I find I can sum up my experience of my Episcopal Ordination on September 4, 2021 by the closing remarks I gave at the liturgy:
You may not have heard the creaking sounds, the groaning sounds underneath all the praying, the music, the singing and laughter we’ve just experienced. Those sounds are what it sounds like when we, the people of God gather together to move the church forward! That’s what we have just accomplished! Oh, I know we gathered today for my ordination, but there is a much bigger picture here. We have just put our mark on the 2,000 year old history of this church, right here, today, because we, all of us just moved the Church in the direction of equality, of justice and toward the type of community Jesus preached about and taught about.
We found we don’t have to wait for the guys in Rome to fix the Church for us. We can do it. Our baptism gives us the keys to the front door of the Church. We have the right to live by what we have come to know, what we have come to believe, and to say that all of us, all of us, all us are holy and beloved.
No longer will we be silent when the hierarchy insults our gay and lesbian family members, our gay and lesbian friends, and our gay and lesbian children for heaven’s sake by calling them “objectively disordered”. All of us are made in the image and likeness of God and are holy and loved. It’s in Scripture!
No one has the right to say who is able to receive communion and who is not. It’s a gift from Jesus, not the Church hierarchy. It’s not their gift to give! Think with me a moment. Picture yourself at the Last Supper. Jesus is handing out the bread he just blessed. Suddenly, a cleric appears
and pulls Jesus’s arm back just as he is about to place a piece of bread in someone’s hand.
‘Oh no, Jesus, you can’t give him the bread,’ says the cleric. ‘And not her, either, she was ordained a priest. They didn’t follow the rules the Church Fathers have put in place about who can or cannot receive communion.’
The audacity! Do you think Jesus would have gone all ‘Chuck Norris’ on the guy?!
Today we say ‘Let that era be over. We can longer stay silent!’
To quote Helen Reddy, ‘We know too much to go back and pretend.’
Let the Church say Amen!
Let the Church say Amen!
Let the Church say Amen!
Amen.
