After the service today, at which I preached the sermon in the post below, I Don't Want to Hear It, the visiting daughter of a church member took me aside and said, "Your sermon called me to be a prophet."
"Really?" I wondered what was coming next.
"Yes, I felt called to show you these verses."
She showed me the following written on the announcement sheet:
"God is the same yesterday, today and forever."
Above it were printed neatly two scripture citations, which I saw only briefly and can remember only as "2 Cor" and "Lev."
"Thank you," I said, and shook her hand, and she took her paper, to my surprise, and moved on to the vestibule.
What was that? I had to think about it. Ah, well, in the sermon I did use the John Robinson quote about there being "more light and truth to break forth." I did describe in a number of ways our discomfort with prophets who take us to a new place. And I celebrated this particular church's inclusion of LGBT people, and I wondered about Don't Ask Don't Tell, and I generally marched around the mine field, for some people anyway, of coming to understand the world differently.
I can't find the verse she appeared to be quoting in the books she cited. Maybe I'm missing it, but I believe that claim is made in Hebrews. Maybe she was directing me to something else, in a more subtle effort at prophecy. Since she included Leviticus, that's probably the best guess, a side-swipe against acceptance.
I'm surprised she was surprised, since her mother's church has a significant membership of LGBT people, and one of them served Communion to her today.
God may be the same, whenever and whenever and whenever, and we could argue the finer points of that all day long--in fact, feel free, shall we talk Process Theology?--but people are not, and if she had actually listened to the sermon, she would have heard me say that God shows us more as we become ready to understand it.
But I guess she didn't want to hear it.
