Rogue Reverend

Who Am I?

Some days, I don’t know who I am.

Audacia Ray wrote a post at Feministe this week about American Sex Worker Activist Projects and mentioned Star Light. She wrote, “There is also the now sadly defunct Starlight Ministries, an outreach ministry to exotic dancers that was totally awesome and not in any way a creepy paternalistic shaming religious group.”

Ever since I resigned from Star Light Ministries, the organization I founded as an outreach to sex workers, I have struggled with my concept of who I am. It’s not so much who I am inside, but who I am outside. What do I tell people I “do for a living?” How do I express my passion for people deemed “unacceptable” by the Church, by society at large, by whatever social circle I seem to find myself in, and still be “just a pastor.”

The church that I pastor is amazing. They are smart, funny, easy-going, committed, and so accepting. I really love being around them in a way I haven’t felt in church in a long time. And my love for them seems to grow.

And yet, there’s me. Who am I? WHO AM I?

Many, many years ago I read a story in a book of Russian fables about a student who goes to Minsk to study. But he’s miserable. So he searches out a hermit Rabbi in the woods and says, “When I was in St. Petersburg, I prayed. I read books. I studied. I was happy. Then I moved to Minsk. Here, all I can do is cry. Tears is all I have.” The Rabbi answered, “Maybe what God wants from you now is tears.”

So maybe me not knowing who I am right now is precisely what God wants from me.

What the Bible Means to Me

Following my second sermon in a series on Romans yesterday, one of my church members asked me a question. I can’t get the exact wording, but the question was something like this:

Why do you preach from the Bible? Do you really think that we should use it as our baseline for understanding why we do what we do? Can’t we, just as easily, use reality and preach from there?

My answer is probably way too involved for a brief conversation following church. I decided to post it here.

I have an interesting relationship to the Bible. First, I absolutely love it. I want to read it, study it in the original language, preach from it, orientate my life to it. Second, I could know God without it. You get that? It reveals to me how THOSE people related to God. It reveals some about God’s nature. But it’s certainly not all of it. Nor does it explain the context in which I live today. So, while I love it, I am also cognizant of it’s limitations.

As I see it, the Bible is the story of a people (actually, two peoples) trying to understand their relationship with God. In the Hebrew Bible, we start with cosmic beginnings then to the particulars of the patriarchs and matriarchs, wanting to follow God, and all the while, being VERY human. Wow. Isn’t that my story?

Then with the gospels, it’s the teachings. The little phrases that Jesus says, that challenge me every day. “Love your enemies.” “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Every day and in every way, the life and teachings of Jesus challenge me to move out of my boundaries.

But I have a different relationship with the Epistles. Especially Paul’s Epistles. Let me see if I can explain this…

Consider Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It’s a wonderful letter written to a specific group of people during a specific time. MLK writes in the style of Paul, and there are some very moving parts to his letter. There are some things that have relevance to my life.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Definitely a statement that has universal implications. However, some things are not so relevant.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

The specificity of this statement has very little to do with me, with my life in Richmond, 46 years after the letter was written. Imagine, we take Paul’s letter, written nearly 2000 years ago, and try to make each one of his statements universal. I don’t believe that they are universally applicable.

So, what does the Bible mean to me? I like this quote (I think it’s from Marcus Borg), “The Bible isn’t true, but it’s real.” I think I know God (not wholly, really). I know God through people, through nature, through my experience. The Bible helps me, especially in this Judeo-Christian context in which I live, to orient my life to this One who I follow: God shown most fully through Christ.

Sex in Church

My face has never been so red in church as it was this Sunday. Preaching on sex certainly has it’s challenges, and my biggest one is this beet-red face of mine. A friend watching the sermon said, “I noticed that you kept your face down, looking like you were reading more, during this sermon.”

I mean, really… How am I supposed to look church members in the eye when I’m talking about bad sex?

The sermon went really well, though. A few people commented that it was the most they’ve ever heard in church about sex. Which scares me a bit. I mean, it’s the biggest driver of our culture, don’t you think? Shouldn’t we talk about it in church?

The majority of the post-preaching discussion centered on what we teach our children. While very few of my congregants  expect that their children will remain abstinent until marriage, they still have the expectation that their children will wait until they are really old enough to decide to have healthy, consensual sex. Of course, the law tells us that the age for this is 18. Many should wait longer.

We’d all like to live in a utopia where sex is not problematic, where shame isn’t common, where maturity is understood, where the consequences of sex weren’t so life-changing or even, death-bringing. But we don’t live in that age.

We must look to our children, challenge them to wait, but give them the tools to do it right. No, I’m not talking about how to receive or give the most pleasure, but how to tell if you are emotionally ready, how to say no constructively, how to make sure that your partner is worth your time.

And how to tell someone if it goes horribly wrong.

And really, a red face was worth the trouble. Let’s see if it’s as red when I preach this Sunday on “Good Sex.”