We should
have torn our clothes
My childhood reflections of a
brother gone too soon
Then David
took hold on his clothes, and rent them; and likewise all the men that were
with him:
The first time I saw him he had on a gray suit, rimless
glasses, and a smile that could light up a room. As a child I was always
mystified by ministers, their demeanor, language, and aura. And he was no
different he gingerly climbed the stairs to enter my father’s study in our
little country church as he prepared to preach our annual revival. We had watched him climb through the ranks and
become a beloved minister in our conference. He was trusted by leading elders,
pastors and lay leader; the stars were all aligned for him to become a
skyrocket of pastoral success.
I remember coming to one of the conference meetings and not
seeing him there and upon closing the meeting the bishop informed us that he
was sick, and we were not to visit him in the hospital. This instruction struck
me as quite odd, visiting the sick was one of the things that we did as Christians.
What was it that made this sickness so different? What were the symptoms that
merited such a response from our episcopal leader? How sick could he possibly
be that we could not go and extend the sacrament to him? In the late eighties there were commercials that
talked about HIV and AIDS and we discussed it in school because of Magic
Johnson, but I'm from West Alabama and surely nobody has AIDS here. There was
no possible way that I thought someone who we knew could possibly have AIDS. We
were taught that it was a “gay disease” but we didn’t have any gay people in Tuscaloosa
county?
Thinking back to my childhood I have
been nurtured by gay people all my life. From the faithful ladies who shared a
home together, holding their head above the snickers on Sunday morning (they made
me a quilt when I left for college), to the brothers who taught me about pitch
and rhythm in the choir. Growing up in
the South you may have known that people were different but no one called that
difference homosexuality, no one said “that’s a gay person” . Maybe it was our
southern gentility or passive aggressive fence making but we acted as if
homosexuality didn’t exist. It was an ignorance of convenience, to be nurtured
by such wonderful people while at the same time acting as if they did not exist.
These beautiful people who enriched our communities could not benefactors of
the beauty and grace that they gave. Silence and shame became essential for survival
in the highly churched Deep South.
But this time we could not avert our
eyes, this time we could not look away, this time we could not ignore because
this time if affected someone who shined so brightly before us. I remember the whispers,
the somber faces and the looks that were exchanged as people attempted to navigate
around talking about him. Every now and then we would receive updates
concerning his well being, leaders still admonishing us not to visit him. They would
whisper about T cells and viral loads and as a child I didn’t know what they
meant but I knew it was bad, I knew he was sick and I knew that Christians
visit the sick. For the life of me I could not rationale what sickness could
have been so bad that we could not be light and salt to him. Why couldn’t we
talk about what was wrong with him? Why would someone tell us what was the
matter?
Meeting after meeting his name would
be brought up and we would pray for him but those same prayers would be
accompanied by whispers and innuendo. Gossip about his “mysterious illness”
would slip and slither around as over time his condition continued to diminish. I thought about him; I thought about what our
silence was doing to him. I thought about all the miracles of the gospel and how
Jesus was never afraid to touch the afflicted but somehow we were afraid to
touch this issue.
Even as a child I knew
that this was wrong, I knew that what we were doing to him was wrong. I knew
that God had not called us to shun him; we had been called to love him. I knew
that love didn’t look like this. I knew what love looked like; I was there when
church ladies would come and care for each other after a death. I was there
when a special offering would be taken for someone who had lost a job. I was
there when we held each other through tears and pain. I know what our love
looks like. This was not our love, this was not our care, this was not our
grace … this was an articulation of our fears, our ignorance and our cruelty
wrapped with scripture and laced with pseudo theological jargon. In effect this was what Christianity looked
like without Christ.
A few months later I saw him for a
final time at a state meeting. I remembered how thin he had gotten, how his
face had become rough and almost gray. He was accompanied by his sisters to his
seat they held his hand the entire service. I remember his smile, how even
through his suffering he still had the audacity to smile. He smiled with that big,
bright, brilliant smile that lit up the whole room.
That smile publicly shamed us all, it shamed every person
who lacked the courage to love him and care for him. That smile shamed every
person who lacked the compassion to educate themselves concerning his condition.
That smile shamed every person who clung so ardently to a flawed reading of scripture
that they could not live the intent of the gospel. Six months later he passed…
we cried, we mourned, we rent our clothes, we gave the show, we performed
marvelously. And we told one final lie.
In his death we acted as if we truly
cared for his life. We acted as if we held him through his pain. As if we
extended compassion and grace. We acted as if we had not been silent at
all. When in reality we sat idly by and
watched a man die and made his suffering into a scandal. During the late eighties to the mid-nineties I
attended funerals for musicians, ministers, and sons who died from a mysterious
illness. And being the good southerners that we were, we shed the tears and sealed
our lips.
There are two commandments for living in the south thou shalt
love Jesus, and thou shalt not be gay. And no southern son or daughter dared
bring shame upon their family and come out of anything much less a closet. And as a child I remember feeling the shame
after every funeral, hearing the same whispers, seeing the looks, there were
always the looks.
He was a gay minister who preached the Gospel, rightly administered the sacraments,
and exercised the discipline of the church faithfully ...
deserved the love, compassion and care of his community. There was nothing for
him to be ashamed of, he was beloved of God. He was a gay man that was taught
by the church that the only way that he could be able to survive was to hide so
he hid. He was born a gay man who died because we were too ashamed to have a conversation
about sex, sensuality, and orientation. He was a gay man. And it breaks my
heart that I don’t if he died knowing that God loved him.
Church can be a place of liberation.
It can be a place where those who have been afflicted can be healed. But it can
also be a place where silence can kill. We have been come experts at saving
face rather than saving souls. The memory of this man haunts me, the silence of
the church scares me, and our collective inaction pisses me off.
A few
tapes are always playing in my mind 1st “shame is a deadly thing”
there is no gospel in shame. 2nd "I will not use scripture to justify
homophobia, misogyny or xenophobia." these tapes are always reminding me to fight for those who are silenced, broken and battered by systems that tell them that they are not worthy to be loved. I choose to fight forward not fueled by the shame that we tried to heap upon him
but by that brilliant smile that lit up an entire room.
