Homily by Jonathan Moore given at St. Thomas' Parish Taize Eucharist, August 9, 2009

My faith has taken me many places. The Episcopal church I grew up in Perrysburg Ohio is less than half a mile from the house I grew up in. The same house my mom grew up in. The house my grandfather built. It was only .4 miles away, but we still drove to church.  I wasn't immediately drawn to life at the church. I was shy and surrounded by the offspring of Perrysburg's upper crust. The mayor's daughter sometimes graced my Sunday School class with her presence. I was really into the stuff that happened after Sunday School. We did plays, I sang a solo for old folks at the Christmas Tea and there was punch. I'd spend summers making mosaics and learning about Christianity around the world. My imagination zoomed. 

Junior high came and I had to go into church with my parents. Suddenly I was carrying a cross, wearing a robe, talking with kids six years older than me about tough issues. The transition didn't come naturally. I've always looked younger than I am and it didn't serve me well in junior high. Eventually I warmed up to the youth group leader. A woman older than my mother, but younger than my grandmother. She had a big spirit, high hopes for us and always seemed to know more about teenage life than I could ever give her credit for. My faith began to really take shape with her help. She knew we were sheltered but curious and compassionate. We would take trips, pilgrimages to New York and Washington alternating every other spring. We slept on the floor of St. John the Divine and Christ Church in Alexandria. How odd that Episcopal churches could hold more than about 80 people. They could be in cities and you could have no idea who was praying next to you. Between Broadway plays and the horror that is the Air and Space Museum food court, we would learn about gargoyles, talk about our feelings and meditate. 

In high school, I didn't have much of a social life so I had lots of time for other things. Leading the acolytes, teaching Sunday School, two tours as a voting member of the vestry, Diocesan Convention delegate. I sat on the vestry during a period of discernment. We hired external consultants, established forums for every issue you could imagine and tried desperately to revive attendance and bring kids back to the church. We got a website. I loved all of it. It made me feel like I was valued, competent and a part of something real. I made my first (of now many) lawyer friends.  

Around the same time, the rector's sermons really started making sense. Having spent a few months with Jean Paul Sartre, ideas quickly consumed me. Morality and God's mission for me intrigued and motivated me. I started volunteering at an interfaith housing program. I met a former prostitute and played with her children for a night. We had dinner, shared our stories and I felt a connection. Just because I hadn't met anyone like her before didn't mean that we didn't come from the same place or share some common ideals. I walked away different. If my 14 year old self could open up to a prostitute before I could go on a date, I knew this God thing must be worth my time. I came to appreciate what I see as God's vision for us: that we all may be one. 

One summer I went to the hills of western Virginia to work on houses for poor folk. There were rocking chairs, banjos, and lots of smiles. We painted and built a porch. God's work could be done with your hands too. As Christians we are compelled to actively seek out brothers and sisters in need. The good we can do and the connection we can make are the closest things to truth and the purest manifestions of God's love that I have experienced to date. 

Soon I was getting a lot of questions in coffee hour. What year was I, oh, time to start thinking about college. What will you study? I had no idea, but I was excited for it. My youth group leader asked me to spend a summer shadowing another rector in the Diocese. Wheels were turning. A few years earlier, I came out to my parents. They weren't really surprised, but they wanted me to keep it to myself for the time. Maybe it was hormonal and really I shouldn't make life any more difficult that it needed to be. So I waited. I found out that the welcoming feeling I got at church, the pleasure I got from exchanging the peace didn't necessarily need to end if I came out. The Episcopal Church was the right place for me. They seemed to know it too. I scheduled a meeting to discuss the church's view of homosexuality with my rector. I sat down in the big cushy chair for the first time and quickly asked why we say "holy catholic and apostolic church" during the Nicene Creed. I knew there was a connection before Henry VIII, but really, why call out the Catholics? The meeting lasted about 20 minutes and I was on my way. I'm still not out to anyone at church in Perrysburg and it's a different place now. There are still some familiar faces, but lots of change and lots of empty seats. My parents stopped going, it got to be depressing. 

In college, I was even more into school. I spent my weekends exploring Chicago and reading for hours in the library. I tried to get involved with Canterbury Northwestern, but it wasn't quite right. Seabury-Western was there too. The seminary my rector attended, but i never visited it. I tried to go to three different churches, but none was right. Too stuffy, too many African hymns, too judgy. So, I took four years off. I felt that I had bought in to the Episcopal Church so deeply that it might be OK to take some time to reevalute my faith in a different setting. In Perrysburg, sermons and formation classes on world religions were my intellectual outlet, my time to think. At school, I was thinking all of the time. About ethics, morality, the role of government, about Jesus Christ. I would come home for Christmas and suddenly I was one of those people. I'd roll in for the midnight Christmas Eve service, take communion, say my late night hellos and be gone. I might as well have been taking up a whole pew with my fur coat. I was an outsider. I justified in my head. I felt God's hand in my work as a volunteer social worker at the local unemployment office. I got to know my downtrodden neighbors and used my strengths to secure public benefits, expunge criminal records, find housing, childcare, scholarships and other good things. On top of that, I felt that I needed to prioritize school, ensure my job prospects, get a boyfriend, etc, etc. There was precious little time for singing, kneeling and coffee cake. 

After college, I stayed around Evanston for about six months. I had graduated a little early, had a campus job I liked and lived with my boyfriend. Life was uncertain but good. I eventually found a full-time job. It was affiliated with the University of Chicago and related to a topic I was interested in, health care policy. Unfortunately, I would be needed in their DC office. There was never a doubt in my mind. I would leave the midwest and make do in a city full of people like me. I was not excited about it, but it felt like the right thing to do. I flew down with my Dad who loved DC since his time at GW, I found an incredibly tiny studio in Dupont Circle and moved in three weeks later. I knew nobody. Work started and I wasn't impressed, lots of older people who didn't want to talk to me. Suddenly I was completely uprooted and more alone than I had ever felt. I started going out in the neighborhood and wound up putting myself in difficult situations. I felt completely lost within a month and broke up with my boyfriend within six weeks. Two weeks later I walked in to the weird looking church down 18th street. 

Men for miles. Old men, young men, men holding hands. I was completely blown away. Eventually I noticed the women too and then there was Nancy Lee, always looking more than confident, a steady anchor. I had mixed feelings about the worship space. I could appreciate the history of it, and it sure made me feel urbane. But really, where is the stained glass? Altar rail? Puffy red kneelers? I was miles from my comfort zone, but that was OK. I came back, had a nametag (of course) and listened. Kay gave a firey sermon about gay rights and I was in. More than a vague feeling than I fit in, I could see it and I could hear it. There was a future for me here. The gay lifecourse lay in front of me all of the sudden, all at once. John would expound on a reading like it was the best novel he had ever read. Every last word was powerful and interesting. It reminded me of a great class on the Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina that I took in college. We could find meaning together word by word in a seeming sea of prose. I went through a lot that first year and warmed up to St. Thomas in the process. I made my first lasting friendships and shared lots of coffee cake. I had a family in DC. 

At the same time, I was a bit gun shy. I didn't want to come on too strong, I was new and young and I saw the ill effects of over zealous parishioners at my last church. I would lay low, listen intently, pray quietly and adjust to this new brand of Episcopalianism. I knew there would be plenty of time for me to lead a committee down the road.

This past year, I reluctantly made a commitment to get more involved with parish life. More than anything, I think I missed being with kids. I had always found something liberating about being around kids and my life in DC was completely absent of them. Godly Play offered me a chance to let my guard down a bit. I don't pretend to know every story, but the one time they let me tell it, I knew it pat. We only have a few kids, but they're committed and curious. We wonder a lot together and that's exactly how it should be. I certainly don't have this thing figured out, but we're all eager to learn from each other. While we don't do a lot of the singing and acting that I loved as a kid, I'm confident that Abby, Corey, Isabell and all the rest are gaining a respect for this place and what it represents. That there is something beyond us is always difficult to grasp, but Mike, Sarah, Missy and I are working every Sunday to make it real for the kids of this parish. 

More than anything, St. Thomas has become a refuge for me. A place to come to reconnect with the man I want to be and the few things I know in this world. We live in a world of radical uncertainty and I am acutely aware of it. I worry, I fret and I stew. But at St. Thomas, I know there is something else. I may not understand it, but I can soak this place in. I am not a biblical scholar, but hearing the word through you all makes God's path for me a bit clearer, Sunday by Sunday. I don't expect to have a moment of revelation or witness a miracle. But my faith builds slowly. My penchant for rationality and order learns to accomodate the things I cannot understand and the love that somehow never yields.