Sermons at St. Francis
This morning we are celebrating the fact that change can occur, that a long standing assumption can be challenged, that an injustice based on prejudice and bigotry can be changed, and, above all, that the use of the Bible to justify injustice and discrimination and exclusion must and can be confronted.
I understand in India there is a particularly clever way of catching monkeys. According to this story, hunters will cut a hole through the coconut just big enough for a hand and arm to enter. At the bottom of the shell, they drill two holes and pass a wire through, securing the coconut to the base of a tree. Then they place a banana inside the hollowed out coconut, and go hide. When the monkey reaches in and grabs the banana, it makes a fist, and the opening is to narrow to allow the monkey to remove its hand with the banana. Most monkeys do not figure out all they have to do is let go of the banana, and so are caught and lose their freedom.
The closed fist grasping a banana is a great metaphor of how we hold on to things that do not do us any good, things that are destructive, toxic, poisonous, limiting. These may be such things as personal resentments, grudges, past hurts, bad experiences, traumas, violence, failures from many different sources. These may also be assumptions, ideas, and beliefs.
For example: some of us here grew up believing we were fatally flawed, that something was wrong with us, because we were inherently different in our sexuality from the majority. People who are part of racial and cultural minorities also know the destructive messages that come from the majority population. We talk about internalized homophobia and racism when we turn on ourselves with meanness and viciousness. We cling to the banana rather than let it go.
The debate in Minneapolis and in other Christian groups involves people and groups getting stuck in individual texts and making fists onto these texts like the monkey fists wrapped around bananas. In today's Gospel's language, that's "flesh", for which we can use the equivalent word, "literalism." The literal use of words are not just useless, but serve death, but the spirit of the words is life.
The reality of our relationship with God, God's purpose for our lives, and God's embrace of love does not depend upon Bible passages, nor does the use of Bible passages by some prove that some of us are not loved by God unless we change, or that God actually hates us. If our own fists are hard to open, the fists of others are very hard to open. However, in Minneapolis enough fists opened to let go of the banana of discrimination against gay and lesbian clergy.
So, what are we to make of this?
First, we need to examine what our own fists are wrapped around that we insist on holding onto to our own detriment, harm and hurt, and even to the harm and hurt of others. If we recognize how we limit our own lives, we may be able to forgive those who seek to limit ours. If we release our fists, we may be able, not to attack those who are against us, or those we have a broken relationship with, but to begin to bring some understanding and compassion to those who can't open their own fists.
Perhaps, I can suggest, that this congregation for good reasons has had its organizational and spiritual fist wrapped around the ELCA's policies of discrimination and disenfranchisement. We have committed 20 years of the life of this congregation, approximately 20% of its whole life, to this struggle. We have paid a cost in being cast out for not grasping the 'banana' we were offered 20 years ago. We have paid a cost in creating new organizations, sacrificing time and money and energy. At times we have stumbled but never fell. We have had to survive and learn to care for one another through all this. We have marveled at people who have stepped forward and made great sacrifices to carry this struggle forward. In time we have been joined by many others. We can give thanks to God for what has been accomplished, and now we can open our fist from this purpose for our existence, let go, and open our hands and hearts to God for whatever she may want for us as we stand on the threshold of a new era. Can we flourish without this cause driving us? Can we open to a new purpose for our existence?
Time to open our hands and hearts and life to receive the way the spirit and life will lead us forward. We will be having discussions about what our relationship to the ELCA may become. We will be organizing a call committee to secure new pastoral leadership. We will need to discover what God is calling us to do in the next chapter of our life together. And, if the past is any gage, it will not be churchly business as usual. It will not involve a ho hum version of following Christ. It will involve reconciliation within ourselves, and letting go of past actions. It will also be something that will emerge out of living in forgiveness and claiming our wholeness.
I'd like to close with the words of Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. 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 were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Amen.