October 14, 2001
Year C
Broadway Series
Title: Annie Get Your Gun
Theme: Following Christ is something one should take seriously and
consider whether one is willing to be taken into new and challenging
directions—whether you are willing to give up everything for Christ. One
of the things we must give up is our sexism.
This weekend we at the Cathedral of Hope held our third Annual Women’
s Conference in Dallas—I know last year we had a few attendees from
here in OKC, though I am not sure that is the case this year. I always
marvel at the commitments we at the Cathedral take on every year, but I
am especially glad that we do this particular conference. I guess more
than anything I am glad that we’re sensitive to the truth that, despite the
fact that gay men and lesbians share some common experiences when it
comes to their experience of sexual orientation, they still don’t
necessarily share all aspects of that experience…there is a whole range
of experiences that I know as a man, even as a gay man, I have simply
not had to deal with. This really came home to me in seminary, when a
friend of mine had graduated from seminary and had begun her first
United Methodist pastorate in a rural county in the heart of Kentucky.
She had been gone awhile but one day she showed back up at seminary
to visit some friends and some professors, and we talked a little about
her first year as a pastor. She told me that there was a local ministerial
association in town that had typically de facto welcomed every minister in
town into membership, but she was the first woman minister in the history
of this rural Kentucky county, and so that set up a dilemma for these
rather closed minded men. Because they did not want to seem as if they
were intentionally and publicly excluding her or the local Methodist
church, the men in the ministerial association actually disbanded the
ministerial association rather than issue an invitation for her to join! I
remember being just stunned at this story—and it made me realize that
women’s experience of the world were very different from mine, that I
knew many doors had been closed to me as an out gay man in seminary,
but I guess I didn’t think about the fact there were a lot of heterosexual
women who were fighting just as hard as I was to answer their callings as
ministers—and sometimes receiving the same time of horrific treatment. I’
ve certainly been discriminated against because of how I make love in
this world, but I have never been discriminated against because I was a
man—in fact, more often than not, I received a lot of unseen perks
because of my maleness, unseen to me at times, no doubt. I think a lot
of men, even gay men, have no clue of the barriers that women face day
in and day out, and sometimes we can even become part of the problem,
sadly enough.
And then the Gospel Lesson for today comes before us, challenging us
to consider that maybe, maybe following Jesus is something we ought
think about before we actually do it. Maybe being a disciple of Jesus, of
saying that of all the commitments I make in this world, this is the most
important one, that before I come to that moment of plunging myself into
following this One, I ought think and to ruminate and to contemplate and
to debate whether it’s a journey I really want to go on in the first place.
After all, there is nothing worse than going on a lifelong trip with someone
and realizing half way during the trip that you and they are not going
towards the same destination. Sometimes we think we know who our
traveling companions are—and then we find that they believe something
very different than we do and it shatters the plans we’ve made for the
rest of the trip. But, of course, following Jesus is not the same as
choosing a travel companion for that trip to Bermuda—the assumption, of
course, is that our chosen companion is someone we’ve made plans
together WITH, that we’ve chosen a mutual map to follow. Yet, in
following Christ, we don’t get to choose our travel plans—those were laid
out for us a millennia, an eternity ago—and we’ve got to decide whether
or not we’re willing to let someone else to do the driving. And the driver,
the leader, may take an unexpected turn onto an unfamiliar road, and we
may find ourselves in a strange new world, a strange new reality. For all
of us in this room, I expect that the journey we are on right now is an
unexpected one, which we hadn’t expected to be on, this journey of
following Christ as openly lesbian and gay people. But finding yourself
on unexpected paths is exactly what we should expect—and for that
reason, we’re asked to count the cost, to risk our lives, with all of their
comfort, to follow this Jesus of Nazareth.
And part of that consideration, that sitting and thinking about whether or
not we can go with this Christ into the unexpected places, to go with
Jesus on a new road, is thinking about whether we are really are willing to
give up everything to follow him. Jesus in this passage reminds us that
even those things that are most precious to us, our family and our
families of choice, even those folks don’t get a pass when it comes to us
being asked by Christ to put them in the proper perspective, that they
cannot be number one in our lives, even though they are so important to
us. Of course, Christ is not asking us to literally HATE our parents or our
family—but he is making a very dramatic point in this hyperbole—he is
reminding us that we have to be ready to give up what is most precious
to us, that thinking that choosing to follow him is like is choosing where
you are going to college is to fail to understand the gravity of the
decision, this decision on whether or not to embark with him on this
journey of faith, this journey of life. The masses that were following him
on that day, the masses of people that were following him, star struck,
following him like Nsync groupies, had no idea that he wasn’t interested
in groupies—he was interested in people who were willing to give up
everything for the chance to learn from him, to be with him, to share a
common cup with him, to maybe even carry a cross with him. And he ask
them on that day to think whether or not they could take being
challenged on all their precious beliefs and prejudices and biases—can
they—can we—give up what we think we know in order to listen and to
follow and be transformed by this Jesus, this walking and breathing heart
of God in the world.
And so when we sit down and consider whether or not we can be write
this story with this Jesus, whether or not we can build our spiritual homes
with Christ, whether or not we can fight a war with the courage that we
have within us, we need to know, first of all, that we will be challenged—
and that the wars we fight and the houses we build will look and feel very
different from the ones we had expected to build. For us here, in this
room, many of us have made that decision, maybe recently, maybe years
ago, the decision that we could build and fight with the tools we’ve been
given for the chance to follow this Jesus, but the houses we’ve built and
the wars we’ve waged have been so, so unexpected. When years ago, I
made that decision to follow Jesus, if you had told me that a war I would
fight would one that included the enemy, the sin of sexism, I would have
laughed at you. If you told me that the house I have been called to build
includes the fundamental truth that women and men are equals in the
eyes of God, despite some of the negative things said of women by the
male writers of the Biblical text, in their worst moments, I would have just
rolled my eyes at you. Part of that decision to count the cost of building
a house with the living Christ and choosing to go on an unexpected
journey with him, is the willingness to go with the One designing the
building rather than counting on the larger culture’s idea about how a
building should be built. We are in a culture that is built on the idea that
men are the center of the universe—and all else flows from that center.
Ironically, the church in our continual stubbornness when it comes to
listening to the voice of God, the church has had to listen to voices
outside its walls for the truth, just as it had to listen to voices outside the
church when it came to issue of slavery in the 14, 15th, and 16th
centuries. Some people have a hard time listening, of course, because
the house they were building was really built for them and not any sort of
residence for the living Christ, who wishes to make his home in the
building being crafted in of our hearts.
But there is good news, of course, when we take Jesus up on this
challenge to allow him to be the lead craftsman in whatever building he is
building within us. The good news is that our foundation is built on the
truth, on that thing that sets us free, sets all of us free, both women and
men. And the amazing thing about truth is that it eventually makes it way
to the surface, despite all the forces that attempt to keep it below the
surface. Annie Oakley, the historical character that is the focus of the
Broadway play we’re exploring today, is one of those incredible people
whose story gets falsified in order to serve the wishes of the male
dominated culture. In the Broadway play, ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, the
lead character Annie is portrayed as a woman so obsessed with marrying
the love of her life, the fellow sharp shooter Frank Butler, that she is
willing to be deny her God-given talents in order to get her man. At the
beginning of the musical, she beats him in sharp shooting contest, but
because she is told that he will never tolerate or be able to handle a
woman who is better than he is at a skill often associated with men, that
is his male ego can’t take it, she decides to miss the next few shots in
order to win her man—and in the play, because she does this, they both
live happily ever after. But the truth—you know, that thing that can’t be
kept down for too long—the historical truth was that Frank Butler’s
reaction to getting beat by Annie was that he fell in love with her almost
instantly and a couple of years later gave up his career so that he could
manage her career. He didn’t run off to more “feminine” companions with
his bruised ego, like the Broadway play hints at, but rather it was her
strength and her talent that attracted him the most.
The interesting thing is some of the history surrounding the production
and timing of the musical. The musical was written in 1946 and it was
during the time in which the men who fought World War II were coming
home from Europe and the Far East, only to find that the jobs they left
behind were now being done by women—and by women who were not
real keen on the idea of giving them up, whether for economic reasons or
for the simple fact that it gave them independence they had never
experienced before. So, just as there was a campaign to get women to
take male oriented jobs at the beginning of the war, there was now a new
campaign to get them to give up those same jobs to the returning men
from the armed forces at the end of the war. And most scholars think
that the musical ANNIE GET YOUR GUN was part of that campaign to
detach women from that newfound freedom they found in their jobs. In
the musical, the message is that if Annie doesn’t submerge her God-
given talents, she’ll never find the love and happiness she wants. We
know, in fact, in real life, that Annie Oakley never believed that she was
second-best or she never downplayed her superior talent so that she
could marry Frank Butler—in reality she was one of few voices
advocating for equal pay for women in the workplace during her time.
So, maybe part of the thinking of whether or not we can or want to be
disciples of Jesus is thinking about whether we really want to hear the
truth, about whether or not we are willing to have our worlds shattered
and turn upside down. In this case, especially for the men here, maybe
part of that counting of the cost, that letting go of all our possessions that
we think we need to build a house for ourselves, is to consider whether
or not we’re willing let go of the untruth for the truth, whether or not we’re
willing to give away the power that sexism has handed to us, whether or
not we can fight wars that we never thought were our own, and ultimately,
whether or not we are willing to let Christ build a home within our ever
growing hearts. Christ says to us, always, always to think about whether
we can do this thing, whether or not we can stand to have our prejudices
and biases and “truths” shattered, and whether or not we have the
courage to build our house on a rock of truth. I think we do have that
courage within us, but deciding for that courage, deciding to take the
chance to hear the voice of the Christ in unexpected places and in the
voices of unexpected people, is something we need to think about, about
whether we can let go of building our own house and letting the Christ
build a new and radical house within our hearts. The truth is more
interesting than the untruth, as the history around the real Annie Oakley
reminds us, and truth makes the best foundation and the best frame and
the best girders than any house worth building can ever expect to have.
Amen and amen.
