Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Friends, listen for a word from God in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the 9th chapter, verses 1-6.
1 The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
Upon those who lived in a land of gloom
a light has shone.
2 You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing;
They rejoice before you as people rejoice at harvest,
as they exult when dividing the spoils.
3 For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
The rod of their taskmaster,
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
4 For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for fire.
5 For a child is born to us, a son is given to us;
upon his shoulder dominion rests.
They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.
6 His dominion is vast
and forever peaceful,
Upon David’s throne, and over his kingdom,
which he confirms and sustains
By judgment and justice,
both now and forever.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this!
This is the word of God for the people of God.
Every year I celebrate the day I first came out on October 25. This year marks 19 years since I came out and this a part of that story.
I had just finished my first year of college and I took an internship in the admissions office at Sewanee. That summer, which felt like my first time being “on my own” (it wasn’t) I first admitted to myself that I’m gay. Yes, I had known for a while that I was gay, but I hadn’t admitted it to myself. Fast forward to the fall of that year and one of my professors and mentors could sense that I was struggling with something. She sat me down and presented three theories of what she thought was going on, the third of which was, “I think you think you’re gay.” She wouldn’t let me leave her office until I said the words: “I’m gay.”
After that conversation I slowly started coming out to my friends both at college and at home. Most people were supportive. Some had significant experience affirming members of the LGBTQIA+ community (shout out to the allies in the music and theatre communities). Some had never had a Queer friend and didn’t know how to react. A few wanted to be supportive, but they had been indoctrinated to believe that LGBTQIA+ people were possessed by demons or at least under the spell of Satan. My coming out started a few friends on their paths to deconstruction…sorry, not sorry.
The Sewanee chaplain cried and gave me a hug as did our choirmaster. Our associate chaplain was particularly supportive and was the first person to teach me that God made me gay and loved me no differently than anyone else that God made. I was inclined to believe her, but it took me more than a few years to really believe what she told me.
I came out to my aunt over a text message (she had known long before I had). I hoped I’d have the nerve to tell my parents while I was home for Thanksgiving that year, but alas I just couldn’t do it. Despite being registered Republicans and at least moderate Catholics, my parents had never expressed homophobic or negative views toward LGBTQIA+ people. In fact, we knew several Queer people growing up. But I had read too many stories about people who assumed that their families would be accepting only to end up being disowned or worse. I was convinced that my parents would never smile at me again once they found out.
Eventually, I wrote them a letter which my father found in the mail, didn’t open, and left on a table until my mother arrived home from work. She called me that night and said, “We got your letter. We love you. And you’re running up our cell phone bill, and we need to talk about that.” Though I now know that her statement was relatively poor in the annals of parental responses to children coming out, it worked for me at the time. For the record, my sister was the one running up the family cell phone bill.
The path from initial coming out to being who I am today was often rocky and was far less direct that one might imagine. It included silence and death threats from people I had considered my friends in high school, but it also included joy in discovering other people who were on coming out journeys of their own. I struggled for years to reconcile my faith and what I had been led to believe with who I was becoming as a Queer man in the world. In a moment which thankfully was neither recorded nor saved in text, I declared in my first ever sermon that I “didn’t support the gay agenda.” I was so desperate to hold a semblance of what I had been taught. I now understand that dynamic as part of the coming out process for many LGBTQIA+ people of faith.
At once coming out is a process shared by all Queer people and yet coming out is universally an individual experience that always is different for each person. What is shared by almost all LGBTQIA+ people is the reality that being out is substantially brighter than being in the closet. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
The Dark Isaiah Knew
Tonight we’re reading from Isaiah again in one of the best known and most quoted passages from the prophet. Though often read closer to Christmas and paired with the story of Jesus’ birth as the light that bursts into darkness, this passage is being written to a people who, in the southern kingdom of Judah, are watching their religious siblings in the northern kingdom of Israel being conquered and taken into exile by the Assyrian army. Isaiah’s gloom isn’t a mood or even an emotion, it’s a reality.
Then three images stack up, one on top of another. A yoke, a pole across the shoulder, and a rod in a taskmaster’s hand. The yoke fits you for work you didn’t choose. The pole bends your back under a load that isn’t yours. The rod reminds you what happens if you slow down.
Too many of us know that yoke by heart. We were fitted for it in a youth groups and confessionals. The yoke was fastened in place by people who told us that they loved us, but our love was an abomination. The genius of this yoke and its accompanying rod was that no one needed to raise a hand against us. They just smiled, quoted a verse of scripture out-of-context or mistranslated, and moved on safe in the majority opinion.
If you grew up Catholic, it probably came with some sort of rhythm. Examine your soul, confess your sins, try to live better (code for celibate or as a heterosexual), and repeat. If you grew up Evangelical, it came with altar calls and reminders from the pulpit that sinners were in your midst, perhaps with a well-timed glare from the preacher, every Sunday, for as long as you could remember. Different contexts, but the same pole across your shoulder.
We learned to examine the space. We learned to notice small patterns and symbols to suss out how affirming a congregation might be to us and our family. We learned the importance of doing the math before walking into any room. We also learned to police our behavior, how we carried ourselves, how our voices sounded, and how we talked about our partners. We accepted being someone else not just to fit in, but to avoid conflict and, in some cases, to avoid danger.
And we were told it was God’s yoke. Jesus did say his yoke is easy and his burden light, but that wasn’t what the church handed us. What the church handed us was heavier, and it was never Jesus’.
But Isaiah’s clear about what God does with yokes. Despite what the church might have taught us and how often they tried to make the yoke into a cross, God doesn’t teach us to accept a yoke. God doesn’t ask us to patiently accept the will of the taskmaster. God smashes the yoke. Our liberation doesn’t start with our own strength. It starts with God, who never intended for us to be under that yoke.
The Yoke We Picked Up
We need to press this text a little further. Once God smashed the yoke, the pole on our shoulders, and the taskmaster’s rod, and we came out into the light, many of us didn’t stop. We turned around, we looked back, and we found the scared and broken people still on the path of coming out. And we figured somebody had to carry them, either because someone had carried us or because we wanted better for others than we had experienced ourselves. We became the guides and the teachers. The ones who show up to every meeting and the ones who answer the same question from the same relative for the eleventh year. We took the pole, laid it across our own shoulders, and named it a calling.
The Bible is full of examples of less than perfect people picking through the rumble and finding where God is calling them to be. Psalm 118:22 tells us that “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” Matthew 21 picks up that verse to describe Jesus, but God has a way to take what the world rejects and transform it into something powerful.
A few weeks ago, when I was in Cincinnati for TFAM Midwest’s gathering, our incoming regional bishop, Lesley Jones, showed us her pastoral staff. Special staffs for priests and bishops have a long history in religion and in Christianity go back to the staff carried by Moses during the exodus and the shepherd’s crook invoked in the parable of the Good Shepherd. Since at least the Middle Ages, these staffs have often been highly ornate and have been given unique liturgical names like the bishop’s crozier. Bishop-Elect Lesley’s staff is a substantial limb cut from a tree. It’s natural, organic, and decorated simply with blue and white thread and several small crosses. Yet when pounded on the floor of her church, particularly in time with the gospel music that congregation produces, it commands attention. The branch found in the forest becomes the staff of a bishop, pastor, and leader.
A Child, Born
Isaiah’s not finished until a child is born. A son is given. Dominion rests on his shoulder.
Even when so many of us are bent and bruised, there’s one who can hold the weight. It’s the same one who said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). In Jesus liberation arrives, but it arrives in partnership with the God who saves.
Harvest Joy
Which brings me back to verse 2. Abundant joy. Rejoicing like harvest. Like people dividing the spoils. When the yoke breaks, Isaiah doesn’t describe a sigh of relief. He describes a feast.
The church taught us that coming out was a confession, something to be mourned, and about which we should feel shame. You were supposed to come out with your head down and your voice low. You were supposed to tell a pastor and then keep it to yourself. But Isaiah says it’s a harvest. It’s something you do with a full table and your friends and family around you.
Some of us never got that feast. We came out to silence, or to a cold shoulder at the same table where we used to sit. Isaiah’s joy encompasses everyone. It just refuses to let the loss have the last word. Joy and grief can share a harvest. Plenty of us have set a place for both. And yet that’s why we celebrate now. On Friday, I celebrated my 19th year out of the closet with family, biological and chosen. I choose to celebrate each year not just because I’ve been able to live openly, but because I know that others can’t celebrate and because I know that others can’t live openly.
Coming out is the moment we embrace the light and walk towards even brighter days. Somebody made it out, turned around, and lit a lamp for us to follow. Now we do the same so that when the next person comes out the first light they see is the collective brightness of all our lamps radiating the light of God’s glory.