Logs to Specks
September 17, 2006
Matthew 7:1-5
I need to take the log out of my own eye before I examine the specks in anyone elses…
I've heard this message a lot this week. It's been circling, entwining, permeating the entire week. It all began on Monday.
I heard the word for the first time this week on Monday. It came from Pastor Elwood McDowell the pastor of Trinity Baptist church in Tucson . This past Monday was the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 destruction, chaos, and death. Each 9/11 following that monumental day the Tucson Multi Faith Alliance has gathered the Tucson community together to worship in a spirit of unity and hope. This September 11 we gathered together at Temple Emanu El. It's the one service a year where I feel as if we've really worked hard to appreciate and know one another. Every clergy person wears their unique liturgical drag. It's one of the few times I wear my robe. And there is something powerful that happens as we come together: Seeks, B'Hai, Moslems, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Non-Denominational Christians and Native persons. This Tuesday it was also primary voting day. So on this sacred evening the service was interspersed with city and state leaders such as: The mayor and vice mayor, Ward Representatives, School District Superintendents, President of U of A, House of Representatives, and City Council. It was a powerful evening worshiping together and sharing a message of hope, no matter where on the journey we found ourselves. And Pastor McDowell was no exception. He fired up the room, reminding us to hold ourselves a bit more accountable. For if we could only admit the logs in our own eyes we could see how it's preventing us from opening ourselves to one another. He reminded us that this 9/11 didn't come from no where, just as the Iraq war is not coming out of a vacuum. We are creating these tools of destruction by insulating ourselves from anyone different than we are. And, he called us out, that this culture is not one of faith, and we as a diverse people of faith need to dismantle this attitude that we're different and thus can't relate as human beings. Take the log out, Elwood preached. For this time spent together in worship, proves, we can find common ground and a new day can come. But, it all begins with us, embracing one another like we're doing tonight. Look one another in the eye, speaking and listening to one another, and seeing the face of God in one another instead. For our God is a God of love, not judgment, and that love is uniting.
I heard it again on Wednesday when Rev. Mike Schunemeyer called. He's a UCC National Staff person in the Health and Advocacy department of Local Church Ministries. He helped produce “Call me Malcom” which was the movie we hosted at this year's Wingspan Film festival. He also helped craft and was the person who delivered the Same Gender Marriage Resolution to General Synod. Mike called asking if he could come and talk about proposition 107. They had this same proposition last election cycle in Ohio . It passed in Ohio in spite of our UCC presence there. Church of the Beatitudes in Phoenix asked Mike to come and participate in debunking what 107 would do and comparing it to what our faith directs us to do and be. He called on Wednesday to ask if he could do a presentation here tonight from 7:30-9:00. The great tragedy of this whole thing is that it becomes so divisive for the faith community. It only entrenches two sides instead of being able to see one another as the face of Christ. For our God is a God of love, not judgment, and the love is uniting.
I heard it again during the Southwest Conference Board of Directors Meeting on Friday and Saturday. Our community of faith, First UCC has made a covenant with the Southwest conference of the UCC that we will be in partnership with one another. This means that we are required to share our gifs, resources, prayers with the other members of the SW conference as well as our local churches. I am Moderator Elect for our conference this year and attended my first Southwest Conference Board Meeting on Friday and Saturday. There are 30 people that represent this conference around that table. Out of a conference with only 43 churches in it, there are 30 people around the table. That's an enormous group to try to get work done within. It takes a lot of dialogue, it takes more time, and things don't go as quickly as I am accustomed to them going around here. It also was the first time that I had walked into a meeting in the Southwest Conference where a spirit of compassion and grace wasn't present. Almost immediately I wanted to eradicate a quarter of the room. They seemed to disrespect process, disregard the moderator or any sense of teamwork. Every time they opened their mouths it was like a cheese grater on my soul. It was the first meeting of the Board and it takes awhile for some folks to position themselves before they can settle down. The last part of our meeting was a dialogue session about what the next steps of our interim work will be. There's a lot going on with a Conference Minister Search Committee, Staff Restructuring, Rock the Future ending phase two and beginning phase three, the Church Growth and Development Team building readiness for renewing and developing churches in our conference, and a pending vote in January to recommend to Annual Conference Meeting that we become an Open and Affirming Conference. Any one of these issues could be volatile, personally, divisive. But, after two days of wrestling it was amazing to see. How our initial feelings about one another, the logs in our own eyes had been chipped away and unity came. Our God is a God of love, not judgment, and that love is uniting.
Finally, I heard it over and over again at the Wingspan dinner last night. Wingspan is the LGBT Community Center in Tucson and they had their Annual Dinner where1 st hosted the 1 st UCC table for the first time. We heard from the Mother of a gay son. We heard in spite of how she had known this his whole life, when he came out the grief and processing it took for her to open herself to this truth. She spoke of how she had to chip away at her own restrictions for his happiness to allow him to be. We heard from Scott Blades from TIHAN . He was there to present the Godat Award Posthumously to the man who created TAP the first AIDS organization in Tucson . He spoke of how AIDS began as “The Gay Disease” and how painful it was to watch friends, loved ones, our youngest, our best, our brightest be stripped away one after another, while no one helped because it was just the queers and it served them right. We heard from the Executive Director of GLAAD as the keynote speaker. How he was tired of the rhetoric from right and left because it was preventing us from protecting all of our citizens. He was encouraging that right now these are the times and you are the people who can make a difference. Our God is a God of love, not judgment, and that love is uniting.
This is the time. We are the people. Perhaps before we get too carried away this week speaking, we should take a step back and try to see through another person's lense. We are the people of the Jesus movement. We must recognize we come carrying all our own baggage. This is the time, to begin to slow down our own agendas and consider what is going on before shutting someone else out.