Response to Presbyterian Outlook - May 4, 2012

Court clears way for Larges’ ordination

A way forward together...

Lisa Larges' faithfulness to her call has carried us all through the entire judiciary and legislative process that brings us to this time and place of hope and welcoming for all. For more than twenty years, she has been steadfast in loving and serving this church. Long ago, Lisa agreed to say "Yes" to the call that many reading this will understand. She said, "Yes" and then lived into the mystery of God’s path that now meets the broader highway, clearing the way so that others may freely serve. 

The notion that this is a "victory" can only be embraced by those who misunderstand that Lisa's deep and abiding love for others was never divided the way some have tried to divide this church. This journey was and continues to be about healing an unjust and broken church that through its exclusion of sisters and brothers who were Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) - excluded a portion of God. 

In the ruling of the GAPJC, it was clear that there is still disagreement about whether folks like Lisa (and me) who identify themselves as LGBT should be ordained. Yet, in a hopeful and Christian response, a very Presbyterian embrace of mutual forbearance and the historical traditions of this church, the commissioners' ruling made it clear that we can disagree and move forward without creating distance between us. We can trust God into this time of healing and reaching out to one another. 

It is for these any many other reasons that I started out by saying that this decision creates an opportunity for all of us to live more lovingly and fully into welcoming all. The courage of the commissioners to reach the unanimous and honest decision that they did is a call to us all that this, like other great shifts in the history of our church, signals a time to move forward...together.

As for the title of this piece, “Court clears way for Larges’ ordination” - while the court provided the response, it is God who clears the way. Just as God is now clearing the way for Lisa’s next call.

Rev. Ray Bagnuolo, Stated Supply Pastor

Jan Hus Presbyterian Church and Neighborhood House

New York City

In response...in response

In response to
Another Step In The Journey
Synod PJC Decision In Parnell And Others v. Presbytery Of San Francisco

http://blog.gajunkie.com/2010/10/03/another-step-in-the-journey--synod-pjc-decision-in-parnell-and-others-v-presbytery-of-san-francisco.aspx

And in response....


Thank you for this posting. It is especially helpful to read through it all as an accurate and fair reporting and analysis of what is impacting this church we serve and the lives of people touched by it's decisions.

In a time when much-needed attention is being brought to the deaths of young gay people, choosing suicide as a remedy to the intense and unbearable bullying and violence they are subjected to for being gay, the PC(USA) is being called. Called to grapple with how people, sisters and brothers who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) are to be welcomed in this church. Called even more, and in more difficult ways, to acknowledge and accept that we (the church we serve) have unwittingly become complicit in the violence as a result of our decisions and those of the broader church, in sending out messages that add to the hatred of LGBT folk and the rampant marginalization and oppression to which we are subjected.

This is not a conversation that most of us want to have, however, it the one place where, as painful as it is, I believe we can start out in agreeing that God and the teachings of Jesus and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit would ever call us to practice anything that causes such terrible things to happen to people we increasingly come to know as family, friends, loved ones, and baptized sisters and brothers. That same call of the Trinity, I believe, would never call us to exclude or marginalize or oppress others to make our church more "pure."

It seems to me that such things are among the most egregious violations of what we hold essential, and we need to change, I wish by heart and love alone, and if not by amendments and ratification.

I say all these things as a Christian, a man who is gay, and a minister of Word and Sacrament, ordained in 2005 as an an openly gay man who refused to abide by G-6.0106b. There were no hidden agendas, a 45 day wait before ordination to allow any charges to be made, and none came.

In practice, good practice, we have already changed. These efforts toward continued exclusion and growing hostility are perhaps increasing because we are approaching a time when we will be a church of hospitality in new ways, ways that will challenge and bless us and provide a place for all. From hostility to hospitality. That, surely, is the way of the Irit, as well.

How anyone can talk about these faithful candidates without understanding the grace they are bringing our way, seems to be more the difficulty of those who cannot or will not accept the impact, if not the intent, of their actions.

We can be a church that embraces our differences, as well as one another. We should, by now, be pretty good at that. God knows the world needs us to be so.

Sticking with God's choice...

Dear Friends - 

A love story this morning. Unabashed and unrelenting....for Lisa Larges, the Minister Director of That All May Freely Serve. 

At the end of this week, Lisa will find her case for moving toward ordination coming before the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Pacific. Lisa has been a candidate for ministry for well over 20 years, held back because of her openness as the person God ordained her to be, a Lesbian - created in the full glory of the Creator.

Unable to deter Lisa's love for God and the courage that has filled her from that place of call and creation, the opponents of LGBT folk are turning ever more diligently toward the "protections" they can find in the process for ordination and our polity. Some wonder whether these efforts have gone too far, raising the process and the polity to an ideologically rigid and idolatrous level, in effect, relegating the Spirit to second-class status.

In fact, the topic of idolatry is among some of Lisa's writings being raised up in the hearing as "evidence" that she is not fit to serve:

From the docket of Mary Holder Naegeli, J. Mark Stryker and Margaret H. Gelini, Complainants, v. The Presbytery of San Francisco.

"She [Lisa] is is a self-affirmed lesbian who has not been shy about her sexual orientation or behavior. The complaint culls from many of her written statements prepared for the presbytery. They include: 

• She says she believes that “holy relationships of homosexuality … have parity with marriage.”
• She calls “celibacy is morally repugnant.”
•  She says Presbyterian polity “does not bar Presbyterian ministers from marrying same-sex couples.”
• And she declares that G-6.0106b “makes an idol out of heterosexuality in a relationship of marriage between a man and a woman.”

These and other statements, my friends, clear expressions of Lisa's truth and love - are among the credentials for ordination. 

And, this kind of truth and love will always be targets; we are reminded of that directly during this time of Lent. Just follow the Scriptures...

 I am always struck by the irony that this time of the year, just like 2000 years ago, is a time chosen by the frightened and fearful who try to limit God's call in others. Especially, and almost exclusively, seeking to deter those of us who are LGBT and openly witnessing to the Spirit that insists we come out into the light.  

I am unsure, honestly, whether I love the love of God that is in Lisa more than I love Lisa herself for her courage and faithfulness. Then I remember that such love is always God, embodied in God's messengers, and that they are one and the same. 

God has chosen Lisa and I, in my growing wisdom, am sticking with God's choice.

Please remember to keep Lisa and the Synod of the Pacific in your prayers, praying that the Light of the Spirit gives oppression and marginalization little space for hiding.