​195 Years of Activism: A Few Reflections on Loving, Fighting and Legacy
May 30, 2019
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
I was born on March 5, 1969, almost four months before the Stonewall Riots. As we gather here tonight, I am profoundly aware of the fact that my life has been  intertwined with and deeply impacted by the life of the modern LGBTQIA+ movement. I’m also profoundly aware that many of those rioters and resisters who rose up at Stonewall, people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and other trans+ women of color like those in STAR—the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries-- didn’t make it to age 50, let alone 60 or 85. I stand here because so many have loved and laughed, struggled and died to make the path I’ve trod.
 
I’m also thinking of many smaller moments and how they have, collectively, knit together my story.
 
It was 1972 and I was riding the bus with my Grammie. She sat next to me as I stood on the seat and pointed out all the churches along our route into downtown Cleveland because she and my parents had already taken me to so many organizing meetings. It was also 1972 when Bill Johnson, who’d been ordained earlier that year as the first out gay person by the United Church of Christ, was invited by my parents to stay in our home.
 
It was 1977 and the United Church of Christ published its sexuality report that then sat on my dad’s library shelf for several years before I took it and kept it hidden under my mattress so I could consult with it as I talked with my best friend about whether she’d have sex with her boyfriend.
 
It was 1978 when I begged Mrs. Cunningham, my third grade teacher, for one of the flyers about the YMCA summer baseball league she was giving to all the boys. When she relented and gave me one and I signed up and we got the word that I wasn’t eligible because I was a girl, my mom organized a petition that reminded the YMCA that there was this thing called Title IX and that she would sue them if they didn’t let me play. I was one of three girls in the league that year. I played for the Dodgers and we lost our first game 44-11. But it was the beginning of a life-long love of organized sports which has included softball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, biking, running and swimming. And all of it taught me to love and trust my own body and its power and vulnerability.
 
It was 1983 when Melissa Gilbert played Jean Donovan in the made for TV movie about El Salvador’s US-funded death squads and I transferred my crush on Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls Wilder to Melissa Gilbert as Jean Donovan and read everything I could find about her and Archbishop Oscar Romero and Latin American Liberation theology. And then it was 1987 and 1988 and 1989 when that crush led me to participate in the Accompaniment movement and to live and study in Central America.
 
It was 1989 and, because of the courage of the Co-Madre movement in El Salvador and witness of a faith that was necessary for survival, I came home and both broke my silence about being a survivor of sexual violence and came out as a lesbian.
 
It was the 80’s and the 90’s and the 00’s and the 2010’s and there are so many Marches on Washington—against wars, for queer justice, for reproductive justice, for indigenous justice, for racial justice, for all of these together. I particularly remember marching with Queer Nation against the first Iraq War in which we staged die-ins at the height of the AIDS crisis and chanted hilarious, smart, sexually-explicit chants against the war (ask me what they were, I’d love to tell you!)
 
It was 2010 and Maggie, my parents and three year-old Shannon and I were driving in a car in which we’d put Shannon’s carseat in the third row of the rental car, surrounded by luggage. Not five minutes into the drive, Shannon, remembering the protest she’d been to when Prop 8 passed, improvs from the back seat, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, discrimination has got to go, get me out of the trunk!”
 
It was 2013 and I stood with many of you in a packed church across from the Minnesota State Capitol the night before the Minnesota House passed marriage equality and we listened to Rabbi Latz talk about the symbolism of the chuppah and pagan leader Robin cast the circle and David Lohman lead us in singing For Everyone Born. And how, for a brief moment, we touched that elusive space of joy and justice.
 
 
It was 2018 and the temperature with the windchill was close to 30 below zero. Under the guidance and leadership of Kandace Montgomery and other Black Visions Collective folx, several of us who were clergy prayed and supported a dozen folx, including Rabbi Lekach-Rosenberg, who locked themselves to the fences to block the train coming into the SuperBowl to demand an end to business as usual.
 
In every year since March 5, 1969, there have been several through-lines:

• None of what I am or do is simply about me. I am because so many others are. And my liberation is deeply woven with yours.
• It is my duty to pass on to others the legacy that has been passed on to me.
• To be someone who claims to be spiritually and religiously grounded is to be called time and time again to resist Empire, injustice and violence and to help co-create God’s extravagant, bodacious, sexy world. And worship and protest, praying and breaking unjust laws, singing hymns and chanting in resistance are all sacred, spiritual practices.
• Our movements are at their best when they return regularly to healing trauma, celebrating the blessedness of embodiment and focusing on making love and justice in the world in small and big ways.
• Blessing upon blessing has been mine—through my biological family, through my chosen family, through Maggie and Shannon, through my movement families and particularly with so many of you in this room with whom I’ve had the honor and privilege of making sacred trouble. In particular, knowing and working and playing and praying with Beth and Barbara is sheer gift.

 
Thank you to Stacey and Sayre and the Task Force and thank you to each of you and all of you for being here tonight.
 
I’d love to end with some Holly Near. Please join with me. I am open and I am willing, for to be hopeless would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before us. So lift me up to the light of change.
 
 

These are times in which the Christian claim that God embodies Godself as radically with and for us is desperately needed. Chaos, violence which threatens, turmoil and anxiety surround us.

State sponsored chaos: Jamal Kashoggi, the Saudi-born, US legal resident and Washington Post journalist whose murder was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman… the seventeen investigations which keep getting closer and closer to the sitting US President who seems more and more desperate… US Military troops shooting tear gas across the border at unarmed Central American refugees…

And personal tragedy: the fifty-one year old friend who entered hospice this week… the brilliant gay man who addiction and depression finally caused his death by suicide last week…
Both in the ambient national atmosphere and in the personal lives of many I love, it seems as if chaos and violence; sorrow and turmoil are the state of the world.

The same is true of the world into which Jesus was born. And yet, in the Christian tradition, as she prepares to give birth, Mary is reported to have sung... in resistant, resilient joy: My soul proclaims your greatness, O God, and my spirit rejoices in you.
​
How does she do this? And why? Here are some reflections and possible answers to read or listen to: 
​http://www.lyndaleucc.org/sermons/advent-4-preparing-to-sing-the-world-right-side-up/

I'm honored to have contributed a re-interpretation of the Prologue to John's Gospel in this wonderful collection. As we seek to both resist the forces of colonization and to build a more just, verdant and joyous world, it is critical to engage our scriptural traditions-- particularly those texts that have literally baptized the violence and death of the colonizer. This book is an attempt at just such a task.

Here's what folkx are saying about it: For generations, the Bible has been employed by settler colonial societies as a weapon to dispossess Indigenous and racialized peoples of their lands, cultures, and spiritualities. Given this devastating legacy, many want nothing to do with it. But is it possible for the exploited and their allies to reclaim the Bible from the dominant powers? Can we make it an instrument for justice in the cause of the oppressed? Even a nonviolent weapon toward decolonization?

In Unsettling the Word, over 60 Indigenous and Settler authors come together to wrestle with the Scriptures, re-reading and re-imagining the ancient text for the sake of reparative futures.

Created by Mennonite Church Canada’s Indigenous-Settler Relations program, Unsettling the Word is intended to nurture courageous conversations with the Bible, our current settler colonial contexts, and the Church’s call to costly peacemaking. 

Contributors include:

Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Kathy Moorhead Thiessen, Kwok Pui-lan, Christina Conroy, Leah Gazan, Joerg Rieger, Norman Habel, Stan McKay, Rachel and Chris Brnjas, Jennifer Henry, Lori Ransom, Rebecca Voelkel, Peter Haresnape, Robert O. Smith, Susanne Guenther Loewen, Carmen Landsdowne, Cheryl Bear, Joshua Grace, Rarihokwats, Darren W. Snyder Belousek, Joy De Vito, Tamara Shantz, Marc H. Ellis, Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, Sara Brubacher, Benjamin Hertwig, David Driedger, Pekka Pitkanen, Celine Chuang, Alain Epp Weaver, Musa W. Dube, Katerina Friesen, Anita L. Keith, Derrick Jensen, Roland Boer, Neil Elliott, Daniel Hawk, Randy Woodley, Lisa Martens, Tobin Miller Shearer, Walter Brueggemann, Miguel A. De La Torre, Vivian Ketchum, James W. Perkinson, Sara Anderson, Deanna Zantingh, Peter C. Phan, Sheila Klassen-Wiebe, Bob Haverluck, Mark Bigland-Pritchard, Chris Budden, Ellen F. Davis, Rose Marie Berger, Wes Howard-Brook, Gerald West, Julia M. O'Brien, Dan Epp-Tiessen, Ryan Dueck, Mitzi J. Smith, Sylvia McAdam, Robert Two Bulls, Ched Myers, Jonathan Dyck, Sarah Travis, Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, Kyla Neufeld

​To order your copy, go to: https://www.commonword.ca/ResourceView/2/19793​ 

Palm Sunday has been hopelessly domesticated by much of the Christian tradition. But, in truth, Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is a brilliant, perfectly planned and executed non-violent direct action. Its wisdom has much to teach us as we seek to navigate in this political moment in ways that are creative and strategic.

​Read more here.

In the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, there is a powerful scene in which God leads Ezekiel out to a valley in which there lie the bones of the dead. They are described as very dry. In these times, it often feels as if we are being placed amidst the bones of the victims of Empire's death-dealing. But Ezekiel's experience isn't only about the power of Empire to kill and oppress, it's also a powerful strategy for resistance.

Read more here

​When Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina died in July of 2008, Peter Staley told this story:"On September 5th, 1991, I put a giant condom over Jesse Helms’ house.
Why? Because, as the condom said, 'Helms is deadlier than a virus.' Senator Jesse Helms was one of the chief architects of AIDS-related stigma in the U.S. He fought against any federal spending on HIV research, treatment or prevention. He once said, referring to homosexuals, 'it’s their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease.' Here’s another choice one: 'There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.'

To read more about what this giant condom might have to do with Lenten practice, read more here: 
​http://www.lyndaleucc.org/sermons/inspired-by-love-and-anger/

These are very difficult times. The level of intentional targeting and traumatizing being done by this White House and their Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist base is exhausting. The backlash against the #MeToo campaign and the stories of so much pain that survivors experience can be overwhelming. And it's all amidst the season of Advent. What does it all mean and how do we survive and resist? As a way to answer some of these questions, I preached at Lyndale UCC in Minneapolis. You can read or listen here: Persistent Love
 

It feels very much like a Dietrich Bonhoeffer Advent. As I've been reading his work The Mystery of the Holy Night, I can't help but see the parallels between his grappling with what he ought to do as a person of faith in the face of Nazism and what we ought to do in the face of the rise of white supremacy and Nazism. As a way to further reflect on this question, I share the sermon below.



​

Awaiting the (Re)Birth of Love: Resilient Hope
Mark 1:1-8 and a Letter from Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Tegel Prison
to His Parents, Advent 1943
Lyndale UCC—Dec 3, 2017
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here…. Until the Child of God appear. Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel, shall come to you, O Israel.
 
What gives you hope? How does hope persist for you? How are you able to tolerate waiting in this Advent season?
 
Sometimes when there is a prescribed season of the church (like Advent or Lent), I have to get myself into the right mindset or framework because it just doesn’t match what I’m feeling or experiencing. Or sometimes I read an assigned scripture for the day and think, what does that have to do with my life or ours?
 
I have to tell you that neither of these things happened for me this week…
 
The yearning, the longing, the waiting for love to be born amidst a world that seems to have gone mad…. The persistent search for hope amidst the madness and waiting… it all seems to have been written for this moment.
 
Our scripture for this morning focuses on John the Baptist. You might remember that John dressed himself in the clothing of the prophets (camel hair tied with a leather belt) and ate locusts and wild honey in order to give people all the visual and cultural cues of the prophetic tradition. Something is radically wrong, John is proclaiming.
 
His people are occupied by the Roman Empire—with its military and its tax plan, with its sexual violence and conquest. And far too many religious leaders are corrupted by their colluding ways. Things feel apocalyptic, with things they hold dear being destroyed.
 
Repent, John pleads. Turn away from the Empire, he demands. Find a way to cleanse yourself of all this toxicity and, instead, help prepare the way for the One of justice and peace.
 
It has been a week of Empire and collusion in our lives, too…
 
Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor and the continued senate campaign of Roy Moore with his Christian preacher supporters who invoke Mary and Joseph to literally baptize pedophilia with Christian theology.
 
The Republican Tax bill which passed the Senate in the middle of the night that, if it survives reconciliation with the House bill, will push 11,000,000 people off health care, put money in the weathiest pockets, open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, just to name a few.
 
And then there was World AIDS Day on Thursday.
 
With each of these, and with many things these days, I find myself being transported to other places—flashbacks of a kind.
 
There are the Anita Hill hearings which I watched with such hope, wearing my “I believe her” button… there was that time in our shelter at Peoples Church in Chicago, whose numbers had swelled because President Reagan cut funding to affordable housing and homeless services. I sat at a table, as a teenager, with a homeless man whose fingers were black from severe frostbite because he had nowhere to go amidst the bitter cold. What can I do, he asked my fifteen year old self?
 
And there is Michael, one of my first patients when I worked as a chaplain at the VA in Seattle. He was in his late thirties and dying of AIDS. It came to me as a flashback this week how he recounted his early years in church when he was told of his sinfulness and worthlessness.  He shared his excommunication when it was learned he was gay.  And how his AIDS diagnosis only made it worse.  He spoke of simple cruelties and profound ones.  In place of care and love, ridicule and revulsion.  When he desperately needed tenderness, betrayal came, again and again. 
 
And then how he finally came to the questions, asked with genuine fear and trembling. Do you think I’m going to burn in hell?  Do you think by this time next week I’ll be in the outer darkness?   
 
It has been a week of Empire and collusion and collusion and Empire.
 
So how are we to hope? How are we to wait for the advent of justice and love?
 
On the eve of World AIDS Day, an HIV+ clergy colleague posted a story from Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. He shared it as his testimony to the start of Advent amidst the marking of World AIDS Day. He shared it as one answer to what gives hope, of what is worth anticipating and waiting for.
 
These are the words from Anne Lamott: "One of our newer members, a man named Ken Nelson, is dying of AIDS, disintegrating before our very eyes...Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaci­ated, but when he smiles, he is radiant. He looks like God's crazy nephew Phil...There's a woman in the choir named Ranola who is large and beautiful and jovial and black and as devout as can be, who has been a little standoffish toward Ken...She was raised in the South by Baptists who taught her that his way of life—that he—was an abomination. It is hard for her to break through this. I think she and a few other women at church are, on the most visceral level, a little afraid of catching the disease...So on this one particular Sunday... when it came time for the second hymn, the Fellowship Hymn, we were to sing "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." The pianist was play­ing and the whole congregation had risen—only Ken remained seated, holding the hymnal in his lap—and we began to sing, "Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?" And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up—lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang. And it pierced me."
 
“It is times like these that show what it really means to have a past and an inner legacy independent of the change of times and conditions. The awareness of being borne up by a spiritual tradition that lasts for [centuries] gives one a strong sense of security in the face of all transitory distress…” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
 
As we begin this Advent journey-- particularly amidst the power of Empire and the betrayals of collusion--we do so with another kind of flash back: We have a past, an inner and an outer legacy. While we wait the birth of love, we do so knowing that love has already been born.
 
While we seek hope, we do so coming back, over and over again, to the communion table… a place where the cradle and the solidarity of the cross are embodied. The communion table… a place where we know the reality of God’s radical, physical, palpable presence with us and in us and the reality that God will and does go into any pain and suffering we might encounter in order to transform it into new life.
 
And we are fortified and reminded and compelled to prepare the way. Amen.
 
 

Over the years, Beth Zemsky has been a mentor and friend in the work of religiously-rooted justice work. She is a practicing Jew, a lesbian and a movement thinker who has both challenged and inspired me to be more faithful and smarter as I've gone about my movment work. It was, therefore, an honor to be invited on to her Podcast. Here is a double episode where we delve into what it means to be about the work of building movements which are devoted to the liberation of real peoples' bodies-- individually, communally and as a planet.

Take a listen: http://bethzemskypodcast.com/bzp004/