Sermon Tone Analysis

Gospel Reading

Hebrew Scripture Reading

Exodus 4:10-

Epistle Reading

Romans 8:1-

Ephesians

Ludicrous

Moses with all his excuses for why he couldn’t do it.

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Jeremiah, called at a young age to be a leader in a community that hurt him deeply.

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Jonah who literally ran the other direction, got caught, delivered the word he was given, then GOT MAD when the people he gave the word to actually repented.

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Deborah, who refused to be written off as a leader because she was a woman.

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Today, we acknowledge the Ascension - the day Jesus went back up to heaven after hanging out a bit here on Earth after Easter.

It’s a crazy story.

The gospels are at a loss as to how to handle it.

Luke just basically says, “Jesus went back to heaven.

And they were pretty flabbergasted.”

He has no idea what else to say about it.

It’s a fantastic example of how God really loves a crazy story with a twist at the end.

Saul, a hot, angry mess until God literally knocked him off his ass to get his attention.

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I sympathize with these people because I have made a thousand excuses like Moses did.

I have run the other direction as hard as I can.

I’ve been written off as a leader for being a woman.

I’ve been a hot, angry mess who needed a good, swift kick in the right direction.

I’ve been hurt deeply by the church.

I have been asked to share today about the journey that has led me to this time and place - standing before you all on this Sunday when you are faced with a choice about the future of this church, the partnership between St. Andrew’s and Emsworth Churches, and your choice of leadership moving forward into that future and that partnership.

And when I reflect on that journey, the first thing that comes to my mind is how utterly ludicrous it is that I’m standing here before you today.

This, friends, is a crazy story with a twist at the end.

It’s not that you are ludicrous.

I’ve told you a thousand times and I’ll tell you a thousand more: you are wonderful and I am so spoiled and overjoyed to be here.

It’s that I am ludicrous.

I’m a ridiculous choice for God to have set before you today.

And at the same time. . . it makes sense that the journey so far has led me here.

God has such a funny way of weaving things together.

I was born just 6 weeks before my dad graduated from Gordon Conwell Seminary and began his first call as a Presbyterian minster near Burgettstown.

I know, I know.

We went back 40 years, but I’m going to skim alot.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago when we talked about names, my first name is from the New Testament Greek for “Grace” and my maiden name is from the Scottish for “clergy”.

I married the son of the church organist at my dad’s second call.

When we were little, I would chase him around the church and insist that we’d be married someday.

It wasn’t the last time he had to admit I was right.

I couldn’t be more Presbyterian if I wanted to.

I grew up in the church.

Church has always been an extension of home for me.

My dad was a Presbyterian Minister for many years and my best friend growing up -

even after we moved to Kansas when I was 6 - was the son of the organist from Dormont church where my dad served for a few years.

I used to chase him around and tell him I’d marry him someday.

During the long hot summers in Kansas, my sister and I would wander back and forth across the street between the church and the manse, playing hide and go seek, riding our bikes, climbing onto the church roof.

When I was eight years old, some missionaries came to our church to do a presentation.

The other kids all wandered off to pilfer cookies or climb onto the church roof, but weird little kid that I was, I was riveted.

At some point during that presentation, I clearly heard God say, “You’re going to do that some day.”

Until that night, I’d wanted to be a dump truck driver, but sometimes God just sends us in directions we didn’t expect.

Throughout the years growing up, I bounced between remembering what God had said so clearly to me that night when the missionaries were at our church and wanting to be a veterinarian, or an aerospace engineer, or a star on Broadway.

I liked leading bible studies at youth group and leading worship at camp with my trusty guitar.

But the older I got, the more distant that voice got.

I was 16 the first time I felt the world really crash down around me. We’d been in Kansas for 10 years - most of my childhood.

My parents sat my sister and I down one day and simply told us “We’re getting a divorce.”

We weren’t given a reason, just a timeline.

In two weeks, we were leaving everything my sister and I knew and moving back to the motherland - Pittsburgh.

Those two weeks were full of patronizing pity stares from everyone in town (or at least it felt like that) and whispers behind our backs.

Our parents immediately stopped going to church, but I decided to keep going to youth group.

I’d grown up with the kids in that youth group.

They were like siblings and I only had two weeks left with them.

But the first time at youth group after my parents’ announcement, one of my friends said, “I can’t believe it.

I never would have thought your dad is gay.”

It was then I understood the stares and the whispers and why neither of my parents would ever step foot in that church again.

In 1995, not even the PC(USA) was very kind to the LGBTQ community - no church was.

Suddenly, the church (not just our local congregation but the church as a whole) that had nurtured me my whole life saw my father as a dirty outcast and my mom and sister and I as some sort of weird, broken, collateral damage.

And I found out that my friend’s information was right.

That was when I decided church wasn’t worth the effort.

I told God to take a hike, I wasn’t interested anymore.

That voice I had heard when I was little was now just a whisper in the distance.

And I’d had enough of whispers.

That voice I had heard when I was little was now just a whisper in the distance.

And I’d had enough of whispers.

I kept going to church after we moved back to Pennsylvania, but only because Mom made me.

I put on a pretty believable show, but that’s all it was.

On the outside, I appeared to be adjusting OK to the move, but on the inside. . . on the inside I was angry.

I was angry and hurt and traumatized.

The thing that happens when we are angry, hurt, and traumatized is that until we heal from that trauma, allow the wounds to close, let go of the anger, we are increasingly vulnerable to more traumas.

My senior year in high school, having long since lost all meaningful contact with the organist’s son from Dormont, I started dating a guy who was the dictionary definition of bad news.

He was angry and he took that anger out on everyone around him in hurtful, manipulative, and sometimes physically violent ways.

But I was broken and confused.

I had no confidence, no hope, no vision of anything better.

So when I was 20, I married this Bad News.

When I was 21, I had my daughter and accepted that this was my life now.

The voice I’d heard when I was 8 was no longer even a whisper.

I had put on headphones and drowned it out completely.

I was going to church at a little church down the street from where I was living, but that was just because my Mom had guilted me into it.

My daughter should grow up in the church too, right?

I was going to church at a little church down the street from where I was living, but that was still just because my Mom guilted me into it.

Those were the loneliest years of my life.

Worse than losing my surrogate siblings at the church I grew up in.

Worse than being uprooted from the only home I remembered.

I had lost myself.

I had lost God.

And I didn’t really care.

I was still going to church at a little church down the street from where I was living, but that was still just because my Mom guilted me into it.

I was still mostly just putting on a good show.

I wasn’t allowed to talk to my friends much, but one day my best friend managed to call at just the right time and I was able to talk to her openly for a short while.

I don’t know what gave me the courage to tell her about the screaming, the objects hurtling through the air, the time he pushed me down the stairs, the night I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow and the bedroom door locked because I genuinely thought he was going to try to kill me that night.