O Lord, take my lips and speak through them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  Amen.

You cannot imagine what a great joy it is for me to be here with you this morning, and what an honor it is to be with Bill and the clergy and people of this congregation.  And how humbling it is to be here on a Sunday when we hear Our Lord saying to Peter, feed my sheep, and to hear it within these walls where that kind of feeding goes on virtually every day.

Trying to preach the good news to you, in the midst of your already reaching out to the world in the ways that you do, seems redundant, at best, but I am honored to give it a try.

We have so much to celebrate on this one Sunday when “pride” is a good thing to have.  (Laughter)  On this day, pride goeth not before the fall.  (Laughter)  On this day, in response to the many people across this land and around the Anglican Communion, who regard gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered folk as a nightmare, this is the day we proclaim it's God's dream coming true.  The inclusion of all of God's children in God's loving embrace.

But I'm also very aware that we live in a very difficult time.  Michael Callan, the AIDS activist and great singer -- He was a member of The Flirtations, for those of you who ever had a chance to hear them sing -- had an amazing song called War Time.  War Time.  He meant it about AIDS, that it was like war.  But isn't there a lot of war going on right now?  Not just in Iraq, as awful and as, shall I say, stupid and immoral as that is, but war here in America, culture wars. 

We have the religious right impinging upon your rights and mine in a way almost unprecedented, certainly in my lifetime.  We have people wanting to turn this great land, this great democracy of ours, into a theocracy, and in that theocracy, they get to decide what God's will is.

And indeed, my picture appears on the cover of a book called "A Church At War."  I have to tell you that the original picture that was going to appear there -- all without my permission, I might add -- was of me leaning back in a big belly laugh, as if I were laughing at all the pain in the Anglican Communion over my consecration.  I called the author and I said, I know you don't have complete control over what goes on the front of the book, but for God's sake this is like throwing gas on a fire.

So there I am looking pensive at least (laughter), thinking about a church at war.  So we live in a kind of war time, don't we?  And how perfect that today we're celebrating Saints Peter and Paul, who, need I remind you, fought like cats and dogs.  It's so interesting to me that people should have the idea that church should be a place without conflict. 

First of all, most of the New Testament wouldn't have been written had it not been for all the conflict in the early church.  That's how we get all those letters from Paul and the others, because the churches were fighting like cats and dogs.  And these two great saints, Peter and Paul, were fighting over, you know what?  Who's in and who's out.  How encouraging and depressing that we're still fighting (laughter) over who's in and who's out of this great church of ours.

Peter, of course, was arguing that in order to be a follower of Jesus you had to first become a Jew.  And Paul, who was roaming around the Mediterranean, just grabbing gentiles anywhere he could find them and convincing them to follow this Jesus, saying, no, actually, they don't need to become Jews first.  You and I are probably sitting here today because Paul won that argument.  But they fought like cats and dogs.

So, this morning these lessons appointed for Saints Peter and Paul are an amazing set of lessons for a church at war, a world at war.  But let's face it -- Aren't you a little tired of all this fighting?  Aren't you a little tired of being talked about in the third person as if you're not in the room?  I certainly am a little tired of being talked about around the Anglican Communion, when the Archbishop of Canterbury won't speak to me directly.  So, I'm a little tired.  I bet you're a little tired, too. 

And these lessons are amazing.  They come across to me as something between a survival manual for someone at war and sort of a pep talk at half time by the coach.  So, let's look at the lessons and see what they might have to say to you and me, those of us who are weary with all the fighting.

First of all, in the Old Testament lesson from Ezekiel we are comforted.  This is the quintessential Hebrew scripture version of the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd seeks the lost, brings back the strayed, binds up the injured, strengthens the weak and feeds them justice.  What an amazing thing.  

It's as if Ezekiel (like Martin Luther King, Jr.) is saying to us “the arc of history is bent towards justice,” and I will seek you out, especially if you are weak. Especially if you are tired. especially if you have strayed in some way.  Especially if you are feeling lost and empty, because I am the Good Shepherd.

And by the way, Ezekiel says, I'll also take care of the bad guys.  (Laughter)  I will take care of the strong.  Even in the Hebrew scriptures, as a precursor to what made Jesus the angriest of all, God has something special in mind for the arrogant.  This Ezekiel passage says to you and me that no one, no one will be left out.  No one will be forgotten.  Every life counts.  And God will give us what we need. God will give us what we need.

And then, in our second lesson from Paul himself, come our marching orders.  These are the instructions for the second half of the game.  Proclaim.  Persist.  Convince. Rebuke. Encourage.  This is no wimpy ministry we've been given.  These are strong words.  They are meant to encourage us.  They are meant to embolden and empower us.  Proclaim.  Persist.  Convince. Rebuke. Encourage.  Out of your own story. 

The story of your own salvation.  How God has come into your life and touched you and made you want to run and leap and dance for joy because you are so loved.  That's the story out of which you are to proclaim and persist and convince and rebuke and encourage.

And then Paul says, also, be patient.  I hate that part.  (Laughter)  Exactly.  And then the other part that I wish wasn’t there, but is:  endure suffering.

Jesus did not have an easy time of it, in case you didn't notice.  The good news he was preaching wasn't good news for everybody.  It didn't sound like good news to the arrogant and high and mighty, and they did him in over it.  Nowhere in the scriptures that I read does it say it's going to be easy for us, either.  We need to expect it to be hard.  Duh! (Laughter)  It's not going to be easy.  It is going to be hard, and for some of us it will involve suffering.  It was true for Jesus, it will be just as true for us.

And then Paul gives us -- Paul, who also knew what it was like to suffer -- in this letter to Timothy, gives us the key to how he does it.  How he endures the suffering.  And he says, there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness.

What he's saying about himself and what you and I need to remember is that we know how this is going to end.  We know how this is going to end.  In the end, God will have God's way.  The arc of history will bend towards justice and justice will be done.  It's as if we've read the last page of this mystery novel and we know “who done it.”  God did it, for us, in Jesus, on the cross.  And we know how it's going to turn out.

In our lifetimes?  Maybe.  Maybe not. But we know how it's going to end.  And because we know that, we don't have to win every day.  We don't have to be successful.  We just have to be faithful.  We just have to do our piece.

You know, one of my favorite places in the whole world is the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis, Tennessee.  It's at the old Lorraine Hotel, where Martin Luther King was shot.  And right at the entrance to what was the old motel is this enormous black monolith of a piece of granite.  It just looks like a stone until you get closer up to it, and it's a bas relief of a trail of African-Americans going round and round and round, higher and higher and higher, and every single one of them is standing on the shoulders of someone else.

That's all we have to do.  All we have to do is stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us and allow someone to stand on our shoulders.  And ultimately, we're going to get there.  We know how this ends and so we dare not lose hope.

Even those who fight against those of us who are gay and lesbian, even our biggest enemies, know how it's going to end, don't they?  You can hardly talk to one of them who doesn't think that they are just putting off the inevitable.  We are not arguing over IF, we are only arguing over WHEN justice will be done for lgbt folk.  We need not lose heart.  You and I will be fed. 

But then there's one more thing.  The Gospel of John.  Not only are we to be fed by God but we are to feed others.  Feed my sheep.  You know, there's that wonderful story about someone who wants to see heaven and hell, and so they're ushered into a beautiful room where a banquet has been set.  The tables are just spilling over with food. 

But here in hell, the visitor notices that the people are emaciated.  They're literally starving to death.  And then he notices the one thing about them is that their arms and elbows are locked straight out.  And although there's all that food, they can't get the food to their mouths with locked arms.