Our Liberations All Tied Up
This morning we celebrate Pride.
A group of congregants from this church is in San Francisco marching in this year's Pride parade, celebrating the fullness and wholeness of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people, celebrating freedom and liberation and the long process and hard work that those impossibly large words entail.
We also join our hearts and minds with Pride celebrations across the world. In the Czech Republic, in Russia, in Poland, in so many places around the world, the struggle for respect and dignity, the struggle to be acknowledged, to be allowed to gather and say, "We are here, we are" is a very live and dangerous struggle.
Gay rights advocates attempted to organize a pride march in St. Petersburg this year and were denied permits by the City government, which instead helped organize and sponsor a countermarch led by a group with ties to former president Putin espousing traditional family values. They told them "no" and organized the exact opposite parade, a gathering designed to reinforce the message that they are wrong, that they are unnatural.
In the Czech Republic as of Thursday this week it was in question whether or not the march would even take place. Counter marches were planned by right wing traditionalist groups, many of whom threatened violence to any gay rights advocates who dared march.
Here in this country the struggle for the liberation of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender folks continues.
To be sure our society has come a long way.
Even beyond the very particular Bay Area Bubble in which we live, there have been Pride parades this month all across the country, celebrations lifting up the personhood, the wholeness and holiness of all beings, no matter who you are, no matter who you love.
We have characters depicted on T.V. We have celebrities coming out, claiming their true selves to the world, though noatably not very many professional athletes yet. I, as a passionate sports fan am longing for the first superstar athlete coming out. I will buy that jersey, banning a few obviously impossible teams for me to support being a Red Sox and Patriots fan. But I would seriously consider it, even if the player played for the Jets. Not the Yankees, some things are just too far.
But still, if you are a young gay person growing up in this country right now, chances are you see role models out in the wider world. Chances are you have your authentic personhood mirrored back to you somewhere.
This was not the case just a historical moment ago.
In our Our Whole Lives program, our sexuality education program for middle schoolers, we have one session in which we invite a panel of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender folks who come and talk to the group.
There is a portion where each of the panelists tells their story, about how their identity became clear to them and how they eventually came out to their friends and family.
It was amazing. Partly I was awed to realize what a singular gift it is for our children and youth that they get to meet and talk to and interview a real live flesh and blood queer people, cool young adults who have wrestled and realized the truth of their beings and have come to love themselves.
Three out of four of the panelists talked about never knowing that queer people existed. They thought they were the only one, that they were somehow fundamentally flawed. Many of them contemplated or attempted suicide.
They made it through and they along with so many of you and communities like this one are making it so that future generations are not faced with the same crushing questions and doubts about their identities.
And that is no small thing.
But, of course, the work is far from over.
The liberation of a people, of so many individual people and of our society at large is a much larger question.
The writers of shows like Will and Grace are not going to redeem the soul of a nation which has discriminated, demonized and doubted whole categories of humanity for generations.
Our collective liberation is much more complicated.
It is the ongoing personal work of a lifetime. It is the collective work of generations.
For all of our liberations are all tied up, interdependent, woven together.
And so this question for you this morning,
What would it mean for you to be truly free?
What would the rest of your day look like? The rest of your summer?
The rest of your life?
Who would you be...free?
The purpose of spiritual growth, the purpose of this place is to help each and every one of us to grow, to transform and to become more just, more loving more true and authentic versions of ourselves. This is a life long process of growth and transformation.
But the personal part of this process is only the beginning.
For all the while as we are growing and changing as we are breaking down the walls inside our minds and hearts, we are serving one another and the wider world. We are working for the liberation of all people.
In Buddhism many of you know there is something called the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva is an enlightened being who strives through al the trials and growth of learning and practice and comes to the point of enlightenment, but instead of merging into the totality of all, instead of taking that final step into dissolution and nothingness, instead the bodhisattva returns to earth, returns to serve humanity and wait for enlightenment until all beings have come to be enlightened.
Hopefully they get sabbaticals because that is going to be a long time.
This path of growth and development of change and transformation is not linear. I imagine our spiritual growth as rollercoaster of curly cues, of dips and valleys, small triumphs, rippling disappointments, tragedies and bursts of unspeakable beauty and joy.
And every moment of truth expanding, every glimpse and taste of wisdom is given to us so that we can be better and more devoted agents of change and transformation in this world.
All of our growth, all of our wisdom, each searing pain and trial we have moved through helps us connect to one another here, helps us show up in love for one another, helps us realize and know that we are in this together.
Helps us know in the bones of our bones that the march today in San Francisco, celebrating the fullness, the wholeness, holiness and liberation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, also celebrates the liberation of all beings.
For the liberation of one is tied up in the liberation of all. Any one of us can only be as free as the least free among us.
Many of you remember that at the end of his life Martin Luther King began to speak out, to preach and teach out against the war in Vietnam.
He was widely criticized for this, and spoke to it in a sermon he delivered in 1967, a year before he was killed. He said,
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live...
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be...
Dr. King knew that his commitment to the long hard work of Civil Rights was not limited to the liberation of black people in this country.
Instead, he knew that his liberation, the liberation of his people, the liberation of his country was wrapped up, inextricably woven with the liberation of the people of Vietnam, of all people.
He knew that for us to realize the vision of this country, for us to live into the deep call of this nation to be a people of liberty, a people of freedom, for us to truly become the country the society we know we can become it will mean that each person, is set free.
It will mean that each of us has awakened to a truer, fuller living. That we have finally broken the chains which held us back and held us down, that we have reached higher than we knew we could, that we have tasted new fruit.
But not only that. For liberation to reach us all, for us to be truly free we also need to look deeply at the causes and roots of systemic oppression.
Brazilian bishop and liberation theologian, Dom Helder Camara famously said, "When I gave food to the poor they called me a saint, when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
In his life, Camara sought always to ease the suffering and work for the liberation of his people. In the 60s and 70s Brazil was under the thumb of an oppressive military regime. He chose always to side with the poor. While many of his compatriots in the Catholic hierarchy enjoyed the material fruits of their elevated office, he chose to live simply. He lived in a small house, and wore only a simple small wooden cross showing his solidarity with the poor.
He knew his purpose was to not only to feed and clothe the poor, but also to work to transform the system which surrounded them.
We live in a world which does not discriminate against people for no reason.
The oppression and subjugation of migrant farm workers today results in low costs at the supermarket.
Unequal labor practices which persist to this day keeping women paid less to do identical work maintains a status quo of male domination in so many fields , keeping many men very rich.
There is a system at work, often hidden, even invisible.
And our liberation, our freedom, and the as yet unrealized potential of our nation demands that we see, demands that the scales fall from our eyes and that we take up the mantle set before us by Camara, by King, by each and every one of our ancestors whose blood and sweat and tears have brought us this far.
Today's march for Pride has been made possible because brave souls stood up for the truth of their beings.
It has been made possible because people listened to the fleeting and faint call of their deepest selves, because people did not shrink away from the truth within them.
They worked for their liberation and we are all freer for it.
And so here we are today.
With this day, and the next.
With what is left of our lives.
And this question.
Who would you be if you were truly free?
Who would you be for the rest of this day?
For tomorrow? For the rest of your lives?
What would you put down?
What would you begin.
Together, with the strength of this wider circle of witness and support, all things are possible.
No matter how many times you have failed, no matter how comfortable those chains feel, there is another way.
Liberation is possible.
For our nation.
For this community.
For all beings.
For you.
May it be so.
Amen
Our Liberations All Tied Up from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.
Copyright © 2010, Rev. Chris Holton Jablonski, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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