Coming out as a disciple, Proper 7 Year A, the Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

It’s Pride month, and the City is aglow with rainbows and glitter and gold lame; all around are festivals of art, film, poetry; there is music, and dancing. It’s a joyful moment, perhaps this year more than most.

Almost forty-six years ago today, Harvey Milk spoke these words at Gay Pride:

Gay brothers and sisters,... You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.

Then as now, coming out involved risks of being thrown out of your family, your church, fired from your job, abandoned by people you counted as friends. Harvey knew the risks.

Two years after he spoke the words I just quoted, he taped a recorded message to be played in the event of his assassination.

Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment, any time, I feel it's important that some people know my thoughts. And so the following are my thoughts, my wishes, and my desires, whatever, and I'd like to pass them on and have them played for the appropriate people.

Among the things he said in that tape were these words so chilling and prophetic:

"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country."

One year later he was shot and killed.

Our own gay movement is not the only one with martyrs like Harvey. Years before, during the civil rights movement, many followers of Dr. King were “disappeared”, disowned by their families, had their legs broken, or were murdered. Nuns, laypeople, priests, and bishops have been similarly treated in Central America.

The experience of Harvey Milk, and Dr. King, and the martyrs of Central America, was also that of Jesus and his first disciples.

From Jesus the early disciples had discovered a profound new truth about themselves: that even though they were often the outcasts and misfits of their day, the untouchables and the impure, they were the beloved daughters and sons of God, with an infinite beauty and dignity that no one could take from them. That they were worth more than many sparrows.

This was a game changer, not something they were used to hearing, especially from religious leaders. A whole new truth they had discovered about themselves, and about every other human being as well; a whole new truth they had to speak, a new identity they had to come out about.

And so they came out as his followers, proclaiming this new, profound truth about themselves and about everyone else.

And there were consequences, sometimes painful ones, sometimes fatal ones. And in today’s gospel Jesus makes no effort to soft sell what those consequences might be.

It’s ironic that the one we call the Prince of Peace should say in today’s gospel “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

When Jesus says this, he is simply stating a spiritual fact. When we discover a new truth about ourselves, we feel the urge, the duty, to proclaim it. This isn’t a command that someone else places on us. We feel it in our hearts. We must speak our truth. The new truth we have discovered about ourselves needs to breathe and grow. As the poet Annie Dillard writes: “The joy that isn’t shared dies young.” Not speaking out leaves us only half alive, living but only partly living.

And yet we know that doing so might disturb some people. This can make us afraid. So Jesus says,

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Speaking our word from the heart has consequences. These consequences can make us afraid. And yet, can we afford not to speak? Can we live with the cowardice?

The philosopher Ken Wilber describes the bargain we make when we when we discover a profound truth about ourselves. He writes,

And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout from the heart--perhaps quietly and gently with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakeable public example--but authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and duty; you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent… Those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain… And this is a terrible burden, because in any case there is no room for timidity.

I’m grateful that Ken Wilber acknowledges a variety of ways of speaking our truths--sometimes with reluctant tears, other times with angry wisdom, or careful analysis, or public example. Each of us has to find our own way of speaking truth.

Because to seek comfort and safety instead of speaking our word may mean that, in an effort to avoid pain, we miss opportunities to fully live. We run the risk of merely existing and eventually dying without ever really living, without ever really loving.

As Allen Boesak of South Africa says, "We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask us: 'Where are your wounds?' and we will say, 'We have no wounds.' And God will ask, 'But why? Was nothing worth fighting for?'

Forgiving and Retaining, Pentecost Sunday, 2014, the Rev'd Dr. Richard Smith

So there they are, huddled behind locked doors, traumatized, frightened, blaming themselves and blaming each other, without hope after all their dreams had died on the cross two days before. Into their midst Jesus appears and says, of all things, “Peace”.

And after he breathes his very own Spirit into them, he presents them with two options: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

After all they have experienced from the Romans, from the religious leaders, from their own and each other’s betrayals, this is a choice they must now make--whether to forgive sins or to retain them; to hold themselves and others in their sin, or to release themselves and each other from it.

Someone once told me that the root of the Hebrew word for forgiveness means literally “letting go of the jugular”. The image is that you have someone by the throat and are strangling them to death. And when you choose to forgive, you let go, let them live.

The choice is ours to make.

What does a choice like this look like? One of the other well-known stories about Jesus gives us a clue.

You remember that story...The religious leaders have caught a woman in bed with a man who was not her husband. They drag her out of bed, bring her to Jesus, and make her stand there in front of everyone.

As she stands there, they talk about how horrible she is, to the point that she deserves to be tortured and killed: “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.”

Imagine this scene for a moment… 

What must she have been feeling?  Humiliation, terror, shame….

And what were the religious leaders, all of whom happened to be men, what were they thinking? She has broken the commandment, therefore she must be stoned. That’s all of her story they care about. They do not see her as a human being with dignity, deserving their respect. To them, all she is is a terrible sinner, nothing more. All they could see was this one moment of adultery.

But what was her larger story? What might have driven her to risk her life to be with a man in an illicit affair? The gospel doesn’t tell us, we can only guess what her own struggle may have been. 

Like many women of her day, she was probably in a marriage arranged for her by her parents when she was 12 or 13 years old. 

Was her husband someone she loved, or who loved her?

Was her husband abusive?

Did she feel trapped? 

Perhaps this man that she had the affair with was the one person she could talk to.

Maybe he told her she was beautiful. 

Maybe he told her he loved her.

The larger dimensions of her story are lost on the religious leaders. In their version of the story, she is a terrible sinner, and nothing more.

I wonder if she started to believe the story they were telling about her.

I wonder what Jesus saw in those tear-filled eyes. What story would he tell about her.

Anyway, while the religious leaders are ranting, Jesus does something curious. He sits down on the ground and begins writing with his finger in the dirt.

Scripture scholars go back and forth about what he could be doing here, but the theory I like best is that he was doodling.

You know how it is when you’re on the phone with someone who can’t stop talking, and how it can get a little tedious? And so you grab a pen and a corner of the newspaper and you start to draw pictures of cats or airplanes, just to break the tedium of the moment.

Maybe this is what Jesus is doing as the religious leaders go on and on with their rants about this woman. He’s finding them very tedious. Maybe he rolls his eyes a few times. And he doodles.

And finally when they are done ranting, Jesus stands and speaks to them.

Now Jesus was a devout Jew. He knew the law as well as the religious leaders did. He knew that the law was given as a tool to fashion a people of love, to help us live more fully.

But he also saw that, among some of the religious leaders, the law had become distorted, had lost its purpose. The religious leaders used this beautiful gift from God to brutalize people and crush their spirits, to literally torture and kill them.

So Jesus stands up and says “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” He turns the tables. “If you honestly believe you can stone this woman without making a travesty of the law God has given us, then be my guest. Who will cast the first stone?” He is taunting them.

Now who is the righteous and who is the sinner? Who bears the greater weight of sin? Is it this woman, or is it those who have taken the law--something very beautiful to help us love and live more fully--and turned it into something brutal and cruel?

Suddenly those who had seen themselves as righteous, those who sought to judge and punish, they are the greater sinners for having distorted the whole purpose of the law, turning it from a means to life into a means to death. 

With these words of Jesus, “...they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him,”

and he rises to his feet to speak to her. 

He says to her, “Woman….” 

In our English translation, this can seem rather cold and formal, but for Jesus it is a word of profound respect. This is the word he uses when he speaks to his mother. “Woman.”

It’s probably been awhile since this woman was addressed with this profoundly respectful word. 

“Woman,” Jesus says, “has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

When he tells her to “Go,” he’s using the same word Moses used when he said to the pharoah “Let my people go!” It is a call to become free from slavery and to start the journey to the promised land. This is more than an encouragement to avoid falling into sin. He’s beckoning her to a life of freedom--freedom not only from sin, but also from the crushing story the religious leaders had woven for her around that sin, a story that perhaps she herself came to believe. 

While you acknowledge the effects of sin and brokenness in your own life, begin, nevertheless, your journey to the promised land. Even as you own the mistakes and failures of the past, write yourself a new story--one that leads to a more abundant life, greater joy, more love. Step into a new future. 

Perhaps we have to do this not only with ourselves but with other people in our lives. Perhaps we need to do this with El Buen Samaritano as our time with them comes to an end. Even as we acknowledge the sin and brokenness in our relationship, we are not bound to that. That’s not the whole story. Perhaps we can write the story of our relationship with that community these past seven years, and write it in a way that leads us all to greater love and fuller lives.

It’s the choice Jesus offers: to hold ourselves and each other in our sin, or to let go of the jugular, free ourselves and each other from an alienated past, and begin a new story, a new future, that leads to life.