November 26, 2011 by Pastor Dan.

One of the ELCA blogs caught my eye because of this single word:  “privilege.”  It is about time that it gets called out in public discussion. 

RE: Hunger Rumblings http://blogs.elca.org/hungerrumblings/post/privilege-22112011/

I was surprised that this post, while taking two paragraphs to set a context for his observation, never connected the dots between lack of privilege, hunger and justice. People with privilege— certainly a group larger than “the 1%” identified by the Occupy Movement—actively resist not only the loss of their privilege but even the identification of their privilege as such. They rationalize what they have as necessity, or earned, or in their contract or as the result of doing “nothing illegal.”

There are many voices in the current strident partisanship in America who decry the sense of “entitlement” in programs for people at the bottom of society, and from that argument they are earnestly trying to unweave our badly-frayed safety net for the poor/elderly/hungry/vulnerable. Ironically, the most strident voices are themselves coming from the most privileged segment of our society.

Privilege itself has balkanized our society. It is the “elephant in the room” of political discourse on many hotly-debated matters, including federal bail-out programs, immigration reform, and access to health care, education, jobs, and criminal justice. Even the sexuality wars of our times stem from the sense of entitlement which heterosexual people typically feel gives them the right to deny equality before the law to LGBT people.

Unfortunately, a sense of privilege has long since permeated the mainline church, especially in those denominations and congregations that cater to suburban upper/middle class (and mostly white) people. This sense of privilege is a cancer which continues to attack the very heart of the Gospel of Jesus. Need we look any further than the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–12, the Parable of the Judgment (Mt. 25:31–46), or the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19–31) to see where privilege or lack of privilege is found in Christ’s teachings?

But privileged Christians can begin the “critical self-reflection and repentance” to which Creech refers, and hopefully resist the corrosive power of privilege by seeing what we have not as privilege but as gift. It is easy to rationalize our privilege as entitlement. Before God none of us has, or deserves, privileges. But that truth should not be easily “spiritualized” as simply a matter of forgiveness or justification by grace (gift) alone. All that we are, and have, and hope to do with our lives, are gifts of God. Even that we can get up every day, and use our health and wealth productively, is a gift. We do not deserve life itself. Life is a gift.

We have all heard the lame jokes about a family sitting down to a table of leftovers where someone who thinks it is unnecessary to give thanks says “This food was already blessed once before!” But when I give thanks at each meal, it is not the food which is blessed. I am blessed that I am able, once again, to eat. So recognizing that our whole lives are gifts may help us to begin to see those all around us for whom food, health, shelter, safety, dignity and justice are all still deeply felt hungers.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in LGBT Rights, Bible & Interpretation, Living by Grace, Health, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

August 30, 2011 by Dan Hooper.

As many of readers of Indwelling Spirit may realize by now, I scribble little “Notes to Self” and don’t get back to them right away. They clutter my desk and brief case and bedside table. Sometimes, months later, these notes take some deciphering, and as I get back to this blog after many months of being overwhelmed by other responsibilities, I am evaluating some of my own scrawled notes:

Spiritually, there is an important parallel here. We may be living with a lot of pain, spiritually. It takes awhile for it to build up to the point where we recognize its symptoms, or are ready to talk about it. Yet we are really reluctant to take our inner emotional/spiritual pain to a specialist—to a counselor, confessor, pastor or spiritual director.

Why do we avoid getting spiritual help when we are in pain?

I suspect that often the reason is that we don’t expect we will be treated gently, either by a counselor/pastor or by God. Many people have experienced so much judgmentalism, rejection, and threats of punishment from religious figures —and told they can expect the same from Almighty God!—that they avoid taking their spiritual symptoms to them.

All of us have been poked, probed, drilled, scolded, and pushed away at some point—at a very sensitive point in our lives—when what we really needed was a gentle touch or a hug, not a lecture, scolding, ultimatum or damnation.

Time and time again this has been especially true for LGBT people. We have symptoms of emotional and spiritual distress. We hurt. It has taken a lot of time for many of us to bring this pain to the surface, and to recognize the symptom of our deep discomfort. We’re not sure of ourselves let alone sure of our relationship to God.

But because of either our own experiences or those of friends, we avoid seeking counsel or guidance for our spiritual lives, because we cannot take any more harsh treatment. Some of us just go on living with the pain rather than seeking a specialist that can help clear it up, because of the risk of spiritual mistreatment or harm. The so-called Ex-Gay campaign, for example, has been unmasked as an effort that subjects gay people to immeasurable pain and mistreatment.

Often I try to explain to non-gay church people what the significant pastoral and spiritual issues are for LGBT people. Some of these people are sympathetic enough to recognize the prejudice and rejection that lesbian/gay people especially have experienced. But because they are in the sexual majority, not sexual minority, they do not fully understand or fully feel the pain that we talk about.

Yes, there are many other Christian people out there who are not sympathetic at all. They continue to finger the same few “clobber” passages in the Bible, and point to them with a sharpened index finger, like a doctor thumping on a medical manual at the possible diagnosis. And because they are so certain of their allegiance to God as they understand him, they almost aggressively attack the wounded or the hurting with this “immutable” word of the Lord. An old saying expresses this pretty well: The church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.

God does not approach us that way. If anything, God touches all who are in pain, all who have open wounds, more gently. God’s approach to our pain or suffering is an embrace, not a probe or poke or drill. From the Lutheran rite for Confession and Forgiveness (Summer 2011), “As tender as a parent to child, so gentile is God to us. As high as heaven is above the earth, so vast is God’s love for us. As far as east is from west, so far God removes our sin, renewing our lives in Jesus Christ.”

If we would simply look again at even a handful of the stories in the Gospels about how Jesus approached people in pain, we would clearly see this gentle approach: the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well (who had already been married 5 times), the rich young ruler, Nicodemus, Zaccheus, Thomas the Doubter, Judas Iscariot, the soldiers who crucified him, and the thief on the cross.

To be sure, Jesus often does challenge people to put greater trust and faith in him, or to turn their lives around (”Go, and sin no more”). But his spiritual approach is always gentle. I might even speculate that Jesus had heard of the Hippocratic Oath (5^th Century B.C.), to which this classic phrase is often traced: primum non nocere, “first, do no harm.” It certainly calls for reflection for those of us who are spiritual guides, counselors, confessors and pastors, and especially for those who are LGBT people of faith.

I have a definite sense of what God’s gentle touch means. (See my essay, “About Jesus,” for example.) Obviously, a lot of rock-hard conservative clergy and laity wouldn’t agree with me, and they can drill their forefinger into the pages of the Bible to “prove” it. But as I’ve said before, “God’s Word for us is always an invitation, not an ultimatum.” And you can quote me on that.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Fundamentalism, Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Gay Catechism, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Ex-Gay, Ministry, Coming Out, Spirituality, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

June 2, 2011 by Pastor Dan.

As our church polishes us and celebrates the recent completion of new things in our sanctuary (such as flooring and pipe organ), my mind turns to the significance of the sacred space, what it has meant historically as a place of prayer and sacrament for nearly 90 years, and what it should mean in the lives of Christians—not just here but everywhere.

The idea of Sanctuary is an ancient one. A sanctuary is not merely a sacred space where we can pray to God, but a safe space from the anxieties, terrors and violence of the world around us.

From time to time, churches also serve as a refuge or sanctuary for illegal immigrants, for runaways and for the hungry and homeless. Battered wives have fled to the church as a place of safety, hiding and understanding. After natural disasters, many people who have been displaced by fire or flood have come to churches seeking help and temporary shelter.

Hollywood Lutheran Church is a sanctuary for sexual minorities (LGBTQ etc.), people in recovery from alcohol, drugs and other addictions, people living with HIV/AIDS, people of color and everybody else who suffers discrimination, and even inmates and parolees who are shunned even after they have “paid their debt to society.”

We don’t just sit in a Sanctuary to pray! The purpose of the Christian Church everywhere should be to enlarge the Sanctuary of God’s love and compassion, and to become a living sanctuary of people committed to mercy, safety, healing and wholeness.

There is no place in our church for judgmentalism, rejection, hatred, prejudice or fear. The Christ we know in faith—who on the Cross gave up his life for our sake and took away the sins of the world—is a Lord who seeks the lost, upholds the weak, feeds those who hunger and thirst, and reveals the light of God to anyone who struggles against the darkness.

If that sounds over-dramatic, it shouldn’t. Christians are in a life-and-death struggle with evil in the world. Every day I see the ruins and results of evil—broken lives, fearful people, indifference or hatred. In the midst of this world, there is no reason to be “religious” if not to follow in the steps of Jesus Christ. And if we follow Christ, we must be the change we want to see in the world. We must be the sanctuary to which others may come and rest and pray and feel safe. This is true religion . This is the life of faith.

—Pastor Dan

P.S. If you’re curious, here are some key Bible passages about sanctuary: Psalm 20:1–5, Psalm 28:1–3; Isaiah 8:13–14; Ezekiel 37:26–27; Hebrews 10:19–24.

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Doctrine, HIV and AIDS, Violence, Homophobia, Faith, Living by Grace, Recovery, Ministry, Spirituality, PRAYERS, History, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

December 10, 2010 by Dan Hooper.

LC/NA Celebrates the ELCA Reception to the Clergy Roster of Pastor Jay Wiesner, an Openly Gay Philadelphia Pastor

Lutherans Concerned/North America (LC/NA) celebrates the upcoming reception of Pastor Jay Wiesner onto the clergy roster by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) on Sunday, December 12.

He will be received as clergy during a Service of Reception presided over by Bishop Claire Burkat, ELCA Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, held during the 10:30 a.m. Sunday service at the University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation (www.uniluphila.org), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pastor Anita Hill, a pastor at St. Paul Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and also recently similarly received onto the clergy roster, will preach.

Pastor Jay Wiesner had been ordained “extraordinarily” in 2004. “Extraordinary” in this context means the ordination was outside of the usual practices of the ELCA. As a result, the ELCA did not recognize his ordination at the time it occurred. At this Service of Reception, the ELCA recognizes that ordination and the ministries Pastor Wiesner has done over time.

Pastor Wiesner completed his seminary training in 2002, but, because he was in disagreement with the then policy that imposed celibacy in a life lived without a partner, he was denied ordination by the ELCA. In 2004, Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, called him as Pastor of Outreach Ministry and ordained him, an act of ecclesiastic disobedience at the time. In September 2008, he was called by University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation as pastor, also an act of ecclesiastic disobedience.

His reception onto the roster of clergy is one of the results of the decisions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly to eliminate the policy that had since 1989 precluded service as ministers by those in a lifelong, committed same-gender relationship. Though not in such a relationship, Pastor Wiesner had disagreed with the previous policy precluding even the possibility of it.

Emily Eastwood, Executive Director, Lutherans Concerned/North America, said “The prophetic witness of Bethany Lutheran, Minneapolis and University Lutheran, Philadelphia is coming true. We give thanks for Jay and the congregations who courageously called him in the face of policies precluding his service. We applaud the Southeast Pennsylvania Synod and its bishop for their visible support for the full inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. While our struggle is not ended, this day leaves an indelible exclamation point in history. This day justice has prevailed, not just for one, but symbolically for all LGBT people.”

Pastor Jay Wiesner said, “This day has been a long time coming and something I have been praying for before I was even ordained in 2004. Both Bethany Lutheran Church and University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation have risked their standing in the greater Church to be a prophetic witness and for that I am truly blessed and grateful.”

Jay is originally from New Ulm, a small town of German descent in southwestern Minnesota. He graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota with a BA in religion. After college, he attended Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. During his senior year, he publicly came out to the faculty and students at Wartburg and left to take some time off. He finished his Master of Divinity degree in 2002 and immediately began work at Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as Pastoral Minister of Outreach. He was called and ordained by Bethany on July 25, 2004. He served that congregation from 2002-2008.

Since September 2008, Pastor Wiesner has served as pastor of University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, an ELCA congregation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (www.uniluphila.org)

Pastor Wiesner is also pastoral director of The Naming Project. The Naming Project is a faith-based youth group serving youth of all sexual and gender identities. The primary focus is to provide a place for youth who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning to learn, grow, and share their experiences. In this way The Naming Project is a space in which youth can comfortably discuss faith and who they understand themselves to be–whether that be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender…or straight.

Phil Soucy
Communications staff
communications@lcna.org

Posted in Living by Grace, PRAYERS, Ministry, ELCA, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

April 16, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Our Wednesday studies engage a wide diversity of people who are not (yet?) members of our congregation, but who find their spiritual centering in our midst. This week we were discussing this passage at the end of John 3.

It seems there are basically two rules or systems which may govern our relationship with God and one another. The one is the rule of rewards and punishments. The other is the rule of grace. In the Bible, of course, we find language that is descriptive of both, and so it takes enormous discernment to give weight to each of these and to decide by which rule we will live.Under the rule of rewards and punishments, we will always strive for reward and try to avoid punishment. We will measure our achievement and calculate our relationship both to God and to other human beings on the basis of how we can gain rewards and what we might lose or suffer. The bottom line is that we will expect our behavior and good works (or our abstaining from bad things) counts for something, and that in the end—the judgment day—we will receive the ultimate rewards of eternal bliss, a heavenly mansion, a heavenly banquet, a crown, etc.

But under that rule of rewards and punishments, we become more like Muslims than different from them, for they too hope to receive entrance to Paradise on the judgment day, except of course that their doctrine affords them no advance certainty that God will grant to them the eternal reward.

The rule of grace, on the other hand, cares little about rewards or punishment. We stop measuring our performance against a standard which is impossible. We simply live under grace, honest in the knowledge that we do not deserve it yet confident that we have already received it without measure. Under grace, we are not ultimately terrified about damnation, for the scripture assures us that we may draw near to the throne of grace with confidence.

Moral theology, especially under the definition of the medieval Catholic system, would attempt to marry these two rules together, but in fact that results in a tragic, upended mishmash in which grace must be subordinated to law. When Lutherans insist— relying on where St. Paul tells us that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, and that all are justified by God’s grace apart from the law— we do not mean that grace is merely the strength we need from beyond ourselves to perform all the required works and deeds and abstinences of moral law. Rather we mean that we are wholly and completely justified —not by any effort on our part nor by refraining from anything, nor even confessing to our sinful nature and our manifold iniquities—only and totally as a free and undeserved gift from God for Christ’s sake.

If it is not the melding of these two rules, which I think is destructive at best, here is the bottom line: It is left to each of us to choose under which rule we will order our lives—whether under the rule of rewards and punishments, or under the rule of grace. If we voluntarily choose the system of rewards and punishments, we may be caught up in a giddy hopefulness for an exclusive parcel of eternal real estate, but in this life we will be preoccupied with fear of punishment and with being given credit for each correct moral choice we make and the sum of our accomplishments.

But if we voluntarily choose the rule of grace, all those things pale before the wonder-filled knowledge of God’s generous love and forgiveness, whereby gratitude for God’s gifts of grace so overwhelms our hearts that our life itself overflows with generosity and compassion.

This topic will be more fully explored on my other web site Gay Catechism. 

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, Living by Grace, Fundamentalism, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

February 14, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Today being the feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, it deserves some comment. I had to preach on it this morning.

It’s a difficult thing no matter whether you’re a cynic or deeply pious. As the story is told it’s too supernatural–ranks right up there with the Ascension on the list of things no one really believes as narrated.

Yet the narrative tries to convey something intensely mystical and meaningful. In the midst of his public ministry, Jesus seemed profoundly different to his disciples. Something happened that allowed/permitted/forced them to see him in a new and blinding light.

Typically we call that a “mountaintop experience,” and it must have been for Peter James and John, the “inner three” who get lot of attention in the Gospel stories but we are never fully told why. As told in Luke 9, the three of them were “weighed down with sleep” (and you will remember that in Matthew and Mark, the same three disciples are with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and, yup, there they fell asleep too).

Just like the other nine disciples, these guys were not perfect. They had feet of clay. They were as flawed as any human being alive right now—but: the witness of these disciples is that a veil was ripped away, and they saw Christ Jesus as God sees him. They were overshadowed and enveloped by a Cloud— a glory they could not understand and could hardly describe— but the Jesus who came out of the transfiguring Cloud with them was not One to be afraid of, or One to hide from, but One who was to lay down his life for them.

I cannot guarantee you a mountaintop experience. You will find your own mountain, and it probably won’t be a pretty picture in the piney woods with postcard views from the top. For some of us, it may be the mountain of our own failures, or sorrows, or mistakes, or addictions, pain or internalized homophobia. But if we climb the mountains we have heaped up in our lives, there, at the top of these heaps of human experience, we encounter the Cross. And it is not a trigger for terror. It is the revelation of the One True God of grace, forgiveness, compassion and lovingkindness. It may be Law which drives us up the mountain of despair, but it is pure Gospel to find the love of Jesus Christ awaiting us at the top.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Living by Grace, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

December 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This week I am trying to send out a few Christmas cards — I have essentially given up on that gracious communication with the bulk of our friends, because I get weighed down with everything else, more and more, as Christmas approaches. But I am writing now to several inmates in California prisons, to men who have written to our church from time to time. These men (all men, so far) have written because of one of our own community who is doing time now for a parole violation, and he has told other inmates that, yes, there is a church in Los Angeles which welcomes gay people. So, although the communication is a bit “stiff” in prison letters because every word going out and coming in is pre-read by prison staff, I can only assume that the guys writing to us are probably gay.

A couple of weeks ago, one of them wrote from Kern County. He isn’t ready to tell me what he did that got him convicted, or even how long he is in prison for. But he says this is his first time in prison, and it’s December and I realize he will spend Christmas in a cell.

“Since my imprisonment I have become ever stronger in Jesus Christ and God and church and hold my Christian beliefs even more dear to my heart than ever before.

“What I need: is someone — some church– and some church members to help me and take me under their wings and into their church and allow me to prove myself as a person, as a fellow church member and child of God.”

This young man’s plea is as clear as any I have ever heard. It seems risky for upstanding church-goers to be concerned about convicts who will have to prove themselves in order to be accepted again in society. But as to being a child of God, he has no need of proof. The church is the community of those who put their faith in Christ. Regardless of the division of people into categories—Jew or Greek, male and female, young or old, imprisoned or free, LGBT or straight, there are no subcategories for the children of God.

How can I be so sure of that? Because each of us is made a child not by something we do or accomplish, or avoid doing, or even repent, but by the gracious act of God alone. We are God’s children just because God says so. It’s about love, not “Brownie points,” sexual conformity, or the lack of a criminal record. It’s about a love so strong that nothing can tear us away from it.

In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul agonizes about all of the things in life (he mentions “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” as examples) that may conspire to cause pain, failure, regret or worry, but then he says, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I am open-hearted enough to read his phrases very broadly, where he says “in all these things” and especially “things present nor things to come (like our modern world). Can we not see that, if Paul were writing today, he might have mentioned other examples: “poverty, racism, gangs, homophobia or sexual orientation, divorce, unemployment, drugs or alcohol, obesity, health problems or gun violence,” and still come to the same conclusion: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

To my friends in prison: may God keep watch with you at Christmas, knowing that not even bars and walls can separate us from the love which is given to us freely. Keep the faith you have in God’s gracious acceptance. And may the people of God keep faith with you!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Violence, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Living by Grace, Faith, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

December 9, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”   Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,” will enter the Kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 7:21

These clear contradictions seem to stymie us nowadays, and Christians still argue whether God is lenient or hard-hearted, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the tenth generation or very indulgent and forgetful of our offenses. Is heaven a place where only a handful will ever get in, or where the gates are never shut?

These apparent contradictions seem to say to us that the ancients and the early Christians were not all of the same mind on the charity and lovingkindness of God. It is not just we who cannot agree on the meaning of Scripture, for Scripture itself gives us different images which seem to contradict (speak against) one another.

Yet for me the overwhelming weight of the Biblical message, not just of spot passages and bumper-sticker length verses, is of God’s endless grace and acceptance. (Forgiveness is one metaphor for God’s grace and compassionate acceptance.)

Seriously, folks, can we actually say (and be theologically correct) that God loves everybody? As we know a certain unmentionable preacher-type from Topeka who argues against this vehemently. If God doesn’t love everybody, then why should we put up with or tolerate or condone anybody who doesn’t toe the line or walk the talk?

But we are the progressive (liberal) Christians, we think. We get it, even if those fundagelicals and Talibangelists don’t.

Alas, the full implication of the phrase “Everybody’s welcome” usually goes over our heads. It doesn’t merely mean that if everybody is welcome, then I am welcome—as reassuring and good as that seems. It doesn’t merely mean the invitation to receive God’s love is to me and to people like me. “Everybody” is an impossibly dangerous, radical word. If everybody is welcome, it means that even people I don’t particularly like or approve of are also welcome. It means that God’s unearned and unlimited grace does not have to be vetted by me personally before it is offered to everybody else in the world.

This takes some degree of self-examination to sink in thoroughly. It doesn’t penetrate our skulls as easily as the mantra “God loves me,” or “I am Jesus’ little sunbeam.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Gay Catechism, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace | Print | No Comments »

December 1, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Here we are again at another World AIDS Day (begun in 1987), and 25 million people have died of this disease. Progress in fighting it has been so remarkable that people don’t use the term “pandemic” any more, which is good.

But the burden and the horror of AIDS has shifted — from white homosexual males who transported HIV around like so much airline baggage, and shared freely if unwittingly — to the third world, to women, to children, and to minorities. The bad side of this generation-long struggle against AIDS is that access to health care is not fair, justice or equal. Those who can afford health care have gotten access to today’s wonderful medications which allow them to manage the immune deficiency and get on with their lives.

Those who cannot get access to such medications (including the millions in third world nations who can’t even get clean water) still suffer the same pain and the same potential future as those whose names are on the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

I am proud to be on the Board of Directors of a fairly new local non-profit entity here in Los Angeles, Hollywood Remembers. Two nights ago, in anticipation of World AIDS Day, Hollywood Remembers staged its third annual consciousness– and fund-raising event, premiering the new rock/blues musical “Red Ribbon,” conceived and written by Joe Lawrence and directed by Jerry Craig. It tells the courageous story of six people whose lives were so heavily impacted by HIV and AIDS in the early 1990s just as the red AIDS ribbon was becoming a national symbol of the fight.

At the end of the evening our Board present $2,500 to Women Alive L.A., a grass-roots organization helping mostly minority women in their struggle against HIV and AIDS. Executive Director Carrie Broadus was here to speak to the audience—preach, really, about the fight we will not give up until AIDS is conquered—and to receive the check. I am hopeful that when our annual accounting is done, we’ll be able to send Women Alive even more. Much of our work has been generously underwritten by corporate and other non-profit sponsors, including Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles, but many small donations at the door provided more than a thousand dollars and proof that people still care.

During the intermission, ushers collected scribe tickets on which people in the audience wrote the names of loved ones they have lost to AIDS. Every year I get teary just jotting down a few of the names of those friends I lost, but I was overwhelmed again this year to see that the enormous red ribbon on the banner (pictured above) being hoisted to the ceiling was not big enough to hold the names. Perhaps the heart of God is bigger than our banners, bigger even that the AIDS Memorial Quilt itself, which is the largest work of folk art in the world (nearly 1.3 million square feet).

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, the 576 square feet on exhibit at Hollywood Lutheran Church will be up through Sunday, December 6. Come and pay your respects, light a candle, and make a donation. It will be well used to help people with HIV/AIDS continue living and fighting.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Hollywood, HIV and AIDS, Living by Grace, History, PRAYERS, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

November 25, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

My friend Steve just tipped me off to an informal survey which Minnesota Public Radio is conducting about reactions to the ELCA’s August 2009 decision to allow same-gender-partnered clergy in its ranks. In recent days more than a thousand people have expressed their opinion to MPR’s Public Insight Network. Here is how the network summarizes it:

“Of the people who wrote to us, most said they haven’t considered leaving the church over the ELCA’s stance allowing people in committed same-gender relationships to be pastors. In fact, many were concerned that we are giving too much attention to those who want to leave, rather than focusing on the story that most individuals and churches plan to stay with the ELCA. Some wrote to say that this change will bring them back to the church, or keep them from leaving.”

Here is the link to add your name and commentary. Or click on the graphic.

Of the 1,100 people who have written responses, MPR says that 150 are clergy (15%). So I decided to add my “two cents” to their survey:

“I am one who never left the church, not during college years, not even when I came out as a gay man. In seminary, I was deeply conflicted until I gained the spiritual maturity to see that the Gospel was speaking to me with the good news that it is not my achievements nor my self-denial which earned me God’s favor. It is pure grace.

“I began to serve the Church as an ordained pastor–at first closeted, over time less closeted, more outspoken. When the church pushed me off its clergy roster in 1991 I remained faithful anyway. In 2004 I was called back to ministry, by a courageous Lutheran congregation willing to ignore the rules, and specifically to do outreach with gay and lesbian people. I remain in ministry with Hollywood Lutheran Church in an increasingly diverse local community. We are grieved that other powerful and fearful churches threaten to pull out of the ELCA (God bless them wherever they come to rest). As for me and our parish, we continue to give thanks to God for courage, compassion, and open-hearted ministry wherever it springs up. And we believe the Holy Spirit speaks to all through these things.”

Obviously I could say a lot more. This is probably the most condensed form (in 200 words) I have ever told my story and explained my faith.

The hardest to explain briefly is my growing confidence that what has happened in the ELCA, over the last number of years which reached its dramatic conclusion last August, powerfully illustrates the work of the Spirit among us as we try to arrive at truth. It is not the absence of 100 or so congregations which are voting to exit, or the larger number of those congregations who are retaliating against the ELCA by withholding funds, which will change the course of the church to follow Christ more closely. It is the growing number of congregations, pastors and individuals who act courageously, pray fervently, offer hospitality to LGBT people and reserve judgment, and gradually come to see their role in the larger ministry of grace and healing which the whole Christian Church has been given. Regardless of threats of schism, we absolutely must use the courage God gave us to do what is right, continue ministry, speak honestly and lovingly, and not hide in closets of fear or uncertainty.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Faith, LGBT Christian, "The Closet", Living by Grace, Public Affairs, Ministry, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

October 22, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Church of Sweden to Conduct Same-Gender Marriage Ceremonies

October 22, 2009 • Phil Soucy, Director Communications LC/NA

This morning the Board of the Lutheran Church of Sweden voted and announced that the church would conduct marriage ceremonies for same-gender couples, using gender-neutral liturgies for both LGBT and heterosexual weddings. The vote of the board of the church was taken at its meeting this morning and is reported as 176-62, with 11 abstentions and 2 absences.

Thirty years ago, Sweden declared homosexuality was not disease. The church has offered blessings for same-gender couples since 2007. In April, Sweden passed a law that granted marriage equality to all. That law went into effect in May.

Some in the Church of Sweden are of the opinion that marriage in the church ought to be reserved for man-woman unions, and argued for that position. Today’s vote ended that debate. The new ruling will go into effect on November 1, 2009. The news amazes even me.  I’ve been watching the European Lutheran churches liberalize much sooner and more completely than the American churches (the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod marching decisively into the past and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod being theologically about where the Taliban is).

European churches started ordaining women as early as World War II ~ for lack of enough males to fill pulpits. The late Swedish theologian Krister Stendahl, who taught for many years at Harvard and then elected Bishop of Stockholm, was an early supporter of the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in church and society. After retiring in 1989 he returned to Harvard and was a keynote speaker for LC/Los Angeles in the 1990s. When I talked with him personally, he was quite open about the fact that he had a lesbian on his episcopal staff in Sweden. Not long after, I received a phone call form Sweden asking for any resources I had on same-sex marriage rites.

In April Sweden became the seventh country in the world to legalize same-gender marriage. In May, the diocese of Stockholm elected a partnered lesbian, Eva Brunne, as bishop. Times have changed, and the church in many places is changing with it.

But I am sure the America Christian scene will go ballistic about this latest. I can hardly wait to hear what that hate-mongering Topeka preacher will say or do. He’s already banned from entering the U.K. ever again. I wonder if the tolerant Swedes will allow him in to protest the lesbian and gay weddings that are set to begin November 1.

It is easy to forget that America is not the center of the debates about LGBT people and the Christian faith. American Christianity has had very different experiences than other one-time Christian nations, and of late, thanks to fundamentalism and the corrosive mixture of religion and politics, American Christians have been dragging their feet for years.

According to Associated Press, “Sweden’s archbishop Anders Wejryd said he was pleased with the decision, while the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights described it as ‘a big step in the right direction.’”

But it still amazes me, and reminds me that those of us who are sexual minority Christians must live into the changing environment in our faith communities. We read the headlines with glee, but remain fearful or completely closeted. Or we go on with life and almost forget that in many quarters we are not as rejected or avoided as we were a decade or two back. If the world’s Christians are indeed loosening up, our emotional homework is to claim the grace we have always believed God has offered to us, and trust the Good News as well as the daily news.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, "The Closet", Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, LGBT Rights, History | Print | No Comments »

September 30, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

How hard our righteous sense of judgment dies.

After another wild and intense Bible Study tonight, I drove home just now thinking to write about one of the guys who attends who is steeped in fundamentalist rhetoric. At times, he is so judgmental that it irritates many of the others. (He has been fed at a different theological trough, so to speak, for most of his life, and can quote Scripture—or at least approximate it—freely and frequently. But it seems that he has concentrated his search of the Scriptures on what is the most judgmental.

We get 12 to 15 people each week for food, prayer and study, and right now we’re working through Paul’s Letter to the Romans—a very intense and heavy book for after-dinner conversation. But hey, somebody else suggested it!

Several weeks ago, we got heated over whether —even with God’s divine forbearance and love— we can be certain that some people are going to burn in hell. Hey, I didn’t bring that up either, he did! The phrases “get to heaven” and “go to hell” seem to be a constant staple in his faith diet.

So over and over (and tonight was no exception) I keep bringing up illustrations of God’s awesome grace to fill in the heart and the soul of Paul’s more juridical arguments about justification. One of my favorites is the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), where the Father figure treats both sons generously—both the one who was long on obedience but short on tolerance, and the younger one who has foolhardy and then sorrowful when he came to his senses out of sheer desperation.

Another favorite is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20), who work varying lengths of the day from as much as 12 hours down to merely 1 hour, but all receive the same wage from the landowner. When there is grumbling, the employer (the God figure) says to those grumblers who worked through the heat of the day, “Do you begrudge my generosity?”

These are both illustrations of God’s grace, but they also bring to light the fundamental human trait of resentment. Scholar are quick to tell us that both parables have a deeper level of interpretation as contrasting the Jews (long obedient and faithful) and the Gentiles (lawless johnny-come-lateleys).

So in the Bible Study, even as I try to affirm what people are saying and thinking, I am always seeking ways to re-channel fundamentalist judgmentalism that wants to be certain God is sending disobedient sinners to eternal damnation. After all, they say, its right here in black and white in the Bible.

As if the parables Jesus told are not also “in black and white”? What is it about our righteous sense of judgment that we will go to great lengths to track down and then lift up the judgmental stuff in the Bible, and then soft-pedal the forgiving, grace-filled forbearance of God? Do we have some profoundly human need, in comparing ourselves against others, to put them down (condemn to hell) in order to lift ourselves up?

Tonight, Mr. Fundamentalist quarreled a little against the parable of the laborers by insisting that in heaven different people would get bigger or smaller rewards based on their deeds in this life. The immediate outcry and groaning from others surprised even me! “Oh brother! No, you’ve got it wrong. That’s irrelevant! Where does it say that? For pity’s sake!”

Christian entitlement fits hand-in-glove with Christian judgmentalism. Both are stuck in the idea that God’s grace is scarce, limited, and that in order for “good” people to receive it, it must be withheld from “bad” people.

Both the parables I mentioned say otherwise. Before the thundering waterfall of God’s gracious and generous love I stand with open hands. I will not receive much if I make my hands into fists. I must have open hands. And I will not receive more by shoving my brother or sister aside. In fact, we are never justified in trying to keep one another away from this constant, bountiful supply of God’s grace. Paul says in Romans that we are justified entirely and only as a gift, received by faith. It is not a reward, but a gift. there is no deserving, no entitlement, no wages at the end of the day. And those who receive the most are probably the most aware of this flood of grace.

But those who think they have earned it, and that it is due them and not to others, have probably received the least. For when our hearts close against others, it is as if we were trying to capture the whole of the waterfall with our fists.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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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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August 23, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

Some wisecracker years ago said that “the church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.” As more atrocities from our armed services come to light from both Afghanistan and Iraq, that may not really be true, but you get the point. Christians are not successfully warring against the forces of darkness on behalf of Jesus if we are constantly beating up other Christians. It is no wonder that millions of people today want nothing to do anymore with any church, because they can’t distinguish between good church and bad church.

How can we let them know that we trust in God’s grace, and don’t believe that God is trying to trick us all into stumbling headlong into damnation?

Today I sat at our parish’s booth in the local street fair, Sunset Junction, which has been going on every August for 30 years to build bridges between ethnic groups and across the chasm between straight identities and gay people. The astonishing diversity and I guess even perversity is palpable when watching it point blank from the middle lane of Sunset Boulevard, closed to traffic for 36 hours.

This is the first year that our congregation has put up the effort to get a booth, think up a theme, and take banners, tables, chairs, literature, free giveaways (we ordered New Testaments from the American Bible Society) and ask volunteers to staff 2-hour shifts. The street fair is decidedly a party atmosphere—the music is deafening and a lot of beer is consumed to wash down either Mexican, Salvadoreno or Thai food—and yet it is surprising how many people actually did look at our banner and posters and take home flyers and a New Testament. We even had a real mail box for people to leave written prayer requests, which we will lift up in our parish life this week.

The reason I mention all this is because this afternoon a woman stepped up, and her first question was, “You’re not Missouri Synod, are you?” She had been raised in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and went through a K–8 parochial school in the Chicago suburbs. Now she won’t go near an LC-MS church. “Too many rules,” she said flatly.

Ten minutes hadn’t past since another woman had stopped to stare at our banner, and weigh whether it was worth stopping to talk, before one of us noticed and called out a “Hello” to her. The banner, in addition to our congregation’s name, etc., bears this slogan:

“Where Religion Doesn’t Hurt.”

She told me a heart-breaking story of having been expelled—she used the word excommunicated —from her church eight years ago. She had been publicly humiliated in church for her sin, which I deduced must have been over a marital break-up. Years later, she is still deeply wounded but also still longing for a spiritual community where she will not be tested or questioned about her sins or failings, or pushed out the door.

Clearly, our church is a place where wounds are healed, but people don’t always recognize the different between a church that continues to wound and one that wants to be a place of healing.

It convinces me all the more that Christian ethics are first and foremost a matter of personal discipline and discernment. As a community, our first duty is to stand with someone who is struggling with difficult ethical decisions or choices, and stand with them even in a failure or a mistake, before the community even begins to talk about condoning or not condoning a behavior.

Martin Luther rebelled against Roman Catholic Canon Law. To this day, the Lutheran Church has no such “code” by which a member can be tried or excluded. We hope and expect that each person, guided by the light of the Holy Spirit, will measure him or herself against the Law until it is clear that each person is in need of God’s forgiveness and grace. Once I am thoughtful and clear about my own need for grace, it also becomes clear that I am in no position to judge another. When you have a whole collection of individual Christians who are clear that none of us can play the divine judge (”Let the one who has not sinned cast the first stone,” John 8:7), it ought to temper the temptation of a congregation or a churchbody to condemn anyone, to pass judgment, or to exclude even a single sinner from the community of grace.

What interested me, too, was that both of these women were heterosexual, and weren’t wounded over being lesbian or gay. Yet both of them had felt judged, even condemned, by harsh religiosity that has forgotten the place we all must have before the throne of grace.

Dear sisters, this is not right. This should never happen to you. Please give us a second chance to proclaim the good news, not wallow in the self-righteousness of those who imagine they are “holier than thou.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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June 24, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Tonight I was trying to finally connect a friend of a church friend with a friend of another church friend. One of them needs at home-care, and the other has done a lot of elder care. There are other issues, too, not the least of which is that the two women have not met each other. The elder needs to be able to trust this stranger she will pay to care for her in her own home. And trust is a big issue for elders, whether or not they realize it. All too often we read the horror stories of elders being taken advantage of, sometimes on the order of huge sums of money.

Trust is a major issue for lesbian/gay people, too. We have been taken advantage of, big time. Some of us have entrusted “our secret” only to have been outed by the person we thought was sensitive, honest, caring and could respect a confidence. Over and over, highly-placed people in the church, whether a local congregation, or the office of a bishop, have broken trust in a completely un-Christian way.

Is it any wonder that LGBT people don’t trust the church? Maybe it’s like hot gossip. We think that the sensationalism of some items of information somehow trump all other ethical considerations. In past generations, a broken confidence could be used to blackmail a homosexual. Nowadays its’ more like all over the internet, for free. But the damage to a life is still done, a confidence is betrayed, and trust is broken.

But it occurs to me that this is precisely where the power of coming out picks up its own momentum. When we are honest—completely honest—about ourselves, our lives, our sexuality, our relationships there is nothing else than an unethical person can do to hurt us. If everyone already knows I am gay, then my friends are my friends knowing I am gay, and those who cannot be my friend will just avoid me because I’m gay. At least they all know where I stand, who I really am, and whom to ask if they have honest questions. If I am completely honest, my honesty about my sexuality and life present an implied challenge—or even a demand—to everyone else that they be honest with me and about me. If it is widely known that I’m gay, it would be preposterous for others to spread rumors or try to use innuendo to hurt me because, well, everybody knows.

The high cost, and high danger, of not coming out, of not being completely honest about my life, is that telling only partial truths, or stretching the truth, or manufacturing pure fiction to fill in acceptable details (which is like painting over reality with a wide brush), will eventually reveal to others that I cannot be trusted.

In years past, many homosexuals simply split their lives down the middle, between day and night, and made sure that the two never intersected. They thought that they were extremely careful to cover their tracks, so that the decent people who knew them as decent people would never have reason to suspect that their public lives were only part of the story. They thought. No matter how well-intentioned, a lie is never perfect, and in its flaws and erosions over time, it damages trust. People might not suspect that I am gay, but they know for sure that I am evasive, ambiguous, distant, opaque where I should be open, present, and transparent. They will come to not trust me even if they’re not sure why.

But when I come out, the two parts of my life simply re-weave into one life. My sexuality, my friends, my whereabouts, what I did last weekend, my boyfriend, my partner for life are not dark secrets, not fiction, not sketchy, not a lie. And the people who can handle that (increasingly they are the majority of people) will trust me because by my honesty I have removed all the reasons not to trust me.

In effect, I am who I am: a gay man with a life partner (using myself as an example). Take it or leave it; take me or leave me. And if I have entrusted myself, my life, my reality to you, I expect you to be honest with me. If you support me in my quest for dignity, respect, self-esteem, equal rights and the grace of God, then stand with me. But be honest, because if you can’t support me, then say so up front so we can all get on with out lives.

I say all of this in a Christian context, because I think this basic kind of honesty and trust-building is fundamental to the Gospel. We say that we trust God’s word, and that means we rely on it without the background fear that God lis really Charlie Brown’s Lucy who will pull the football away (grace and love) at the last second, or the fear that there is a trick question on the final (the judgment day) which will erase our good grades and cause us to flunk.

Gay and lesbian Christians are truly/truthfully living on faith because we are entrusting to God the honesty of our lives in the confidence that God is being totally honest and trustworthy with us. If that isn’t faith I don’t know what is. Can we trust God? And if God is trustworthy, shouldn’t God’s people, the Church, be trustworthy also? Can we trust Christians to be who they say they are—disciples, not judges—? Can I trust you?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Faith, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »