From Strength to Strength
(or Be A Queer for Four More Years)

by the Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon
Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco
November 7, 2004   

剛剛落幕的美國總統大選對美國的進步人士而言，是一次痛苦的挫敗。過去四年的強權好戰、排斥異己，可能都將以新的強度和速度繼續擴散，以強化美國的國際領導地位，並同時解決美國國內要求和平和人權的異議聲音。面對這個不得不面對的現實，一位牧師針對選後新局寫下了這篇振奮人心的講道詞，不但反省教會在這個世俗世界中的角色，也呼籲繼續點亮拒絕被收編的心燈。

宗教信仰和同性戀等邊緣位置在這篇講道詞中有新的結合形式，不過更重要的是，這也是一篇意味深長的動人講稿。

Blessed are they who put their strength in You,
who choose to share the joy and sorrows of the world.
They do not give way to fear or doubt;
they are quickened by divine light and power;
they dwell within the peace of the Most High.
They go from strength to strength and live with integrity.

—Psalm 84, from Psalms for Praying by Nan C. Merrill

Here we are.

Many of us are disappointed, depressed, even devastated by the outcome of the election.  We cannot imagine four more years and where we will be at the end of the next four years.

We look back, but only long enough to learn from our mistakes.

We may be discouraged for the moment, but we do not despair.

We move from strength to strength.

I am standing before you today to give you hope, so I ask you to open your heart.  Hope is not found in hollow optimism or in the language of cheap platitudes.  Hope thrives in adversity, comes alive in the most undesirable circumstances, and hope finds kindred spirits with those who choose to love in the midst of loss.

The tipping point in this election, I believe, was that conservative churches and other houses of worship were mobilized in vast numbers to come out and vote their 「moral values.」  Obvious code language for gay marriage and abortion.  Eleven states passed anti-gay marriage laws, ten of them overwhelmingly; laws that will affect not just gay people.

Many across the country believe that moral values won the day.

I believe that moral values suffered a resounding defeat.

So, I am interested in conversations about moral values and family values, compelled by the hard work of finding our way through and forward to a new day.

I am interested in changing the public discourse and challenging the assumptions that are the underpinnings of this discourse: the worn out God vs. gays rhetoric; the imperialistic and violent language of both politicians and religious leaders; the abuse of power; the worship of corporations; the blatant double standards in our justice system; and, the hijacking of religion for political expediency.

I want us to consistently expose the value system that makes economics the bottom line for everything rather than humanity, life and the sharing of resources being the bottom line, as well as the starting place.

I want children in the world to know what peace is, to know daily the sound of their own laughter; to be at home in their own vulnerable bodies because their bodies have been untouched by abuse, war, disease or rejection.

I want queer people, LGTB people, our allies, sexual minorities and gender traitors, to live boldly in the world, but to live well FOR the world.

I want us to be mature enough in our pride and celebration to also be honest with ourselves—honest enough to ask how our sex cultures, our drug cultures, our consumerism, our narcissisms, our low self-esteem disguised as self-righteousness—contribute to the world we say we want to create.

I am not interested in being united, or being unified in a national vision, identity or direction that I believe is antithetical to how we are to live together on this planet.

I am interested in building new and innovative coalitions for justice and for spirituality, in dissolving the we vs. them paradigm not by an instant turn around after an embittered and divided election, but by discovering some of the common ground we do share.  By listening. By discovering new ways to talk to each other.  By finding a new religious meeting point.

The church plays a vital role in this.

Churches have been co-opted.  In pulpits across America sermons are fueled by militaristic and imperialistic theology.  There are big billboards outside many Florida churches with pictures of men and women in military uniform.  The sign reads: 「Our troops doing God』s work.」

This is religion at its worst.

The Church is only the church when it exists for others.  Not when it becomes a puppet of the state.  Not when it enters into holy wedlock with the Empire.

This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer and he was executed in the concentration camps for it.  Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian in the 1940』s, was in prison for resisting the Nazi regime.  He was a leader in the confessing church—the church that resisted religion being taken hostage to a state that committed one atrocity after another.  And those atrocities started with an overt nationalism and then an anti-Semitism that crept into and was embraced by the churches.  The majority of the churches in Germany bought into the state』s agenda.

Bonhoeffer resisted.  He knew that the church』s main responsibility was to be the conscience of the state.  That is what spiritual communities are for.

Politics is not the goal or the focus of the church; that is not why we exist.  We exist for life, for justice, for love, for community—for the well-being of all; we hold ourselves captive to higher principles for the common good; we speak of a divine source and experience spirit.

And we are meant to be a voice for the voiceless, a resistance to violence, a beacon of hope, a proponent of an alternative lifestyle.  Like poets, artists and musicians, we are to offer a different picture of life, to remind ourselves and humanity of truth and beauty, of possibilities and transcendence, of a power greater than ourselves; we are to proclaim liberation and act in the world as if love were the most potent force in the world.  We are to help people see and believe the good in themselves and others.

We are some of the best people to do this.  We go from strength to strength.  We are being used as a wedge in the current political situation.  It is not the first time, and it won』t be the last time.  We were the church with AIDS; now we』re the gay marriage church.

Do not underestimate how difficult times might be in the next few years. There will be tactics, overt and covert, to squeeze us out and shut us down.  All the more reason to be bold with who we are.

So I have a challenge: BE A QUEER FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS

I want us to be queerer than ever.  Queer—not gay.

We need to broaden our definitions of queer:

Queer—means an array of genders, of families, of loves;
Queer—means being suspicious of the status quo (without and within);
Queer—means moving outside the norm where we are in solidarity with    all the marginalized;
Queer—means a persistent refusal to be assimilated;
Queer—means an insistent authenticity, telling and living the truths of our lives.

We』ll need a tremendous amount of strength and moral fortitude to do this.

Where do we find this strength?

I took great comfort from the psalmist of the Hebrew scriptures: 「Blessed are those who put their strength in you who choose to share the joy and the sorrow of the world.」

Putting trust in a power greater than ourselves, not in military might, not in presidential elections.

Putting trust in God is engaging with the world, its joys and its sorrows.

Don』t leave out the joy part—we can』t let anyone mess with our joy.

Those who put their trust in God do not give way to fear or doubt.  This doesn』t mean we aren』t faced with fear at times—we just don』t give in to it.  It will not have power over us.  This culture of fear that we are immersed in must be exposed for the control tactic it really is.  To give in to it is to participate in creating more of it and solidifying it as a way of life.  And we know that if you can keep people afraid, you can get them to buy into anything.

Because people feared the erosion of moral values, they voted against their own economic interests to ensure that this country was led by someone who would uphold moral values.

We go from strength to strength.  We have used our energies well.  We have been a resisting voice to the church at large, to the city when we needed to be, to our own denomination.  We survived the AIDS years and then expanded our social services beyond our communities.  We have embraced a way of being community that is multi faith, radically inclusive.  This is part of your heritage.  When you step into this sacred circle, you become a part of it.

Strength to strength; one mountain peak to another.

It』s time to scale another mountain peak.  Yes, there are valleys, slumps, times of discouragement—but we rise.

Why?  It』s our nature.

Carter Heyward writes,

「Our strength is the fulfillment of our vulnerability.  Our strength is our commitment to do something about what we have experienced, to celebrate the just and change the unjust; it is our commitment to act on the basis of what we have seen and come to know about humanity—our own humanity and that of others.  A humanity that is ours.  Our strength is our commitment to live our values.」

Strength to strength.  So what』s next?  What』s now?

Finding a way to talk about and live moral values—inviting otherwise religiously disaffected people to a spiritual paradigm that fosters the kind of conversations that help build bridges.

Michael Lerner expressed some of what I have been thinking about:

「Moral values are things like: fighting for a living wage for everyone; opposing standardized testing; health care as a human right for everyone; banning assault weapons; ending our policy of pre-emptive war; a thoroughgoing ecology that stands up for the preservation of all life; and, respect for families—all families.」

「Yet liberals, trapped in a long-standing disdain for religion and tone-deaf to the spiritual needs that underlie the move to the right, have been unable to engage many people in a serious dialogue.」

「Justly angry at the way that some religious communities have been mired in authoritarianism, racism, sexism and homophobia, the liberal world has developed such a knee-jerk hostility to religion that it has both marginalized those many people on the left who actually do have spiritual yearnings and simultaneously refused to acknowledge that many who move to the right have legitimate complaints about the ethos of selfishness in American life.」

「What if … insisting that a serious religious person would never turn his back on the suffering of the poor, that the bible's injunction to love one's neighbor required us to provide health care for all, and that the New Testament's command to "turn the other cheek" should give us a predisposition against responding to violence with violence.」

「Imagine a [political] party that could talk about the strength that comes from love and generosity and applied that to foreign policy and homeland security.」

「Imagine a [political] party that could talk of a New Bottom Line, so that American institutions get judged efficient, rational and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize people's capacities to be loving and caring, ethically and ecologically sensitive, and capable of responding to the universe with awe and wonder.」

「Imagine a [political] party that could call for schools to teach gratitude, generosity, caring for others, and celebration of the wonders that daily surround us!」

I believe we must help lead the way—we must mobilize gay people to become queer people.

Queer—not afraid of spirituality and meaning and politics and justice.
Queer—not afraid to speak of and to live moral values and to give that a whole new meaning in our society.
Queer—people who love people who are different than they are.  We know how to love in unconventional ways.

I need you.  We need one another.  We need ideas about how to craft a message, how to live concretely what we are trying to communicate, how to get that message out as far as possible.

What an irony it would be – the very people who were the wedge for moral values become the new voice of moral values; become a vital part the momentum that brings to the light of day what is waiting to find expression—the spiritual left, the new religious wrong—whatever it is.

BE A QUEER FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS.
BE A QUEER CHURCH.

I don』t want to use 「God/religion」 as a smoke screen for my own political agenda, but do the soul searching work of an inclusive spirituality that is broad enough and profound enough for our complicated, messy and beautiful world.

I am indebted to Nathaniel Batchelder, who lives in Oklahoma City and is the Executive Director of Peace House; a voice of Hope in middle America.  He wrote these words this week:

"ME, I AM LACING UP MY CLEATS FOR THE LONG RUN, FOR THE LONG HAUL, THEN, SHOULD OUTCOMES COME TO PASS WHICH I MOST FEAR, I PRAY MY CELL AT GUANTANAMO BAY WILL BE NEAR YOURS, SO WE CAN CONTINUE TAPPING OUT OUR HOPES ON THE PIPES."

And, finally, I am reminded of this story: A reporter interviewing A. J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle, one rainy night asked, 「Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?」

Muste replied, 「Oh, I don』t do it to change the country, I do it so the country won』t change me.」

And here we are, holding our candles.

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