June 26, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

Catholic Church Denounces Move By Cuba To Support LGBT Rights
by The Associated Press

Posted: June 25, 2008 - 8:00 am ET

(Havana) Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church is protesting the communist government’s growing support of gay rights, including a daylong event raising awareness against homophobia and a law allowing sex-change operations.

“Respect for the homosexual person, yes,” said an editorial Tuesday in Palabra Nueva, the monthly magazine of the Archdiocese of Havana. “Promotion of homosexuality, no.”

The editorial signed by magazine director Orlando Marquez referred to activities held May 17 by Cuba’s Sex Education Center, which is directed by Mariela Castro, daughter of President Raul Castro.

The headline for this story from Associated Press caught my eye and freaked me out.

Apparently the Roman Catholic Church —anywhere in the world— is determined to be the last surviving entity which is rabidly anti-homosexual, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it cannot understand human life, will not grow or change when the Holy Spirit is clearly calling to it, and does not model itself on the compassion and understanding of Jesus.

Isn’t it enough that the Roman Catholic Church in this country has stonewalled virtually every effort to root out clerical abuses, especially child molestation (of both girls and boys), has spent the contents of its offering plates to pay attorneys to defend an indefensible cover-up of corrupt clergy?  Isn’t it enough that Pope Benedict XVI has told all other Christians in the world that they simply aren’t the church (and by implication cannot be saved) because they are not under his personal authority?  Isn’t it enough that the American Catholic Church —one of the more open-minded pockets in the Roman Catholic Church worldwide— has put its energy and money into fighting even the most rudimentary protections for LGBT people under the law?

In another overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, the Czech Republic, the right wing is still trying to block or harass all efforts to hold a gay pride parade.  According to 365Gay.Com (read it here) yesterday the government banned anti-gay rallies that ultra-right wing groups were trying to hold simultaneously with a pride march in Brno, Moravia.  While the Czech Republic, released from the iron grip of socialism has gotten quite liberal about gay people, it is safe to say the underlying Catholic hierarchical culture is trying to mobilize against gay rights.  Sadly, hwoever, the churches in Prague are just about as empty as everywhere else in Europe, illustrating how totally out of touch the church is with the 21st century.

What is really appalling/amusing (can those things be said in the same breath?)  is that the Castro regime is itself so backward that it is already fundamentally homophobic.  For years it has only compounded the inherent homophobia/hypocrisy found throughout Latin America.  Yet when it finally decides that it needs to address public policy issues concerning homosexuality in a more honest and just manner, here the Roman Catholic Archdiocese is essentially protesting such justice and in effect calling for continued repression.

In 1981 my spouse and I sponsored four Cuban refugees in this country, three of them gay men.  I learned first-hand of Castro’s anti-gay policies.  And I learned first-hand that Cuban men typically deny being gay as long as they are the so-called “active” sex partner rather than “passive.”  

At the worst of the Marxist repression, Cuban gay men could be imprisoned merely for being effeminate.  One of the four was extremely effeminate and had been in prison before being released by Fidel and kicked out of the country, directly into an American refugee camp.  His boyfriend, who pleaded with us to get him out of the refugee camp, considered himself not to be homosexual because, he said, he was always on top.

No issue, apparently, is too big to prevent denial, hypocrisy or just plain bull!  Alas, the church proves again that it will never willingly step over the line against the surrounding culture.  If Latin America is homophobic, the then church somehow believes it must defend and protect that cultural bigotry. 

Faked picture labeled “Gay Fidel” from this site

But when society has moved on —and I think this gesture on the part of Raul Castro’s regime indicates that even Cuban society is moving on—why does the church have to drag its feet even more?

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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June 24, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

NATIONAL BRIEFING | NEW ENGLAND

Maine: Group Abandons Gay Law Campaign
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 20, 2008

A group has abandoned a campaign to overturn a state law protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The group, the Christian
Civic League of Maine [emphasis added], said it had failed to gain the support needed to continue. The proposal would have repealed protections in employment, housing, public accommodation, credit and education. It would also have affirmed a state law restricting marriages to one man and one woman, ensured that only one unmarried person or one married couple jointly could adopt a person, prohibited clerks from issuing marriage licenses to persons of the same sex, and prohibited municipalities from licensing civil unions.  California and Massachusetts are the only states to legalize same-sex marriage; a handful of others allow civil unions or domestic partnerships among same-sex couples.

I certainly didn’t have to single out the Roman Catholic Church.  After all, it has gotten into bed, as it were, with the Religious Reich. 

But why is it that the Christian Church feels it must not only weigh in on matters deemed to have moral significance, but constantly attempt to play a controlling role in setting public policy?  It seems clear enough that behind many conservative views or even more ultra-conservative voices who back and fund the repeated incursions across the line which seaprates church and state.

I have long felt that the best witness to admirable ethical standards that any Christ can make is to live an ethical life oneself, and let one’s own actions speak louder than words.  This is why I am appalled at the behavior of the Roman Catholic Church in this country in its efforts to deny civil rights to gay people when its own actions have included flouting the law and ignoring the high moral standards in the law which protects children from sexual molestation. 

If you do not believe that abortion is morally acceptable, then don’t have an abortion.  If you feel that homosexuality is immoral, then don’t be homosexual (especially if you insist that homosexuality is a matter of “choice.”).  If same-sex marriage is morally wrong, then don’t marry someone of your gender. 

Every time one of these measures comes up (and thank God that one in Maine is going down again) it claims to be protecting something.  But the homophobia is unmistakable because it usually seeks to shame and punish someone else!  That would be like promoting high academic achievement in schools not by publishing an honor roll but by paddling those who got D’s and F’s on their report card.

Mayor John Baldacci and family.  Hmmm. The homophobia of the Christian Civic League of Maine is scarcely hard to document.  Their web site entry for March 5, 2005 loudly chastises Governor John Baldacci attempts to add [protection for] “sexual orientation” to Maine’s civil rights law, and virtually rants about the “gay agenda”:

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Rights, Health, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

June 23, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

On the western edge of the vast Los Angeles sprawl is the “colony” of Malibu. A separate city, it is famous for the wealthy people who have houses there, especially high on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is equally famous for being overtaken by annual brush fires, or in the rainy season, sitting helplessly as mud- and rock-slides erode its scenic cliffs into the Pacific Ocean below.

This is my “Malibu Metaphor”: Fundamentalist piety is like a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. Those who claim and stand upon the promontory feel superior. They have all the answers. They have enshrined and set the Bible itself in concrete up there. They will go to any lengths to shore up their bluff (pun intended), and they look down on anything below which laps at their stony, hard, solid certainties.

But down below the waves are relentless. These waves represent a greater reality than even a rocky outcropping or high bluff. Because at the base of every promontory the sand collects—formed from rocks which over time broke and fell and were pounded into smaller and small pieces.

It is easy, from the top of a promontory, to suppose that everything at the bottom is “fallen,” like Adam and Eve in the Garden falling into sin. It is easy to suppose that everything “down there” is inferior or worthless—flotsam and jetsam, driftwood and entangling seaweed, oil slicks and shipwrecks. So fundamentalist piety looks down upon everything else, including all other expressions of the Christian faith—all other religions, humanism, doubt, agnosticism— and all those who do not share the stony hilltop with them.

In the physical world off the coast of Malibu, both the rocky cliffs and the sandy shore and waves are all part of the reality. But how people understand the reality will affect where they take their position.

I believe fundamentalism stands on this promontory, clutching a Bible it believes to be inerrant, invincible, a solid rock. But just as surely, it will certainly be eaten away by the waves crashing and splattering at its base. The religious right rejects and despises LGBT people with our “relentless” agenda. They fear that everything we do and are will undercut their bluff, even as they pretend nothing can hurt them.

But the greater reality is the ocean of humanity, in all of its salty, briny diversity —bearing every form of life with the constant change of tides.

The tide has risen. Now the tide is in. The ocean-rich swell of life itself is breaking down the bluff.

For those of us in the LGBT/Christian movement, we know we are in the same soup as all the rest of humanity—those who are doubters, ex-Christians, skeptics, cynics, godless pagans, atheists. It doesn’t bother us, because we stay afloat by grace alone. But all of us, those faithful and those who know no religion have the same relentless force against the lifeless, inert cliffs from which our stony opponents look down on us.

Where do they suppose Jesus would be in this scenario? On the top of the bluff, admiring the sunset of a solid religious establishment? Or in the soup, the mix, the tide of life that is gradually making a sandy shoreline out of the bluff above? The Jesus I see in the Gospels mixed with people who were sinners, tax collectors, Samaritans and foreigners — outsiders, non-practicing Jews, people with debilitating illnesses, the poor and those without hope and without resources. None of them were smug. None were high-placed. And those who started to pick up stones in order to bring down a woman caught in sin were themselves cut down by his withering judgment.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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June 21, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

Today a friend called back to say that she and her partner had just signed a contract for their wedding and reception site: a beautiful hotel ballroom with a view of the ocean, the Long Beach skyline, and the Queen Mary in the harbor. It sounds fantastic. Her voice practically bubbled right out of the phone.

I am really looking forward to presiding at their wedding. And right away I started writing some language that may wind up as part of the “meditation” or personal remarks I can squeeze into the ceremony. But I am also mindful that her partner’s poor health and recent emergency room visit is what prompted these women to move their wedding date forward.

If only the “religious reich” could understand the depth of love and commitment between people like them, and between me and my partner of 32 years. Two people, period. The sex or gender of the partners doesn’t make any difference, and what they’re all worked up about is that the government form which used to say “Bride” and “Groom” in the boxes now says “Partner A” and “Partner B.”

I think the fundagelicals are obsessed about sex. As if the sex of the partner is the most important thing about marriage. Or the possibility that the partners in a marriage will have ex after they are married. For such people, it’s not about people. It’s not about love. It’s not about fidelity, commitment, about richer or poor, in sickness or in health. For them, it’s about sex.

They can yammer all they want that sex is all about family (that sex belongs only in a heterosexual marriage where babies are the only permissible conclusion to the sex act), but it isn’t. There are all kinds of wonderful families that came together without anyone having sex with anyone.

And they can yammer about sex is wrong unless it’s pat of a lifelong marital commitment, but they refuse to recognize, let alone respect, our lifelong commitments, so that’s just rubbish.

The truth is that they have invented a theology of sex that says it is a reward for good behavior. If you’re good, you get to have sex. If you’re not, you don’t deserve it. And by “good” they now don’t even mean heterosexually married forever. They just mean heterosexual.

At least they won’t be able to castigate us any longer for having sex outside of marriage. We’ll be married men, or married women, and the opinions of the right wing can just be left hanging to twist in the wind, for all we care. If will only be the lesbians and the gay men, at this rate, who will stand up for the “traditional values” like love and commitment.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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June 18, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

There will be no sudden rash of lesbian weddings or gay weddings in our congregation.

That’s not because the leadership or membership are opposed to same-sex weddings. The Council voted, before I was even considered as their pastor, to permit the use of the Sanctuary for same-sex ceremonies. So the commitment of the church is there to see this as a real ministry.

And it would not be because we have no lesbian or gay members. The percentage of the membership has been steadily growing for years, because lesbian and gay people see this church as open, welcoming, supportive and genuine in our commitment to try to follow Jesus.

It would be because there are very few couples—five at last count, another one or two of whom one member of the couple belongs to the church. Largely, our lesbian/gay membership are singles.

Some are happy being single, and aren’t particularly interested in explaining further. Others will make casual comments that the right man or the right woman has not come along. Either they have been unlucky in love, or are perpetually shopping.

I cannot help but wonder, not about these as individuals, but about lesbian and gay people as a group, that we are still so submerged by social rejection, a.k.a. homophobia, that we cannot fall in love or make commitments—or if we’ve made them, are emotionally and spiritually unequipped to care for and feed those relationships to keep them healthy.

Internalized homophobia was a big subject twenty years ago. It has been used to explain everything from male promiscuity to broken relationships to low self-esteem, to the evasive way in which even permanent partners would refer to one another obliquely, to conceal the nature of the relationship. Internalized homophobia and being closeted were cloaked with the same dark covering, stained with the same black ink. Things deeply buried, we theorized, kept us from recognizing our true self-worth, and our entitlement (yes, entitlement) to breathe the same air, inhabit the same planet and pursue happiness the same as everybody else who is living.

Nowadays, there is nothing fresh to be said about internalized homophobia. While the larger society is still wringing its hands about the causes and the effects of sexual orientation (as recently as this past Monday’s Los Angeles Times Health Section), the lesbian and gay community have essentially stopped thinking about. We believed that we had somehow gotten over it, taken care of it, put it aside as a relic of our past along with shag carpeting, oversized playpen sofas and Princess telephones.

What does gay look like?, Los Angeles Times, June 16, by Regina Nuzzo

But the dearth or absence or paucity of love is palpable. At last count there was something nearing 100,000 domestic partnerships registered in the state of California. Domestic partnership more or less resemble marriage (not enough to suffice for the Supreme Court), bestowing a lot of rights and responsibilities on same-gender couples. But only 100,000? California has a population of 30 million, of which we can safely assume 3–10% are gay or lesbian. That would suggest there should be a million domestic partnerships, if we really want to secure our rights and protect our family through legally-recognized relationships.

Where is everybody? Alas, I suspect that 90% of everybody feel unloved or are still looking for love in all the wrong places, or like the long-term unemployed have simply given up looking.

I can only hope that the legal permissibility of marriage will encourage those who are unsure of themselves. It moved me deeply to see the majority opinion of the Supreme Court repeatedly reference the respect of the community as a necessary part of equal recognition for same-sex couples. Maybe the language of respect and honor will begin to undo what deeply-buried internalized homophobia has done to us — at least in the younger generation. We can hope.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in "The Closet", Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

June 17, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I just returned from six hours in West Hollywood on the first official day of same-sex marriage. The news has been full of it, and will be even more this evening and tomorrow, but I need to think and react as an individual to what I have seen and heard and done.

I came late to the party, so to speak, since marriage-hopefuls began lining up last night as early as 6:00 p.m. in order to be at the front of the line. (Fortunately, because I promised to bring hand-bells to ring, Councilman Duran’s office got me preferred parking a few steps away.)

The newly-printed marriage licenses were being issued in the large community auditorium in West Hollywood Park, near the intersection where four years ago we reacted with anger when the Supreme Court voided our San Francisco weddings, and where so many other historic moments in our movement have been observed. These new forms now say Partner A and Partner B, rather than Bride and Groom.

The media literally swarmed Star Trek actor George Takei and his partner Brad Altman as they got their application, walked across the large hall to pay their $70.00 and get their license, and proceed to the park itself where they could be married.

The City of West Hollywood had gone all out, with several information and volunteer tents—one for officiants, one for the media, with plenty of food and beverages on this hot summer morning—one for www.marriageequality.org, and six stylish pavilions covered in white gauze with chandeliers, be-flowered and decorated arches and flowing draperies where individual ceremonies were being held.

The park was not being mobbed, apparently, because many of the excited applicants pulled their marriage licenses and then left, apparently planning to have ceremonies elsewhere or on another day. I fully understand, since my partner and I intend to be married in the fall in a church ceremony.

To add to the festive atmosphere, a pastoral colleague and I rang English handbells repeatedly, under the trees, as couples came through the lines, and exchanged their promises before deputized officiants, including West Hollywood officials. The day was peaceful, almost mundane, with neighborhood children play on the swing sets in the park only a few feet beyond this festival of love and commitment.

I suppose as a result of the attention we received by being dressed in clerical garb and ringing the bells in repeated peals, I was interviewed, I think about eight times: by CBS, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, some others I don’t remember or didn’t ask, and by an independent lesbian film maker. Even my hands were videotaped as I rang the bells! I realized it made good visuals and interesting sounds for TV and radio.

Repeatedly I was asked why I was there and what the day meant for me. “Two things,” I repeatedly explained. This is a historic day for the community, and for the legal progress that has been made in securing legal rights and public respect for lesbian and gay people, who want nothing more from society than the chance to accept responsibility for one another and to live their lives with dignity. “But secondly,” I said, “My partner of 32 years and I fully intend to be married also.” No one looked particularly shocked by that, even though I appeared to be your typical neighborhood Roman Catholic priest.

A few reporters were interested enough to ask more of my personal background, which is not particularly unusual. We have been a part of this movement, I said, for decades. We have marched and demonstrated. We fought the Briggs initiative, and then the Knight initiative. We had a private religious ceremony in our living room many years ago, then filed papers for the California Domestic Partnership registry in 2002. Two years later, we were part of that lesbian/gay wave of humanity that rolled into San Francisco to be married in February 2004 in City Hall’s grand rotunda. This is a historic day in California, but it is also a deeply personal historic day in our own lives.

More than a year after the California Supreme Court nullified our San Francisco marriage certificates, we were able to get an autograph on ours by Mayor Gavin Newsom himself during Outfest in Los Angeles.

Kerry Chaplin, the talented and eligible young interfaith organizer for California Faith for Equality, had all manner of talking points available for speaking to the media, and by the end of the day I realized that I had never had a chance to read through them in advance. As it turns out, I think, every single lesbian or gay couple who forms a legal marriage becomes a “talking point” against the pernicious proposed amendment headed for the November ballot which would end this summer of love.

Many of the couples participating were long-time couples, seeking to protect their families and their legal rights. But at the end of the day, I was approached by two young women, together as a couple only one year. They were both raised Catholic, they said, but wanted to have at least a Christian minister preside over their ceremony. I was delighted to be asked, and touched by their depth and their excitement about this new day dawning.

If the excitement of it all, and concern for the legal maneuvers of the religious right, made me nervous, in the end it was the genuineness of these young women and their optimism about their new life together, which gave me a sense of deep peace. God bless them. God bless all of them!!

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

June 15, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

These twelve [disciples] Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. . . . Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. — Matthew 10 

The closer we get to legal gay marriage in California, the more the fundagelicals will rant and rave. They have already written us off as “lost”—damned for sure, going to spend all eternity in the fires of hell. They will continue to look for clever new ways to pronounce shame on people who are now largely impervious to new shame. Meanwhile, we are getting married, and are finding new ways to feel proud.

It always amuses and annoys me that people who are losing influence talk more and more stridently about the “dire consequences” if the world does not listen to them. The panicked, angry voices of hateful Christians has been too loud for too long in America—and they will continue to insist that we are sick or “of the devil.”

As we get closer to Tuesday’s new marital opportunity, even lesbian and gay people are having some misgivings. The media have been picking up on this more and more, since they’ve run out of steam about queer euphoria. Some same-sex couples have determined to sit this one out at least until the November ballot is over. Others are dusting off retro-thoughts from the 1970s that “marriage is an institution—who wants to live in an institution?”

We ourselves still live with some of the internalized homophobia of the early gay rights movement a half-century ago, fearful that we are somehow sick or lost or pathetic, or don’t deserve to be free and happy and gay. We wonder out loud if we are really fit for marriage, or that the (especially male) gay character is inherently commitment-phobic—that we are tramps to the core. “All men are pigs.”

Well, no, really. Thousands of us can’t wait to pay our $70 for a license to accept responsibility for one another for the rest of our lives.

For those right wing folks (who still pretend they don’t know any of us personally), we will remain society’s lepers. They insist we are not only unworthy of enjoying the rights, privileges and respect of the mainstream, but suited only for living in our pathetic ghettoes (creative neighborhoods and designer-perfect abodes filled with high-end consumer products).

It was easier for prejudice before our sense of pride emerged. We were dangerous social lepers when we skulked around truck stops, tea rooms (now reserved for Republican senators) or elementary schools. We were lepers in our pathetic promiscuity.

We were lepers when HIV and AIDS killed off our young, bright and beautiful. The right-wing fundagelicals enjoyed trying, and were highly successful for a long time, in shaming us with such terms as “sodomites” and “homosexuals.” They could describe us with words of seeming precision to elicit immediate understanding and financial support within their donor base.

And the whole reason that straight, right-end Christians portray us in such terms is their desire to keep us isolated by our shame, because of their fear of contamination (by our good taste? our open-mindedness? our sculpted abs?).

But it will be harder and harder to isolate and condemn us when we are highly visible as out couples, husbands, and wives, and when it becomes clear that California is not being incinerated under God’s wrath or falling into the ocean.

In Matthew 10, Jesus says that on the day of judgment God will look with greater tolerance upon Sodom and Gomorrah that upon other places that do not receive Jesus’ word or turn away Jesus’ offer of peace, who refuse hospitality to those who come in his name. The contrast between the self-righteous Christian and the compassionate Christ couldn’t be more stark. Today we are finding that lesbian and gay people are open to Jesus’ word of compassion, and to our offer of peace in his name. It is the right wing which rants and warns of damnation.

In this same chapter Jesus recognizes that ministry will almost certainly trigger controversy. The wolves out there may try to tear us apart, and we should be prepared.

It will not be any different for those of us in the Christian church who welcome couples who want to marry and to revel in the sense of God’s blessing.

Less than 48 hours from now, it will be legal for two women or two men to tie the knot in California. “Gay marriage” will become the new leprosy to the Religious Right. They are expected to spend at least 10 million dollars by November to fight the Supreme Court’s decision. This will be a summer of great controversy because the religious right is seeding it into our society.

In our congregation, there have been, and there will be many more wedding ceremonies for women and men who love one another against all odds. Our hospitality to the lesbian and gay community will never be more thoroughly tested than it will with the legalizing of marriage. But our doors will remain open to lesbian and gay couples simply because Jesus sends us his disciples to serve the outcasts, the lepers and those rejected or harassed by others, and to offer a word of peace, not dire warning.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, HIV and AIDS, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Coming Out, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

June 3, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I feel unprepared and humbled and honored, and I’m at a loss where to begin. A young man came to my office door asking to see me. I am used to strangers coming, almost always asking for money, or food. In a nutshell, this young man was a Muslim, asking to learn more about Christian faith and about Jesus.

He is foreign born, in this country on a brief visa, but engaged to be married to a citizen of the U.S. whom he met in his home country. She is a Christian, and out of a life-long curiosity about Jesus, and respect for her, he wanted to know more —much more— about Christian teaching. An important factor is that he is not entirely free to express his curiosity about Jesus openly, not within the home of friends where he is living, and not among his own people at home.

After my first insecurity about teaching someone subsided a bit, I expressed my respect for his great faith tradition. He too was respectful, knowing that so much is gained when all people listen to the faith experiences of others.

But where to begin with the story of Jesus? We have some common ground, because Jesus is a figure spoken of in the Qur’an. How to explain that for Christians Jesus is not merely a prophet, but the presence of God incarnate. How does one explain what “incarnate” means to someone whose entire faith tradition rejects that?

He made it easier for me by asking, “How did Jesus die?” Somehow this led to explaining revelation and grace, and to the highest story of our spiritual awakening, the parable of the prodigal son. I explained the basic contents of the New Testament — not written with a single voice as if verbally revealed from heaven, as the Muslim scriptures are believed to be, but the testimony of many Christians over a period of several generations, through which God’s voice speaks.

I called to mind the meager explanation of what is written, what is explained in the New Testament, from John’s Gospel (20:30–31): “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

So I found myself struggling with what is best and most essential from the Bible to tell to someone who has scarcely had a chance to look inside its covers without enormous scorn from others. So much of the Bible is profound beyond words, and so much is trivial or downright embarrassing to read as an outside would read it. So much is completely opaque — occupying the best scholarly minds for a lifetime to make heads or tails of it. Where are the parts which are transparent, clear as crystal, and allow the reader to glimpse what is of greatest value, or to be digest that which is spiritually most nourishing?

I found myself on the desert road with Philip the deacon, approaching the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch. (Acts 8:26–40) “Do you understand what you are reading, he asked, about the passage from Isaiah which was in his hands.

“How can I unless I have someone to guide me?”

And so beginning with the ver passage of scripture the eunuch had been reading, Philip began to tell him the story of Jesus.

Now I am praying for this stranger/new friend, and for his fiancé, hoping that the Holy Spirit finds me worthy as a vehicle for God’s message. Would I be happy to convert this man to Christ? Yes.

But is that my role and place? No.

We come from places in this world very far apart. We come from different cultures, economic classes; we have different native languages; our life circumstances and sexuality and experiences completely differ.

I don’t know if I am qualified to teach such an important student. I have more misgivings than there are verses in the Bible and the Qur’an combined. Yet it now looks possible I may become this man’s teacher. I only hope that I can provide what God decides to grant to him.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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