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"Sheep, Wolves, Serpents and Doves"
Matthew 10:16-23
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
June 16, 2002
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
When I sent out my weekly e-mail this past Thursday which told my sermon title, Paula Moyer e-mailed me back wondering if I had spent some time at the zoo in St. Louis. I guess that is one perspective of the experience. It would have been easy to call our opponents in the struggle for justice and inclusion, animals. But to do so would be an act of violence. All of us have animal-like tendencies from time to time. I would like to explore with you this morning Jesus’ menagerie metaphor of discipleship: sheep wolves, serpents and doves.
Jesus knew a thing or two about being called an animal. In fact he even once called a woman with whom he was fed up a dog. It’s a way of dehumanizing your opponent and even Jesus was guilty of it. If you can call someone a pig, or a dog, or a skunk, or a rat, or a snake in the grass, they no longer appear human. It’s easier to generalize about them and even persecute them. Jerry Vines, former president of the SBC called Mohammed and demon-possessed pedophile, all in the interest of ecumenism, I’m sure. He might as well have called him an animal.
Jesus called Herod a fox. He called disciples sheep and encouraged us to be gentle as doves while we’re wise as serpents. Today's scripture clearly tells us what will happen when we are faithful disciples. We will, in a word, be persecuted, misunderstood, confounded, and made as enemies in the eyes of the rest of the world. But we will also have the assurance that Christ is with us in a new and powerful way.
"Behold, I send you our as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Sheep are docile animals who could get devoured by wolves. That’s what’s happened to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities. They have been eaten alive. Sometimes the persecution is overt, as in a hate crime, but sometimes it is less obvious. It is when people feel that God doesn’t love them, when families reject them, when they reject themselves, when they confine themselves in to closets to appear heterosexual so they can be accepted by family, by church, by society, by God. This kind of climate is just as insidious, just as lethal.
The slogan of the Southern Baptist Meeting was "lest we forget". About 100 of us carried life-sized posters of people who had died either by their own hand or at the hand of another because of the persecution of the wolves. I held up a picture of Robert Eads and I said, "Lest we forget Robert Eads and all those who have died and continue to suffer from Southern Baptist spiritual violence, bigotry and discrimination."
Robert was a transgender person who had 20 doctors refuse to treat him because of his unique circumstance. By the time he was finally treated, cancer had spread throughout his body and he withered away. It was my honor to remember him, lest I forget.
"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them..." That's the wisdom part. There's an old African proverb which says, "only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet." Be wise as serpents. There are plenty of wolves out there who are ready to pounce on us sheep. We are to be wise enough to see through their deception. We are to be wise enough to be cautious, yet confident in the one who sends us. That's the "gentle as doves" part. In our gentleness, it is important not to lose our dignity, our mission, our calling.
"Beware of them"—why?–Because, "they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles." (The Gentiles means the whole world.)
"Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children rise against parents to have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name", says Jesus in verse 21 of Matthew 10.
On Monday, 25 present and recovering Southern Baptists shared their stories. They did this for seven hours. Time and again people told all who would hear about how their families betrayed them. One 17-year-old told how his mother disowned him when he came out to her. She threw him out of the house and lied about his father’s feelings about him. He now lives with and is supported by his dad. Another said how her brother had stopped letting her see his babies. A mother told of how she had rejected her daughter when she came out to her. Her daughter later committed suicide, lonely, frightened and alone, all because her mother was doing the good Christian thing by calling her to repent and practicing "tough love" on her. The mother now teaches a Bible study for glbt folk in her home, so that no one else has to feel that they are alone or think that God does not love them. What a privilege it was to share those stories and hear those stories. These gentle doves told their stories, these sheep who have escaped the wolves around the corner. They told them without judgement, letting the stories speak for themselves. We invited the messengers from the SBC to attend. No one did. We have the audio and videotapes, however and we will send them on.
We have been gentle doves for three years with the SBC. We have stood in silent prayerful vigil. We have written letters, phoned, faxed and e-mailed. The response has largely been the same: "We will not hear your stories. We don’t need to hear your stories. We will not investigate this any more. Now, go away." But we remember verse 22 of Matthew 10: "but", says verse 22, "The one who endures to the end will be saved."
The Southern Baptists are not our enemy. Untruth is our enemy and our Southern Baptist sisters and brothers are trapped by that untruth, just as we have been.
Our task is to bring the truth with love, relentlessly with the desired result of creating a beloved community where we could sit down at table with our Southern Baptist sisters and brothers. But there is a long way to go. We have no illusions of that. As they go on with business as usual and continue to spread untruths about the glbt communities, we need to escalate our action. But how do we do that? We are sheep among wolves. It goes against our nature to act like serpents. But the scripture says that we are to act as doves, but to be as clever as serpents.
So here’s how we escalated the pressure on the SBC:
First of all we had a no-longer-silent vigil. As our activist friends tell us, silence equals death. We needed to share our stories and speak for those who could not speak. We held a press conference and asked that James Merritt speak at the conference and at the very least repudiate Alabama judge Roy Moore’s statement that the state should use execution to protect children from gays and lesbians. He refused and we told him that we would attempt to bring our message inside the convention hall. I spoke at the press conference and told the press and all those listening about you and this great church. I told them how the SBC had once misused the Bible to support slavery and now it misuses the Bible once again to support discrimination against God’s glbt children. I told them that I was the heterosexual father of two young girls who I hope and pray will live in a church and society where they would not have to fear for their lives or souls if they were to discover in their self-understanding that they were lesbian, bisexual or transgender. We then silently walked to the front door of the America’s Center and tried to get inside to deliver our message. In groups of four we prayerfully went forward, trying to tell our stories. Police in riot gear arrested 38 of us, including a family of four from St. Paul. We weren’t mistreated, although the handcuffs were pretty tight. We spend about 4 hours in custody before being released. We were charged with violating 2 city ordinances and fined $200.00 plus court costs.
I spent an afternoon in jail. But some of my GLBT sisters and brothers describe the Christian experience as incarceration without privilege and freedom, that each and every day they are told they are sinners and denied basic rights, it is like the jail cells are closed again. I spent that time in jail voluntarily in order to set people free. I hope and pray that that day will come soon.
During the vigil and civil disobedience, the police shut down the entrance to the America’s Center for an hour. No one was allowed in or out. We shut down a portion of the SBC meeting. We were arrested as we were kneeling in prayer and as 200 of our Soulforce comrades looked on and cheered and wept. It was great to look out of the bus window as we were whisked away to the workhouse and see Jon Smith continuing the vigil.
But this was not all we did to disrupt. A dozen of us went inside the convention center with the rest of the Southern Baptists. This is where the wise as serpents comes in. We couldn’t even let the entire Soulforce contingent know what was happening until the action had begun for fear of their cover being blown. It was the task of these 12 apostles of truth to try to approach the podium during Dr. James Merritt’s presidential address to share their stories. In two’s at two-minute intervals they stood up and began shouting their stories.
They were immediately whisked away by police, but not before their stories were heard, or at least their passion was felt. These people went in to the convention and took their seats early in the morning, applauded when everyone else applauded, sang when everyone else sang and dressed as everyone else dressed. At the designated time, one woman simply stood up and said, "My gay son is not sick, my gay son is not sick…" They spent 11 hours in jail and were threatened with the felony of "ethnic intimidation"—a new hate crime law designed to protect minority groups like the glbt communities. It made civil rights groups drool at the possibility of taking that case to court. That aspect was dropped and they were charged with a misdemeanor. But they were ready to spend a long time in jail. To engage in voluntarily redemptive suffering so that others might be set free.
Part of our being wise as serpents and gentle as doves means never compromising, but enduring. The book of Revelation lifts up those who bear the faithful witness and have patient endurance in the face of persecution. That is what discipleship is all about.
But bearing the faithful witness can be hard. It is so much easier sometimes to simply acquiesce to the whims of the more dominant. And that is where we need to watch out the most. People are always going to disbelieve us and try to disprove our faith. They can take away our jobs, our ordinations, our church buildings and our denominational standing.
They can try to beat us down and make us give up. That’s where community comes in. I feel so supported by UBC. It’s a great privilege to participate in the action and to know that so many great people support me.
Jesus said in today’s scripture, that the one who endures to the end will be saved. He says that if we are truly disciples of him, we will be persecuted. It was Jesus’ vocation to stand against religious authority and say, "enough of this hatred, enough of this violence, enough of this death. When you endure it all, you will have new life and have it in abundance.
We gathered back at Centenary United Methodist Church on Tuesday evening when we had all gotten out of jail. We told stories. We laughed. We cried. We felt the power of the Spirit of God wash over us and fill us with renewed confidence and hope. We spoke of how many people appreciated what we had done. We again lifted up those who had gone before, lest we forget. We celebrated the fact that we were all safe and just possibly our action saved another person from violence because of what they saw on the news, read in the paper, heard on NPR or saw on the street of St. Louis.
And all of you were a part of it. You are the ones who help grant me and Jon and others the power to act as sheep amongst the wolves—or should I say people with wolf-like tendencies. We help each other to be wise and serpents and gentle as doves. And through it all, we grant hope to a world and a people in need. That is what UBC is about. That is what Jesus was about. And that is what we all are about. "Behold," says Jesus, "I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent or gentle as doves."
Let me close with a story shared by Arun Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson on Saturday in St. Louis. He told of a benevolent king who was on a quest to find peace. Despite all of his attempts, he could not find it. At last he approached a sage, saying "what is peace?" The sage looked at him deep in his eyes and after along pause gave him one grain of wheat. The king was unaccustomed or perhaps too proud to ask for an explanation about the wheat. So he took it home, put it in a small gold box and meditated on it for weeks and weeks. But he did not find peace. He finally got the courage to approach the sage once again. He told him what he had done with the wheat and that it had done nothing to help him find peace. The sage said that as long as he kept the wheat in a box, it would rot and whither and eventually turn to dust. But if he took that wheat out of the box and mingled it with the other elements, it would multiply. It would create great fields and provide bread and produce more seed. "When you do this," said the sage, "you will experience peace."
Sisters and brothers we are to spread our grains far and wide. When we do that, we can plant seeds that will grow into fields of peace, hope, love, justice and mercy.
"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent and gentle as doves." AMEN.