Come Out! - March 13, 2022 - P.I.E. Day
John 14
Deborah Laforet
Come Out!
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by the Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
Many of you know this, but I love stories, I love storytelling, and one of my favourite forms of storytelling is midrash. Midrash is an ancient Jewish form of storytelling. Here are a couple of quotes I found on midrash on Wikipedia:
Wilda Gafney is an American biblical scholar and Episcopal priest who specializes in womanist biblical interpretation, from a black woman’s perspective, and topics including gender and race. She writes that Midrash and rabbinic readings "discern value in texts, words, and letters, as potential revelatory spaces….They reimagine dominant…readings while crafting new ones to stand alongside—not replace—former readings. Midrash also asks questions of the text; sometimes it provides answers, sometimes it leaves the reader to answer the questions." Vanessa Lovelace, another professor and theologian, in a book written by Wilda Gafney, defines midrash as "a Jewish mode of interpretation that not only engages the words of the text, behind the text, and beyond the text, but also focuses on each letter, and the words left unsaid by each line.”
Jewish scholarship has always found it much easier than Christian scholarship to play with the stories of the bible, to dance with the text. If there are questions about a story, if something seems missing or is contradictory or questionable, stories are created that fill in the blanks.
The story that Laura read for us today, a story written by diaconal minister, Ken Delisle, is a midrash story; it is a reinterpretation of a story we read in our bible, a story that fills in the blanks Do you know the story of Lazarus? It’s a story that is found in the gospel of John. In the story, Lazarus dies, but is raised from the dead by Jesus four days later.
Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, who are also found in the gospel of Luke, seem to be close friends with Jesus. They are a family, but I have heard others question why three siblings were living together. Why were they unmarried during a time when marriage and having children was the proper order of things? Once I heard someone wonder whether Lazarus might have been disabled in some way, physically or developmentally, and that maybe this was why he was unmarried and why his sisters lived with him, and even, possibly what caused his death.
Today’s story offers a different explanation. Now the story never explicitly states why Lazarus wasn’t married, but that there were rumours that he wasn’t interested in women, that he was “one of those people.” Whether the rumours were true or not, Lazarus was ostracized by his community for being different, for not following the rules of society. Being unmarried and possibly encouraging his sisters to ramain unmarried would have been a social taboo. In fact, I think some today might even question these living arrangements.
In our story, we hear that, although the law said he should be killed, the people were reluctant to shed blood and instead began to shun him, and eventually, to declare him dead. He was forced to leave town in order to save his sisters. His disgrace and his banishment would ruin their lives as well.
When Jesus finally arrives, days after the sisters summoned him, the sisters tell him what happened, and he weeps. The story tells us that he wept that the people had “failed to understand his preaching on love and justice. They failed to accept the fact that God created out of love and so all are loved equally by the creator.”
And then Jesus raises his friend ‘from the dead.’ He says, “Lazarus, come out!” If only it were that easy.
Coming out stories are the stories people share about when they decided to be open about who they are, when they told family and friends, “I’m gay.” “I’m bisexual.” “I’m queer.” “I’m a woman, not a man” or “I’m a man, not a woman.” “My pronouns are They/Them.” “I have a new name.” Sometimes these statements are followed by expressions of love and support, but, for many, they are followed by rejection, hate, revulsion, abandonment, banishment, and sometimes even forms of violence.
For hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, if you weren’t straight, if you didn’t identify as the gender prescribed to you at birth, if you didn’t marry and have children, you were seen as going against the natural order of things, against God’s created order.
So imagine, you grow up in a faith community where you are taught that God loves everyone, that we love our neighbour as ourselves, that Jesus died for us, but when you speak your truth, when you profess to love someone of whom the church does not approve, you are told there are conditions on God’s love. that the community or God will always love you but doesn’t love what you are doing, that you are not a full member of the church, unless you confess your sin, take counselling or what we call conversion therapy, and never act upon your ‘deviant urges.’
It takes bravery to come out to family and friends. It takes courage to come out to your faith community. It shouldn’t have to be this way. Love should be unconditional. We have been taught that God’s love is this way, that the love of Christ is with us always, but sometimes the people of the church add conditions. You must be straight. You must not be divorced. You must not have children before marriage. You must have money to give to your church. You must be neat and tidy. You must not have a criminal record. You must not be an addict. You must not rock the boat. It’s amazing there is anyone left in the church.
We are all sinners. We are human and we make mistakes. We hurt others, we are greedy, we exclude people who are different from us, we are corrupted by power, we hoard our abundance, we judge and we condemn. Everyone one of us has confessions to make, but who we love should not be one of them. Self identity should not be one them. The colour of our skin, our abilities, how much money we make, our failings, our mistakes, should not keep us from the love of a faith-filled community that professes to follow Jesus, a teacher of justice and mercy, that professes to be filled with the love of God. If a faith community is not sharing unconditional love with all their neighbours, I doubt you’ll find the love of God filling that community of faith.
Maybe some day, no one will have to “come out.” Maybe some day, it won’t matter whether a baby is a boy or a girl. Maybe people won’t feel pressured to get married and have children. Maybe people will be valued and honoured for who they are, the full expression of themselves, in all the colours of the rainbow. And maybe churches, communities of faith, will share the unconditional love of God with everyone, with no restrictions, no hoops to jump through, no invisible strings attached.
In our story, before Jesus commands Lazarus to come out, he speaks to the people of the community. He tells them how powerful God’s love is, that God, the source of all love and life, wants all humans to live in a community of love and justice and equality. The town, in the way it had treated his friend, had failed to show God’s love, but God can forgive and give them all a new chance, the man in the cave and all those who had turned their backs on him. God’s love is so powerful that life could be given back to the dead.”
God’s love is so powerful that life can be given back to the dead. God’s love and forgiveness is limitless. It is limitless for each one of us and for the church. We can be brought back from the dead. The church can be brought back from the dead. Let our love know no bounds and may the full spectrum of humanity, the full spectrum of colours in the rainbow, discover that unlimited source of divine love, and share it and fill the world with it. May it be so and thanks be to God. Amen.