The 2013 film Philomena
is the story of an Irish woman’s search for the son she had out of wedlock
who then was sold to an American couple by the nuns who ran a home for unwed
mothers. After discovering that her son was gay and died of AIDS, Philomena
also learns that Sister Hildegard prevented the son and mother from meeting
when the young man visited Ireland shortly before his death. When they meet and
Philomena asks the nun why she prevented her from meeting her son, Sister
Hildegard answers, “You had no one to blame but yourself and your own carnal
incontinence. Self-denial and mortification of the flesh… that’s what brings us
close to God.”
Self-denial and mortification of the flesh… that has all too
often been the Christian church’s attitude toward the kind of love celebrated
in the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon from which Michael Dimengo read the
first lesson.
One of the most common misunderstandings of religion in
general and of the Christian religion, in particular, is that they are
concerned with a realm we call “spirit” that is completely separate and apart from
the realm of the earthly or material.
It’s easy to see why many
Christians believe this when you read Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “Do not
gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to
the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh..” But in fact,
when Paul uses the words “flesh” and “Spirit”, he means something quite
different than what we usually mean when we use those words.
This misunderstanding is not just a slur spread by the
enemies of religion; it is a conviction deeply held by a lot of the faithful
themselves, including a lot of good Christians who go to church every Sunday.
But if it is true that the spiritual and the physical are
completely different realms, then why does the Bible contain the Song of
Solomon? This extended poem is frankly – almost embarrassingly - erotic: “I am
faint with love. O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right
hand embraced me… Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away… let me see your
face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely…
My beloved is mine and I am his…”
Of course, from the time this poem was written to the
present day, good faithful religious people have tried to spiritualize it
beyond recognition. The rabbis of Israel claimed that it depicted God’s love
for b’nai Yisrael, the children of
Israel. And the church fathers, following in the footsteps of the rabbis,
claimed that it was about the love of Christ for the church.
Beware when people speak well of you and tell you how
spiritual you are, because they are usually trying to make you completely
irrelevant!
But of course, the rabbis and the church fathers were wrong;
the Song of Solomon is a love poem. And to speak of love, one must speak of the
flesh; one must speak not only of agape -
the love which gives without seeking anything in return; one must not speak
only of philos - the love that we
have for our family members and friends; one must speak also of eros, or passion.
Plato said that eros was
the child of hunger. Anyone who has ever loved another knows that Plato was
right. If you have loved another with eros,
passion, then you know the hunger for the other’s presence, the other’s
eyes and voice, the other’s embrace, the other’s… well, I’m in a pulpit, so I
better not finish that sentence!
Until very recently, the church, at best, merely tolerated
gay and lesbian people, although there is no doubt that the church has had gay
clergy from the very beginning. And although the church has done its best to
marginalize women for most of the last 2000 years, I am certain that many of
the women who did find ways to lead and serve loved other women.
The church told us that we would be acceptable only if we
did to our love for one another what the church did to the Song of Solomon: We
had to spiritualize it until it was nothing but a dried up stick. We had to
deny that it had an erotic component.
And yet, at the very heart of the Christian faith is a
celebration of the physical, of matter, of flesh: In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became sarx – a Greek word meaning flesh and
blood and bone. The Word became flesh and blood and bone and lived among us.
The Christian faith is the most physical, the most fleshy of
all religions. In the early church those wishing to be baptized stripped naked,
and were anointed all over their bodies with sweet smelling oil before stepping
into cold running water. Every Sunday from the first century to the present,
Christians have claimed that they eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood
when they receive the bread and wine of the eucharist.
To say that someone’s love for another is acceptable only as
long as it does not include a physical, an erotic component, is to deny
something essential to the Christian faith.
Tonight we are celebrating marriage equality in Nevada. Over
the last few years we have witnessed a great sea change. In spite of DOMA, the Defense
of Marriage Act of 1996, (which should really be called the Denial of Marriage
Act) thirty-five states now issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. From
the enactment of DOMA in 1996 to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’
decision granting same sex couples in Nevada the right to marry, we have
traveled light years, but the price for that journey was too high.
The Song of Solomon says, “Do not stir up or awaken love
until it is ready…” It was the AIDS crisis that stirred up and awakened both love
and rage.
Writer Andrew Sullivan says, “The radicalism of [AIDS]
segued into the radicalism of gays in the military and same-sex marriage…. Once
[we] had experienced… the responsibility for life and death for [ourselves] and
others [we] … found it impossible to acquiesce in second-class lives. [We]
demanded full recognition of [our] service to [our] country, and equal
treatment under the law for the relationships [we] had cherished and sustained
in the teeth of such terror.” (Love Undetectable,
p. 65)
The AIDS crisis gave a voice to the love that once dared not
speak its name. No longer voiceless, we refused to be silent when we were told
that we could not serve openly and honestly in the service of our country. And
then when we were told that the love of gay and lesbian couples was different
from and less honorable than the love between a man and a woman, we spoke out
again.
But the price was the death of 650,000 men and women. It was
AIDS that brought our love out of the closet and empowered us to fight for
recognition. And that gives new meaning to these words from the Song of
Solomon: “…love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes
are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it”
On Dec. 1, I helped lead a candle light vigil for persons
living with HIV/AIDS or who had died of AIDS. And that night I sensed that
there was a connection between the vigil and the celebration of marriage
equality that I was helping Bishop Edwards to plan, a connection that I
couldn’t quite articulate.
And then it came to me in the form of a question: Would
there have been an AIDS epidemic if the church had embraced gay and lesbian
people? Would the AIDS quilt contain 48,000 panels if the church had given its
blessing to gay and lesbian relationships? I don’t think so.
Andrew Sullivan also wrote, “Plagues and wars… force people to
ask more fundamental questions of who they are and what they want…. Out of
cathartic necessity and loss and endurance comes… a desire to turn these things
into something constructive… [to] give meaning and dignity to what has
happened. Hovering behind the politics of homosexuality in the midst of AIDS
and after AIDS is the question of what will actually be purchased from the horror.
What exactly … did a third of a million Americans die for? If not their
fundamental equality, then what?”
The church’s refusal to accept gays and lesbians and affirm
their relationships forced their eros, their
passion, underground and into the shadows. Denied healthy channels, passion
become pathological, and so the epidemic came.
For me tonight there is a note of sadness and anger in our
celebration. It is wonderful that we have marriage equality in Nevada and 34
other states. It is wonderful that the Episcopal Church now allows me to bless
and celebrate gay and lesbian relationships.
So thank you… I guess. But I also have to ask the church,
“What took you so long? Why are you so late to the party?”
Why did it take you so long to say to your lesbian daughters
and gay sons, “We love you and accept you. We bless your relationships and want
to encourage them.” Because for such a very, very long time, that is not what you
told us, and it is still not what many, perhaps most, branches of the Christian
church are saying.
Some would say that the church withheld its blessing from
its gay and lesbian children because of the Bible. They tell us that the Bible
condemns homosexuality, and you cannot bless gay and lesbian relationships
without undermining the authority of the Bible.
But I don’t find that a very persuasive argument. There are
just over 800,000 words in the Bible. The Old Testament contains only 45 words that
unambiguously refer to homosexuality. In the New Testament there are only 48
words that refer unambiguously to homosexuality. There are a few words that are
ambiguous, so let’s include them. That gives us possibly 51 words in the New
Testament that refer to homosexuality.
So if we combine the Old Testament and the New Testament,
that gives us 96 words that refer to homosexuality. Ninety-six out of more than
800,000. That means there are at least 799,914 words that don’t say anything
about homosexuality, either positive or negative.
Now, it’s a little unfair of me to argue this way. After
all, you can’t assume that homosexuality is not an important topic in the Bible
just because it has so little to say about homosexuality.
So let’s look at a couple of other things. What did Jesus have
to say about homosexuality? Not a thing. What about the Ten Commandments?
Nothing there either.
This is not the time or place to go into all the reasons
that Christianity gave such extraordinary weight to just 96 words in the Bible,
words that were used to justify the condemnation and sometimes the killing of
men and women who loved differently. But
I am certain that the world would be a warmer, better, more loving place if the
church had read those words in a different light.
I loved a man who was an elder in the Presbyterian church
and who was also HIV positive. Scott and I were together for two years. I am
certain that his life would have been very different if the church had accepted
the way he loved, had offered to bless his relationship with another man.
Perhaps he would not have become infected.
I am certain that my life would have been very different if
I had gone off to college with the encouragement of my parents to meet a nice
young man, settle down, and get married. Perhaps I would not have arrived at my
59th year having spent only two of those years in a loving and
intimate relationship with another man.
So by all means, let’s celebrate marriage equality in Nevada
and elsewhere. But there is a skeleton at the party or rather 650,000
skeletons, so for me this celebration is tinged with regret and anger.
The most powerful moment in the movie Philomena occurs immediately
after Sister Hildegard tells Philomena that what’s important is “self-denial
and mortification of the flesh” and that she prevented her from meeting her dying
son because of her “carnal incontinence” as a young woman. Philomena looks at
Sister Hildegard and says, “I want to tell you something: I forgive you.”
I would like to be able to say to the Christian church, “I
forgive you,” but I’m not quite there yet.
