Have you ever felt shut out from the Grace of God? Have you ever received the message, one way or another, that you’re not the right kind of person, or you’re not worthy, or you don’t belong for one reason or another, that you were outside the embrace of God, that the heart of your Holy Creator was not your home? It happens so often for so many reasons, I’m sorry to say. It can be very dramatic and hurtful: for example I’ve had people share with me that they confessed to their priest that they explored their sexuality and the priest told them that what they had done was unforgivable. But it is more often subtle, that we just don’t have what it takes to be among the “chosen.”

For my part, for a long time, I genuinely believed that I was shut out from the grace of God. My mind was too skeptical about the doctrines I was supposed to believe to be saved. It was hard for me to feel like I had the purity of faith it takes to be a true believer., although I’ve never very dramatic in my sinning, I was just so aware of my moral shortcomings, and the moral shortcomings of humanity at large, and the vicious side of what groups of humans could do, including religious people, that I just never felt I could be honestly myself in the fold of the bright and shiny Christians, who were so enthusiastic and optimistic about their being saved and all the others being condemned.

            Yet, Jesus kept pulling on me – sometimes to my chagrin. And Jesus kept pulling on me to be with community.

When I finally surrendered to the pull of following Jesus back to church, it was really, really important to me that I find a church that wasn’t excluding or condemning people because of gender and sexual orientation. At the time I said that this was because I refused to go to a church that wouldn’t be a healthy place for my friends who were gay. And that was true. But, as I reflect now, I realize that there was a deeper motivation for me that I wasn’t fully aware of at the time. A church being “open & affirming” of LGBTQ+ folks was a signal to me that maybe I would be welcome too, just as I am. It meant that maybe this could be a place where I could honestly be who I am, and welcomed for it.

Now, I’m straight and white and gender normative, there’s so much less at stake for me in not belonging, I am not at risk of harm in being an outsider the way that a trans person is, for example. But I had been led to believe that I was also outside of the grace of God because of the ways that I was not the perfect model of a true believer. And this did indeed do harm to my sense of wellness of my soul. I really needed to be seen simply as I am and to receive a warm and unconditional welcome into the Good News of the grace of God, poured out to the world through our dear Jesus.

I am so, so grateful that I did find such a welcome, through Open & Affirming churches, and the good people who minister through them.

What’s amazing to me to realize in reflecting back over the years of my walk with Jesus, is that the people who have been so critical to my learning how to receive Jesus into my heart and surrendering to the love and grace of God, are almost all people who would not have had any space to be leaders in the church for like 99% of Christian history, and in most places not even today.

I owe my faith, I owe my being here before you now, to my being ministered to by people who are gay or lesbian or trans or nonbinary or straight women, among others.

People who know what it’s like to be excluded from houses of worship, like the Ethiopian eunuch in our story from Acts, folks who know what it’s like to be excluded in ways that can be a threat to their very existence, folks who are much stronger and more faithful and courageous and gracious than I, seem to have a better chance of understanding the essence of Jesus and the Spirit of God’s Love, in ways that, for me at least, have been critical for me getting schooled into the transformative, saving power of Grace. (And, for the record, I, for one, am still getting schooled.)

The Divine Love that Jesus embodied is the antidote to all the ways that people set up boundaries to try to deny others the knowledge of God’s Love Supreme. It’s a staggering how the name of Jesus has been twisted into the service of exclusion rather than inclusion. Many of us need to get schooled back into the true nature of God’s Love.

            What I have been learning is that a key part of this getting schooled into grace, is recognizing the ways that we have received messages about God and about ourselves that make us believe we are somehow shut out from God’s grace. If we can name these messages, we can ask God to cleanse us of them, release us from them, and receive the healing blessing of God’s true unconditional embrace of us.

I want to invite you into a ritual to do that. For those of you who feel led and comfortable to do so. This is similar to a ritual of healing & release that we offered yesterday at our tent at the Pride Fest in Phoenixville, PA:

A Ritual of Healing & Release

We invite you to:

1.     Write on the rice paper what you wish to release

2.     Hold the paper, and put the energy of that burden into it

3.     Drop it in the water and stir until it disintegrates

4.     Leave that burden in the water

5. Receive the blessing: May you know that you are a beloved gift from God. May you be blessed to share your gifts with others. Go in peace

In faith, with courage,

Pastor Nathaniel