Resurrection for Real

MCCNY
March 22, 2026

^{Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.} ^{Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.} ^{When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.} ^{When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’}

Jesus says today, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

I know that for some folks here today, these words already make perfect sense, maybe because you grew up with a bunch of people telling you what they wanted you to believe they mean. But I want us all to return to confusion, go back to that first- or second-century, first audience utter bewilderment at hearing or reading these words. Jesus says that people who believe in him will not die … right on the heels of saying that Lazarus is dead. He first says it allegorically or something, and the disciples were all literal, “Oh, he’s sleeping? Excellent, so everything is fine.” And then Jesus says it plain, like he’s exasperated, “No, I meant that he’s dead. Lazarus is dead, and we’re going to Bethany. Oh, and people who believe in me won’t die.”

But Lazarus did die. He was in fact extremely dead. You might think that dead is something you either are or aren’t, like pregnant, or unique, but the text is emphatic about how dead Lazarus is. The gospel gets kind of graphic about it. There were probably a couple of reasons why, and I have decided that one of them is to let Jesus off the hook for waiting two days to leave. The LOLCat bible says that Happy Cat (LOLCat bible calls Jesus “Happy Cat”), Happy Cat “ttly took his sweet time getting ready, liek 2 hole daze.” But Lazarus was extremely dead when Jesus arrived, like four days dead, which absolves Jesus for waiting so long to leave.

We don’t know why Jesus waited two days, but I’ve made up a bunch of reasons, like rush hour. You know, a two-day rush hour he was trying to avoid. Like at the Holland Tunnel. My favorite explanation is that maybe there was already a two-day line formed for healings and feedings and exorcisms. Does that happen here, at the grocery store when a clerk wants to close the lane, everybody already in line still gets to check out? (Do you still buy groceries at the store?) Jesus had a line at his check-out lane. I think this is at least part of why John says again and again how much Jesus loved Lazarus and his family, to balance this delay and make sure we won’t think Jesus was unfeeling or uncaring for waiting to leave. It seems unfeeling and uncaring.

Another reason for emphasizing how dead Lazarus was may be tied to the Jewish tradition that the soul lingered after death for three days, and only after that is the life truly ended. I don’t understand what difference it would make had Jesus arrived when Lazarus was already dead but the soul was still hanging around. But, you how it wasn’t enough to just put Houdini in a straight jacket. They also dangled him upside-down from a skyscraper. Maybe it’s like that. So now people couldn’t say of Jesus, “Well, anyone could have resurrected Lazarus, his soul was right there, still lingering…” Maybe the ultimate objective is to establish that Lazarus is really, really, unquestionably dead. Very dead. He has begun to decompose; his body was rotting. It stank; the gospel makes a point to talk about the smell and the point I think is that Lazarus is completely beyond mistake or misdiagnosis. He’s unquestionably dead. Like Ezekiel’s dry bones. Like people crucified left on to poles to be eaten by dogs and birds.

It feels important to tie this John gospel story of an extremely, graphically dead Lazarus to right now in the US and globally. For fourteen months I’m carrying a weight again in my chest, maybe you are too, trying to find some magical fulcrum where I can stay informed and not look away and engage meaningfully, but also function. Trying to find hope – Harvey Milk said we have to have hope – among the attacks not just on trans healthcare but our very existence, our very sense of self. Among the attacks on not just so-called civil unlawful entry but on Latine names and speech and co-existence, where children and parents are separated, where people are wrenched undressed in the night from their beds, when people are targeted at home improvement outlets trying to work and in courtrooms trying to enter lawfully, when citizenship and documentation is irrelevant and ethnicity is the point. Trying, if I’m being honest, to find hope among the frustratingly late realizations among white folks that power corrupts, that power is corrupt, that none of us are free until we are all free, that frustratingly slow, well-meaning people only now cry fascism when every infringement of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness they recognize has been withheld from Black folks in this country from its inception. In today’s “On This Day” from EJI, the Equal Justice Initiative, they end an account of a white woman and Black man arrested for walking on the same sidewalk and maybe talking for a minute with this, “The narrative of racial difference created to justify slavery – the myth that white people are superior to Black people – was not abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation or the Thirteenth Amendment.” (I’ll presume to add that, looking at the carceral complex and the money bail system, slavery was barely abolished by the Proclamation or the Thirteenth Amendment.)

And Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. And maybe we’re confused by this. And I am.

There’s something else that fascinates me about this story. People keep saying to Jesus, if only you had come in time. It seems very much like they mean, If you had come beforehe died you could have kept him from dying. This is weird. For one, because if they believe that Jesus can keep people from dying, then why don’t they trust he can raise people from death? And is saving people on the brink of death even his thing. He made a ton of sick people well. He healed a ton of people with long-term conditions, like leprosy and hemorrhaging and healed people with disabilities, I guess, which feels wrong to say without taking a minute to unspool the ancient and modern practice of disability porn, and which so-called healing I like to pretend was really about destigmatizing disability and bringing community back into oneness with people and body difference. But that’s this sermon. Jesus fed literally thousands of people in the gospels with literally jack. But did Jesus ever really keep people from dying? Okay, yes, he did save the Roman centurian’s lover and the ruler’s son from dying, totally fair of you to bring it up. But still I will point out that even then, both times, Jesus doesn’t go there. He didn’t need to go anywhere. He says instead, “You go on back, the boy lives.” Jesus didn’t need to come at all, let alone in time.

As you probably know, I think John is an extremely strange gospel as a rule, but this is extra-strange enough to feel important. Lazarus is exceptionally dead, and Jesus is too late. All is lost. When all these people say, If only you had come in time, it’s their hopelessness. They’re saying, Things might have been okay under different circumstances, at a different time, before, but not now. Maybe there’s also shaming. Maybe they’re also saying, Things might have been okay had you gotten here sooner, had you left right away and arrived while the soul still hovered, had you come without being called, had you done something different. Jesus.

But it is defeat. Nothing can be done now. In this hopeless state, the best Martha can manage is resignation. She makes an incredible statement of who Jesus is, one that rivals Peter’s confession. She says, You are the anointed, the Child of God, the One. Yet it means nothing, I think. It’s just words. It’s like she’s saying, “Yes, you’re very special and important, but Lazarus is dead.” Jesus, however magnificent his title, is useless. If he had come in time, hope would be possible. But as things stand, she can only await the final resurrection at the last day, whatever that’s worth. (Nothing.) It’s rote; she’s on auto-pilot. It’s a mechanical faith and it speaks of a distant hope. A disconnected rescue. It’s a meaningless future so much in the future that it has no bearing on today, on right now.

But what if the whole point of this story of Lazarus and Mary and Martha and that crowd outside and Jesus waiting two days and him dead four, what if the whole point of all of this is to make clear to us utterly that it is not ever too late? Never? It feels impossible, like giving away everything we have to people who can’t pay us back. It feels unbelievable, like justice ever rolling down like a river. But I think maybe this is what this Jesus wants us to trust. Do you believe this?

I don’t know if I do. But I want to. But I need to. Fourteen months I have been carrying a weight again in my chest that has made it difficult to live, to function. Maybe you too. If I’m being honest, I have never been so emotionally and spiritually unwell and also sober, and it’s reminded me why I’m an alcoholic and how absolutely delicious it is to be numb to national and global realities. It’s given me a renewed resentment toward my sobriety, and fortunately also a renewed appreciation of it, and of me. Maybe you too; keep coming back.

I named trans people trying to live our lives being erased, and Latine people and families trying to live their lives being kidnapped and caged, and Black folks ever trying to live their lives being infantilized and dehumanized and brutalized. And this brief, soul-crushing list is the tip of a melting glacier of recent and historical national and global corruption and graft and warmongering and election tampering and suppression of speech and faith in the press and trust in our system of government and our league of nations and international law and any sense that none of us is free, or well, if we are not all well and free. Gaza, Iran, Lebabon. All of this, of course, layered over and on top of our lives already peppered with exhaustion and worry and grief, broken hearts, broken cars, unpaid bills.

Today’s strange and confusing passage from this strange and almost absurdly counter-canonical gospel arrives at a moment I am so resistant to hearing it and so desperately need it and struggle to grasp it. Maybe you too. What if “I am” is literally resurrection and literally life in real time, now? What if those who believe, though dead, live right now for real? And everyone who lives and believes will honest-to-Pete never die? I don’t know for sure what that means, and I’m so deeply cynical and suspicious of hope or of the substance of things hoped for. But what if it means that it is real and never too late.

I want this story to be literal. I want it to mean something immediate, something for right now. Not later, not in the end times or on the last day. And I do think we’re not truly hearing the story, we’re missing out on something vital if we don’t. Martha’s statement of faith was so profound, and so limited. Jesus, you are the anointed. You are the Child of God. You are the One. It’s too bad you didn’t come sooner.

Mary, too. When she hears that Jesus wants her she jumps up and runs to him. She falls exhausted at his feet, the place where she sat in that other story, when Jesus says that she has chosen the better part. She demonstrates with her body and her tears who Jesus is to her: Beloved. Teacher. And yet her words to him are the same as her sister’s: It’s too bad you didn’t come sooner.

The people in this gospel story who follow Mary have seen Jesus do a number of signs and miracles. They’ve seen him turn water into wine. They’ve seen him heal that ruler’s son with his word alone. They’ve seen him heal the man at the Pool of Bethsaida on the sabbath. They’ve seen him feed five thousand families. They’ve seen him give sight to the man born blind at the Pool of Siloam on the sabbath. With spit. They’ve seen him walk on water, for crying eye! The people who follow Mary know what this Jesus can do and have witnessed miracles. They have seen his magic. And they mutter, It’s too bad you didn’t come sooner.

I feel like this gospel is being incredibly tender with us, and generous. I think, as with many gospels and narrative stories of Jesus, our disbelief and our hopelessness and our easy head-in-the-sand and cheap grace thinking is understood as part of how difficult discipleship can be. It’s never okay, I’m not saying anyone is saying it’s okay to half-hat it. In fact, the “Jesus wept” bit here is largely understood by dorks who study the language and stuff to be Jesus weeping with rage and frustration at all the head-in-the-sand cheap-grace thinking going on around him. But I think this gospel knows that it’s hard, that it will be hard, that it is supposed to be hard. All of these people who knew Jesus, who loved Jesus, all these people who hated Jesus but who all knew what he could do – Martha even gets really close to expressing exactly who the gospel understands Jesus to be –they all still absolutely, completely believethat he is too late.

But it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t too late. At the risk of hitting you over the head with it, I’ll repeat that this may be the whole point. It wasn’t too late, and it isn’t. Jesus mucked around for two days, Lazarus’s corpse reeked, the soul was long gone, and Lazarus was returned to life. (It doesn’t help my sermon, but I have to note that Lazarus was raised and there’s no fanfare or so much as a thanks, good to see you. It was pretty anti-climactic, though that may be because they’re saving up for next month.)

Jesus is not too late. That power that he represents to create change for the family he loved so much has no dependence on circumstances or time or arriving in time. They and maybe we believethat death is final but Jesus and Thich Nhat Hahn say that there is no death.

This brief nerd time-out for folks who don’t already know: when Jesus says I Am the resurrection and the life, he is repeating what God says to Moses from the burning bush when Moses asks for God’s name. I Am. Jesus makes seven of these statements in this gospel. In Hebrew, I Am is the name that in English we spell Y-H-W-H and presume to pronounce. The name is sacred and unpronounceable and unsaid in Jewish faith. The gospel community is probably aligning Jesus and his life and ministry (and martyrdom) with the God and the faith and the community and social ethical culture of all time, the gospel begins with the words “In the beginning,” and I can’t help but point out that the name I Am is ontological. It is existence itself and outside of time, borne on the breath of dawn.

This Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

I need this now. I need this resurrection today. I need this today, not later. Not some imagined hypothetical future before a throne being asked, What have you done that I should let you into my kingdom? (P.S., God isn’t going to ask you that. That may be another sermon. That also may still be this sermon.)

In 2000, James Dale lost his legal case with the US court system when the Supreme Court enshrined homophobia as a legal discrimination and a valid interpretation of the BSA code to be “morally straight.” Remember that? I do. I was at Lambda then. We didn’t have marriage or custody of our kids, were getting fired from jobs and couldn’t be boy scout leaders. This SCOTUS decision was the end of the road for James Dale and for however many hundreds of hundreds of morally straight gay boys and young men who knew themselves to be leaders. Evan Wolfson and David Buckel and Pat Logue, who argued the case for Dale with Lambda Legal, said after the demoralizing decision that The Supreme Court doesn’t have the final word.

It was a strange and confusing thing to say. I remember repeating it to Bob Hollinger here and I remember his confused and almost angry reaction. He thought it was ridiculous and absurd. But what happened in the years that followed that shameful BSA fight and SCOTUS decision was that people who supported the inclusive and community foundation of the Boy Scouts started to act within their families and neighborhoods and communities. They withdrew the special rent-free leases and other privileges the organization had enjoyed. They stopped making donations to the BSA. They withdrew their children from membership and enrolled them in other groups that didn’t discriminate, like Boys and Girls Clubs of America. By 2015, the BSA, which had long, long included Jewish scouts, Black scouts, Latine scouts, even in the face of Klan threats, by 2015 the BSA lifted the ban and added gay scouts and leaders to its commitment and ethics.

It feels like a quaint example now; twenty-five years later it feels almost nostalgic. I don’t tell it to equate it with the violences and oppressions we’re witnessing and surviving and not surviving today. But it does work as an illustration of what “though they die, yet they live” might mean for today’s discipleship. It’s a powerful and successful example of how “not too late” can play out in real ways for us.

Discipleship today won’t look the same for all of us, or the same all the time for any of us. Rumi tells us this: there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth. Some folks are following and videotaping and questioning ICE and NYPD and other law enforcement. Some are being shot and killed. Some are writing op eds in school papers and being arrested, making art and being arrested. Some folks are building mutual aid and communal care networks, figuring out how to get groceries and clean laundry to people sheltering in place. There are courts, slow and sure. So so slow, bless them, and not always sure. Folks are shopping local as a discipline and tithing as a protest. Folks are standing on corners and in street for No Kings and other civil disobedience. And there are things we always have layered over and on top of it all: making our friends laugh, smiling at a stranger, ordinary moments of tenderness and generosity.

And also caring for ourselves, which is as much a part of discipleship as anyone else’s wellness and freedom. Noticing beauty. I’m going to the Whitney biennial later, by god. Feeling love and tenderness, when we feel it, and the tenderness of patience, when we give it, and generosity. Noticing the cat scratching to climb your lap, as well as the picket line and the election canvassing. You hold the key to love and fear, there in your trembling hand…

John’s disciples know how easy it is to keep grace cheap and half-hat. To say this is too big for me, it’s too late – to say it’s been too late for ten years, to say there’s nothing for me to do. I know that voice, I hear it too. I know that fulcrum between being informed and being functional is paper thin and a moving thing. But I think we are asked today, do we believe in resurrection and life. And I, suspicious and cynical, cynical and really struggling to function, I trust this much, this first step at least: that there is always something for us to do, that we all have a part to play, that it is not ever too late. And I hope – Harvey Milk says we have to hope – I hope it is real as your beloved face, so real it’s almost anti-climactic.

I love you. Peace.

Is This a Pride Sermon or, Pride is a Verb

MCCNY
June 22, 2025

Ezekiel 16:48-50
Mark 11 :15-19

I want to start by reminding us of the Ezekial passage just now. Here’s what it says again: As I live, says God, your brother Sodom and his sons (I’m not having that misogyny nonsense today on top of everything else; live with it) your brother Sodom and his kids have not done as you and your children have done. This was the guilt of Sodom: they were arrogant. They had abundance and easy prosperity, but they did not empower the poor and needy and make them strong. That’s what the word means translated by so many bibles as “help.” It’s not alms or pity help or white saviorism. It’s not condescending or even genuine, generous condescending. They had abundance and easy prosperity, but they did not empower the poor and needy and make them strong. They were arrogant and did not abide by my laws. So I removed them.

God said that. Hold that thought.

I’m tired and out of sorts. I may never have needed to swear in a sermon more than I need to swear in a sermon this week. I feel like I’m living in The Running Man, and not in a good way. If you don’t know the reference, shame on you. It’s peak Richard Dawson.

Today is Stonewall Sunday. Next Sunday is the 56th anniversary of the Stonewall riot. June has for decades been committed to Pride emerging and exposing itself, sometimes literally, in marches and parades and corporate pretendo allyship shilling for queer and genderqueer dollars. Over time, we got safer. We did more parades and fewer marches. Maybe we got comfortable. Maybe we started to think we were post-queer.

This year, this month, they’ve undone the name of the U.S. Navy Ship Harvey Milk, named for a queer, executed city council member and national pro-gay activist. They’ve redone the names of confederate forts Pickett, Hill, and Lee that we’d changed because those guys were traitors and they were committed to preserving human trafficking and enslavement. They decommissioned the suicide hotline dedicated for queer and genderqueer callers; and people will die. When they did it, they removed the T from the acronym, our acronym – our acronym! I have such mixed feelings about our acronym and the conflation of sexuality and gender and the bogus false inclusion of trans folks in name only and the weird way the full acronym is used as an adjective. Like how a February NYT headline reads “Nearly one in ten adults identifies as LGBTQ.” I doubt that very much. I’d be surprised if a single adult anywhere identifies as “LGBTQ.” The bland thoughtless use of those letters makes me nuts the way some people get worked up about the Oxford comma. Okay, I’m one of those people, too. It’s a frustrating acronym, but it’s our acronym. *Our problematic friend. And we, we will decide who will and won’t be bogus false included in name only.

This month a Minnesota state senator was assassinated, her husband murdered, another senator and his wife shot, their families threatened in their homes. Violent murder in their homes and a two-day killer at large in the state, but Minnesota was mocked and its representatives mocked and blamed and laughed at like they were women disclosing rape in the 90s.

The Supreme Court this week affirmed a state’s right to deny harmless, reversible, best practice, science-driven gender-affirming healthcare wanted and needed by some trans kids *and their parents, with their parents’ permission, and people will die. The House made deep cuts to Medicaid and they’ve shut down AIDS and cancer and other disease research and vaccination, and people will die. They’re supporting a war against starving children. They’re supporting a war against people defending their own national sovereignty. They’ve started yet another war over control of middle east wealth and assets, and people will die.

What’s the sin of your brother Sodom? This is it, these are Sodom’s sins. Arrogance, abundance, and not sharing. Not resourcing and building up folks who are sick, disempowered, who don’t have enough. It’s here, it’s happening right now. I could really use some Sodom-era divine justice fire and brimstone. I don’t even believe in hell, but I could use some of that OG retribution right now. Not drowning the whole world or burning a whole city; I’m with Abraham on that, but certainly let’s have some Reed Sea close over some selective cohorts after the good guys have passed through. Definitely let’s have some zapping like God did at those two guys trying to catch the ark from tipping over.

Seems like if two guys can get zapped for trying to keep the sacred ark from falling over and getting busted, there could be a lot more zapping right now for all the deeply on-purpose evil acts against the sick and poor and disempowered. I’d like to see a large number of pillars of salt that used to be all these people looking backward and longing for the old days of enslavement and klan rule and trans erasure and mediocre white men in charge. I’d be cool. A little casting into outer darkness and gnashing teeth. Where’s Armageddon when you need it.

I’m joking.

I’m not joking.

Where’s divine justice.

Where is it.

This next sentence is going to feel obvious. I don’t want this to be a feel good sermon, and not just because of naming all the evil in the country this month, this year. I don’t want us to leave here feeling good about ourselves. I don’t want us to leave here feeling Pride month proud. I don’t want us to leave feeling good enough.

Please stay with me on this; I love us. I love you.

We aren’t bad; we aren’t bad. And we’ve got to move past encouraging and feeling good about ourselves for not being bad. I love us. I love you so much; we are existentially good. And we have got to move beyond affirming our existential goodness. Yes yes yes, Sodom wasn’t torched, even in the parables, even in the fables, Sodom wasn’t torched for being homo.sexual. Those guys raped and broke faith with a traveler and were treating their own disadvantaged neighbors similarly. We know this, and if anyone here doesn’t know it, please check in with one of us for the bibliography. We aren’t bad, Sodom wasn’t gay, God loves us. The end. But not the end. That’s not the goal, it can’t be. Pride isn’t the point.

Pride is the point. Pride is our power, our empowerment. And it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning. We can’t stop there. We can’t just work enough to get ourselves through the door, and then close it behind us. That’s what Jesus is mad about today, it’s what he has advocated and acted against again and again. It’s what he’s demonstrating against today.

I want us to feel strong and empowered. I want us to reject shame and blame. I want us to move through the world heads up, eyes up, shoulders back. I want us to claim our promise, our birthright, claim our goodness and divinity. But that’s just not enough. It’s not enough. I’m not sorry for saying it; Jesus said it.

You are enough. And knowing and living our enoughness is not enough.

We are called to act for justice, for distributive justice. To hold accountable. Anything less is falling short of the glory, baby.

Knowing what racism is and does isn’t enough. We are called to countermand and dismantle it. Knowing what sexual consent is isn’t enough. We must share power and practice consent in all of our interactions with one another, and name it and hold each other accountable when we don’t. And if anyone thinks sharing power is weak or “woke,” I’ve got a donkey-riding king to show you and a messiah who went open-eyed so to speak toward arrest and execution. It’s not enough to know the definitions of colonialism and cultural extraction and mass incarceration. Knowing that homos.exuals and transes are in every era of history and geography, we are, isn’t enough. Knowing that we’re in the bible stories as exemplars and saviors, we are, knowing that we are as holy and wise and righteous as anyone, we are, is not enough. It’s a lot. It’s amazing. I want it for us. And we must go beyond our Pride; we must strengthen and build up the poor and sick and disempowered.

Jesus said it and demands it of us. That’s what’s happening in the temple today. Every gospel has this account of the temple civil disobedience. Any gospel in the canon that isn’t completely made up pairs it with the street action of the palms procession for a two-part indictment. Any gospel in the canon that is completely made up uses the two acts of public civil disobedience at the beginning and the end of Jesus’s ministry to bookend his life and work, to highlight acts of discipleship, of direct action, and its cost. These actions are almost certainly very actually probably why Jesus was executed.

It’s really important to know what he was criticizing. I’m not one hundred percent sure what Jesus is specifically targeting in the temple, but he’s not attacking Jewish faith, or necessarily temple structure or even the high priesthood. Probably yes, though, he may be targeting specific priests and lampooning specific governors and administrators yesterday, and maybe even other messiah types, with the donkey cabaret. I believe he is criticizing current practices, current legislators so to speak, current policies and structures so to speak, associated with the way the temple was currently operating. Who it was serving and who it was taking for granted. That he was highlighting and condemning these people and what they were doing to prop up the *system,” to support and grease the faith machine that “practices faith,” that “has faith” but doesn’t do justice, that “performs faith” and enacts ritual and allows the poor and sick and disempowered to participate but does not “help” them, doesn’t strengthen and build them up. In our own terminology, Jesus is probably definitely criticizing the operation of the church for giving the superficial impression of doing church but not, in fact, doing God’s work.

That’s what he means by quoting “den of thieves” from Jeremiah. The church is the refuge. It’s being used as cover.

Probably the Mark gospel made the house of prayer reference for its own purposes forty years later, but probably historical Jesus quoted Jeremiah. Jeremiah was talking about leaders who robbed or exploited the poor and sick and disempowered and then used the temple as cover. It might be like what the Southern Baptist Convention did, also this month, curse them, and any other body calling for harm and disenfranchisement of queer and trans folks in the guise of religion. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s similar, and people will die. Jeremiah says, your churches are pirates’ lairs. Your churches are bunkers. They are fundamentally rejecting, Jeremiah is, Jesus is, the veneer and machinations of any faith that doesn’t do its work of strengthening and building up the poor, sick, and disempowered. They are saying what Amos (5), and Hosea (6), and Micah (6), and Isaiah (1) all say: Your hands are covered in blood.

This is what I’d like us to think about today, but not as the victims of the violence. Not just as the victims of violence. This is how I’d like us to think of our Pride this year and ever, our church, our streets this year and ever. Not just for us. Not just for homos.exuals and transes. Not as a time and place to bolster ourselves only, to let ourselves through the door just to close it behind us.

That would make us the thing Jesus is condemning and demonstrating against today. To use our Pride, use our faith, use our inclusive churches, use our Pride month as a cover, as a beard, for celebrating ourselves and raising up ourselves and looking good and doing the appearance of justice and equity but not doing the work of justice or equity. The work of empowering the poor and sick and beset upon. We can’t just feel good about being queer and genderqueer. Please stay with me with this; I love us. I love you.

You might be thinking, but we are the beset upon, and we are. But we aren’t a monolith. The Jews under Roman control in the first-century land of Jerusalem were not a monolith. It’s one of the things that bothers me so much about the acronym, *our acronym! and its conflation of sexuality and gender and the bogus false inclusion of trans folks in name only and how people use it. I’m going to just say and hope we can acknowledge together that, yes, we are all beset upon, and that trans and genderqueer folks this year especially, this year uniquely, are profoundly experiencing a different level of violence and erasure, legislative and communal, in sport and healthcare, in identification documents and how that affects us moving in and between public spaces. That the numbers of our Black and brown trans sisters have never gone down, not once, at Transgender Day of Remembrance.

I hope we can acknowledge together that the newish anxiety and fear in this country of authoritarianism, or fascism, or totalitarianism or whatever words you’re using is not new or newish to our Black family and neighbors, that these or similar terms generally and broadly could be described as Black experience in this country always. Always. That our Latine family and neighbors are being literally hunted, literally hunted in their homes and cars and workplaces, hunted in the courts and offices needed to conduct their legal pleas for residency.

There aren’t sides. No things are a monolith. It’s not enough to be indignant. It’s not enough to be indignant about what the “other side” is doing and be proud of not being Them. It’s not enough to know what’s wrong, and it’s not enough to be in another political party than the one doing the deeds. There are people doing terrible, violent things. There are people aiding that harm, or looking the other way. There are people interrupting and shutting down business as usual, throwing blood on the draft files. And all those people are all along the political spectrum. This isn’t about being registered Democrat any more than being anti-racist means just not being klan.

I am so resistant to saying any generous thing about Liz Cheney, who voted something like 96- or 98% in line with her party eight years ago. But she is entered into evidence that they aren’t a monolith. Blue politician Gavin Newsom is defending his handily blue state from legislative and economic attacks, and he is beleaguered, and – and I still remember this – last year he said transgender lives and rights were expendable and should be sacrificed for his party success.

There aren’t always sides. There aren’t monoliths. Last Wednesday, Nezza sang the pre-game anthem at Dodger Stadium in Spanish para su gente, even though the Dodgers club administration said sing it in English. And some Dodger fans called for a boycott, and someone from the Dodger club maybe told Nezza she wasn’t welcome back. But Puerto Rican baseballer Kik3 Hernandez, Dodger utility player and currently in a bit of a batting slump, had posted to Instagram last weekend that he “cannot stand our community being violated,” and is “saddened and infuriated by what’s happening in our country and our city.” And yesterday those of us who get NYT notifications on our phones about the LA Dodgers got one that the Dodgers administration closed its parking lot to ICE agents and announced it is fronting $1 million and partnering with the California Community Foundation, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and other organizations to continue providing aid to immigrant families.

I don’t want us to leave here today feeling good about ourselves. I’m worried when I preach about our responsibility how many folks afterward seem to keep only hearing me say that whatever you do is fine. Whatever you do isn’t fine.

Whatever you do is fine. If you do something. Whatever you do is fine if you do something. It’s not me saying it; it’s Jesus. If the church isn’t doing God’s work, shut it down. If Pride isn’t doing Justice’s work, it’s not enough, shut it down. Do something. There is plenty, large and small, something for everyone. Some people turn over the moneychanger’s tables and get executed. Some people go around the corner and untie the donkey and the colt of a donkey. (Just kidding, there was only one donkey.) Nezza sang in Spanish para su gente even though she was scared. Safeway workers are striking. Millions of people protested and marched and put their bodies in danger for No Kings. The NAACP won’t invite a sitting president to its national convention this year for the first time ever in its 116 years. That Swedish kid that rode in a boat to the climate summit rode in a boat to Gaza with food and medicine. Boston has declared itself a sanctuary for immigrants and trans folks. People donate to the ACLU and Lambda and The Abortion Project.

There is a lot to do, different kinds of things to do, and it is not enough to perform faith, or Pride. We have got to do the work. Jesus said so; he said it, not me. He said, you have to do something. Jesus didn’t die for us so we don’t have to; someone else told us that. Someone who wanted us to sit down and look away. Jesus said I’m going to do stuff they’ll kill me for; follow me. And in case we spiritualized that, like how we did for hundreds of years, he said, Take up your cross and follow me. We still spiritualize it.

I love you, Compton people. Folsom Street people, I love you, Stonewall people. I love us. You’re good; you’re so good. Happy Pride, family; Let’s get to work.

Peace.

Imagine if That Ocean is Love

MCCNY
May 5, 2024

As God has loved me, so I have loved you. Now, abide in my love. If you obey my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have obeyed God’s commandments and abide in God’s love. I have told you this so that my joy may abide in you and that your joy may be complete. My commandment is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: that you lay down your life for your friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know the owner’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, because everything that I learned from God I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit – fruit that will abide. Then God will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my commandment: Love each other.

Do any of you remember all of those stories about the greatest commandment, those stories in every other gospel where someone comes up to Jesus trying to trick him and asks some version of “Oh hi, Jesus, I didn’t know you’d be here” all nonchalant, “no reason, just out of curiosity, what’s the greatest commandment? Asking for a friend.” And they’ve actually planned this out and are asking because Jesus is calling them out for abusing their power and exploiting people’s faith and obedience, so they want him in trouble. And no matter what answer Jesus gives, they know someone will think some other commandment is way more important, and they hope it will be worth fighting over, and they want Jesus to be discredited or worse in the backlash. But in every version of the story, Jesus always says that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And folks generally find that hard to argue with.

In every version, that answer means that love is the fulfillment of all commandments, all the law. Especially Matthew, which has its Jesus actually say the words, “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” If we act always in love, we will be always on the right side of God’s laws, according to Matthew, and according to Romans 13, and according to this John gospel two chapters ago with the new commandment by which everyone will know you are a Jesus lover if you love each other, and also according to Matthew when its Jesus says the Golden Rule is the fulfillment of all the commandments.

Matthew and Paul and John and John and Matthew are saying explicitly and repeating that we won’t break the law or contradict the law and prophets if we act in love. A lot of us bible nerds further believe that the second law, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is essentially a how-to manual for obeying the first law: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” That the way to love God that much is to love our neighbor; and in fact that loving God and loving our neighbor are the same thing.

The reason I’m talking so much about the greatest commandment stories is that I think today’s reading from the John gospel is the John version of them. John always does it sideways, you know; its Jesus talks way more and usually makes less sense. But it’s in verses 10, 12, 17 here: “If you obey my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have obeyed God’s commandments and abide in God’s love… My commandment is this: Love each other as I have loved you… This is my commandment: Love each other.” John’s super-talky Jesus is also saying these are the same: to obey God’s commandments means to love.

The John gospel talks about love a lot. You probably already know this. The bible does, generally all of it, the Hebrew and the Greek, generally a lot. But maybe especially John and the John letters. It makes sense if so much is riding on love, if love is the greatest commandment. All the commandments. The thing is, I don’t always know what it means, love, in John or anywhere. I use that word, love. I say it to people I’m deeply fond of. I say it to people I’m lightly fond of. I usually reserve saying it out loud to people I feel safer with, people I trust. But people who said they love me have caused me lasting harm and in some cases continue to do so. And I love some of those people, as well, some of them very much; and not all of them are part of my life today.

I want to say that again so that we understand each other. There are people who have hurt me and others a lot, and I don’t allow them to have contact with me anymore, and I love them. This feels important to make clear while we try to make sense of love. Because of this I know that love is not necessarily tied to feeling or being safer, or to trust. Because of this, love isn’t synonymous with feeling happy. Because of this I know that forgiveness, whatever that is, is closer to loving than to forgetting, that maybe forgiveness is as much grief as mercy. Because of this I know that when we talk about love, we’re talking about something that is not simple, something so messy, that cannot be held by a single word. That we will need more words.

John definitely gives us more words. One of them is abide. The John gospel is exasperatingly unclear, and I would argue that’s the exact reason it’s a favorite of fundamentalists and dogmatists: there are so many definitive statements and so much ambiguity. But it is also so often so beautiful, compelling, so evokative. Abide in my love. Abide in God’s love. There is no litany of love’s attributes, what it does, what it doesn’t do, what it means to lay down my life, but there is a sense of something enormous and surrounding, something we can live in, be immersed in and embraced by – something great, something lasting that envelops us and holds us and our lives.

The Buddhist teacher Tara Brach says, “When we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves.” I remembered this because I’m afraid of so much, and definitely afraid of waves, and because it felt like a new way of rehearing and remembering the lesson about mindfulness and the sky. You might know it. A teacher draws a round M on a board and asks what it is. The students say, It’s a bird. The teacher responds, It is the sky with a bird in it. Mindfulness is abiding in the sky or the ocean, the thing that is constant, and knowing that the bird is temporary. The weather is temporary. Mindfulness is less about “This, too, shall pass” than it is “Not always so.” I just said it’s less “This too shall pass” and more “Not always so,” and I know that’s a subtle difference, and I’m sorry. Also, mindfulness isn’t exactly the particular thing I’m thinking about when I’m talking today about abiding in love, but it also very much is.

A “this too shall pass” framework comes across a lot, maybe most times, as focused on the future. It feels dismissive to me of the present, both in the words themselves but also in the tone I usually hear it spoken with: already making what is into what isn’t. When I hear it, I tend to hear that now isn’t important, not a big deal, doesn’t matter. Framing impermanence and mindfulness differently, as “Not always so,” subtly and significantly attends to what is. The present moment is now, and we can be fully with it, and it will change, and we can be fully with it. How we feel will change. And that change may feel better or may feel worse, easier or harder, more spacious or more dreadful. Mindfulness encourages us and asks us to practice neither holding onto the good or pushing away the bad, sitting both with our skillfilness and compassion and also with our anger and impatience and mess; to be here, right here now. It’s awful, I hate it. It’s sobriety; eghch.

And this is so pertinent to what I’m thinking about when I’m talking today about abiding in love: Mindfulness asks us to have a heart that is ready for anything. It asks us to attend. It’s Rumi’s poem, you may know it already: This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Maybe the John gospel’s beautiful, exasperating language of abiding in love can be clarified in this way. Imagine that love is an ocean that is us. Imagine that we are not separate, not boats, not ships or fish. We are the massive body of water, we are a body. Imagine this; close your eyes if it helps. Feel yourself as water with everything alive. We talk about community a lot, we talk about relationship a lot and I think *this is what we always mean, but imagine that this is the Atlantic. The Indian, the Arctic. Bigger than what we often think of as relationship. Bigger than what we usually think of as community. Bigger than our corner of the ocean; oceans don’t have corners. A bigness that contains us all, but also not an abstract sense of big, not just an idea of big, but this concrete thing. An ocean, and everyone is it, and I am it. Imagine this, please. You are this ocean that is all of us. You are very important, your difference and uniquenesses is essential. Your autonomy and your dignity is sacred. You are one in a million, a snowflake; I’m kidding and not kidding, right? Your you-ness is precious, and you are enough.

And you are not separate, maybe from anyone. I think Jesus is saying not from anyone. Paradoxically and oxymoronically you are a sea that is all of us, where I am and am not I, and you are and are not you, and we are. Where, Thich Nhat Hahn says, there is no place where I stop and you start.

I think that’s abiding. I think that’s laying down our life for our friends. I think when Jesus says to lay down our life, he literally means for us to die for one another, to die for what is just, to die trying to make real more safety and more surplus and more ease for more people. And I think that there also is a laying down our life in becoming an ocean with every other life. By attending as very deeply to one another as we tend to do for ourself, for our friends and lovers, to do this as deeply for all. There’s an awfulness to the bigness of that, and a wonder. That is also a finding our life by losing it.

Abiding in love, I think, is attending to this recognition that we are connected. We are an ocean together. If I abide in and live and move and speak and make decisions from an ocean that is us all and regards us all, it *must affect what I do and say. It *must no longer be possible for me to disregard anyone else. There’s another Buddhist lesson you may already know: A teacher gives a chicken to each student and says, Go somewhere that no one can see and kill the chicken. The students leave and one by one they come back with their dead chicken. Finally, the last student returns but has not killed the chicken. The teacher asks and the student responds, Everywhere I go the chicken sees. Abiding in love regards everyone, all life, every living being. It is neighborhoods and cities and countries of mostly Black and brown folks who live most impacted by the consequences of economic exploitation and extraction and overextraction and these effects on climate. We must regard.

When we are an ocean, we have to resolve conflict in ways that are mutually and complexly beneficial. I’m certainly referring to Gaza, and achieving a reality that Jonathan Lovett describes where Israel is free because Palenstine is free, and Palestine is free because Israel is safe, and Israel is safe because Palestine has hope for a better future. Even as Israel has made incomprehensible and horrifying decisions. As divestment and other accountability actions are silenced and policed and yet persist. It is possible and necessary to act. It is possible and necessary to do this in ways that account for us as an ocean, in ways that know that everywhere we go the chicken sees. I’m certainly referring to Gaza. I think I’m also referring to Ukraine. If Israel and Palestine, then Ukraine and Russia. If Fergusen and Sandy Hook, then India, Honduras, and Niger. We must regard.

If we trust that that we are the ocean, we will not turn away from the waves.

But we needn’t do it all, we can’t. There’s a tension in that which also requires vigilance. We are an ocean, and we must attend; we can’t do everything, and it’s not a justification for indifference and inaction. This is a reality, and it’s a very personal assessment. We don’t have the capacity to organize and contribute to every injustice. And we can attend to them all, give them our thought and care and support those who are showing up for that work. We can’t attend to the wellbeing of the people who have harmed and are no longer granted access to us. I won’t; that’s not what forgiveness is. That isn’t my work. But in this ocean and my place in it with them, I need and trust that they are not alone and are loved and embraced by somebody. Somebody else. Sometimes I ask to be sure.

Paul describes love with a gorgeous richness in his letters, you probably already know this: he says love is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast, it is not proud, rude, or self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. But I have kept a record of wrongs by some folks, and I don’t always trust some folks, and I don’t always hope about some folks; but I love. I love. *I just can’t do it: I don’t speak to my mother, but my brother does. I check in sometimes, has he talked to mom recently. He always has. That’s how I am connected to my mother, in an ocean of love with my mom, where my tender deeprooted scarred compassionate mourning is alive and active for her. But through my brother. I don’t know if it’s abiding enough, loving enough. I wonder often if it’s enough. I think that’s part of my grief.

Abiding is relentless, unending. It’s the bridemaids and their lamps who are given no quarter, at all hours; we are immersed at all times in and in love with everyone. What is our capacity? What is our need for rest? What will harm our own wellness? How do we balance these questions with every gospel’s Jesus’s call to come die? How do we balance them with every gospel’s Jesus’s call to live abundantly?

I don’t know what joy is, either, verse 11 there. At this point I don’t know if we really need to talk about joy this morning or if now I’m just feeling confessional. But as long as it’s in there in verse 11, I’ll confess that I’ve been thinking about joy a lot lately because it’s been a cussably hard few weeks and I have given some thought to what is joy, what is the enoughness, or brightness or whatever, that endures beyond the difficulty of the moment. We probably do need to talk about joy. This is joyful work, I know you know this experience of seeing the life in a neighborhood block party, of the comradery of a marathon or of grassroots protest or a West Indian parade or Dyke March. But joy is also a guest most at home when least expected, Alan Shapiro writes; he calls it “vagrant balm of Gilead.” It’s part of the promise here but it’s hard to imagine doing this work of loving so immersively and so comprehensively without being exhausted by it. Abiding in joy may not be a reward, after all, it may simply be a recognition of what is lasting, what will endure beyond the strain of loving so fully.

The John gospel and its Jesus make abiding in love sound so compelling, so beautiful, the slow and rhythmic call of the sea, and I think it is, but like any discipline it’s not easy or simple or wholly peaceful. It’s very much a taking up our cross to follow. It’s selling everything we own and giving it away. It’s loving our “enemies,” the people who hate us and hurt us. It is the hard work of discipleship – and we know, every time, where discipleship leads.

I love you. Peace.