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?'