Sermon 07.23.2023: Responding to Hate with the Love of Christ

Have you heard and discerned your call? If not, why? If so, how? Together, let's explore God's call to each of us to heal and repair this broken world!

Scripture

John 15:12-17

12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

Sermon Text 

Introduction to Worship

My name is Marci Glass and I’m the Pastor/Head of Staff here at Calvary, joined with my pastoral colleagues Joann Lee and Victor Floyd, along with the other great members of our staff.

Thank you for being here this morning, on this 169th anniversary of the founding of this congregation. While the city of San Francisco is very different than it was in 1854, our commitment to the people of this city remains as strong as it was then. We seek to nurture and inspire people in here so that we can go out into the world to transform lives.

Last week, protesters came to disrupt and harass. And I’m sorry for the trauma and pain that some of you experienced when they yelled hateful words your way.

I want to be clear that we aren’t an open and inclusive church to be provocative, to anger neighbors, or to pick fights. We are an open and inclusive church because of God’s grace, which has reached into our lives and changed us.

Let me share a quick story about this grace.

Many years ago, I preached the story of Jesus’ baptism. As John baptized him, the heavens were torn apart, the holy spirit descended like a dive-bombing pigeon, and God’s voice cried out from heaven, ‘THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED’. In the sermon, I said that when we are baptized, we join in Jesus’ own baptism, and God’s voice reaches down from heaven, reminding us that we, too, are God’s beloved children.

After worship, a high school kid named Christopher came into my office, closed the door, and very seriously asked me, “is it true? What you said about God loving us as children, and does it include the gays?”

Christopher started coming to worship because a friend of his from high school had invited him to church. She knew he was being bullied at their school for being gay. He didn’t have a family he could talk about things with. Somehow she convinced him to give our church a try. And he had found acceptance at this church.

“Yes”, I replied. “There’s lots I’m not sure of, but I am 1000% confident that God created you and God loves you”.

“How can that be when I’m such a mess?”

“Well, sure. You’re a mess”, I said.”But not because you’re gay. You’re a mess because you’re a high school aged human. God loves you. I’m a mess, but I’ve learned how to hide it better than you have because I’m older. God loves me. Every member of the congregation is a mess, in their own ways. God loves them too.

“Why does God love us when we’re such a mess?”

I frantically glanced around my office, trying to think of how to answer. I saw this pot that my son Elliott had made in first or second grade.

“Have you ever painted a picture or made a piece of art?” I asked him, holding up the pot.

“Yes.”

“What do you think of your creation?”

“I love it. I made it.”

“Is your art perfect?”

He admitted it was not.

I said we’re like the little pot Elliott had made me. We aren’t perfect. We’re kind of lumpy and sometimes we crack. But we were made in love and we are treasured by God.

“Then I want to be baptized. I want God’s voice to speak that I am their beloved child.”

That’s grace, my friends. When the voices of the world try to tell us we aren’t enough, we aren’t worthy, we aren’t accepted, grace is when we hear God’s voice calling us beloved.

There was not a dry eye in the church the day that Christopher joined the church and was baptized.

I tell you the story of Christopher because it matters that we remember our beautiful created-ness. It matters that we remember that God created us with a great diverse beauty. And it matters that we see the beautiful created-ness in each other.

Hear me clearly. Each of you is God’s beloved child. In you, yes, you, God is well pleased. All of who you are is already and always loved by God and you can bring your full authentic selves to church. Not because any of us is perfect but because none of us are. And God loves us. That is grace.

And so Calvary will continue to welcome people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, not to be provocative, but to be faithful to the gospel. We will continue to advocate so people can live authentic and joyful lives, with access to housing, healthcare, and education.

If the protesters were here today, I would tell them that God’s voice cries out from heaven for them too. They are also God’s beloved children, which makes us family. And we know that it isn’t always easy to be family. But we’re called to keep at it, to keep in polite and respectful conversation, sharing stories about our experiences until we can find common ground.

We must remember that people who read scripture differently than we do,

and people who vote differently than we do,

and people who see the world differently than we do are still people. People created by the same God who made you and me.

This week, I heard someone say “whoever is under represented in your life will be over exaggerated in your imagination.”[1]

And so, as we gather to worship this morning, we do so with humility, acknowledging we share the responsibility for a world divided, separated, and estranged. God calls us to be in conversation with others. We enter worship with joy and gratitude for 169 years of Calvary Presbyterian Church. I don’t think we look a day over !50. And let us enter worship with gratitude, for being able to bring our whole selves to God and to each other.

[1] Monica Guzman of Braver Angels, at Chautauqua Institute, July 21, 2023

Rev. Michael G. Pappas:

Have you ever heard the expression, “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans.” When your Pastor Marci Glass invited me to preach this Sunday, it was to be in her stead in the midst of the sleepiness of summer. She informed me that this particular Sunday just so happened to fall on the same day as the observance of the

169th anniversary of the founding of Calvary Presbyterian Church and that the emphasis of the season was centered around the theme of “CALL.” Way back when this invitation was extended, I envisioned a polite, if not classic, sermon posing questions to you good people of God, such as, “Have you heard your call? If not, why? If so, how? And, how have you responded to your call to repair a broken world.”

What neither Pastor Glass nor I could have ever anticipated was the prospect of angry and meanspirited protestors harassing you at the front door of this sacred sanctuary just a week ago today. Living in this broken world, perhaps that disruptive protest was allowed to happen, to awaken us from our comfortable existence, from the calm sleepy summer, in order that we might receive Christ’s words in today’s Gospel as a challenge to respond to hatred with love.

If confession is good for the soul, I must confess, when selecting today’s Gospel passage, my purpose was to emphasize just one line, Christ’s words, “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” It was around this one line that I intended to build an entire sermon, giving no thought to the lines that proceeded, nor followed, no less its context. That was shortsighted of me. In light of last week’s disruption, the passage as a whole, as well as its placement in John’s Gospel, is instructive, inspiring and offers a helpful and pastoral call to action. There are no such things as coincidences!

The fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel is often referred to as the “farewell address.” Here Christ is gathered with his Apostles and counsels them in the Way of righteousness, for a time when He will not be physically present. What does he say?

I invite you to close your eyes for a moment and listen…

12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

I invite you to open your eyes…There is a lot to unpack here. For starters, Christ reveals his will by identifying the greatest commandment, the one that distinguishes His disciples as His own, different from all others, that “we love one another.” But not just that we love one another, as we know love, but as Christ loves us. Here he is preparing his disciples for the sacrifice he will make at His Calvary. What is his definition of that sacrifice? “To lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Here he further redefines the relationship between man and God. To be so bold, He declares that love cannot be true love if there is inequality in the relationship. So what does he do? He humbles himself, elevates them, reminding them that they were created equally in the image and likeness of God. In so elevating them, He reminds them of their innate dignity by virtue of the fact that He chose them and not vice versa and that, they are called to be co-creators with God, the fruits of that loving relationship being the promise of a transfigured world.

Sounds nice, yes? But is it so easy? For those of you met at the Church doors last Sunday by meanspirited protestors, harassing and trying to prevent you from entering this sacred sanctuary, I can only imagine the feelings you must have experienced. Just reading the account in the San Francisco Chronicle filled my heart with sadness, fear and, yes, at first anger. I learned of the incident by way of a text from our City Attorney David Chiu, one who is not only charged with ensuring justice but has a personal love for Calvary, as he claims it as his and his family’s worshipping community, the place he was married, his Church. After reading that text my instinctive response was to reach out to our civic and community partners and alert them to what I considered a violation of the sacred and indignity against all people of faith in this, the City of St. Francis.

I must confess, at first learning of the harassing protest, Christ’s commandment to love was the farthest thing from my heart. It was only in a further text exchange, with another colleague, that I was able to make the connection between Christ’s commandment to love as the necessary response to those who would spout hate at the doorsteps of this church. In that text, my colleague stated simply, and in capital letters, “THE TIME IS NOW,” followed by a short video clip of good people of God donning angels’ wings and silently, with love, creating a human barrier between the followers of Fred Phelps, who loudly sought to disrupt the funeral of gay youth and that young man’s grieving family. That image now remains embedded in my consciousness as the ultimate triumph of the power of love over hatred.

If we truly want to comprehend and appreciate the miraculous power of love over hate, we must come to know the Christ of the Gospels, what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be the Church that bears His Name.

Those who wish to better comprehend the person of Jesus need look no further than the New Testament, in particular the four Gospels, for an unabridged and unapologetic depiction of the man and teachings countless souls through the ages claim as the greatest prophet if not the Son of God. The New Testament is the source of constant study here at Calvary, and the world over, by those who seek to be in closer relationship with and emulate the example of the One they claim as their Savior.

Ironically, as the San Francisco Chronicle article reported, it was a Bible Study, here at Calvary, that one of last Sunday’s agitators actually disrupted before respectfully being asked to leave. That disrupter, I suspect, considered himself a true and good Christian, but did he really ever take the time to meet and encounter the Christ of the Gospels?

That Christ taught love not hatred. That Christ rebelled against the hypocrisy of the establishment and those hypocrites of the establishment who sought to exploit, repress, and exact power over vulnerable others. That Christ reached out to the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the weak, and the despised and claimed them as his true own. That Christ gave sacrificially, loved sacrificially, and forgave sacrificially; Among his last recorded words in the Gospel being, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” He offered these powerful words of forgiveness from the Cross for those very ones whose hatred incited His painful crucifixion.”

Simply, to be a faithful and authentic love-seeking Christian means to emulate Christ’s example. Then and only then will we be able to fearlessly and courageously risk allowing love to triumph over hatred.

The same holds true for the Church. Students of history will attest that Calvary Presbyterian Church has sought to follow Christ’s example for lo these 169 years. In its early history, Calvary was instrumental in founding Cameron House in Chinatown which, since 1874, has served the changing needs of our City’s vulnerable and more often than not discriminated-against Chinese community. Past clergy of this historic church have consistently been active and vocal allies of San Francisco’s African American community, especially during the critical days of the Civil Rights movement.

On a national level your former Pastor and Past SFIC Board Chair Laird Stuart’s leadership was instrumental in guiding the broader Presbyterian Church to ratify policies that would result in a Church more welcoming to and inclusive of its LGBTQI+ faithful.

In just the past decade Calvary’s visionary efforts from “Breaking the Cycles of Poverty through its Matthew 25 Partnerships for Change”, to its “Racial Equity Initiatives,” to becoming a “Sanctuary Congregation,” and its “Faith in Action” advocacy work, bear witness to its capacity and commitment to not just “talk the talk,” but more importantly to “walk the walk.”

Taken collectively, these touchstones give evidence to a clear, deep, longstanding and treasured tradition at Calvary Presbyterian Church of heeding Christ’s call, and bearing witness to His command to take courage to stand with the opprssed and downtrodden in their time of need. In the process, the faithful of this Church, engaged in Christ’s work, have become spiritually transfigured and know how the power of love can transcend even the greatest challenges and obstacles.

That said, as important as it is to celebrate an institution’s achievements in history, it is equally prudent to realistically acknowledge its shortcomings. For, as Shakespeare so insightfully noted in his work the Tempest, “What is past is prologue.” Just recently I heard it said that one need only glance at the American Constitution to see the fingerprints of Presbyterian polity in every sentence. American governance not only benefitted from Presbyterianism’s ethos and polity, but also from the enthusiasm and persuasiveness of its clergy! To quote King George III, “America has run off with the Presbyterian Parson,” alluding to the extraordinary number of prominent Presbyterian pastors who led the Revolution from their pulpits. Having been born and raised in a northern New Jersey township named in honor of the legendary Presbyterian “Fighting Parson,” the Reverend James Caldwell, I fully appreciate this profound legacy all too well!

Yet that legacy was not without flaws. If these esteemed clergy were alive and here today, I dare say many, if not all, would confess that the journey of American Democracy, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the ratification of the Constitution, was fraught with deep and scarring division, painful compromise, and shameful inequity; a legacy they left to future generations to resolve. This dark inheritance has festered over the course of our history and over time has given rise to and amplified ideological polarization in our land on every core debate concerning the economy, social responsibility, race and class and has been the catalyst for every conflict spanning our devastating and unconscionable four-year Civil War, to segregation, race riots, the Ku Klux Klan and the Civil Rights movement, and most recently to the present intense culture wars in which a significant sector seeks to turn back the hands of time, in order to strip large swaths of the “least of our brethren” of the rights and freedoms that are the very aspiration of American Democracy. Listen to those narratives carefully and you will easily detect a similar cadence that rears its ugly head in every generation, sadly, in many cases, in the name of a supreme white national race which deceptively seeks to gain legitimacy by attaching itself to the honorable name of Christianity. Sadly, that dark vocal voice has creeped into every thread of our rich American fabric, even here, in the perceived security of our San Francisco bubble.

It was that dark vocal voice that greeted and traumatized many of you as you innocently and unsuspectingly arrived at Church last Sunday. And just what was it that they chose to protest? They chose to protest an LGBTQI+ Pride event. But not just any Pride event, rather a Drag Queen Bible Study.

Wow, I’ve got to pause for a minute. I never thought I’d be uttering those words from the pulpit of a Presbyterian Church! That I can, bears testimony to just how far the Church has come to being more Christ-like, in general, and how far Calvary Presbyterian Church has come to be more Christ-like, in particular.

Drag Queen Bible Study. I’m sure that just hearing those words out loud might be a trigger for some of a different age and era, those whose sensibilities were conditioned by a society whose manners dictated a certain discretion, if not repression. At the age of 62 I get it.

Drag Queen Bible Study. I’m not only repeating it but saying it out loud, so that we have another opportunity to digest it. Drag Queen Bible Study, not original, dear Victor… Yet I am told the best compliment is to appropriate the brilliant idea of another. By the very sound of it, you could not have been more conspicuous in your appropriation. Is it not an adaptation of Drag Queen Story Hour, but for Church? You are absolved!

Listen good people of Calvary to the mission statement of the secular entity which founded this program and upon which Drag Queen Bible Study is based: Simply, “to celebrate reading through the glamourous art of drag. To create diverse, accessible, and culturally inclusive family programming where kids can express their authentic selves and become bright lights of change in their communities.” Did you hear anything objectionable in that mission? If such a creative method is both effective and engaging in teaching reading to children in the greater community, ought it not be considered a gift to introduce and convey the teachings of Christ to little ones? Christ Himself was a very good psychologist. His message of Salvation was so important that he was not afraid to employ any persuasive and creative rhetorical method at his disposal to convey His message. To the farmer he spoke in metaphorical parables comprehensible to the farmer. To the fisherman and vintner, the same. To the children in particular, who see and experience life with wonder and amazement, He does not wish to be distant, formal or removed. Was it not Jesus who said in Matthew 19:14, “Let the little ones come unto me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these…” Perhaps those of us of a certain age and conditioning would benefit by becoming more childlike, reclaiming that wonder, amazement, and acceptance. Who knows? We just might like it.

I know that those of good faith in society and Church are trying their best in this arena. As far as advancements have been made to not only accept, but embrace our LGBTQI+ sisters and brothers, of which I count myself a member, there are still those within that alphabet soup acronym that have been left behind, singled out, judged, and sadly targeted by those who cannot accept others different than themselves. Here I am speaking of the most vulnerable, least represented, and greatest to be victimized, those in the transgender community and yes, drag queens. Isn’t it ironic that such are always the target of bullies? Is it any surprise that they alone were the target of last Sunday’s protesters?

It might baffle some, but it is precisely with these, the voiceless and vulnerable that Christ calls us to stand in fervent and resolute solidarity today. For those who might not think so, I would only remind you of the prophetic words of Lutheran Pastor Martin Neimollar’s stirring poem of 1946, “First They Came…” Listen to those words now…

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist
Then they Came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the Trade Unionists
And I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist
Then they came for the homosexuals
And I did not speak out because I was not a homosexual
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left to speak out for me.

Beloved faithful of Calvary Presbyterian Church, today I bring to you the love and support of countless communities of faith throughout our City who stand with you in solidarity at this fragile time. Allow me to commend to you this… Each time you enter the threshold of this sacred sanctuary, remember last Sunday’s protest. Muster all of the love in your heart and very being and pray with sincerity for those whose misguided hardness of heart and soul expressed themselves with such hatred. Pray for your pastors and the leadership of this historic and visionary church, that they may be fortified with righteous hearts, the truth of Christ’s Gospel and love for you to continue to navigate Calvary through these challenging and uncertain times. At last, pray for one another that collectively, as the body of Christ, this community of faith may shine in our City as a bright beacon of hope inspiring and giving fortitude to those who share in the struggle.

And may love always triumph over hate!

May God bless you and God keep you…