John is a man of prophetic acts--he dunks people in water.  When the authorities from Jerusalem send investigators to challenge him, John denies being anyone of importance, “I just dunk people in water,” he tells them three different times (John 1: 24, 31 and 33).  But his dunking in water is a prophetic act foreshadowing the day when the world will be immersed in God’s spirit.

Paul also spoke of baptism as a prophetic act.  As we are immersed in the water and rise up again from it, so we imitate Jesus’ descent into death and his resurrection from it.  Indeed, Jesus’ death and resurrection is itself the ultimate prophetic act remembered in our baptism (Romans 6: 3-4) because it foreshadows the ultimate redemption of all God’s creation (Romans 8: 18-25).

Having been rejected by a United Methodist Theological Seminary because of my sexual orientation in the mid-1970’s, it was ironic that I was admitted to a Master of Arts program in Religious Studies twenty years later by a Roman Catholic school.  The Sister who interviewed me for admissions offered nothing but encouragement when she heard that I wanted to learn more about the Wesleyan roots of the United Methodist Church, as well as explore the current controversial issues dividing the churches including fundamentalism and the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality.   She knew my call to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church had been frustrated by policies barring LGBT persons, but shared my hope that there were signs of change in the air.

Imagine my surprise when I attended my first class and recognized at once (through that special faculty LGBT people call “Gaydar”) that the professor who would teach me church history was a gay man.  Not very long after that semester, the College held a campus wide vigil after Matthew Shepard, a young, gay University of Wyoming student was brutally “gay-bashed” and murdered.  On that occasion, my church history professor “came out” in a very public way to the entire assembly.  It was a very dark time in a dark season, but that act of “coming out” brought light to many of the LGBT students of the college on that evening.

In the MA in Religious Studies program we covered the same areas of study required at United Methodist Seminaries (I even studied United Methodist polity in a class on ecclesi-ology!)  My college emphasized academic quality but with a focus on ministry.  Though a small program, my fellow students were a diverse lot, ranging from Unitarians to Charis-matic Evangelicals.  We received much individ-ual attention and had the freedom to pursue many projects informed by our unique interests.  Much of my work focused on the religious and ministry concerns of LGBT people.  During my studies, the Pacific School of Religion began the first Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry--another sign of God’s light shining in the darkness!

Life is an ongoing experience of light and darkness, immersion and emergence, life and death and new birth.  My heart aches to hear the young Rev. Beth Stroud express the hope that she will live to see the United Methodist Church restore the ordination credentials stripped from her by the church court that found her “guilty” of being a “practicing” lesbian.  I had shared a similar hope thirty years ago, but I no longer expect to see the day when I might be ordained to the ministry of the United Methodist Church.