But if Less is More, How you Keepin Score?: Sermon on Luke 16:19-31

This is my first sermon preached post-internship. I was asked to pulpit supply at my brother's church, Svea Lutheran Church, in Svea, Minnesota.

Grace and Peace to you from God our Creator, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, Amen.

Take a drive through Saint Cloud on any given day, on any major street, and you'll see him. His name might not be Lazarus, but you'll see him. Standing there, with a sign that says “homeless, need help.” Or, “homeless vet, anything helps”. Or whatever the sign says. I saw one once that said, “yes, I will be buying booze with this money”.

So we drive by. Maybe we stop, maybe we give them something. Maybe we have nothing to give. Maybe we're a paycheck away from being on the street right next to them. Whatever our lot in life, those of us in this room, in this sanctuary, are not Lazarus.

Jesus tells this parable about a rich man and another man named Lazarus. Notice which one gets the name. In the bible, people of importance get names. We know many of the important names, but even some of the named people, I couldn’t tell you who they were. Can any of you think of the name of Noah’s wife? Noah’s sons had names. But what was his wife’s name? Joan. Joan of Ark.

Seriously, people of importance got names, and those of less importance, weren’t named. Jesus tells a parable of a rich man who thought he was important – he wore fine clothing and ate plenty of food every day. He was a man of power, yet, Jesus fails to name him. This rich man walks by Lazarus, a poor man covered in dog-slobbered sores… Well, Lazarus died, and went to hang out with Abraham. The rich man died soon thereafter, and he was not afforded the same privilege. The rich man was punished after he died, and asked for Lazarus to spare him from his torment. Abraham tells the rich man that of all the wonderful things the rich man had in life, he didn’t spare any of it for Lazarus, so why should Lazarus spare anything for the rich man? The rich man realizes his fate, and asks to warn his brothers that are still alive. Abraham tells the rich man that they’ve already been warned. Moses and the prophets of old have already told his brothers what to do. That was up to the brothers to figure out how to fix their fate.

Now, this is just a parable, and it follows after last week's parable of the dishonest employee… But Jesus is making a point. Both with last week's parable and this one. Too much of anything, be it money, food, buildings, boats, barns, tractors or trucks… excess in life, takes away from someone in need.

There it is. There’s the gospel. How’s it sitting with you? If it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you weren’t listening. This parable is among a handful of others like it – that point out not only are rich men in trouble, but so are any folks in power. Jesus isn’t singling out rich folks, but all who hold power and wield it against those of lesser power. Jesus is pointing to the injustices of the world, and asking you – What are you doing about it?

For some people, things are looking better these days. Minnesota, in recent news, has become the second least impoverished state in the nation. Which means that Minnesota has the second smallest percentage of people living in poverty, second only to New Hampshire. Minnesota isn’t necessarily one of the small states, in terms of population or land mass. We’re a pretty average state when it comes to those numbers. But we’re nearly the best at keeping our citizens out of poverty. With nine percent of our state’s population living at or below the Federal Poverty Line, it’s still roughly half a million people. But, we’re doing a lot better than other states for sure.

Erik tells me that you house homeless folks here at Svea, which is great. There are lots of ways churches like Svea can help out, and housing the homeless is one of the ways. But it’s not a fix-all. Giving money or food to the folks on the street, is not a fix-all. Making sandwiches, prepping meals, giving to Toys for Tots, giving to other charities – it’s all great work, and millions of people benefit from the work these charities do. But it’s not a long-term solution.

The rich man ate of his food, lived in his fine house, and ignored Lazarus at his gate.

Have any of you been to the State Capitol building? It’s all great and grand and quite the sight to look at. If you drive around the building though, to the neighborhoods nearby; the grandness of the building is overshadowed by the dozens of people carrying their life’s possessions in shopping carts. Ever since I studied a church right down the block from there for a class project – I can’t get that image out of my head. The symbol of governing in this state, and the neighborhoods around the capitol building are swimming in poverty.

Life gives us glaring examples of injustices like this all the time. How many homeless people do the lawmakers pass by before they reach the legislative chambers and continue to ignore Lazarus? How many young black men need to die, on camera no less, before justice is brought to their community? How many Syrian refugees need to wash up on shore? How many Somali folks need to be needlessly investigated? The list of injustices grows and grows…

We’re humble folks in the middle of an averagely-sized and populated state. We’ve got our own lives to take care of, children to raise, grandchildren to adore…

We are the brothers that need the warning. We are the bystanders, the folks living our lives in the middle of Minnesota with hopes of a better tomorrow.

There will always be turmoil in this world. Lazarus will still be sitting at our gate, and we will still be the brothers reading the prophets of old. So what then, can we do?

Continue doing the little things. Continue standing up for those who need support, those who need a shoulder, those who need a hand. Speak up for those in trouble. Advocate. Be a voice of support. The world is too big to conquer on our own, and the world’s problems are able to be fought with those with larger offices and bigger paychecks than any of us. But we can do the little things.

We can do the little things, because we believe in a God that does the big things. We believe in a God that created everything out of nothing, and continues to create every day. We believe in God’s son, that saw the troubles of his world and fought against the powers that were. Jesus the Christ fed, healed, walked with and talked with those in need. He preached, taught and sat with those who needed to hear. He got on his knees and served his friends. He saved the world through his actions, saved us all from ourselves by being the advocate, the Savior of the world. Jesus the Christ saves us all from ourselves by the unwinnable, unshakeable Grace, Love and Mercy of God.

Jesus the Christ saves you, me, and saves us all. The turmoil of this world is too much to bear somedays, that all we want to do is listen to the wind blow through the long and flowing fields, and enjoy the sunset.

I spent this last year on my internship in Amor, Minnesota. Amor is about half the size of Svea, with only 5 houses… and a church and cemetery. But they do have a bar. In the center of Ottertail County, it’s halfway between somewhere and everywhere else. Like Svea, it’s a Swedish town with a Swedish church, named after a town in Sweden. Farm fields surround the church on 3 sides, and beyond them are the thousands of lakes in Ottertail County. My office was tiny, but it had a window that looked out onto the rolling potato fields, and I’d sometimes just sit and look out that window, and thank God for the beauty that surrounded me.

And this was one heck of a year to be an intern, with all that went on in the world. I kept saying to myself, and in my sermons – that God’s got this. If anybody’s got this, it’s God.

There were certainly beautiful sights to be seen – sunsets on the lake, geese flopping all over the frozen lakes, sunrises over frost-covered tree lines… But one of the more beautiful sights to be seen, was the work being done by the Richville Methodist Church, just a few miles up the road from Amor. The Church has a clothing mission, where anybody may drop off clothes to be given away, and likewise, if anybody desires clothes, they may take however much they want. Beyond clothes, they expanded two years ago to include a section for houseware items as well. A small church, again, in the middle of nowhere – was doing amazing work for the impoverished people of Ottertail County, and beyond.

In the face of adversity, in the eyes of Lazarus, in the voice crying out in the wilderness – There is a God who loves us all, who saves us from ourselves and is there in our deepest darkness and despair. God is there to bridge the gap between the rich and poor, so that Lazarus no longer needs to be at our gate and on the street.

God bridges that gap – because God is Lazarus. If we looked into the face of Lazarus – into the face of the people on the street – into the face of our black neighbors – into the face of our Somali neighbors – we would be looking into the face of God. We are all God’s children. Rich and poor alike. Black and White alike. Christian and Muslim alike. We are all God’s children. Together.

Amen.

Know Thyself: A Coming Out Letter

(From The Matrix)

To Everyone - Friends, Family, and Everyone in Between -

Hey folks. If you’ve ever had a conversation with me, you know I sometimes like to start at the end of a story first, then give you the backstory. It’s one of my favorite plot devices in science fiction, and to that end, I’m going to spoil the ending of this blog post for you.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Alright. You’ve been warned.

I’m Transgender. More specifically, I identify as transfeminine genderqueer.

            Which means, I was assigned the gender of Male when I was born, just like about half of all the other babies in the world. For one reason or another; whether it’s biological, societal, or any combinations of reasons; “Male” is not how I personally identify or how I feel, which means my gender identity transcends my assigned gender at birth. Because my gender identity transcends in the female direction, transfeminine is a word that describes that direction. Genderqueer is an umbrella word that encompasses many identities, but is a large enough umbrella word that describes my personal feelings. I feel that I rest between male and female, experiencing both a masculine and feminine aspect to life; and I express that reality as transfeminine genderqueer. 

If that’s enough of an explanation as you need, you don’t need to read any more, if you don’t want to. The following narrative is further explanation of my experiences with my gender identity all through life, and how I came to understand myself as Trans…

Trigger Warning: Slurs

She’s a Bass!

I’ve known that I have been somewhat… different since I was in elementary school. Whether it was my colored matching sweatshirt and sweat pants and old hand-me-downs; my underbite scaring away any semblance of friends to talk with, or my utter fascination with all things Star Trek and Star Wars… I was picked on, bullied, and beat up for many reasons over my years of elementary and high school. After all, I was just another under-privileged kid living in a rural Minnesota town with parents that lived paycheck-to-paycheck.  

            As I got older, the bullying was less focused on my clothes, underbite or nerdiness… and more focused on who I was as a person. I was in fifth grade the first time someone called me a ‘faggot’. ‘Gay’, ‘faggot’, ‘queer’… they were all words I eventually looked up in the dictionary. They followed me through high school. In 8^th grade, a kid from Texas thought he’d be original and call me the same words, only in Spanish.

            The bullies were only picking up on the same questions I was asking of myself. But no one else knew about it. Maybe I was different. Maybe I was gay. Maybe I did throw like a girl… because I was one.

            It was about 8^th grade when I started having dreams where I would tell people I was a lesbian. I’d have dreams where I was someone else entirely, but dreaming I was a girl was a recurring dream throughout high school.

            Like any teenager, puberty was rough, but squashing that idea that I was somehow less manly than my other male classmates… became a focus of mine. I was a tenor in 8^th grade choir, but as soon as I moved up to the older choir, I had to become a bass. I had to prove my manliness. Sure, my femininity displayed itself wonderfully in my mannerisms, but I had to work hard at proving to people that I wasn’t feminine or gay.

            I started putting my words, actions, even my hair and clothing choices in neat little boxes in my head. Hair gel was too feminine. Tight shirts and pants were too feminine. I wouldn’t say words that made me sound feminine. My hairstyle was the same every quarter when I got a haircut.

            By my senior year in high school, after I moved back from my adventures in California; the last goal I had for myself, was to prove that I wasn’t gay by getting a girlfriend by graduation. I was not going to graduate high school without ever having a girlfriend. I made that goal by three days, but I was finally able to prove to everyone… that I wasn’t what they had called me for all those years. I had a girlfriend to show all the bullies that I was not in fact, gay.

I’m Looking for Baggage That Goes With Mine

            And that was it. I had proved to the world, and to myself, that I was not gay. The nagging question about being a girl… well that was still tucked away in the back of the brain. I had a girlfriend to worry about. And then that first relationship fell through. And then I had a second girlfriend. And that one fell through. And then a third girlfriend. That fell through. And then a few other girls here and there… and then, there was Tiffany.

            Tiffany was different. Like my kind of different. She had a backstory similar to mine – divorced parents, under-privileged upbringing – and she was strong. Not physically, but she had a strong presence about her; like a powerful woman ready to take on the world – strong. She was everything I needed and more, and soon after meeting and then dating – we married within two years of knowing each other.

            That general feeling of being different, the thought of being too feminine… survived the wedding vows. Survived the birth of our son. On our first wedding anniversary, I took Tiffany out to our porch, and told her I was gay.

            There’s nothing like shattering your spouse’s heart on your first wedding anniversary, let me tell you - but after a talk of figuring out that no, I didn’t ever have a romantic relationship with a man, and no, I wasn’t attracted to any guys – I had restored a little faith in her, and we decided that I truly was not gay.

            But that answer just led me to other questions. If I wasn’t gay, what was I? There was something off, something different about how I felt, some recurring thought that I wasn’t as masculine as I should be – that I was more feminine than I should be – that I was more different than I should be. That same old dream of being a girl was still there.

            And I couldn’t tell anyone.

I’m Still Tangled Up in You

            I had already broken Tiffany’s heart once, I couldn’t tell her this secret. I couldn’t tell her that I secretly had dreams of being a girl, or someone other than this sad confused young man. I didn’t want to lose all that I had worked so hard to have. But then a few years went by, I entered seminary and spent a year muddling through life as a youth director at a suburban church. After a summer mission trip went awry and a couple months to put myself back together again; I could no longer lie to myself when faced with the ultimate test as a Lutheran seminary student: Chaplaincy.

            My Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) site was at Unity Hospital in Fridley. On my first day on the floor of the hospital, I saw a once-healthy man reduced to skin and bones by pancreatic cancer. That was when I knew, without a doubt, that God’s calling for me was serious work, and I needed to figure myself out quick, so I could figure out God’s work in the world, and my role in it.

            All through our group and individual sessions as fellow chaplains, the supervisor would ask deep, probing questions to get us to open our deepest selves to God, so that nothing was left untouched.

            And all through those deep probing questions – the same question kept coming back unanswerable – and it should have been much simpler to answer – Who are you, really?

I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman

            I shouldn’t say it was unanswerable. It was answerable, but the answer that kept coming back, was, “I’m transgender”. “I’m not a man”. “I’m not as masculine as I claim to be”. In the deep, deep recesses of my soul, I knew that I wasn’t who I claimed to be. And that realization hit me like a ton of bricks.

            One thing that queer people have to work through when coming out – is coming out to themselves. Queer folks have to break down their own barriers of identity, through any latent homo-, bi- or trans-phobia in their own minds, before or even during the beginnings of the public coming out process.

            I came out to a few people before even telling my wife. Even after telling her one late November night, I backed down from it, claiming my thoughts to be nothing more than anxiety – reinforced and originally suggested by my therapist at the time. It took another couple winter months of coming out to myself, going back and forth in my mind of whether I was just making everything up, or denying my true self to God and the world…

            That spring of 2015, I wrote a letter to Tiffany, explaining myself even further, confirming to her that I was indeed Transgender, and that I needed to figure it out. I sought out the Center for Sexual Health at the University of Minnesota (which, I found out later, was aided in starting by Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota). I saw a therapist that specialized in sexuality right before starting my internship at Zion Lutheran of Amor, and one last time my first Monday there.

Conceal, Don’t Feel, Put on a Show…

            My first Monday of internship, I visited the Center for Sexual Health again, and this time was diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria. It’s the diagnosis given to some Trans folks who feel that they are experiencing a disconnect between their assigned gender at birth and the gender they personally identify with. It was the confirmation I needed to help me make sense of myself. When I returned that Tuesday, I didn’t tell my supervisor about my diagnosis. I was fearful of losing my internship, and thus causing me to have to start the internship process all over again, uproot my family and everything. I didn’t want that.

            Since August 2009, folks who identify somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum have been able to be ordained and serve as rostered leaders in the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), provided they have a ministry or congregation willing to call them. However, congregations in the ELCA also have the right to refuse to hire, or fire any individual based on race, gender identity, or sexual orientation – because of the Separation of Church and State.

            Thus, knowing that I could very well lose my internship upon revealing my gender identity, I kept it a secret. This summer, when circumstances allowed for me to finally tell my supervisor about my gender identity, I did so in the form of a letter. I then was able to share this letter with my synod and Luther Seminary. By sharing this letter, I was able to come out to all that needed to know at the time, and ask what would proceed internship.

            As part of my coming out to my synod and seminary, I also agreed to share information of my gender identity in the form of a short paragraph to Zion Lutheran, my internship congregation. It was my hope with the paragraph and ensuing blog post, that Zion and other churches like it would learn more about the struggles of me and other LGBT folks.

           

Let The Storm Rage On…

The last piece of the coming out puzzle is this blog post. This post is meant as a busting open of the closet door, so that I may finally tell the world the secret that has plagued me for so long. I am Transgender. I am the T in the LGBT. I identify as transfeminine genderqueer, or just genderqueer.

If the word ‘queer’ is too much for you, that’s okay. Non-binary and Gender-non-conforming are also words that could describe me. Another important element for trans folks is pronouns. 

Pronouns are very important to some trans folks, so respect pronouns when folks want you to use them. Personally, I don’t care so much about pronouns. Because I rest betwixt genders, I like hearing the occasional ‘she’ or ‘her’ or even the occasional “ma’am” or ‘miss’… It’s kinda fun to hear. But I’m fine if you use male pronouns in reference to me. Or ‘they’ or whatever.

Just not ‘it’. Never ‘it’. I am not an ‘it’. I am not a he/she. I am not a shemale. I am not a tranny. Don’t do it. Don’t ever do it. Respect pronouns when people request them, respect people’s identities.

The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway

            It’s fitting that my blog site is called Grey Matter. In life, I do believe in a lot of grey areas, where the simple black and white realities we assume are present, are actually melded in shades of grey. As a Lutheran, I believe that human beings are both Sinners and Saints. Holy Communion is both bread and wine and Christ’s blood and body. Christ’s divinity and humanity. Traditional and Contemporary. Lutherans are used to Grey Areas in their faith.

            Even if my gender identity isn’t so clear, there are many elements to my life that are so much clearer now – now that I’ve started to understand myself a little better. Tiffany and I have the best relationship in our marriage that we’ve had, because I’m able to be open and honest with her. I share my feelings easier, not having to pretend it’s unmanly to share feelings. I feel much more comfortable in my skin, even if I’m still getting used to my own queerness.

            I hope that my quest to be more authentic opens doors for not only me, but other people still in the closet. I hope that other folks will feel welcome to explore their identities and welcomed in communities both large and small.

            This is a brave new world, and I’m excited to be a part of it.

            Thanks for reading; thanks for your support; thanks for being you.

            In the words of Dr. Seuss – “Today, you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.” So be you. Be who God calls you to be.

Amen.