In the mid to late 1980’s, I and a number of others were arrested in Washington D.C. for demonstrating in front of the South African Embassy.  I can still recall our chant “Free Mandela, free Mandela.”  After repeated warnings from the police we were arrested and put in a policy wagon and taken off to be booked. 

Nearly twenty years later, I found myself riding in a van with the Rev. Natalie Metzger, the only female Pastor of the Presbytery in the Western Cape in South Africa.  We were headed for a township called Mountain View in which the unemployment rate was nearly fifty percent, the housing lacked all the comforts of home you and I are familiar with, and the children rush forward for any affirmation and attention they can receive.  When we arrived, Natalie immediately went to the trunk of her car where she had placed some food.  The children immediately gathered for anything she could give them. 

After spending some time there and meeting some of the people we proceeded down the road to a place where women and men were learning pottery skills, the art of weaving, and other possibilities for becoming financially independent.  But on the way, Natalie told us of the many challenges they face in meeting the needs of those who had been pushed aside during the apartheid era.  Education and employment are matched only by health concerns that face the hundreds, no hundreds of thousands, seeking to experience the fruits of a new era.   Voting for the first time in their lives was still a thrill to the majority who had  been  unable  to   participate   in   choosing  their national leaders until 1994.  Some voiced that when they voted they felt they were doing so for their parents, their grandparents, and the many who had lived before. 

I happened to be riding in the front seat, opposite Natalie.  What seemed like out of nowhere, she began to talk about her husband.  He was very supportive of her ministry and, in fact, had begun to get involved himself.  He was now giving a lot of his time to bringing about political and economic change for the people of Mountain View.  This was really significant for her, she said, because he had been a member of the Security Force - the special police force that had had a reputation for being ruthless and violent in their enforcement of apartheid.  She went on to say that he was now using all the political knowledge he had to the advantage of the township people that he had earlier used against them.  That brief interchange shot through me.  Here I was riding in a car owned by someone who I had earlier been protesting against, who is now working equally as effectively for the same rights and freedom I, in my little way, had been championing.

Many of you, and many, many more in our society are still not able to participate fully in all the rights and privileges of our society.  Some of you still have to remain in secret about who you are and who you love.  You can’t have full voice in the denomination to which you belong.  You are not able to claim the same rights for your loved one that heterosexuals have.  And now you are being told again that marriage in the State of Ohio is only for a man and a woman.  You know all the limitations and discriminations you faced.  I don’t have to repeat them.   But  I  was  reminded  in South Africa that in spite of the depth of injustice and cruelty, there is hope for a new day.  

I share this experience to remind us, who seek for justice in society and full inclusion in our denomination, that God is still at work in and through the structures of society.  We can take heart.  We can voice thanks for change, for progress.  While we aren’t where we want to be, we aren’t where we used to be.  And radical changes like those in South Africa can happen.  It took many years and lives, but there is a new political reality that is beginning to change lives.  Generation after generation sought these changes.  I wonder which generation represented in the service today will be able to celebrate the new day we seek?  

God loves justice!  We need to keep focused on claiming that it is God who has made us, and we are God’s people. You and I, gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, transgender, can claim with the Psalmist that we are, each of us, all of us, made by God and in God’s image.  As we offer thanksgiving for that Biblical truth, let us renew our resolve to live in hope through the struggle of realizing our dream.