“Shut up” becomes open wide, oh my.

August 27, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Now Jericho was shut up inside and out because of the Israelites; no one came out and no one went in. • The LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have handed Jericho over to you, along with its king and soldiers. • You shall march around the city, all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days, • with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. • When they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and all the people shall charge straight ahead.” — Joshua 6:1–5

This week is a milestone of sorts. Tuesday I observed, with very mixed feelings, the 35^th anniversary of my ordination into the Lutheran ministry. In 1974 it was unimaginable how my life would unfold. In 2009 it is almost unimaginable how different that world was, and what happened in those years.

If anyone then had tried to predict that by now I would be happily married and my man would be standing by me to cut the cake—openly, in front of a supportive Lutheran congregation—I would not have believed it.

I certainly would have hoped so, thinking then with youthful naivete that our generation was going to change the world. We set out to do so, of course. But looking back over three and a half decades, it is obvious that our generation also tried to stop change. Idealism, pragmatism, and inertia belong to all generations.

Yet the biggest surprise came in the last week before this personal anniversary. With the ELCA’s decision to lift its outright ban against lesbian/gay clergy, the wall of resistance has simply collapsed. Goodsoil and the cooperative GLBT-positive movements which have circled the ELCA since 1988 have sent up a great short, the wall has fallen down flat, and now . .. do we charge straight ahead? Is it our next goal to enter, pillage, rape and destroy?

For 35 years I have heard the outcry of reactionary and homophobic Christians, seen their hand-wringing, and worked behind the scenes to chip mortar out of the wall of their resistance. They are still of the mind (people like Solid Rock, CORE, Word Alone, etc.) that our purpose is to destroy the faith itself.

Nothing could be more wrong. If we (myself included) had wanted to destroy the Lutheran church or the Christian church, we could have done that more easily the way millions of others have done: as soon as you’re old enough that your parents don’t make you go to Sunday School and church, you run for the nearest exit and don’t look back. If we had wanted to destroy our “Christian society,” we wouldn’t need to go through the trauma and drama of being lesbian or gay. We could have just gotten married and raised the next generation of kids with no values whatever. Church and society can be destroyed with indifference, and anomie.

To be honest, the illustration from Joshua is not totally on target, for the LGBT people who have now succeeded, with the Lord’s power, in flattening a wall of resistance, have done it from within—by marching around and around inside the walls. We are not outsiders clamoring to get in. We are insiders—from infancy, childhood, baptism, confirmation, youth groups on—who did not exit, did not run, but stayed in this church, “shut up inside and out” because we have heard the Gospel’s truth and sensed the power of God even in this buttoned-down institution.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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