by the Rev’d. Anne C. Fowler
July 10, 2005
Provincetown, MA

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Those who have ears, let them hear. Matthew 9:8-9

When Jack Smith called to talk with me about preaching today, he said, “I saw your picture in the gym.”
           This was a first for me, I have to say, because as you can see I am not now, nor ever was I, a buff aerobics instructor. “The gym?” I said, incredulously.

“Well, I go to the gym in Provincetown,” Jack told me.

“Oh, that explains it, I said. “It must have had something to do with gay marriage.”

“You got it,” said Jack. And indeed, I had just been up at the State House in Boston testifying, again,on the question of the amendment to our constitution to ban equal marriage, which has of course been legal in this great Commonwealth now since May a year ago.

I have a parish in Jamaica Plain, part of Boston. Jamaica Plain has a substantial gay and lesbian population, and my parish reflects that. I imagine I was called to St. John’s 13 years ago in part because of my work for the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Episcopalians, and indeed for those of other faiths who find their way into our parishes – their full inclusion in the sacramental life of our church.

When I told Jack that I was feeling led to preach this subject today he said, Fine, but everyone won’t agree with you.I said that I really didn’t want to present arguments, rather, I wanted to give some witness, to tell some stories. Because that’s how I believe we’ve gotten as far toward justice and equality as we have, in our Church and in Massachusetts, not through strident opinionizing, but through the telling of stories.

Also, that’s what I think the Gospel is, the Good News. Not an argument, not rhetorical genius, but story. Story and action, story and gesture. Story, not argument, changes hearts. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Those who have ears, let them hear.

My own story, the beginning of the story, is this. My best friend in seminary was a gay man. We loved each other dearly, felt each other to be, strange but true, soul friends. One night he came to dinner with his boyfriend of the time, and they both kept thanking me effusively, too effusively, for the evening. “Look, “ I said, “cut it out. I like to entertain, I like to cook.”
           “You don’t understand,” they told me. “We have so few chances to socialize like this. As a couple. With straight people.”

And that was my light bulb moment. I was divorced then, had been divorced twice, in fact, and I was extremely conscious of the difficulties of staying married, with all the social and economic supports that marriage brings with it. How could we ask gay couples to achieve faithful, committed, long-term relationships with none of those supports?

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Those who have ears, let them hear.

Here was the situation: I could be married. I could be ordained. My friend, simply because of his genes, his chemistry, his wiring, whatever the cause of homosexuality is ultimately proved to be, because of his very being, which was not a choice– he could neither be married or ordained. That, I thought, was simply not fair. So for years I worked within the Church to bring about approval for the ordination of qualified candidates and the blessing of committed relationships for all Episcopalians, regardless of sexual orientation. And blessedly we achieved that in the Diocese of Massachusetts, some years ago.

And then I got involved in interfaith work. I remember, 8 years ago, sitting in the basement hall of some church in Boston and composing and signing, with a handful of other clergy, the charter statement for the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry.

Now I have to tell you, this was like signing on for a clergy trip to Mars. Same-sex marriage seemed just as likely to happen in our lifetime as did a shuttle to the red planet. But you know what? Here we are!

The couple of years leading up to the issuance of licenses last May were intense and often difficult years. Difficult emotionally, difficult politically, stressful, complicated, and thought provoking. In addition to testifying and rallying and sitting through many tense days of Constitutional Conventions, I spent more time thinking and praying and feeling about marriage than I’d ever done in all my years of being married, divorced, single, and then married again.

For many years, as I worked for inclusivity and justice within the church, I used to say that I wished we could get beyond questions of ordination and blessing of unions to what really mattered: solving world hunger, for example, and ending war.
          
 But I have come to the conclusion that marriage really matters, that marriage is profound, fundamental to who we are and to how we understand ourselves – as individuals and in society. Marriage is essential both to our sense of personal identity and to how societies – almost all societies, I believe, in all times and places – to how societies organize themselves.

I have come to this conclusion not mainly through study, though I’ve done some of that. I’ve come to the conclusion mostly through listening to the thoughts and feelings, the sorrows and the hearts’ desires, of those who have been for so long excluded from the institution of marriage, excluded from its rights and responsibilities, excluded from the blessing and the privilege of matrimony.

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Those who have ears, let them hear.

What has impressed me more than anything, I believe, is my awareness, which continues to deepen, of the magnitude of what has been withheld from those who love, and wish to marry, members of their own sex. And I think that’s what’s impressed lots of other people in this struggle. People who had much farther to travel than I, in their personal journeys, to come to the support of equal marriage.

And I include among these many of our legislators who had conversion experiences in the course of the equal marriage debate. Sometimes people comment on my courage in engaging so passionately with this issue. But I’m only answerable to a congregation who, almost to a person, wholeheartedly support me, and to our Bishop, who, I am grateful to say, supports me and this work wholeheartedly as well. I don’t have to bear the censure of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese or the wrath of voters who disagree with me, as do many of the legislators who stood up for equality under our constitution. Now that’s courage! These people have become some of my personal heroes.

I want to go back to our Gospel for a minute, and to Jesus’ imagery about the soil and the seeds: stony soil, shallow soil, and good soil. I think so often we hear this parable in terms of judgment, and not only judgment but of permanent categories: we are either good soil or bad soil, shallow or deep.

But to me, that isn’t the Gospel. It’s my experience and my observation, that we are sometimes one kind of soil, sometimes another. Sometimes we have ears to hear, sometimes we don’t. And what life does for us, what God does for us, when we are blessed, is to prepare us, make us ready, to hear and to understand what at one time we could not. God tills us with God’s grace, enriches us, and deepens us, so that we prepared to receive and to nourish the seeds of wisdom and truth God sows in us.

That’s what I believe I’ve seen happening in these last couple of years as equal marriage has become a reality in our Commonwealth. More and more people tilled, cultivated, made ready and able to receive a new vision of what full justice and inclusion means. More and more people able to undergo conversion. I cannot tell you what a grace-filled honor it has been for me to witness these things.

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Those who have ears, let them hear.

The other marvelous change I’ve seen since May of last year is the change in my gay parishioners and colleagues and friends who have been able to marry. They are so filled with joy, so grateful! They feel so complete! I feel very humbled, and sometimes a bit ashamed, to be in the presence at so much happiness and thankfulness for being married, for gaining the rights and responsibilities that I, that all of us straight folk, have taken for granted.

And this, I do believe, is the Gospel. I think this must have been how those folk following Jesus around must have felt. All those people who in their time and place were outcasts, pariahs, scapegoats. Who were different and ostracized just for being who they were, what they could not help but be.

What did their ears hear? Me? Jesus is going to have dinner with me? Jesus is going to include me in the picnic of bread and fish? Jesus is going to talk to me about living water? Does Jesus really see me as a full person, complete, worthy? Me?

I think that’s what they heard, that raggle-taggle crowd that followed Jesus. And that’s what my gay friends hear in the news about equal marriage. They are hearing, as they never have heard before, that their politicians, their clergy, their community, welcome them and stand with them. They hear that we know them all to be full, complete people, couples, lovers, partners, families – all equal, all embraced. They are seeing the face of the living Christ.

And oh, what we will receive from them in return! What we are receiving already! Hope, inspiration, so many other fruits of the Spirit!

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Those who have ears, let them hear. Alleluia! Amen.