This series that we are in the middle of now is all about coming out, which is actually about liberation. I want to suggest to you that liberation always begins as an inward journey that then becomes public action. I’m trying to encourage all of us in these three weeks to come out in various ways and to not see this just as a question of sexuality, but rather to see that we need to come out in all of our humanity. There are various aspects of ourselves that have been suppressed, and maybe even denied, and progressive religion is about inviting all of those aspects of our humanity to be voiced, integrated and embraced.
Today we are focusing particularly on sexuality, and I want to invite you to call out from yourself aspects that have never been given voice before. Or maybe there are things that have never been spoken in the way that they need to be spoken. Maybe you are not even aware of what the issues are because they are hidden so deep within you. I want to reassure you that this is a safe place to come out If this morning could be part of a process of drawing aspects of your self closer to the surface then I will be pleased.
Today is also about our community coming out. This community has come out before but I want this to be another coming out. Above all else, however, I want you to be able to awaken to the seed of divinity that is within you. What better day than harvest festival to awaken to the seed of divinity, calling out of you a fuller humanity and freer sexuality.
Trembling Before God
There was a documentary made a few years ago called “Trembling Before God”. The director of the film was Simon DuBowski. He traveled the world for six years, collecting interviews with various liberal, orthodox, and Hassidic Jewish leaders and rabbis. As he traveled the world he found that there were very few people willing to speak with him about the question of sexuality within Judaism. He even traveled to Israel, where he waited in line for seven hours to gain an audience for two minutes with a very prominent Jewish leader. The Jewish leader said to him that “Gay and lesbian Jews are animalistic and an abomination before God. This is the message you should put in your film. You should tell them to memorize the first ten chapters of the Psalms as a remedy for their illness.”
DuBowski launched the film in New York City, and he was on the street after the premiere of the film, when a group of people gathered around him and something incredible happened. They had been profoundly impacted by the film, and DuBowski said later, "We stood in a circle. We were gay, lesbian and straight; Jewish and gentile; Orthodox and liberal; black and white. We shared stories about our lives for over two hours. At one point, someone turned to me and said, 'When God created the world, this is what he intended.'" God intended for humanity to be expressed in all its diversity. People should be sharing their stories, learning from each other, and inspiring each other with a diversity that is cause for celebration and not fear.
Two Pillars of Progressive Theology
This is the basis of progressive theology. All of life exists in the image of God. All people and all aspects of all people exist in the image of God. I wonder whether we really believe that. We find it hard to believe. We find it hard to believe that those least respectable parts of ourselves might also exist in the image of God. The Hebrew word for image is closer to our word shadow, and if God contains infinite qualities and attributes, including the shadow elements, which may have been denied, then everything that we manifest in our lives exists in the image of God. It’s part of the seed of divinity. And so it is an essential element of progressive theology; this notion of inclusiveness. Not just including all people but including all aspects of all people and all situations.
The other pillar of progressive theology is well expressed in the quote “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Your inner liberation will become public action. And so self-empowerment is the basis of progressive religion. If you dream of a world where you can walk hand in hand with your same sex partner down the main street of a small town, then grab their hand and walk down the main street. If you dream of a world where you can place a photograph of your partner on your desk at work, then do it. Begin to create the world that you dream of. As you give voice to these dreams, and as a small group begins to form supporting that dream, and as the group grows larger, eventually it will become second nature. No one will think twice about a same sex couple walking down the street hand in hand.
But then again it’s not as easy as that. Who do I think I am to say that; a white heterosexual married man stand in front of you and suggest that you do that.
Our Community Coming Out
We had a young man in our community, just over a year ago, who came out. Nick Beighley, who has now gone off to college, in January of 2005 came out as being gay. And the reaction that he got from some of his friends and relatives, some of whom have different religious orientations, was eye opening. When Nick chose to walk hand in hand down the boardwalk in Grand Haven with his partner, and found people walking the other way and sticking their fingers down their throat and cursing these two teenagers, telling them that what they were doing was vile and they should be ashamed of themselves, we know that we still have work to do. That is unthinkable; that a young man could be treated like that in our neighborhood. As long as it is not possible for a couple to express affection in public, even in church, we still have work to do.
Oppression is about two different things: Us and them. It’s about our own fear of change, of what it will mean for us to come out, and it’s about them, the structures that fly in the face of coming out. It’s about religious organizations making it difficult to come out, because of their hateful doctrines.
Some people asked me during the week why Christ community has to be so public about our acceptance of people of all sexuality. My answer is simple. As long as it is not possible for two teenagers to walk down the street without being vilified, we still have work to do. Our community still has a role to play. This community has got to come out again, more forcefully. We need to be the change that we wish to see in the world. We need to allow people to come out in the midst of this community and feel safe. We need to make our personal lives public liberation acts. We are coming out again today and we are coming out in a new way. We are moving from acceptance regardless of difference, to a celebration of difference. They are not far apart yet they are qualitatively different in their expression.
Our coming out today is about celebrating difference, around which our community finds its strength. We need to do so much more than tolerate difference. The insights of people who have been oppressed because of their sexuality are a lesson we all need to learn from. The insight of liberation through coming out is part of the lesson in fuller humanity that we all need to learn. There is something about experiencing the death and rebirth of coming out that means that the GLBT community can teach us something about Christian faith, that without them, we are lacking. We need to celebrate diversity, and within that we will be performing a public liberation act.
As long as two teenagers cannot walk down the street hand in hand our work is not done. We have to be public. Where else in a church can people find a safe place to come out, if not here? What other religious community in this area will take a public stance, and stand alongside those who are being oppressed with a hatred that is irrational, unscientific and unchristian? Who else will stand by our GLBT community? We must be the allies.
Lazarus Coming Out
There is a story I read to you earlier about Lazarus. See this as a parable, not as a literal rising from the dead. There was a historical figure named Lazarus. He was the brother of Mary and Martha (You remember Mary, she was the sinner who rubbed her hair on Jesus’ feet and poured expensive perfume on him as an act of affection; dare I say an expression of her sexuality.) In any case, Jesus had an experience with Lazarus that led him to tell a parable. In Luke’s gospel, the parable is told as that of a rich man and a poor man. Can I suggest to you that this is actually a story about one person? This is a story about two extremes warring within this one character, one represented as a man so wealthy that he puts his food on a piece of bread as a placemat, and when he is finished he simply tosses the bread on the floor for the dogs to eat. The other aspect is Lazarus, so destitute that he eats the bread that even the dogs won’t touch.
You’ll remember that the story takes place in what is described as Hell. Just imagine that the story is about one person and the extremes of Heaven and Hell that we create within us. The parable describes Lazarus, with these extremes of love and fear, oppressor and oppressed, and this was a coming out parable. Lazarus had to go to the depths of hell within his psyche to integrate his most denied aspects before he could come out.
John tells the story slightly differently, as a man who is locked in a tomb. It’s a tomb of fear, and Jesus calls him out simply with the words, “Come out.” What I notice about Lazarus’ coming out is that when he comes out he still has all the linen of the tomb around his face and body. I find this fascinating, because if this had actually been a supernatural raising from the dead, it wouldn’t take much more effort to go the next step and put some clothes on the guy. It seems significant to me that when Lazarus comes out of the tomb he still looks like a dead man walking. That’s often the way it is when we come out. We take small steps; we take one step at a time, and still have to go through our own process of death and rebirth.
Coming out as Death and Rebirth
What a perfect time to come out- harvest festival. A time when all the patterns of nature come full circle; all the death we experienced through the winter, the journey inward, underground, the place of death where new birth arises in the spring, the growth through the summer, and here we are at harvest.
It’s time to allow all those aspects of ourselves, our humanity, our sexuality, to come out and be expressed. And this is a place for that to happen. A seed has to die in order for it to be reborn, and I speak about death in two senses: the first is the sense that coming out always comes at a cost. After the situation in John’s gospel it says that Jesus’ life was now at risk, and Lazarus’ life was also at risk. Anyone who threatens the status quo is going to be at risk.
For our community to continue to threaten the status quo by saying that all people should express themselves freely, this will come at a cost. And it will feel like a death. But I mean death in another sense as well. For those people who come out of the closet and express themselves freely, it will be like a death, because we get attached to the closet. We get attached to that eerie sense of familiarity, and it begins almost to become comfortable for us. And coming out requires a sort of a death in order for something new to be born.
I had the experience in Auckland New Zealand of working with a GLBT community that met as a faith community in the building of the Anglican Church that I was running. They began at a time in the 1980’s when it was still illegal to practice homosexuality in New Zealand. So they met behind closed doors and would only use each other’s first names when they gathered. But a large group gathered in the face of such hatred and hostility, and they found community. For 20 years they built this up into a thriving faith community.
By the time I arrived in the late 1990’s they were starting to shrink as a group, and to this day they are still shrinking, as more local churches are opening themselves to a celebration of diversity. And so it’s less necessary to gather as a separate group, and now they find themselves integrating with other communities, and this is happening all over the world. And again we are seeing the same pattern of having fully embraced the sexuality, now it’s time for many of them to simply be a part of other communities, and for it to not be all about sexuality. To not be fully identified in the role of a gay man or lesbian woman. To embrace it, but not be only about that.
Now we have communities around the world like ours, where what unites us is our spirituality, and we can celebrate the different manifestations within the one spirit. But it doesn’t all have to be about sexuality. Having embraced and included all, we can also transcend an exclusive attachment to any particular role at the same time.
This is something that Native American culture has understood well. Some of you may have seen the New York Times article last week, which drew attention to the “two spirit” people in Native American culture. Two spirits, because both masculine and feminine identities are equally expressed in one person. Until Christian missions came along and said that this was a disgrace, Two Spirit people were honored. When foes arrived, they would be in fear of a two-spirit warrior. It’s an important aspect of Native American spirituality, as it is in all indigenous spirituality, to fully embrace all sexual diversity as honorable. They include all sexuality and also transcend all sexuality by saying that its not all about clearly defined sexual roles.
So this morning I want to invite you to come out. It’s safe. Come out at the time and in the way that you need to come out, for this will be a process, and we will do it alongside each other as we come to terms with both the oppressor and the oppressed within each of us.
We will come out as a community that still has work to do. When you come out as an individual, you might either do it with a press release, or else you might simply wake up one morning and say to yourself, “I will live freely.” As a community we will both send out a press release and call on individuals to live their humanity more fully, and their sexuality more freely, and we together will be the change that we wish to see in the world. Our actions will become liberation work. We will threaten the status quo. That will come with a cost for us. But it will be well worth the cost. As we continue to put signs up, and send out press releases that say we are open and affirming, we will move closer to the day when two teenagers can walk down the main street in Grand Haven and be celebrated rather than vilified. Bring on that day!
