Mar 06 | “Coming out of the [prayer] closet,” (Ash Wednesday Sermon, March 6th 2019)

It’s always fascinating to preach on Ash Wednesday in a queer affirming church.

Why?

Because I am constantly reminded of the King James Version of the passage from Matthew, which reads at verse 6: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father who seest in secret shall reward thee openly.”

Man, is there ever a good time to enter into thy closet once you’ve come out of it?

Now, don’t get me wrong. For some of our friends around the world and even here at home, the closet is a safer place to be than outside of it, at least for the moment. But it’s no-one’s ideal. And in the world we’re living in today, if it’s safe to come out, we should – not just for our own health, but to shame the bigots with the blazing light of courage. Representation ain’t easy to come by. Come out in all your glory.

Likewise, these days the progressive church should come out of the closet. We should celebrate its power to comfort those who seek refuge in its message of unconditional love for all God’s children. We shouldn’t be shy in who we are and who we serve. Progressive Christians do tend to feel it’s gauche to ask, “Do you know Jesus?” to everyone who passes by, and with good reason. We don’t have to adopt every tool our more conservative siblings employ. But in the time we’re living in, isn’t it be better to cry aloud that God has come among us and is making all things new?

And so is now, in the hurting and fractured and angry world we live in, the best time to be mucking about in the closet?

Well, the passage we just heard from Matthew doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It’s balanced not only with the out-and-proud call to justice of the prophet Isaiah, who chooses the fast of liberation, but with the memory of what came before in Matthew’s Gospel.

In Chapter 5, Jesus tells us to repudiate the norms of the world we live in. In the Beatitudes, he tells us we live in an upside-down world where the poor in spirit, the lowly, and the meek and mild are the ones who will inherit God’s kingdom. He tells us that we should be salt and light, impossible to hide, heroes of our neighbours, out and proud. He tells us that he is not here to abolish any of the laws but to fulfill them, and we should therefore be more righteous, more kind, more radical than any have yet been. He constantly repeats the refrain, “You have heard that it was said… But I say…” The law says do not murder. I say do not even be angry with each other. The law says do not swear falsely. I say do not swear at all. The law says “An eye for an eye.” I say “Turn the other cheek.” In all things, he says, we are to shame the other with our peaceful nonviolent resistance.

Then he says, “Oh, but do it quietly.”

Is that even possible?!

How can we live out loud in the closet?

Of course it’s likely Jesus is employing hyperbole here. But let’s go a little deeper. Let’s ask ourselves what this could mean in the season of Lent.

In the season of Lent, we strip away our desires and illusions and accretions to get at our spiritual core. We dive deep to harvest pearls, those strange treasures that form and harden around the grit of imperfection and mortality, and offer them back to God.

On this particular night, we admit our needs to the God who made us this way. We admit our dependence and our confusion. We admit our evanescence and our fragility. We admit the impossibility of the task we have been given – living loud but little lives – and together lean on each other in our vulnerability. We accept that our work can never be done in one lifetime, and that’s okay.

In a sense, we do get into the closet in the season of Lent: not because it’s a good or a holy place, but because it reminds us that it exists only to be shattered in the light of Easter. The closet is really just a symbol, maybe a microcosm, of our own limitations, the ones imposed upon us by our beautiful broken world and the ones we impose upon ourselves out of fear and anxiety. It’s not easy to live out loud.

But we shouldn’t despair, for in a sense God too entered the closet, a closet of earthly flesh, in Jesus Christ. And despite all his best efforts to come out, to tell his truth – that he was the Messiah despite his frailty and utter ordinariness – humanity just stood outside the doors and wondered what all the racket was about. The disciples only recognized the truth when God blew the doors right off their hinges one Sunday morning… Ah, but we’re not at that point in the story yet.

The prophet Isaiah tells us to live out loud by throwing ourselves into self-sacrificing love, that this will be our liberation. But Matthew reminds us that we do not do this work solely for our own glory. It is truly God’s joy to see us burst forth from the confines of the closet. How much more will she rejoice if we respond to our freedom by running off to yank open other closet doors? Your liberation is only the first step. The next step is sharing your freedom with others who are reaching for it. In coming out we discover that we are not alone. Once we have filled our cup with strength, we have power to re-enter without fear, for when we open the doors, we discover that we are no longer alone: we meet the Beloved within! “Seven minutes in heaven” indeed!

This is why we mark Ash Wednesday. We can only celebrate the unbound freedom of resurrection when we are willing to embrace the dark and stuffy confines of death. When we remember the closet, remember times when we were fighting to stay alive like a butterfly in a jar, we are given the power to liberate the ones who are still trapped, to blow those doors right off their hinges as God once did and as God continues to do.

And closets are not just a place to hide, of course. Closets are for storing treasures with which to adorn ourselves. Some of these treasures are bright and colourful, like integrity and grit, and some are small and delicate but all the more precious, like vulnerability and fear.

All of these things were woven into the fabric of God’s robes of flesh. And God looked fabulous in that ensemble. So too do we embody the beauty of a God who went into the closet not to hide and wither there, but to gather up a rainbow of treasures to share with the world, to invite others to share their brightest and best.

This evening, we are gathered together in this closet, this little church, admitting that our beautiful bodies are especially beautiful because they don’t last forever, and our beautiful contradictions are beautiful because sometimes despite it all we choose compassion and love and kindness. We’re embracing our finitude with a small sign here, where everyone can see it.

And then, we’re coming out.

We’re coming out into a world that rages against death and scorns the aged. We’re coming out into a world that trumpets brute strength over emotional vulnerability. We’re coming out into a world that increasingly asks if love is possible.

We’re coming out, and no-one said it was easy – but we’re together, and we look fabulous.

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