God is Still Speaking.

September 23, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

It is high wedding season for the lesbian and gay couples in California. We’ve had several months now to get weddings planned and guests invited. So I am very busy, doing several weddings per week from now until election day November 4. (Do I need to remind anyone to vote NO on Proposition 8?)

But our national churchbody, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is apparently rattling its sabers about gay marriage. The word has leaked out that the top national official who is responsible for interpreting the ELCA’s constitution between biennial churchwide assemblies is saying that ELCA pastors in California (and Massachusetts I presume) should not be performing the legal ceremonies even if they preside over “blessings.” He (it always seems to be a he) is interpreting the rules by making a real stretch of logic that because our pre-existing guiding social statements about marriage and family see a marriage as two of opposite genders that pastors, who have pledged to obey the rules should not be presiding over gay and lesbian marriages. According to sources I heard yesterday, he is even suggesting that a pastor who performs a gay or lesbian wedding could be subject to disciplinary charges — even to the extent of being removed from the professional roster.

It is a stretch because the pre-existing documents did not even contemplate the possibility of legalized same-sex marriage. It is a stretch because he is suggesting that broad social statements must control and limit every individual pastoral act on the local level. It is a stretch because he leaves no wiggle room for the individual’s conscience. It is a stretch because he is trying to keep his juridical rubber-band around a world which is rapidly changing.

It is beyond me why he would want to take the ELCA down the road which is so rocky and pitted and filled with land-mines that have endangered the United Methodist Church, the United Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church.

Why he would want to take the path of conservative control, when the ELCA is in very close and significant agreements with the United Church of Christ, is equally beyond me. The United Church of Christ is much more open-minded about gay/lesbian marriage and the presence of gay and lesbian people in its membership and professional ministry. In recent years that national body has produced and broadcast some amazing television ads that use the slogan ”God is Still Speaking.”

In other words, the book is not closed on the will of God.  God speaks in our changing world. We should be listening to and discerning what the word of God is for our changing world.

But apparently high-ranking ELCA officials believe that God is not still speaking, or that the pre-existing documents written more than 20 years ago have the last word. I think it may be closer to the truth that the ELCA is not listening, but God is still speaking.

In the meantime, I am conducting marriages, invoking the blessing of Almighty God with confidence that God is present wherever love is lifted up and where commitments are made and kept.

On Sunday afternoon, I presided over the wedding ceremony for two men who have been partnered for 16 years. One of them is in a wheel chair now, and could not even stand to recite his vow of love and fidelity for life to the younger man who had pushed him down the aisle and whose tears streamed down his cheek. So that partner knelt beside the wheel chair for them to exchange their vows in front of the altar of our church.

Go ahead, mister high-ranking official: Try to tell God not to be present in that sacred moment. Try to tell me that I should not announce the unconditional love and blessing of God on these two brave men. Try to tell me I am in violation of 20 year-old documents which I pledged to uphold, or that I could be subject to discipline for signing a document which certifies that these two men have freely and without coercion decided to accept responsibility for one another for the rest of their lives. But while you are trying to tell me this stuff, I can scarcely hear you, because I am listening for a voice which is louder than yours. God is still speaking.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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