It was a typical Sunday morning at St. Luke's United Methodist Church. Prayers were said for Helen, a parishioner who is dying. Water was sprinkled on Sadie and Eilidh, baby girls, newly born. And in between, the small, unassuming church in Northwest Washington welcomed a stranger who had, in their eyes, been badly treated by the world.
Irene Elizabeth Stroud was, until last month, an associate pastor at a 208-year-old Methodist church in Philadelphia. On Dec. 2, she was stripped of her credentials by a jury of 13 Methodist ministers, who concluded that Stroud, a "self-avowed, practicing" homosexual, had violated church law.
Irene Elizabeth Stroud, center, the United Methodist minister defrocked in December because she is a "self-avowed, practicing" lesbian, greets a congregant at St. Luke's in Northwest Washington after her sermon.
(Photos Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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Stroud, 34, is appealing the decision. In the meantime, she said, she has been "overwhelmed" by requests from other churches to talk about her case and her experience as a lesbian called to the ministry. Yesterday, she accepted one of those invitations, delivering a sermon before about 100 people gathered in the humble sanctuary of St. Luke's, just off Wisconsin Avenue near the Naval Observatory.
The Scripture reading of the day was John 1:29, a straightforward tale about the moment when John the Baptist recognized a "dusty, weary traveler" as the Son of God, as Stroud put it. She said the passage reminds her of certain schoolbooks that show the Coliseum and other antiquities in all their glory on transparent overlays while, underneath, pictures show the same structures in ruins.
Jesus, she said, works in reverse. He is "able to peel away the dirt and sin of the world and see all the possibilities underneath."
"I wonder what the United Methodist Church looks like to Jesus," Stroud said. "Does He peel away the divisiveness and the bitterness? . . . Does He take away the fractiousness over things that don't matter and see, underneath, the desire to reach out together to a hurt world?"
Stroud called on St. Luke's to join her church, First United Methodist in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, and nearly 200 other Methodist congregations that have declared their opposition to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
"As long as our denomination continues to hold an official policy of discrimination, it will be important for local congregations who do not discriminate to take a stand," she said.
Later in the day, Beth Stroud would speak to a gathering of Methodists from across the Washington area interested in hearing more about the movement known as the "reconciling ministries network," which pushes for inclusion of gay clergy. The meeting was organized in honor of Stroud's visit by Dumbarton, Foundry and Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist churches, according to Stroud's cousin, Sandi Stroud. Dumbarton and Foundry have joined the network. St. Luke's, Sandi Stroud's home church, has been considering joining for years, said the Rev. Anne Yarbrough, the pastor.
But first there were hymns to sing and babies to baptize. Near the end of the service, Stroud joined Yarbrough in carrying Sadie and Eilidh, the newest members of St. Luke's, up and down the aisle in their fluffy white dresses.
Then Stroud stood with Yarbrough at the front of the church. The pastor, who plans to retire in June, lifted from around her neck a white stole, the ceremonial garment Stroud has been forbidden to wear.
Yarbrough handed the slender strip of fabric to Stroud. "I hope I can say this," she said. "But I know the day will come when you'll be wearing stoles again. And I hope this will be among the ones you wear."
Afterward, Stroud called the gift "very moving, very humbling."
Yarbrough called it a "symbolic way to express my support."
"I pray that she's the future of the United Methodist Church," Yarbrough said. "That gives me a lot of hope."
