Preacher:        Deirdre R. Hinz

Sermon:          “Earth swears to the sky that nothing shall remain hidden”

Date:               October 14, 2007

Scripture:        Luke 4:14-30

 

Throughout our sermon series—entitled “Whose Gospel is it Anyway?—we have explored the gospels’ differing portrayals of Jesus.  In Mark, Jesus is portrayed as a prophet who proclaims the arrival of the Kingdom of God and invites repentance and belief in the good news.  Mark’s gospel contains no birth story; the gospel actually begins with a fully grown Jesus seeking baptism at the river Jordan.  Most scholars believe Mark was the first gospel to be written, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a primary source.  Matthew and Luke, however, depart from Mark and include birth stories.  In a sense, they both humanize Jesus.  But they have some differences as well.  Matthew believes that Jesus is the long-awaited royal Messiah who will redeem Israel from the Roman Empire.  Matthew treats Jesus’ birth story as the fulfillment of Israel’s prophetic scriptures, scriptures which he quotes repeatedly to prove his messianic claims.  Jesus’ kingly status is immediately apparent in Matthew: wise men from the East visit the young monarch, and Herod very quickly perceives the infant Jesus to be a royal competitor.  So, in Mark Jesus is a prophet and in Matthew he is the Messiah.  Luke, however, has an entirely different view of Jesus—and he reveals his view gradually throughout the first three chapters of his gospel.  Let me catch you up:

 

Right off the bat, Luke tells us that his understanding of Jesus is different from Mark and Matthew.  In an often overlooked introduction, the author informs a man named Theophilus—a man whom history has long since forgotten—that this book has been written in order that Theophilus “may know the truth concerning the things about which he has been instructed.”  So far we know truth is a theme.

 

Then the story begins.  Elizabeth miraculously conceives John the Baptist following a visit to her husband, Zechariah, by an angel.  An angel also visits Mary, who similarly conceives Jesus.  Mary is unwed and, unlike Elizabeth, her pregnancy is considered anathema by her community.  We learn that Elizabeth and Mary are relatives.  Mary stays with Elizabeth for three months during her pregnancy and, upon hearing Mary’s greeting, John “leaps for joy” in Elizabeth’s womb.  Before their birth, John and Jesus already share a special connection. 

 

Jesus’ birth story in Luke is distinctively earthy, and emphasizes his humble origins.  We read that “Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  We also read that shepherds living in the fields come to see Jesus.  There is no mention of wise men from the East, or of Herod’s jealousy.  Jesus is born into poverty.  And he is recognized only by lowly shepherds, two elders in the synagogue, and a few unnamed teachers in the Temple.

 

Meanwhile, John has gone to live in the wilderness, and he doesn’t show up again for several years.  When he reappears, Luke presents him as a divinely inspired prophet who demands that a crowd of would-be followers both repent and bear fruits worthy of repentance prior to their baptism.  When the crowd asks John what he means, John tells them that if they have two coats, they must share with anyone who has none.  He tells tax collectors to collect no more than the amount prescribed for them.  He tells the soldiers not to extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and to be satisfied with their wages.  Jesus must have been a worthy supplicant, because John baptizes Jesus.  Jesus goes to the wilderness to experience temptation by the devil and, shortly thereafter, Herod imprisons John.  It would seem that John’s radical words linking spiritual repentance and social corruption struck a political nerve.

 

So it is in this heated political atmosphere that Jesus returns to his hometown in Galilee.  Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, stands before the synagogue, unrolls the scroll, and reads from the book of Isaiah:

 

                        The Spirit of God is upon me,

                        because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,

                        to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

                        to let the oppressed go free,

                        and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 

Again, these words are particularly poignant in light of the context: Good news to the poor?  According to John the Baptist, Roman leaders were extorting money from the Jewish people, most of whom were poor subsistence farmers.  That they were doing so by means of threats and false accusations implies that they had the weight of Roman authority on their side.  In other words, good news to the poor implied a threat to Roman political power.  He also proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor, that is, the year of Jubilee.  By appealing to this long-neglected scriptural precedent, Jesus is calling for the cancellation of debts, the freeing of slaves, and the redistribution of land.  In other words, the year of the Lord’s favor implied a threat to Roman economic power.  And then Jesus proclaims release to the captives?  Remember that Jesus’ dear friend has just gone to prison for similarly indicting the powerful elite, and espousing a comparable vision of justice.  What’s amazing is that Jesus, in all probability, knows that his friend will be executed, but he feels compelled to call for the release of his friend; to “come out” in support of him, and to “come out” on the side of justice.  One might even say that Jesus “comes out” as “queer.”

 

Now, the word “queer” is one that will be received by people in this room in many different ways.  For some it is an epithet of hate.  For others it’s a catch-all term that includes an entire continuum of sexual orientations and gender identities; after all, it’s easier to say “queer” than it is to say “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, allied, and questioning.”  For others still “queer” is a word that represents ultimate freedom from restrictive labels.  Queer, for them, means they recognize the mysteriousness of love as it occurs in relation to both genders, and they claim the fullness of their gender identities, which are both male and female.

 

But I’m using the word a little differently—although there are commonalities.  When I say Jesus is queer I mean that Jesus is stating his intentions and his priorities without hedging.  I mean that he is boldly stating who he is and what he stands for—knowing full that he is placing himself in harm’s way.  I mean that Jesus claims a position at odds with the dominant culture and affirms his unwillingness to uphold oppressive social conventions.  I mean that Jesus, like so many queer folks, courageously discloses what is most true about himself.  And I mean that Jesus—again like so many queer folks—must suffer the loss of his community in order to remain true to who it is he feels God calls him to be.  Luke tells us that his hometown rejects him.  They run him out of town.  And when they realize that Jesus is implicitly calling them to “come out” and to risk their lives, they even try to kill him.

 

I started by saying that Mark’s Jesus is a prophet and that Matthew’s Jesus is the Messiah.  Who, then, is Luke’s Jesus?  He’s a radical—and I would add, queer—social reformer.

 

Now—let me be clear on this point—the spiritual journeys undertaken by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons are uniquely powerful experiences that can produce amazing cultural and theological insight.  In no way do I mean to undermine the uniqueness of these journeys.  But if we focus too narrowly on the uniqueness of these journeys, I think we lose the more universal implications of what it means to “come out.”  It sets up the queer experience as one with which straight folks feel they have no point of connection, thus heightening a sense of difference and separateness.  The truth is that God calls each of us, no matter how we understand our sexual orientation or our gender identity, to “come out” over and over and over again throughout our lives.  Indeed, in each and every moment of our lives, all of us must continually make the choice to live authentically and justly—that is, to be queer.

 

So how do we as a diverse community of faith “come out?”  What does this mean for those of us who identify as straight, or for those of us who identify with the gender we were assigned at birth?  This is not a simple question.  Indeed, the answer will differ for each and every person in this room.  But I do think there are some generalizations we can make about this path:  it means making the invisible visible; it means exorcising the demons of secrecy and inauthenticity; it means being discontent with the lies and half truths on which our systems of oppression and injustice rely; it means allying ourselves with the poor, the oppressed, and the imprisoned, and speaking out on their behalf; it means taking an honest assessment of the ways in which we benefit from oppressive systems; and it means choosing wholeness and newness of life over and over and over again.

 

*******

 

This past January, I traveled to Guatemala with a delegation of students from United Theological Seminary.  During our brief stay, we visited with Mayan indigenous communities, human rights organizations, grassroots cooperatives, and government agencies in order to better understand the Guatemalan context.  One of our meetings was with a woman called Blanca, who was instrumental in starting an organization called “Family Members of Detained and Disappeared Persons.”  In the 1980s—when Guatemala’s 36-year civil war reached its violent peak—Blanca suffered the loss of six personal friends and family members.  Among them was her son, Oscar, who was only 22 years old.  Through an interpreter, Blanca told us her story:

 

“This month would have been my son’s 44^th birthday.  He was taken 22 years ago this February.  I sacrificed so very much to raise my child: after nine months of carrying my child, raising him, and helping him to have a better life, his disappearance was a huge loss.  My son did a lot of social work.  He was taken by twelve men—hunted as if he was in the jungle.  But, no, this happened in the city—and at 5:45 in the afternoon.

 

“He was put in a car, and to this day I do not know what happened to him.  I wanted my children to be professionals, to have a different life—but my life changed at this moment.  I had to go to the morgue and to police stations to try to find him.  And I saw the same families at these places all the time.  Our relatives were not delinquents: they only wanted change, and a different life.  That’s when we decided to unite to make a change; we could not do it alone.”

 

Blanca continued: “During the eighties, President Rios Montt’s goal was to eliminate all guerrilla sympathizers.  Anyone who asked for rights, or even a better salary, was considered a sympathizer.  But we—the families of the disappeared—decided to show the world what was happening.  We began seeking support from churches in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of Latin America.  We contacted Amnesty International.  We established statistics.  And we began seeking clandestine cemeteries and excavating unmarked graves.  So far we have completed over 100 excavations, and we have found over 2,000 bodies.  At each excavation, we hope to find family members so we can have a proper funeral and burial.  We do not want this suffering to continue into future generations.  We are not seeking revenge, and we are not masochistic.  We only want people to know the truth that, in Guatemala, genocide was committed.  We want justice.”

I asked Blanca—who had only a second grade education—how her organization knew where to look for the bodies if, in fact, the graves were clandestine.  She said, “There are always those who see, but are afraid at the time to tell others what they saw.  But now that the war has ended, people feel freer to come forward and share their stories.  There is an indigenous Guatemalan expression: ‘Earth swears to the sky that nothing will remain hidden.’”

 

*******

 

Earth swears to the sky that nothing—nothing—will remain hidden.

 

*******

 

Both Luke and Blanca assure us that it is part of the cosmic order, designed by God, that all truths will be revealed and that all of creation will be made whole.  Blanca’s life exemplifies this cosmic truth, but so do our lives.  When we leave abusive relationships and work hard to overcome the hurt, we come out.  When we struggle to overcome our addictions to drugs, alcohol, and destructive behaviors, we come out.  When we leave jobs that are unsatisfying and that diminish our sense of self-worth, we come out.  When we leave marriages that, in spite our best efforts simply do not work, we come out.  When we live boldly into the identities to which we feel called by God, we come out.

 

Luke reminds us that this path is not easy.  We must responsibly and prayerfully weigh the impact of our choices on family members and friends—because the flip side of all this is that what can be most liberating and exhilarating for us is often experienced by our communities as a loss, an abandonment, a threat, or a personal indictment.  But still I hold out hope that, with both sensitivity and love, as well as a faithful tolerance for ambiguity, we can find ways to fulfill with integrity our common call to wholeness and justice.

 

This is the movement, the spiritual truth, to which Jesus attested in Luke.  And this is the message, the spiritual truth, that underlies this contemporary cultural event that we call Coming Out Week.

 

Whose gospel is it anyway?  It is our gospel inasmuch as we are willing to claim our Christian queerness.  It is our gospel inasmuch as we are willing to follow the example Jesus and come out.

 

Amen.