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IT'S MY STORY ... Remember TRUST God
by
Rev. John Buttars
Luke 3: 1-6 10
A Sermon -- Dec/2000
Three introductory comments. First, today's sermon was introduced in last week's, the significance in naming. I want to thank you for the names, the new names, you have given Harcourt Memorial. For those of you who gave me names as we shook hands at the door, please write them down on the edge of today's bulletin and put them in the offering plate. For any of you who have names for this congregation, feel free to put them in the offering plate. Second, you may have noticed that there are two sermon titles. The first requires an explanation. This is my story as a Dad although I will mention a number of other people. We're getting close to Christmas, a story of two parents and a child and this is my Dad story even when you might get tempted to think it is another person's story. Because I'm talking as a father, it's tender for me and my emotions just might stop me so Monica will read if needed but a few tears won't hurt any of us. Third, I am feeling badly about one thing, the fact that some of you know part of this story and many of you don't. I have gone through a discernment process as to whether I should really preach this sermon. Barbara, Andrea and Fiona have been part of the process, my spiritual director, Monica, people in this congregation, friends. When I raised with the Ministerial Support Committee my decision to preach this sermon, I asked if those who knew bits and pieces of my ‘Dad' story should be told beforehand and the response was affirmative. Just before my mother died, Barbara and I began to develop a list of whom we had told and letters were sent out. Gradually I began to discover that those letters were being passed on to others. Barbara has suggested, given that it's December and almost the end of our budget year, that maybe the Finance Committee might want me to do this more often. And as a Canadian living in the southern United States might say it, "Y'all come back next week, eh!"
To tell this story, let's begin on a hot August mid-day in the early 1990's with my sitting on the lawn at Ignatius College. I was listening to a United Church minister who was on retreat. Except I wasn't listening very well. I was distracted, consumed with worry about one of my daughters. As I sat there, supposedly listening intently as a spiritual director should but a million miles away, there was a voice that spoke to me, a voice as clear as if someone had spoken to me directly, a voice as if the whole of Creation heard it,"Trust." It was as if the message was, "Remember John, Trust me" (the ‘me' being God), but I only heard the one word "trust" in the depths of my soul and to confirm that one word message I knew without a doubt that my daughter had gotten a job. That was one of the things I was so worried about. I knew she had a job but she didn't call that Tuesday evening, nor Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, nor Saturday. Surely if she had gotten a job, she would have phoned. Finally we called on Sunday evening and she reported that she had been working in the Trent University book store since the previous Tuesday, the very day when I heard that word "Trust" with an inner certainty that she was finally employed.
Trust. That word has been foundational to me these last eight years. It's not that I have trusted all the time but there has been that sense of trying to remember to trust through the deaths of Barbara's father, Barbara's sister, Barbara's mother, my mother's Alzheimer's Disease and my father and mother's deaths, and Barbara's uncle's suicide. The word trust has been a constant invitation through all the tragedies and changes in this congregation. That word was not just my trying to calm myself, my trying to be positive, do the power of positive thinking routine. The word trust was a word spoken from a source outside of myself, a word to the depths of my soul and, I must confess, a word that I have continually forgotten and occasionally tried to remember.
But why was I so worried about my daughter? It wasn't just that she was having a difficult time finding a job. It had begun months earlier when Barbara had made a flying trip to Peterborough to bring her home from her Trent University residence because of illness. The following Monday morning I went curling and when I came home for lunch she was still in her pyjamas with Barbara and her in the living room. I knew I was not to enter that room. We are a close open family but this was a mother daughter talk. Later that day Barbara told me the subject of the conversation but it was a time before Fiona told me directly. It was simply this. "I'm not who I thought I was."
With that news part of me went into denial. It was our secret, the three of us. It took time before Andrea was told and then grandparents. For me, after the denial, there was fear and grief. Nobody ever prepares you for having a gay or a lesbian child. I found myself remembering her birth, my waiting in a room for hours as Barbara was surrounded by specialists. Would this child survive? When I finally saw her, my first conscious thought was, "Where on earth did she come from?" She was both our responsibility and at the same time, she was gift from God and when I look at both of my beautiful daughters, they are both gifts from God. But now one of them was slowly coming to terms with the fact that she was different from whom or what she expected. And I entered a world of denial, grief and fear.The denial was easy. I just kept working. Fear for her, first of all. Since then I have met an amazing number of parents and fear is one of our first responses. Fear about telling people, fear for safety in work and in society. Will she find a job where she won't be harassed or even fired? Will there be friends for her? And fear for me. For the first time, I felt afraid in the church. What would your response be if you knew that your minister and his wife had a different child? It was just a few years after ‘the debate' in The United Church–1988 with the turmoil and anger still fresh. And grief. You don't realize what hopes you have for your children until the hopes are gone. You give up walking your daughter down the aisle or holding a grandchild. Remember that name given to me from last week's sermon, "Grandfather-in-waiting." And you grieve other things. You grieve giving up stereotypes, ignorance, misunderstandings. It's a lot easier living with conventional understandings but I have had to give them up, aided by many sources including this book edited by Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches, a fantastic resource. And in that swirling mass of denial, fear and grief I heard a word from beyond, spoken sitting on a lawn on a hot August day, a word from God. Trust. I have forgotten that word more than I have remembered but the experience still lives as profound consolation and direction in my life.
Eventually we were given permission to tell others and so I began to tell some of the families in this congregation who are in the same position as we are. Andrea was told. Grandparents were told . And we joined PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. I had been to AA groups: "Hi, I'm Bob. I'm an alcoholic." Now it was, "I'm John. I'm father of two daughters, one of whom is lesbian." In that group I had to decide whether I would be public about being a minister. I realized one of my irrational preconceptions was that ministers don't have homosexual children. In that PFLAG group I became a lightening rod for some people. Anger towards the church got dumped on me. It was humbling to be the recipient, the target of such anger.But why would I tell you now of this fact that Barbara and I have lived with for nine years next month. Part of me doesn't want to tell you and some of you may not want to hear it, but I feel as if I am being backed into a corner where I can do no other. Some of you know without our telling you so this is to end any potential for gossip in the Guelph community but in addition there are three reasons and if I were to assign proportions, it would go like this. Ten percent of the decision is because increasingly Barbara is having opportunities to speak as a mother and if I were a Bell Telephone repairman it wouldn't matter but I'm not. Some of those speaking engagements might land up reported in a paper and already Fiona and Barbara have had their pictures in The Toronto Star; thankfully none of you noticed. Twenty percent of the decision is because I need to repent. John the Baptist called the people to repent and this is my repentance, my turning around from a private secret that was messing up communication. Last year, for instance, planning for the Harcourt Christmas Dinner got all messed up because I refused to say that I wouldn't be at the dinner. I avoided the issue because I didn't want anyone to know where I would be which was at a concert of Singing Out, the Gay and Lesbian Choir of Toronto of which Fiona is a member, where Barbara and I will be once again this evening. So I am repenting publicly, turning around from a family secret that was messing up communication in the Harcourt family. Do you have secrets that mess up communication? And the remaining seventy percent of the decision is because it has been suggested (in the Harcourt Council, in the Justice and Outreach Committee and with individuals coming to my office), that Harcourt should consider, just consider, becoming an Affirming Congregation, a congregation that intentionally enters a process of welcoming different kinds of people, including gays and lesbians. I could not stand the thought of this being discussed and my never putting on the table that one of the ministers is personally involved in the issue. So I have to say, the decision about being an Affirming congregation is not mine. Barbara and I have stories to tell but my love for you and commitment to this congregation does not depend on what happens on this issue.
Almost three decades ago, I gave thanks to God for the safe arrival of a daughter. Now I have been called to give thanks for a lesbian daughter. Let me conclude with four of the things that I have learned out of this experience, maybe four of the things I am still learning.
First, I am white, male, well educated, firmly heterosexual, and privileged to live in Canada. My lesbian daughter has introduced me to being on the underside. If we had lived in a Nazi controlled country, she would have been forced to wear a black triangle, symbol of a repelling and unacceptable woman, and there is every likelihood that she would have been rounded up on a train to a concentration camp. Would her mother and I have let her go alone on that cattle train? Or would our love have been so deep and so fierce that we would not have abandoned her to the powers that be and her mother would have put on a black triangle and I put on a pink triangle, signs of our solidarity? Hypothetical, but she has introduced me to imagining what it is like to be on the underside. Where in your life do you express your solidarity with the outcasts or the unacceptable of this world?
Second, Jesus invites us to take up our cross and follow him (Matthew 16: 24). I have never truly understood what that means but this experience has taught me that taking up one's cross is being taken somewhere that you would never ever choose to go. I have not willingly chosen to go this way but to have gone has been a privilege. I have been blessed beyond measure. How else would I have ever experienced that word of ‘Trust" that, when I have remembered, has given me so much courage and comfort these years. So much of who I am as a minister and human being has been hammered out because of my daughter saying to me, "I'm not who I thought I was." She too has gone where she would not have first chosen to go. If you read the whole passage in Matthew (16: 24-6), you realize that the invitation to take up our cross, your cross, to go where you would chose not to go is for all people who follow Jesus. I ask you, what is your cross that you willingly take up?
Third, I have faced a deep paradox in my own life and anything paradoxical is potentially a religious issue. If spiritual issues can be discerned because they have to do with relationships and depth, religious issues can be discerned through paradox. Religious issues are like the paradoxes of death and life, joy and sorrow, fear and assurance, guilt and forgiveness. The paradox in this instance is this. On the one hand, I am deeply uncomfortable and even repulsed by the issue of homosexuality. I am a typical straight male but I have never been uncomfortable in the presence of a homosexual person. Sometimes I have been repulsed by things they tell me but sometimes I am repulsed by what heterosexuals tell me. Homosexuals don't have a corner on the market and sometimes I'm repulsed by what I tell myself. In the 1980's when we were dealing with ‘the issue', this was what I was struggling with, a paradox, and because of that I sat on the fence with people disappointed with me from both sides. Religion, as the quote in the bulletin indicates, is about binding together and whenever there is a contradiction, a paradox, then you know you are dealing with a religious issue. Religious issues cannot be solved by a vote. They can only be embraced, entered into, pondered, shared, but never ultimately solved. However, out of paradox comes revelation, the Word of God. Consumed with worry there was a word from God, "Trust." Where do you experience a religious issue, an unresolvable paradox?
And finally, prayer for me has become, to a very large extent, holding in love. I trust my daughter is held in love by the One who created her. I trust that I her father am held in love. I trust that you are held in love. Sometimes there is nothing that can be done, nothing that can be changed, nothing, so we wait. We wait patiently, expectantly, hopefully: Advent is about such waiting–patiently, expectantly, hopefully. And in that waiting, a kind of desert place that has nothing to do with the mall and Christmas shopping and everything to do with the child Jesus born in the manger, in that waiting comes the invitation to love what you would choose not to love, to love what you do not understand, to love with a scope and a breadth that you could never have imagined. Indeed, prayer for me has become, and living in Jesus Christ has become, to a very large extent, holding in love. Do you have the capacity to hold in love, with open hands and open hearts, yes with wisdom but without condemnation?
On a hot August day, I heard as if the whole of Creation heard, "Trust."
Rev. John Buttars
Harcourt Memorial United Church
87 Dean Ave. Guelph, ON
telephone: 519-824-4177
email: harcourtuc@sympatico.ca
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