For the Healing of Our Demons: A Lament For Orlando

By Rev. Robin Bartlett
Preached on June 19, 2016
at First Church in Sterling, MA
Scripture: Psalm 42
​Listen to the sermon here.

"Good Bones" (edited for language) by Maggie Smith
 
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real (dump), chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
 
Just like in a dump someone’s trying to sell you, it’s been hard even to see the “good bones” in the world this week. This place could be beautiful, right? We could make this place beautiful.
 
Please won’t you pray with me.
 
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts together find their way into the heart of God. Amen.
 
The psalmist says: my tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, where is your God?
 
Some of us can probably relate to the psalmist’s words this morning.
 
I’m going to be honest: I am tired of preaching this sermon, so I’ve dreaded it all week. I’m sick of the prescribed mass shooting script. You know your lines. I know mine. They vary only slightly depending on which side of the aisle or the pulpit you and I are on. They vary only slightly based on who or what we’ve chosen to blame this time. The opportunities to preach this sermon are far too frequent, and it doesn’t look like they will let up.
 
Our Gospel text this morning is about Christ healing demons. Christ, heal us. We are all possessed. Human evil is real. We get it. Enough already. If prayers were all we needed, we would have stopped these massacres by now, so show us what to do next.
 
Some of us are brave enough or despairing enough to ask God as the psalmist asks, “Why have you forgotten us? Why must we walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses us?”
 
“Where is our God?”
 
Our psalm today is a psalm of lamentation—a cry to God; a rant, if you will.
 
Our psalmist’s lament is made more painful as he remembers a time of joyful and celebratory faith in the Lord. This remembrance seems almost punishing in the midst of his depression and fear.
 
These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
 
The 300 or so people at last call at Pulse in Orlando on Sunday morning were a multitude keeping festival. My colleague, Rev. Richard Jones, pastor of First Parish in Bolton preached last Sunday: “For those of us who are of a certain age in the LGBTQ community, gay bars were not just places to drink and dance. They were sanctuaries. They were places of refuge. They were one of the few places men and women like me could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully ourselves.” In other words, a house of God.
 
I can’t stop thinking of the young, mostly Latino, mostly GLBTQ people of God in the Pulse dance club in Orlando on pride weekend that made it out alive on Sunday morning. I think of their young innocence shattered; their lives forever changed. I think of them remembering what it was like to dance, free from fear in the one place where they could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves.
 
These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
 
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
 
Beloved, this morning is supposed to be a festival for us, too. This is the Sunday we set aside each year to be grateful for our church and its volunteers.
 
…and this is the second Celebration Sunday--the second year in a row--in which our week would be violently interrupted by a mass shooting—this time the deadliest in recent American history by a single gunman.
 
This is the second Celebration Sunday in a row in which I have needed to respond to a mass shooting that was both terrorism and a hate crime.
 
This Sunday last year, on father’s day, I got up into this pulpit after a gunman came into a Black Church in Charleston—Mother Emmanuel-- and shattered the sacred space of people at prayer with bullets and a body count leaving a trail of racist writings. A house of God desecrated. The one place where folks could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves.
 
And this week, a gunman who had beaten his wife, had been angered by seeing two men kissing, who had been described by employers as “unhinged,” and had been on the FBI list of suspected terrorists, legally bought one of those killing spree guns. And he killed 49 people in another sacred space—a gay club in Orlando on Latin night. Then he called 911 to take responsibility on behalf of Isis. The one place where folks could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves shattered by bullets and blood. Another house of God desecrated.
 
There has been a mass shooting every 60 days now since 2012. Sales of the weapon used in this latest shooting in Orlando sky rocketed since Sunday for “fear they will be taken away.” Political rhetoric has gotten increasingly hateful, even at rallies for mainstream candidates for president. It doesn’t seem like Love is winning right now. It seems like fear is.
 
And so we ask with the psalmist, where is our God? Certainly not in the distortions of holy texts used by religious extremists and terrorists. Certainly not coming out of the mouths of those who would bludgeon others with our Bible. Certainly not in the automatic assault rifles that we have made into an idol.
 
For those of you who don’t like it much when I “get political” in my sermons, I want you to know that what happened in Orlando isn’t a political “issue” for me, it’s a personal one.
 
Many of our family’s closest friends and family are gay. I have danced the night away in many a gay club with the people I love. My husband proposed to me in our favorite gay club in Boston on showtunes night. Our friends—gay and straight together-- sang the song you heard this morning (Seasons of Love, from the musical Rent) before he got down on one knee.

My oldest daughter’s god parents are both gay. Her father’s cousin who she calls Tio is gay and he is Latino-- just like she is; like most of the people who died at the Pulse night club in Orlando were. My daughter’s god father and his husband just adopted a baby girl in May. My daughter sobbed on Sunday in fear for their lives; for their daughter’s life.
 
I am so tired of trying to explain to my kids why we are handing them a world that is not worthy of their promise. A world where we can’t protect them and the people they love; not even in their schools.
 
For those of you who don’t like it much when I “get political” in my sermons, I want you to know that what happened in Orlando isn’t a political “issue” for me. It’s a personal one.
 
It is personal because I’m a Pastor. And my God calls me to wasteful love and extravagant welcome into Christ’s church.
 
This week, a lesbian couple who had visited our church wrote to me to thank us for welcoming them so fully. She told me this story: She and her wife and daughter had attended another church in our area for a whole year. They loved what they heard and saw. Pious and committed Christians, they loved the church and were looking forward to serving it. When they were ready to join, they met with the pastor. They told him the beautiful love story of who they are, and the child they had just had. And the pastor told them that he believed marriage was between one man and one woman. He said they would probably “fit better” somewhere else. He told them they could keep coming if they really wanted, but handed them a list of places to go instead.

“That was the only time I have ever felt personally discriminated against in my whole life,” this woman said to me.
 
“Find God somewhere else,” the pastor said.
 
No wonder dance clubs have become sanctuaries of welcome and safety for the gay community. Our churches have failed to be.
 
There are victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre whose families refused to claim their bodies upon realizing that their children were gay. There were undocumented survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting who upon being questioned by police were marked for deportation.
 
No wonder dance clubs have become sanctuaries of welcome and safety for this community. Our homes and our country have failed to be.
 
Meanwhile, our psalmist cries:
As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually,
 
“Where is your God?”
 
My dear friend the Reverend Tim Burger, priest at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Worcester, father, husband, member of God’s rainbow people, spoke this truth at the Worcester Interfaith Vigil for Orlando:

“To those who say, where was God? God was there--- in the pulse of the Latin beats, in the sweat, (the lust), the love, the blood... and God will not do what God has given us to do... which is to put our bodies and our votes and our love and our passions where we say they are... in solidarity with those who are suffering.

And so to the beautiful, fabulous, fierce queer people gathered here- hear this now: you are so loved. And your love comes from God and is of God and you are blessed. And my prayer is that you know this, and feel this as deeply as the thump and bass inside you- when you decide to dance again. Until then, hold each other close, for God is also holding you. And do not lose hope.”

Or as the psalmist says: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”
 
Beloved, you and I can make this a place where people can bring all of who they are, free from fear. A place of hope, where God turns no one away. Let’s end our silent vigil. Let’s live instead in loud defiance of hate, in solidarity with those who are suffering. We can bravely provide a place of sanctuary where all can feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves if we are loud. We can go outside of these four walls and make that sanctuary everywhere we go. Be the church. Be Christ in the world.

​Get loud.
 
I saw a picture of a church sign yesterday at a United Church of Christ church that said, “Live so fully that Westboro Baptist Church will picket at your funeral.” YES.
 
Beloved, the world is at least 50% terrible, but let’s try to sell it anyway. Like a realtor, chirp on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.
 
God is love and
 
Love is love is love is love is love is love is love.
Amen.