The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few

By Elaine Bennett

The bulletin says we're celebrating a lot here today at St. George's, including our Sunday School teachers and Juneteenth.

I'm not an authority on either subject, but I will say this: How we raise our children speaks volumes about who we are as a parish today, and what the world will be like tomorrow. I am always moved and amazed when I encounter the work going on in our Sunday school. So thank you.

And Juneteenth is a holiday I never heard about before I came to St. George's. It commemorates the day that slavery finally ended in the United States. Those of you who know your history will know that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 -- it went into effect on January 1st, 1863. But for obvious reasons, that particular law was not observed in the Confederate states.

And it wasn't until June 19th, 1865 that Union soldiers got to Galveston Texas and told the men, women and children who were enslaved there that they had been free for the last two and a half years.

They had always been free under God's law, of course. But I imagine it's hard to feel free when there's a guy with a shotgun who says he'll kill you if you leave the plantation.

So Juneteenth has a lot to teach us about freedom. And about how easily institutions can deny it. Especially if we allow them to.

And as a gay Christian, that is a subject I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

So Happy Gay Pride Month, everyone.

And Happy Father's Day, too. Since it is Father's Day I thought I'd start with a little story about my father, Charlie.

When I graduated from college, I moved back home with my parents. And that summer, I went to my first Gay Pride March.

I was excited about it but I was also a little nervous. See, I get sunburned really easily, and I knew if I was outside all day, marching from Greenwich Village to who knows where uptown, I was going to come home with a big sunburn and I needed a cover story. A friend of mine told me to say I was going on a picnic.

So when I left that morning, I said, "Bye! I'm going to a picnic in Central Park."

Little did I know that the Gay Pride March would be culminating in a huge rally in Central Park. And also little did I know that that the entire affair would receive massive coverage on the evening news.

When I came home that evening, my father made a big joke about it. He said, "How'd you like your picnic with the..." and then he used a crude word for gay men.

Well, that got my attention -- my father never used words like that. He was a pretty sharp guy in some ways and I felt he was trying to tell me that he knew about me. So the next day when we were alone, I came out to my father.

I said, "You're right, Dad. I was at the march. I'm gay."

I'm not sure quite what I was expecting him to say. But what he did say was, "You're our daughter and we love you.... Just don't tell your mother."

In case you're wondering, I did eventually come out to my mother, too. Buy me lunch sometime and I'll tell you about it. The bottom line is, I was able to tell both of my parents that I'm gay, but to the day they died, I was never able to tell either of them that I'm Episcopalian.

Hey, we were Roman Catholic. And I was very Roman Catholic.

You know how hard it is for most parents to get their teenagers to go to church? My parents had trouble getting me to come home. In fact, I regularly attended two masses every Sunday: I was the lead guitarist with the folk group at 9:30 and then played and sang as part of a duo at one of the two masses held at noon.

Growing up, just about every major event of my life revolved around church, including my first date and my first kiss. And in high school and college I went to weekend-long retreats designed to fill me full of the self-esteem teenagers so badly need. They gave us buttons and banners along the lines of "God Loves You."

My favorite one said -- quote -- "God Don't Make Junk." I was never able to figure out whether the bad grammar was an attempt to be hip or a subtle commentary on the nature of the Trinity. "God Don't Make Junk."

Well, a couple of years after I graduated from college -- I was living in the city -- and my parents decided that we should go to Christmas Eve midnight mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. So we did.

Then the following June, the Gay Pride March rolled around again. Now, every year during the march, the gay Catholic Group -- Dignity -- used to stop at St. Patrick's and hold a brief prayer service on the Cathedral steps. But that year there was a new Cardinal in town, and Cardinal O'Connor said gay people praying on the Cathedral steps was "sacrilegious." Can you imagine -- telling anyone that praying is a sacrilege?

Cardinal O'Connor announced that he was going to block off the steps of the Cathedral. In fact, he didn't even want gay people walking on the street in front of the Cathedral. So the Archdiocese sued New York City, trying to get the entire Gay Pride March rerouted off Fifth Avenue.

He lost his lawsuit, but I got the message loud and clear: When the church -- my church -- didn't know who I was -- when I was just one of the nameless thousands at Christmas Eve mass, I was more than welcome. But when they did know who I was, they didn't want anything to do with me.

It was the ecclesiastical version of "You're our daughter and we love you, just don't tell your mother."

And that was the last day I considered myself a Catholic.

It took a long while for me to trust God -- and organized religion -- again. People told me I needed to learn to separate God's actions from man's. But it's hard to remember that you're equal and loved by God when "man" -- in the form of the Archbishop -- won't let you in the church door.

(One of the other actions Archbishop O'Connor took was to ban Dignity from meeting or celebrating mass in Catholic Churches. And that edict spread to other dioceses, which is why to this day, the local Dignity group meets here at St. George's. I came across their meeting by accident one day. They were playing Bingo.)

So I struggled with religion for a long time. But eventually I found the Episcopal Church at St. Ann's in Brooklyn. And when my partner and I were getting ready to move to Maplewood, we found St. George's.

The Gay Pride March played a role in that, too. Oasis -- the gay & lesbian fellowship of the Diocese of Newark - was marching in the parade. We went up to them and talked with some people and Cheryl Notari and her partner Sharon told us about this fabulous parish right in our new hometown. I'm not sure I believed them, but I decided to see. And I have been here happily ever after.

Now, as these "coming out" stories go, mine is pretty tame. My parents didn't throw me out of the house. But I do feel that Cardinal O'Connor threw me out of my church. Through his actions, as the representative of God and the Roman Catholic Church in New York, the community that I had always relied on suddenly decided, "Well, after all, you know, maybe God Do Make Junk. And -- guess what? -- you're it."

I'm willing to bet that most of the gay people here have some sort of story like that.

And so do the vast majority of gay people who are not here. Because, remember, there are thousands of people out there who are too scared or too hurt to even think about walking into this building.

Now we know that once they get in here, they can sit in any pew, shake hands with any person and find someone who welcomes them and cares about them and wants to give them space to repair their broken relationship with God. We know that. But how do they know?

These walls are pretty thick. Nobody outside can hear what we're doing in here. The windows are really high up and full of all that colored glass. People can't pass by and see what's going on inside. So how do we reach out? How do we tell those scared, hurt, unchurched gay people that not only does Jesus love them, but we do too?

How do we do it? We do things -- individually and collectively, as a community.

We have events. We have "Marriage Equality Weekend" and put a rainbow flag banner across the front of the church. We march in parades, like the New York City Gay & Lesbian Pride March coming up in two weeks.

Last year, with our elders riding in style down the route, we showed that support for gay people is not limited to the young. We had a lesbian priest marching in her clerical collar -- strangers hugged her. We also had many other parishioners, gay and straight, toddlers riding on their lesbian moms' shoulders, young Keenan walking out front, waving like the Mayor of New York.

I can't tell you how many people shouted "thank you." Some cried. Others said, "I know someone who lives in Maplewood." And thousands of people saw tangible evidence that "Christian" does not always mean "homophobe." And that at least some Episcopalians really do mean it when they say, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."

Because as wonderful as St. George's is, it's easy to forget that not every Episcopal church really stands behind that slogan. And I'm not just talking about parishes in Florida or Texas or Virginia, where there are bishops and priests who want to separate from the U.S. church because we allowed an openly gay man to become a bishop. There are parishes right down the road -- parishes in our very own diocese -- where gay and lesbian people do not feel welcome.

These are the parishes Bishop Beckwith was talking about when he said one of his goals for the diocese is to practice "radical welcome."

You know, for the longest time I didn't even know what the phrase meant. The Bishop would talk about "radical welcome" and I was like -- "Huh? It wasn't until a month ago, when we had the priest from Connecticut come down to talk about becoming a welcoming parish that I realized that the phrase "radical welcome" basically translates as "being nice to gay people and people of color." Radical.

I guess there are a lot of parishes that need to work hard at that. It's pretty much business as usual at St. George's, thank God.

But once we leave the friendly confines of our parish, and of this town, the rest of the world is not quite so radically welcoming. In fact, especially in the last year or so, parts of my new church have started to feel a lot like my old church.

Case in point, the Lambeth Conference that begins next month in England. That's the gathering that happens every 10 years, when all of the bishops of the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church gather to talk. And once more, the media will be filled with stories about how Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, is being excluded. These stories will mention that the only reason he is being excluded is that he lives in a committed relationship with another man.

Now, imagine for a minute that you're someone who doesn't know much about the Episcopal Church. You know about as much about Episcopalians as I know about the Lutherans or the Amish. Which is to say, you know they're there and they believe in Jesus. But that's about it.

Now imagine being a gay man or a lesbian who left or was thrown out of his or her church. And you start hearing these stories about the Episcopal Church. Yes, it's great news that one tiny, little state "hired" a gay bishop. But the whole rest of the world seems to be mad about it.

So if you're an unchurched gay person, which part of that story makes the bigger impression on you? The part that offers hope -- or the part that reinforces everything you've already learned about organized religion?

We may believe that when it comes to the future of the Episcopal Church, there's much more reason to hope than to despair. We know our bishop is a good guy. And we know that there are lots of other good guys and good women wearing those pointy bishop hats. But I've been an Episcopalian for 15 years and a part of this incredibly loving, spirit-filled parish for 16. And I have to tell you, some days it's hard for me not to think, "Here we go again."

If all those leaders of my church won't welcome Gene Robinson to God's table with his brother and sister bishops, then maybe I'm not welcome either. Not really.

On days like that, it's hard for me to remember that I'm safe here. That even though our Bishop and our Presiding Bishop are going to leave Gene Robinson behind physically -- and leave me behind metaphorically -- when they walk through the doors to the Lambeth Conference, we will still be in their hearts. And they will be advocating for us.

You know, 15 years ago when I was received as an Episcopalian, confirmations were still held at each parish. So I was received here at St. George's. Bishop Spong was here and our Rector, Barry Stopfel, was standing at his side. And of course Barry was one of the few priests at the time who was openly gay. His presence gave me the courage to believe that this church really was different.

There I was, an open lesbian, with my partner standing up for me, and the Episcopal Church was saying, "Yes, Elaine, God loves you. We love you. Be with us."

And when I knelt down before Bishop Spong, I just burst into tears. I mean, I turned into Niagara Falls. I couldn't stop crying. And the Bishop looked at Barry and whispered, "Is she okay?"

And Barry whispered back, "She used to be Catholic."

I still cry a lot in church. And not just at weddings and funerals like everybody else. I cry at baptisms -- and I cry buckets at ordinations. I think it's because even after all these years there's still a part of me that doesn't trust that the welcome the church is extending in those sacraments is going to last. There's a part of me that's still waiting for this church to pull the rug out from under me just like the last one did.

As members of St. George's, where everyone truly is welcome, that may be hard for you to understand, but I think it's very important for you to hear.

You know, in many ways St. George's is an island, a "radically welcoming" island. And that's great. But we have a choice. Are we going to be a tiny island, the St. Kitts of the Episcopal Church? Or are we going to be an island like Australia -- so big and expansive that it takes up an entire continent?

It's not what we do inside this building that makes us Christians; it's how we take what we do here out into the world. In today's Gospel, we heard Jesus tell the apostles, "The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore, ask the Lord to send laborers out into the field."

We can't wait for somebody else to send the workers. We know what needs to be done; we have to do it.

So, please, don't just enjoy the inclusiveness of the St. George's community while you're here -- take it out into the world with you when you leave. Tell your friends, your family, your coworkers. Come out of the closet -- whether you're gay or straight, come out of the closet as Christians who welcome gay and lesbian people into community with you.

Take back the word "Christian" from the bigots and the haters. Their voices are loud right now, but our voices can grow louder as more people join in our welcome and our island expands, until the whole Diocese is on the same island, and one day the whole Episcopal Church will be, too.

I've had people say to me, "I'd like to talk about this stuff, but what can I say?"

Talk about your experiences, talk about your life. I think any sentence that combines the words "gay," "church" and "welcome" will be a revelation to many people.

And if you prefer to use humor -- my father always told me that people remember things more if you can make them laugh -- here's a quotation that was given to me by a dear friend of mine who happens to be straight. It's a quotation from that famous theologian, Dorothy Parker.

Now, Dorothy Parker started writing in 1919 and she wrote all the way through the 1940s, so you know this quotation has been around a long time. Dorothy Parker wrote, "Heterosexuality isn't normal; it's just common."

I want to close with a prayer Bishop Beckwith used as a blessing at the end of his Consecration. I can't offer a blessing, but I can share it with you as a prayer. So please pray with me:

May God give us grace never to sell ourselves short,
Grace to risk something big for something good,
Grace to remember that the world is too dangerous now for anything but truth
And too small for anything but love.
Amen.

© 2008 Elaine Bennett