| Rev. Pat Bumgardner |
Deuteronomy 6:1-6 |
| November 12, 2006 |
Mark 12:18-34 |
“Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came up and asked Jesus a question, saying ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a spouse but no children, the brother shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother (deceased sibling). There were seven brothers; the first married and, when this one died, left no children; and the second married the spouse and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died.’ ” (No doubt exhausted!)
I guess we can take comfort in the fact that who does what with whom, where and when has been an age old preoccupation of the religiously inclined, and not simply particular to our day and age and the focus on queer life and queer love. Whose spouse will she be?
“Jesus said to them, ‘Is not the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to Moses, ’I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.’ One of the scribes. . .”
The Sadducees were actually a political party that included well-placed priests, scribes and laity ~ people who try to separate their political lives from their spiritual lives have no real idea what Jesus was up against.
“….came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, asked, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Sovereign our God is one; you shall love your God withal your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ’You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
It was the typical “water-cooler” question of the day. Instead of “how about those Mets?” It was “what do you think the most important commandment is – and people had a lot to choose from. Those original 10 words of Moses’ had been expanded to include 613 do’s and don’ts. Which is first and foremost?
Ever been in a meeting (I am perhaps using this metaphor because my life has been a series of meeting lately!) in a meeting where someone just got tired of all the discussion back and forth and “called the question?” Do you know what that means? It sort of brings things to a head, to a point of action ~ You have to use the potty or get off it, as dear old Granny used to say (though not with quite such polite terminology!).
I think that’s what Jesus does in this story. I think it’s what we were saying to our detractors on Thursday evening at a demonstration. We were there to support the right of queer people to march in Jerusalem and 5,000 Satmars were there to oppose that right. They were holding up signs quoting texts of terror from the Scripture. We were holding up signs with love. Someone actually took our sign about loving your neighbor as yourself and through it in the trash. “Do you really think we, queer people, should be executed?,” someone asked a man holding a sign advocating that interpretation of the Levitical codes. “Oh no, not you -- ,” he said, “ Just gay men,” he replied. “The Bible does not say anything about lesbians.” I beg to differ (which is another sermon) AND that’s a ridiculous attitude [A with a circle?] that only make sense if some life is worth more than other life, which is some of what the prescriptions are actually about and definitely part of what our own story (tonight) is addressing. This isn’t a story about the resurrection, these guys are questioning and mocking Jesus, making fun of him. They had no interest in what he believed in or stood for, or the promise and hope he was trying to call fort in people’s lives. They did not believe in resurrection because they didn’t want anything to ever change, not how people related, not even the roles they played in society. It’s like the guy who kept pacing up and down in front of me at the demonstration I mentioned and I guess I should explain: When we went to Jerusalem for World Pride last summer, the march was cancelled because of security issues stemming from the war between Israel and Lebanon and so Jerusalem Open House went to court to fight for the right to hold a march at a later date, and won -- and that march was scheduled for this past Friday, but turned into a rally instead. It’s a whole, long, big story, but anyway, there have been demonstrations and protests against us in Jerusalem for over a week. People have been attacked, fires set, rioting really, and a particular sect of Judaism, the Satmars brought 5,000 men to 2nd Avenue between 42nd and 46th Streets to demonstrate ostensibly against our right to assemble in Jerusalem, but actually about much broader issues and so, about 12 of us (William, Rev. Edgard, and me from MCC and Rabbis Sharon Kleinbaum and Ayelet Cohen and members from CBST) went to counter their protest.
Anyway, there was this old man who kept walking back and forth in front of me, muttering under his breath: boy or girl, boy or girl? At one point, I felt like saying, “Well, you appear to be a boy, but I don’t know since, I have on a suit and you have aon a long coat with knee socks, but lucky for you I practice the politics of self-identity, which thanks be to God New York City plan to begin practicing by announcing a proposal to make gender identity a proclamation not a physical exam. We are who we say we are! That’s God’s take on identity. In the story of the burning bush that Jesus references in our text: I am who I am.
Things have come to a head in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ encounter with people who mock him here is the climax of all his hostile provocating debates, designed to trap him. His questioners are not concerned about spousal confusion in the afterlife. They do not believe in an afterlife [no we said earlier]. They are concerned (as we know from many times of looking at this text over the years) about property rights and maintaining accumulated wealth within particular familial units. The law really said, and it was optional on the man’s part, not the woman’s, of course, a part of the issue we’ll get to in a moment the law said: if brother’s live together, that is to say, if they share a common household and own things together, then if one dies without a male heir, the other may exercise his right to sleep with the widow to produce a son who would then be designated as the deceased’s heir, not that of the biological father, and inherit the property of the deceased. It’s almost as complicated as the two lesbian who divorced out in Brooklyn, and the judge not having any case law governing divorce, as if queer people breaking up is somehow unique in a world where fully 50% of legally recognized marriages end in divorce – not having any “case law,” the judge had to look to trust suit and trust legislation to “divvy” up the property. Women even by the time of Jesus, women in Palestinian culture at least, remained legally disenfranchised on multiple levels, and that is a big part of what Jesus is addressing when he says: when the dead are raised, they neither marry nor are given in marriage,” Jesus is not disparaging sexual relationships (so breathe, it’s a promise of new life, not no life, we believe in!) , he is saying the kind of systematic oppression that treats half the population as property to be passed on will not continue in the Reign of God. There sill be no “wife swap” as the show is called, no dominance and submission (my apologies to the S & M community, but we’ll deal with that next week!) -- “On earth, as in heaven,” not in heaven as on earth, is our prayer! Is not the reason you err, that you know neither the scriptures, nor the power of God? Haven’t you read the story of the burning bush? How many people have read that story in Exodus’ third chapter (I bet we’d get more hand if we asked how many have seen the movie version)? What happens? Moses is tending the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro when he sees a flaming bush (no political pun intended). Light often represents the presence of God, it’s why we picture angels with halos. Anyway, Moses walks over to check things out and the bush talks and Moses talk back. (I’ve seen stranger walking down the streets of Manhattan, though I have to say widespread use of hands-free cell phones has made it harder and harder to distinguish who’s talking to thin air and who isn’t) which was an interesting thing about the demonstration we were at on Thursday. Our opponents issued all their rallying cries in Yiddish, which hardly any passersbys, and absolutely no reporters, not even the folks from CBST understood. Finally, one reporter asked: who are they talking to? Must be themselves, we concluded. Which, it seems was one bright light in Tuesdays’ election results: religious fundamentalists and extremists are more and more simply talking to themselves. Moses has a conversation with God-disguised-as-a-bush, and God calls Moses to stop running away. That’s why Moses is even in Midian, right? He’s run away from not only what he’s done, but from who God really intended him to be, who he is and what that truth means for the life of the world.
You know, somebody else got caught trying to run away from themselves recently. You’ve probably read or heard most of the story by now. The Rev. Ted Haggard, pastor of a 14,000 member mega-church out in Colorado Springs, head of the 30 million member National Evangelical Association and perhaps not so well known, founder of the Life-Giving Church movement in the Ukraine, where almost single-handedly he increased the evangelical population from 250,000 to 3 million over the course of the past 10 years. He’s a very successful man, very influential in religious and political circles. He organizes all his churches around a paramilitary ideology, small groups with commanders and ranks. Violence is a holy thing, he says, a God-like methodology, when it comes to sin, and a lot falls into that category as it did for the Sadducees. God, he teaches, set the standard around pre-emptive attacks and so things like the war against Iraq is Biblically justified. And whether we agree with that position or not the truth is Mr. Haggard lost his empire because he tried to pretend he was someone he isn’t ~ all his adult life, he says, and now, exposed; has resigned his ministry in self-loathing. His “repulsive,” “dark side,” as he puts it, is in need of reproach and punishment and corrective discipline. He must be made an example of, he wrote to his congregation, but the question is, an example of what? Of virulent self-hatred? The world has enough of that. This is his change to bring healing and redemptive transformation to not only his own life, but also the wider evangelical community, his chance to heal some of the rift between sexual identities that people in Arizona at least, clearly rejected as a standard and in legislation. This past week, Arizona became the first state in a long list of 27 to reject an amendment denying equality of relationship.
Is not the reason you err, Pastor Ted, that you understand neither the scriptures nor the power of God, a power not reserved to one type?
“Take yourselves as an example,” St. Paul will write to the Corinthians, (1:26ff) “when God called you, how many of you were wise or influential or came from noble families?” God chooses what is foolish, weak, and unacceptable by the world’s standards, those who are nothing at all to show up those who are everything. Chris is our wisdom, our virtue, our holiness, and our freedom. Boast in that truth!
God neither punished nor asked Moses to self-flagellate. God did not take everything away; Moses did that to himself. God called Moses to come out, and now I’m talking more than sexual identity here.
I am who I am is not just an affirmation of out duty to be who we inherently are (something the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is oddly trying to affirm, I think, it’s not who we are that is morally disordered, their guidelines on the pastoral care of the homosexual, say, but our sexual identities. Oh, I get it: it’s not who I am that’s the problem, but who I am!) I am who I am is not only a statement of identity, but a statement of power and purpose. God is talking about not disappearing into the scenery, like Mr. Haggard tried to do, but rather about the choice to rise up, which is the change of verbs in our Gospel passage: The Sadducees ask about anastasis (a static doctrine) (Myers). Jesus talks about anastosin, an active verb, rising to life. That and that alone is the point, the call of the story.
All the debate about queer life, queer marriage, queer equality, it’s over! We are who we are by the grace and design of God. Jesus called the question (Matthew 19:12,born that way, read it!). Now, get up and do something with this amazing gift of life God has entrusted to our care and keeping. That’s the story in Belarus this week, not the arrest of 7 gay people planning an international conference, but their refusal to play dead. It’s the story in Jerusalem, where 4000 people, gay and straight, showed up at a stadium on Friday, to defy the politics and piety of death. It’s what happened Thursday nigh here, at the corner of 43rd Street and 2nd Avenue, and again yesterday, as Claude and Joe and Ray and many others marched as proud Gay Veterans. It’s not about whether you believe in military service or not, any more than it’s about political party, or who you voted for. It’s about this: we hold these truths to be self-evident. Self-evident that all people are created equal, and have the right to life, to live fully, we say, the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The military ferreted out 18 people last year alone, whose only “crime,” only “offense,” was the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness via the Internet. But here’s the good news: there is no “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” provision in the Bible. It’s just TELL, it’s all tell. Tell the world who I am, God says, a God whose only position on enforced silence of any kind has consistently been, “Let my people go!” Tell the world who you are, because that’s all our best hope. Only the truth will ever set Ted Haggard, or any of those thousands of people he shepherded, free.
You know, part of what this story is about is whether we (and now, I don’t just mean queer people but all people of good will), are willing to come out as people of HOPE, to both understand what is unfolding around us through the lens of hope and new life and possibility and to engage life on those terms. I don’t know about you, but I read the world through the lens of hope this past week when legislators, straight legislators in Mexico City, passed a Civil Unions proposal encompassing gay and straight couples alike. Think about it, a city in a nation 90% Roman Catholic, at a time when the Vatican aligns its voice with those of the most aggressively conservative and punitive voice on the Jewish and evangelical fringes in Jerusalem and simultaneously in this country offers “pastoral care” guidelines that maintain we are “morally disordered.” I take hope when a culture deeply rooted in matters spiritual, religious finally comes to life and says enough is enough.
You know, there is a song sun at Passover, the feast celebrating the journey Moses will shortly embark on, it says: if all we ever did was get to the Red Sea, but the waters never split in two, it would have been enough. The point being, we are called to be a people of promise and hope. I had my hopes lifted when Singapore introduced legislation to decriminalize particular sexual acts ~ largely because it’s time to get real about love, and what all people do to express love.
I had my hopes lifted when 300 Muslim and Christian leaders from Arab states came together in Cairo to announce that they were breaking the code of silence around AIDS and HIV in that part of the world. And when Barney Frank, poised to become the first openly queer Congressional Committee Chair in U.S. history, chose as a top priority: closing the gap between poverty and opulence in this country. I find hope when people get that the queer agenda is the human agenda.
Maybe Jesus was right: love, loving God, loving, not condemning or blaming one another; not polarizing ourselves politically, but love, maybe that is what’s really important. For sure, it’s what the world desperately needs.
You know, we can talk all we want about coming out around sexuality or gender identity but part of what the world desperately needs us to do is come out as people of hope, people who believe in the power of love. That’s God’s only power and why if you ask me, there are bad things still at play in our world. Not because queer people exist, or march, as one demonstrator posited, “look at Jerusalem, he said, you went there for World Pride and a war broke out!” Well, not exactly…. We went there even in the face of war to say love is the way. There’s evil, suffering, violence in this world precisely because God is love. That’s the only power God chooses to use to heal and save and set us free. God did not smack Moses around or punish him in any way. God just promised to be with him, to love him through thick and thing, this is what the world desperately needs.
The Sadducees want nothing to change, now or later, and love (as anyone who’s ever been in love for even 30 seconds knows) changes everything. Love’s power to bring change is the connection between these two seemingly disparate stories ~ one asking a question about Resurrection and another, asking about the first or most important commandment. Love is the key because in Jesus’ world, love was not so much about emotion or sentiment, as it was about alignment and loyalty. It was about with whom and how we connect, in order to live life as fully as possible. To love someone, even God, is to be loyal to them, to say: I get it, my life depends on your life. Or, as Thomas Merton put it, “Love is the seed of life in my own heart, when it seeks the good of the other.”
It was a hopeful thing to me this week to hear people say, lots of different people say, this nation offered up a referendum on ending violence and bloodshed in places like Iraq. 150,000 Iraqis, that’s the latest official public count, 150,000 Iraqis dead and over 3,000 American soldiers, just gone, and no one the freer for it.
You know, Ted Haggard said he taught an “ideology of the use of power, of military might, as a public service.” He said, “we need prayer that is violently confrontive.” But Jesus said, over and over, no matter how provoked: we need love. Pray for your enemies, he taught, for those who curse or seek to harm you. The truth is, there was nothing so unique about what he proposed as the most important commandments among the 613 rules and regulations of his faith. He was quoting from both Deuteronomy and a prayer faithful followers of Judaism recited twice daily, and the Levitical codes many of us are familiar with. The unusual thing, scholar say, was that he brought together the love of God with the love of the people of God, something particular pieties often try to hold separate. When our friend in the story saw the truth in that connection, Jesus said to him, “you’re not far from the reign of god.”
And, I’m saying to you, we weren’t far on Thursday, William and Rev. Edgard and the Rabbis of BST and their congregants. I’m saying, our people in Jerusalem weren’t far, chanting “we love you,” as other set fires and threw stones, citing Biblical injunctions. We here, in MCC churches longing to be close to God this morning, aren’t far off. That’s the good news. We, who have connected faith with the practice of kindness and compassion and mercy. We who want the world to be a better place can find hope in the truth that what the world needs in order to change is what we all have to spare: love.
No one is short on love, because it’s not about us. It’s a God thing. We simply pass on what’s been entrusted to us. We love because God first loved us and in the end, there’ nothing more promising for any of than that.
Amen.
ALL are welcome in MCC. MCCNY is one of hundreds of MCC churches worldwide