Benediction: Rachel Held Evans

Jonathan Merritt, who attended yesterday's requiem Eucharist for Rachel Held Evans in Chattanooga, described it this way: "Looking around the room ... was like glimpsing the Kingdom --- women and people of color, queer people and trans people, disabled people and Native Americans. A testament to a life lived in service of an inclusive God whose name is Love."

Of course there were very many there, too, who would have fitted seamlessly, if appearance were a basis for judgement, into any Southern Baptist (United Methodist, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic ....) church in America.

But a quote from one of Held Evans' books, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, surely must have been on the minds of many of us watching:  “This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.”

I celebrated the beginning of LGBTQ Pride Month last evening by watching a recorded version of the service that had been live-streamed early in the afternoon from First-Centenary United Methodist Church in Chatanooga. The rite was Episcopal, honoring the faith tradition Rachel had settled into after leaving the evangelical church of her childhood. And the stained glass was glorious (I do love good stained glass).

Held Evans was, among many other things, a champion of LGBTQ people, especially of those seeking a place in a church that most often has declared us unworthy, even wicked.

She died in early May, survived by husband, Dan, two small children, parents and a sister. Burial will take place today in her hometown, Dayton, Tennessee.

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The preacher was Lutheran and another major figure in what sometimes is called progressive Christianity, the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber; the liturgist, the Rev. Winnie Varghese, Episcopalian, of Trinity Church, Wall Street.

You can watch the recorded live stream here, although the service is a long one. If you watch, however, make sure to see the Bolz-Weber sermon, one of the most powerful examples of funeral preaching I've experienced.

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Here's the benediction, delivered by Bolz-Weber and incorporating as it ends words of Rachel Held Evans:

Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are they who doubt. Blessed are those who have nothing to offer. Blessed are the preschoolers who cut in line at communion. Blessed are the poor in spirit. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you. 

Blessed are those whom no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at middle-school lunch tables. The laundry guys at the hospital. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers. The closeted. The teens who have to figure out ways to hide the new cuts on their arms. Blessed are the meek. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.

 Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like. Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried. Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else. Blessed are those who “still aren’t over it yet.” Blessed are those who mourn. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.

I imagine Jesus standing here blessing us because that is our Lord’s nature. This Jesus cried at his friend’s tomb, turned the other cheek, and forgave those who hung him on a cross. He was God’s Beatitude --- God’s blessing to the weak in a world that admires only the strong.

Jesus invites us into a story bigger than ourselves and our imaginations, yet we all get to tell that story with the scandalous particularity of this moment and this place. We are storytelling creatures because we are fashioned in the image of a storytelling God. May we never neglect that gift. May we never lose our love for telling the story. Amen