It is good to be back in this pulpit, the last time was on Easter a few years back.  And to also preach next Sunday while Pastor Susan is refreshing her spirit with family and friends. 

We just read the only passage in the scriptures about Jesus’ life as a youth. One solitary episode how Jesus when twelve, and acting a little naughty, snuck off to visit the temple to listen and engage the religious scholars.  And it is only found in Luke.  After the happy reunion with his distraught parents, I have always appreciated the words Luke uses to end this story.  He writes, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and humanity.”  That is to say, Jesus grew up.  He evolved.  He was not a pre-programmed heavenly child after all.  He had to take life head on and figure it out as best he could.  As Jane Carter would sing, “one day at a time.”  And he did it well. 

Alfred North Whitehead has said, “The life of Christ is not an exhibition of over-ruling power.  Its glory is for those who can discern it…Its power lies in its absence of force.  It has the decisiveness of supreme ideal, and that is why the history of the world divides at this point of time.”  Yes, his is a life the world has not yet caught up to.  In Jesus, humanity took a quantum jump.

My message today will be rather personal.   It too is about growing up, my own struggle.  So, with your indulgence, I want to lift before you my personal journey and how I have had to endlessly evolve.  In some ways I apologize for doing so. A preacher ought to be very cautious about being the subject of his own sermon and when doing so keep in mind what Reinhold Niebuhr said of sin. “Sin is the result of undue self-regard – the general inclination of all persons to overestimate their virtues, powers, and achievements.”

And I might add this is not just the sin of persons but of nations and especially are own country which needs more than a dose of humility.

It is further clear that Jesus felt undue self regard, that is, self-righteousness, was the cause of all the hatred and factionalism of his day, as it is today, and it is probably why he seemed more at home with sinners and prodigals, than with the righteous.

There are two ways to repent of such self-righteousness in our selves, writes Patricia Williams, a specialist in the theory of evolution.  “The first is to acquire a healthy skepticism about one’s own rectitude and that of one’s group.  The second is to look for truth and goodness in those who have different opinions and customs.” 

With that good advice in mind, let me share some aspects of my own life…what may be called my continuous crisis of becoming.  Please keep your own evolution in mind. 

As hopefully for all, my spiritual journey began early in a loving home.  I grew up in an extended family of eleven, which including my six brothers and sisters.  That we were all loved gave us a sense of self worth. It was an underserved grace, a gift which many persons sadly do not receive. Folk singer Pete Seeker was right about raising children, “Pour in the love and it will come out from them.”  We were loved.

We were not strong churchgoers but I was baptized at the age of eight in a Russian Baptist Church in Lansing, Michigan.  By that time I was convinced that my most significant hero, divine being, friend, companion, call him what you may, was the man, Jesus of Nazareth.  He was like an older brother, one of real flesh that I could always count on and hopefully emulate.

But for years through high school and early college, which was near by, my Jesus relationship gave me no great theological clarity or direction for my own larger journey.  I left college and enlisted into the army parachute corps just as the Korean War was ebbing.  I needed to, as must we all, leave home.  The military became a self-imposed exile. 

Yet, I was rewarded by this misadventure.  Early on as I began sixteen weeks of infantry training, a chaplain gave me a pocket size New Testament.  I carried it with me during those long days of boot camp, reading it during breaks, and memorizing parts, especially Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

These were the same words, I later would learn, that inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  And they lit a small spark in me. Surely it was because what I was reading in Jesus’ sermon, and what I was being indoctrinated with in my military training, was strikingly dissimilar.  It seemed I needed a new purpose for my life.  I had been assigned to the post general’s office, a cushy job, but I soon asked, and it was granted, to work as a chaplain’s assistant with the chaplain’s office.

I won’t bother with the details but about midway through my military service, I finally felt a sense of purpose, a calling, and I made an application for the ministry in the Presbyterian Church. I had joined the local Presbyterian Church in high school although what attracted me there was the shallow reason that the church had a basketball team. 

But by now I had a better reason.  I especially liked what the Presbyterian Church was saying on social matters, and right at that time, printed in the New York Times, was a letter by the Presbyterian Church denouncing the fear mongering tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  It was the first ecclesiastical body to do so. The recent movie “Good Night, And Good Luck” focused on that issue and I had vainly hoped that George Clooney would have mentioned the Presbyterians when he wrote the score for the film.  We could use some good press lately.

But just as I was to leave the military, I spoke to one of the senior chaplains whose faith I was not too sure of.  I asked if he felt born again.  He answered that he had been born again, and again, and again.  His answer puzzled me since it was not the orthodox answer. I would soon discover, however, that what he said was exactly what I would experience for my own life. So with enthusiasm, I returned to finish college and then to San Francisco to attend seminary.  Jesus and I were finally on a roll!

But the greatest changes that would occur were during my various places of ministry:  First, at San Quentin Prison, and then on to five churches in California, Michigan, Wisconsin and finally, here at 103 Taft.  

What I learned through these forty-five years is that to remain the same is to renounce existence.  As Susan rightly said last week “not to change is to die.”  Or as Cardinal Newman, a wise Roman Catholic had said, “Life is change and to be perfect is to change often.” 

In seminary I soon learned that religious dogma could not be written in stone; that religious orthodoxy was far too rigid; hat theology had to always be open-ended since its subject is God, and who can claim finality about the mind of God except those who have created God in their own image?   As some one has said, “The sacred is an infinite mystery and its truth is still being revealed.” (Nurya Parish) Or even as one of our hymns warns us, “The Spirit floweth free, high surging where it will.”

Perhaps what happened to me these years in the ministry can best be summed up in another hymn by the wonderful Unitarian hymn writer, Samuel Longfellow, brother of Henry Wadsworth.  He writes in his hymn, “O Life That Maketh All Things New”

The seekers of the light are one:

                                                One in freedom of the truth,

                                                One in the joy of paths untrod,

                                                One in the soul’s perennial youth,

                                                One in the larger thought of God.

What I was beginning to realize that the life “that maketh all things new, was that of Jesus, himself.                                                              

Well, my first ministry on paths untrod, was, as mentioned, to serve as a chaplain in San Quentin Prison while in seminary.  What I learned is that prisons are not great places for rehabilitation and our growing prison population, the highest of any country, is a blight on our nation’s soul.  And let add here much thanks to the work of our own Mike Shyrock and this church’s support of the Kairos prison ministry.

Frustrated by life behind bars, I asked the senior chaplain, who ministered to all those on death row, why was it that what I studied about rehabilitation wasn’t happening here?  While he was sympathetic, and I admired his own efforts, he gave me some sage advice, warning that I would soon discover that all the ideal values I had learned in seminary would not be necessarily true in the local church. 

He was right.  Institutions, as necessary as they are, are not faultless.  But working within institutions, I learned, is a must. 

Unilateralism, as we have found in our nation’s present foreign policy, is dangerous.  How wonderful, but late, our administration has decided to follow the Geneva accords regarding combatants and even belatedly finds worth again in the United Nations.   

At my first church, Mt. Olive, in the Los Angeles area, I learned that congregations, while not perfect could be wonderful agents of social change.  I came there understanding the three P’s of church life:  To Praise God, to be in Prayer with God, and to Plot for the Reign of God on earth.  

In that church in the early sixties, racism was the main challenge.  It was obvious that we needed to Plot against it. California at that time was growing like a weed.  Adjacent to the church a whole city had developed with a population of 14,000 within a decade. But there was not one African-American living there!  They were excluded due to a law the realtors had backed under the guise that anyone should be able to sell their house to only those they decided were acceptable.  

Our little local group of clergy decided, as did others around that state, that something must be done.  After attempts at persuasion, it was decided in our church to confront the issue head on with a press conference, which surprisingly got a lot of press.  The realtors were quite angry and one called me the very next day.  “Why didn’t you consult with us before you went to the press?”  A little intimated, I could only reply “why didn’t you first check with the religious community before you developed your racially prejudicial policy?”   It was then I wore my very first campaign button, “Would you let you daughter marry a realtor?”  I even sent a button to my realtor Father back in Michigan.  Thankfully, California’s law assuring housing equality came a year later – a policy of hospitality. 

This was also the time that Martin Luther King was reminding us all that the most segregated hour of the week was Sunday at 11:00 AM.

And such segregation was also apparent in that church, an all white congregation of some 800 members. But it was there I learned something about hospitality that still brings me to tears.  As we were assembling for worship, a tall black woman, the first ever, came in and sat in the third pew.  At this early service no one sat that close and she would certainly feel isolated, her back to the rest of the congregation.  But an incredible kind of miracle happened just as I gave the call to worship.   Two separate couples came forward and moved into the pew on both sides of the woman.  

That is what a sanctuary should mean, a welcoming place, “A house of prayer for all the peoples,” to quote someone whose whole life was an open table of hospitality.

That congregation taught me a lot, as most will if we clergy will let them.  And I might add that the reverse hopefully is true. 

In my second church, Baldwin Park, also in the Los Angeles area in the 60’s, I learned even more that it was not a question if the church should be involved in the political, social and economic orders of the world but it was only a question of how.  After all, this is the only world in which to exercise our faith.  I began to realize we were meant to bring Heaven to Earth, not Earth to Heaven.  I also began to realize that the common hope of praying for Jesus’ Second Coming was off the mark for several reasons. 

First, because it neglected the present time which is where Jesus located God’s activity, not in some future hope.  Second, I realized Jesus’ first coming was sufficient and our fault was that we had hardly appropriated it.   And third, those who anxiously wait for his second coming have wrapped it up in the  false idea that God’s wrath will be unleashed through a cosmic war of good over evil, with Jesus at the head of God’s army. 

Jesus didn’t share that dream at all or did he believe in such a vengeful, killer God. Jesus loved this world and knew God did as well. God’s concern, Jesus thought, was for us to ensure equity for all in society, to love the unlovable, not to assure the survival of only the fittest, or to divide the world between the good and the evil.    The only wrath to come will be solely due to our own inhumanity.     

That church felt the same way.  That is why some of our church elders reminded me that speaking against the war in Vietnam was not enough, so the Session secured the civic hall to conduct a war protest and brought in a decorated Green Beret as our main speaker.  After I introduced him, tear gas bombs were thrown by an opposition group.  The rally failed but I learned that the church must take risks if ever it was to be a light or a salt in this world.  Private faith must become public.

This church was also upset that at that time the state made getting contraceptives difficult to receive.  So the Session decided, a first, to hold a Plan Parenthood Clinic in the church and we advertised its welcome broadly. At the same time we became aware of many abandoned women with problem pregnancies.  Since abortions then were against the law in the US, we helped organize a safe clinic for them in near by Mexico.   

Also the cold war had intensified, so the Church was pleased to send me on what would be the first of three trips to the Soviet Union knowing reconciliation could not take place without relationships.  It was a small effort but it changed me.  In this church I had so many rebirths I could hardly count them. 

But again, as Whitehead has said, “Stagnation is the deadly foe of morality.”  Religious bodies, and our own souls, must not become encrusted with mildew as Camilla would say.

In my third church, Westminster, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I learned my theology must change or I had better leave the ministry.  I had an interesting lesson there.  In the church I was serving I taught a class on the variety of theological positions, offering my critique of each one. 

When I discussed liberalism I used the writings of Duncan Littlefair, a nationally known radical minister whose church happened to be few blocks from where I was located.  I meant to be critical of what he had to say.  It seemed most of that city called him not Littlefair but the Reverend Little Faith.   But as I studied his sermons, I realized he had more truth and grace about him then most of my colleagues or me.  I would later apologize to my congregation for bearing false witness against him, and told the congregation they would do well to get to know him. Even so, it was I who needed to broaden my faith. 

This lead me back to seminary in Chicago for doctoral studies in process theology, the very seminary where Duncan himself was schooled.  There I was born again into a theology that was far more in sync with the scientific world view than my own Christian Neo-Orthodoxy.  Fountain Street, a liberal independent church where Duncan was the minister, became my model for a congregation from then on, but within the Presbyterian Church.    

In my fourth church, Linn in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I learned money isn’t everything and that real humans come in all economic conditions.  Lake Geneva was a very wealthy community, surrounded by farmers eking out a living.   I discovered that financial wealth did not guarantee happiness or wholeness, and that being poor did not mean poverty of soul.  I had learned the latter in my own family.  What I discovered, when we were able to bring both groups together, the have and the have nots into one congregation, that we were all mutually enriched as children of God, and so would be our ministry.

In 1983 I came to my fifth and last church, Mt. Auburn. Here I was reborn in several ways.  My first rebirth had to do with the question of truth and authority.  Early in my pastorate here I did a series of sermons on “The Ten Commandments for Today.” 

A description of the series was printed on the bulletin board in the narthex.  One day I looked at it and discovered someone from the congregation had scribbled on it, “The Ten Commandments According to Hal Porter.”  Well, I didn’t need to be told I wasn’t Moses but my critic made a point beyond indicating a disdain for my preaching.

So from that moment on I sought to make it clear when in the pulpit that what I had to say about the Christian gospel was according to Hal Porter.  Oh, I believed that what I had to say was combatable with Jesus’ teaching, but I wanted everyone to know that I was just a human being, and no one would go to hell if they didn’t agree with me.

I think that is something this present congregation can resonate with.  You would not expect any person from this pulpit to speak with any other authority other than them selves. 

The Bible is often referred to as the Holy Scriptures, but that does not mean that every word in them is divine. And as you also know, the Christian scriptures begin with the four Gospels – gospel meaning good news.  What is often overlooked is that the full titles in the Bible are The Gospel according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, and according to John. 

This implies that they are each different, and they are.  Even though the central subject in each is Jesus, they each are composed by individual writers, and we may say, by different theological thinkers, with their own theological biases out different historical situations and they all treat Jesus differently. 

People talk today there may be schism in the Presbyterian Church, especially after our recent General Assembly, because it is obvious that we all don’t think a like.  Well neither did Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and we could add Paul and Peter and James.

Beyond this, the larger lesson is that Jesus, being such a remarkable individual, was hard to define even in the Bible.  And so I had to learn a new thing, that there really is no one orthodox version of Jesus even in the scriptures.  Jesus cannot be saddled into one fixed creed.  And churches that claim they alone have the truth of scriptures I find are churches to shun for their message only leads to factionalism and exclusion.  In any case, we must remember what Jesus said about throwing stones.

This, too, is one of your congregation’s important principles, as you have so practiced.  That we must be open to ideas and philosophies and values different from our own, with the possibility that from them we may change our minds. 

Of course there have been many rebirths here but the major one was regarding homophobia, a condition we all have been conflicted with in some measure. But it was an issue more than any other that changed my life as well as this congregation.  I really don’t need to tell this church about this but I must say a few things.  It was great epiphany when one of our Elders, Nancy Brock, was asked and singular wrote the following. It was recommended to the Session and became the heart of our inclusion policy.  Her statement brought us tears: 

We affirm that gays and lesbians are part of God’s good creation and they, no less than heterosexuals, are meant to enjoy God’s gifts of love, joy, and intimacy.  All who seek and receive God’s love are welcomed as full participants in the life and worship of Christ’s church without having to deny or hide their sexual orientation.  Therefore, we are gratefully open to the service and leadership of gays and lesbians including those called to ordained positions in our congregation.

In 1991, the year of its adoption, we were unaware of any homosexual persons in this congregation, but we knew they had every reason to doubt that they would be welcomed in our denomination. That policy has changed this congregation forever and for the better.   Even as this non-discrimination policy has been sorely challenged, from within and without, thankfully you have continued it.  You remain a head light in the More Light movement. 

You know the blessings of this story for it is your story.  But no one was blessed more than I, except I knew I also had to change.  Oh, I had long dealt with the inclusion of homosexuality in the church, but only as a justice issue.  I, like so many, having not known gays personally, had not really wrestled with my own homophobia, and I needed to change.  And what changed it were the hundreds of gay and lesbians that brought their faith to our ministry and to Mt Auburn’s open table.

I won’t add to what you already know but one anecdote I like to tell when I am preaching elsewhere is that Mt Auburn having been closely watched in the media, that The Cincinnati Enquirer in one of their editions falsely printed that I was a “practicing homosexual.”  The paper later apologized, although I was hardly offended, and they even offered me a column to write about our church’s inclusion policy. 

But on Sunday, the day after the news story broke, one of our members during worship and the sharing of joys and concerns, got up and said, “Pastor, several of us want you to know that we are willing to help you with the practicing part!” 

As the wonderful William Sloan Coffin said about the time he spent with gay people, “familiarity (with gay persons) has bred only respect, never contempt.”  How true! 

Yes, life is a continuous crisis of becoming!  It is to be born again, and again, and again.

Now I am a pastor emeritus.  A proud distinction it is but only because of who you have been and are.  And I rejoice in our new Pastor Susan and her excellent and embracing understanding of the Gospel.  Her spirit gives a bounce to us all.

What I am not amazed at, but I delight in as I sit in these pews apart from any official role, is the great and willing individual talents of faith that are more than evident here.   The leadership you offer both within the Presbyterian Church, as Jean earlier announced, and in the community at large, is far-reaching and so necessary.

I can say these things to you because I have no special agenda except I believe that they reflect what you reflect, a sincere desire to serve God’s unbounded love for all persons.

So that has been my journey so far.  All along the way I have come to realize that the essence if sin is arrested self-development.  That sin is a form of laziness, the failure to become, to grow, to enlarge one’s soul, to trust in all circumstances God’s love.

Yes, we all fail even at that, but thankfully, as Oscar Wilde reminds us “Every saint has a past; every sinner has a future.” So let us not despair.        

If I were to define a Christian it would be simply one who seeks to follow in the path that Jesus took and to serve the God he served.  I am still compelled by that life.  But that I know is your same witness and your witness continues to encourage my own birthing.

Yes, we are Presbyterians even as we have a quarrel and will continue to oppose some of its stated policies.   But it is a lover’s quarrel, and there is much that remains good in our thousands of churches. 

Next Sunday I want to speak of the state of religion in this the freest of society – what it means to live under a secular government and yet to know our faith comes from God.  The text I suggest we think about comes from Jesus who said, “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that is God’s.”     

Certainly we are all disturbed by this world which is too filled with hatred and factionalism.  Events of this past week show how dangerous this world has become.  But let us continue to be disturbed even more by the immeasurable grace of Jesus’ life who died not for the world sins but because of them.  And let us who would bear his name only look at ourselves and pray that we are still in the birthing process, as our hymn suggests,

       still looking for more light,

and from new truths,

  and on new paths,

    and hopefully with a soul still young,

realizing there are greater thoughts of God to be known, and by them, to be re-born once again, and again, and again.