one family, the Wejak clan’s presence in this church now extends to the fifth generation. Three generations of family participation are not unusual.

This staying power has created a community of quiet commitment and consistency, with an ability to fold in new members and families as part of the whole. As a congregation we are not particularly trendy or sexy; nor are we easily rattled. Long warp threads of enduring relationship with God run through this congregation, giving us strength. And the foundation of that relationship is a core belief in God’s unconditional and inclusive Love.

The horizontal threads of our life together as a congregation reflect our responses through the years to new understandings, new crises, and new opportunities.

It is my observation that, over time, God has purposely led this congregation down the garden path of unconditional Love, calling forth from this community successive acts of justice and generosity on behalf of the marginalized. Some of these acts have cost us members. All of these acts represent the efforts of a community struggling to be true to God’s all-embracing Love.

So, in the long view, stepping forward now to speak out for an inclusive ordained ministry is part of our much larger tapestry. As always, we work to respond faithfully to God’s call in this time and place. Tonight, we confront injustice in our own denomination. We find it inconsistent with our experience of God’s Love, that gay and lesbian United Methodists who are called by God to ordained ministry, are presumed by United Methodism to be unworthy of the role. These are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our friends and loved ones, ourselves, all part of the beloved Body of Christ. As we read it, they – we – are ‘included in.’

We address this issue with the passion of God’s Love. We also take this step expecting to exercise the patient endurance of the long haul. This is one step on a long journey, to echo Mark Williams’ sermon of last Sunday.

I should hasten to add that this congregation finds itself a bit nonplussed that anyone would think our stance unusual, given the long view. This community would characterize itself as an ordinary congregation, like many others, struggling in human, faulty ways to respond to the call of God. If we are making a difference, that Difference witnesses to the transforming power of God’s Love embodied in a very human faith community.

Finally, a testimonial on behalf of my father. Reah Dougherty served this congregation as pastor from 1957 to 1962. His journey then took him to other pastorates and other experiences. The most transforming of these, I believe, was his growing understanding of and advocacy for full acceptance of lesbians and gay men in our society, and especially in the life of the Christian church. He was utterly consistent in his faith understanding and his practice on this issue. He was deeply honored to receive a community service award from Seattle’s Pride Foundation for his work.

In retirement, and later, as his health slowly failed, he chose to attend University Congregational Church, an open and affirming congregation, and to come back with me to Woodland Park United Methodist Church. Once again he found here the congregation I have described.

He did not live to see you take this next, public step of faith. But, taking the long view, I know he would be pleased, and not at all surprised.

Fifteen years ago our family attended Wallingford United Methodist Church. This was during the time Wallingford was holding discussions about whether or not to become a reconciling congregation. I recall several drives home from church, discussing with Jeff the points for and against. Being inclusive seemed like the Christian thing to do, but we weren’t sure such a bold step was really necessary. After all, it didn’t really affect anyone already in the church. Then one of the members, a wonderful friend, a father, a Sunday school teacher, told us that he was a gay man. That was a transforming moment. Suddenly our perspectives were changed. No longer was this a theoretical question; it was personal. Of course, he could teach our children in Sunday school, have them over to play with his daughter, be our friend and fellow church member. We voted in favor of becoming a reconciling church on the strength of his courageous act of speaking out. We have regretted to this day our narrow mindedness. This man’s few words transformed two people.

Over the next several years, other people whispered stories of injustice, hurtful words and hate directed at people whose sexual orientation I did not understand, but giving me a glimpse of what it’s like to be excluded and threatened. But it was the private and personal courageous acts of coming out that really began to show me the many faces of gay men and lesbian women. I met a lesbian couple in this church and heard their stories as well as the stories of their daughter and her struggles having lesbian parents. In hushed voices, patients told me of their being gay or lesbian but beg me not to write that information on their charts. I heard stories from our children about gay bashing at school or how so and so’s parents couldn’t accept their child’s sexual orientation. I heard of a friend’s nephew estranged from his father after revealing his secret. I heard of another friend trying to protect her lesbian daughter from the community’s judgment. Hushed stories, silent suffering, prayers for compassion offered in such vague terms that no one else would know what I was really praying about.

Then in the spring of 1999, we heard the tears of our own daughter on the phone from Uruguay, learning that she was to lose her host family because they had learned of her lesbian orientation. We cried with her, trying to help her through a culture that could not understand that we still regarded her as good and pure and beloved of God. Even then, however, we dared not break the polite silence. Our prayers for her and for us were veiled in vagueness. Through our tears for our child and all of these children of God, we were alone in silence, knowing the unspeakable, in fear of rejection and blame. But God was speaking to our family, teaching us, angering us, cradling us is God’s hands.

When Rev. Karen Damman openly affirmed her partner and their son and demanded of the church her right to an appointment, we quietly offered prayers for Karen. But we also began offering prayers for Reconciling Ministries and healing this rift in the church, talking out loud about the justness of her requests, expressing outrage about the exclusionary language we found in our Book of Discipline. Some of us meeting in secret with a Reconciling Parents group explored how we could be supportive at Annual Conference and whether our actions would “out” of children. Sometimes, in other settings, we would test the waters by allowing out just enough of our opinions to get a discussion going. But we held our own secrets hidden in our hearts and sat very close, holding hands under the table.

Then June 15th came and the unspeakable was spoken. Boldly and courageously, our own Pastor Mark Williams revealed to us his secrets, his deep hurts, his pain, and his joy at being able to claim all of himself as real, valid, wonderful and lovely. Suddenly, the timidity in this church began to give way to outrage, solidarity, and a belief we were being called by God. As Pastor Mark said, it was not he who was changed by his coming out, it was us who were changed. Just as the Monarch butterfly’s green cocoon changes to brown just before it opens up, we were transformed. The jar was opened and the butterflies began to fill the sky. The wind created by their tiny wings created a stir in the very air of this church and personally in our families.

Like the fledgling butterfly, it took a short time for our congregation to find the power and direction we would need for the journey.

• We began to unveil our secrets, and found ourselves accepted.
  
• We voiced our reservations and found ourselves respected.
  
• We felt helpless and found the courage to speak out against ignorance and injustice.
  
• We shared our passions are found more passion.
  
• We asked for help and received 19 Emails waiting.
  
• We felt scared and were comforted by our pastor just prior to his departure for Nashville.
  

Whenever we have felt little, powerless, scared, hopeless and overwhelmed, God has been with us. Though we may doubt the influence just one of us has on our brothers and sisters, we should not doubt the power of the Holy Spirit moving through us.

I believe in boldness. I believe in breaking the silence. From secrecy and silence, to timidly speaking, to shouting from the front of the church, the time to claim God’s all empowering love and to open up the church’s doors to all of God’s people is now. God’s word is in us: we just have to open our mouths. To the gay men and Lesbian women among us, come out and let us know who you are. To the straights among us, come out and let us hear your outrage at the injustices this church and this society condones.

This little church isn’t so little any more. The rainbow banners outside are a new bold welcoming sign. They might have been even larger had I only realized the size and power of the face of this congregation. We have the power to influence others, to create change, to achieve justice. May we walk humbly with our God on this journey together.

I am a student at Seattle University and I just read a quote form Tolstoy that I thought was very appropriate. He said, “The more we get to know people, the more difficult it is to judge them”. It really struck a tone with me because I felt the more I did get to know people the harder it was to label them: straight, gay, sexual, lesbian, or different than the home because I saw them as a person. I think that that right there is where our church is moving. I think our church is trying to understand, it’s trying to get to know homosexuals and homosexual behavior. I think we’re not there yet, but we’re taking big strides and we’re getting there. I see us moving towards greater understanding of humanity and that we are all human.

I would like to borrow this quote from his holiness the Dalai Lama. He was lecturing at the University of Arizona and he started off this week long series of three hour lectures. He walks up to the podium; he’s short, shorter than I am, a little Tibetan guy and this sort of accent I can remember although wish I could since the poem sounds some much better in his Tibet accent. But he says, Though I’m meeting you all for the first time, I believe that I know you. I believe we are all the same; we are all human. Of course there are differences, black, white, red, gay, straight, bi-sexual, Tibetan, American, Muslim. But at the core they are all human. We have the same physiologic makeup; we have the same physical needs; the same emotional needs. We all have minds and hearts and we all need those minds and hearts to be nourished. So as he made this talk of understanding, I think that right now our church is beginning a greater period of understanding. You see I borrowed that quote from the Dalai Lama, but you can find that same quote in the bible, that Christ said the same thing. How many times does it say we are all one? We are all members of this human race. We are all members of the body of Christ. We are welcome at the table. Jesus taught us to love, Jesus did not teach us not to carpet bomb a group of people just because they are different from us. Jesus taught us to love, he did not teach us to ban people from our pulpits and from positions of leadership simply because they are different from us. We are called to love, that’s where I hope our church is coming from. That’s where I see our church moving.

I’ll end with a little story. The story of a young boy about yea tall. About this color of hair and about this color of eyes. A boy who grew up in a very conservative community. The community that for most of his life told him that some of these feelings he was feeling inside were wrong, that they were evil, that he was going to hell. That all people who thought this were going to hell; that they could not possibly be Christian. He was a boy, just like every other boy, that cried when his favorite pet, a black Lab, got run over by a truck. He, to this day, smiles when he turns the corner and sees the presents under the tree at Christmas. And yet, he is walking; picture him walking into a living room, any living room, your living room, and he has this thing about himself that he wants to tell you. He’s been racking his mind about this for months, years. He trusts you. He walks into the living room, you look into his eyes, you see he is blinking back tears because of the weight of the thing he is going to tell you. That’s where I am going to stop the story. The story does not end, but I as the story teller now turn it over to you, to us, to the church universal and to the world. Let us look into those eyes that are blinking back tears and I hope that behind them we see a human; behind them we see ourselves and we treat them the way we ourselves would like to be treated.

That’s my story.

A friend of mine told me that he was talking with his neighbor about my situation since coming out this summer. He assured his neighbor that the fact that I'm gay isn't the most interesting thing about me. I'm relieved to hear that. Because when we've all grown tired of caring about the gender of who sleeps with whom, I hope that my life remains interesting and meaningful. Long after the Church has discovered that sexual orientation alone doesn't define any of us, I hope that the choices and decisions of my life tell a story much deeper than the story of my life over the past four months.

Those who were present in worship on Sunday heard me read one of my favorite poems by the poet Rumi. "Jars of Springwater" is a poem about that moment when just a taste isn't enough any longer. The poem describes the realization that having just a little bit of a thing sometimes just isn't enough. For me the poem captures the feelings I've felt lately about my relationship with the Church. The Church says that I'm of sacred worth, but still my life is incompatible with Christian teaching. The Church says that it's committed to be in ministry for and with all persons, but it also says that I'm essentially unfit for the exercise of ordained ministry. The Church offers me and many of us a taste of respect and openness and affirmation... but just a taste. We're offered a glimpse of God's infinite grace, but we're afforded only conditional standing within the body of the Church.

The prayer that I'm praying tonight is that all of us will have the courage to demand more than just a taste of justice within our denomination. I pray that we will all have the courage to insist on more than just a taste of respect. I pray that our Church will someday offer more than just conditional love and acceptance to some of us. I pray that our Church will someday reflect God's infinite grace to all people, including those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered. In the words of the poet Rumi:

Jars of Springwater are not enough
anymore. Take us down to the river!

The face of peace, the sun itself.
No more the slippery cloud like moon.

Give us one clear morning after another
and the one whose work remains unfinished,

who is our work as we diminish, idle,
though occupied, empty, and open.

Rev. Mark Edward Williams