ONA/Pride Sunday Sermon 2024

This sermon was delivered on June 30, 2024 for Open and Affirming Sunday/Pride Sunday. The scripture references are 2 Corinthians 8 and Galatians 5:1, 13-25.

Paul, the author of these letters, has a lot to say to two groups of people, trying to be people of faith, together, in their respective communities about 2,000 years ago. The churches in Corinth and Galatia clearly had some things going on. Unfortunately, we as readers, in the much distant future to when these letters were written, don’t really know what those issues were. And although biblical scholars have tried and tried again to figure out the issues, they are at best guesses. Lots of inferences are made but no one can say this is exactly why Paul wrote these letters to the communities.

So, we hear that people of faith are in fact “people-y” – you know they try to get along, but everyone has an opinion. Some people think this way or another. Everyone has “feelings” about everything that’s happening. We can relate to that today – many churches are the same in this respect. And today is no exception.

In UCC-land, today is Open and Affirming (ONA) Sunday or Pride Sunday. And several other denominations have Pride Sunday as well. It is the last Sunday of June each year because June is National Pride month. If you ever take a look at a UCC Calendar and planning book, you will find that are many special Sundays – rural church, WISE, Creation Care Sunday, our 5 for 5 offerings all get a Sunday, the regular special Sundays of the church year – Christmas, Epiphany, All Saints, and so on. Some people look at the planning calendar and think these special Sundays are all great, others never know about any of them, and others hate them or at least some of the Sundays.

I know having severed the denomination at all of its levels, local church, association, conference and national, all levels of the UCC hear both the good and the bad about these special days, and in particular, right now, Pride Sunday.

I’ve read and been told that the Church has no business celebrating Pride because the LGBTQIA+ community has stolen the rainbow from Christians to its condoning sin, to when is there going to be a straight pride Sunday, and worse. I’ve seen churches and events protested; pastors threatened – me being one of them in a previous call. I have seen people get kicked out because they are who they are and won’t covert or be saved. This hurts my heart and I believe the heart of God.

But here’s the thing, I have also seen the church affirm people “no matter who they are, or where they are on life’s journey.” I have seen people come back to God and the church because they have been told that they are God’s beloved and they are loved. I have seen people become happier, healthier, closer to whole because the church has explicitly said you are welcome, without having small legal print that says exceptions apply if you are divorced, a person of color, a person who doesn’t speak English, you don’t believe the “right things,” you ask too many questions and just don’t follow and so on. I have seen people grow in faith as they walk with others who have different experiences of God and God’s love. I have seen hate turn to love, yelling turn to singing and laughter, people once divided becoming united. I have seen glimpses of the kin-dom of God, here and now and I’m willing to say you have seen those glimpses too.

Galatians 5 speaks about the bad things – things that over time have been labeled “sin” but the best translations of the text don’t use the word sin.

I don’t know about you, but I can easily spend more time focusing on the negative. It’s easy for us to get down on ourselves and others and to get caught up in biblical literalism and our version of sin. What is sin and who gets to define it is ever evolving and changing. Even in the Bible we hear a variety of opinions about what sin is and who gets to define it. There is beauty in the diversity we find of the different expressions of faith in our sacred text. And people who debated the canonization of the bible had reasons to include such a wealth of experiences of faith and God and trying to be community together. We read how in different places and times, different things were defined as sin. And as modern readers we often put our own values and understandings into the biblical text. We try to use bits and pieces of a letter to justify whatever we want today.

But what I find interesting is that a theme that is found in both epistle readings we heard today is that love is always coming up. Love is always the best answer. Love is always being used as a guide for the work of the community. The question of who is in and out of the community is often answered with, what is the most loving thing to do? What should we do when people are suffering? Respond in love to help and offer healing. To offer reconciliation and reparations.

Pride Sunday matters, the Open and Affirming Movement matters because the Church universal has hurt people, killed people who claim their identity. It matters because God’s love has been weaponized, when Jesus told people to put down their swords. It has been used to bar people from fully knowing God’s vast and mysterious love when God has sent prophets, Jesus, apostles, the Holy Spirit and so many more people to say come on in and be yourself. Come and be wrapped up in love that is bigger and wilder and bolder than anything we can imagine.

And even if it’s not us who have kept people out, or kicked people out, shouted slurs and God’s name in the same sentence, protested, threatened and/or harmed people, we are part of a family that is one. We are part of a family called Christianity and it is our job to reach out to those who are hurt and offer aid and protection and love. And also – and this is the hard one even for me – we are to reach out to those doing the harm and hurt and to love them too. They are us and we are them, one body. And sometimes we have to work a part of the body more than another. Sometimes we have to struggle and convince our parts that there is a better way to be so we can be whole, so that we can all know God’s love in safety and in authentic ways. Sometimes we have to teach our body parts new ways of doing and being. While we can do it by force and saying believe or else, what if we offered patience and grace and forgiveness to the part that has to relearn how to be and let the learning happen with practice and experience?

Having Pride Sunday invites us to reconcile and to be reconciling, to love in bigger and crazier ways. It invites us to remember that when we see another and talk to or about another, we are seeing and talking to or about someone who has the spark of the Divine in them – that we are in fact talking to a part of God. How do you think God wants you to talk with them? Let us talk with others with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control and faithfulness. Let us talk as we remember we are God bearers and kin-dom builders, here and now. Amen and Amen.