Coming home to each other
Psalm 34
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
October 27, 2024
How’s everyone’s existential dread doing?
It’s a day when we can be delivered from our existential fears for a while and play in a way that is less scary than living in exile. It’s a day when our faces shall not be ashamed, because we can wear makeup or a mask or we can take off the one we wear all the time. It’s a day to be happy and take refuge in queer liberation. It’s a day when the awkward kid gets to be a superhero and the quiet kid gets to be outlandish, said one friend. It’s a day for us to taste and see that God is good. It’s a day of skeletons and bones, and God keeps every one of them. It’s a day for redemption, when no one is condemned but all are welcomed. God wants all of us to make it home.
Benediction – enfleshed.com
Let all who are named Freak, Monster, Weirdo, or That Which Others Should Fear call out to the gifts in each other. When destruction is made normal, we need all the wild, all the odd, all the unusual we can get.
Blessed be the tricksters, stirring up trouble when evil desires calm.
Praise God for the prophets who linger with us like ghosts.
Hallelujah to the children, knocking on the hearts of strangers, chasing joy from door to door.
Let us keep trying on possibilities like costumes, until we discover the ones that will leave evil trembling.
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
October 27, 2024
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| Photo of my little brother in a red and white clown costume and green parka, me in a princess costume with a mask and pink and beige dress with a light blue winter jacket, and a neighbor friend wearing a monster mask, white jersey, blue pants, red Keds, and a light brown wool toggle coat. We're standing in front of the back end of a black Mercury station wagon with fake wood paneling. |
How’s everyone’s existential dread doing?
That good, huh?
So, okay let’s talk about something less scary…
Who loves Halloween?
My relationship with Halloween is complicated. When I was a kid, my mom was not a fan of Halloween. First, there were those stories about razor blades in apples and candy bars, so my mom wanted my brother and me to be safe. Also, she was worried about sugar and cavities. So, on Halloween, rather than getting a bagful of candy from trick-or-treating, my brother and I would dress up in our costumes and my mom would take us to the mall to either Friendly’s or Brigham’s and we would sit at the counter and have a hot fudge sundae. When my brother and I aged out of the trip to the mall, when kids came to our house, my mother handed out packs of sugarless gum, little boxes of raisins, or a small bag of salted peanuts. At one point she might’ve handed out pencils, ultimately defeating the whole notion of “trick or treat”.
When I asked folks on Facebook why they love Halloween, I heard things like, it’s when the veil between this world and the next is thinnest, when I can feel my ancestors with me. It connects me to my folk roots and to Samhain. It takes place during autumn, my favorite time of the year. It’s the one day when I can eat most of a bag of fun-sized Baby Ruths and nobody thinks it’s weird. Candy and chocolate ranked high in the responses.
Others love the magical creepy spookiness, some love the gory, monstrous horror of Halloween and let me say a word about that. I recently read about an idea, a theory that people who experienced trauma or abuse or loneliness as a child sometimes develop a tendency to embrace things that other people might consider grotesque or scary. When you’ve been told in subtle and not so subtle ways that you don’t belong, when you believe you’re not wanted, it makes sense that you would become a champion of the underdog, a finder and keeper of lost and broken things, an appreciator of things other people think are repulsive. You’re protecting people and creatures and things that no one else wants because like you, like everyone, they exist and because they exist they need love and protection.
Imagine then, on top of that rejection, growing up in a faith tradition that says the same thing not only about you but also about the scary, grotesque things you love. Abuse heaped upon abuse. No escape not even into fantasy or the mercy of God. All that pain and trauma turned inward and against the world. And yet what is faith for, if not to know that God is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Why do people hide such a good word from those who need it most?
Halloween has become a holiday that is a good word for those who need it most. How many of you have heard Halloween called “Gay Christmas”? Anyone who’s been to the gay Halloween bingo in Wilmington knows what I’m talking about. Halloween as a queer holiday dates as far back as 1935 when a gay Black man named Albert Finnie would throw a glamorous Halloween costume ball every year in Chicago. It’s a day when people can try on an identity or give expression to their inner selves. For queer folx and others who live on the margins it’s a day of freedom and nonconformity and no one thinks it’s weird.
Even the context of this psalm plays into Halloween and is a good word for those who are outcasts. David, who is a queer icon for some, having loved Jonathan like his own soul, is on the run from King Saul. He flees to the city of Gath where he finds himself surrounded by the Philistine king Achish and his men. In order to escape, David takes on the guise of a madman, scratching at the door of the gate and drooling over his beard. Robert Alter, in his commentary on Psalm 34, writes, “Why did the editor detect a link between our psalm and this incident in David’s story? In all likelihood, the connection he saw was the psalm’s emphasis on God’s rescuing power, even when the just [person] is threatened with imminent death by [their] enemies.”
As one person responded on Facebook, Halloween is the one day during the year that people are willing to approach neighbors in a non-threatening way. It’s a day when we can come home to each other. Poet and pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes writes, “Halloween: a day when we get it right. Strangers come to us, beautiful, ugly, odd or scary, and we accept them all without question, compliment them, treat them kindly, and give them good things.” Teenagers and young adults—some not so young—get to be kids for a while longer. The kid in all of us gets a chance to be whoever we want to be.
So, okay let’s talk about something less scary…
Who loves Halloween?
My relationship with Halloween is complicated. When I was a kid, my mom was not a fan of Halloween. First, there were those stories about razor blades in apples and candy bars, so my mom wanted my brother and me to be safe. Also, she was worried about sugar and cavities. So, on Halloween, rather than getting a bagful of candy from trick-or-treating, my brother and I would dress up in our costumes and my mom would take us to the mall to either Friendly’s or Brigham’s and we would sit at the counter and have a hot fudge sundae. When my brother and I aged out of the trip to the mall, when kids came to our house, my mother handed out packs of sugarless gum, little boxes of raisins, or a small bag of salted peanuts. At one point she might’ve handed out pencils, ultimately defeating the whole notion of “trick or treat”.
When I asked folks on Facebook why they love Halloween, I heard things like, it’s when the veil between this world and the next is thinnest, when I can feel my ancestors with me. It connects me to my folk roots and to Samhain. It takes place during autumn, my favorite time of the year. It’s the one day when I can eat most of a bag of fun-sized Baby Ruths and nobody thinks it’s weird. Candy and chocolate ranked high in the responses.
Others love the magical creepy spookiness, some love the gory, monstrous horror of Halloween and let me say a word about that. I recently read about an idea, a theory that people who experienced trauma or abuse or loneliness as a child sometimes develop a tendency to embrace things that other people might consider grotesque or scary. When you’ve been told in subtle and not so subtle ways that you don’t belong, when you believe you’re not wanted, it makes sense that you would become a champion of the underdog, a finder and keeper of lost and broken things, an appreciator of things other people think are repulsive. You’re protecting people and creatures and things that no one else wants because like you, like everyone, they exist and because they exist they need love and protection.
Imagine then, on top of that rejection, growing up in a faith tradition that says the same thing not only about you but also about the scary, grotesque things you love. Abuse heaped upon abuse. No escape not even into fantasy or the mercy of God. All that pain and trauma turned inward and against the world. And yet what is faith for, if not to know that God is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Why do people hide such a good word from those who need it most?
Halloween has become a holiday that is a good word for those who need it most. How many of you have heard Halloween called “Gay Christmas”? Anyone who’s been to the gay Halloween bingo in Wilmington knows what I’m talking about. Halloween as a queer holiday dates as far back as 1935 when a gay Black man named Albert Finnie would throw a glamorous Halloween costume ball every year in Chicago. It’s a day when people can try on an identity or give expression to their inner selves. For queer folx and others who live on the margins it’s a day of freedom and nonconformity and no one thinks it’s weird.
Even the context of this psalm plays into Halloween and is a good word for those who are outcasts. David, who is a queer icon for some, having loved Jonathan like his own soul, is on the run from King Saul. He flees to the city of Gath where he finds himself surrounded by the Philistine king Achish and his men. In order to escape, David takes on the guise of a madman, scratching at the door of the gate and drooling over his beard. Robert Alter, in his commentary on Psalm 34, writes, “Why did the editor detect a link between our psalm and this incident in David’s story? In all likelihood, the connection he saw was the psalm’s emphasis on God’s rescuing power, even when the just [person] is threatened with imminent death by [their] enemies.”
As one person responded on Facebook, Halloween is the one day during the year that people are willing to approach neighbors in a non-threatening way. It’s a day when we can come home to each other. Poet and pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes writes, “Halloween: a day when we get it right. Strangers come to us, beautiful, ugly, odd or scary, and we accept them all without question, compliment them, treat them kindly, and give them good things.” Teenagers and young adults—some not so young—get to be kids for a while longer. The kid in all of us gets a chance to be whoever we want to be.
It’s a day when we can be delivered from our existential fears for a while and play in a way that is less scary than living in exile. It’s a day when our faces shall not be ashamed, because we can wear makeup or a mask or we can take off the one we wear all the time. It’s a day to be happy and take refuge in queer liberation. It’s a day when the awkward kid gets to be a superhero and the quiet kid gets to be outlandish, said one friend. It’s a day for us to taste and see that God is good. It’s a day of skeletons and bones, and God keeps every one of them. It’s a day for redemption, when no one is condemned but all are welcomed. God wants all of us to make it home.
Benediction – enfleshed.com
Let all who are named Freak, Monster, Weirdo, or That Which Others Should Fear call out to the gifts in each other. When destruction is made normal, we need all the wild, all the odd, all the unusual we can get.
Blessed be the tricksters, stirring up trouble when evil desires calm.
Praise God for the prophets who linger with us like ghosts.
Hallelujah to the children, knocking on the hearts of strangers, chasing joy from door to door.
Let us keep trying on possibilities like costumes, until we discover the ones that will leave evil trembling.
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