I woke up last Saturday with the memory of pain and a view of rolling gray clouds.  I remembered lying on my back on an ice-rink and how I had been beaten up.  I have only told this story once before, during the discussions of anti-Semitism in Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ,” because of the rise of anti-Semitism in the world, and because of election year attacks on gay and lesbian relationships.  These attacks resurfaced again recently in the half-hearted attempt to bring about a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and in the decision in New York this past week to disallow gay marriage in that state, and so I want to tell the story again today as I remember it.

I am a child, a child who has never met a Jew.  I am playing with a friend in his yard, and some kids have just raced into the yard in excitement.  A Jewish family has moved into the neighborhood.  “Let’s go,” they say, “they have horns on their head—they are really small, but if you look hard you can see them.”  My friend goes along, but I don’t want to.  I walk home instead and tell my parents, and they are horrified. This is just ignorance, they say.  My friends have been misinformed by someone who should know better.

Flash forward. We have moved from the sleepy dairy farm town to a small city, and bought a house in the Jewish neighborhood.  Suddenly, more than half of my friends are Jewish.

On Sunday we go to church—my father and I are in suits and ties, and my mother and grandmother wear hats and gloves.  We stay dressed for Sunday afternoon dinner at home.  My father reads from the Book of Common Prayer, and a meal begins.  The focus of the room is a large painting of the Pilgrims trudging through the snow, and so we are reminded every week of the hardships that were performed so that we could give thanks today.  Polished silver clinks against the good china, and an old clock ticks the beat of a Puritan meal.

Next door, I know things are different, and after changing clothes, I will go there.  Jay Kaufmann is my age, and we share a love of H.O. model trains and cars.  His mother and father are Sheila and Max Kaufmann, and they are not like my parents.  Everything is always very, very dramatic, and I love this about them.  When there is a disagreement, which is often, everyone clusters and talks with their arms.  Their shoulders lift up, theirs hands come forward, and there is passion.  Sheila says to Jay, “You want I should not get verklempt?  With such a son talking to his mother like this, I should not be verklempt?  I’ll show you verklempt!  Paul, do you talk to your mother like this at home? No, you do not.”

“No, Mrs. Kaufmann,” I say, but I will just as soon as I get home.  My parents find it more than a bisel amusing that I am coming home with Yiddish expressions.

Moving ahead—we are sitting at lunchtime on round orange seats that attach to a long table that folds in half and rolls away so that the Jr. High cafeteria can be cleared. Reid Lachmann, Alan Berkovitz, Jay Kaufmann and Keith Riegel are talking, and I am listening. They are discussing the preparations for their Bar-Mitzvahs.  How to pronounce that Hebrew word and how to navigate the ceremony itself.  Alan’s rabbi is kind and proud. Jay’s rabbi expects too much.  Keith’s rabbi is distant, and Reid’s is too strict.  I listen and take it all in—I follow their progress and I am a part of it.

At each Bar-Mitzvah, I am handed a Yarmulke and I place it on my head. I am nervous for my friends—there is Alan, the smartest boy in the school—he unrolls the Torah scroll, uses a yad to point to the words, and walks through it with confidence not making a mistake.  There is Reid—he’s the all-round guy, but he looks nervous up there, his voice falters, but his rabbi helps him.  Jay makes mistakes and snickers at his flubs—his rabbi looks quietly disgusted.  In each synagogue I feel at home because I know these kids and their parents.  On Friday nights we walk to the Jewish Community Center for dances, and some of them come to my church for Youth Group.

And now here is the day I remembered last week coming out of sleep, the day of gray clouds and cold.  I am fifteen and I am at the ice-rink at the school, about a mile from my house.  It is cold, and I am skating.  A group of kids who live at the other end of town approach me.  They walk across the ice and make a circle around me.

“Hey, Jew,” one says.  “Why don’t you go back to Jew-town?” asks another.  “We don’t want you here.”  I am closed in by words and threats.  I can solve it all so easily.  My name is Tellstrom.  It is Swedish.  I belong to the First Congregational Church.  I am not Jewish.  But whether in fear or because of principle or both, I say nothing.  I freeze, until the first fist hits my head, then the second punch to my lower back.  I go down, and my head hits the ice.  They continue throwing words that come from ignorance and prejudice that can only be taught, and their words sting like a skull against ice.

When there is cold silence, I stare up for a very long time at gray clouds moving fast, and feel the ice numbing my back.  I have lived among my Jewish friends and emulated them.  I have taken part in their lives and in their rituals.  Apparently, to some, I have become a Jew.

When I stood up from the ice that day, I knew that I had taken part in one of the most visceral of all Jewish experiences, that of being hated and demonized.  These feelings would surface again in a few years for other reasons, but on this day, I felt that in some small way that should remain personal, that when I stood up from the ground, I stood up as a Jew, and I would always be a Jew if only in solidarity.

Today’s scripture talks about the time that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.  He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

This is a Lenten text, and I am using it at the wrong occasion of the year, but it is about a time when we recall through our own experiences, or by reflecting on what is happening all around us, what it is like to be in our own wilderness.  And when we are in a wilderness, as with Christ, temptation comes to us when we are feel separated.

These are wilderness days.  They are wilderness days for Jews, as anti-Semitism has escalated throughout the world.

What are the temptations that come to a people who are historically hated and despised, and what do we say and do to be in solidarity?  Scriptures say that when Jesus went into the wilderness, he was filled with the Holy Spirit.  That same Spirit is with us today, calling from the wilderness for us to join the outcast in solidarity.

These are wilderness days for gay and lesbian people, too.  In the past, gay people have been denounced for their immorality—it was said that we were unable to sustain loving relation-ships, we were promiscuous, and any attempt to couple did not produce the desired societal goal of child-rearing and raising.  Now we are denounced instead for showing ourselves to be able to sustain loving relationships and for successfully bringing up children, and for wanting the same rights as everyone else—rights that protect—legally, spiritually, and psychically.

The Defense of Marriage Act was signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, presumably during an extramarital tryst that ultimately brought shame to him, and national humiliation to his wife and child.  His own “Defense of Marriage” doesn’t strike me as a model that I would emulate.

Governor Schwarzenegger once demanded that San Francisco immediately stop same-sex marriages.  He says that marriage is between a man and a woman and we should protect the sanctity of marriage.  And yet, as a husband, his reputation in Hollywood is that of a man who has squeezed more peaches than a deranged produce clerk.  His own Defense of Marriage is not a model for respectable gay and lesbian people, either.

But over and over again, President Bush says he wants a constitutional amendment to restrict the definition of marriage to exclude many people in this room.

The constitution has been successfully amended seventeen times since the Bill of Rights was passed.  In every instance, save for Prohibition which was repealed, these amendments were meant to expand the rights of the citizenry.  This amendment, which recently failed again, is not about equal protection, it has nothing to do with the states-rights that conservatives champion; in fact, it is not a conservative idea at all, but a radical one.

My friend and colleague in Chicago, Shawnthea Monroe, speaks about this in her new book.  She says, “Call me crazy, but I doubt that keeping same sex-couples from marrying will decrease divorce rates among heterosexuals.  That’s like banning people of color from your country club in hopes of improving your golf game.”¹

Conservative commentator William Safire said that he favored civil unions.  But what he said that convinced me even more that gay and lesbian partnerships must have full equality with the same rights and privileges of heterosexual marriage, including the word itself, came in these words: “We should have some sort of civil union for gays, because that shows our tolerance as a nation. But we should not have gay marriage, because that word implies acceptance.” (paraphrased)

In 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court found “separate but equal” to be constitutional in educating black and white children.

Bill Coffin wrote, “Would not the same inequality prove true were civil marriage reserved for straight couples only, while gay and lesbian unions were designated otherwise? Further, if for all of us marriage is a profound symbol, and for some a sacred one, what right have straight people to deny it to gays and lesbians for whom it is altogether meaningful?”

And, the most shameful part of the president’s actions, of course, is that his entire purpose is not about defending marriage at all.  We were in Europe while this last attempt was made, and every news source there reports this idea of denying marriage as an appeal to keep America’s religious right on board during a time when the war is not going well.

            These are wilderness times for me and for many of you as well.  How do we stop to re-member that the Holy Spirit is with us in the wilderness?  And, how do we avoid the temptations that lie out there in the wilderness?  The temptation to hate, the temptation to stay in the wilder-ness and not let our advocates join us, let alone the enemies that we should be talking to.

William Sloane Coffin said, “There are people who say Jesus was never tempted, never really, because he never ceded to temptation.  But who knows better the strength of the enemy, he who surrenders or he who struggles to the end?”

I was told things about Jews before I met any, things that were untrue and harmful, words that often arise from people who want to talk more about others instead of to them. We have all been told things about gay and lesbian people that are not true as well.  Can you stand up and be an advocate against all discrimination, with a voice that will ring with a different authority because you are not a Jew, or because you are not gay?  Can you speak from your experience when others of us cannot?  Can you risk walking into a wilderness of prejudice and speak the truth despite what temptation makes you want to say instead, including saying nothing at all?

Ours is a struggle that is more divided along ideological lines than ever.  We are confronted with the politicization of glbt people because an electorate can be carved up over these issues.  Whatever side of the aisle we sit one, we have a responsibility to talk, to write, and to complain about this politicization, and speak to power with love.  We have been used and abused by them, and the president’s recent action shows that he thinks that his base is large enough and hates us enough to drive us into the wilderness.

Recall that the wilderness is where temptation comes—the temptation to hate back in return, the temptation to demonize, the temptation to isolate.  These are wilderness days, and we have to remember that it is when we are in that place, that is when we can feel the Holy Spirit closest to us.

I am guilty of anger today.  I am guilty.  But when I hear that schpeel on the sanctity of marriage from that Farshtinkener religious right and their Feinshmeker friends, I want to plotz.  We should all be so broygis with these Meshugoyim.

But I have to remember that moral outrage is a great motivator, but no formula for a solution. I also remember that our world is moving very fast, and in some ways in very dangerous directions.  People are afraid.  With the issue of gay marriage being everywhere in the air today, I think of the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, and see if you don’t see us somewhere between his second and the third stage.  He said:

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently

opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

I hear about anti-Semitism sharing the same news-hour with anti-gay rallies.  So…at least I am in good company—out here in the wilderness, where temptation pulls me and yet the Holy Spirit is with me.  This is the walk that calls on us to pick up our own crosses and carry them, and while carrying them, we can hear God’s promise in the 91st psalm that even the devil himself is impressed with enough to quote:

“Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name.  When they

call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and

honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.”

This is the promise to you who live in the shelter of the Most High, in the shadow of the Almighty, who can say, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” Shalom.

1.      Shawnthea Monroe, “Not So Desperate: Fantasy, Fact and Faith on Wisteria Lane,” Chalice 

      Press, 2006

Glossary of Yiddish Terms

(My friends laughed at my usage, but also shook their heads—I will never teach Yiddish.)

A bisel- A little
Broygis- Angry, not on speaking terms
Farshtinkener- Rotten, as in a rotten person
Feinshmeker- High falutin’
Meshugoyim - Crazy people
Plotz- Burst

Schpeel- Selling job. “I had to listen to his entire schpeel”
Verklempt- To get all emotional