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Matthew Shepard Memorial Sermon – October 8, 2006
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 2:16-25; Psalm 128; Mark 10:2-9; Hebrews 2:1-18
Trinity Episcopal Church, Seattle
Eight years ago from this coming Thursday, on October 12, 1998, Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and then crucified on a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming. May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace, and may we who are living not rest in peace until God’s realm comes on earth at it is in heaven. Amen On my website, I have a collection of “Reasons to be an Episcopalian” (http://www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/365plus.html) Initially I set out to collect 365 reasons, but there are now list 482, with new entries still arriving from all over the world. I hope you will send me some of your own to consider for the collection. Two major themes recur often in that collection, 1) our worship is awesome, and 2) we don’t require you to check your brain at the door when you enter. Indeed, you will be in danger unless you bring your brain with you and use it. That is especially true in attending to our readings this morning. I love the irony: You invited me to preach at this your annual service honoring “Matthew Shepard,” an Episcopalian murdered because he was openly gay, and yet today’s readings, put heterosexuality into the floodlights. It’s as if today is “Heterosexual Sunday.” Even more ironic: almost no thinking Christian agrees, not even a thinking fundamentalist, unreservedly and wholeheartedly with the spin today’s texts give to heterosexuality. Consider, for example, the patriarchal assumptions of the authors: Today’s Psalm proclaims. “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house” (Psalm 128:3).Who owns the house? What is the relative status of a houseplant to the house? Surely we have no problem guessing the gender of the one who authored that fantasy. Consider this alteration, “Your husband will be like a cactus plan within your house.” Is that affirming? For whom? Lest you think I am wrong to challenge sacred texts, notice that Jesus does the same thing in today’s Gospel: he disagrees with Scripture about divorce. Moses would allow it; Jesus will not, under any condition. Is Jesus the only one allowed to disagree with Scripture? And is he right to allow no divorce? Is divorce wrong even if love has completely gone out of the marriage? Even if one partner is violent towards all others in the house? Today’s reading from Genesis, the story of Creation, portrays woman as an afterthought, created out of only a small part of the male, and made to be his servant. This account in Genesis 2 is spiritually light years away the account in Genesis 1, in which God creates male and female at the same time, both equally in God’s image.Perhaps those of us who are lesbians or gays may help heterosexuals in responding to these texts. We have extensive experience of Bible Abuse. Some use the same creation story as evidence that God has nothing to do with us. “See, the Bible talks about Adam and Eve being one flesh, not about Adam and Steve! You are perverse and will bring down the wrath of God not only on you but on all who tolerate you, just as God destroyed the people of Sodom!” The Bible does indeed set hard penalties on homosexual practice: Leviticus proclaims: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is on them” (20:13). According to that passage, those who murdered Matthew Shepard obeyed God’s order.After General Convention in 2003, David Bena, Bishop Suffragan of Albany concluded an open letter to the dioceses saying, explaining why he and Bishop Dan Herzog had voted not to consent to the election of +Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. “Lastly, let me speak for a moment to the gay people of this diocese and to the families and friends of gay people. Neither Bishop Dan nor I wish you to leave, or wish to cause you harm. But we are standing by our vows to "guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church." .... While we engage, Bishop Dan and I are committed to maintaining the traditional teachings of the Church regarding sexual behavior. While this may be painful to you, we ask that you remain patient, examine your own conscience and foundations, and follow Jesus as your Lord and Savior. I will do the same. Let Christian love and compassion be our guide even as we disagree with each other on certain practices within the Church.” I replied: Bishop Bena, Leviticus 20:13 clearly commands that you put me to death, for I freely, willfully, and unrepentantly have violated that commandment repeatedly before God and before the whole Church in a faithful relationship with my husband lo these last 30 years, and intend to continue in violating that commandment until death do us part. [It will mark 33 years together next February, and we’re still at it!] Surely you do not expect me to obey the part of the commandment that addresses me without yourself obeying the part of the commandment that addresses you.Therefore, I will willingly submit to capital punishment at your hands in Albany or wheresoever and at such time that you denominate so long as the press and the sheriff are present. I hope that you will invite all others who share your zeal for "the teachings" and the discipline as we have received them. While this may be painful to me, I agree to remain patient; for you, like me, have been forgiven before you know the need to ask. God will not use the same standard in judging you that you use in judging us, but rather fill your heart with joy at God's coming. Lutibelle/Louie, Newark Deputation, Member of Executive Council Bishop Bena replied to me, with just one word, “Whew!” Bless his heart, Much is at stake for all of us in the current battles about how we read Scripture and about the relative authority we give to various parts of it. It is absolutely crucial that we allow, indeed expect, the Holy Spirit say new things to us, for we worship a living God not made of human hands nor created by clever theology. In his chilling 1977 documentary Licensed to Kill producer Arthur Dong, a gay Asian-American, interviewed seven men in prison convicted of murdering gays. While few of the murderers were actively religious, almost every one of them cited the bible or religion as authority for the murders they had committed. They felt that God was on their side, that they had a ‘license to kill.’ Matthew Shepard is an icon not because his fate is unthinkable, but because his fate is all too possible in a society poisoned by bad religion. Matthew Shepard was neither the first nor will he be the last to be crucified because of a commitment to radical love. I did a Google search this week for the incidents of three hateful phrases on the web: “Kill the faggots”: 2,560“Kill the [b word]”: 31,000“Kill the [n word]”: 5,440 How many in this room have been present when lesbians or gays have been spoken of with condemnation because we are lesbians or gays? ------ Anonymous callers have left dozens of hateful messages left messages on my own answering machine through the years. Here’s one from 1980 that I recorded verbatim to preserve it, or pickle it, as a poem. I call it, “When You Can’t Do Your Algebra”: Hey, Louie, I'm gonna kill you.I listened to your program, you faggot.I'm gonna beat your flipping face if I ever see you. You hear me!?I ain't no flipping faggot.I kick your junky flipping ass.Goodbye.Of course flipping is not the word that he really used. Isn’t it fascinating that the word he did use is considered more obscene than the other ‘f’ word which I left intact here? Several years ago I was teaching in the University of Wisconsin, where it is really cold and people don't speak the way I was brought up to speak. I had a young student who was a rather attractive young man, but didn't have much between the ears. It became quite apparent early in the semester that Robert didn't have much chance of passing the course without some special help. So I offered to have him come by my office with every paper he wrote in Freshman English. Bless Robert's heart. He did beautifully. He was there.The next paper wouldn't be that much better, (nor is mine necessarily) but we worked and we worked and we worked. And near the end of the semester, Robert got just enough better to pass that course with a C-minus, which was the best we were going to get from Robert. But he earned it, so that he could get out and do the work of the other courses. I was happy. And he was happy too. I didn't see Robert for maybe a year or year and a half. Back in those days I was still jogging. It is very difficult to jog in the wintertime. But Spring was on its way and the world was, as e.e. cummings says, "puddle wonderful." I was out jogging around the lakes on our campus, trying to miss a puddle here and not slip there. And I looked ahead of me, and no farther than from pulpit to the altar I saw Robert jogging through the wet, wonderfully bright cold. And I was so happy to see him (That meant that he was still at the University!). I brightened up and I said "Robert!" And at that point Robert spat in my face and said, "Faggot!"
Can you...can you imagine what it would be like to be Robert? Can you imagine what it would be like to be Robert's wife? Forget the spit on my face. Can you imagine what it would be to be Robert's daughter? Coming to your father with a need... any kind of need. Anything that stretched him to reach out to her? We are here today for the Roberts of the world. What we know as Christians on our journey, Robert so much needs. I knew in the moment that Robert's spit got into my eyes, just as Jesus talks about spittle taking scales off your eyes, that the Roberts of the world are vastly in need of love! We must learn how to speak that love.
The abuse we face is not just verbal. In 2004, the latest year for which the FBI has published statistics, bias against a particular sexual orientation accounted for 1,406 hate crime incidents. Law enforcement agencies reported that 60.8 percent of these offenses resulted from an anti-male homosexual bias, 21.1 percent from an anti-homosexual bias, 14.3 percent from an anti-female homosexual bias, 2.5 percent from an anti-heterosexual bias, and 1.3 percent from an anti-bisexual bias. (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2004/section1.htm) 175 hate crimes were reported for Washington State in 2004. Seattle reported 11 hate crimes related to sexual orientation, 11 related to race, 1 related to religion. It is as if the evil imaginations of Leviticus are in the spiritual DNA of many people in the country and in the Church. About five years ago, I received email of just one sentence from a stranger: "Are you the same Louie Crew who used to live in Fort Valley and had a black lover?" "Yes," I replied, "and why do you want to know?" "I was afraid I would never find you, and I am in desperate need of your forgiveness," he replied. "I was a teenager back then, and my family encouraged my brother and me to throw rocks at your apartment and to call you threatening to murder you. I was with my father when he ran you off the road with his truck several times when you were jogging. I grew up gay, and I am having trouble living with myself for having done these horrible things. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?!" "You were forgiven long before you ever thought to ask," I replied, "from the same source of my forgiveness, the same source of all forgiveness. Bless you!" "I have an Hispanic lover," he replied, "and my parents have welcomed us home as a couple." I have focused heavily on the grim facts of the church’s extensive complicity against lesbians and gays.It is far easier to pretend that history does not exist, or that it has now completely ceased and should thus be ignored. Otherwise, why would any of us want to be a Christian? The answer to that question is hugely important. Remember this if you remember anything at all that I say: The only reason to be here is because you have been invited, all of us have been invited, by the Lord of the feast. It is spiritually unhealthy for any of us to stand outside any church saying, “Let me in!” We are already loved, already redeemed, already sanctified. If we don’t come, many will never see Jesus. If we don’t forgive others their trespasses against us, they may never get a glimpse of how fully God has forgiven us all our trespasses. I have spent a good deal of my life trying to figure out what God is doing with us lesbian and gay Christians, and now I think I know. I come from north Alabama, where we have coal mines. Sometimes lethal gases fill a shaft of a mine, and they can’t be seen. To test whether the mine is safe, miners first send in a canary. They don’t send a plain sparrow, because they would never notice whether the sparrow flew out. Lesbians and gays are the canaries in the coal mine of the Church. Lots of others with less colorful “sins” are watching to how we survive. “Will the church be safe for me as a divorcee?” some ask. “Will the church really welcome me as one in recovery for addiction?” others ask. “Will the church welcome us in a mixed marriage?” some ask.Watch the mine entrance closely for the canaries. Any Church too toxic for lesbians and gays will be too toxic for anyone else bringing real needs here. In June 1982 I visited my father in his nursing home. Mother had died there in January. He had been in constant pain for over 5 years. We three were very close. "Dad, I know that I have not been the son whom you wanted, but you need to know that I love you very, very much." He struggled 3 minutes pulling himself to the rails to look at me directly, intensely. "Oh but you are completely wrong: you are the son that I wanted and I love you." Dad was just a man, but oh how blessed I was to have him as my father. I realize that few people are that fortunate. But let me tell you about my other Father, who says to each and everyone of you in this place, “You, you, you, you…are the daughter I wanted, You are the son that I wanted. Adam and Eve, yes. Also Adam and Steve. Eve and Jean. Ernest and Louie. Kim and Scott. Rebecca and Harry. Hilda. Josephine. Edgardo. Li Min Hua…. I have made you but a little lower than the angels, and I love you very much.” Amen
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