"The Embrace of Discipleship"
Fr. George Wertin
Sunday, April 6th, 2003

It was not my intention to give the homily today. I came home from vacation a week ago relaxed and looking forward to the final weeks of Lent and Holy Week. Then I retrieved the messages on my voice mail. The last one was from Archbishop Flynn stating categorically that Rev. Dr. Mel White was not to speak at St. Joan of Arc this Sunday - or any other time. I was devastated. This was the first time that the Archbishop had ever intervened to prevent someone from speaking at St. Joan of Arc.

I knew that Mel White was scheduled to talk, that he is a gay man who has an effective ministry to promote the inclusion of gays and lesbians in Christian communities. Archbishop Flynn asserted that he had been getting considerable correspondence from people stating that Mel White promotes views inconsistent with Catholic teaching on human sexuality.

I deliberated and consulted. I prayed and struggled. I assessed the options - to defy the Archbishop and jeopardize the mission and ministries of St. Joan of Arc, to acquiesce and cave in or to seek a third way - to step outside the power struggle and follow the principles of active non-violence: the very principles Mel White and his foundation, Soulforce, espouse.

I talked with Mel White and told him the Archbishop’s decision and that I was not going to set us up for a power struggle with him. I stated that we must respect the office of the bishop and find new ways to work for power sharing and the equality of all our members.

I asked him to accept this decision. He could not have been more gracious. He simply expressed his concern that we find ways to support the GLBT members of our congregation who will be hurt yet again by another expression of rejection.

He also shared the outline of what he intended to talk about in his homily. He intended to reflect on Jesus’ words to his disciples in the last discourse according to John where Jesus promises to send a “Comforter, that will abide with you forever.” He was going to talk about the embrace of the Church, the embrace of our sisters and brothers and the embrace of Christ’s Spirit - always with us, never failing. There was no attacking of Catholic Church teaching, rather spiritual nourishment. It is a message of inclusivity and acceptance, of compassion and respect. It is a simple message, but one that needs to be heard again and again. There are so many power struggles in our world today.

A few weeks ago Archbishop Desmond Tutu was in the Twin Cities. As the head of the Truth Commission that sought reconciliation and healing after the non-violent end of apartheid in South Africa he emphasized how the moral climate needs to be changed. He was asked about religion. Didn’t it pain him as a religious man that the Afrikaners actually used the Bible and religion to oppress his people?

Tutu replied that religion in and of itself is neither good or bad. It is morally neutral. It is like a knife, he said, which is neither good or bad. If you use it to peel an apple, it is good. If ‘I stick it in your gut,’ bad. It is the same with religion. Deeply religious people supported Hitler and Naziism, deeply religious people supported slavery and even yet use the burning cross as a symbol of domination. But, he went on to say that the Bible and religion were also powerful resources in the resistance to oppression and apartheid.

Archbishop Tutu concluded by saying there is no way injustice and oppression will have the last word. But it is a tragedy that the Bible and religion are still used as weapons to exclude and condemn a significant minority of God’s family - people whom we know are held in God’s embrace. The Bible and religion are being used against sexual minorities today just as they have been used to oppress others through the centuries. God’s love does not know the boundaries of race, sex, creed, nor sexual orientation.

And so we are left to examine how to be authentic disciples of Jesus. How do we respond to the Archbishop in a way that is consistent with the non-violent Gospel of Jesus? Can we find a way to respond with compassion, justice and love recognizing that we have to seek more than “being right” - as Thomas Merton(today's reading) explains so clearly - that we have to seek the truth and recognize that we do not have the truth. Can we find a way to avoid a ‘lose-lose’ power struggle with the Archbishop.

I believe we can. We can choose the way that follows the principles of Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. We can choose the way that Ghandi called Satyagraha or Soulforce. This is the demanding process of waging a struggle for justice in which we seek. not to exterminate the opponent, but through love and a willingness to suffer if necessary, to create a just resolution of conflict refocusing the conflict from persons to principles. This demands discipline and discipleship. It requires recommitment and a renewed resolve to promote inclusivity, healing and justice. It recognizes that the seed must first die, and only then can it bring forth new life, as today’s Gospel proclaims.

It means, first of all, that we do not just walk away from the issue and pretend it never happened. It means that we have to seek dialogue with the Archbishop in a respectful manner. The Parish Council, which met on Thursday night, has taken the first step by inviting the Archbishop to meet with them to discuss the issue in an atmosphere of open dialogue. We must seek the truth, not just ‘being right.’

It means that we have to learn better the process of satyagraha or Soulforce. We have to reframe the discussion. We have to learn to struggle for justice in ways that will create ‘win-win’ solutions. There are ways beyond hostility that can lead to healing, reconciliation and truth.

Finally it means we must recommit ourselves to being a welcoming, compassionate community, especially to our gay and lesbian sisters and brothers. Let me pay tribute to the wonderful lesbian and gay members of St. Joan of Arc who have contributed so much through the years to the life of the community here at St. Joan of Arc. They have never asked for special consideration. They are an integral part of our community whom we have, perhaps, taken too much for granted. We must recognize that they face numerous expressions of discrimination in our society even though St. Joan of Arc is a safe and welcoming environment. We must recommit ourselves to advocating for the millions of gay people who face discrimination in employment, housing, education, basic civil liberties and even in church structures.

On the First Sunday of Lent I called upon us to examine three dimensions of discipleship. First, we are called to be disciples of peace and non-violence. I remind you that violence can be expressed in words and attitudes just as well as with weapons. We are called to resist injustice - but not violently. We must promote ACTIVE non-violence embracing those who feel the sting of discrimination and challenging those who are oppressors.

Secondly, we are called to be disciples of compassion: we must identify with those who are different from ourselves. Can I identify with a gay or lesbian person? Can I identify with the Archbishop? Can you identify with me in trying to find an appropriate response to a painful situation? As Alice Walker wrote in The Color Purple: “When I bleed, God bleeds. And when anybody bleeds, we all bleed.”

Finally, we are called to be a community of equals empowering gays and lesbians, women and racial minorities, poor people, elderly - everyone - into a rainbow community of justice and love.

I conclude with the words of Thomas Merton from our first reading this morning: “Nonviolence has great power, provided that it really witnesses to truth and not just to self-righteousness.” Let us forge ahead, not with hostility in our hearts, but with a recommitment to end the hurt and pain in our midst.

1st Reading
A reading from Blessed are the Meek: The Roots of Christian Non-Violence by Thomas Merton.

A test of our sincerity in the practice of nonviolence is this: are we willing to learn something from the adversary? If a new truth is made known to us by them or through them, will we accept it? Are we willing to admit that they are not totally inhumane, wrong, unreasonable, cruel, etc.? This is important. If they see that we are completely incapable of listening to them with an open mind, our nonviolence will have nothing to say to them except that we distrust them and seek to out wit them. Our readiness to see some good in them and to agree with some of their ideas (though tactically this might look like a weakness on our part), actually gives us power; the power of sincerity and of truth. On the other hand, if we are obviously unwilling to accept any truth that we have not first discovered and declared ourselves, we show by that very fact that we are interested not in the truth so much as in “being right.” Since the adversary is presumably interested in being right also, and in proving themselves right by what they consider the superior argument of force, we end up where we started. Nonviolence has great power, provided that it really witnesses to truth and not just to self-righteousness.