John 11:32-44 and Freedom by Langston Hughes
November 3rd, 2024
By Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche
Welcome again on this All Saints Sunday! If you are so moved, I invite you now to take some deeper breaths, letting ourselves arrive. I offer this prayer as we are all held by these ancient words from Psalm 19: God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
La Maison du Visiteur sits just a bit up the hill on Rue St. Pierre in Vezelay, a most perfect little village in France. I was there to see the Basilique de Marie Madeleine, and as I was exploring after we arrived and settled in, I discovered the Visitor Center where you can find out more information and see a film telling the story of the Basilica including the architecture. Working
at the desk that day was Armand and we talked about a lot of things and when no one arrived at the time the next showing was to begin, I was offered the special treat of viewing the film in English because I was there all by myself. Armand gestured toward a set of stairs. In English with an adorable French accent, he told me to push. The door was really large and
I was still not used to the knobs in the middle. Did you know about that?
Then he guided me into a small theater that I had all myself.
The film shown at La Maison du Visiteur was called, The Dance of the New Adam. It explained the history and the theology of The Grand Tympanum, the basilica’s most prominent architectural feature. The carvings tell the Christian story in a cosmic way, incorporating myriad religious figures, astrological signs and scenes depicting the stories in scripture and the work of the Spirit throughout time. In some ways I am not sure why I was surprised, but I was. Because it was the Basilica with her
name. But in the Grand Tympanum, Peter is prominently featured. Since I was alone, I gave a loud grunt toward the large screen in the mini theater all to myself. As some of you might remember from this summer, in the Gospel of Mary, the only gospel that we know of from at least partially a woman’s voice, in the Gospel of Mary, Peter doesn’t believe Mary and she
cries. And in the canonical gospels, the ones that got included in the Bible, Peter is recorded to be unreliable. Maybe you remember that Jesus has to save him from drowning to death in an episode in the Gospel of Matthew. 2
In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Peter denied Jesus three times. 3 In the Gospel of John, when Jesus is begging for support, Peter falls asleep. 4 And early in the Gospel of Mark Jesus gets so angry that he asks Peter to stand behind him because he is just can’t believe that Peter questioned him. Jesus even calls him the devil basically. 5 In each of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Mary Magdalene is the one who is present with Jesus at the cross and stays until the end. 6 And with the new scholarship considered, the Gospel of John chapter 11, it confirms that she is the through line. But at the Basilica with her name, at least one of them, Peter is in the position of honor in the Grand Tympanum, seated at the feet of Jesus, holding a large key. The dramatic voice narrating the film said that the large key is: any guesses, that’s right it’s the Key to the Kingdom of Heaven.
And you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I pondered this a lot, sitting there in that theater and after. Why did Peter get that Key, why did we end up getting Peter the rock? Why couldn’t it have been a team, why did it have to be one person? For the very least, how stressful it would be to be the only one with a most important set of keys? Why did it have to
become patriarchal when Jesus himself modeled something else? And I found myself doing some reading on the concept of patriarchy and where it came from, where and it started and more and because the social construct of patriarchy began near the agricultural revolution in the shift away from being hunters and gatherers it’s good to remind ourselves that it hasn’t always been the status quo for human beings. We have lived in other arrangements.
And I also found myself reading and talking to people and wondering if this construct is not only doing a disservice to women and non-binary people and trans people and gay men and any gender non-conforming person maybe others, it turns out that many are making a really good case that the construct of patriarchy isn’t serving you men either. What do you think about that? And let me be clear as Celeste Davis puts it succinctly, “There is nothing wrong with maleness. It should be celebrated and honored.
1 Mary 10:3
2 Matthew 14:29-31
3 Mark 14:29-31, Luke 22:54-62 and Matthew 26: 69-75
4 John 18:10-11
5 Mark 8:32-33
6 Matthew 27:55-56, Mark 15:40, Luke 23:49 and John 19:25
There is nothing wrong with masculinity and displaying masculine attributes…There is something wrong with patriarchal masculinity. There is something very wrong with patriarchy.”
This summer I came across a new book by Ruth Whipman called Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. She is a mother of boys and in the season of #MeToo and boys men being and feeling canceled, she writes about how patriarchy is keeping all of us a bit trapped, whoever we are, creating a system that determines how we are to show up
and more. She says, “the feminist part of me wants to smash the patriarchy, and the mother part of me wants to wrap the patriarchy up in its blankie.”
She said, “Where I ultimately landed was that these two things are not in opposition. Patriarchy harms men and boys, as well as women. We’re all trapped in this system together. It’s central to the feminist project to support men and boys. It’s not in opposition to it.”
And of course the answer is love.
In her book The Will to Change bell hooks writes, “To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity… In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to becherished and loved.”
Whipman’s research revealed that many boys are given the message that they are only allowed two options, to be happy or angry. She says, “We teach boys to code every emotion as anger. At the same time, we spend less time listening to boys’ feelings. We spend a lot of time listening to their opinions, and much less time listening to their feelings. So it’s not really
that surprising. If you give them the options of anger and opinions, then they’re going to have angry opinions. That’s the only outlet to express all those feelings.”
It’s clear to me that all of us need to be unbound and freed from this construct that is holding all of us back. And I wonder if Jesus even amid First Century limitations was living and offering a way other than patriarchal culture?
So I wonder who gets the Keys to the Kingdom in this time?
There is so much I could say about this story that we heard from the Gospel of John because you know some of us have really started diving into chapter 11 with the new scholarship, but today I want to highlight the freedom for everyone in this story, to feel what they needed to, not just happiness or anger, but frustration and sadness, worry and weariness.
Mary weeps and those who came with her were weeping too and Jesus sees it all and then he starts weeping along with them. He cries publicly, right there in front of those who in our time a man might feel the need to impress or to withhold anything but stoicism or perceived strength. But Jesus weeps.
The people around him sort of mock him for not being able to do what they think he should. But as you know by the end of the story, after Jesus and all gathered can express what they are feeling, Jesus thanks God that he could be heard and then the person they thought would not recover, Lazarus as you heard comes out. All of them help take off his bandages.
He is unbound. He is freed. He gets something like a new life. The story begins with feeling deeply and being able to show what they are feeling because of love.
So I wonder should Mary get the keys too? Along with Peter? Allowing the feminine and the masculine to exist alongside together in this new time?
You know I am all about that!
What if Jesus actually modeled something other than patriarchy? I mean if you look closely at some of these stories, he is a crier, a healer, he shows his feelings, he tells his friends that he loves them. If anyone asks smashing the patriarchy is biblical.
How do you feel bound by the patriarchy? What else can we learn from Jesus’ leadership? How can our church be a part of freeing our tradition and our world from toxic patriarchy?
Beloved of God, I actually believe that we are toward the end of this paradigm, toward the end of this toxic masculinity, I think we are near the final stages, the last stage of domination, whether it’s soon or very soon, it’s going to come, some of us will be alive for the beginning of the unbinding, the time when all of us are freed. Because the keys should be in all of our
hands, are you with me? Opening up the cage of that construct and letting us out. Let them go, let us go! As we heard from Langston Hughes, I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want my freedom
Just as you.
We are being, we will be, if not now, then