Acts 19:1-7                                                                                       

by Harry Knox
January 7, 2006

Central United Methodist Church, Toledo, Ohio

Central Church, I hope you know what an honor it is to stand in this pulpit. The

reputation of this congregation as a beacon of hope for all who are oppressed reaches far

beyond Ohio, at least to Washington, D.C., where news of your work gives me and many,

many others both comfort and joy. You have been an anchor to the Reconciling

Ministries and Church Within a Church movements, and your good pastor is one of the

shining lights among national LGBT-affirming United Methodists. In supporting her

work beyond this local church, in lending her to the rest of us, you give a marvelous gift

to the movement for justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. So I come

to you with thanksgiving and a sense of real privilege. Thank you for having me.

 

I love our little text for the morning — the straightforward way Luke tells the story. Paul

is the visiting preacher at a preaching mission in Ephesus and he is introduced to 12 men

who are called “believers.” He is not the first preacher they’ve ever heard — it’s not clear

who had gotten to Ephesus before Paul, but we know that person was a follower of John

the Baptist. If that preacher was a follower of John, we can bet those guys had had a good

old- fashioned conversion — had been convicted of sins that had limited their enjoyment

of life and their relationship with God — and had decided to change. They had taken the

Good News of salvation seriously and when Paul came to town they and he were drawn

together in the way we Christians always seem to find each other on the highways and

byways of life.

 

Somewhere in the conversation Paul began to realize that something was missing in the

fellows’ understanding of what the Christian faith could mean. He puts a frank question

and gets an earnest reply — “When you were baptized, did you receive the Holy Spirit?”

“We didn’t even know there was such a thing!” say they.

 

OK, maybe I don’t like everything about the way Luke tells the story. I want to know the

part he left out. I want to know how Paul described to them what the Holy Spirit is, how

it feels when the Spirit is inside and around you, how different we are when we move

from being just a believer into being a Spirit-filled disciple.

 

But, the story is what it is. We are left to let our imaginations run, to wonder about the

Spirit and her nature and our relationship to her. Yes, she’s a big old girl! In Greek and

Hebrew and in the understanding of most of the major religions of the world the part of

God who communicates with and empowers us is a girl. The words that describe her in

human ways are feminine words. You’ve just got to love that. If there was anything that

ever needed a makeover with a feminine touch, it is our understanding of God.

 

So sitting up in my office at Rhode Island Avenue and 17th Street in Washington, and

riding the train to and from work, and on airplanes running around the country I’ve been

wondering about the Spirit, thinking about women, and considering what I could say as a

visiting friend to people I just knew I would love on arrival.

 

I began to think about my experience of the Spirit of the living God and how I have seen

it manifested in my work as an advocate for justice for LGBT people over the years —

and I got really happy. You see, I believe we are on the cusp of a fourth great awakening

— there are said to have been three great periods of revival in this country — and I

believe we are seeing the stirrings of the fourth. And this one is the unique gift of LGBT

people to the church. I see every day in my work as director of the Religion and Faith

Program of the Human Rights Campaign the incredible faithfulness of lay and clergy

believers around the country who are speaking truth to power in winsome ways that are

changing the hearts and minds of religious and political leaders, and, more importantly,

the hearts and minds of their constituents. Friends, I get up and run to work every

morning, afraid to death that I’ll miss something — that’s how exciting it is be doing this

work right now.

 

LGBT lay people are calling the question for pastors: “Brother Pastor, Sister Pastor, they

are writing discrimination against us into our state constitution, in several states they are

coming for our children, the powers and principalities are looking the other way when

our homes are burned, our lives threatened, when we are fired from our jobs. We are

under attack. When in the name of the Great Liberator of the World are you going to

speak out?”

 

Non-LGBT people of faith are talking with legislators and governors and saying, “You

know these people are our neighbors, our family members, and our friends. Please, stop

hurting them. And for goodness’ sake, stop hurting them in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Brave pastors are counting the cost of discipleship. No big appointment in their future.

Pension will be based on the salaries small churches pay — not enough to live on.

Children won’t have their choice of school. They’ll always have to sit sort of toward the

back at the district and conference meetings, because they’ll never be the chair. Brave

pastors are counting the cost of discipleship, lifting their heads toward Heaven and

saying, “Here am I. Send me.”

 

You are those people. Cheri Holdridge is that pastor. And you are the vanguard in a

movement that is changing America one heart and mind at a time. A person like me

doesn’t lead people like you. I just hold onto your coattails and enjoy feeling the wind of

your wake in my hair.

 

It’s revival! The movement for justice for LGBT people is being kicked up a notch now

that some of us have remembered what we knew but had allowed ourselves to forget.

There is such a thing as the Holy Spirit!

 

The Spirit has been working on us and through us all along, of course. But it’s been kind

of hard to focus on her with so many people beating us over the head and saying that God

made them do it. Many of our friends had to get away from the abuse of the church in

order to get safe before they could stand in their own reality and claim their right to be

fully alive and fully a citizen — to be out and proud.

 

 

Our political organizations were purely secular in their focus — our pain caused too

much worry when some of us talked about things of faith in advocacy settings. We had to

have time to get safe, and then to heal a little. But this is a “fullness of time” kind of

moment. Your national leaders are following you back to church and temple and mosque.

Together we are reclaiming the rich, powerful language of love, commitment,

community, and justice and talking once again in language people in Ohio understand —

faith language. We know there is great power within us all as human beings — and now

we are tapping into the greater power that is the source of all our being. We are a gift to

the country and to the church — neither will ever be the same — because we are living in

the power of She Who Is — the big old girl who whispers creative ideas, nudges us up to

the microphone, stands by us with her arms crossed and her hip poked out and her

pocketbook swinging, and who holds us when the crisis is past and lets us laugh or cry or

both in equal measure.

 

Revival. That’s what I’ve been thinking about, dreaming about, as I’ve looked forward to

coming to Central Church — what will a Spirit- filled, Spirit- led movement for justice

look like?

 

A Spirit-led justice movement will be characterized by courage. Not a lack of fear,

not a flighty disregard for the consequences of our actions, but the sort of faith that

allows us to just do what needs to be done and say with Queen Esther, “I will go into the

king and if I perish, I perish.”

 

When I was the executive director of Georgia Equality, we sponsored a hate crimes bill in

the state Legislature that included protections for LGBT people. In the previous election

we had endorsed the man who had been narrowly elected lieutenant governor of the state

because he told us he would see to it that the hate crimes bill would pass. But when the

bill was introduced and began to move through the state Senate, the lieutenant governor

began to change his tune. He told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he didn’t think

the bill was a priority, or some such language, and signaled that he wasn’t going to put

any political capital behind getting it passed. I tried to call him on the phone with no

reply. I e-mailed him. I sent friendly senators to see him. I called his press secretary and

said, “Please have the lieutenant governor call me. I’m going to have to talk about him in

the press and I really don’t want to do that without talking with him first.” Not a word

from the Capitol.

 

So I gave the press interview you would expect — let’s say I reminded him and the

LGBT community of his promises to us.

 

The next morning I got a summons to the lieutenant governor’s office. Now friends, I

was scared. The offices of the governor and lieutenant governor in the Georgia state

Capitol are designed to remind visitors of who has the power. Twenty- foot ceilings. The

lieutenant governor’s office is probably 25 by 25 — enormous desk. Usually everyone is

dwarfed in these surroundings, but in this particular fellow’s case, the office actually fits

him. The lieutenant governor of Georgia is about 6’2” and weighs in the neighborhood of

280 pounds. He’s a big guy. He had summoned four other people to the meeting —

Georgia Equality’s lobbyist, two of our legislative allies and the leader of a rival

advocacy organization who he knew I didn’t like. He had set me up for maximum

embarrassment. He had the other four people sit in chairs in front of him and faced them

across the desk as you would expect. But he had pulled the chair he intended for me over

to his left.

 

We sat down. The lieutenant governor turned to face me and hoisted his gigantic leg onto

the desk. Do you get the picture? Pure power. He looked me in the eye and said, “Boy,

you don’t know how things are done around here.”

 

Now I had said a little prayer before going into that office that had sort of never stopped.

I asked God to give me the words to say and the strength to say them. In that moment

peace came over me and a little voice said in my head, “You represent Me and all the

LGBT people in Georgia, who I love.”

 

I looked at the lieutenant governor and said, “Lieutenant Governor, I’m sure there is

much I don’t know about how things work here. But I know you told us you would help

us move this bill and I know we delivered 70,000 votes to you and I know you won the

election by fewer than that number. We would like to find a way to work this out. Please

help us.”

 

The longest 10 seconds of my life passed with my eyes locked on those of the lieutenant

governor. Then he lowered his leg, sat up in his chair, and said, “All right, here’s what we

can do.” And our hate crimes bill passed.

 

I hope you know that I know that was a spiritual moment — that the hero of the story is

the marvelous Spirit of the living God. My political science degree didn’t help me. My

master of divinity degree didn’t help me. My job title didn’t match the title of the

oppressor that day. And I surely didn’t have a brilliant plan going in like some script

from “The West Wing.” I was scared almost to death, and the Spirit pulled me through.

If I did anything right, it was this. I accepted the gift of courage the Spirit offered me. She

didn’t offer me peace until right at the last moment. But She gave me courage to put on

my suit and drive to the Capitol and take was going to be dished out — and then She

gave me the peace that calmed my quaking voice and the words that were just right for

the situation.

 

A Spirit- led justice movement isn’t ever going to have all the answers and a perfect plan.

But it will have courage born of our collective experience of all the ways God has made a

way where there was no way.

 

A Spirit-filled movement for justice will recognize that progress is not linear, but

spherical. Stay with me now — I’m going to get a little geographical-weather- like on

you. Remember the Spirit has a feminine nature. Not straight up and down, but round.

Not planned and perfectly executed and delivered on time, but organic, rooted, deep and

wide.

 

A Spirit- filled justice movement will be less focused on winning any one election and

will focus everyday on winning another soul to God’s cause. It will not seek magic-bullet

messages that will manipulate a majority into voting one way or the other, but will seek

to do real, consistent education and personal outreach that will help change the way

people feel, then change how they think, then change how they act, then change how they

vote.

 

A Spirit- filled movement will celebrate a 60 to 40 percent loss because it knows that

before the campaign, only 20 percent were in favor of justice. It gives us all the space to

know that as we win hearts and minds, we make the ultimate victory, the one that is

coming, a change that will last because it will be rooted in the rich dark soil of true belief,

not the shifting sands of transitory sound byte ideology.

 

People working in justice movements that are Spirit-filled and Spirit-led will offer

grace commensurate with the grace they have received.

 

Until it finally crumbled into dust, I carried in my billfold a little scrap of newsprint from

the Georgia Wesleyan Christian Advocate, dateline 1976. It was a letter I wrote as a

precocious 15- year-old to the newspaper of the United Methodist Church in Georgia. In it I decried the decision of the National Youth Ministry Organization to sponsor education about homosexuality and assured my fellow Methodists that the youth of the South Georgia Conference would never go along with the national policy. There have been times in my life when I was more like the lieutenant governor of Georgia than I find it comfortable to admit.

 

None of us started out where we are today. I am grateful beyond words to the good souls

who, in my youth, confronted my homophobia and racism and sexism and privilege and

argued and cajoled and reasoned and laughed at and pushed and cried with me until I got

started on the journey through to the other side. They could have said, “Humph! Another

bigoted Southern white boy,” and walked away. But they stood with me when I was

lousy company and offered no hope of my own redemption. They loved me with the love

only the Spirit of God can provide, for I was as ugly and unlovely as you can possibly

imagine. They met my petulance with patience and my lies with love. Many of them are

gone now. None of them got to sit up in a beautiful office in Washington, D.C., and give

leadership to a national LGBT organization’s religion and faith program. They didn’t get

to run around the country and be with the courageous people that motivate me to get up

and run to work to work every day. I cannot make that fair. All I can seek to do is to

make it end in justice.

 

Too often we get caught up in the all-or- nothing nature of politics, whether it is secular

politics or church politics. It’s all about winning — 50 percent plus one — who’s ahead

and who’s behind. Victors and losers.

 

But, once in a while, there is a paradigm shift. It’s economically advantageous to the

powerful to keep other human beings enslaved, but the powerful fight each other to end

slavery. Men have all the money and they are the only ones who can vote, but they vote

to give the franchise to women. A hugely profitable company makes its profits on the

backs of child labor, but sees the error of its ways and becomes the world’s largest nongovernmental proponent of children’s health, education and human rights. The rules go out the window. The world teeters a little on its axis and things change fundamentally.

Those are spirit movements.

 

They are predicated on a massive change of heart — on the hardest thing in the world —

people like you and me, for we are all both oppressed and oppressor at various times in

our lives — admitting we are wrong and promising to do better. Such movements require

repentance. And repentance almost never comes at the end of a gun, or as the result of

overwhelming force or displays of power. And I hate to say it, but it rarely comes as a

result of a more reasonable argument. Repentance is almost always accomplished in an

atmosphere of unconditional love — love that speaks truth to evil, but does it in ways that

invite and invite and invite and rarely, if ever, threaten. In such an atmosphere, the

oppressors can begin to experiment with scary change, and in the forgiveness offered by

us, see mirrored the forgiveness of God, and begin to forgive themselves.

 

The last conversation you had with your legislator was not the last time you will talk with

her about hate crimes. The last shouting match you had at a family gathering was not the

last time your family will hear about — or think about — or cry about — or pray about

LGBT issues. Last year’s election was not the last word on marriage equality in Ohio; it

was just the first of all the statewide conversations that will be had about marriage

equality on the way to Justice Day.

 

We have received such grace from God! We must, in gratitude, offer that same grace to

others — and in the process we may find that grace is more powerful in the end than all

the powers and principalities arrayed against us.

 

Finally, when we are justice-seeking people who are filled and led by the Spirit, we

can give ourselves a little grace, too.

 

Activism is not the same for everyone and there is no single right way to do it. When you

foul- up, act like a Soprano and “fuggetaboutit” — give yourself a break

The Scriptures don’t call the 12 men at Ephesus half- way Christians — they are called

“believers.” The fact that they received a new gift — and all the gifts that followed from

it — shows that they were worthy, even in their ignorance. There is no roadmap for how

to achieve justice in this generation. We learn the rich lessons taught by those who’ve

gone before, but we must invent it anew for this time and the issues that face us now. We

are ignorant in some really fundamental ways. But rejoice, Central Church! You believe

in and have tied yourselves forever to the One who is not limited by time and space, Who

has redeemed us out of sheer unreasonable love for us and Who has cattle on 10,000 hills.

 

You know enough; you have the vocabulary; you will find the courage; the money will

be there. God bless you as you work and work and talk and talk and strive and strive for

justice. Your effort is a constant prayer of both petition and praise. And while you’re at it,

please pray for me and your colleagues at the Human Rights Campaign.

Amen.