Text: Galatians 5: 1, 13-15, 25

This Sunday, 21 years ago, Bev and I came downtown on the day of the Gay Pride parade, and we stood at the end of the causeway, right about where that bronze cast of Emily Carr stands today with the monkey on her back. That day, though it wasn’t visible to the eye, Bev and I each had a monkey on our backs … the monkey called Fear. And Fear’s voice, though not audible in the way I’m audible to you right now, spoke loudly, urging us to be cautious, protective. “What if people see you, Fear said. “What will you say? How will you explain yourself? You could lose your job.” Not only did Fear talk. Somehow Fear had a hold of our feet. Fear more or less let us be when we took our place on the sidewalk as spectators … watching for my dad in the procession who would be proudly walking with the PFLAG group (parents and friends of lesbians and gays).

21 years ago. We’ve come a long way in 21 years. I’ve come a long way in 21 years … not only but at least in part because we’ve come a long way in 21 years. AND many young people (and not only young people) are still opting for suicide because of the hatred and the violence, both real and imagined.

So that is in part why, this year, I’m walking in the procession through the city, even though after the last few years -- and last year in particular-- I found myself questioning the whole thing … wondering if we had lost our way … like somewhere along the way we got severed from the roots of Gay Pride … from the stories of people and the people themselves who put everything on the line … all that hard won work.

Sara Miles puts it this way, in a sermon I heard her preach this past week …
“Gay Day is not supposed to be about those expensive floats; it’s not supposed to be about elected officials tossing candy to the crowd; or wedding planners drumming up business, or cheesy rainbow flag trinkets everywhere. And mostly it’s not about Gay Pride. I just hate gay ‘Pride.’ Pride, as St Paul says, is a problem! Pride is what sustains us in sin. And sin is the million ways that we distance ourselves from God by separating ourselves from one another. Back in the old days, we did not call it gay pride. We called it Gay Liberation. And liberation -- not pride-- is what we’re celebrating here this morning.

Gay day is about freedom, that sweet sexy sting of absolute joy when you realize that love is more powerful than law. Freedom, when you see the oddest, weirdest, most stigmatized children are beautiful and beloved; when you taste a cup of water, living water, free water that’s poured out for everyone and then you see everyone handing it out to one another, without boundaries, freely, because Jesus is freedom. He has loved us in our various bodies without reservation. He’s chosen us, as weak and clueless as we are, to be his disciples. He has recreated us a new people, no longer under the law, but free under the grace of God … not ruled by greed and commerce and the temptation of assimilation into the world, but liberated to be free people, who willingly turn over our entire bodies to do righteousness and to serve other people.”

This is the freedom St Paul is talking about in that excerpt from his letter that Eileen read this morning …
it’s the freedom to rise above self-interest and self absorption …
the freedom, paradoxically, to be bound to one another …
the freedom to serve one another and the world in love.

I had the privilege of being caught up in a powerful demonstration of this kind of freedom when I was student intern in South Korea in the summer of 1987. It was at least as hot as we’ve had it these last days … and politically, way hotter! When we first arrived, there were just the 2 of us overseas interns living in a small residence … and then, within a couple of weeks, we were joined by all these ministers who were settling in and beginning a hunger strike. They were protesting the imprisonment and in some cases, the disappearance of people -- students and factory workers, fellow ministers and others who had spoken out against injustices, against countless violations of people’s democratic rights. Plain clothed, government hired, thugs took station at the gate into the residence property … keeping an eye on what these ministers were doing, where they were going. The ministers made themselves identifiable by their shaved heads and their purple clerical shirts … purple not for bishop status, but purple indicating ordeal, endurance and justice.
Every day, several times a day, they would gather for prayer … and they would sing … they would join protests across the city …and refuse to eat, calling for the release of those illegally detained … insisting on the right for peaceful protest .. and the end of the current regime. For me, witnessing their radical commitment, their freedom
inspired and strengthened by their faith-- it made a deep impression on me … sowed seeds in me that I didn’t know were there til one afternoon I found myself in the midst of a massive demonstration not by intention… but that’s another story for another day. Enough today to simply say that standing there I understood we could die here today, but somehow the desire to stand in solidarity for the sake of protecting people’s lives was more powerful than the urge to get out of there and save my own life. I count it one of the most valuable gifts of my life to have had that experience of deep freedom … in Sara Miles words, “the sting of absolute joy when you realize love is more powerful than law.”

Before I left South Korea that summer, that hot, violent summer, I went to a tailor and got measured for a purple clerical shirt. I didn’t know for what … I think I saw it as a souvenir … a potent reminder of these people, of their freedom, their depth of faith, the depth of their commitment to care about and stand with those who are suffering -- their freedom to put their bodies, their whole beings on the line for the sake of life.

I’ve never worn this shirt. But today I’m going to put it on and wear it as we walk through the city. Purple for ordeal, endurance and justice. It’s going to be my way of remembering and honouring the labour and the labour pains of those who’ve delivered us to this point. And under the banner of James Bay United Church, it will be a way of bearing witness to the wide open, free flowing love of God.

After the Gay Day festivities last year, maybe I decided too quickly that the whole thing has become a party in such a way that there’s nothing at stake. For today what I see is that our liberation is at stake … the liberation of us all. Until there are no more suicides over being gay … until people are free to live into the gender identity that is truly theirs without some tortuous journey to get there … until that Fear monkey has no more allies … until we are free to see the oddest, weirdest, most stigmatized children are beautiful and beloved … until we get it that God’s love is indivisible, that God plays no favourites, and our salvation is bound up with every other life … until then, the liberation of us all is still at stake.

There are all sorts of ways we can live into our freedom. As people called to take part in God’s love for the whole world -- no exceptions-- we have the freedom to live for others, to be a blessing to others,
to be all were are created by God to be.
This is a day to celebrate that freedom.
This is a day exercise that freedom to serve one another in love --
to be in the service of a wide, wide open love.

Surely every day is that day … to live in the radical freedom of that all sufficient love which calls us out of our slavery to self-interest and into life-giving connection with the vastness of God’s creation.

Whether in the streets or along the sidewalk, at home or the check-out counter at Thrifty’s buying a cool drink, how will you exercise that holy freedom today?

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