I’m tired of white supremacy. Weary of death. Tired of injustice. Tired of witnessing sadness and loss and depletion and fear that our people carry from day to day. I’m tired of living my own. And it’s so easy to get lost in rage and resentment. To transform prophetic indignation into partisanship and retribution. To become poisoned by our principles, like Matthew today.

Folks often tell me that they don’t care for the Hebrew bible and its angry and violent and vindictive God. Folks tell me they prefer the Christian bible and the gospel stories filled with love and grace and gentle kindnesses. I have always replied, and I repeat now, that every word of violence found in Hebrew scripture is retold in the Greek, and that every word of forgiveness and justice spoken in the gospels was uttered first by Israel’s prophets and foreparents. Today’s scriptures are the object lesson.

Matthew is exposing a family fight today, and that gospel is willing to say that God rejects the cousins and kin who reject the Matthew community. The gospel is willing to say that God has destroyed their city and their temple. That God will do the same with any who are passing themselves off as genuine believers but are tares and goats, bad fish and children who say they will go out to the vineyard but do not. Matthew’s righteousness has soured and has become resentment, has turned and become a mirror of the hatefulness and exclusion that the Matthew community itself has suffered.

Obviously, I say this with a deep sense of sympathy and compassion for Matthew. I wouldn’t at all mind getting to decide who will be tossed out into outer darkness, chewing the inside of their own lip with their teeth. I’ve already started a list. I would like there to be consequences for mine enemies. Mine racist, transphobic, climate change denying, anti-vacc enemies.

But it’s important to know that Matthew’s oppressors are people who had more in common with them than were different. I have friends who are poverty activists and poverty scholars who defend Matthew and admire Matthew for its moral clarity and its urgency. Matthew is a justice activist. Matthew has incisive critique. Matthew is like any of us in many ways… but also any of us whose righteousness has been eclipsed by self-righteousness… so probably all of us at one time or another. Maybe one or two of us right now. (I’ve already admitted to having a list of mine enemies I’d like to send to hell if there were a hell.)

But I want to admit to you, as well, and this feels harder to say in many ways, that I cannot find a God of Love in the king of Matthew’s parable, or in this feast. Not in a king who sends troops to destroy his own citizens and cities who decline his invitation; who binds and casts out a diner (whom he oddly first calls “friend”) who did accept but didn’t have the right clothes?; who invites so-called “good and bad” alike only to shame and reject some of them. And I’m not able to understand Mercy and Justice in a feast that is conditional. I know that this passage is colored red in the did-Jesus-say-it color-coded bible, but this king is thinking how I think. And a sovereign deserving of all our heart, soul, strength, and mind probably won’t, and probably shouldn’t, use my playbook. Or Matthew’s. This king has my impulses. And Isaiah insists that its God isn’t like me, that its God’s thoughts are not my thoughts nor its God’s ways my ways. God is higher, Isaiah says. I imagine that means better at grace than me and Matthew. Better at patience and whatever it is that forgiveness is. I’d like to imagine that means not being vindictive, not being violent, not being a bully. That seems like a reasonable bar for a merciful, just, and loving God.

Maybe God doesn’t have to be all the things everyone thinks a God should be, maybe doesn’t have to satisfy all the images and all the roles and all of the human impulses for punishment and judgment and attrition. Maybe what we call God isn’t something that hurts us, ever, even righteously, even tough-lovingly, but is always the things that correct us and that comfort us and save us.

Maybe every God we hear about in the bible isn’t a God that we have to contort and bend to fit into our understanding of God. Maybe every God we hear about in the bible isn’t God? Maybe we don’t accept without question the stories of God as killing farmers, burning cities, smashing the heads of enemy babies against a rock, sending a bear to eat a bunch of boys who called Elisha “Baldhead,” or killing disciples for stealing money and lying about it.

That God is certainly not the pine-scented air. There is just no way that God is the pine-scented air.

And so, speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world, what if we replaced the king of Matthew’s parable with the Shepherd of Psalm 23? What if we scrap violence in all its forms, all its allegories? What if, instead of a feast preceded by murdered messengers and revenged merchants and burned homes, what if we instead have the divine meal of Psalm 23? Instead of death and retribution and rejection, what if we assume that whatever is divine is also provision, restoration, comfort, universal …

I’m not saying life is all cornflowers and honeybees. The psalmist knows that life is filled with loss. That we walk through a valley of deep shadow. That death surrounds us, discrimination and violence, sick family, addiction, living overwhelmed by need and responsibility and worry. The valley of death is the very center of the 23rd psalm, and its presence is assumed by the verses before and pervades the verses after it. There’s no denial, no erasure, no pretense.

But it’s no accident that when the psalm is most desperate, closest to the valley of shadow, that then is also the time it is closest to what is divine. Before and after, God is in the third person: God is my shepherd.  God makes me lie down. God leads me in just paths, as is befitting the name of God. But when the psalmist moves into the valley of deepest shadow, when the poet is surrounded by enemies, then God is at its most personal and most present: You are with me. Your rod and staff comfort me. You spread out a table. You anoint my head.

I don’t know about you, but this is what I need for my spirit and my faith. This Shepherd. The last thing I need is a king who hits me and binds me and throws me out. But, honestly, I don’t want a God who will do this to the people I hate, either, if I’m really honest with myself, because sometimes the only difference between me and mine enemies is twenty minutes. Am I so righteous, really? that I’m never the hypocrite, never hurt anyone, never deprived someone of their dignity or respect? No.

Speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world. What if the God we imagine doesn’t throw anybody out? Not people who come to a wedding without the wedding robe. Not people who reverse carbon emissions caps. Not people who voted differently from me. Maybe not even people who target trans folks and try to reverse marriage equality or hoard wealth.

Speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world. What if the perfect divine that we imagine doesn’t take sides between us? Doesn’t chose between Matthew versus Matthew’s cousins? Doesn’t choose between people who believe Black Lives Matter and people who love the flag? Between trans women of color and people made violent and transmisogynist by hegemonic gender values? Between me and the rest of mine enemies?

You prepare a table for me in the presence of mine enemies. Think about that: mine enemies are there, as well, at that table, at the feast. Isn’t the Shepherd preparing a table for them, then, too? Surely mine enemies aren’t just there to watch me eat. Speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world, when my head is anointed with oil, when my cup overflows, what if this God anoints all the heads and overflows all the cups? Makes the sun to shine on the evil and the good, Matthew got that much right, makes the rain to fall on the so-called just and the so-called unjust. What if God doesn’t divide us into sheep and goats, into wheat and tares – into just and unjust?

What if God understands that not everything is either one thing or the other, one side or the other? That some people think Black Lives Matter and love the flag? That some people love and fight for trans women of color and still are trapped in and beguiled by hegemonic masculinity? What if God knows that the difference between me and everything and everyone I hate is sometimes only twenty minutes? This is a hard saying.

Of course this doesn’t mean that there is no right or wrong. I’m confident that racism is still God-damned, and poverty is God-forsaken, that a loving God takes sides against violence and sexual violence. Importantly, though, I’ll not say that God makes this feast for both Trayvon Martin and also his killer George Zimmerman, or for both the dozens of trans people killed this year so far and also their murderers, for both the Muslims and Sikhs and other brown people systematically detained at airports and dragged off planes and digitally strip searched and also the agents who degrade them and the politicians who create the unjust policies, for both the Israelis and Palestinians killing one another. I won’t speak for every harmed person; it’s not my place to decide, I don’t think, what that open table means for everyone, what universal cup filling and anointing means for communities I’m not a member of, or impose my interpretation of universal table-making on these families and survivors of hate and harm. I’ll speak just of me, sitting down to table with the people who have harmed me, and I will wonder for myself about the plentiful imagery of the world.

I’m not asking us to give up our longing for comfort when everything is awful and hard. Of course that is part of an impossible, divine spirit. I am, though, wondering about giving up our need for retribution against fellow humans who make things awful and hard. Maybe even if they did it on purpose. Maybe even if they aren’t sorry. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world.

I’m not asking for us to give up our ethics, our compunction for justice, or our anger at injustice. Of course that is part of an impossible, divine spirit. But I am, I think, hoping that in our zeal for fairness, we don’t require harm or death to balance the scale. I am hoping that we don’t deify our revenge by calling it God.

I’m asking us to speak of the plentiful imagery of the world, to imagine an ultimate reality whose mercy doesn’t make sense, which Paul called a skandal, an absurdity. I’m asking us to conceive of an impossible grace, a collective peace that is beyond our understanding.

Imagine power that is not corrupt. Imagine strength that is not violent. Imagine special treatment, for everyone.

I’m just asking us to imagine a parable – and a paradigm – where a Shepherd provides a balm to the afflicted, provides green pastures, still waters, provides love and compassion, an overflowing cup to so-called friend and so-called enemy alike, as if those names are not opposites. As though we are enmeshed, interdependent, comingled. As though “our” salvation depends on “theirs.” As though love and comfort, kindness, mercy is what saves and redeems and atones.

LITANY, Billy Collins
You are the bread and the knife,
          The crystal goblet and the wine…
                -Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.

Peace.

Rehoboth MCC
November 27, 2022

But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Child, but only the Parent. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Human One. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Human One. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your God is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, they would have stayed awake and would not have let their house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Human One is coming at an unexpected hour.

There are a number of texts throughout the gospels, both the ones in our bible and outside of it, that have Jesus or sometimes John the Baptizer saying stuff about what’s going to happen at the end of the world. It usually sounds a little bit like the Left Behind stories, sometimes it sounds like Children of the Corn. Like today, Matthew talks about Noah and, frankly, I’ve never been so skeeved out by the Noah story; and it’s kind of a skeevy story to start with, if you know what I’m talking about. People are minding their own business doing harmless stuff together and suddenly one goes raptured. And some Psycho call’s coming from inside the house nightmare comes in the dark to steal your stuff and do God knows what else awful. This stuff always sounds scary. It never, ever sounds like good news.

It feels like a really wrong way to begin this season leading up to Christmas. Next week we’ll be talking about a lonely voice in the wilderness crying out for justice. The next week will be about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, freeing those in prison. And after that of course an angel will come to Joseph in a dream to encourage him to marry a pregnant child-woman instead of shaming her or stoning her. These passages coming up make tons of sense for what we believe Christmas to be and mean, maybe especially that one don’t throw rocks at the woman you love. They *feel Christmas-y, especially that take care of people’s needs one. But this thing today is definitely not like the others and seems absolutely out of place. I know a pastor who quit preaching the lectionary because he couldn’t deal with this apocalypse every year on the first Sunday of Advent. He didn’t think it sounded like good news. But he was Methodist, you know. (Teasing. Mostly. Some of my best friends are Methodist.)

The thing is, though, this is good news. I think it’s brilliant news. Apocalypse Advent is actually my favorite Sunday to preach all year, so thanks for having me. Also, blessings from the Council of Elders (I didn’t forget).

One thing about this, the end is not always the end. That is tricky to say, as a white, slim, able-bodied, Christian-adjacent person with a fair amount of privilege. I want to take care not to minimize the pain and loss that many folks feel at the end. Families that I encounter at the hospital emergency department, and the families of those five murdered in Colorado Springs and in the other six or more mass shootings last week. Tamir Rice’s family, who had to get through another anniversary of his murder this week. I don’t want to minimize what’s happening with the erosion of the Indian Child Welfare Act, or the 327 people named this year at the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

But I don’t want us to confuse violence and injustice or oppression with the end. Violence and injustice and oppression are bitter and broken, but they don’t have the last word. We learned that with the energy and organizing that came in the wake of the Boy Scouts versus James Dale decision and now with the Dobbs decision. The highest legal court in the land doesn’t get the final say. We learned it at Golgotha, too, which is a big deal to a lot of us. We have a bunch of different ways of thinking about what happened with the first disciples on that first Easter, but one way or another it’s arguably the whole point of our faith or faithfulness that *That end was not the end. I don’t want us to think of violence or death as the end. And I don’t want us to mistake the end and the beginning.

Where’s the beginning of a ring, for instance? Where’s the beginning of the day? Where’s the end of the earth’s seasons? The cold and dark dormancy of winter makes green spring buds possible, that leads to the summer’s flowers, that makes possible shedding curled up leaves and seeds, that leads to the dormant soil and germinating seed of winter… An old English folk song says, I gave my love a cherry that had no stone. I gave my love a chicken that had no bone. I gave my love a baby with no cryin. I told my love a story that had no dying. How can there be a cherry that has no stone? How can there be a chicken that has no bone? How can there be a baby with no cryin? How can there be a story that has no dying?

Does anyone know the answer to the riddle? A cherry when it’s blooming, it has no stone. A chicken when it’s pipping, it has no bone. A baby when it’s sleeping has no cryin. The story that I love you, it has no dying.

What “Jesus” is describing here (and let’s just note that I threw up some finger quotation marks around Jesus; we’ll come back to that in a minute), what “Jesus” is describing is not a catastrophic end but a beginning. Jesus is telling people, them, us, that something monumental is coming – the Human One, or the Son of Man, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ – choose your title. A new world order is on the horizon, and the end of this world is here. It’s not scary, no matter what we’ve been told the Book of Revelation means, or Daniel, or Mark 13. The end of this world is not scary but spectacular, and exhilarating.

The new world order is precisely all the stuff coming up in the lectionary the next few weeks, especially people getting fed and clothed and cared for and loved and brought in. Especially people not being shamed or hit with rocks to death. The new world order is built into the nativity parable, it’s low-life scuzzy shepherds becoming the central figures and first responders to love and justice. It’s is freaky foreign eunuchs becoming astrological co-conspirators and colluders in salvation. The new world order is an immigration and refugee policy that sounds more like Emma Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” than like nativist xenophobia. It’s when the United States gives up its role as the world’s leading jailor. It’s when all people living with HIV and AIDS have access to life-saving medication and prophylactics, whether they live in sub-Saharan Africa or in SoHo. It’s when Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, and the places we don’t know about yet have actually clean water, and cities and towns stop doing as little as they can get away with for poor and working class city infrastructure, for Black and other neighborhoods of color. The coming of the new world order is the apocalyptic question: To whom does the sovereignty of the world belong? And that question is answered with the words: It belongs to good, to God. To love. To justice. To everyone having enough.

Today’s reading isn’t about the end. It isn’t scary. This is the beginning of the good news that *That world is coming, that new, good world where wealth and power is distributed evenly. Huzzah.

I’ve been putting Jesus in air quotes because Jesus probably didn’t say this stuff, at least not this way. It’s probably definitely the gospel writer folks saying that mean-God punished Noah’s generation, because I’m pretty sure that real Jesus, non-quotation marks Jesus, talked about God as love and provision, not as anger and judgement. Also, Jesus almost certainly didn’t talk this much. He stood somewhere on a hill or sat in a boat and shouted stuff at the crowds, and it probably was short and sweet. It was probably really funny ha ha or funny absurd, so they would remember it, like having a log sticking out of your head while you poke around in your neighbor’s eyeball for a speck. Something like congratulations, gross poor people, you win all the best prizes! Like love the people you hate; like give it away for a rainy day.

People are asking “Jesus,” When will this world come, already? Because we’ve been waiting and waiting for it. We thought that the Maccabees were going to make it happen, they say. Then we thought Judas in Galilee or Simon in Perea or John at the Jordan River were going to make it happen. Then we thought you were going to make it happen, once and for all, with a swift and mighty hand like in the old days when Moses could make the mountains quake. But the Maccabees didn’t do it and Judas and Simon and John didn’t do it. And non-quotation marks Jesus didn’t overturn Rome and return the land and authority to the Jewish people, but only overturned temple tables and died violently and humiliated. The community of Matthew’s gospel has been waiting and waiting. And our communities – queer, genderqueer, grandchildren of kidnapped and enslaved Black elders and First Nations and Chicano y latine and immigrants – our communities have been waiting and waiting. When will this world come that we long for, this world that will save us and free us, with just and fair laws and policy, and an end to hunger and war?

And Matthew’s “Jesus” says, Here’s the sign: You’ll know because people will be eating and drinking and marrying. People will be planting crops and grinding meal. That’s how you’ll know it is the beginning. And that’s how you’ll know that it’s time for that good and just new world.

The new world order isn’t a cataclysmic event that a God is sitting around waiting for the right moment to spring on us. (Surprise!) Every moment is right for love and justice. Every moment is right for feeding and healing. A sinister God isn’t lurking and hiding, waiting to catch us out. (Jesus is coming! Everyone, look busy!) God isn’t a thief sneaking at night into your house when you’re asleep. For pity’s sake, goodness knows that we sleep at night and wants us to get a good night’s sleep.

I’m not a fan of scary God. People act like fear is a great motivator. Religious people for forever have been trying to scare us with the end of the world and a terrible God’s surprising sudden arrival and Judgment Day and missing the top secret heaven train because we were sleeping or distracted or ran out of oil. These folks think they can shame us or frighten us into being good. But what does anything good want with our shame? What does anything good want with fear? We are not created in the image of fear. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear. Fear not, the angels said. Do not be afraid, post-Easter Houdini “Jesus” said as he passed through locked doors.

I don’t think Matthew’s “Jesus” or any Jesus wants us scared; but I think he wants us getting to it, he wants us to begin. Jesus is saying, This is a good day for it; it’s always a good day for it. He doesn’t want people thinking, How long can I put it off? When do I absolutely have to get on board? How long can I keep hating people I hate and hording my stuff and ignoring anti-trans violence and the racial wealth gap before I have to repent and act? How long can I be complacent about harm to immigrants and Muslims and broken binding treaties with sovereign first nations? Does it have to be today? I don’t want to miss out on the reward, but I’d like to enjoy my privilege and comfort for as long as possible. I don’t want to be left behind, but I don’t want to stick my neck out too soon. So what are the signs of the times?

And Jesus says, You don’t get it. There’s no deadline. The deadline is always. The time is ripe and always has been. Get to it, now, like it’s your own idea, like you love it.

The end of the world isn’t a train we catch or a bus we miss. “Jesus” is talking about a day and an hour that nobody knows, not even the angels, but not because it’s a secret. It’s the opposite of a secret: there’s not a day or hour to know. It’s every day. It’s every hour. It’s whenever people are eating and drinking and marrying, whenever people are planting crops or grinding meal. It’s not going to happen upon us or happen to us suddenly, because it isn’t going to happen *to us at all. It’s going to happen because of us. It’s going to happen through us. *We are the new buds pushing the old growth off the trees. We’re going to make it so, because we’re going to be doing it, building it, growing it.

The new world order isn’t going to happen without us, and now we know that’s why it’s scary.

Turns out it is scary, after all, because no God is doing it for us. *We have to do it, and it’s going to cost us. It’s going to hurt. If it isn’t awful, if we aren’t scared, we may not be doing it right. Some of us will have to interrupt our white privilege. Some of us will be expected to cough up some of the wealth we have been hoarding with the help of redlining and bank loan advantages. It is scary. But if we weren’t scared already, then maybe we haven’t been paying attention. Folks are going to the grocery store and being shot down in the aisles. Folks are dying in our clubs. Folks are being shot in church, in synagogue. Folks aren’t surviving the school day. Folks are being hunted down and shot during their morning run. Folks are dying shopping for a BB gun at Wal-Mart in an open carry state. Folks are dying all around us for living their Black lives and queer and genderqueer lives and Jewish lives.

These times call for frightening boldness, terrifying audacity. Scary. It means we stick our neck out, call attention to ourselves, make trouble, get in trouble. (Good Trouble, rest in power Representative Lewis.) Maybe it means we risk the dogs and the water hoses, risk arrest, risk our surplus, our stockpile, risk getting on bad terms with the bosses, risk upsetting the family at dinner. It means we will and must say unpopular things and be criticized sometimes and unthanked, sometimes unthanked by the people we think we’re supporting, sometimes criticized by those folks we thought we were helping. That’s hard. That’s hard, take a breath; that may be its own kind of discipleship. And all this is legit scary because we know that every disciple of no-quotation marks Jesus died a martyr. It’s scary because we’re told again and again throughout the gospels to take up our own cross and follow. It wasn’t done once and for all for us, no matter what we were told; he was showing us the way. He was showing us the way. So maybe that’s where the guy in the field disappeared to; maybe that raptured women grinding meal got raptured to taking up her cross. Maybe that’s what we’re heading toward.

And that feels scary. But if we aren’t scared already, then we haven’t been paying attention.

I always feel awkward trying to pawn this off to folks as good news. Jesus bids you come and die! Happy day! That’s weird. That’s a hard sell. And it is good news. It is *the good news, no matter what we’ve been told. And it’s what we do, what we’re supposed to do, here, everywhere. It’s what we create community for, how we come together, and for whom. This is our reason for being, going at least back to the Mark gospel, probably more; it’s our bread and butter. Like breathing in. Like marrying and planting and grinding meal. Like life; like the kitchen table. I don’t know that it will ever stop being scary; but I do know that it’s the best and most good news we are.

Perhaps the World Ends Here…
Wars have begun and ended at this table
It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror
A place to celebrate the terrible victory
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite. (from Joy Harjo)

Peace.

MCCNY
October 23, 2022

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two people went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by themself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating at the breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this second one went back home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

I bring greetings and peace on behalf of the Council of Elders. I’m supposed to have been saying that for a year and a half and I still owe you a few.

Any time Jesus tells a parable, or frankly says an aphorism or tells a story or opens his mouth ever, it’s probably a good idea to think about where the surprise is. This has gotten harder to do after two thousand years or so of people telling us what everything he ever said means and getting it wrong, more or less, every time, taking all the edge out of it, taking all the bite out of it. Understanding the surprise and shock with Jesus, a lot of the time, means we need to unlearn all that nonsense – unlearn anything the church taught us that makes it feel good about itself (I’m going to go out on a limb and say Jesus had zero interest in making a church that wouldn’t exist for another couple decades or centuries feel good about itself), and unlearn anything that smug self-loving church ever told you about shame.

We aren’t having any lessons today about the kind of humility that was beaten into us as kids, for some of us literally. None of that depravity theology or “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me” or “We have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is nothing good in us,” and so on.

So we’re clear, I’ll put myself in the Marianne Williamson camp, although these days that’s not as easy to say as it used to be, when she writes: …We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us…

So that’s the take-away, if anyone wants to skip out early; now you know. It’s not about depravity or shame. You are deeply loved. You are embraced by excellence and goodness. But I want to be clear that we won’t have any lessons today that make ourselves feel smug and satisfied. Jesus’s parables want us uncomfortable and humble. Jesus wants us deeply loved and embraced and also surprised and unbalanced.

To recover the shock and surprise of this sermon, we probably need to move away from a Pharisee and a tax collector as the central characters. The Pharisee being unjust and treating the tax collector unjustly is supposed to be shocking. At the time it was shocking. But, over the last couple centuries of Christian imagination, Pharisees and tax collectors have traded places and we’ve lost a sense of who these people were. My boyfriend John Dominic Crossan says that we could think about this in the modern terms of “a pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray,” but that doesn’t work well anymore, either, in a modern, post-Catholic-sexual-abuse-scandal era. The Pharisee is not the twisted caricature we’ve made him out to be; he’s not a villain twirling his mustache over a woman tied up on the railroad tracks. The Pharisee is dedicated to observing the law. This one went above and beyond what was required: he fasts twice as much and tithes on everything, not just his own food and animals, just in case the people who were supposed to didn’t. He’s sort of the person today who is in church every Sunday, who puts a check in the plate every week for more than ten percent of his income, who serves on the Board and visits congregants in the hospital. He’s a good guy, a well-mannered guy, a mild-mannered guy, a righteous and observant, law-abiding and faithful.

The Pharisee is John Fischer, folks. Are you following me? The Pharisee is Alva Bostick. We need to cook with oil. The Pharisees were pillars of church and society.

The tax collector isn’t a saint or a hero, either; this is important, too. Some of us have taken Matthew and rehabilitated the tax collector, turned him into a harmless wee little man. Kind of like what we’ve done with W. Bush. But, like the candidate who introduced 50 state mini-DOMAs and disenfranchised tens of thousands of Florida voters, tax collectors were rotten, rotten, no good, terrible. The tax system, then as now, was designed so that the people were bled dry. In antiquity, “someone had to go without proper family life, material sufficiency, basic human dignity and life space in order to generate a surplus.” Taxes were set by bid, the highest bidder received the contract, the people had to come up with those funds promised to the Roman imperial machine, plus the tax collector’s cut, and it was brutal. Tax collectors were traitors, they were religiously unclean. They were hated for cause.

The Pharisee is James Lane, a good guy, a righteous guy. And the tax collector is a pharma bro, jacking up the price of HIV medicine and Epi-pens. The tax collector is a QAnon believer wielding a flag pole at Capitol police to stop certification of ballots on January 6. I want to argue that the tax collector is also white men who chased and assaulted and murdered Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging in Glen County, Georgia, and that feels as extreme as Jesus is being.

To understand the surprising and unsettling depth of what Luke’s Jesus is saying, we have to know how very good the Pharisee is, and know how very bad the tax collector is. The surprise of the parable has to be palpable. It has to maybe be painful. Evan Swanson wasn’t justified? A Proud Boy was justified? The world has gone mad, Jesus! You’ve gone mad! Up is down! Left is right!

I’m not even sure I’m joking. This is madness. All is not right in heaven or on earth.

We know that coming to church isn’t enough and that tithing and fasting and teaching Sunday School and being on the Worship Team and leading the Congregational Care Team and going to the nursing home to sing carols isn’t enough. We know about I despise your feasts, says Amos’s God in chapter 5, and your burnt offerings are a foul stench. We know that Jesus was an observant Jew, and we know he broke the rules all the time, whenever the rules hurt people.

It’s not about the rules. So it doesn’t matter how religiously observant and righteous and salt-of-the-earth and pillar-of-the-community the Pharisee is – and now we’re going to quit comparing him to our friends, because now we’re going to talk about where the Pharisee took a hard left. He may have gotten so much exactly right, but he is critically un-right in his contempt for the tax collector.

Remember how the tax collector is a skank? A rotten, pension-stealing colonizer who cheated poor people and old people and tripped pregnant people? Jesus is saying that there’s something worse than being that guy, that what’s worse than being a tax collector is being contemptuous of a tax collector. What’s worse than being a evil, rotten schmuck is thinking that you’re better than one.

It would be easy to make this about the run of the mill stuff we do every day without batting an eye. The contempt we show to people who wear their pajamas to Wal-Mart, for example. Whatever we’re casually cruel and smug about: the person texting and driving, or sagging their britches, or eating pizza with a fork. But I don’t think Jesus wanted this to be light and superficial. He was talking about the really bad, contemptible people, too. The ones so awful, so alien, we think they’re not human, we think they’re beneath us. People who shoot through their front door at Renisha McBride as she begs for help after a car accident. People who refuse hormone blockers to trans kids trying to buy some time with their bodies, people who refuse autoimmune disease medicine to a 14-year-old who is not pregnant because it can also induce an ectopic abortion for people who are about to die from ectopic pregnancies. Or certain politicians. Or Tucker Carlson. People who laugh at rape survivors and defend rapists because of movies or baseball or football. People who hit their kid in the grocery store.

Jesus is saying that there’s something worse than those folks, even those, and it’s us when we have contempt for them.

I’m not going to talk much about the tax collector being justified. That’s someone else’s business, the universe, ultimate reality. That’s the business of someone or something else that has more power and is more good than me. I’m very cool with repentance and I hope that every person who hurts kids and applauds the Confederacy and touches anyone without permission all beat at their breast and say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Amen. The justification part, though, is not mine to give. I’m not going to tell Oscar Grant’s family that the police who cried at the hearing is justified. Jesus would, I guess; he seems to here. Jesus was bold, though; but that’s too much for me. That’s above my pay grade. I want all the evildoers to cry and beg forgiveness, but they’ll have to get their justification elsewhere.

I am, though, accountable for my contempt. You are accountable for your contempt. I’m going to talk about that. I’m going to talk about how maybe all of us feel or have or show contempt for someone, think someone is so other as to be beneath us. And we are accountable for it before the throne of justice. Maybe that’s some future thing for you, or maybe it’s a right now accountability. But even if our goodness is tied to our passion for justice, our contempt for its offenders takes us outside the reign.

It’s not about anything else we are or have done, you see? I think that’s why Jesus’ good guy is so good and his bad guy is so bad. This lesson right now isn’t about sowing seed generously and impartially on all the soil, or about raining the rain and shining the sun on everyone’s land, or giving away all your money to people who can’t pay you back. I don’t think this lesson is about making sure everyone has enough food and safety. I don’t think it’s even quite about inviting everyone to your banquet and taking the less prestigious seat. I think this lesson is specifically about none of those things mattering, that they can’t be fulfilling, that they aren’t enough, if we’ve done them for ourselves, if we think those actions are what saves us and gives our lives meaning. Those are good things to do; please keep doing them. There are many, many lessons that make clear that we are to care about and support, that we are not to have contempt for the people who are oppressed and exploited. This lesson is insisting, though, we not hold in contempt the people who did it, who are doing it. Luke’s Jesus is saying whatever else we do is folly in the end if it leads us to arrogance and contempt — for anyone.

My contempt, even of a sputum like Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, keeps me from the fullness of love. And my contempt, even of a pus sack like Steve Bannon, keeps me from humility. I don’t know whether I’m joking or not. I’m definitely not joking about what love requires of me, and you, and can offer us and wrap us in its fullness if we will not close ourselves off to it. But I’m not sure I’m joking name-calling these cold and violent men. These tax collectors. But I’m not above them. As much as I loathe what they do and how they are, though I don’t have access to their power or the range of their traumatic impact, I cannot think I’m above them. I must know I am connected to them, that I’ve been them, with the power I have and the harm radius I have impacted.

Thich Nhat Hahn has this poem, Call Me by My True Names. I think it’s talking about what Jesus is talking about:

…I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

I can’t take this all the way to forgiveness. I’m not going to tell you or anyone grieving harm or surviving violence that anger isn’t right and good; Not all relationships can be unbroken. I’ll leave it to you to wrestle with the angels whether the standard you hold yourself to for the fullness of love is forgiveness, and what that means.

But it’s no accident that the Greek words used here for “exalts” and “humbles” are the same words found in the Magnificat and in John the Baptizer’s pronouncement about what is necessary to prepare the way for justice. Luke’s Jesus isn’t making a suggestion about humility and compassion. These aren’t for our consideration. They are foundational to this gospel, to every good news, to maintain righteousness, they date to the prophets of Israel. I hope that you engage all of this practice and this grappling from the soft embrace and the strong foundation of knowing that you are already good. You are already dearly beloved. And please engage and grapple, because it is essential. This is essential: God has shown each of you what is good, and what is required? only to do justness, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your gods.

Peace.

I had this idea in fourth grade that I was going to run away from home. This time my plans were more elaborate than usual. I planned it out with Ryan-something from class with Mrs. Reeves. She of the descriptive essay. I usually remember Ryan’s last name when I remember this plan, and it may come to me before I finish writing. He was sweet-looking and blond. He was nicer to me than most kids in fourth grade. He liked me, I think. It felt like it. He felt safe. And I don’t remember him from anything else but fourth grade and these elaborate plans to run away, and I didn’t realize before today that he doesn’t exist in any other memories in my memory. I wonder if he moved. I wonder if I went to school with him for another eight years and just looked through him. I wonder if he joined the awkward, faceless, messy mass of adolescent loathing.

We were supposed to run away together. He must have been miserable, too, but I don’t remember, though it feels like we talked for months or hours or an afternoon, all an age in fourth grade. I had an orange canvas suitcase, which I love about this memory. I don’t think I’ve invented it. It had either an abstract floral pattern or maybe paisley. I wish I still had that suitcase, I would use it for weekends or for work and feel retro and remember the thrill of adventure and escape.

The thrill of adventure and escape was in the planning. And in the very, very early stages of execution. I did pack that suitcase, I think. I think I left it in the front room behind the chair closest to the door. It seems very unlikely to me that it went unnoticed there, but I don’t remember it being noticed or having to explain it. It’s possible that the discovery of my fully packed orange something-print suitcase was not worth reacting to or remarking on. It may have been mundane. Frequent. It’s possible that I had packed that suitcase and prepped for escape an unremarkable and nonreacting number of times to date.

It may have been Ryan Smith.

When we ran away together, we were supposed to meet up at the school and go from there to the train tracks downtown. We were going to hop on a train car and ride the rails west, I think. This, as an adult, is my favorite part of the plan. Here’s why. The elementary school is five miles from the railroad tracks downtown. That doesn’t seem like much now, but in fourth grade that’s kind of like driving from here to Nashville. I know how to get there, and I’ve got the wherewithal, but it’s going to take a very long time. Especially with a tangerine tarpauline suitcase with a cool abstract pattern filled with clothes and probably books and maybe food, but I doubt it, foodwise. I bet it was filled with books.

The other magical thing about this downtown railroad plan is not that we were going to ride the rails, though I suspect that’s what you were thinking. The other magical part is that somehow whatever train we managed to get on with an open car, with a book-bursting piece of luggage, going a mountable speed, with some kind of rungs or steps for climbing, that extraordinary train with all of that astonishingly perfect confluence of accessibility was also somehow, spectacularly, going to be headed west. It’s only later, when I remember Ryan Smith and fourth grade and this plan that I think about and am delighted at the unlikelihood of it all. I’m not surprised at how much was left to accident and synchronicity. That continued to be my modus operandi for quite some time.

There’s another reason this is my favorite part of the tale: more than the packed carrot rough cotton case, more than the downtown train, in addition to the magical west-headed train, our westward sanctuary, our chosen place of haven, was Nebraska. Nebraska.

Nebraska.

I never did run away. I didn’t fetch that suitcase to go anywhere but back to my bedroom, back to the drawers or, more likely, the shelves where its contents lived. Ryan is the one who backed out. He may have gotten into some trouble with the police, though; I feel like there is a soft gray shape at the edges of this memory that jangles a bit, as though he made an early break and it broke him. I know I felt betrayed.

I want that orange canvas suitcase. I want to carry my weekend change of underwear or my work calendar in a cantaloupe sailcloth bit of childlike hope. And as much as that hope, I want that thing back, that sense of innocence and ignorance, that sense of naivete and simplicity and unjaded, unworn credulity that made Nebraska seem like a place of wonder and resurrection. It just seems now too small, too close, too much like home to save me.

April 24, 2022
Imago Dei MCC

Francisco X. Alarcón wrote of un dios más dios, a more godlike god:

I want a god as my accomplice who spends nights in houses of ill repute and gets up late on Saturdays. a god who whistles through the streets and trembles before the lips of his lover. a god who waits in line at the entrance of movie houses and likes to drink café au lait. a god who spits blood from tuberculosis and doesn’t even have enough for bus fare. a god knocked unconscious by the billy club of a policeman at a demonstration. un dios que se orine de miedo ante el resplandor de los electrodos de tortura. a god who hurts to the last bone and bites the air in pain. A jobless god a striking god a hungry god a fugitive god an exiled god an enraged god a god who longs from jail for a change in the order of things. I want a more godlike god

A more godlike god. I think Alarcón is writing about an extra, ordinary god, a god who is More, ordinary. One perhaps who blurs – or erases – the hierarchies between secular and sacred, between holy and habitual. I think today’s gospel passage illustrates this beautifully.

It is a remarkable and an ordinary story. Hours of fishing with no catch and then a surprising haul. A charcoal fire at daybreak beside a lake. A miraculous meal and a common meal, like so many others Jesus shared in homes and on hillsides. Friends, family have gathered. They are reunited, Jesus is alive! Bread and fish is on the fire, typical food, already there is enough for the day, already a blessing; and Jesus says, bring the fresh catch – and there is something new, abundance! un dios más dios. Ordinary miracles in you and with you and through you.

It’s a communion story and so it tells us something of that meal. Bread and cup are ordinary things; routine, useful things, necessary stuff but wholly commonplace. Like the stuff of Jesus’s miracles: he uses words, water, bread and fish, spit. And like the stuff of his lessons: seed, a woman with a broom, a man with debt, wheat, weeds, leaven, flowers and birds, all things that surround us in our homes and our work and play. Bread and cup; bread and fish. This routine, this daily meal, and Jesus said, this is my life, this my body, my promise. This ordinary repeated thing, this everyday practice, becomes the magical rite of community and salvation, solemn representations of a divine, loving reign.

It feels really important to peel away some of the spiritualization and religion of this passage (not to discard it, if you want to keep it please do, but peel those layers back for a minute) and better understand that communion is also, perhaps first, a meal. Just a meal. A more godlike meal, an extra, ordinary meal. The bible (in Greek and in Hebrew) is filled with meals that are ordinary, that are special, some that are startlingly special.

Just in the gospels alone, how many instances can you remember of meals, parables of meals, sayings of meals? There is the surprising feedings of five thousand households in all four gospels. (John agreeing with the other three gospels is in itself is something of a surprise.) Then we have the surprising feeding of four thousand households which is told in Matthew and Mark. Again, all four gospels tell a story of the woman who anoints Jesus as he sits at table, John’s gospel calls her Mary. In Luke there is a post-resurrection meal after the walk to Emmaus, Jesus invites himself to the home of Zaccheus to eat, and Mark insists that the laborer deserves her food.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree that Jesus’ disciples eat and drink, as opposed to John the Baptizer’s disciples, who fast. The Syro-Phonecian woman in Mark, whom Matthew made into a Canaanite woman, argues that even the dogs get to eat the scraps under the table. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell of a last supper and provide a similar ritual story. John tells of a last meal, too, with a much, much, much longer story and many more words. In two gospels there is a parable of the wedding meal (where people are brought in from off the streets, from the highways and hedges, when the invited guests refuse to come; hold that thought). Luke prefaces its version of that parable with a saying that folks should take the lower seats at meals. And John tells of a wedding meal at Cana.

And these are just the ones I can think of right off the top of my head. What could we come up with if we put our heads together? Or if we sat down with a concordance or something? The meal is important to Jesus and to his first followers, and I want to argue that the significance of the communion meal is drawn from the significance of the ordinary table. My boyfriend John Dominic Crossan notes the importance of the meal throughout the gospels and says that the meal is actually the heart of the original Jesus movement.

Think about that. The heart of the movement.

Part of this is clear when you know that, culturally, there was a strict hierarchy that divided people into separate and separated classes. This system of hierarchy was based on whether people were able to make an equal exchange of some social, economic, or political capital, and the hierarchy was so unquestioned that it was considered to be the bedrock of public life.

People did not break bread with those across the vast gulf that separated the upper and lower classes. People did not invite those from the other side of the gulf to dinner. Weddings and banquets and dinners were held between people from the same side of the social chasm.

Because the only people who mattered were the people who could trade favors with you, people who could benefit you.

Because the meal itself was as socially symbolic as it was actual.

Because, then as now, the concentration of wealth with a few demanded the exploitation of most others and their labor – exploiting people deprives them of “proper family life, material sufficiency, basic human dignity and life space in order to generate a surplus” (Crossan, The Historical Jesus).

This social fabric, then, is the backdrop of Jesus’ life and ministry. And from this place of vast inequality, Jesus introduces the ministry of meal.

Jesus is introducing a new commensality (that means eating together). His meal is egalitarian, mutual, reciprocal, just, balanced, interdependent, partnering. It assumes that everyone has something to bring to the table. It assumes that no one *needs to bring something to the table. Jesus rearranged the rules about who is good enough, who is enough, to eat with. He called for a new way of understanding interdependence or, as Thich Nhat Hahn calls it, inter-being. (There is no place where I stop and you begin; we inter-are.) Given how central it was to their social construct, it was meal as protest, meal as theater, every bit as much as the satirical march on Jerusalem or the civil disobedience with the temple money changers. In that culture, the meal itself, the very act of breaking bread with, of sitting down to table with another person in itself meant that you were equals. And Jesus was creating an actual and symbolic world in which reciprocity was based not on social, economic, or political grounds but on something higher.

Instead of telling you what that means for you, I’d just like you to think about this for yourself. Whether there are people who you think are beneath you. Or maybe you think that you are the person who isn’t good enough to be invited to the banquet. And importantly, please think carefully about this as something that the communion table only elevates, that the eucharist ritualizes and sacralizes: remember that the ordinary meal and our ordinary daily practice of eating together and being together is what we are being asked – even required – to reformulate. Not just on Sundays. Not just during the eucharist. Not just when someone is looking.

This passage goes on to include an exchange with Peter that reverses his denial of Jesus. Peter denied Jesus three times, and three times today, Peter takes it back and gets a do-over. It’s tempting to talk about this as forgiveness, and to preach about forgiveness, but I usually don’t. I don’t know what forgiveness is, other than who is expected to do it with or without an apology, and how it’s used an end in itself rather than as a tool for repentance and repair. But I will point out that Peter is at the table. Peter wasn’t left out of the meal here, wasn’t shamed or punished, but was brought in and fed and given three opportunities to make peace with Jesus and himself, to find amnesty from Jesus and from himself. It feels so important to notice that and be challenged and moved by that, and maybe convicted, I don’t know. I’m thinking on it, too, and what that means for the people in my life who have really done a number on me, have never apologized or even acknowledged that harm, and who I am repeatedly told to forgive. I’m struggling with this, too, because it looks like those people are at this lakeside coal fire breakfast reunion along with everyone else. It breaks my heart open. It breaks my heart. It opens my heart. I’m thinking on it, too.

It’s just a meal. And a more godlike meal, an extra, ordinary meal. Just that. But not merely, or unimportantly. A more godlike extra, ordinary meal that is a daily, a three-times daily event, woven into the fabric of our existence, for our survival, embedded in our culture. Like Pride. Like breathing.

I know this parable is true and important and points us toward the thing we call heaven. A meal where people bring whatever they have, whether that’s material stuff, emotional stuff, identity stuff: the little boy had five loaves and two fish; the woman has her tears, her long hair, her expensive ointment; the Syro-Phoenician woman has her certainty that she, too, is a child of God; Jesus had a charcoal fire, fish on the fire, bread; and the disciples have a fresh catch. People have brought what they have, and sometimes that is only their hunger, sometimes only their brokenness: together it becomes a meal. Together we create a meal.

I believe this points us toward “heaven.” Not something apocalyptic or apocryphal in the future, but a way of living together right now, today. Maybe this is exactly heaven: An open table.

Metropolitan Community Churches everywhere celebrate an open communion. Everyone is welcome at its table, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, whatever you call yourself, whatever name you call your God. Without exception, without exclusion, everyone is invited here because we believe that these gifts, these ordinary miracles of food, friendship, abundance, are for all of us. un dios más dios. The table is set, please come and be fed.

Peace.

Rev. Miller Hoffman
Temple Concord, Binghamton NY
June 11, 2021

I’ve been thinking about that Marge Piercy poem, The Low Road. It gets quoted a lot, maybe too much, not unlike that Margaret Mead business about a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens. I love it, though. I love it.

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

I’ve been thinking about the end of this pandemic, and about belonging. About how do we build community again, in all the ways that we mean that — taking in the strange time disconnections that we have, long days and short months, taking in our lost social skills and how the easy ways we were with each other have become more stilted and more awkward, taking in the levels to which we maybe don’t even realize we are holding our breath, tensing, carrying our tightness, our watchfulness. Taking in the new names of unarmed Black boys and men and barely armed Black teen girls whom we’ve added to our growing list of unarmed and barely armed Black friends and neighbors shot down, calling it justified, how our Black friends and neighbors are tracking the numbers of people shot down at the grocery store. Shot down on a jog in the street. Shot down on their own couch, in their own bed. Taking in, too, the list of Black and brown trans women we’ve suddenly stopped tracking this year, it seems, whom suddenly we’ve stopped talking about and being aware of, maybe because the media doesn’t or maybe we don’t have the bandwidth to hold onto all of this loss, all of the people we are losing, all of the tension and anxiety. And maybe some of our self-care strategies are about shutting it out. Or using some of those old algorithms based on those old biases. How do we regroup, and hold on to what we’ve learned and gained this hard year, and find back what we lost that we need, and stay present with the hard stuff that isn’t directly ours to try to share the burden of it with those in the direct line of fire? How do we re-build community after all this?

There’s a thing I do in my professional work with sexual abuse survivors, or as a chaplain with people at the hospital or their families who are struggling, and I ask what they’ve tried already that works. (And what doesn’t, so let’s not try that again. That was a disaster.) But what strategies had some success and that maybe as things started to even out we lost sight of? I’ve been thinking about this for myself, the stuff I know about, firsthand or firsthand from my people. You have stuff, too, that is your firsthand or your people firsthand stuff. What has worked? What can we use again from before?

I was in New York City on 9/11. That city is so tough, so jaded and has seen everything. You just can’t surprise it most days. And 9/11 rocked us. Scared us. And there was this change for a while. Not forever, you know, not even for long before we got our cool back, our nonchalance. But we laid off being angry, escalate-y, chest-thump-y for a minute and slowed down. Folks smiled more; it was so startling. It is so startling to be smiled at by a stranger. Folks locked eyes for a second instead of looking quickly away, and folks smiled more at strangers. Held doors for each other. Picked things up that people dropped on the street. That happened before and still does, don’t get me wrong. NYC’s heart is always soft somewhere, always beating somewhere. It was just more often those days, more often in more places for a while. With more strangers that folks didn’t know, had no reason to trust, who didn’t look like each other or have things in common. Except we all had this thing in common.

We all had that day in common. Most of us knew someone who was in those towers. Or we knew someone who knew someone. I lived out in Brooklyn, in Kensington, and I remember police were stationed at mosques, and I wondered whether they were there for “their” safety, or for “ours,” and I wondered who “we” were, and who is “they.” I remember people saying they “don’t feel safe any more” and I understood what they meant, because most of us shuddered a little when a plane passed overhead and lots of us, our heart flickered when the lights snapped off suddenly on the train. But, and this is an important but, I had friends who said, “I already didn’t feel safe before.” They already didn’t feel safe, and everyone else was getting a taste of what they had always felt, because they were queer Black women, or gay Black men, or genderqueer fat Latine self defense instructors, or soft butch dykes holding hands in Prospect Heights.

In 2003 when Ohio blew a fuse and the lights went off across the whole NE, so many of our bodies in NYC remembered, shuddered, tensed. We walked home again from Manhattan across some of the same bridges where the same trains weren’t running. Throughout Brooklyn, folks moved outside to play baseball and sit in the grass. Folks pulled the meat out of the warming freezers and cooked it up on sidewalk grills, set out tables and chairs in the streets and on the curbs and played Calypso Jazz from their speakers, or Arturo O’Farrill, and ate and danced on their blocks.

And what worked during those days and months of reconnecting after 9/11, for lots of us, was tapping into what we shared that day. Holding that awareness in our hands like a stone, turning it over, rubbing it against our own skin, looking at its edges. We became the woman in the Buddha’s parable who had gone from house to house looking for a family who had never lost a loved one, so that she could ask for a white mustard seed to raise up her dead son. And what she found instead, instead of a magic seed that returned everything back to “normal,” she found instead a community, she found herself surrounded by people who had grieved, who were grieving, whose open, wounded hearts could connect and find a home for hers. What worked after that Blackout in 2003 for so many people was generosity, easy openness. I walked through Brooklyn Heights and Prospect Heights and Prospect Park on a hot August afternoon, and watched businesses and families and shopkeeps just relax into what they were about to lose, and open it up and grill it up and share it – with a Red Stripe or a Presidente – with whoever they found on the sidewalk.

I don’t remember much about AIDS until after the cocktail, after ACT UP had splintered from GMHC, after our people – “our” people, yes? – had been decimated by a pandemic, by a president who did not care who died, did not call the disease by its name. But I knew Keith Haring, Sylvester, Nureyev, Freddie Mercury, and countless, countless others. I cried when sculpture artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres put 175 pounds of candy in a corner of the Brooklyn Museum and invited us to eat it and diminish the pile like the disease did to his lover, Ross. I cry still when I watch Angels in America and The Band Played On and A Normal Heart and the others. I know faith communities that held funerals every week, mourned and memorialized lovers and friends often without their bodies, which were taken in death by family that had spurned them in life, taken them and taken their property and cleaned them up and made them decent and left their lovers and their friends outside.

I know that what worked for a lot of us in those years and in the years after was the die-ins and protests and investing time and risking freedom – Marge Piercy, “What can they do to you? Whatever they want.” – risking freedom and safety, putting our bodies at risk for this thing we shared, for the body that we are only when you put us together. At Stonewall, Storme, or whoever it was who got the first key off that first police, didn’t just unlock her own cuffs and beat it home. She passed the key back. I don’t know what’s fact and what’s fiction about that day and week, except that Stonewall was a bar for losers, and most of those losers were Black, brown, and genderqueer, and were unarmed or armed with bottles and pennies and dog piles against the special Tactical Police Force. And I know that we didn’t beat it home.

What worked was staying and yelling and shutting down business as usual. What worked was making art and film and poetry. Dorothy Allison, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton: “Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me, and has failed.” That poem by Marge Piercy: “Two people can keep each other sane, can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, sex. Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge.”

Dolly Parton donated a million dollars to developing the vaccine, and then stood in line with everyone else for the shot. That worked. Biden has gotten Pfizer to make 500 million shots for poor countries at the reduced not-for-profit rate. That works. And some shmoe bakery in Texas with only three staff and every-order-counts lost customers because they made Pride cookies (what is up with homophobes and baked goods?), and normal, schmoe people in that small shmoe Texas town went and stood in line for days and bought out every last thing in that shop, placed orders, bought cookies and gave them away. How cool is that. That worked. I am a cold-hearted cynical nontheist person who doesn’t think much about June Pride anymore and swears, a lot, and that story make my eyes hurt a little, like when I chop onions. My god is in that story.

What works for you? What stories of survival do you have firsthand or do your people tell you stories of? What worked? What worked after sobriety, those little bites. One day. One day. Showing up.

I know we need patience, we need to to invite everyone. I know we need to take naps and have picnics and watch crap tv and check out so that we can check back in for ourselves and each other. I think we need to make art. To use humor. To be generous. To listen. I think we need to listen to people who are mad at us, who need something from us, who are telling us what we don’t even know that we don’t know. I think we need to listen to the people making us uncomfortable and get more experience being uncomfortable and get more practiced with sitting with that discomfort and listening.

I know that all of this is in our own best interest, whether for our own safety and satisfaction, for our own sense of being a good citizen or a good neighbor, or because we’re safer when more people are safer, we’re safer when more of the world is vaccinated. Sometimes we need to have a more selfish motive like that to get started, to get our momentum going. But eventually I think we can get to doing kind stuff for the same reasons we plant butterfly bushes or quit killing spiders, because it’s right for butterflies and spiders. And maybe that’s not just a self-serving instinct anyway but a budding realization that we are connected, deeply connected, that we inter-are, that there is not a spot where I stop and you start. That we are like that forest of seemingly-individual, distinct trees that have a completely interwoven root system and are in fact one giant living organism.

I do think we need to do it even, especially when it’s hard and uncomfortable, to keep plugging away every day, to remember that our friends cannot take breaks from racism, from anti-trans violence, knowing it can happen and keeps happening at any time, in the grocery store, at the park on a merry-go-round, walking home from the 7-11, on any Saturday, jogging down the street in the middle of the week in the middle of the day, in their own beds, on their own couches.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when we care
to act, it starts when we do
it again and they said no,
it starts when we say We
and know who we mean, and each
day we mean one more.

Peace.

There Is No Middle, Only Lots of Margins
Rehoboth Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Dover
Rev. Miller Hoffman

June 21, 2020

There are 56 genders. There are 24 genders. There are 32 genders. There are six genders. There are 18 genders. We don’t know how many genders there are. We are obsessed with how many genders there are. We are always getting upset about how many genders there are. We may not know why we care about how many genders there are. When I was an undergrad, ages ago, the biology teacher said there was xx, xy, xo, xxy, xyy, I can rattle off from memory five different chromosome combinations and that was in the 80s. Even then there weren’t two, even in the 60s it seems that folks knew this. And even so these are treated by so many people as variations on the binary. I don’t know why. Maybe we do know why.

Early in June, J. K. Rowling – it feels like this was already ages ago, so much wonderful and terrible stuff has happened this month – she stubbornly insisted (again, she did this already last December) she insisted that something called sex is essential and equivalent to something called gender. I’m okay, if you care, maybe you don’t, I’m okay with biology. Each of us has genital configurations and fat distribution and balding patterns and body hair patterns and chest shapes and hip shapes and genital glands and voice pitch and hormones (everyone has all of them) and larynxes and height. Yeah. We all have height. I’m cool with us having those things. The thing that’s weird and violent, though, is insisting that those things mean we’re either F or M, no matter how we feel about it, no matter what our many other biological realities are. Do you think gender identity is just in our head? Do you think that what’s in our head is not part of biology? I think what’s weird and violent is knowing that there are at least five of a thing that I can rattle off thirty-three years later from memory, but pretending that there is only either M or F, or else only monster and myth.

We all have one of a variety blood types, A, B, AB, O, plus or negative. One or more is incredibly rare, and no one acts like they’re not real or freakish. We all have eye sight, a maybe infinite number, maybe not infinite, I don’t really know a ton about it, but 20/20, 20/30, 30/20, 20/100, whatever. We all have eye color, ambers, browns, blacks, blues, greys, greens, hazels, reds, violets. Hair color, browns, blacks, blonds, auburns, reds, greys, whites. I could go on like this for pages, but Kharma says I’m absolutely not allowed to talk longer than 15 minutes under any circumstances. I’m fine with us having biology. It would be very strange and kind of ignorant not to. Of course we have bodies. Of course we have biological differences. You can call them what you want, of course, you don’t need me to tell you that, but I don’t call them sex differences, because I want it to be very clear that gender is not biological in any way. If I want to distinguish them from blood type, eye sight, eye and hair color, allergies, neurological statuses, then I call them genitals. I call them breasts, hips, hair and balding patterns, and so on. I call sex the thing we do in bed. Or on the kitchen floor, or wherever. No judgement. Of course we have biology and biological difference, but recognize that we don’t use these other biological realities to box people into gender. We don’t use many, many (most?) biological differences to force people to conform.

There is so much overlap across gender of all these things. You already know this, but sometimes we let hegemony (also known as the status quo-by-force, also known as the deputizer-of-oppression, by which we oppress ourselves and one another and act as though it were our own idea), sometimes we let hegemony, or cultural norms and expectations, convince us that we don’t know what we know. There is so much overlap of height, strength, voice pitch across people across gender. So much overlap of fat distribution and hip width and hair patterns and chest shapes across people across gender. So much overlap of hormones, even chromosomes. Almost nobody knows their hormone ratios. Almost no one knows their chromosome make-up. Most of the time you have to be an exceptionally gifted athletic woman before you are coerced to know your chromosomes and hormone proportions and compelled to become not-woman. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so brutal. Everyone must be one of two, except you. Biology is not destiny, except her.

It’s not just Caster Semenya (an exceptionally gifted middle distance runner in the women’s 800 meters with an uncommon chromosome combination and hormone ratio) it’s not only her, Caster, that is harmed by biological gender determinism. What got Rowling riled up was an article about the additional risk to some people, already marginalized by gender, during COVID stay-at-home with its consequent reduced privacy and reduced availability of needed products to manage menstruation. As an aside, the article several times referred to girls and women, as well as nonbinary people, or referred to girls and women, as well as all people who menstruate. The article, in addition to addressing a critical global health byproduct of the pandemic, was also recognizing the number of people who need menstrual products who are not women or girls, though women and girls were also named. Several times. (Which makes me think that Rowling didn’t read the article and only reacted to the headline. Let this be a lesson to us all. First lesson, don’t be a transphobic, biological essentialist jerk. Second lesson, read the article.) Rowling, if you don’t know, hollered on Twitter that people who menstruate should simply be called women. First, she said, because that’s who menstruates. And later, she said, because that shared identity, womanhood, is a critical center of affinity and a powerful locus of creative change.

Which it is. But the Buddha didn’t say don’t confuse the moon with the finger pointing at the moon for nothing. Womanhood is a critical center of affinity and a powerful locus of creative change because of the shared experiences of marginalization, dismissal, violence, and disenfranchisement, among other things. But feminism largely acted (and still acts largely) as though the experiences of white, non-trans, middle-class women were/are the defining experiences of womanhood, and so Black, Latina, and Asian experiences, transwomen’s experiences, working class and working poor and poor women’s experiences, Deaf women’s and women with disabilities’ experiences, and a host of women’s experiences of marginalization, dismissal, violence, and disenfranchisement, among other things are left unaddressed or ignored. Imagine if we quit building and policing walls on top of arbitrary, political boundaries and instead read the article and acted on it. Instead built inclusive and sustainable water, sanitation, and hygiene services. Instead built and funded schools, health clinics, and community-based programming. Instead increased access to menstrual materials (and all other materials) to increase school and work attendance and all activities of daily living. Instead dismantled menstruation stigma, both stigma against those who do and stigma against those who do not menstruate, if you take my meaning. Trans women, yes, and non-trans women who are -menopausal, non-trans women who are of bleeding age and yet who do not bleed for many reasons.

It seems so foolish to me, so very foolish, to equate girlhood or womanness with something like menstruation or childbirth or breastfeeding (or breasts), when so many non-trans girls and women agonize over and doubt their girl- and womanhood when they don’t menstruate, are unable to conceive, have breasts removed during cancer and other treatment, or simply age out of these markers. How foolish, and how evil, yes, perhaps evil, if there is such a thing, to claim to equate girlhood or womanness with something like childbirth and then ignore the childbirth mortality rates of Blacks, American Indians, and Alaska Natives, 2-3 times higher than those of whites during childbirth. “Most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Racial and ethnic disparities in pregnancy-related deaths have persisted over time” (CDC). Preventable! And persistently 2-3 times higher than those of whites during childbirth. What is a critical center of affinity worth, how valuable is the creative change if so many women continue to die without your attention or interest? Trans women, mostly trans women of color, murdered at horrifying numbers globally, each year more, dying in part because of your insistence that sex is essential, unchangeable, and biological only in the narrowly defined biology of your choosing. And non-trans women, women who pass your precious biological standard, dying in preventable ways at twice or three times the rates of people who look like you. Your center of affinity is exposed. Your lofty concern for creative change is showing its raggedy and jagged edges.

I say “your” and mean “ones,” of course. I say “your” and mean “our,” of course. I say “your” and mean “your,” “you.” You are the only one who really knows which meaning works best.

We don’t know how many genders there are. We are obsessed with how many genders there are. We are always getting upset about how many genders there are. Let’s stop. Here are my rudimentary recommendations.

1. Reject all binaries.
2. Reject all generalizations.
3. Accept that we do not get to decide who other people are.
4. Accept that our determinations about who other people are usually do harm to them. Usually real psychological and physical harm.
5. Don’t use other people who are different as your textbooks. Go find stuff online or on tv or in the library or movies or other public resources. Do not ask human beings to educate you about their difference. There are no exceptions to this. There are exceptions to this, but until you are an expert at exceptions, there are no exceptions.
6. Learn new stuff about stuff that’s different than you, stuff you don’t like, stuff you don’t know yet that you like, stuff that you disagree with, stuff that isn’t about you and doesn’t center you and maybe doesn’t portray you favorably. Seek this stuff out (not from other people who are different from you). Look for it the way you look for things that are deeply satisfying and rewarding. Keep doing it.
7. Resist the urge to evaluate and review these things. Try not to announce “I like this.” Try not to tell others, “I do not like this.” Try to engage, read, watch, listen and not have it be about you and what you think about it.
8. Try not to argue with it. Try very, very hard not to defend yourself. Try to listen, especially when it says or does something disagreeable or maybe unfair.
9. Learn the difference between what you meant and how it was perceived. Eventually, and as soon as possible, learn that but-what-you-meant is perfectly irrelevant. See 8.
10. Don’t stop thinking, don’t stop using your critical skills, but, critically, use those skills on yourself. Use your imagination on behalf of the other person who is different from you. If you feel uncomfortable or attacked, ask, for example, what it is specifically that is making you feel that way. Ask yourself why do you feel uncomfortable or attacked by it. Think about under what circumstances might you rightly and honorably say or do this objectionable thing to someone. Think about under what circumstances might the other person who is different from you rightly and honorably say or do this thing to someone else. If you feel disgusted or put off by something, or find it unpleasant or unappealing, ask yourself why. Wonder with yourself about what has helped to shape your aesthetic. What “told” you whether things were pleasant and beautiful or not; and might that be a matter of taste; and might your taste have limited importance; and might your taste have room for more things.
11. Watch and listen and read so much that you start to be able to tell for yourself what is stereotype, exaggeration, falsehood, what is awful and untrue, what is awful and true because this group is various like all groups. And start again from the top. Reject all binaries. Reject all generalizations. Accept that we do not get to decide who other people are. Accept that our determinations about who other people are usually do harm to them. Usually real psychological and physical harm.

We don’t know how many genders there are. We are obsessed with how many genders there are. We are always getting upset about how many genders there are. Let’s stop. Let’s start. Let’s learn not to care. Let’s learn to care. Let’s expand our centers of affinity. Let’s work for the kind of creative change that affects the most marginalized first, the most harmed most immediately. Let’s let ourselves, if we have more now, let ourselves be the ones to receive the benefits that trickle down. Do it with race and ethnicity, with body size, with Deafness and disability, with class and education, with all the differences we fear and distain all at once, until we’re done. There is no time for one at a time, and none of us is only one kind of difference. We need to act now, with the desperation of those who defend the status quo, to transform it. Let’s start. Let’s not stop until we’re done.

Peace.

Published November 1, 2019 on VAWnet, a project of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence

Transgender women of color interrupted the flow of the first-ever presidential LGBTQ town hall October 10 after Ashlee Marie Preston’s invitation to ask a trans-related question at the forum was withdrawn by organizers. Whatever the reasoning, the rescindment of Preston’s active participation was experienced by many people within trans communities as a silencing. Though still invited to attend, Preston and others decided not to be present so that they would not imply support or be tokenized by efforts to “diversify” the event. Some participants who did attend chanted “Trans Lives Matter,” and others used the microphone to strategically redirect the discussion and to name the violent targeting of trans folks, as well as their simultaneous erasure from the discussion.

What happened at the CNN-sponsored town hall mirrors what we know to be true of intimate partner violence and rape culture: Survivors and victims are often dismissed as emotional and unreliable and erased from official conversations about the violence we’ve experienced. The trans women who were forced to command the candidates’ attention are expanding the legacy of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, as well as the legacy of trans activism and protest, including the Cooper Do-nuts, the Compton Cafeteria, and the Stonewall riots. Each of these watershed moments of revolution featured police targeting of early trans women and men, crossdressers, effeminate gay men, stone butches, scare queens, and others, many of whom were people of color and people made vulnerable by poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.

Although some progress had been made for trans and genderqueer rights in the 21st century, since 2017 most of the few protections and legislative inroads have been curtailed or eliminated. These cuts and reversals have done harm to trans and genderqueer access to and participation in education, health care, disease prevention, housing and homelessness, adoption and foster care, prisons, military service, asylum, and protection under Title VII and Title IX. Already still struggling with stereotypes and mischaracterization in public restrooms and on public transportation, people within the transgender and genderqueer communities are again under legislative siege across the full spectrum of public and private life.

Official legal attacks and policy rollbacks contribute to a social climate that devalues trans and genderqueer people. The way that officials, administrators, and elected representatives talk about trans-related issues – let alone transgender bodies and genderqueer lives – affects the national discourse about us. When authority figures attack us with policy and language, they encourage and reproduce violence against us at local and personal levels. We know that people who are demeaned and disbelieved are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. We know that people wielding power and control against intimate partners are aided by sexism, heterosexism, racism, transphobia, and other forms of systemic oppression.

Even seemingly frivolous behavior is significant to this culture of violence against trans and genderqueer folks. At the LGBTQ town hall mentioned earlier, Sen. Kamala Harris began her initial remarks by providing the pronouns she uses, “My pronouns are she, her, and hers,” and the CNN news anchor Chris Cuomo responded glibly, “Mine, too.” Cuomo later apologized, and he did well to do so. Regardless of his intentions, by mocking Harris’s efforts to call attention to the importance of asking for and providing pronouns across gender identity, he encourages others to dismiss this small and important way to respect and meaningfully perceive trans and genderqueer people.

Since our communities started counting, the numbers of transgender people murdered has been climbing globally. The Remembering Our Dead project began with 14 names and two countries in 1999; as of September of this year, more than three hundred names have been compiled from 13 countries. This number is almost certainly low. We have been killed in every imaginable way; we are beaten, stabbed, hanged, strangled, hit by cars, drowned, shot, raped, and thrown from bridges. Most of those killed are women, mostly women of color. The global numbers show a horrifying concentration of violent trans deaths in South America, particularly Brazil, as well as the United States and India. Overwhelmingly the transgender people murdered in the United States have been black. And many of those killed were murdered by boyfriends and lovers. In 2018, Zella Ziona was murdered in Maryland because she saw her boyfriend in the neighborhood and flirted playfully with him in front of his friends. Itali Marlowe, who is the 20th trans person to be counted among those murdered in the U.S. this year, was shot to death by the man she lived with.

In November 1998, Rita Hester was murdered in her home in Boston. The Remembering Our Dead project was created directly in response to her murder, which like many violent crimes against trans people was unsolved. A candlelight vigil was held the following November in San Francisco, and these were the beginnings of what became the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) held on November 20. Last year events took place in more than twenty-nine countries. Holding a TDOR event is a strong show of support for the trans and genderqueer communities. If you are thinking about organizing one in your area, there are a number of important considerations before finalizing your plans.

Start planning early.

It is very important to include people in your planning who are among the groups most directly impacted. In the case of a TDOR event, this certainly means transgender and genderqueer people and, importantly, trans women and trans women of color. Allies understandably sometimes want to own our responsibility for ending anti-trans violence and remove the burden from trans shoulders, but it is important to take direction from the folks we intend to support.

Because not all trans or genderqueer folks will have an interest or the energy to participate in planning, allies should begin asking early for community members to join the planning conversation. There is an important difference between having trans folk and trans women of color contribute substantively to the event, as opposed to inviting trans people to attend or speak at an event after the meaningful decisions have been made.

Choose a venue.

Often, the most available community spaces for queer and trans events are congregational buildings or bars. While these are significant positive presences in our history, as well as our current queer and genderqueer lives and communities, they also can be sites of discomfort and even pain for many trans and genderqueer people. Start early to secure a space that can be most neutral and emotionally safe for the most people. Be mindful of the physical accessibility of the venue.

Invite speakers, advocates, and other human assets.

When choosing speakers, take care to include the voices of those most directly impacted by anti-trans violence, while also including as much of an array of trans and genderqueer diversity as possible. Beginning early will help to make this possible. Police chiefs, mayors, and politicians often are eager to speak at our TDORs and other events; know that it is okay (and perhaps preferable) for these authorities to attend and silently support us. If it seems important to include these voices, consider how (and whether) they have demonstrated concrete support throughout the year through policy and practice. Take care not to simply defer to their role or rank. How are they showing support and interest in our safety? How are they framing and responding to violence against us?

When considering security, think carefully about whether to invite a police force. Some police are trans and genderqueer, of course. There is, though, a painful and complex history of tension and violence by the police against LGBQ communities, T and nonbinary communities, communities of color, immigrant communities, other marginalized and oppressed communities, and the people who live at the intersections of these groups. For these reasons, events like the annual New York City Dyke March train and prepare their own community volunteers to serve as security, marshals, and negotiators. Discuss what options are available for you and, if in the end a police presence is planned, offer training to the officers to communicate the community’s needs and expectations during the event.

Because the event is highlighting parts of our communal trauma experiences, many TDOR planners have taken steps to invite social workers, counselors, or therapists to be available for emotional support. These counselors are given a station in the main area or a “comfort” room is set aside near the main program for participants to access confidentially and voluntarily. It is critical that these professionals are well-trained in pronouns and other matters of trans experience, racial justice, and other relevant justice matters.

Create event content.

From beginning to end, think about how the event can practice and model what we expect and want from a world that respects and celebrates trans and genderqueer people.

• Make opportunities to ask for and provide pronouns during every part of the event, with appropriate ways for folks to opt out. (Transgender and genderqueer people will decline to provide pronouns sometimes because we don’t feel safe, we don’t necessarily have a single pronoun or any that fit, or for other reasons.) For example, you might invite speakers to include their pronouns at the beginning of their remarks, provide pronoun nametags, and include pronouns as you greet people at the door. (“Hello, thanks for coming! I’m Miller and use he/him or they. People are gathering just ahead and to your left…”)
• In addition to including the impacted communities in planning and decision-making, it’s important that TDOR events highlight the disproportionate weight of violence against transgender women of color. This can be done with speakers and facilitators, with a dedicated part of the event focusing on trans women of color, through a slide show or video, or in other ways.
• It is also very important to recognize and talk about the full range of trans and genderqueer identity and experience, including trans folk on and off the binary, agender people, the many fluid gender identities, and others. This may be communicated with language throughout the program, with invited speakers, and in other ways.
• Consider reading the names of those who have been killed globally. This honors us across national and political boundaries, highlights our murders as a global epidemic, and underlines the number of our dead who are of color. There are hundreds of names, and organizers often are concerned about the time needed to read all the names. Consider, though, that the event is organized around a day of remembrance and honoring the dead. There is time. Make time.

Names can be read during a candle-lighting portion of the event in the middle or at the end. Some organizers make a candle-lit walk part of their event, with a reading of the names happening at a point on the path, sometimes near a cairn or other memorialized symbol for the dead. Take care for the emotional weight of reading the names, and try to have a number of readers.

Many, many names on the global list are people from Spanish-speaking countries. Not all of our communities will have people who speak Spanish fluently. Take some time to speak with your readers, and encourage non-Spanish-speaking readers to say the names with confidence rather than tentatively and with question marks in their tone.

Many names on the global list are anonymous or “Name Unknown.” Read the name and honor each of the unknown persons represented by this marker. Recognize that each entry represents a person who lived, loved, and was murdered. Recognize that, even with those entries where names are provided, we do not fully know the person.

• Understand that traumatized people and people under attack may be emotional and even angry. Anger and distress are very appropriate responses to the violences directed at trans and genderqueer folks, people of color, immigrants, and those living at the intersections of these communities. Be aware that social etiquette and expectations are culture-specific, and that much of what is considered “polite” or “appropriate” is defined by hegemonic Whiteness. Create a space where fear and anger can be expressed and validated.
• Be mindful of the impulse of allies to “keep it positive” and “focus on uplifting.” There is room to celebrate progress – this can even be an important piece of a TDOR event – but, as with fear and anger, expressing grief and naming our dead is appropriate and often needed.

Organize all year.

It is important to make pro-trans activism and education part of your community’s work year-round. Take care not to limit or tokenize your support to a single event or month.

Resources for Planning

Trans Murder Monitoring Project/ TGEU (Transgender Europe)
National Center for Transgender Equality
International Pronouns Day

Video can be found here (28:05)

Prayer Become Character
New Light MCC, Hagerstown MD

It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Father, holy be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day the bread that we need. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into trial.’” Then he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to the friend at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey and I have nothing to set on the table. And from inside the friend answers and says, ‘Do not bother me. The door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though your friend will not get up and give you anything because of your friendship, yet because of shamelessness your friend will get up and give you as much as you need. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds. And to those who knock, it will be opened. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by your son for a fish? You will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will you? Or if you are asked for an egg, you will not give him a scorpion, will you? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly parent give holy breath to those who ask?

There are so many ways that this passage is wrong. Back home in Iowa, I learned a few things about social etiquette. One or two. You don’t show up on your friend’s doorstep at midnight asking for three loaves of bread. Seven p.m., no problem, you don’t even have to call first. Nine p.m., sure. But not midnight; it just isn’t done. You don’t yell from the inside of the house and tell people to go away, either. Everyone knows you lay there quietly and pretend to be asleep already, like civilized people. And you always say please. There isn’t a single please in this entire passage, with all the praying and asking and seeking and knocking. It’s shameless, really.

Jesus is providing his followers with a liturgical prayer, a formula, meant to be learned and recited in community service, just like folks do it here every week. We call it The Lord’s Prayer, or The Prayer That Jesus Taught. The prayer formula is a chance to say words together that have the magical power to transform us into community. Like the Apostles Creed, or the Pledge of Allegiance, or the Rocky Horror Picture Show script. We become one voice. We are, or pretend to be, in agreement, of like minds. And it appears that John the Baptizer had given his disciples a special prayer to recite together, and Jesus’ disciples want one, too. (Notice how they don’t say please?) So Jesus gives them a prayer that distinguishes them, maybe marks the followers of Jesus apart from the followers of John, apart from the Pharisees, apart from the Sadduccees and the followers of whoever else was out there near the Jordan. Teacher, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

It’s worthwhile taking a minute here to point out how many translations of this prayer exist. Like many things in the bible – and in heaven and earth, Horatio – there isn’t a single version. Luke’s version here, as we can see, is missing elements from Matthew’s: no “who art in heaven,” no “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And that business about “for thine is the power and the glory, forever” is right out, all around.

The Jesus Seminar focuses on trying to uncover in the gospels the words that originated with Jesus rather than later editors or church authorities, and they think that Luke’s version is less authentic than Matthew’s. They say that Luke is mixing its metaphors: see how it reads “forgive us our sins as we forgive our debtors”? No matter which version anyone uses of this prayer, people generally clean that bit up and make it consistent. The Jesus Seminar says that Luke is imposing its – or the church’s – ongoingmission on the prayer. Where Matthew says “give us today the bread we need,” Luke says “give us each day the bread we need.” Matthew was all Alcoholics Anonymous about it, saying, One day at a time, all Thich Nhat Hahn, saying, All we have is this breath, this moment. Luke apparently thinks we’re going to live forever. Luke says, Give us bread for all the days, Our Father. And so as usual, even when we’re unanimous it doesn’t mean we agree.

Jesus’ prayer teaches us to pray, and Luke’s gospel emphasizes prayer. In addition to using the Greek words for prayer and petition more than the other gospels, Luke also tells more stories about Jesus praying.¹ Luke has Jesus praying before important events, and also at totally random times. It tells of him going off to be alone to pray and it describes him praying at his baptism before the heavens open, before selecting the twelve, before he asks the disciples who they and the crowds say he is, on the mountain before the Transfiguration, and, here, before the disciples ask him to teach them to pray. Several of Luke’s unique parables and sayings involve prayer. Prayer seems very important to this gospel.

Which is fair. Prayer cannot be overemphasized, particularly when we understand it broadly, to include all of the ways we invoke presence and humility and remorse. There’s a saying that has been attributed to everyone from Emerson to Lao Tzu that says, Take care of your thoughts, they become words. Take care of your words, they become actions. Take care of your actions, they become habits. Take care of your habits, they become character.

Prayer doesn’t transform the world around us, at least not at first. It doesn’t first change the circumstances of our lives to fit our hopes and desires. First, it transforms us. Prayer in all its forms – meditation, examen, penitence, tai chi, petition, yard work, distance running – prayer allows us to become centered, to enter a way of being that is a bit outside of time and space, that is bigger than us and the piece of the world we live on. Prayer gives us a chance to let go, to think clearly – Thich Nhat Hahn says to think deeply – to find ourselves, in a way. It’s similar to how some folks don’t know what they think until they start to write. Sometimes we don’t know where we are or who we are or what we need until we stop and get centered and balanced. It’s not an accident that Luke describes Jesus in prayer before every major and several minor events and decisions of his ministry. Prayer supports and carries us through the momentous and the mundane.

And the seriously mundane. I used to think that Jesus was teaching us what to pray here, how to pray, and I was dismissive of those people I know (let’s just call them, “Mom”) who would pray for green lights and parking spaces. Because I thought they were wrong and backwards. I thought we were supposed to pray instead for patience and cheerfulness to wait at the red light, pray for acceptance and equanimity to go all the long way to the grocery store from our parking spot in Siberia. But I think now I may be the one who got it wrong. I suspect it’s not just about asking for the “right things,” or saying the “right things,” but about us reaching past ourselves, using meditation, examen, penitence, tai chi, petition, yard work, distance running, whatever, to think deeply, to be present, to be humble and contrite.

Look at Abraham from our first reading. For pity’s sake. He sounds like my godson. Abraham is unrelenting. What about 50, God? What about 45? What about 40? 30? 20? What about 10? It’s like every single meal I ever ate with A.J. when he was a little kid. Can I have dessert if I eat 20 green beans? Can I have dessert if I eat 15 green beans? Ten green beans and a piece of broccoli? Five green beans, two peas, and a ketchup packet?

I wonder if Jesus just hopes we’ll pray, in all those ways we do it, do it lots and lots, about whatever we need, whatever we hope. It may not have much to do with how, although there is definitely a strong sense of peace and ease in this prayer. God of us, may your name be holy. May your priorities come first. Give us what we need each day, as we need it. Forgive us, and help us forgive. (Whatever that means. That’s someone else’s sermon.) Keep us empathetic and compassionate. There’s a simplicity and an equanimity in these words, a serenity that is zen and Buddistish. A simplicity of what we long for.

These are the things of huge, momentous events and decisions. And they are the mundane stuff of everyday life. Bless you, universe. Bless me. Don’t abandon me here. Don’t forget my needs. Don’t be too hard on me. Don’t let me be too hard on others. Maybe even if we’re praying for green lights and good parking spots a lot, maybe if we pray all the time to win the lottery or to find our eternally-misplaced coffee mug, maybe those prayers are perfectly good prayers. Maybe we’re still getting into a habit of remembering that we’re connected. Of remembering that there’s something bigger than us that connects us and stop lights and parking spots, that connects us and grocery store and other people in cars. Something that connects coincidence, and design, and synchronicity. Maybe the ease and peace and equanimity will develop from there. Maybe the willingness to dig deeper and lean into challenges and look for lessons and growth will come in time. Maybe right now, in this moment, praying for a green light is the thing that keeps us from screaming obscenities at the driver in front of us. It’s a good start.

And it’s just a start. Jesus teaches a prayer that teaches about God. He tells us to call God “Father,” Pater, which of course I feel compelled to unpack a bit. First of all, metaphor. Throughout the bible God is called Father, Mother, eagle, woman baker, fortress, huge-bosomed one (for reals), housekeeper, redeemer, immigrant, queen of heaven, shepherd, seamstress, and a bunch more. Seriously, I could go on for a while. These are metaphors. Whatever God is, God could be any of these things and none of them. None of these defines or limits or all-encompasses what you understand to be God, and the more metaphors and images and examples that folks have and use, I suspect, the closer we get to the multiplicity and mystery of godness. Secondly, contrary to fundamentalist (and possibly popular) opinion, the idea of God as a father, or or a papa, did not start with Jesus. It has much earlier roots in Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi, and elsewhere.² P.S., Jesus was a Jew. (That is only a non sequitur if you aren’t a Christian supersessionist. That’s not funny.)

Jesus teaches a prayer that teaches about God, and he tells us to call God “Father,” and then he tells parables that illustrate God in a way that is both a kind of parent and a kind of friend. First, God is a friend who will go next door to get bread for you when you arrive, obviously without warning, in the middle of the night. (Although, again, what are you doing showing up places unannounced in the middle of the night?) Also, God is a neighbor who will get up at midnight to hand the bread out to you, even though the door was shut and everyone is annoyed now and was in bed sleeping. Because it was midnight. Thirdly, God is a parent who knows not to give kids a snake when they ask for a fish. God never gives kids a scorpion, duh, but especially not when they’ve asked for an egg.

This is sometimes upsetting to the folks who don’t want a God painted in pastels and petticoats, who think these images of God as Dad and grumpy good neighbor and friend are the sort of namby-pamby, wishy-washy petunia God that is the very thing wrong with the world. But, for one thing, it’s Jesus who is using these examples of God as friend and neighbor and parent. Also, there is no “please” anywhere and there is also not a single word of fire, brimstone, wheat, chaff, or plucking out body parts. So it’s not me. Jesus is the one being all it’s-all-good let’s-hug-trees saying that God is like a princi-Pal.

Except that it’s totally more complicated than that, as usual, which might be upsetting to a whole other set of people or maybe the same group for new reasons. Because it’s clear that God is a totally annoyed neighbor who is giving you bread only to get rid of you so that God can go back to sleep. And, clearly, comparing God to a father who doesn’t give a scorpion to a kid who wants an egg is a pretty low bar for parenthood.

I think we’re back to prayer for its own sake. I think we’re back to prayer being that practice that shapes us: Take care of your thoughts, they become words. Take care of your words, they become actions. Take care of your actions, they become habits. Take care of your habits, they become character. Maybe it is what we ask for that Jesus wants us to reflect on. Maybe what we ask for, again and again, banging on the neighbor’s door at midnight, maybe that is what becomes our character. And is it for green lights and good parking spots, or is it for social justice and economic justice and enough food for everyone?

I do get the sense that we’re being encouraged to ask, and keep asking. Like A.J. Like Abraham. Like the persistent friend. Luke’s Jesus makes clear that God is in relationship with us, and Luke’s Jesus seems to be saying that prayer is how we stay connected – to our God, to our annoying friends who show up unannounced in the middle of the night, to our neighbors who are bugged by us asking for bread when everyone is sleeping but get up anyway, to our family who keep asking for fish and eggs, apparently, which has got to be more metaphors, right? Bread is life. Friends are asking neighbors for life. Eggs are life. The kids are asking their dads for more life. Prayer is how we stay connected to life, to community, to whoever. To ourselves. To the earth and the plants and the sunset, whatever. How we stay in relationship. Stay connected to what is bigger, and better, than what we are alone.

Maybe prayer in all the ways we do it becomes, among other things, to keep talking, to stay in the conversation, to say who we are and what we want again and again until it changes us or changes the world. Until the green lights happen or the equanimity. Until the green lights don’t matter anymore. Until we make more justice. Until everyone has the bread for today. Until we have forgiven all debts. Until our thoughts that become our words become our actions become our habits become our character are thoughts about connectedness, about relationship. About more life.

Jesus says this, this is how to pray.

Peace.

Sketchy video here from the livestream. (9:00)

Typically at this time of year I’m in a church somewhere trying in twenty minutes or less to take the bash out of the bible. I want to talk about Stonewall in a minute, and there isn’t much other than continuing to shift the culture that can be done about the mentality of the church, but if there is even one person here today who agonizes over what the bible says, I would hate to to miss the opportunity to give you the quick 2-minute speed-date version. Generally, bashers focus on verses in Leviticus, Genesis, Romans, and 1 Corinthians. You might be familiar with the passages. If you’re not, frankly, more power to you; some of us have been living under the oppressive weight of these words most of our lives.

In a nutshell, the Leviticus prohibitions are in a part of the book probably meant to list and forbid sex practices used by neighboring religious groups who worshiped rival gods. Probably. It’s been misused not only to falsely accuse the biblical God of homophobia and transphobia (and xenophobia), but also I think gave the bible God a bad rap as sex-negative. I think biblical God is actually a fan of making sweet love down by the fire. Bible God says, “Keep it consensual, kids; discuss your safe words and have fun. Just don’t worship rival gods while you’re at it is all I ask.” (That’s a paraphrase.)

Sodom is about inhospitality and is basically the Game of Thrones Red Wedding of Genesis, where the townspeople broke the sacred salt-and-bread covenant with their guests and so everybody died horrible deaths. If you’re not familiar with the Game of Thrones Red Wedding, more power to you; for some of us that’s 67-odd hours of our lives we’ll never get back. There is actually no sex in the Sodom story of any kind, homo- or otherwise, because the story is about rape and rape is not sex but violent assault. In defense of the second-century church patriarchs who first came up with the anti-gay reading, though, we still confuse those two today.

The Romans thing is almost certainly an unfortunate rhetorical device, where Paul really wanted to tell his audience that they were lousy hypocrites, but he wanted to lull them into false security first by playing on their dislike for Greek metrosexuals. It was like, “Hey, you know those gay and strangely meticulous people that we all agree are unsavory and unnatural? …well, you are worse than them! Gotcha!” (That’s a paraphrase.) But we needn’t worry too much, because Paul also said that short hair and circumcision is natural and that God is unnatural. So, clearly an argument could be made that a) go home, Paul, you’re drunk, or b) Paul is comparing queer sexuality to God. I’m fine either way.

Forget about 1 Corinthians, it’s technical and boring and hard to make jokes about. Suffice to say it’s basically a first-century C.E. game of beer pong. And don’t forget that anyone who pulls out any of these verses and waves it around like a club is ignoring a bunch of other verses, often adjacent, about fornication, menstruation, lobster, and polyester. And also that the biblical model for marriage includes multiple wives, harems, and sexual slaves, so, you know, maybe it’s not the most up-to-date resource.

What is way more fun than defending ourselves is talking about our biblical ancestors, biblical sexual and gender suspects who were kings and princes and military heroes like Jonathan and David and the Roman Centurion; and were foreign dignitaries and divine messengers, like Esther’s eunuch and the Ethiopian eunuch and Matthew’s magi bringing jewelry and perfume to a two-year-old boy (!?); who were tribal leaders and army generals, like Deborah; and ‘adam, the first-ever human created in the divine image; and early Christian house church leaders and deacons, like Prisca and Aquila and Tryphaena and Tryphosa (which are real bible names and, oddly not popular in bible name baby name books); like Ruth and Naomi (which are more popular in bible name baby name books), two women whose words of love and devotion to one another have been used for weddings of all kinds and in all churches: “Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. I’ve got the U-Haul and a hitch, and nothing can stop me from moving in with you.” (That’s a paraphrase.) Exemplars of community and faith. Ideal rulers, the embodiments of lovingkindness, legendary heroes. We’re not just not condemned by the bible, we people the bible. And we aren’t just included in the stories, our stories are models of faith and leadership and loyalty. We’re holy in there. We’re awesome. Get used to it.

It seems like part of Pride is knowing our history and doing this kind of research and bible exegesis, confronting resistance and interrupting ignorance to the extent we feel up to it at any given moment. It seems like part of Pride is loving and celebrating ourselves and taking up space in movie theaters and city streets and on borough hall steps.

But the legacy of Stonewall I think is fundamentally about recognizing and honoring the vast differences between us, even within our queer and genderqueer communities. Recognizing that what the bible does or doesn’t say about us doesn’t matter to all of us, because some of us are Muslim, because some of us are atheist, because a hundred other reasons. Part of Pride is making room in our celebrations for all of us and our words: dykes, fairies, neutrois, demi-. Butch, nelly, bear, soft-top, hard-femme. Poly, non-monogamous, kink, fetish, consensual safe-word-friendly bondage. Making room for all the things that my mom is afraid of and that my dad wants to be cool with but struggles to understand. Making room for all the people we’ve been taught to be ashamed of, and who sometimes we forget not to be ashamed of.

The legacy of Stonewall isn’t a parade, all due respect to parades. Nor necessarily a rally, all due respect. Stonewall was a riot. We threw bricks that night. We threw pennies, beer bottles, high heeled shoes, and dog shit. There was a chorus girl kick line, too, because we’re fabulous and we’re not made of wood, but we set garbage cans on fire. We set the bar on fire. I’m not advocating violence; I promote non-violence and I practice non-violence, but I want to make clear that the folks who rioted were desperate. They had nothing to lose and there was nothing to gain by behaving, by making nice, playing by the rules. They were mostly poor and homeless, drag queens, flame queens, effeminate men, street fairies, stone butch lesbians, largely brown and black. They were people we’ve been taught to be ashamed of, and who sometimes we forget not to be ashamed of. They were lined up, frisked, sexually molested, beaten, stripped for gender verification, handcuffed, locked into paddy wagons. It was as routine as the airport TSA. It was as routine as racial profiling.

We revere them today, if we know their names. Sylvia Rivera is getting a statue along with Marsha P. (for Pay It No Mind) Johnson in front of Stonewall, and Stonewall was recently added as a national landmark. Sylvia’s name rings out in June and peppers the floats and banners in parades. But Stonewall isn’t ours to romanticize and sanitize, to coopt and whitewash. During her lifetime Sylvia was never able to stop fighting. The groups that organized in the wake of Stonewall, whether they were called the Gay Liberation Front or the Human Rights Campaign didn’t want her and were ashamed of her, didn’t use her picture to promote their work, looked away from or through the poor and homeless, drag, flame, effeminate, fairy, stone butch, brown and black, desperate with nothing to lose. Sylvia was banned from meetings, banned from strategy, banned from podiums. We do it to her again and again today. We do it again when we leave out gender protections in order to pass protective laws for lesbians and gays and the occasional well-behaved bisexual. We do it again in Pennsylvania cities every year when we write Pride dress codes that forbid chaps and go-go shorts and body paint. We do it again when we discourage political speech at our rallies, when we insist on focusing on the positive, behaving, making nice, playing by the rules. The rules haven’t been written for Sylvia and Marsha P., for Leslie Feinberg and Ivan Valentin, for Tiffany, Tammy Novak, Spanola Jerry, and the Puerto Rican scare queens of Stonewall. And until the rules are re-written, Pride and Stonewall require that we prioritize the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all our people, loud and full-throated, all the way to our edges, all the way to our margins, to the people we’ve been taught to be ashamed of, who sometimes we forget not to be ashamed of.

The legacy of Stonewall casts its light over Ferguson and Flint and Charleston, as well, over black churches burning in the south and brown children locked in cages on our border and calls us to return to its desperate roots on Christopher Street on a sweltering night in 1969. It casts its light over the relentless attacks on trans and genderqueer people. Over trans women assaulted on public transit, trans soldiers willing to serve their country forced to closet and stealth and suffer misgendering and dead-naming. Over withdrawal of healthcare that takes gender-affirming surgery and medicine (if needed and wanted) out of the reach of all but the very wealthy, over dozens of trans people killed last year and 10 trans people murdered already this year in the States, mostly trans women, mostly trans women of color. The legacy of Stonewall demands that we return to our first marches and our first protests and our first calls for action.

The legacy of Stonewall is urgency. Because they had nothing to lose, they acted with boldness and desperation. And boldness and desperation are what is called for in the wake of Ferguson, Flint, and Charleston, of black churches burning in the south and brown children locked in cages on our border, of trans folk denied life and dignity, denied safe transport and protected employment and bodily integrity.

The legacy of Stonewall is realizing that it’s not us versus them. It’s not fighting over slices of the pie. Because They are Us, They are here. We are trans folk, soldiers, people who need body integrity. We attend black churches. We have brown children. And the pie is infinite and bottomless. Don’t let anyone tell you different. There is enough and more than enough love, dignity, respect, wholeness, healthcare, marriage, affordable housing, restorative justice, immigration reform, prison reform, asylum, living wage to go around. More than enough room at the meetings, more than enough input for the strategies, more than more than enough time at the podiums. We need to listen to each other, stop name-calling, stop talking over each other, stop telling each other how to be hurt and how to be healed. We need to listen to one another’s pain, to make each other’s wellness part of our own wellness. We need to be willing to risk whatever comfort we have, whatever respectability we have, all of us queer, genderqueer, or ally. We need to get our hands dirty, all of us. We need Stonewall’s urgency. We need Stonewall’s deep and wide affinity. We need Stonewall’s action. That is its legacy. That is how we name it. That is, I think, how we honor it.