Agape by Erin Melton

Agape 2018

By Erin Melton

“I would love you to tell your story of First Austin… what church were you looking for? why this one? what do you think is going on here today? and what we are called to do and become.

This year I want to tell a love story, but also a story of perseverance, faith, courage… and a calling.”

My dad was a youth pastor and I grew up in First Baptist churches.  I spent the majority of my childhood at Gage Park Baptist church in Topeka, KS.  Gage Park Baptist was only a couple of blocks from the Westboro Baptist Church.  I grew up watching them picket all over our city and eventually, all over the country.  I learned very early, what hate looked like.  What separation can do.  How badly it can hurt individuals and a community.  Hate is so powerful and destructive.

The Westboro picketers where provoked one day by a member of our youth group. It led to some of the Westboro members coming to our church parking lot and yelling at us and our pastor.  I don’t remember anything they said, but I remember what it felt like to be in the presence of that much hate.  It was palpable.  You could feel it on your skin.  And it was terrible. 

I realize that there are very few churches that operate the way that Westboro does, but the message is basically the same no matter how it’s packaged. As John Pavlovitz writes: Bigotry, even when it is wrapped in religion or justified by the Bible or spoken from a pulpit is still bigotry.  And that message, that you have to be like the rest of us, is hurtful.  Even though I am white and straight, that message makes me feel like one of the “others”.  It makes me feel like I don’t belong.

I’ve sat through sermons that spoke against the LGBTQ community and they broke my heart.  All I could think about were the children in the congregation.  The children who already knew who they were and who they were going to love and how one of their first lessons from their home church was that they don’t, and will never, belong.  That they have to forgo a relationship with God.  That they aren’t worthy of God’s love and Jesus’ forgiveness.  Redemption doesn’t apply to them.  Something is wrong with them.  I also thought about the children that were already being taught how to judge others.  The kids that were being taught they are “better” than someone else because they identify with their gender at birth and they’re attracted to the opposite sex. 

It’s soul-crushing.

After trying several churches in the Austin area I started thinking that, because I was in Texas, I wasn’t going to find a church that loved all people, all people, all people.  And I don’t mean in a “we still love you, but we hate your ‘sin’” kind of way or a “you can stay but you have to change your behavior and deny who you are” kind of way, but in an authentic, fully recognized kind of love.  A redemptive, healing, inclusive love.  The kind of love that God puts in my heart.  The kind of love that overshadows the Fred Phelps of the world. 

We know there is a battle raging between love and hate and I wanted to be on the side that was empowered with love.  I wanted to be on the side that weeps when unarmed black men are shot.  When immigrant families are torn to pieces.  When asylum seekers are turned away.  When civil liberties are stripped from the LGBTQ community.  When synagogues and schools and nightclubs, and movie theaters, and concerts are filled with gunfire.  When women are assaulted and then shamed for that assault.  I wanted to belong to a community that recognizes the marginalized and forgotten members of humanity and does everything in its power to bring those people to the light and remove their shame.  It is a community I had started to believe didn’t exist.  At least not within church walls.  So, I gave up on church.  I gave up for a lot of years.  I was so disappointed by the Christian communities I had met that I spent half my life not going to church.

In April of 2017, Chris and I hit a low point in our marriage.  We decided that one of the things we needed was a church home.  I had heard whispers that First Baptist Austin was inclusive.  It was a longshot, being a Baptist church, but we decided to go at least once and then we could check out other churches in town.  I counted on it taking us months to find a home.  I thought we’ll have to go to multiple services and multiple churches to see which one stood out to us - one where we both felt comfortable, but God had a plan for us and that plan was Natalie and Gay.  Our first Sunday as we walked up to the front doors, there was Natalie.  As soon as she yelled “Hi!” and led us in to the sanctuary, I knew I didn’t need to go anywhere else.  And when they took us to lunch that first Sunday, I knew I didn’t want to go anywhere else.

Since then, we have been so actively cared about.  We get calls and text messages and invitations.  We’ve been asked to volunteer and serve.  We are prayed for and checked-in on.  I feel courted, not only by God, but also by this congregation.  I feel seen.  Our church really SEES people.  It doesn’t ask you to hide your addiction, depression, illness, gender identity or orientation, failings, struggles, grief…it doesn’t ask you to hide any bit of yourself.  You all have shared so freely and openly.  It feels like a family, a tribe.  One that I was a part of before I met any of you.  I belong here.  God is in this place.

We have a calling: to change the way the world feels about Christianity.  To show them that it has a heart and a soul.  To be Jesus-like and to be Jesus followers.  To show them that we love the world and its inhabitants without stipulations.  Without conditions.  To show them love wins.

So, we will continue to open our eyes and our hearts and our doors.  We will invite people in and show them what love looks like in action and how it feels.  We will talk to each other and find places to serve one another, this city, and the world at large.

As I wrote this speech, lyrics from an Indigo Girls’ song kept creeping into my mind:

A safe place for all the pieces that scattered
Learn to pretend there's more than love that matters

This is the safe place for all the scattered pieces and we know love is the only thing that matters.