In a Perfect World: On Reproductive Choice

Homily, June 7, 2009
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8, John 3:1-9

Opening reminder: As a Congregational Church, we maintain the "freedom of the pulpit." That is, we preachers don't tell people what to believe. We interpret the texts and life in a way we believe is reponsible and faithful and then invite listeners to enter into dialogue with us and one another.

In a perfect world, we would all know Isaiah's vision of being taken up into intimacy with the Divine. In a perfect world, we would live regularly in that place. In a perfect world, Nicodemus wouldn't have to come to Jesus under the cover of night. In a perfect world, we could ask our questions and explore our beliefs openly, without threat of exclusion or violence.

In a perfect world, listeners in the pews wouldn't take the words of their preachers at face value and act on the violence spewed from some pulpits. In a perfect world, the hyperbole and exaggeration of preachers would remain just that. In a perfect world, people wouldn't walk into the narthex of a church and shoot the usher. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have abortion.

But we don't live in a perfect world, last time I checked. We live a world where last Sunday, Dr. George Tiller was shot dead while serving as an usher at the Reformed Lutheran Church of Wichita, Kansas. Tiller ran one of the few clinics in the country to perform late-term abortions.

Regardless of the mental and emotional instability of the shooter, he was spurred on by the violent words and images spoken from those claiming to be Christian. Frank Schaeffer this week apologized for the way his words when he was an evangelical Christian contributed to Tiller's death. As you've heard, he was called "Tiller the killer" by others and compared to the Nazis. Do you know his full story?

Tiller did not set out to run an abortion clinic. While serving as a flight surgeon in the Navy, his father, mother, sister, and brother-in-law were killed in an airplane crash in Yellowstone National Park. He received a humanitarian discharge from the Navy to return home and care for his ailing grandmother and his one-year-old nephew. He began working in his father's clinic, planning a three-year transition from a general practice to dermatology.

The transition never happened. He knew that his father performed a few illegal abortions - after refusing to do so for one woman and having her die as a result. But as woman after woman came in and told Tiller how his father had saved their life, he discovered the number was much higher than he previously thought.

Tiller only performed abortions where the mother's life was in danger or the baby was already dead or would not be able to survive outside the womb, with conditions like hydrocephalus, lethal chromosome abnormality, no brain, or the baby being allergic to itself. In fact, he also ran a little-known adoption agency for women who were able to bear healthy children. Early on in his practice, when many of these women were unwelcome in their own homes, he would invite them to live with his family in their house while they finished the pregnancy and adopted the child out.

All of this took place amidst hundreds of protesters each year outside his clinic and previous acts of violence committed against Tiller. A Republican most of his life, Tiller said he continued to practice in the face of such violence and protest because "there's no one else to help them."

There was another reason. Tiller had an experience of the Holy following a bout with drugs and alcohol in the 1980s. He didn't, and we won't, pretend he was perfect. He also could be very biting and sharp-tongued with the protesters. But as he recovered from addiction, his Higher Power encouraged him to continue his clinic. He could have moved to much more lucrative medical career. He heard the call to stay and fight for what he believed in, for what eventually cost him his life. He was, to use the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, "born from above" or "born again" into this second half of his life.

The United Church of Christ has supported legal abortion since Roe vs. Wade in 1973 as one of the founding partners of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, whose tagline is "Pro-faith, Pro-family, Pro-choice." At the same time, the UCC has worked to make abortions less necessary through family planning, prenatal care and education, and working to end violence against women.

But we don't live in that perfect world where abortion will never be necessary, as much as we hope and pray and work towards it. What we do live in is a world that is not perfect in the sense of flawless but perfect in the sense of being complete or whole.

In this sense, we are united to one another and must stay in dialogue with one another. The dialogue between pro-life and pro-choice advocates is good for us all when it doesn't devolve to violent words or tactics. We can work together to support all women and be held in tension together around our differences. We can honor one another's experience of being born again.

And we can all find our place in that holy of holies with Isaiah, hear the word of God to us, and respond as he did and as George Tiller did, no matter the cost: "Here I am Lord, send me."

May it be so. Amen.

Sources for this homily:
Kansas City Star on the life of George Tiller: http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1237637.html
Article by Frank Shaeffer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/how-i-and-other-pro-life_b_209747.html
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice: http://www.rcrc.org/

Spirit Wind: In the Beginning...

A reading for two voices based on Genesis 1 and Acts 2:

One: In the beginning, the very beginning, before all things…
Two: In the beginning, the beginning of the church, after Jesus had died, been raised, appeared on earth again, and then ascended to heaven…

One: In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void.
Two: In the beginning, when God created the church, the women and men who had follwed Jesus were a scared and scattered lot.

One: In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, darkness covered the face of the deep.
Two: In the beginning, when God created the church, fear and confusion covered the faces of the disciples.

One: In the beginning, the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters.
Two: In the beginning, they were all together in one place on the day of Pentecost.

One: In the beginning, a Divine Wind swept over the face of the waters.
Two: In the beginning, suddenly, from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.

One: In the beginning, God spoke, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and God saw that the light was good.
Two: In the beginning, all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages; all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another:

Both: “What does this mean?”