You have called you servants
May 3rd, 2010to ventures
of which we cannot see the ending
My life could not have been imagined. Placed for adoption immediately after birth, a month later adopted into a wonderful family, baptized into Christ at three months old and then sent out into the world………………my life is an unexpected adventure.
Few people from my childhood and fewer still from college would have expected me to become an ordained pastor. I spent a few years pursuing my next high, getting into trouble with my college administration, contemplating what it meant to be an abomination in the eyes of God since I was gay. I loved Jesus so much, but I knew he hated me.
A new path came open to me once I hit bottom and struggled through the public shame and humiliation I had brought upon myself. A daily reprieve from the sadistic desire to put chemicals into my body that would gradually lead to death left me. The physical damage I had done to my body slowly reversed. The spiritual violence of idolatrous superstition and its accompanying homophobic self hatred was gradually replaced with genuine faith and trust in God.
I didn’t know where God would lead me, I just knew I would be better off if I followed his call.
This call lead me to serve Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx for the last fifteen and a half years. I wasn’t supposed to end up in New York, never mind the Bronx. But, this is what God asked of me, where he led me.
In unexpected places, unexpected blessings come too. I learned that faith saves not just souls, but flesh and blood on this side of heaven. I learned the stubborn insistence of faith in the face of overwhelming odds. I learned the beauty of being forgiven especially when it seemed lasting anger and brokenness was only possible. I’ve learned something about community built around shared faith in Jesus Christ and around shared values with people different from us. I’ve learned both kinds of community are essential. I’ve learned what it feels like to be terrified and what it feels like to be healed.
And now, God is calling me to a new venture, the end of which may not become visible for a long time. I had only promised to stay a Fordham for at least five years. God had different ideas.
I will go now to serve two congregations on the East End of Long Island, the Hamptions starting July 1. Proof that we cannot predict God’s map.
I will be at Fordham to the end of May. I will get all the records together, put everything into the files, clean up my office, do all the administrative stuff. I will also continue to preach, preside, pray, visit, walk the neighborhood and say goodbye to a people and place that have become my world for a time. And Fordham, as the congregation has since 1915, will continue to do God’s work, share the good news of Jesus Christ and make a difference in that community. Its just what the congregation does.. Its in their DNA.
I will continue to pray that God will use me as he wishes, in places I could not have imagined, running along a map that never seems straight or predictable. Thanks be to God.
Lord God,
You have called your servants
to ventures
of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden,
through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love supporting us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen