Sui Generis

  ***

  Reverend Mike’s Last Sermon (Easter, 4/4/10)

  When I was a little girl, I attended Trinity Lutheran Church in Gresham, OR. I first met the senior pastor, Pastor Rudy, when I was hospitalized after a car accident. He was a kind, grandfatherly man who would come by on his hospital chaplain rounds and say hello, pray with me and any family member who was there and then go on his way.

  When I got out of the hospital and, subsequently, out of a body cast and jaw-wiring plastic surgery apparatus, I wanted to go to Pastor Rudy's church. So, my Aunt Jan would pick me up on Sundays and we would go. My mother always gave me a quarter for the offering plate.

  Besides Pastor Rudy, there was Pastor Mark; he was a young seminary student who reminded me of my favorite cousin Ken. They both wore black-framed glasses and had blond hair; they were also awfully tall to a little girl. When I sang in the children’s choir, afterward Pastor Mark had me sit with him so I wouldn't have to run around looking for Aunt Jan.

  I was so proud the first time I realized that I knew the service by heart and didn't have to follow along in the liturgy book. I was also very proud when Pastor Rudy said I was old enough to have communion.

  I loved Sunday school, too. There was always singing, and sometimes the teacher shared Bible stories by using felt board figures. It always seemed just a wee bit magical to me, the way the pictures just stayed right where the teacher put them.

  I don't remember what time of year it was when Pastor Rudy announced that he was leaving. I knew Pastor Mark would leave someday; he was waiting for his own church and would go where he was sent. It just never occurred to me that the same thing could happen with Pastor Rudy.

  I wasn't worried, though; pastors were, as far as I knew, nice men who taught us to be kind to each other.

  I also don't remember what time of year it was when Pastor Gustav came to Trinity Lutheran. I just remember that he was from Germany, and he was loud, mean and scary. At communion he refused to serve me, even when Pastor Mark told him I had been receiving it for a year at that point. Church and, correspondingly, Jesus became kind of scary for me once Pastor Gustav came to town.

  Needless to say, once church became scary I didn't want to go anymore. I don't think I stopped going until we moved away and Aunt Jan could no longer pick me up.

  I didn't start going to church again until I was in high school. My mother's best friend's daughter was getting married and off we went to their church. I met some nice people, many of them close to my age. I liked Pastor Russ and also Pastor Byron, who was in charge of the youth ministry. I don't know who was more surprised, my mother or me, when I decided to join the Milwaukie Christian Church.

  I sang in the girls' quartet; I read scripture aloud during services. Church stopped being scary again. I had such fun with the youth organization. We went Christmas caroling one night and had a get-together at someone's house thereafter. My mother's best friend's son had come caroling with the group; he was a shy guy and I always made a point of talking to him because I knew how much I disliked feeling excluded.

  I don't remember how the subject came up, but we got to talking about what music we listened to. People around me cited Christian artists like Don Francisco (whose "He's Alive" I had sung during a service) and Keith Green.

  When it was my turn, I responded honestly that I loved The Beatles.

  That was when shy Gary gave me a look that was somewhere between pity and contempt and said "Christians don't listen to The Beatles."

  I didn't feel inclined to talk to him after that.

  Pastor Byron and his wife moved away to run a halfway house for troubled teens who had run away or were put out of their homes. The college-age youth ministry folks, many of them in seminary or bible college, took over the program. It was still pretty good, as I recall.

  I don't remember what time of year it was when our regular Wednesday youth activity was canceled and we went over to the main sanctuary to watch a video presentation by James Dobson of Focus on the Family. The little Christian Church had affiliated with them and I remember looking around in horror as people whom I had thought were my friends nodded in agreement with Dobson's inflammatory rhetoric against gay people (one of my best friends had "come out" to me a few months before) and a whole host of other things with which I vehemently disagreed.

  That was the day I realized that church could become a scary place even when the minister was a nice man who didn't leave. (The internet is an amazing tool; I learned that Pastor Russ is still there.) Instead, I left. If "Christians" couldn't listen to music that had no hurtful message, or have GLBT friends, I didn't want to be a "Christian" any more.

  I visited a handful of churches, generally going only once. No one ever seemed to notice the new person in their midst anyway.

  By the late 1980s, I was practicing Wicca. I became less observant after several years, although I held the teachings about a loving god and goddess just as dear as those teaching about a loving Jesus that had remained in my heart -- even if that was no longer the Jesus I heard "real Christians" talk about.

  It was November 2008 the first time I heard Rev. Mike speak. By that time, I had been working on marriage equality issues for four years, and I was at a rally protesting the passage of California's Proposition 8.

  Before Rev. Mike ever spoke, I was keenly aware of something I had seldom felt: the presence of something bigger than myself ... bigger than the universe, in fact. I remember feeling it only once in a church: St. Mungo's, in Glasgow. I had felt it at Clava Cairns, at Rosicrucian Park ... and I felt it again that day outside San Jose's City Hall. There was a loving, warm and healing presence.

  When Rev. Mike delivered the invocation, I was surprised. Here was a man in clerical garb, invoking "the god of the redwood trees, ocean breezes and warm autumn mornings."

  I may have cried; I'm not sure. I just remember thinking that this man understood "god" in a way that I did, too, and that a few years back he could have gotten me back to church.

  The next time I saw Rev. Mike was March 2009, during a silent vigil for marriage equality. I've written many times about how he hugged me while I cried, and how he told me that yes, I was welcome at Metropolitan Community Church.

  The following Sunday, I went to MCC for the first time. The building was small; there were assorted chairs instead of pews and there weren't very many people.

  I've written before about how much I cried during that service, but I haven't said much about other things that have happened.

  That first day I was greeted by many people, the first of whom was Deacon Woody.

  "Welcome home, sister," he said to me. "We are so glad you are here today."

  That had never happened to me at any other church.

  People laughed during church, they applauded the choir, and they participated! That had never happened at any other church I'd visited.

  When my depression was dark and weighing me down, I found the courage to let the people of MCC know and ask for their support through prayer. I had people come up to me, take my hand, and tell me to call them day or night. People called to check on me or just to say that they were thinking of me. They gave me their gifts of love and healing.

  That had never happened to me at any other church.

  People told me that they loved me -- and I knew they meant it.

  That had never happened to me at any other church.

  I had been coming to MCC for about a year when Rev. Mike announced that he was leaving and that Easter Sunday would be his last day.

  I was devastated. I wrote to Rev. Mike and told him the truth: that I supported him in any endeavor he chose but that I was very much afraid that things would not be the same without him.

  More than one person asked whether I would keep coming to MCC after Rev. Mike left. I told them truthfully that I would, because I had friends there. But I knew it would be hard at times.

  The word "pastor" comes from th
e same etymological root as "pastoral." A pastor is a shepherd: someone who leads and cares for the flock. Ideally, the pastor is a good shepherd -- someone who, like Jesus, cares for the entire group and leaves no one out in the cold. Rev. Mike was the shepherd I needed in order to be brought safely home.

  As I was getting ready for Easter services and Rev. Mike's last sermon, I was crying. I had realized how much all of this reminded me of Pastor Rudy leaving, and how scary church had become for a shy little girl after that.

  Yet, this was different. In the scripture that night, the risen Jesus said to Mary, "Do not hold me, for this is not the end of my work." During this scripture, I began to smile.

  Rev. Mike's last sermon was about how Easter is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a different one. That helped dry some of my remaining tears.

  At the end of the service, we had a special farewell liturgy. That helped, too.

  What helped me most of all was being able to hug Rev. Mike and tell him how much I loved him, and to thank him for bringing me back to a loving relationship with Jesus.

  Because that had never happened to me in church before either.