Monday, May 24, 2010

The Installing Preacher


 
So here's what his bio can tell you: Zachary Moon is originally from Berkeley California. He was raised in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and recently completed a Master of Divinity at Chicago Theological Seminary. Next week he will move to Atlanta to begin a year long residency in spiritual care at the VA. Zac is a chaplain, itinerant preacher and teacher. He has led workshops around the country on topics of the Bible, transformative theology, and community organizing.Here's what i can tell you: Zachary Moon moves mountains and casts out demons. He is full of spirit and truth. He is my friend. He walks in the footsteps of Jesus, the Nazarene. Jesus, the rebelious and righteous. Jesus, the beloved. So, church, it is with the highest amount of gratitude that I bring to you my beloved, Zac Moon, with whom my soul is always well pleased.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Alicia

Footsteps accumulate around sacred waters
when nearness enables communion.
Our conversations are never the same and always the same
sex, death, body, G-d/s, moms, fear, faith, falling, planet, person/s, pregnancy, power, classrooms.

Gentle soul: i never get enough of you.

Especially now when time zones and zip codes place barracades.
Especially now. To bridge the gap: you send me gifts,
mostly poems, always mind-blowing
in their secret knowing of : who you are, who i am and the holy intersectionals.
Your gifts delight me
but in the gifts i keep feeling this invitation to imagine

what life might have been like
if i hadn't been drinking myself into oblivion
and you hadn't met your future husband
while we were occupying the same (ridiculous) territory
completely unaware of one another
many many years ago.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Ordination Sermon

Sermon: “Righteous Transgressors”

The Ordination of Emily Joye McGaughy

First Congregational Church of Riverside

March 27, 2010 – 2:00 p.m.

Psalm 42:7-8 and Ephesians 4:1-16

I’d like to begin by thanking Pastor Jane Quandt and the good people of First Riverside for welcoming all of us – Emily Joye’s extended community – with such warmth and hospitality. What a blessing it is for all of us to share in this blessed day with all of you!

I also want to thank and acknowledge Pastor Tom Ott. Tom, it means so much that you came all this way to be with Emily and her California folks on her ordination day. And while I’m at it, may I also say… “You lucky so-and-so’s in Battle Creek…! I’m sure you already know this, but you all have gotten one of California’s finest – and I know that she’s gotten one of Michigan’s finest, as well.”

And finally, I just want to say to Marty Tamburrano…: Marty, you have raised one heck of a daughter, and on this day, not only are we celebrating Emily Joye and her ministry – what God is doing through her – but we are also lifting thanks and praise for you, for the superlative mothering that produces a superlative person and pastor like Emily Joye.

Emily Joye, honey, I’m gonna get to you in just a little while…, but before we go any further… let’s pray.

Holy One,

Great Beloved,

God of the Deepest Places and the Highest Places ~


We are gathered this day with joy in our hearts,

With praise and thanksgiving on our lips,

For the mighty, mighty good thing You have done

in calling Emily Joye McGaughy to ministry in Your church.

We thank You for the countless ways

Your grace is revealed,

Your compassion is revealed,

Your justice is revealed,

Through her life and her ministry.


We ask Your continued blessings on her,

on all those with whom she ministers,

and on all those for whom she cares in Your name.


We ask Your continued light on her path, Gracious God –

Guiding her, leading her, showing her the way.


We offer these thanks and ask these blessings in the name of Jesus,

our brother and our Christ.

Amen and Aché.


At some point early in our friendship – I can’t tell you exactly when because I’m at the age when women get … forgetful – but at some point early in our friendship, I learned two important things about Emily Joye McGaughy. First, I learned that she is a poet, that she is a lover and crafter of the profound and rhythmic word, both written and spoken. Second, I learned that she is an artist, a maker of collages to be specific – and there are probably quite a few of us gathered here today to whom she has gifted one or more of her beautiful collages. I also learned a third thing about Emily Joye, which is that she’s a smack-talkin’ Lakers fan, but I have graciously overlooked that one and only flaw in her character….

Now, poets are not respecters of punctuation and other boundaries of syntax and grammar. And collage artists (collagists… is that a word?) are, likewise, people who tend to blur the boundaries and color outside the lines. “Line?” they ask. “What’s a line?”

The feminist writer and intellectual, bell hooks, once wrote a book called Teaching to Transgress in praise of pedagogies that encourage young people to question authority and challenge convention and “transgress” against racial, sexual and class boundaries.

Within five minutes of meeting Emily Joye, I knew I was in the presence of a serious transgressor, and my heart…just … sang.

My heart sang because my leader, my Jesus, my hero – probably not the same one that George Bush once called his hero, but that’s a detour we are NOT going to take today – my Jesus was a transgressor. In violation of the religious rules and protocol of his time, he shared meals with so-called sinners, he touched people who were sick and lame and ritually “impure,” he engaged in face-to-face conversation with women who were not his wife or his mother – including a few women accused of prostitution or adultery. And he did all this, he did all this, in the name of Love. He did all this in the name of the One Whose mercy endureth forever, the One Whose grace and compassion never fail. He did all this in the name of God.

Emily Joye, I believe that God has called you to this day, to this ordination, because what the church needs, what the body of Christ desperately needs, are righteous transgressors – and you, my dear, dear friend and sister and daughter of my heart, are one righteous transgressor. Now, lest people think I’m calling you out of your name, or accusing you of something bad, let me clarify! In our time, a “transgression” has come to be regarded as a “sin” or a “violation,” but the Latin root of the word “transgress” simply means “to cross over.” To cross over.
Now, am I saying that you’re a rule-breaker? Well, yes, you are – praise God! – but that’s not all you are.

Am I saying that you’re a boundary-crosser? Yes, indeed, you are – praise God! – and I’ve watched you... with White folks and Black folks and Latino folks and Asian and Pacific Islander folks, and straight folks and gay folks and transgendered folks, and super-privileged folks and under-privileged folks, and on and on. A boundary crosser, most assuredly…, but that’s not all you are.

Psalm 42, the psalm from which Bill read to us just a little while ago, says: “Deep calls to deep…,” and to be a righteous transgressor, to be the kind of righteous transgressor that Jesus was, is to live from the deepest place in your soul. And that, Emily Joye, is who you are. That is what you do. Living from the deepest place in your soul, you passed up an internship with one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest churches and chose, instead, to serve at a safe house for women leaving prostitution – poor women, abused women, drug-addicted women. Living from the deepest place in your soul, you took your anti-war, peace-loving self to the V.A. Hospital in Palo Alto to serve injured veterans – severely injured veterans, brain-injured veterans, traumatized veterans. And we watched – all of us who love you – we watched you enter fully into the lives of those women and those veterans, walk with them and pray with them, suffer with them as they relapsed and rejoice with them as they recovered, become family with them. Some people’s ministries have a preposition problem, you know – they think that ministry is something you do to folks or for folks. Not your ministry, Emily Joye – your ministry is what you do with folks.

Your ministry is a daily re-affirmation of those words LeAnn read to us just a little while ago: “There is one body and one Spirit, and we are called to one hope by one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, who is above all and through all and in all.” A ministry of righteous transgression isn’t grounded in sympathy. It doesn’t say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” It doesn’t even say, “I’m going to love my neighbor as if s/he were myself.” No, it does something even more radical than that. It says, “My neighbor is myself. That former prostitute is me. That returning veteran is me. That Iraqi woman, that Afghani child, that Haitian man, is me.” One hope, one faith, one body, one Spirit – that’s a ministry of righteous transgression. That’s what God is calling for, and that’s why God is calling you.

In just a little while, Jane and our dear sisters and brothers from the Southern California-Nevada Conference and all the rest of us will gather around and lay hands on you, and we will pray, and you will cross the threshold into the life of ordained ministry. You will cross yet another boundary. You will transgress, righteously.

We will not ordain you, because we don’t do that. The Holy Spirit does that. Deep has called to deep – God has called to the deepest place in you, and you have said yes, and what we do this day is affirm. What we do is add our yes.

And we affirm loudly and joyfully. We affirm, holding in our hearts those words that Joy Lynn read at the beginning of this service: “In the midst of a world marked by tragedy and beauty, there must be those who bear witness, who stand and lead, who speak honestly, who gather with the congregation, do justice, love kindness, walk humbly, heal and transform and bless.”

There must be religious witnesses, and there must be righteous transgressors, and you, Emily Joye McGaughy, are both.

Praise God. Hallelujah. Amen.