Sermon preached by the Reverend Nicholas Lang for the Blessing of the Holy Union of Kevin Connors & Jim Schilling

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

October 20, 2007

In the Name of our God who creates, sustains, and renews our lives: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Thousands of words have been written about love and relationships. Hundreds of songs have been sung about the subject. Year ago, Frank Sinatra crooned one whose lyrics declare that “love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.” In the famous musical, My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle cries out: “Words, words, words! I’m so tired of words. Don’t talk to me of love, don’t talk to me of June, don’t talk to me about anything at all, just show me.” In the second reading today we listened to a passage from Paul’s letter written to the community of believers in Corinth in the first century. Paul describes love as patient and kind. He says that love envies no one, is never boastful, never conceited, never rude, never selfish, keeps no score of wrongs, and will never come to and end. More words about love. But exactly what does love look like?

I think it looks very much like the relationship of the two people who have called us together this evening to witness the promises they will make in our presence. Because the possibility of the church’s blessing—let alone acceptance— was not available for them when they first made that commitment, they are asking for that sacramental grace twenty-seven years after they began their lives together. Well, we know the grace was always there. Today we are just affirming that reality.

Many of you know the details of their exciting and adventurous story. It was a highlight of our parish publication Journey this month. Their journey took them from their homesteads in Ohio to touring the world in the world of showbiz to their landing here in Fairfield County where they met and lived with Bobbi Belarski who, along with several four legged companions, would complete the family they established here in the Norwalk area.

Their lives have been blessed with great joy in the founding of their wonderfully successful Music Theatre of Connecticut and the many students whom they have mentored and whose lives they have touched. They have also experienced sorrow in the loss of parents and, last year, their young nephew Andrew.

In all of it, watching from the sidelines, observing the way they care for each other, for their family and friends, and for all those whom their lives touch, not the least of whom are the thousands of young people that have benefited from their teaching, I suspect that we have seen quite definitely just what loves looks like. The blessing for St. Paul’s was their arrival here on Christmas Eve five years ago when, in their own words, they came to dinner and never left. Like so many others they experienced the love that abounds here and the healing that comes with that gracious spirit of radical welcome.

Love is what members of any believing community do—if they are genuine. The litmus test for authentic Christianity is not based on how much scripture we know or how much sin we did or did not commit but on how successfully we have kept that new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. Jesus gave us this mandate because he wanted to be sure that the world would recognize us in the act—that the world would know what loves looks like—and what it doesn’t.

If the church is the authentic expression of that kind of unselfish, unconditional love, how can it not welcome and include all people as God’s own beloved and extend to them every opportunity to grow in their love of one another and to have their loving relationships blessed by the church. So this evening we proudly celebrate what is an example of the church at its best—including instead of excluding—and recognizing the blessing that these two people have been for this community, for society, and for the church at large.

A few years ago, our new Presiding Bishop Katherine visited a nursing home and celebrated a communion service there. She gave a brief homily about finding the blessing wherever it is offered. Then they had communion together—holy bread given and received. Afterward, someone came up to her and said, “That woman over there, the one you just gave communion to is Jewish!” The woman’s son later came up to Bishop Katherine and said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see my mother take communion!” She recalled that he seemed a little scandalized and rather grateful that she had been included. Somewhere in the depths of her being, his mother heard the words about eating and finding the blessing wherever it is offered and responded. Bishop Katherine looked at the son and said, “And I am quite certain that baruch atah adonai eloheinu —God was praised.

I tell you this story because sometimes being faithful to the Gospel and to the commandment to love one another means not following what have been traditionally taught as “the rules.” Old rules that have not emerged from a foundation of love and compassion are like fences and barriers that, while they may keep some folks safe, keep far too many others out. Time after time Jesus got himself into trouble with the religious leaders of his time because he saw how the rules had become demonic idles rather than occasions of grace.

While we rejoice with Jim and Kevin tonight and give thanks that the Episcopal Church in Connecticut has opened the doors to the GLBT community and recognized the entitlement of same-sex couples to have the same opportunity as their heterosexual peers both to publicly profess their commitment to one another and receive the church’s benediction, there are, sadly, couples who still cannot find that possibility in their church or place of worship and for whom religion is abrasive and exclusionary.

The Reverend Elizabeth Kaeton, Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chatham, New Jersey, recently posted a reflection on her blog on the anniversary of her ordination to the priesthood in October, 1986. Elizabeth is a lesbian living in a long term committed relationship. The Rt. Rev'd Frederick Barton Wolf, then recently retired bishop of Maine, ordained her on behalf of her own diocesan bishop who "allowed" the ordination but would not ordain her himself because he said, "the church has not spoken clearly on this issue." To which a member of the Cathedral of St. Luke in Portland, her sponsoring congregation responded, "Bishop, with all due respect, Elizabeth is not an 'issue', she is a person we have been deeply persuaded is called by God to be a priest in the church."

The Anglican Communion and, by its participation in that entity, the Episcopal Church is caught up in a debate over how to interpret scripture and whether or not the rules of long ago should still apply today. Most of the issues focus on human sexuality---should lesbians and gay men be should they be fully included in the life of the church, should they be ordained priests and bishops, should the church be blessing their holy unions. But none of us, gay or straight, are “issues.” We are all the gift of God’s wonderful creation, all God’s beloved and all entitled to the same and equal place at God’s Table in the Church. Kevin and Jim are persons who have ministered faithfully in the world and in the church and whose relationship we have been deeply persuaded should be blessed and sanctified in God’s name.

There is a wonderful Jewish word “Shalom” that is too often simply translated as “peace.” It has a much more profound and rich meaning that captures the essence of our life in this community and as those who proclaim the Gospel message of love. Shalom is a vision of God on earth, a realm of peace, a place where justice is the rule, where prejudice is banished, where diversity is cherished, where each of us is received as equal sister and brother where the gifts with we have been abundantly blessed are equally valued. We call that place the reign of God and we get a little glimpse of it here in this community of St. Paul’s.

In a few moments, Kevin and Jim, we will witness the public profession of your love and ask God’s blessing on your holy union. What you are about to say to one another are more than just "words, words, words". It is a statement of your faith which, author, Eugene H. Peterson says, “is not an accumulation of vague impulses that tend, generally, toward the good, nor is it the nurture of obscure emotions of piety; it is choosing to walk through a particular gate, and down a definite road.” As you have done—for twenty-seven years and for that act of faith you have more than earned the blessing we pronounce here tonight.