Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] February 5, 2023 “A Gay Man’s Ordination 30 Years Ago” 1st Samuel 3: 1-10 - Common English Bible Now the boy Samuel was serving the Lord under Eli. The Lord’s word was rare at that time, and visions weren’t widely known. 2 One day Eli, whose eyes had grown so weak he was unable to see, was lying down in his room. 3 God’s lamp hadn’t gone out yet, and Samuel was lying down in the Lord’s temple, where God’s chest[a] was. 4 The Lord called to Samuel. “I’m here,” he said. 5 Samuel hurried to Eli and said, “I’m here. You called me?” “I didn’t call you,” Eli replied. “Go lie down.” So he did. 6 Again the Lord called Samuel, so Samuel got up, went to Eli, and said, “I’m here. You called me?” “I didn’t call, my son,” Eli replied. “Go and lie down.” (7 Now Samuel didn’t yet know the Lord, and the Lord’s word hadn’t yet been revealed to him.) 8 A third time the Lord called Samuel. He got up, went to Eli, and said, “I’m here. You called me?” Then Eli realized that it was the Lord who was calling the boy. 9 So Eli said to Samuel, “Go and lie down. If he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down where he’d been. 10 Then the Lord came and stood there, calling just as before, “Samuel, Samuel!” Samuel said, “Speak. Your servant is listening.” On Tuesday I will celebrate having been ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament in the United Church of Christ for 30 years. My call to ministry reminds me of the call of a young Samuel. I was 16 years old and kept having a series of dreams. Night after night, I saw myself in the role of a pastor – preaching, visiting the sick, and so forth. My whole family was very involved in the church so it made sense, but I had already told God I wasn’t interested. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I was sure it wasn’t that. However, the dreams just kept coming and coming and became more and more annoying. I was a youth delegate to a statewide church meeting and I told some ministers about my dreams. Every one of them said, “It sounds like Samuel. When you wake up, say yes to God.” I refused and the dreams kept coming until finally one night I woke up and with a great lack of enthusiasm said, “All right, enough already.” And I instantly felt washed in peace. I knew it was right. Except nothing can be that easy. Enter all those years of feeling different, not knowing what it meant, and then not wanting to be different in “that” way. I knew the call from God was real but how could I both be gay, once I could say the word out loud, and still be a pastor? But thanks to another very powerful dream, I realized it wasn’t going to be easy, but I had to proceed on faith. In the next verse, “God told Samuel, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of all who hear it tingle!” It wasn’t good news for Eli, but he said, “God is God. And God will do as God pleases.” I believed that. I just had to figure out my part. So, long story short, I finished seminary, during which I chose the UCC as my new church home – it wasn’t without its own set of problems, but at least it provided a possibility of ordination. In 1972, Bill Johnson was the first openly gay man in modern history to be ordained. In the normal course of events, I would have been ordained a few months after graduating. But no one can be ordained in the UCC without a call – usually to a church or hospital or something like that. Bottom line: Someone has to hire you. That was the hard part. At the time there were maybe 100 Open and Affirming congregations, but many said “we don’t want one of ‘them’ as our pastor.” The same thing has been said at times of women and people of color and people with disabilities. Back in 1972 when Bill Johnson was ordained, it wasn’t to ministry in a church. Twelve years later, Diane Darling went from being a seminary intern at the UCC in Modesto to associate pastor and then co-pastor – and was thus the first out-lesbian called to a church. But everyone knew her. The question remained: How do you get through the search process with “lesbian” on your profile? Or should you? Why must you disclose such a thing in the first place? I remember lots of conversations about waiting until a search committee gets to know you before telling them. But that didn’t usually go very well. Committees felt betrayed by someone they liked. And certainly, don’t wait to come out until the congregation votes! That will not end well. It wasn’t until 1989 that Loey Powell successfully went all the way through the process, out on her profile, honest in her interview, known to the whole congregation who voted to call her. It only took 7 years of rejections first. Just four years later, I was the beneficiary of an incrementally slowly changing world and of those who had spent a lifetime working to change the church – with much personal heartbreak and sacrifice. When Archwood UCC voted to call me, we may have crossed over to fingers on a second hand to count the number of such pastors out of 5,000 churches. So, it was 1992 and I was working at the UCC national headquarters in Cleveland. I learned that a small inner-city church was willing to consider the profiles of openly gay and lesbian candidates. They were that desperate. Archwood’s 1,000 members had plummeted to 30 on a good day and this was their third search committee in three years. Few people were interested. In the first go round, the final candidate was voted down because the secretary didn’t like him – for one thing, he had a Jewish sounding name. The second one was voted in but then he turned it down because the secretary wouldn’t let him begin until she recovered from surgery. Perhaps I should have known that after a used car salesman turned them down (I’m not kidding), my chances were either pretty good or I was pretty dumb to consider it. So, I met with their third committee, a very dejected bunch of people. We had a really good first meeting in June. And then I heard nothing from them for two months. I finally wrote asking for notice that I was no longer under consideration. In August I received a nice letter back saying the committee felt it would be too divisive for the already small church. To be honest, I was a little relieved. Did I really want to go to a church that might close? However, they called two weeks later and asked me to consider them. December 12th was the day. I would preach, answer questions after worship, and they would discuss and vote. However, the search committee worried, correctly, that some of the questions might not be appropriate, so they appointed an 85-year-old Republican to field the questions and then he would ask me. Surely no one would ask him anything too bad. The tactic didn’t work and finally he was too red faced to continue and just stepped aside. Showing no shame, the undignified questions about such things as my sex life continued, and occasionally some relevant to church, ministry, and vision. Finally, I left the room while they discussed among themselves. It took forever and I even toyed with the idea of leaving. And then I heard a loud ruckus in the sanctuary, like a fight had broken out. Upon the announcement of the 2/3rds margin, someone took the microphone and spoke Congratulations! into it too loudly. Which prompted others to start yelling, including the secretary who declared everyone was going to hell. The meeting was over and many people just went home. I wanted to as well. However, the search committee chair came to get me and invited me down to the Fellowship Hall where people were waiting. As I was adding Sweet and Low to my coffee, the infamous secretary Mary Mae Meister (isn’t that a great name for a villain); Mary Mae raced toward me from the other side of the room and began screaming in my face – we’ve got to keep the children away from you. You can just go home now and have sex with anything you want. Seriously. I was a wreck inside, but I listened calmly and thanked her for her honesty and stepped away. She then turned around and chose another target to berate because they hadn’t made their pledge yet. I walked to the middle of the room where a lovely group of women in their 80s held out their hands and formed a half-circle around me, and said, “We’re glad you’re here.” I can still see their faces. Penny, Alice, Clara, Betty, Lillian… I had hoped that Mary Mae’s public outburst would convince the church leadership that she had to go. But she ran the church and they were used to her antics. How could they survive without her? So, I had to insist she be retired or I, like the used car salesman before me, would pull out too, which further angered those who opposed my call. And even upset some of my supporters. They wanted me to work with her for six months. Eleven of the 13 no votes never set foot in the church again. I went to visit each one who would listen but it was just an hour of humiliation. One man who voted for me stayed only a few months. He told me, “I love your sermons, but I just don’t see a pastor. I see a homosexual in the pulpit” – and I had never once pulled out my feather boa. But to the rest of them, I grew close. They were like family to me. However, when some of them died, their family members wouldn’t allow me to conduct their funeral. So, in February, to the ordination itself. The Cleveland Plain Dealer did a big story about it the week before, which unleashed madness. Piles of hate mail arrived and continued for months. A death threat was left on the answering machine to burn down the church with me in it. I took the little tape to the police who, as I figured, said they could only do something if indeed the church had burned down with me in it. I lived in the parsonage six feet from the church, so I felt more than a little vulnerable. In the busy week before my ordination, one of the pastors in our ecumenical cluster, a United Methodist church, asked to visit. Our cluster did joint services and even operated a hunger center together. He handed me a letter that said he and his church members would not attend any future event where I would be involved. He said he wanted to give me the letter in person as a “friendly gesture” and added, “I hope we can still be friends.” The same week the pastor of a large suburban UCC invited me to lunch. The church had promised to do some work around our inner-city church as a mission project, but over a piece of pie he said they were pulling their support. I would have preferred a letter. Another church in our Association left the UCC citing me as the reason. Or rather, that our association minister had supported my ordination. In response to the newspaper story, a very prominent and very rich man in Cleveland demanded that the UCC president intervene and stop the ordination or he would no longer give money to his own UCC. Paul Sherry sent him a very nice letter explaining why he would not do that and then sent a letter of greetings to be read at my ordination, expressing regrets he could not be there personally. One more: The pastor of the nearest UCC wouldn’t speak to me or even send a letter but had someone else share the news that he would not be attending my ordination because he didn’t approve. However, a few years later I officiated at his wedding. Despite all the above, I felt very much loved and supported. The United Methodist pastor right across the street was wonderful. He organized a group to be on the watch for the protestors who promised to picket my ordination. In the end, however, only one protestor showed up and he simply put little handwritten cards on all the car windshields that read “God does not create people gay.” On the day of the ordination, the 20 or so people of Archwood were dwarfed by a packed sanctuary. Many of them were complete strangers who read the newspaper article and were hungry for a church that would welcome them. Some came back and helped lay the foundation for the congregation that was to come. Nearly every one of the initial twenty people who voted to call me died within a few years and without their radical hospitality, the church would have died too. In fact, Archwood is the only church in the neighborhood still open. The other UCC, Lutheran, Episcopal, both United Methodist churches and even the Catholic church have closed. Archwood still meets and worships in the same place but wisely gave its building to a cultural arts center and is now without the burden of any repairs or rent. Ten years after my ordination I began a doctoral program and developed a study of others who had followed the same path – out on their profiles, honest in their interviews, called by predominantly straight congregations. Instead of just one in 1989 and a handful in 1993, by 2005, there were well over 100 in my study. Despite the consistency of a great number of churches fearing the loss of members and money, my research proved that churches with openly LGBTQ pastors significantly outperformed the rest, particularly with families looking to raise their children in an environment of openness and acceptance. But the other side of the study also identified the personal and emotional toll it took on such pastors. I can now laugh about hate mail and death threats and such indignities as being refused the honor of officiating at funerals, but I did get worn down. Pressure by some to fail; pressure by others that I better succeed or I would set the movement back. I struggled with some severe depression for a while. But my challenges were nothing like the pastor who was at home when someone shot a gun into the parsonage and other hate crimes. Numerous acts of vandalism. Or when Gene Robinson was consecrated a bishop and wore a bullet proof vest. And I can’t not acknowledge this first Sunday in Black History Month what churches and ministers of the gospel have faced in this county – arsons and lynchings and daily aggressions and indignities. In the grand scheme of things, I was extraordinarily fortunate. And so I’m here to express my gratitude for these 30 years – and more to come – and to see the tremendous progress. There are now more than 1,800 Open and Affirming UCC congregations, I don’t know how many LGBTQ pastors – hundreds! And movements within many denominations. But the struggle for the larger church is far from over. More churches would condemn you for being Open and Affirming than congratulate you. To us in this room, the danger is in thinking it’s not a big deal anymore. It is. People – straight and queer both – are still hungering for a place that would welcome them. People are still being rejected and around the world and even worse. It pains me for those for whom change is still only incremental. Or non-existent. We have to figure out our part and be faithful to the call. But God is a God who continues to make a way out of no way. Blessed be the God who calls you, like Samuel, by name.
1 Comment
Jayne Ryan Kuroiwa
2/5/2023 11:02:56 am
I hadn't realized Archwood was your first call--nor any of the underbelly of Church folk you encountered. You have worn the mantle well with honesty, skill and grace. Thank you for your faithful witness. To God be the glory.
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