“That’s what it means to come home to All Saints Church. Where we get free of the narratives that have bound us. Where liberation begins within.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Homecoming Sunday, September 16, 2018.
Jesus asked the disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” “Who do you say that I am?”
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“Shhh… It’s contraband.”
I spent most of Thursday at CRDF, the women’s jail for Los Angeles County. I was sitting with, let’s just call her Mary, who is currently incarcerated in a unit set aside for women who have broken rules inside the jail.
“I got caught with contraband,” she said. “So I’ve got to be in this unit for awhile.” She seemed matter-of-fact about it, so I didn’t dwell on it. And we went on talking about other things.
After a few minutes, another woman walked up to her and handed her something. “You left this in the shower,” she said. Mary quickly pushed it under her chair. But I could see it. Mary had taken two towels and purely by tearing and knotting them had fashioned them into a beautiful handbag for her to carry toiletries.
“Mary,” I said: “Can I see that? That’s extraordinary!”
For the briefest of moments, she beamed with pride and then quickly shook her head.
“Shhh… It’s contraband.”
When I thought of contraband, I thought of cigarettes or a knife or something that could cause some harm. But this … this was beautiful … and functional! So, this time I had to ask, “How is that contraband?”
“Contraband,” she said. “Is anything that isn’t in its original state. You aren’t allowed to make contraband. You aren’t allowed to have contraband.”
I glanced down at the bag. I wanted to pick it up and admire it. I wanted to go around the room showing everyone, “See what Mary did? Isn’t this incredible?”
I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs how wonderful it was that in the midst of this inhuman warehousing of people, the power of creativity, the power of beauty could still survive.
But if I did any of those things. If I even drew attention to Mary’s creation, she could be punished. So, I looked up and looked in her eyes.
“It’s beautiful!” I whispered.
Mary smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered in return.
Shhh… it’s contraband.
Contraband is about power. The idea that there is one natural state for each thing and that any divergence from that natural state is not only wrong it is ludicrous. The point is that those with power get to say what things are and what they should be. Those with power get to say who people are and who they should be.
And anything else is contraband.
And if you make contraband, if you have contraband, if you are contraband … there are consequences.
And so, when we begin to create, to feel, to wonder, to live in ways that are who we truly are but not what the powers of the world demand of us, the natural tendency is to silence ourselves before the world silences us, before the world punishes us.
And when someone else notices, when someone else sees who we really are, though our hearts might sing, though inside we might crave someone recognizing who we truly are, too often we react not as one celebrated but as one outed. Because we know the consequences. And so instead of shouting in joy, we hide ourselves and whisper desperately:
Shhh… It’s contraband.
Whenever I’ve heard this morning’s Gospel reading, I’ve been taught that the Jesus we hear is a Jesus who is in power, a Jesus who is in control, a calm, sage teacher asking the questions he already knows all the answers to. Who is waiting for Peter … and for me … to be the good student and get the answer right.
For this Jesus, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” becomes, frankly more than a little passive aggressively, “I know who I am … I just want to see if you do, too.”
But more and more, I wonder. As I have more and more met Jesus in people like Mary, I wonder if Jesus is really asking these questions not searching for the right answer to the quiz but longing for someone to affirm something wonderful and scary he is beginning to suspect about himself.
Maybe Jesus has more wonderings than answers. Maybe Jesus is as scared and unsure as the rest of us.
Who do people say that I am?
Who do you say that I am?
Maybe Jesus is the woman the world calls convict and criminal, who just a mile and a few economic classes away would be called artist and entrepreneur.
Maybe Jesus is the transgender woman who has been told her whole life she is a man, or the college student whose family expects her to go to med school but just can’t stay away from the theatre department.
Maybe Jesus is the black or brown woman trying to figure out how to make it through just one more day in a white world and that question is a survival technique or maybe Jesus is the person nearing retirement who knows they aren’t done becoming and the questions are about whether this world really will let them have a fresh start.
Who do people say that I am?
Who do you say that I am?
Maybe Jesus isn’t asking these questions in some passive aggressive calm sagacity but in beautifully human desperation. Maybe Jesus really wants to know. Maybe Jesus really is afraid he does know.
Maybe Jesus is you. Maybe Jesus is me.
Who do people say that I am?
Who do you say that I am?
These are extraordinary questions. They cut to the heart of the biggest question of them all – Who am I? The answer to that question is wonderful and terrifying. Wonderful because there is nothing more beautiful and powerful than claiming our true identity. Terrifying because if that identity does not match up with who the world says we are to be, there are deep and terrible consequences.
We look at how Jesus asked these questions, and I wonder if it wasn’t in desperation.
Who do people say that I am? The people’s answers were all about trying to put him into old categories, categories where they knew how to deal with him. John the Baptizer. Elijah. One of the prophets.
But Jesus was beginning to understand that he was none of those things and that those categories were prisons. Jesus was beginning to understand there was another identity trying to emerge from deep inside. Peter affirmed what Jesus was sensing in himself. Peter affirmed that Jesus was something different. Someone that didn’t fit into old categories. Someone new.
The whole thrust of the Gospel is that God is doing a new thing … God is always doing a new thing. Jesus is always exploding boundaries and moving beyond them.
Those among us who are transgender understand this in profound ways the church needs to hear. Transgender author and pastor Austen Hartke writes: “When God calls us to something, it’s always a call to move out of bounds. When ministers are called, they’re called out of the secular life they knew and into a new relationship with God and others. When transgender Christians are called, they’re called to move outside of the gender binary our society values and into a more challenging and yet stronger and more compassionate relationship with God and others.”
The entire life and teaching of Jesus is about doing a new thing, claiming a new identity … and doing so in a way that will invite the wrath of the systems of oppression that depend on our sticking to the identities they choose for us. And those systems are strong. Those systems have for millennia gotten hold of the life and teachings of Jesus and have tried to make Jesus fit into the very categories that he defied. To use him to reinforce them.
The very theology the church has used Jesus to reinforce is patriarchal and binary and heteronormative. God the father, Mary the mother. And yet Jesus doesn’t fit into those categories. God is doing a new thing. God is revealing a new thing. God and we are much more complex and interesting, much more powerful and beautiful than the categories the world uses to control.
What if that is the church that we are? Where each of us and all of us can trust that God is doing a new thing not just in Jesus but in us. That maybe, just maybe, the old categories don’t apply. That just because the world calls you one thing doesn’t mean that is who you are or who you are becoming. That just because you have done or been one thing for your whole life, doesn’t mean that you can’t be and become something new now.
What is hidden and what has been erased? What is closeted in each of us that is dying to emerge, that is gasping for air. What of each of us is locked behind bars screaming to get free? What in each of us is the world telling us to hide, telling us to bow our head and lower our eyes and say “shh … it’s contraband.”
A couple of months after I arrived here, I was talking with a friend about All Saints Church and I said to her, “I feel like more than anywhere else I’ve been, this is the place where I feel free to be myself and explore who I am becoming.”
And then some things began to happen.
I began to get pushback and even pain and anger about some of the things I was saying and doing. About the voices I was centering. About how I talk about Jesus. About a lot of different things.
And I began to wonder if this was really the safe place that I thought it was. I began to wonder if I could really be myself here.
I’ve spent most of the last year wondering that and wrestling with that and trying not to wonder what parts of myself were safe to show.
And I knew that some of you were struggling, too.
And what I’m beginning to realize is that it’s all OK. That this really is that place and we really are those people. Not just for me but for all of us. And we do it incredibly imperfectly because that’s who we are – incredibly, gloriously imperfect. I think maybe we each thought we were expecting the right answers from each other. And we were afraid there wasn’t grace if we got them wrong.
So here’s the thing. I am a work in progress, and so are you, so are we all. None of us is in our original form … none of us is in our final form … and none of us are contraband.
Most, if not all of us, are concerned with who the world says we are and most, if not all of us, feel some sort of disconnect between that and who we think we might be becoming. Some of us have to hide a little and some of us have to hide a lot. And it’s tiring. And we long for love without judgment and the freedom to ask the questions without worrying about giving the answers the teacher is waiting for.
I think this is that place. I think we have been that. I think we can be that. I think this is the community where that’s OK. Where we can cry the questions to each other.
Who do they say that I am?
Who do you say that I am?
Who am I?
Where we will just hang with each other as we wrestle with them and rejoice as we discover the answers. And if our answers are different than what the world says we are, we will have each other’s backs and we will let each other claim our true names, our true identities and the deep power that resides within them.
That is what it means to come home to All Saints Church. Where we get free of the narratives that have bound us. Where liberation begins within.
Coming home to All Saints Church is not just about the familiarity of the past but about becoming again, becoming new.
So I’m going to keep trying. And I hope you keep trying, too. And together we will ask one another all the scary questions and when our true selves peek out we won’t say “Shhh … that’s contraband” but instead we will celebrate and nurture them together, knowing that we – each of us and all of us – we are the new thing that God is doing.
That’s All Saints Church. Welcome home.
Amen
