Pride & Prejudice
Matthew 10:26-31
As we begin pride week, I’d like to take a journey of the imagination, to look at pride from a different vantage. We’ll make four stops on this journey. Our first stop is mythical Stepford, Connecticut. Nicole Kidman stars in the 2004 remake of the film The Stepford Wives. You see the founders of Stepford are a little prejudiced and a little twisted. They think Stepford is the perfect family paradise. It has no crime, no poverty and no pushing. No wonder. The men of Stepford are prejudiced towards perfect, solicitous wives, wives who never act up. They will stop at nothing to feed this prejudice and have combined the best of biology and electronic circuitry to turn the women of Stepford (and one gay man) into placid and blissful robots. Kidman’s character does act up, refusing to become a wide eyed Stepford wife. In fact she has enough pride to know she is perfect just as she is. Watch this video clip showing how Kidman and her husband played by actor Matthew Broderick conspire to short circuit the perfect prejudice in Stepford, returning each woman (and the one gay man) to their original creation. Show clip.
Our next stop is New York, June 1969, the site of the Stonewall riots that are credited with catalyzing the modern gay rights movement. The GLBT community had put up with enough prejudice and more than enough police harassment. So our drag queen sisters had enough and fought back. They acted up and catapulted a movement.
As a result of what began at Stonewall, we enjoy far greater civil liberties than we would otherwise. Still violence against our community still occurs; from the outside and from the inside. Sometimes the violence is physical, sometimes it is institutional and sometimes it is emotional or spiritual. Sometimes it comes from within our own families.
I witnessed this during the Soulforce Equality Ride. This is the third stop on our journey. Forty glbt young people boarded a bus in the spirit of the freedom rides in the sixties, this time to visit conservative Christian universities to protest the treatment of queer and questioning youth. I shared the rally stage with a young speaker at Brigham Young University. His name was Joshua. This young gay Mormon, described coming out to his devastated and confused parents. Shortly after his fated conversation with his family, he had been in a major auto accident and nearly died. When the doctor’s pulled him through, he woke up to see his mother standing over his bed. Her first words were “It would have been better for your eternal salvation had you died.” She may have driven a sword through her son’s heart and spirit. I remember the Soulforce staff and the students of BYU gasping in horror as he related the story, tears rolling down his face. We were astounded that anyone much less a mother could say something so cruel. That kind of wound hurt worse than the physical pain of the car accident. More tragic than the car accident, this Joshua’s family had been so prejudiced by their religion, they believed they were doing the right thing, concluding they had no other place from which to respond.
Something else happened that day to the BYU students who listened to Joshua’s story-something Godly and grace filled. His sweetness and authenticity prejudiced them in his favor. That day because of his courage and pride, prejudice went the other way. Prejudice can also be positive.
The good news for Joshua was that he had finally come to know that God loved him without reservation. He understood the message of our scripture reading today.
To better understand the context of the passage, the Roman establishment in Matthew’s time had a prejudice of their own. Stop number four. Christians were building pockets of community living into a radical new order that looked more like chaos to many onlookers, and that threatened to undermine the order of the Empire. They could have easily worn our T shirts “We are family” because they were family to one another.
The believed that only God could claim the kind of power over others that many exerted without such right. Their belief was that God was calling every person -- male and female, slave and free, of every nation -- leading them to build a community in which women and slaves were received as human beings with agency to make their own decisions and gifts to offer the community -- and they didn't ask anyone's husband, father, or owner or Emporer for permission to do so. They had pride in being Christian and in what God was calling them too.
Even so their neighbors, their friends, and sometimes their own family turned them in, hauling them before governors as agitators, to be flogged, or worse. Stepford, Connecticut was a walk in the park compared to first century Palestine.
So what's Matthew's word to his community, the one thing he wants them to remember when persecution like this happens? What’s the one thing we can remember when we face internal or external persecution?
He didn’t give them something clever to say or do.
He simply told them to hold on tightly to how much God loves them. That’s good advice for anyone living into Christ’s reconciling ministry. That would mean us. That’s why as reconcilers we must remind ourselves moment by moment to stay grounded in God’s love. Reconcilers bring estranged people back together with the God that loves them.
As reconciling people of faith, we are bound to connect with the deep wounds and wounded people. Often the wounds we connect to are our own. Wounded people like wounded creatures are apt to respond with cruelty, anger, confusion, apathy and distrust. Joshua’s parents had given over all their power to the Mormon Church. They were prejudiced towards a notion of a perfect world with no war, no poverty, no pushing and no homosexuals.
My friend and EDS colleague Dylan Breuer says “remember just how much and how unconditionally God loves and values you, and you won’t be thrown off-center by anyone’s attempts to make you feel as badly as they do. Remember just how powerful God’s love is to heal and you won’t have to flee from things that remind you of your own vulnerabilities and wounds. Remember what God’s love looks like in the flesh, in the person of Jesus, and you’ll know how to respond. Keep in touch with the love in the core of your being.
Without staying grounded in God’s love we could respond in anger that would continue the cycle of violence. There’s a reason that Dr. Martin Luther King called the result of nonviolent resistance “beloved community.” It is the community of those who know, who proclaim, and who embody the good news that love is fundamental, powerful, and liberating- the Word through which the universe was made and lives, and for which it is destined.” [slightly paraphrased]
And be proud that you get that the good news isn’t good news until its good news for everyone! Because it is good news for all God’s children. Take comfort, pride and joy in knowing you are known by God and valued as holy and beloved.
The prejudice that goes with this kind of godly pride, pride in who God created you to be, is to be prejudiced against oppression wherever it surfaces, hatred of any type. Be prejudiced against anything that interferes with someone knowing that they are valued and known by God.
As people of Easter hope and Pentecost spirit, we must be prejudiced enough to seek liberation for every sparrow—liberation for the whole of God’s creation, especially ourselves.
Yet not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from your God. Even the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. That’s God’s prejudice in your favor. Have pride that it is so.
Amen.