-- Shakespeare
Meditation: by feminist theologian Carter Heyward (Our Passion for Justice, p. 84)
…Love… [is] our human experience of God in the world.
[But] because the word love has become a catchall for sweet and happy feelings;
because we have learned to believe that love stories
are warm and fuzzy tales about dewy eyes and titillating embraces;
because we have been taught that love and marriage go together
like a horse and a carriage
and that love means never having to say you’re sorry;
because, in short, love has been romanticized so poorly,
trivialized so thoroughly,
and perverted – turned completely around – from what it is,
we find ourselves having to begin again
to re-experience, re-consider, re-conceptualize what it means
to say “I love you.”
What does it mean to believe that God is in the world,
among us, moving with us, even by us, here and now?
Reading: by Richard Blanco, who delivered a poem at last month’s presidential inauguration, the youngest and first openly gay person to be inaugural poet, from an article entitled “Making a Man Out of Me”
I'm six or seven years old, riding back home with my grandfather and my Cuban grandmother from my tía Onelia's house.
Her son Juan Alberto is effeminate, "un afeminado," my grandmother says with disgust. "¿Por qué? He's so handsome. Where did she go wrong with dat niño?" she continues, and then turns to me in the back seat: "Better to having a granddaughter who's a whore than a grandson who is un pato [a duck] faggot like you. Understand?" she says with scorn in her voice.
I nod my head yes, but I don't understand: I don't know what a faggot means, really; don't even know about sex yet. All I know is she's talking about me, me; and whatever I am, is bad, very bad. Twenty-something years later, I sit in my therapist's office, telling him that same story. With his guidance through the months that follow, I discover the extent of my grandmother's verbal and psychological abuse, which I had swept under my subconscious rug.
Through the years and to this day I continue unraveling how that abuse affected my personality, my relationships, and my writing…
… At forty-one I realize I've been sad all my life and have always written from that psychological point of view. I am inspired by the melancholy I see mirrored in others, in the world, and the ways we survive it. I strive to capture sadness and transform it through language into something meaningful, beautiful. Although throughout most of my writing career I had never consciously written for or about the gay community, thematically I feel I've unconsciously been a very gay writer all along in this sense: trying to make lemonade out of lemons, castles out of mud, beauty out of pain.
Would I have become a poet regardless of my grandmother's abuse? Probably, but not the same kind of poet, nor would I have produced the same kind of work, I think.
Nevertheless, in the end her ultimate legacy was to unintentionally instill in me an understanding of the complexities of human behavior and emotions. I could have easily concluded that my grandmother was a mean, evil bitch and left it at that. But through her I instead realized there are few absolutes when it comes to human relationships. People, myself included, are not always good or always bad.
They can't always say what they mean; and don't always mean what they say. My grandmother loved me as best she could, the way she herself was loved, perhaps. Her trying to make me a man was an odd, crude expression of that love, but it inadvertently made me the writer I am today. And for that I feel oddly thankful…
Reading: by Gene Robinson, the first openly gay person to be elected bishop in the Episcopal Church (in 2003) from God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage (p. 15). You should know, Robinson was married twice.
What I can tell you is that everything I intended and pledged in my marriage to a woman I intended and pledged in my marriage to a man. It feels like the same thing, being lived out with the one I love. It has the same trials and tribulations, the same joys and rewards. Marriage calls us to be our best selves, for each other. Marriage is a very human attempt to make a place in one’s heart for another – a place so holy as to make it possible to have a love for another at times greater than the love of one’s self.
And that is why, for the Church, marriage is a sacrament. A sacrament is one of the places God promises to show up! It is in learning to love another as much or more than one loves one’s self that we get a tiny glimpse of the selfless love that God has for each of us. It is in marriage that we have the opportunity to experience and learn about God’s unconditional love for us.
Defending Love
A Sermon Delivered on February 10, 2013
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
This week, with Valentine’s Day coming up, I am thinking about love. I am thinking about the love of my life, Elaine, to whom I have been married for almost 23 years now. I am thinking about what a wild ride it has been, these years together. Falling in love in grad school, building a home, raising two great children, working and playing together, sharing moments of deepest bliss and greatest struggle - the threads of our lives are so completely interwoven, I can’t imagine a life without her.
This week our daughter, Sophia, is performing in a high school drama production called “Almost Maine.” It is a romantic comedy made up of nine short pieces in which pairs of performers explore love and loss, in a remote, snowy region of Maine. It’s an appropriate show for the week leading up to Valentine’s Day.
Needless to say, my favorite of the nine pieces is the one my daughter is in. But my second favorite is the one that features two buddies, Randy and Chad, who begin by talking about their latest troubles with their girlfriends, but end up realizing that their own friendship is no longer merely platonic. In a comical but touching twist, they both begin to fall for each other. Literally and physically falling on the ground, clumsily collapsing every time they try to get up, the two men finally look into each other’s eyes puzzled and elated, as they realize they have fallen in love.
I feel very fortunate to live in a town, where our high school kids can perform a play that celebrates the love between two men, right along side with heterosexual couples.
And this week Illinois senate bill SB10 passed out of committee, and is now heading for a senate vote on Valentine’s Day. After that, it will be voted on in the House. The bill includes the “Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act.” If passed, this means, according to the Illinois General Assembly synopsis: “all laws of this State applicable to marriage [will] apply equally to marriages of same-sex and different-sex couples and their children; …[they will] have the same benefits, protections, and responsibilities under law.”
This is a big deal for gay and lesbian communities. It is a big deal for all of us who have non-heterosexual friends and family members. It is a big step away from the “second class citizen status” in which we have long placed our lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual brothers and sisters.
I think it is a big step toward justice and equality and freedom. But not everyone agrees. The News-Gazette reported that the Senate will likely pass the bill, but the House may not. For a lot of people in Illinois, the senate bill is a big deal – but not in a good way.
Back in January, Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of Springfield sent a letter to his 131 parishes, which he asked to be published and read from the their pulpits. The Bishop wrote: “Our state's elected lawmakers will soon consider a bill called "The Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act." A more fraudulent title for this dangerous measure could not be imagined. The proposed law is, in truth, a grave assault upon both religious liberty and marriage. All people of goodwill, and especially Christ's faithful committed to my pastoral care…, should resolutely oppose this bill and make their opinions known to their representatives.”
Last week the Illinois Family Institute sent out an announcement of a “Defend Marriage Lobby Day,” on February 20th. “Join Illinois families from all over the state on Wednesday, February 20th, to stand for natural marriage and lobby your state rep to vote NO on same-sex marriage,” they say.
To fire up their constituents, they describe these frightening scenarios: “If people of faith allow this bill to pass, churches will be forced to change their hiring practices and allow same-sex marriage ceremonies if they rent their facilities… And children will be taught in school they can marry a man or a woman when they grow up!”
What Bishop Paprocki and the Illinois Family consider dangerous and frightening possibilities, in my mind, are very good things. I want our churches to rent their facilities for same-sex marriages. I want our children to be taught that they can marry a man or woman. This is, in my mind, religious liberty and marriage at its best.
Our social action committee is trying to help support the passage of the Marriage Fairness Act. They have contact information of our state representatives available for you in fellowship hall. They encourage you to contact your representatives and make your opinion known.
* * *
I confess, I am so fully entrenched in my own view on marriage equality, that I had hard time even understanding how any reasonable person could be opposed to it. Why do religious and cultural conservatives talk about “defending marriage,” I wondered. It’s not as if proponents of same-sex marriage are working to outlaw different-sex marriage. My marriage to Elaine will not be affected in the least, whether or not lesbian and gay couples are allowed to be married.
It took me a while to realize, they weren’t talking about my marriage in particular. They were talking about the institution of marriage. Especially for many religious people, the institution of marriage is sacred. And I agree.
The love and commitment expressed in the public act of marriage is so powerful, so profound, it touches so deeply into our individual lives, and is so far-reaching in our families and friendships and the communities in which we live – it makes good sense to me, to treat marriage as something precious, something holy.
Marriage, as I understand it, is all about love. While I am not an Episcopalian, Gene Robinson’s words strike me as profoundly true: when we learn to love one another, we may get a tiny glimpse of God’s love.
If there is a God, that is the kind of God I would worship. A loving God, whose presence can be felt in the experience of true love between two people.
But, of course, there is no consensus on whether or not God exists. And even among those who believe in God, there is no consensus as to what we can consider God’s will.
* * *
There is a frequently cited passage from the book of Leviticus, that is translated to say “homosexuality is an abomination.” And yet as biblical scholars have pointed out, this is a poor translation of this passage, and lifted out of context.
Citing scripture to support your personal opinion or political persuasion is an exercise of questionable value. To challenge biblical literalists, who say we should live as the Bible instructs us, we can quote Exodus 21:7 that condones selling our daughters into slavery, or 35:2 that tells us we should kill any of our neighbors who work on the Sabbath.
Imagining a U. S. Constitution amended to embody a literal biblical interpretation of marriage, Washington state Representative Jim McDermott submitted these proposals: Marriage shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. That is from Genesis 29. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. That is Genesis 24:3. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. That is Deuteronomy 22:13.
As Gene Robinson points out, there is actually not a single passage in the Bible that – either literally or figuratively - opposes the marriage of same-gender couples. In the Christian scriptures, Jesus addresses the issue of homosexuality a total of zero times.
Getting to the religious heart of the matter, and moving beyond literalistic proofs and polemics, Robinson points to a Gospel passage attributed to Jesus: Matthew 7:12. This is where Jesus says, “treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfills the law and the prophets.”
It is the Christian version of the Golden Rule – Do Unto Others – which is found in all the world’s great religious traditions. Gene Robinson wonders, “What would be the result of every person of faith, indeed every person with a desire to be a moral human being, thinking, “If that were me, what would I want?”…I’m not sure that is an exercise engaged in by those adamantly opposed to gay marriage. “If I were gay…” is too big a stretch for those who find such a possibility so remote and so disgusting to even consider.” (p. 37)
* * *
When Richard Blanco was a child, his grandmother thought homosexuals were disgusting. Set in her ways, she couldn’t imagine a love that transcends the conventions of her own upbringing. Tragically, she could not see beyond her narrow and rigid assumptions about what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a woman.
Human love and sexuality are profound and powerful forces in our lives. They touch so deeply into our individual lives, it makes good sense to treat them as something sacred, something holy. The Sacred is mysterious, awe-inspiring, and frightening. It is difficult to describe, and impossible to ever fully understand. The Sacred, like life itself, is ambiguous. And, like God, it is ultimately unknowable.
Carter Heyward writes, “We live, all of us, in uncomfortable ambiguity. We live with contradictions and partial truths. In ambiguity we seek the meaning of ourselves and of the world, and the words to communicate the meanings we find. In its enormous, vital complexity, sexuality may draw us as close as we ever get to the heart of ambiguity. It is to escape from anxiety-producing uncertainty, I think, that we so readily accept labels and resist our own questing and questioning.” (Our Passion for Justice, p. 76)
Because love and sexuality are powerful and frightening, we build rigid boundaries to contain them. We create categories - “gay,” “lesbian,” “straight,” – and these categories can become boxes. These boxes, Heyward says, are “imposed from without, not truly chosen, not reflective of who we are or might have been or might become.”
“The moment a boy child learns that little boys do not cry, the instant a girl child learns that little girls do not fight, the child takes a step farther into the heterosexual box… The heterosexual box is designed to transform vulnerable little boys into big, strong men and feisty little girls into soft sweet ladies…”
The result, Heyward says, “is that the sexuality within us is confined, shaped, limited, perhaps diminished, by the container built around it.”
Years before same sex-marriage was discussed in our state legislatures Heyward wrote: “It occurs to me that it may be the special privilege of lesbians and gay men to take very seriously, and very actively, what it means to love. … Deprived of civil and religious trappings of romantic love, we may well be those who are most compelled to plumb the depths of what it really means to love.”
Richard Blanco was taught some hard lessons about love from his grandmother. Given the harsh words she hurled at him throughout his childhood, he could have easily concluded that his grandmother was a mean and evil person, and left it at that. Instead he learned that there are few absolutes when it comes to human relationships.
People, we ourselves included, are not always good, and not always bad. Sometimes we can’t always say what we mean. And sometimes we don’t always mean what we say. But all of us try to love. All of us love, as best we can.
Sometimes our efforts to love are unintentionally cruel or callous. Sometimes our efforts to love are clumsy and even comical.
It isn’t easy to understand the complexities of human behavior and emotions. Both love and hate run deep. But love runs deeper. Both love and hate are strong. But love is stronger.
May we remember love is the sacred force at the heart of life.
May we remember that love will lead us
through deepest bliss and greatest struggle
and help us build a better world. May we find and foster such love. Amen.
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