Q&A with Rev. Durrell Watkins

Question #1: Nearly all Christian churches prominently display a large cross on their altars. Sunshine Cathedral doesn’t…Why is that?

Answer: I don’t know how accurate it is to say that most churches have large crosses on their altars. In fact, I have worshiped in churches that had small crosses and in churches that had no cross at all (including some of the largest churches in this country). Brooklyn Tabernacle, for example, has no cross (and no altar for that matter). The Crystal Cathedral has a cross off to the side on its chancel, but not on the altar. The Potter’s House and Lakewood Church don’t display a cross in their worship settings. In fact, many of the megachurches in this country seem to be iconoclastic (and periods of Church history have been more or less iconoclastic as well). It should also be noted that the cross was not a widely used Christian symbol for the first few hundred years of the Christian movement.

Crucifixion was a brutal practice employed by the Babylonian and Roman empires to terrorize their subjects. I do not rejoice in Jesus’ execution; in fact, every Good Friday I am filled with grief to think he was so unjustly tortured. The marvelous thing about the cross is that it didn’t have the last word. Jesus lived powerfully in spite of the threat of crucifixion, and the experience we call Resurrection denied the cross the last word on Jesus’ life. The cross is a comma in our faith story, not a period. The point of our faith isn’t to worship Jesus’ death, but to celebrate his life… a life that couldn’t be diminished by the evil of torture and execution. We do not worship the cross; we live the Resurrection!

That having been said, I do understand that the cross remains an important symbol for some people. Therefore, we do have a cross which is ritualistically featured every Sunday. We process in a large, ornate cross at the beginning of every service. We place it at the front of the chancel (House Right) and put a spotlight on it for the duration of the service. There is also a cross in our marble floor in the foyer leading every person into the worship center.

The power of our worship comes not from the furnishings, but from our being together as an open and searching community. The living Christ is represented in the elements of bread and wine on the altar, and the message about Jesus is proclaimed in our gospel readings each week (and in our daily lives). There are many symbols in our worship space, and hopefully some of them hold meaning for you.

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Question #2: Why isn’t there an American flag on the chancel?

Answer: We do not preach an American gospel, nor do we worship an American God. We hope God blesses our country, but we also know that God shows no partiality and loves all people of the world unconditionally.

Every American is entitled to be proud of her or his country, and every American ought to make her or his country better by voting, paying taxes, and by speaking out against injustice, prejudice, and inequality wherever they have been allowed to flourish. But our worship space is open to all — Brazilians, Mexicans, Dominicans, Canadians, Germans, Japanese, Australians, Tongans, Kenyans; the Commonwealth of God doesn’t have geographic boundaries. We pray for our country and for our leaders, but we never want to elevate our national symbols to the status of religious symbols. There are times when we fly the flag outside, but inside, we are all children of God regardless of our national identity, ethnicity, or political opinions. When we gather together as a worshiping community, we are more than American (or Canadian, or British, or Argentine, etc.); we are first and foremost citizens of the Dominion of God.

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Question #3: Why aren’t there guardrails on the chancel? Is it safe?

Answer: The safety code says that “safe guards are not required on the audience side of the stage.” The chancel is as safe as it ever was. There is a lip around most of the chancel to keep things from sliding off (the same sized lip that was on our previous chancel). There are also handrails on the sides of the stairs to help people who need extra support when climbing the stairs. Additionally, our previous chancel was open not only at the front but also on the sides… our current chancel has solid walls on the sides. So, our current chancel is at least at safe as our previous chancel was, maybe more.

We must also remember that our worship space is more than a worship space. It is a community space. We worship in the Walt Lawrence / Stephen Lewis Center for Worship and the Arts. Our chancel is also a performance stage that will be used for organ concerts, piano recitals, cabaret shows, film showings, and choral concerts. That is our gift to the community. Guardrails would interfere with our ability to also be a performance space. We certainly want everyone to be careful on the chancel (and everywhere on the property), and the law of gravity is always in effect. But our chancel has passed safety inspections and is at least as safe as it ever was (and as safe as any stage or dais that I’ve ever seen).

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Question: I’m not sure I believe in God. I want to, but somehow I can’t completely accept the idea of God. Any words of guidance for me?

Answer: Which God can’t you believe in? The God that people once said instituted the evil practice of slavery? I can’t believe in that God either. The God that men said wouldn’t call women into professional ministry? I can’t believe in that God either. The God in whose name people discriminate against same-gender-loving people? I can’t believe in that God either. The God that some Christians claim can only be in relationship with people who share their religious doctrines and interpretations of scripture? I can’t believe in that God either. Maybe we don’t believe in the same God!

The spiritual journey is one where we constantly destroy the false idols we inherited. God is always bigger than our present understanding, and so as we grow, smaller images of God are dismantled. This is actually very healthy. You may not believe in a God vengeance, or a homophobic God, or a sexist God, or a God of war, or a God who can somehow be contained by a single religion, but I bet you believe in all the best things that the word “God” represents.

Do you believe in love? Do you believe in the beauty of life? Do you believe in human potential, and in flashes of wisdom that come from seemingly nowhere? Do you believe in compassion and kindness? Have you ever experienced moments of profound insight and grace? Aren’t these the qualities that collectively represent “God”?

Finally, let me make this point. If by “belief” you mean that you can’t accept certain opinions about God, then maybe you don’t believe. But let’s distinguish between belief and faith. Belief is the opinion one holds (and beliefs can change). Faith is trust. Belief tries to give the answers. Faith doesn’t need the answers. St. Paul said we walk by faith, not by sight… by trust in the unknown rather than by “beliefs” we can see, name, recite. Your beliefs may be in question, but it seems to me that you have plenty of faith, because you trusted that the Mystery of Life would not be unraveled by your honest question. So, even when you can’t believe in God, I would say that you do have faith in God. And I “believe” that is better anyway.

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Question: The bible says, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Isn’t that an argument against gay and lesbian couples?

Answer: (1) I know many gay and lesbian parents. Some of them are foster parents. Some of them have children from previous marriages. Some of them have adopted. Some of them have had alternative insemination. In any case, same-gender loving people can “multiply”.

(2) The passage you are quoting comes from Genesis (1.28). That is a story that describes the creation of a flat earth that is covered by an invisible dome (v.6) which keeps a cosmic ocean at bay. The story tells us our world was created in a week, and the world it describes is very different from the one we experience in the 21^st century (we don’t think the blue sky is water above an invisible dome, for example). If we aren’t taking the rest of the story literally, we needn’t take the line from verse 28 literally.

(3) The final point I want to raise is that in the story you reference, God tells a couple to be fertile and multiply and populate the earth. As the earth now has several billion occupants, I assume that primordial couple did their job… mission accomplished! In the story, God isn’t telling “us” to populate the earth; God is telling the first couple to get busy. Since the earth is populated, we can assume the people who received the directive followed it satisfactorily enough (if we were to take the story literally to begin with).

Gay people often have children, and not all straight couples do. The directive to be fruitful and multiply comes from an ancient parable that we can’t take literally today. And the directive isn’t given to the reader, but to the characters in the story (who apparently followed it more than adequately). So, a line from an ancient creation story cannot be fairly used as a proof-text to condemn lesbian and gay people.

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Question: I heard recently that there is an ancient Mayan prophecy that says the world will end in 2012. Do you believe that?

Answer: I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to prophecies of doom. St. Paul said that we “walk by faith, not by sight.” We don’t need the future mapped out for us; we can have faith that we will be able to navigate the future and make the most of it. I also don’t believe that the future is predetermined. We are free to make choices now, and choice have consequences. The future depends on what we do, think, and say today, not what someone predicted centuries ago.

What we think about, we bring about. When we focus on failure, we usually fail. When we focus on fear, something scary usually pops up. So, I have no interest in focusing on predictions of gloom and doom, because if we focus on gloom and doom, we may actually bring it about. I would much rather focus on hope, possibility, happiness, and achievement, because those are the experiences that I want to have in life.

The Mayan world has ended. The world of the Roman Empire has ended. The world of the Soviet Union has ended. The world of the British Empire has ended. The world that was thought to be flat has ended. The world where there was no Internet has ended. The world as it was known has ended many times, always to give way to a new experience of the world. So, who knows? Maybe the way we have experienced the world will change in 2012, or 2050, or 2099. Change is the one constant in the universe. I don’t give too much power to superstitions about “end times” (regardless of what source they are attributed to), because I’m much more interested in making the most of the time we have now. If we do what is good in this moment, I bet the future moments will be full of opportunity and possibility as well.

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If you have questions about faith, the bible, the church, or sexuality & spirituality, you can email your questions to durrell@sunshinecathedral.org, or go to the Cathedral web site at www.sunshinecathedral.org and click on the link there. Rev. Durrell Watkins will answer your questions and publish the answers in this column. Your name will always be withheld, so only the actual question and the response will be printed.