Matthew Shepard Memorial Sermon – October 7, 2007

By Nathaniel Brown

 

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

(Habakkuk 1:1-6; Timothy 1:1-5; Luke 17:5-10)

Trinity Episcopal, Seattle

 

 

I am speaking today because nine years ago yesterday, on October 6, 1998, a rather delicate young gay man named Matthew Shepard was kidnapped in Laramie, Wyoming, brutally beaten, and tied to a fence where remained through the night in sub-freezing temperatures. He was found the next day – the 7^th, today - by a passing biker, and taken to a hospital. He never regained consciousness. The Episcopal priest who came to his bedside said that Matthew was beaten so badly as to be unrecognizable, and that the only part of his face not covered with blood was where the tears had run down his cheek. He must have known what was happening, and been as helpless as he was alone. He died on the 12^th. This was an event which can still bring tears to my eyes when I remember it.

 

This is not going to be the same homily that I had originally planned to deliver today.  What I had hoped to speak about was the progress that we have made  in recent years toward establishing equal human rights, dignity, and inclusion for gay people in our society and in our church.  I had hoped to celebrate that progress, and link it to the progress that has been made in other human rights areas ranging from racial equality to women’s rights.  And certainly there is much to celebrate, though in all these areas, much remains to be done, and much is even threatened.

But then two weeks ago our bishops met in New Orleans with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and part of what I have to say today is that I am devastated by what came out of the meeting - and perplexed by  feelings of  alienation, disappointment, and betrayal.

What has happened? 

On Wednesday the 26^th, the bishops issued a statement  reconfirming the General Convention’s Resolution B033, which states that the Episcopal church will “exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.”  They clarified this statement by adding, for the first time: “The House acknowledges that non-celibate gay and lesbian persons are included among those to whom B033 pertains.” 

No more avoiding actually saying it: No Gays. 

For a good, long time, too: The last General Convention pledged in a last-minute resolution not to do anything “unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion.”  And we all know when that will be. 

Next year, in Jerusalem.  Maybe. 

Our bishops seem to be worshiping at the twin idols of unity and appeasement, and the sacrificial lambs are gay/lesbian people.  I ask you whether inclusion so long and so indefinitely deferred can be called inclusion at all? And how in God’s name we can bring the gospel to the gay community after this?

Another result is that officially at least, we will have no blessings for our deepest and most meaningful relationships – something the rest of you take for granted, perhaps.  Note that this is not “marrying”, but “blessing”, though it should be marriage. 

 

Those of you who are married know that one of the abiding, perhaps in the end the chiefest aspect of marriage, is that through a successful marriage we learn what unconditional love is.  We grow in love and understanding, and we become better human beings because of that “other” who is always present, and who makes us want to be better people than we are. Marriage is life in greater abundance.  My marriage with my partner Chris brought me growth and joy, and brought me back into the church in gratitude.  But the bishops have decided that this is not worthy of a blessing, although we bless our pets and have even blessed, as Bishop Spong has pointed out, cruise missiles.  We will not bless the most enriching and joyful experience of a person’s life, one that brings us so much closer to God.

 

It is the old controversy over who shall be included in Christ’s Church.  It is much like denying women the priesthood or indeed denying women priests the opportunity to serve God as bishops, and it is brought to you by the same thinking.  It is an exclusion based on identity.

Let me digress further, for just a moment.  There are some 620 purity laws in the Old Testament which prohibit everything from eating pork to including eunuchs in the congregation.   Christians follow the example of Jesus, who ate with all manner of people and held the despised and excluded Samaritan up as our example; and we follow the example of Paul, who reached out, against much opposition, to the Gentiles; and of Philip, who baptized the Ethiopian eunuch.  Seeing all this in-bringing as the Christian way, we no longer penalize or exclude on the basis of the holiness code.  Yet some seem fixated on just seven verses throughout the entire Bible which seem to exclude homosexuals.

 

These verses are worth examining, though I freely admit that what follows is a vast oversimplification:  The Old Testament speaks of homosexual actions as “toevah” (הּכּﬠוּתּ) a word which is never used in the context of something intrinsically evil such as rape or murder, but rather in reference to something ritually unclean like eating pork.  Similarly, Paul uses two words which have been assumed to refer to homosexuality: one is “malakos” (μαλκός), a word which is usually used meaning “soft” or “wanting self control”, that is, “promiscuous”.  The word is never used in Greek to mean gay people, and Paul often uses it to describe heterosexual activity.  The other word is “arsenokoitai” (αρσενοκοίταί), a very rare word which the best evidence suggests strongly did not connote homosexuality to Paul or his contemporaries.4 Even the word “homosexual” is a neologism, first used in German in about 1875, and in English only after 18925. 

 

In other words, the Bible does not speak of what we today understand as homosexual orientation with life-long, committed same-sex unions.  As he often does, God is asking us to think and to make adult decisions: “Truly, I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”6  And “Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”7

 

But back to the current situation: a resounding, present no to honest and open gay bishops and another no to blessing same-sex relationships - and all clothed in a gratuitously insulting bleat at the end of the statement: “We call for unequivocal and active commitment to the civil rights, safety, and dignity of gay and lesbian persons.”

The bishops of the Episcopal Church have decided that unity is more important than justice. They have bent their collective knee to the will of the bullies and agreed to forget a prophetic vision of justice and inclusion - until the bullies agree with it.

The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures would have been appalled. For all the high-sounding rhetoric about how much they value gay people, the church has purchased a tenuous peace by excluding the outsider, and the GLBT community has been told, yet again, to wait for justice and inclusion. 

Does anyone see anything encouraging in this, that is, encouraging to LGBT people?

Is there a place for LGBT people in the Episcopal Church?  I confess to you that I do not know whether it is possible for me to remain in the Episcopal Church, where I am clearly a second-class citizen.

The Old Testament lesson for today, from the minor prophet Habakkuk seems dreadfully apt:

 

“How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, Violence! but you do not save?  Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails.”8

 

Will anyone deny that people who are disposed to violence find encouragement when a group is denied its full humanity?  In denying full inclusion to gay people, the bishops give comfort to the haters by demonstrating that gay people are not fully human, not worthy to be part of the communion, do not have access to all the sacraments.  We have nothing to teach, and our unions are not worth a blessing.  Matthew Shepard hangs on that fence still, alone, in the cold.

 

And, as happens when appeasement is resorted to, no one is pleased.

 

At home, the ultra-conservatives will leave no matter what is done, and it is a hard truth that the sooner they leave, the better for everyone – although we should try hard to find some way  that they might go with our blessing, for disagreeing with love is the true Anglican way, and we are under a new commandment, which is to love one another.

 

Other conservatives will stay, to everyone’s benefit, although some things will trouble them, just as some things trouble the more liberal.  But we believe, as we must, that our real business here is to come to Christ’s table together, and that to refuse to do so is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

 

Here we come to the Epistle for today:  “God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”  I  believe this is true: as a friend writes to me:  “Eventually, I feel, it is the rank and file that will bring us through this. Many, if not most, are not about to let down the GLBTs… because you're right: this is not justice.” 

 

The work of the church – Christ’s work in the world - is not carried out by bishops or committees or those who write reports. It is carried out by communities of Christians who come together in love and charity and as much mutual forbearance as they can muster through prayer and humility.  By congregations.  By you.

 

Eight years ago I left the church where I had been attending since the 7^th Grade.  The men’s group passed a resolution that they did not want to worship with “that kind of people,” our priest announced from the pulpit that discussion of same-sex unions was over so long as he was rector, and people audibly whispered behind my mother’s back.  We found our way here, and you welcomed us.  Here at Trinity we found the sort of community where we come together not, perhaps, always in agreement, but in mutual respect and charity, to take the bread and the wine together.  My father’s funeral service was held here, my partner’s ashes are buried outside in the memorial garden where I hope mine will join his, and we celebrated my mother’s life here when she, in her turn, died.  You made us welcome, and this is my place, just as it is yours.  Our place.

 

In his play Faust, Goethe puts in the mouth of the devil a chilling self definition: “Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint.”9  “I am the spirit that eternally denies.”  I believe he meant the spirit that eternally denies us the things that bring us life in greater abundance, and what this means to Christians is the humility to let Grace happen in all lives. 

 

Let me leave you with four things.

 

Let me leave you by asking for advice, if you care to give it, and by asking all of you for your prayers as the Episcopal church apparently lurches away from the courage and the prophetic vision of justice it had for a short while. 

 

Let me leave you with this: we are God’s people.  We learn, we expand our understanding of humanity, and our compassion, and we say, “Come in, and share the blessing.” 

Let me leave you by saying that I am not in complete confusion.  My faith does not stumble.  I believe that, “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."10  I may question my place in the Episcopal Church, but I cannot question my place in the congregation of Christians if I believe this. 

And let me leave you with this: perfect love casts out fear –  fear; not compassion, not  intelligence, not the duty to listen, not the God-given humility to learn.  It is our job to love one another, that is the New Commandment. 

 

If we can just learn that one thing, Matthew Shepard will not hang forever on that fence.

A Collect:

 

Heavenly Father, who are the Author of all Mercy, and who gave us a New Commandment through your Son Jesus Christ to love one another; we pray for the soul of your servant Matthew Sheppard, and for all who have suffered because of prejudice and ignorance; we ask for your forgiveness when we have hated; and for your divine help in learning to do the hard work of loving all mankind.  Though Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.

 

Recommended Reading & Bibliography

 

 

 Leroy Aarons, Prayers for Bobby, Harper, 1995 – The deeply moving story of a fundamentalist Christian mother coming to terms with here son’s homosexuality after his suicide.

 

Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance, St. Martin’s Press, 1999 – Homosexuality in nature observed and exhaustively documented.

 

Howard H. Bess, Pastor, I am Gay, Palmer Publishing, 1995 – A very readable look at issues surrounding homosexuality by an American Baptist Minister. Probably the easiest source for broader examination of the "troublesome verses". Highly recommended.

 

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, University of Chicago Press, 1980 - Highly scholarly and deeply notated; the study of linguistics and Biblical texts, and a history of the relatively "new" phenomenon of anti-homosexuality withing the Church and society. Fundamentally important reading.

 

Robb Formann Dew, The Family Heart, Addison-Wesley, 1994 – Well-written account of the growth of a family through coming to terms with the homosexuality of one of their sons. Highly Recommended.

 

Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, Blackwell. 1998. A distinctively theological interpretation of scripture, as opposed to a subjective or personal one. Heavy, but most valuable.

 

Daniel A. Helminiak, What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality, Alamo Square Press, 1994 – Examination of Biblical texts.

 

Richard Holloway, Dancing on the Edge, Fount/Harper Collins (UK), 1997 – Tremendously exciting look at core Christian beliefs in the post-modern age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Holloway, Godless Morality, Canongate (UK) 1999 – Presents a superb & challenging way of examining inherited dogma. Highly recommended as a basis for further examination and discussion.

 

John J. McNeill, Freedom, Glorious Freedom, Beacon Press, 1995 – McNeil, a former Jesuit, offers some of the most inspiring directions for gay and lesbian lives to take, in deeply spiritual and very clear writing. This was a very important book in my own coming to terms with spirituality as a homosexual Christian.

 

John J. McNeil, The Church and the Homosexual, Beacon, 1976

 

Eugene F. Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body, Blackwell, 1999 – A scholarly and very challenging examination of Christian attitudes towards homosexuality. Cannot be too highly recommended.

 

Colin Spencer, Homosexuality in History, Harcourt Brace, 1995 – Useful reference for historical questions and research.

 

John Shelby Spong, Living in Sin?, Harper, 1990 – Highly readable, thoughtful and at times provocative meditation on Christian sexual ethics. Highly recommended whether one agrees or not, as a starting point for reexamination of a broad range of issues.

 

John Shelby Spong, Here I  Stand – My struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality,. Harper, 1999

 

Andrew Sullivan, Love Undetectable, Vintage, 1999 – A conservative and often inspiring reflection on homosexuality from a Catholic point of view.

 

Michael Vasey, Strangers and Friends, Hodder & Stoughton (UK), 1995 "A new exploration of homosexuality and the Bible." Very scholarly be most readable; highly recommended.