Say "Yes" to the Yes

He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!” (Matthew 15.26-28)

Not His Kind

Today, Gay Pride is traditionally observed around the world, marking the 43^rd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that gave birth to the LGBT rights movement. While many communities opt to celebrate Pride on other dates throughout the year, the last weekend in June touches a global nerve. With or without parades and festivals, we pause to consider how far we’ve come together and the distance we’ve yet to go.

In light of today’s celebrations, we’re going to break from the Sunday lectionary to consider a truly amazing event in Jesus’s life and ministry. In fact, it’s one of very few times when we witness two altogether extraordinary things: someone whose needs are too great to countenance rejection and Jesus, the Great Teacher, learning an invaluable lesson that changes how He sees and thinks. The story, told in Matthew 15.21-28, is deceptively simple. A mother, whose daughter is tormented by an evil spirit, seeks Jesus out. Expecting to be ignored, she makes a ferocious squall that disturbs the disciples. They urge Jesus to send her away. He agrees, not because she’s too loud and obnoxious to merit attention. Jesus wants nothing to do with her because she’s not His kind. She’s a Canaanite from the pagan tribe Israel conquered to claim the Promised Land. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus says matter-of-factly—as if the woman should know better than to ask Him for anything.

Unimaginable

The Canaanite woman will not be ignored. She kneels before Jesus and prays, “Lord, help me.” We imagine her desperation and humility will touch Jesus. Given the racially charged climate of her day, she is, after all, making a fool of herself to prevail on the kindness of a Jew. But Jesus’s reaction is unimaginable to us. He rejects the woman’s plea in a most degrading fashion. “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says. For all practical purposes, He tells the woman she’s worse than a beggar; she’s a thief, an ill-mannered mongrel trying to steal what doesn’t belong to her. Where is the love that Jesus is so famous for? Where are the compassion and acceptance He’s always talking about?

Surely the insult wounds this woman to the core. Surely her hopes crumble and the pain of hearing her daughter won’t be helped slices her in two. Still, in the face of outright bigotry, she refuses to be refused. She grants Jesus His point. Her request is unorthodox and, in the eyes of Jewish traditionalists, indefensible. She really has no right to ask, or expect, Jesus to intervene. But none of it matters. Her need is too urgent, her agony too real. So she absorbs the insult and then turns it on its head. “Yes, Lord,” she says. “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Her simple statement takes Jesus aback and compels Him to rethink His position. He’s stunned into a new understanding of what God requires of Him, and everything God wants to do through Him to eradicate religious, social, and cultural boundaries that deny God’s grace to all but a select few. Suddenly Jesus is moved on a level far more profound than merely accommodating an anguished mother’s request. The woman’s belief that Jesus will help her constrains Jesus’s belief that He must. He declares, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” Matthew finishes by informing us, “Her daughter was healed instantly.”

All-Inclusive

This is the Gospel in action—the good news of God’s kingdom that calls us to repent from narrow-mindedness that seeks to limit God’s grace to people of a certain kind, namely, our kind. And our astonishment with this episode springs from witnessing Jesus repent from the exclusionary mindset of His faith tradition. God vests the Canaanite woman with holy boldness to teach Jesus that God’s grace is too big for labels and boundaries. The time for religious bigotry and rejection has ended. God is doing something new that debunks members-only myths about faith and acceptance. Up to this point in Matthew, Jesus has been pushing the envelope by healing Jewish outcasts and performing miracles on the Sabbath. But this precious Canaanite mother presses Him to go all the way—to ignore all the rules and include her among those whose lives are forever changed by His power. And perhaps the most thrilling aspect of this event emerges in Jesus’s immediate response. He doesn’t tell the woman to come back after He’s had time to consider whether or not He should honor her request. He doesn’t consult the religious establishment about what’s “right.” He doesn’t poll His followers to see if they’ll be comfortable with His decision to help the woman. He answers her prayer with an all-inclusive “Yes.”

Christ’s all-inclusive “Yes” is the Canaanite mother’s legacy to us. And she has much to teach us about laying claim to it. We may have to come to Jesus in a big way, making a lot of noise that disturbs His inner circle. We may have to endure social and religious humiliation caused by our insistence that Jesus take notice of us. We will have to humble ourselves before Christ and beseech Him to help us. But God vests each of us with holy boldness to believe that God’s grace is too big for labels and boundaries. Great is our faith—so great that Jesus will reward it without hesitation. Jesus will never ask us to come back after He’s considered our worthiness. No traditions or powers need be consulted to ensure our acceptance. Christ will never poll His followers to get their approval of His decision to hear us and do amazing things in our lives. Regardless who we are, where we come from, and how others label us, Jesus answers us with an all-inclusive yes.

On this Pride Sunday, I pray that LGBT and alienated believers everywhere will summon the courage to overturn every hindrance and boundary attempting to deny their right to believe. I pray that we all will say, “Yes” to the Yes.

Christ’s all-inclusive “Yes” is the Canaanite mother’s legacy to us.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/06/23/say-yes-to-the-yes/

March and Shout

As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. (Joshua 6.20)

Some Parades Aren’t for Watching

For years, Walt and I scheduled an annual vacation in Paris for the Fête de la Musique, a dusk-to-dawn revel unlike any in the world. One year, Paris’s Fête du Pride—the LGBT celebration held the last Saturday in June—fell four days after the Fête de la Musique. Knowing Paris, we knew it would be big and didn’t want to miss a beat. We dropped in on a friend who’d spent a lot of time in New York. “Where’s the best place to watch the parade?” we asked. He wasn’t sure what we meant. Assuming our French was off, we rephrased the question. He still wasn’t clear. As a last resort, we tried English. “Ah,” he replied with a wry smile. “It’s not a parade one watches; it’s a march one joins in solidarity of purpose—to demand equality for all. Naturally, there will be music and dancing and costumes. But the march is more than that. It’s for everyone and everyone participates. You’ll see.” And so we did. As the route turned into the Place de la Bastille, the boulevard leading to the Place de la Republique—the final destination—overflowed with half a million people marching (many with distinctive flair) for LGBT equality.

Some parades aren’t for watching. They must be joined—if not physically, in spirit. This holds for any parade that celebrates minorities and movements, as its primary goal is demonstrating solidarity of purpose. Along with marking the community’s proud heritage, longevity, and progress, a yearning to overcome still greater barriers surges beneath the jubilance. Aside from displaying collective strength, the mobility touches a primal nerve. It says, “We’re not satisfied yet. We won’t stand still or be silent until every impediment raised against us is removed. As long as one of us is unjustly held back, we’ll march ahead as one.” Sideline viewing won’t get you there. Nor, as Israel’s legendary conquest of Jericho teaches, will relying on the kindness of strangers. As they say, you gotta be in it to win it.

A Place Belonging to Them

To date, archeologists have unearthed just enough evidence to support pro and con cases for Joshua 6’s version of Jericho’s fall. Some scholars defend its historical veracity; others theorize Joshua’s author reframes the conquest as metaphor to emphasize the miraculous nature of actual events. Read literally or metaphorically, the message is the same: God delivers on the promise that Israel will have a land of its own. And noting a few known facts about Jericho while revisiting the legend greatly amplifies its meaning and relevance.

Jericho is at its pinnacle when Israel arrives (ca. 1550 BCE). While it’s too soon in the human saga to call it a “major metropolis”—it covers eight square acres—it’s a renowned manufacturing and trade center. Compared to nomadic peoples like Israel, its citizens, politics, and culture are highly advanced. Furthermore, Jericho’s commercial eye looks favorably on foreign artisans and laborers. Few cities match its expansive capability to assimilate and accommodate outsiders. These and other factors make Jericho an open city—except when outside threats arise. Then, its gates slam shut and its fate hangs on walls said to be the strongest of their time.

So, realistically, the Israelites have an option. Instead of mounting a full-frontal attack, they can systematically occupy Jericho in waves, like other immigrant groups have done. And they know this, as two spies Joshua dispatches to survey the city in advance enter and move about it freely. (Only when their mission comes to light do they encounter hostility.) Yet Israel also recognizes stealthy integration isn’t enough. God promises much more than a place for them to “belong.” No, God promises the Israelites a place belonging to them—where their voice matters, their views carry weight, and they’re entitled to shape their destiny. Before Jericho and the adjacent Canaanite territory can truly be The Promised Land, every barrier relegating Israel to second-class status must topple. Strolling into town, settling down quietly, and hoping for change won’t change anything. (It will be Egypt redux—less traumatic, perhaps, but a backward step all the same, since they’ll lose autonomy gained in the desert.) When change needs to happen, walls need to fall. And when walls need to fall, it’s time to do exactly as God instructs Israel: march and shout.

Circus Act

Over-familiarity with the story leads us to discount how peculiar God’s strategy must sound to Israel and how strange its execution must look to Jericho. Word of potential military assault puts the city on lockdown. Defensive troops stand watch on the walls. When the Israelites are first sighted marching toward Jericho, their armed guard leads the way. As they get closer, though, things get weirder. Seven trumpeters decked out in priestly regalia follow the guard, and behind them seven more priests haul some sort of fancy box. (Canaanite ignorance of Israelite culture keeps them from recognizing the Ark of the Covenant—the vehicle expressly designed to transport the nation’s most sacred relics to The Promised Land.) As for the army, well, it’s definitely irregular. Even at a distance, it’s plainly sub-standard. Its weapons are crude. Its uniforms (or lack of them) aren’t presentable. And it obviously could use some discipline.

By the time Israel reaches Jericho’s perimeter, it’s a joke. The city watches in befuddlement, wondering what this circus act means. The Israelites make a lot of racket while parading once around the walls. Then they go home. They repeat the march for six days. Day Seven’s parade runs longer. The Israelites make seven laps around Jericho. Just when the march starts to wind down, the trumpeters sound a blast and the army yells at the top of its lungs. The rest is history—or, if you prefer, legend.

People of the Promise

This weekend, cities around the world will commemorate the birth of the LGBT equality movement 32 years ago, when a handful of irregular-looking patrons of a tiny New York City bar decided intolerance no longer could be tolerated. Just as Israel’s rebellion against Pharaoh triggered an onslaught of chaos and violence, the 1969 Stonewall uprising sparked a series of riots that shook the world. Gay communities everywhere united, instinctively marching out of our Egypt, where we’d been held captive and forced to live persona non grata in service to oppressive powers. The heady pursuit of freedom and equality set us down the path Israel followed: we abused our liberty by shrugging off responsibilities to safeguard our health and welfare. Urgent threats to our survival disoriented us. For the more than a decade it felt like we’d lost our bearings in a wilderness of death and disease. The desert’s crises muted our exuberance, but we kept marching. While adversaries sat on their hands and jeered at our distress, our persistence prevailed. Allies from everywhere joined our march. With their help, by God’s providence, each step brought us nearer to our Promised Land.

So where are we? I believe we’ve crossed the Jordan. Where we live now looks nothing like where we left. During our wilderness ordeal, God prospered the place promised to us, enlightening its people to the advantages of tolerance and equality. Yet we mustn’t mistake the hospitality and kindness of strangers for an acceptable option. Strolling through open gates, settling down quietly, and hoping for change won’t change our being viewed apart from the majority. Our 32-year journey brings us to Jericho, the last bastion of impediments between the promise and us. We haven’t come this far to compromise. A place where we can belong is a far cry from a place belonging to us, where our voices, wishes, and self-determination inform the world we live in and future we shape for generations to come. Equality isn’t real until all things are equal. Freedom is an illusion if one of us isn’t free.

As people of the promise—gay and straight, young and old—we will march and shout until every wall crumbles in every corner of the world. We will remain mindful that, right now, millions of LGBT sisters and brothers in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean have only begun their march. For those held captive to fear of death, violence, and political reprisal, the Promised Land is a flickering dream. Even we who live in more advanced societies face allegedly unconquerable barriers of indoctrinated prejudice, legalized injustice, and institutional indifference. This has to change for good. When change needs to happen, walls need to fall. When walls need to fall, we march and shout.

For the Record

This weekend, and every time LGBT people and their allies—as well as every other minority and movement—take to the streets, we remember some parades aren’t for watching. Christ’s command to love our Creator and neighbors compels us to join their march, in spirit or, if possible, in person. The Bible’s constant entreaty to defend the widow, care for the orphan, and welcome the stranger calls us to respond.

And, for the record, we know how weird and weak we look to gatekeepers and watchers on the walls. We realize ignorance of what our bizarre dress and behavior signifies blinds them to power we possess. It’s okay if they regard us as no more than a noisy circus act. Every march is one more lap around the walls. Every shout rattles their foundations.

Joshua 6.20 reads, “As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it.” Though it looks and feels like we’re walking in circles, we’re privy to the plan. Day Seven is coming. Remaining bastions of inequality and exclusion will fall. What’s promised will belong to us at last.

We may look weird and weak, our dress and behavior may seem bizarre, and our marches and shouts may appear futile. But we’re privy to the plan. Day Seven is coming.

Postscript: Much to Be Thankful For

By design, Straight-Friendly was launched on June 29, 2008 to coincide with the Stonewall anniversary, hoping to underscore LGBT right of Christian inclusion as both a spiritual and social mandate. Thus, this weekend also celebrates our third year together. And what a magnificent journey it’s been!

There’s much to be thankful for. First and foremost, I lift a heart of gratitude to God, Whose gentle love and abiding presence sustain this place, to Jesus Christ, Whose teaching and example are its bedrock, and to the Holy Spirit, Whose guidance and instruction steady its course. And then there are all of you, who’ve so generously embraced, nurtured, and blessed Straight-Friendly with your love, wisdom, joy, and strength of character. I’m humbled beyond measure that you would claim me as your brother—and thrilled beyond compare to count everyone who gathers here, seen and unseen, as true friends. May God richly reward the faithfulness and kindness you’ve showered on S-F, its readers, and me as we continue marching ahead.

Happy Anniversary!

Heavenly Places

God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

                        Ephesians 2.6

A Closer Look

Welcome to Gay Pride Month, a 30-day celebration that creeps in like a kitten and thunders out like a gorilla. Around the world, gay people and their allies spend the first three weeks at symposia, reading hours, and panel discussions the media conveniently ignore. When June ends with parades commemorating the ’69 Stonewall Riots that spawned the gay movement, though, cameras will take interest because pride celebrations make great TV. Who can resist sitting out a commercial break for a closer look at, say, burly jocks got up like Susan Boyle (my bet as this year’s new icon), nearly naked kids bouncing on floats, or a cadre of lesbian bikers? Mark my word: June 30’s coverage will tease these sorts of images for all they’re worth simply to glue viewers to their sets.

As Stonewall’s 40^th anniversary opens the movement’s fifth decade, one expects the media will provide more substantial chronicles of its advances, setbacks, and struggles. The time required for such retrospectives, however, will result in preaching to the choir, as disengaged and disdainful audiences will pass them by for glimpses of sensational parade footage. The “closer look” they get will be the same clichés the media’s hyped for 40 years, bringing disengaged and disdainful audiences no closer at all. They won’t get closer looks at PFLAG marchers, same-sex couples and families, or welcoming churches valiantly obeying Luke 14.23: “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.” (More likely, they’ll see curbside clutches of misguided Christians waving “Go to Hell” placards like the cold, unlighted torches they are.)

Another Sunday

Once again, Tuesday reviews of Monday’s coverage will bring the same question: how can we raise our neighbors’ estimation of us if the media keep to the low road? The issues are too knotty to untangle. Freedom of expression twists around inaccurate, imbalanced representation. Defiance of rejection and drive for tolerance gnarl into crossed purposes. High-strung hijinks teasing homophobic clichés unravel into rope securing the very myths they taunt. While others continue picking apart the political and social strands lost in the jumble, gay believers are blessed with a better solution. Our witness of God’s love and acceptance lifts us above controversy, making every day a pride celebration. And while we embrace and honor the defiance displayed at Stonewall, we rejoice in another Sunday long before June 29, 1969. Our pride and confidence—our rights and victory—were established by the ultimate display of defiance, when Christ stepped out of His tomb to defeat sin and death forever.

God Pride

Believers challenged by minority status—not only orientation, ethnicity, gender, and class, but less discussed inhibitors like family, social, and professional standing—by all means should reverse the flow of prejudice by claiming its target as a source of pride. But we should also be cognizant our minority pride nests inside our majority status as one of billions created in our Maker’s likeness. Awareness we’re as we are and where we are because He willed it so entitles us to celebrate God pride. Realizing the enormous sacrifice He undertook to restore His pride in our making reframes our self-image in a fresh, powerful context. In Ephesians 2.6, Paul writes, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” That’s an image that definitely merits a closer look. Christ’s triumph over sin and death seats us with God in heavenly places, high above minority strife, above downcast stereotypes, above the short reach of fear-inflamed hatred.

God pride protects us to present His love to others. David—possibly the most hated, misjudged man in the Bible—says in Psalm 3.3: “You are a shield around me, O LORD; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.” I urge all of us—gay and straight, female and male, from every ethnicity, class, profession, and background—to march through Gay Pride Month and every other month with heads lifted in God pride. It’s important for us and even more important for others. In verse 7, Paul explains God raises us to sit with Him to “show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Since the media can’t possibly capture God’s grace and kindness to us, our pride as His children is the only way others will ever get a close look at Him.

Annual celebrations of minority pride are nested inside God pride that all believers celebrate year-‘round.

(Tomorrow: Tireless)

Take Heart!

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have 

peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  

I have overcome the world.

John 16.33

It's Not Easy

Being gay and following Christ is tough. Neither of them is easy to begin with. But when we elect to do both--to hold on to our God-given identities and pursue our calling as believers--we're asking for trouble. Our problems have nothing to do with God or us.  They rise from whose who refuse to believe (or seriously doubt) it's possible to follow Jesus and live an open, healthy, and active gay life.

Staring at all this trouble, we're tempted to forget the whole thing. But Jesus told us to expect trouble. Whether we like or not, if we deserve it or not, it's headed our way. It comes with the territory; it's part and parcel with living in the world.

Our Defender

Job said, "Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble." (Job 14.1)  He should know. His faith cost him everything, including his family. He found himself in the miserable company of friends trying to convince him he was wrong to trust God's grace and mercy.  Yet Job couldn't be dissuaded.  In spite of all his troubles and everything he saw, he held fast to his faith.  He told the troublemakers around him, "I know my Redeemer [or, "Defender"] lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth." (Job 19.25)

As unorthodox, often ostracized believers, we need to follow Job's example: know what we know and leave it at that.  We don't need to defend ourselves, because our Defender lives.  He has overcome the world.  Instead of taking sides in pointless debates about who can or can't follow Christ, we should do as He says: take heart!

Personal Postscript: Stonewall

The Legacy of a Courageous Few

I purposefully launched this blog on the 39th anniversary weekend of the Stonewall Riots.  On June 28, 1969, I was a nine-year-old Pentecostal preacher's kid in Chicago.  That a handful of gay men--most of them non-white and drag queens--resisted the harassment of New York's Finest didn't register the slightest blip on my personal or family radar.  Not until several years later was I even aware of Stonewall and what it signified.  By the time I dealt with my sexuality and came out, the courageous defiance that Stonewall triggered made the world a much different, more secure place for young homosexuals like me.  Along with the world at large and every non-heterosexual in it, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the Stonewall Inn's brave patrons, as well as those who joined the ranks early-on in the struggle for gay equality.

At first, the movement adopted the banner of "gay liberation," but it evolved over time into "gay pride"--rejecting the idea that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people should live in shadows of shame and fear.  I'm firmly convinced that GLBT people have no cause for shame.  Like every straight man and woman, we were created by God and, as His handiwork, have every reason to be proud.

Gay Pride and God Pride

But this leads to another question: Why haven't more openly gay believers come out of the faith closet?  Many of us sequester our belief from our sexuality, or vice versa.  Either we hide who we are from our straight brothers and sisters in Christ, or we hide our faith from our gay brothers and sisters in the community.  We go to churches--many of them devoutly anti-gay--where we identify as "single;" in secular situations--many of them devoutly anti-religious--we demurely claim to be "spiritual."

Why are so many of us so afraid to be openly gay and openly Christian at the same time?  If we really intend to follow Jesus, we should do what He says.  He has told us these things to give us peace.  He has overcome the world.  There's no reason to worry about what others think or say.  As believers, we need to ask ourselves: does my gay pride mean anything without God pride?

Stonewall, early hours of June 28, 1969; New York Times

article (6/29/69).