2021.02.28 | Coming Out Christian
“Coming Out” Christian
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, California
Second Sunday in Lent
Feb 28, 2021
Mark 8:31-38 (NRSV)
Good Morning, Church! I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Stephen Clover. He and I attended Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS) together, in Boston, Massachusetts, back in the day.
I’d prefer to be introducing you to Stephen in person, even over Zoom; but that won’t be happening today, because Stephen died about nine months after I graduated seminary.
Stephen Clover was the first person who I knew well and loved deeply, who died of AIDS--Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. I don’t think the acronym or the words for the disease had been coined when Stephen first developed symptoms that would one day lead to his AIDS diagnosis. Back then, some disease investigators were referring to the garbage pail of symptoms that were sucking the life of vibrant gay men like Stephen as “wasting syndrome.”
Although I can’t think about Stephen without thinking about AIDS, I want to be clear that Stephen was a Person With AIDS--he was not his disease.
Stephen was, for example, a second-career student at ANTS. Like Pastor Pepper, he got the call to ministry a little later in life than yours truly and Pastor Marvin. But nevertheless, he got the call.
Stephen was also, by Andover Newton standards, classified as a “Special Student.” I didn't know that fact or understand it’s meaning until the school directory, which was referred to as the “Funny Book,” was published and distributed mid semester of my first year at ANTS.
Over lunch one day, I said to Stephen, “I know you’re special, but what’s “Special Student” status? Is that some kind of “teacher’s pet” identifier, or what?”
Stephen just about spit his coffee on me when I popped that question.
“Well, I like to think so,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “But in the Funny Book it means that I don’t have a college degree. I could get all A’s and fulfill all requirements for graduation, but the school will not give me a diploma unless I first complete a bachelor’s degree from a four-year accredited college or university.”
That thought gave me pause for several reasons. Even though Stephen was ahead of me in terms of years in seminary and even though we never had a class together, I didn’t have to look at his transcript or see the grades on his exams to know that Stephen was profoundly gifted for ministry. As much as I appreciated the seminary’s standards, and even though I was fortunate to have graduated from a four-year college with honors, and even though I had been on the Dean’s List every semester in seminary, I was (and always have been) deeply troubled by the fact that Stephen wasn’t considered eligible for a diploma from our seminary.
I was troubled for several reasons. First and foremost, in my humble opinion, Stephen was a more faithful and articulate Christian and a better preacher and pastoral counselor than 99% of the people I went to seminary with.
Stephen could quote scripture like nobody else I had ever known, including the Hebrew Bible and New Testament professors on campus. Stephen didn’t just quote scriptures like a precocious child who was going for the gold at an AWANAS competition; he quoted scripture like a person who knew its truth, and who wanted to share it with others. Stephen knew that the words he was quoting were “wonderful words of life,” as the old chestnut goes. And, he knew that these words (from the Word) had saved his life, and what the divine spokesperson said he had done for Stephen, he (Jesus) would do for you.
So imagine my consternation—and the consternation of my peers who shared my view—when our appeals to the Dean on his behalf always seemed to fall on deaf ears. This great injustice we felt—and we said—was surely due to the fact that Stephen was an unapologetic homosexual, and a Christian, and a man persuing ordination in the American Baptist Churches.
Yes, Stephen was a self-proclaimed, unapologetic, homosexual. And yes, he used that term all the time even though it had fallen out of fashion amongst politically correct LGBT folx I knew at the time.
I think that Stephen used the term because it was a way for him to be out and proud about his identity, and because he had come out years earlier and a time that “homosexual” was the only polite term used in our society for how he identified.
I think Stephen used the term as a way to affirm his own identity and as a pastoral strategy to help the rest of us, who were far less secure in our identity, to claim unashamedly who we were and are.
Stephen didn’t feel any need to use euphemisms to describe himself. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he enjoyed watching others squirm when he used the word “homosexual.” The more nervous the term made others, the more frequently he used it, and the more he relished it and labored over every syllable: “ho-mo-sex-u-a-l.”
Right after he enunciated the word, Stephen would squeal with glee—sort of like my 6-year old great-niece when her mom tells her that her chores are done and she can saddle up her horse for a ride.
At the time I knew Stephen, he was one of the most “out and proud” members of the LGBT communities I was a part of.
Thirty-some years later, I’m here to tell you that the same is true. He still is one of the most out and proud queer people I’ve ever known, but being a homosexual does not adequately describe Stephen. Because he was also unapologetically a Christian.
Like the Apostle who wrote in II Timothy, chapter 1:11-12, Stephen frequently interjected these words in conversation over lunch, as easily as he did from the pulpit of Colby Chapel on our seminary campus:
11 For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, 12 and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. (II Tim. 1:11-12)
I heard Stephen repeat this passage numerous times over the three years that I knew him. In some ways, his doing so wasn’t that remarkable. He was, after all, a card-carrying Baptist,. He had the floppy Bible with the gold trim and the fancy ribbon page markers and the tabs to prove it. He had the blue suit, white shirt, black tie Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes too. In addition, Stephen was doing what Baptists do. He was good at quoting scripture.
Yet, in other ways, Stephen being out and proud about being a Christian was completely shocking to me—not because of who he was, but because of how poorly he was treated by other people who proudly called themselves “Christians.”
I don’t know the whole story, but I do know that after he was diagnosed with AIDS, Stephen wasn’t welcome back in his hometown or in the pews where he worshipped as a youth. Stephen wasn’t welcome there because back then most of our churches and our society were suffering from two diseases: AIDS and AFRAIDS. We still don’t have a cure, but we’ve made some medical and spiritual advances that have reduced the severity of both diseases, and contributed to our health as individuals and as a society. Though we have a long way to go.
I know that Stephen never graduated from Andover Newton, as he had hoped to do, because his health broke down before he could finish all of the required courses for the degree, and he died before he could finish college.
I also know that when Stephen died, his funeral was held in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the Unitarian Universalist Church, where he had worshipped when he visited P-Town on vacation and where he lived and attended during the last year of his life. This was so, because as it turned out, those God-fearing people who had taken Stephen to church all of his life, and drilled him on his memory work, wouldn’t or couldn’t take care of him when he got really sick. So the Unitarians in P-Town took him in. And, yet, Stephen never stopped quoting the scriptures, or believing in God, or tithing to his church, or loving his family, or claiming the Christian faith as his own.
Stephen was never ashamed of the gospel even though the church where he was baptized was ashamed of him, and his funeral had to be held at a Unitarian Meeting House hundreds of miles away.
So if you’re looking for a contemporary example of what Jesus was talking about in the gospel of Mark today, there you have it--Stephen Clover. And if any of us is wondering what it means to follow Christ in this day and age, I’m here to tell you that it looks a lot like Stephen Clover’s example. It looks like coming out Christian—even if the word “Christian” makes you squirm, and the effort causes you to fear what people might think of you when you do. Amen.