Here is a sermon written for Reformation Sunday in 2005 just before the vote for or against rights to gays and lesbians. It has some ideas in it for Trinity Sunday regarding discrimination. I just ask that if anyone uses any part of it that they footnote me as a resource. Peace - Pat Butler



NOW IS THE TIME
Reverend Patricia Butler
30 October 2005

Psalm 24 as Responsive Reading
Luke 4:14-21

We are facing some very difficult times in our nation and in our state, and in our local communities. Today, and for the next few days, a very unusual event is taking place in Washington, D.C. Now, many would say that there are always unusual events taking place in Washington, D. C., but this one is quite different. For the first time in history, a woman’s body is lying in honor in the Rotunda of our nation’s Capital. It is the body of Rosa Parks. I did not know, until I was doing some
reading in the newspaper the other day, that there has only been one other African American whose body has lain in the Rotunda. Rosa Parks is the first woman.

Rosa Parks died last week,October 24th (2005). She was a very interesting woman. She was born in Tuskegee, Alabama; her father was a carpenter, her mother a teacher. She moved a few times within Alabama and as she grew, she followed the advice of her dear mother who said, “Take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were.”

Born in February of 1913, she once remarked while doing an interview “Back then, we didn’t have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next.” She herself became a teacher, and she and her husband were active in the NAACP. Rosa witnessed many horrible, unthinkable things in our nation’s history; floggings, rapes, murders, she would sleep at night and hear the Klan trying to lynch someone and she lay there in bed, afraid to go to sleep
because they might burn her house down.

On that fateful day, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was riding the bus back home from where she taught. She was physically exhausted, she was also very tired and fed up with the kind of treatment that she and other blacks had been receiving every single day of their lives. She sat down on the bus, and when she refused to move to let a white man
sit in her seat, she was arrested and the wheels of the civil rights movement began.

Rosa Parks was a quiet, soft-spoken, very diplomatic woman, always, everyday, she complied with the rule that you paid your bus fare in the front of the bus, then had to go outside the bus, around to the back door of the bus and hope that it didn’t get shut on her before she got there, which she said, is usually what did happen. To us, today, this kind of behavior sounds ridiculous, especially to us here in Maine, but things like that happened, and worse, much worse.

What made a difference to Rosa? Why did she finally decide, “I’ve had it, I’m going to take a stand?”
Let me share these words with you from Genesis: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;’ ... and so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them,” (Genesis 1:26) ... “And God saw everything that was made, and behold, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31)

“It was very good!”

I hope these words sound familiar to you. They are from the first chapter of Genesis. Rosa Parks knew these words, they were familiar to her, they are about the creations of our world, (which our children have also been learning about in this first unit) and of how the author envisioned God created all that is.

Does any person, any human being, have the right to say that what God made, in any circumstance, is not good?

What I am talking about here is - discrimination. throughout history the human race has found ways to discriminate against other humans. The Egyptians did it to the Israelites and finally, after 200 years, God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into freedom.

In our own country, which is still very young, we’ve discriminated against many groups, people of other religions, people of other races, people of different skin colors, people of different sexual orientations. Did you know, this is a sad fact, but did you know that many years ago, the southern churches built balconies, and the balconies were built for the slaves? The masters could sit on the floor of the sanctuary but all the slaves were relegated to the balcony. Thank God - quite literally, thank God that is not the case here and that is not the reason for our balcony!!

How can we proclaim that God created all of humanity and that God called it good, and still say to some that they are not the same and therefore they should be treated differently?

In just over one week, a week from this Tuesday, we will have the opportunity to go to the polls and vote, this is a right that didn’t come easily, this is a right that was fought for and won by our ancestors. We will be facing many issues, but I would like to speak to Referendum #1. If we vote “yes” on Referendum #1, we will be voting to discriminate against people based upon sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, credit, and education.

Now, think about it, does that make any sense? Does it make sense to vote to discriminate against people? If we vote “no” then we are upholding a law that already exists, NOT to discriminate.

In the words of my friend, Reverend Dale Holden, Pastor of First Congregational Church, UCC of Houlton, “All too often, opponents to Maine’s Anti-Discrimination Act are represented by faith-based groups whose theology includes a selective interpretation of the Bible with an emphasis on judgment and exclusion. The United Church of Christ actively opposes any effort to repeal Maine’s Anti-Discrimination Act, because discrimination is wrong and it hurts real people. No one
should lose their jobs, be denied a mortgage or evicted from their homes simply because they are gay, or believed to be gay.”

Reverend Richard Weidler, Senior Pastor of the Woodfords Congregational Church, UCC, wrote: “The prophet Micah proclaimed that that which the Lord requires of people of faith is ‘to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God.’ Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to especially care and advocate for those who are marginalized by society.”

Rev. Weidler asked his congregation in a recent sermon, “Are you in favor of discrimination?” and the answer was a resounding ‘No.’ We >then moved forward with the resolution in support of adding sexual orientation as a protected class in the Maine Human Rights Act. Lesbians and gay Americans live and work in our communities. They attend our services and are members of our congregations. they should be extended the same freedoms and protections as all other Americans
without living in fear.”

The Reverend David Gaewski, our Conference Minister, said, “The United Church of Christ has a long history of standing up for equal rights and against discrimination, ... members of the United Church of Christ marched at Selma and fought for the passage of the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act. We have advocated for the fair and equal treatment of all Americans regardless of race, gender, religion -- and yes, sexual orientation.”

We as humans, as Christians, must remember our past; we must remember the history that has been less than fair to many people throughout history. We must remember it so that we do not make the same horrendous mistakes as we have made in the past.

Luis Bunuel, the film maker, writes, “Life without memory is not life at all. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feelings, even our actions. Without it we are nothing.” (from If I Had One More Sermon to Preach by Rev. Ansley Van Dyke, pgs. 17-18)

And if we look closely at the teachings of the Old Testament, one of the recurring commands that echoes over and over and over is REMEMBER, remember the hurt, the pain, the suffering, that we, as a society have done to others. Remember it and do not do it again.

We must remember that God created each and every person, and pronounced them as GOOD!

If we are honest, if we are truly honest with ourselves, the earth today does not mirror the Genesis hope for the peaceable, productive, ordered world. Little by little we are destroying what God has created, and what God continues to care for, continues to create.

I am not going to tell you how to vote a week from Tuesday, that is your decision and your decision alone.

But, I want to point out to you some principles upon which this nation was founded and that the Declaration of Independence state are “...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” There may be many, many interpretations of that, but if all people are created equal, they must be treated with equality.

Today is Reformation Sunday, we remember our long, somewhat difficult struggling history and how we came to be people of the Reformation, Protestants who protested against things that they felt were wrong. Those ancestors fought to give us the freedom to worship, the freedom to decide for ourselves how we will live. And as people of faith, we must stand up for what we believe, we must stand up for what God created this world to be, not what it has become, but what it CAN
become.

I believe very firmly that we are at a crossroads and that now, NOW is the time to decide. Now is the time to take a stand for what is just and right, for what is honorable and faithful. Now is the time to decide once and for all that all people are God’s people and that all people, together, can create a better world.

I pray for each of you as you make your decision, and I pray for all of this country, and this state, as one great family, we may one day pray together, “God, open our eyes, our minds, our hearts that we may embrace ALL of your people. Amen”