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Open to Life Rev. Mark Stringer First Unitarian Church of Des Moines September 8 & 9, 2007
I never cease to be amazed at my work.
When I chose the
theme of today’s service, the first of a
three-part series based on the responsive reading
with which we close the service most weeks, little
did I know that in the days leading up to this
weekend, I would get to live these very themes
myself in an historic way: prepared to serve.
A week ago Thursday, around 4pm, my wife Susan and three-year old daughter, Leah, left to spend the night in Ames. We are preparing to move down the street and are getting our house ready to sell. A photographer was scheduled to come to our house Friday at 5 and I needed to get a lot done before then, most of which involved smelly cleaners and paint, which Susan and her allergies would not appreciate.
So from 4pm Thursday to about 3am Friday morning, I shampooed all the carpets, mopped the floors and painted the bathroom. I went to bed exhausted.
I awoke around 9:30 Friday morning and stumbled into the bathroom to scrape the paint off the windows. A few minutes later Mary at the church rang my phone. Two men were going to be calling me about officiating their wedding that morning.
I knew about the district court’s ruling about 17 hours earlier that said to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Iowa was unconstitutional, but I did not expect to get a call so soon. Sure enough, one of the men, Tim, called me moments later asking me if I would be willing to marry them. “Of course” was my response, as I recall, even as I acknowledged that it was not the normal way I do things. I asked Tim a few questions about their age, where they were from, how long they had been together. I was a little troubled by how young they were and how rushed it all seemed, but I knew that I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t say no not because I could be certain about their particular relationship or commitment. I couldn’t say no because of all the other same-sex couples I know who have been denied the right to legally marry for so long…and the over 1100 federal and over 500 states rights and benefits that go along with a legal marriage. Immediately I knew that this was a big deal and I wanted to do it right, so I suggested that we meet at the church at noon. That would give me time to collect my thoughts, prepare a ceremony and, uh…take a shower.
Tim was a little hesitant to wait, saying that the press wouldn’t be happy about it.
“Oh,” I said, “You have press with you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem,” I responded. Of course there were press with them. But still, I was concerned that this would become a media circus.
We hung up and I started thinking about what I had to do to get prepared. A cup of coffee might be nice….
A minute or two later, the phone rang again. “We have to do it now,” Tim and then Sean said. “There is going to be a stay issued. We have to do it now.” I could hear the panic in their voices. The window of opportunity was closing.
I said, “Well, you could come to my house…but, you know, I’m not clean…I’m not dressed!”
“Mark, you can marry us in your underwear,” was the reply.
Now that would have made for an interesting news story!
About five minutes later, I was in my laundry room trying to find a clean dress shirt when there was a knock at my door. I yelled out, “I’m getting dressed.”
“You’ve got to hurry” was all I could hear.
I gave up on the dress shirt and threw on the closest things I could find, a polo shirt, a pair of khakis and my sandals. I grabbed my stole and walked out into my front yard, where over a dozen reporters and cameras were waiting.
There was a kind of manic energy present as I walked over to meet Tim and Sean for the first time. And as the cameras followed our every move, I quickly realized that this was not only history in the making, but that I was going to be expected to actually say something, that the cameras would be recording it, and that people would see it.
You can view what transpired next on the web, as WHO has the “raw footage” posted on their site. And raw this ceremony was. Like when I called Sean “Joseph”, or when I realized, in a moment of pure surprise, that the date that this historic event was taking place was the same day that 11 years earlier I had exchanged marriage vows with Susan.
“Check it out,” I proclaimed. “It’s my anniversary!”
Susan loved seeing that clip on the news.
I barely offered the couple a ceremony. Time was of the essence. I mostly just signed the certificate and had them exchange their rings and then they were off.
At least one of the reporters said, “Is that it?”
“Today,” I said “is about the legal document.”
And it was.
But we all know that what happened on my front lawn that morning was about much more than that.
It was about Tim and Sean’s commitment to one another and the resourcefulness it took for them to be legally recognized.
It was about all the same-sex couples I know who have been denied their civil rights for so long.
It was about my calling as a minister, my calling to work for and defend love and justice in all forms.
And it was about the religion that we share as Unitarian Universalists. A religion that does not require that we all share the same statements of belief, but rather that we all keep ourselves as open as we can to life itself. Not life as it is portrayed in any given scripture or through any particular religious doctrine or interpretation, but life as it is lived by our fellow humans. Life as it is lived.
The fact is, I knew that unlike many if not most of my colleagues in other denominations, I could preside over this wedding with the blessing of most of the people in this congregation and in UU congregations all over the U.S. I did not have to wonder if I was going against the doctrine of the church, of if I would jeopardize my ministry. I believe that any UU minister would have done what I did that day, given the same circumstances. Ever since I began my ministry, I have been happy to accept the call to this church and to the Unitarian Universalist ministry. But I doubt I will ever be as proud as I was that morning to be a UU minister in Des Moines, Iowa!
About fifteen minutes after the couple and their entourage had arrived, everyone was gone, headed down to the courthouse in a race against time. A race I’m glad to say that they won. I called Susan to tell her what had happened in our front yard, on our anniversary no less, and we both decided it was the best present we could have given to each other. Before our conversation ended, the calls started coming from all over the nation. I spent the bulk of the next four hours on the phone talking to reporters, sharing my gospel of marriage equality over and over again. What a gift it was!
I got dozens of e-mails, too.
Most were supportive. Some were poignant.
Maria wrote, I saw you marry the gay couple on TV, and I'm proud of you. Although I am straight ("not that there's anything wrong with that"), I proudly support gay and lesbian rights. Part of my conversion occurred when I saw the happy faces of the couples getting married in Massachusetts when their window of opportunity opened.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
I thought of all those who would be seeing the happy pictures of Tim and Sean. And all the other conversions that might be taking place as a result.
Kelley from Iowa City wrote, As children we all grow up hearing our parents, foster parents, friends and other relatives talk about when we'll get married when we get older. Few people know that they are gay or lesbian as children, and even if they suspect, don't realize that they will soon be pushed outside of their culture and denied the rights and responsibilities of family life as adults.
I got choked up reading that one. I thought about six-year-old Ellery McCallister, asking me a few weeks ago as she left the auditorium with her father, if it is really ok for two women to marry. I told her that in our church it is about love, so it really is ok. And I thought about my own daughter, not quite four…how fascinated she is with weddings right now, how much she likes to pretend to marry Harry Potter and what it might be like for her in Iowa if she were to realize at some point that she feels more drawn to Hermione Granger. And I smiled as I acknowledged that, at long last, in Iowa at least, things were moving away from unnecessary discrimination and towards equality…towards love.
But I want to tell you about one more e-mail exchange I had, because in some ways, it was the most hopeful story of the whole weekend.
Not long after the news of the ceremony broke, someone named Cary wrote me: “How does it fell to be a demonic little bastard…meaning that God is NOT your father!”
What’s so hopeful about that, you ask?
The hopeful part came later that day. I had not yet responded, but I got another e-mail from Cary anyway, which read: I owe you an apology, and a big one at that, for sending you my comments this morning. I sincerely apologize for that. I thought you were a Christian minister, and my reference to God was one to the Christian God. I have since learned that you are a minister of the Unitarian faith, and, as such, I am in no position to judge your actions or beliefs. I am not in any position to judge what happens to anyone after this life. God is the judge in that sense. I do believe that I am in a position to judge actions taken by Christians in the name of Christ, and when someone professing to be a Christian minister acts contrary to the standards of his office, I felt authorized to make comments. Anyway, none of that applies to you, so I was quite out of line in sending scathing/insulting remarks.
peace, cary
Even as I acknowledged to myself that some of my Christian colleagues would not agree with Cary’s perspective, and that his emphasis on judgment went against my own understandings of Jesus’s teachings, I wrote back:
“I love this country! Thanks for acknowledging my freedom of religion, just as I acknowledge yours :-)”
Peace to you, too.
Mark
In the end, you see, we know this wasn’t really about religion. Sure, we get to be proud that it happened in our denomination, but it really wasn’t about religion at all. This was about civil rights.
So peace to us all. May each of us, in the days and weeks ahead…find reason to be open to each other, open to how life is truly lived, open to life itself.
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