by Diana Logan
Diana Logan is a nurse practitioner and a member of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church.
It was ten years ago in a different church, in another state, that I began to fear the people who wear the robes.
It started one October day when a member of the 9th grade Sunday school class I was teaching at the time asked to speak to me privately. I will call him Jason.
“I’m leaving,” Jason said bluntly. I was puzzled. I had know Jason since he was a baby and his parents were good friends. His mother had not said anything to me about the family moving away. When I questioned Jason about this, he replied: “No, I mean I am leaving this church. After last Sunday’s sermon I am afraid to come here anymore because I think I am gay.”
My heart began to break. Both my husband and I had been disturbed by the sermon we’d heard the previous Sunday. It had underscored our dismay regarding a number of negative events we had observed over the last several months in the Presbyterian church we had attended for twelve years. The Presbyterian Women’s circles had been merged into one very fervent group called “Women’s Ministries”. The adult Sunday school class had begun to discuss a publication called: “The Presbyterian Layman”. Session had announced via the church newsletter that all of us who attended the church were now members of “The Confessing Church Movement”.
It was all very confusing, but we loved our church, and our family tried to go on as before: I taught Sunday school, my husband was a deacon, and our teenage children attended youth group. Then came was the sermon which had upset Jason. The sermon title was: “Pruning the Dead Wood”. Our lead pastor said that he had concerns about our congregation’s commitment to Jesus Christ in that some had allowed the secular culture to encroach upon their daily lives. I was not sure what he was talking about, but his references to people who were gay needing to “renounce their sins” suggested to my husband and me the beginning of a witch hunt.
I looked at Jason. He was a bright, caring, committed Christian. He had been baptized in our church, and not so long ago he had been confirmed. Unbelievably, he was now telling me that he was afraid to attend the church that had promised to nurture him. I hugged him. I begged him not to leave. But Jason had made up his mind. “It is only going to get worse,” he said tearfully. “You just wait and see.”
I ran from the Sunday School building in great distress, determined to talk to somebody, anybody who would listen. I saw coming out of the church office one of the members of Session. I did not know him well, but we had served on committees together and I remembered him as being very kind. I told him, without revealing Jason’s name, what had transpired. He had initially greeted me with a smile, but as I spoke, his expression on his face reddened with embarrassment: “Well, you know, it does say in the Old Testament…Leviticus, I think, that this sort of thing is a sin….” he said lamely. “But people are beginning to get hurt,” I said. “And Leviticus also talks about stoning unruly children. Shall I go out in the desert and collect rocks to throw at my ninth grade Sunday School students every time they act up?”
His tone then changed, and he advised me very sternly that I needed to talk to one of our pastors. They were the ones, after all, who could interpret scripture in a way the rest of us could understand it. He said that it was sad indeed that the young man wanted to leave our church, but perhaps it was what was needed if he were refusing to acknowledge his sin.
Dismayed and feeling disbelief at what I had just heard from the elder, I turned from him to go into morning worship. Briefly, I saw the flowing robe of our lead pastor disappear through the door of the sanctuary. I had known him for years, and had loved and respected him. Lately, however, he had seemed to change, somehow. My stomach contracted in fear as for the first time I realized how dangerous he had become.
The phone message from our associate pastor came the very next day. For some reason, she said, God had laid me upon her heart. She was concerned. Would I please join her for lunch soon? I told my husband that evening at dinner that I knew God had nothing to do with it. Still, I would meet with her. I was curious as to what she had to say. It was clear to me that the elder had told The Robes that I had been “acting up”.
“Homosexuality is a sin,” she said simply as she slurped a spoonful of soup. As as teacher of our youth, I needed to guide the young man. If he were beginning to have sinful urges, it was an opportune time for someone to intervene. She and the lead pastor would be glad to help. I need only tell them his name. “Over my dead body” I thought to myself. There was no way I would ever give Jason up to The Robes.
What she said next, however, made me stop chewing my bread and listen more carefully: “I had a similar problem with a secret sin, once” she said dreamily. I perked up. Was our associate pastor a lesbian? If this were so, I could not wait to tell Jason. “Jesus saved me from a shopping addiction,” she said, and I started to choke on my salad. “So never underestimate the grace of God,” she admonished. “The loving forgiveness of Jesus Christ can save this young person from his horrible sin. We have begun to pray without ceasing for him.”
I was furious, but I tried to stay calm. Each student in my Sunday School class was like my own child to me. I had taught most of them since the early grades, and had proudly watched as many of them had been confirmed. I wanted to brag about Jason, how he was the best of them all. Had he not served the church, participated in mission and worked hard helping with Vacation Bible School? He was a regular in Youth Group, a counselor at Presbyterian summer camp, and probably the biggest shocker (to her at least)—he had preached wearing robes in her precious pulpit during Youth Sunday the year before. His sermon had brought the congregation to tears, as his message was one of hope and love. Now she and others were wanting to hunt him down so they could save him from some fabricated sin. He was leaving his church, in fear. I now began to see why Jason would never be safe with these people. I knew I had to protect him with my silence.
In the end, I simply asked her to please leave Jesus out of it, as there was nothing loving in what she was saying. Lunch was over. The associate pastor tried to hug me as we parted, and she said that she would be praying for me. Her words were superficially kind, but in my heart I knew that I, like Jason, had become dead wood.
The message came through loud and clear about a week later, via the Women’s Ministries group e-mail. The message was about me, but did not address me directly. The e-mail had been forwarded to every woman in the group: “We cannot believe that Diana Logan is causing so much trouble in our church. But then, what would Satan do?”
I jumped in my chair when I read the reference to Satan. So now I was the devil himself? That was a quick leap, from long-time church member and Sunday School teacher to Satan. I was blown away at the betrayal, as was my family. Clearly, I was dead wood and now I had been pruned. The prophetic words of Jason came back to me: “It is only going to get worse”. How right he had been.
The evening after the e-mail had been circulated, I received a phone call from the only friend I apparently had left in Women’s Ministries. She told me that she was no longer going to attend their meetings and that she and her husband were seriously thinking about withdrawing their church membership. “Satan has indeed come into our church,” she said and I shuddered at her words. “But he is not in you. If there is a devil among us, he is wearing robes.”
I did not laugh about the e-mail until a couple of weeks later when I went to lunch with a gay co-worker. I was explaining to him how the associate pastor considered a shopping addiction on the same level of sin as being gay. I had challenged her, and therefore had received the nasty e-mail. My friend responded by throwing his napkin over his face and feigned weeping so dramatically that other people in the hospital cafeteria turned to stare at us. I kicked him under the table and he peeked at me from behind his napkin. “But you don’t understand,” he said earnestly, “You have just made me realize that I will truly burn in hell. I am gay AND I have a shopping addiction!” Our laughter was very comforting to me.
One can only imagine when I attended my first service at St. Stephen eight years ago, how cynical I was. Not only did the pastors wear robes, but collars as well. At first, I found the robes oppressive, not only of the pastors but also of the choir members as they walked up and down the aisles. It was as if I were experiencing some liturgical post-traumatic stress syndrome. My hard heart only softened a little as I saw the tiny children of the Bethlehem choir walking sweetly by me during those special Sundays that they sang with the adults.
Time passed and the loving people of St. Stephen greeted me each Sunday. I listened carefully each week as either Fritz or Warner declared that “St. Stephen is an intentionally inclusive community of believers”. Old wounds began to heal. I began to realize with great clarity that the people who wear the robes at St. Stephen are not to be feared. There were the beautiful babies, freshly baptized, who were carried up the church aisle by Fritz and introduced to their church family. Something in the way he gently challenged the congregation by that simple stroll with the baby in his arms made me trust that St. Stephen was one church that would not renege on its promise to nurture its young.
Then there was that Sunday that Warner stopped shaking hands with people at the door after church to get down on his knees in his robes to greet a crawling infant face to face. The baby squealed in delight.
My biggest epiphany came, however, on a Sunday morning in ordinary time, when as a congregation we turned to face the back of the church for the benediction. There was the choir in their robes and Fritz in his robes, raising his arms to give us a blessing. I looked around me at all the people who had become my church family, and a love for each and every one of them overcame me in such a rush that I began to cry. I felt at home with them, and safe. Through the blurriness of my tears it appeared that there was no distinction between clergy or choir, adult or child, male or female. We were all cloaked in a grace so strong that there was no room for separation.
I bear no ill will towards the people of my previous church. Had I not experienced what they had to teach me, I would not have learned a very important truth. What defines a church is who gets to wear the robes—and at St. Stephen, we all do.