Queertivity 2.0
Mark 7: 24-30
Heritage United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
October 14, 2018
Before I begin I need to make a confession.
Two weeks ago I preached this sermon at the New Ark United Church of Christ. When I originally had these thoughts, I had planned on bringing them to you. For me, this church can be like the region of Tyre—a place where Jesus could have a break and get away from what is familiar but certainly not away from the call of God.
The New Ark is a predominantly white church and privileged, so I crafted the message for them. In preparing to come here, I rewrote some of the message because you are a different church. Where the need for confession comes in is that this version, the one I am about to share with you, is the one I should have given to the New Ark as well.
This past summer at Fa Lane’s ordination, your own Dorothy King, moderator of the Chesapeake Association, named some of the qualities that Fa would bring to her ministry. One of them is creativity. But from where I was sitting, and listening to the pitch and cadence of Dorothy’s voice, I heard “queertivity”. My mind and heart leapt with delight.
At once I remembered a quote, an idea attributed to Albert Einstein: “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it.” Queertivity. It will be the queer minds, the marginalized minds, the neurodivergent minds, all those who’ve been underrepresented, kept and pushed away from the table, their voices silenced, their identity debased, ignored or erased—these are the ones who possess the consciousness to solve humanity’s problems.
In what looks like, sounds like this different consciousness, some folks have been declaring, “The future is female”. But still others say this doesn’t go far enough. The future is not female, they say; the future is intersectional. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a contemporary black feminist, coined the term “intersectionality”. We have not just one identity but co-existing identities. We are not solely our gender but also our race, economic status, ethnicity, culture, language, ability, nationality, education, religion, sexuality, age. All of these shape our experience, our thinking, our consciousness, how we see and engage the world, how the world views us and behaves toward us. All these identities have been used to create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination. Whole groups of people are systematically discriminated against because of skin color AND gender AND gender expression AND economic status. On the flip side, it’s also what we mean in the United Church of Christ when we say we are Open and Affirming: we are open to all our identities, all of what it means to be human, and we affirm and lift up the whole person.
These identities interact and interconnect at a level so profound that we can’t say the future we fight for is equality for only one identity. We can’t assume that if we lift up women and girls, liberation, justice and equity will come for everyone who is disenfranchised. The future is all genders and it is black and brown and queer and trans and differently abled and neurodivergent and the least of these.
The future is intersectional because the old rules of patriarchy, abuse and safeguarding of power, elevating some at the expense and destruction of everyone else are how we got here. It’s going to take a different consciousness, it’s going to take queertivity to solve the problems created by patriarchy, abusive power, and exclusivity. Queertivity, the creativity of that different consciousness, comes as a result of embracing intersectionality.
The unnamed Syro-Phoenician woman, mother to a daughter with a demon, possessed queertivity. Alone, gentile and female, she approached a Jewish rabbi. Jesus went to the region of Tyre to escape the crowds but he could not escape the people who needed him the most. Jesus may have had no place to put his head but compared to this foreign woman, he was privileged and protected and had power she did not. However many times we’ve read this story, did we ever consider the courage, tenacity and vulnerability it took for this woman to bow down at his feet and beg Jesus to heal her daughter?
Then in one of the most un-Jesus moments in the gospels, Jesus responds to her in a way that can only be described as prejudiced and demeaning. He says to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children he refers to are the children of Israel, and then Jesus goes so far as to say that healing this foreigner’s daughter would be unfair and then he calls them dogs.
Let’s stop there for a moment. I for one am heartened to have this account of Jesus behaving like a privileged male of the patriarchy, about ready to withhold his power from someone who desperately needs it, precisely because the story does not end there. The incarnation is not about humanity becoming perfect but about the divine entering into a fragile humanity in need of healing. And healing can be as uncomplicated, impactful and powerful as changing one’s mind, one’s consciousness, in the presence of community we cannot escape even when we want to.
The woman embraces her intersectionality, her many-faceted identity, everything that makes the world devalue her, and she gives Jesus a piece of her mind, her queertivity. “But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’” And with that, Jesus changes his mind, his consciousness, physically alters his course, and expands his purpose. “Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.”
This nation is demon-possessed by capitalism and greed, patriarchy and white supremacy, nationalism and partisanship, violence and abuse of power, and it seems as though there are enough of us who have lived quite comfortably with and benefited from this system that have Finally. Had. Enough. But not before everyone who has power attempts every opportunity to control and hold onto whatever power they can; not before toxic masculinity can throw a tantrum, deflect and obfuscate in a high stakes, public job interview and still get the job; not before those in power completely strip away all of the hard-won freedoms and protections of the past 50 years.
Which means you must use your queertivity, embrace your intersectionality. Those who have privilege, power, and money, need to invest in those who have had to beg just for the right to exist safely in public space, to have what they need to live. Wherever, whenever we resist, protest, speak truth to BS, we have to bring Jesus in the room, into the conversation. Which means we who have privilege have to leave our white, cisgender, ableist, Christian fragility at the door and bring our black and brown neighbors, our trans and queer neighbors, our immigrant and refugee neighbors, our Muslim and Jewish and Hindu and Buddhist and atheist and Baha’i and Sikh neighbors, our differently abled neighbors, our neighbors whose first language isn’t English, our neurodivergent neighbors, our unemployed and underemployed neighbors, our street neighbors, our neighbors on Medicare and Medicaid, our marginalized and criminalized neighbors. That's what it means to bring Jesus in the room.
The time is now here when the first shall indeed be last, and the last shall finally be first. And you, you are the answer that is needed. Me and mine, the racism of my ancestors, the racism that runs in my blood, is what got us here, and we must get out of the way. The future is intersectional. “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it.” Queertivity is the new consciousness. Thanks be to that Power that is making all things new.
Heritage United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
October 14, 2018
Before I begin I need to make a confession.
Two weeks ago I preached this sermon at the New Ark United Church of Christ. When I originally had these thoughts, I had planned on bringing them to you. For me, this church can be like the region of Tyre—a place where Jesus could have a break and get away from what is familiar but certainly not away from the call of God.
The New Ark is a predominantly white church and privileged, so I crafted the message for them. In preparing to come here, I rewrote some of the message because you are a different church. Where the need for confession comes in is that this version, the one I am about to share with you, is the one I should have given to the New Ark as well.
This past summer at Fa Lane’s ordination, your own Dorothy King, moderator of the Chesapeake Association, named some of the qualities that Fa would bring to her ministry. One of them is creativity. But from where I was sitting, and listening to the pitch and cadence of Dorothy’s voice, I heard “queertivity”. My mind and heart leapt with delight.
At once I remembered a quote, an idea attributed to Albert Einstein: “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it.” Queertivity. It will be the queer minds, the marginalized minds, the neurodivergent minds, all those who’ve been underrepresented, kept and pushed away from the table, their voices silenced, their identity debased, ignored or erased—these are the ones who possess the consciousness to solve humanity’s problems.
In what looks like, sounds like this different consciousness, some folks have been declaring, “The future is female”. But still others say this doesn’t go far enough. The future is not female, they say; the future is intersectional. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a contemporary black feminist, coined the term “intersectionality”. We have not just one identity but co-existing identities. We are not solely our gender but also our race, economic status, ethnicity, culture, language, ability, nationality, education, religion, sexuality, age. All of these shape our experience, our thinking, our consciousness, how we see and engage the world, how the world views us and behaves toward us. All these identities have been used to create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination. Whole groups of people are systematically discriminated against because of skin color AND gender AND gender expression AND economic status. On the flip side, it’s also what we mean in the United Church of Christ when we say we are Open and Affirming: we are open to all our identities, all of what it means to be human, and we affirm and lift up the whole person.
These identities interact and interconnect at a level so profound that we can’t say the future we fight for is equality for only one identity. We can’t assume that if we lift up women and girls, liberation, justice and equity will come for everyone who is disenfranchised. The future is all genders and it is black and brown and queer and trans and differently abled and neurodivergent and the least of these.
The future is intersectional because the old rules of patriarchy, abuse and safeguarding of power, elevating some at the expense and destruction of everyone else are how we got here. It’s going to take a different consciousness, it’s going to take queertivity to solve the problems created by patriarchy, abusive power, and exclusivity. Queertivity, the creativity of that different consciousness, comes as a result of embracing intersectionality.
The unnamed Syro-Phoenician woman, mother to a daughter with a demon, possessed queertivity. Alone, gentile and female, she approached a Jewish rabbi. Jesus went to the region of Tyre to escape the crowds but he could not escape the people who needed him the most. Jesus may have had no place to put his head but compared to this foreign woman, he was privileged and protected and had power she did not. However many times we’ve read this story, did we ever consider the courage, tenacity and vulnerability it took for this woman to bow down at his feet and beg Jesus to heal her daughter?
Then in one of the most un-Jesus moments in the gospels, Jesus responds to her in a way that can only be described as prejudiced and demeaning. He says to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children he refers to are the children of Israel, and then Jesus goes so far as to say that healing this foreigner’s daughter would be unfair and then he calls them dogs.
Let’s stop there for a moment. I for one am heartened to have this account of Jesus behaving like a privileged male of the patriarchy, about ready to withhold his power from someone who desperately needs it, precisely because the story does not end there. The incarnation is not about humanity becoming perfect but about the divine entering into a fragile humanity in need of healing. And healing can be as uncomplicated, impactful and powerful as changing one’s mind, one’s consciousness, in the presence of community we cannot escape even when we want to.
The woman embraces her intersectionality, her many-faceted identity, everything that makes the world devalue her, and she gives Jesus a piece of her mind, her queertivity. “But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’” And with that, Jesus changes his mind, his consciousness, physically alters his course, and expands his purpose. “Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.”
This nation is demon-possessed by capitalism and greed, patriarchy and white supremacy, nationalism and partisanship, violence and abuse of power, and it seems as though there are enough of us who have lived quite comfortably with and benefited from this system that have Finally. Had. Enough. But not before everyone who has power attempts every opportunity to control and hold onto whatever power they can; not before toxic masculinity can throw a tantrum, deflect and obfuscate in a high stakes, public job interview and still get the job; not before those in power completely strip away all of the hard-won freedoms and protections of the past 50 years.
Which means you must use your queertivity, embrace your intersectionality. Those who have privilege, power, and money, need to invest in those who have had to beg just for the right to exist safely in public space, to have what they need to live. Wherever, whenever we resist, protest, speak truth to BS, we have to bring Jesus in the room, into the conversation. Which means we who have privilege have to leave our white, cisgender, ableist, Christian fragility at the door and bring our black and brown neighbors, our trans and queer neighbors, our immigrant and refugee neighbors, our Muslim and Jewish and Hindu and Buddhist and atheist and Baha’i and Sikh neighbors, our differently abled neighbors, our neighbors whose first language isn’t English, our neurodivergent neighbors, our unemployed and underemployed neighbors, our street neighbors, our neighbors on Medicare and Medicaid, our marginalized and criminalized neighbors. That's what it means to bring Jesus in the room.
The time is now here when the first shall indeed be last, and the last shall finally be first. And you, you are the answer that is needed. Me and mine, the racism of my ancestors, the racism that runs in my blood, is what got us here, and we must get out of the way. The future is intersectional. “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it.” Queertivity is the new consciousness. Thanks be to that Power that is making all things new.
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