Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seeyouonsunday/videos/718428744397517 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0poBtmNqitY
Picture it: small town, Indiana. It is spring and it is prom season. And the PTA, led by one particular mom, has ended up with a lot of power and have decided to cancel prom. See, they found out there was a girl named Emma in the high school who wanted to go to prom with her girlfriend. And, well, that just can’t happen, so it’s better to just cancel the whole thing.
700 miles away, for two down on their luck Broadway chorus members and two Broadway stars with egos so big that no one likes them, decide they need to do something so the public will love them. They need a cause to join in. They hear about the canceled prom, about how it was all to exclude Emma, and they decide that this is the cause they need to fix their problems, and they could fix small town, small-minded, Indiana with their big city, Broadway, liberal ethics in.
And despite what the first song they sing when they arrive in Indiana, “that it’s not about me (the Broadway stars); it’s about Emma”–it’s really all about them for the whole First act.
The Indiana State attorney convinces (forces?) the school to hold an inclusive prom. Everyone’s excited, gets ready and Emma arrives at the school with her new Broadway besties, only to find that the PTA threw an alternative dance at another venue. The school had to have a prom that was inclusive but didn’t mean they couldn’t host one at the Elk’s Lodge for everyone else. No one told Emma or the principal, who arrive at the high school to find crappy decorations and no one else there. It’s unbelievably cruel.
And I wish this were just a story right? Something that happened, something they use to make the story more interesting. But you know you know better.
In 2020, 20 a family sued Kettle Marine School district for, as the papers described, multiple incidents of racial bullying that was brought to the attention of teachers and nobody did anything. It sounds like it went on for years. The child has complex PTSD. I can’t find what happened to the lawsuit but it’s my understanding the family left the school district. There are not a lot of families of color in the Kettle moraine School district.
I found of course that the article was posted somewhere on Facebook and went to the comment section which included people’s stories of growing up in this area and them being bullied by classmates or talking about their children who are bullied at the school. Not for racial reasons sometimes for class reasons sometimes for sexuality or orientation.
Also in the comment section were people saying why does everybody have to claim racism? It’s because of the words they were using. Why are they even still here? Get over it. Everyone gets bullied, even adults.
We had JJ here some months ago talking about his experience of kids at the school of being bullied and abused to the point that he dropped out for his own safety.
We have a friend who grew up and went to school out here and her life was made miserable because she grew up in a household of atheists in a community where everybody was Christian. It went beyond inviting her to events to include telling her she was going to hell. She was uncompromising about it and so was everyone else.
There’s a Facebook group. I make the mistake of reading from time to time worse when I decide to comment on things where they decided everyone gets bullied so it shouldn’t be a big deal. It went on and they called someone an idiot and I got to the end of that and was like this was unhinged and I commented and then they proceeded to continue to just be unhinged to the point where it ended. With someone claiming that Well that bullying is slander and libel and with her telling me women cannot be priests or pastors but that’s just the truth and not bullying what I’m doing all week and on Sunday mornings is bullying.
So it turns out they’re right. Even adults get bullied. And in the words of the great Mandy Patinkin through Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”
I want to believe the world is becoming a better place and I think there are lots of signs that are positive. But I do think there are those who say they love their neighbor and then treat their neighbor who is poor, who is a person of color, who is LGBT, who is disabled differently; that anyone who doesn’t fit the norm, anyone who’s a little weird different, doesn’t get the places of honor or doesn’t get a seat at the table, or doesn’t get to go to prom like all the other kids.
It isn’t loving your neighbor as yourself if some of your neighbors eat well, live well, get the good prom, and some of your neighbors don’t. There is no separate but equal in James’ letter–because it will never be equal. And history tells us that those who argue that point are, at the very least, closing their eyes to the cruelty of it.
Theologian Patrick Cheng proposed 7 sins that damage a person’s dignity, relationship with oneself, with others, and with God; and 7 graces of God to reconcile, to heal, revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus. (From Sin to Amazing Grace)
(1) Sin as exploitation, grace as mutuality;
(2) Sin as the closet, grace as coming out;
(3) Sin as apathy, grace as activism;
(4) Sin as conformity, grace as deviance;
(5) Sin as shame, grace as pride;
(6) Sin as isolation, grace as interdependence; and
(7) Sin as singularity, grace as hybridity.
I don’t think these, despite coming out of queer theology, are just for queer people.
Sin as the closet is making yourself small. It’s not humility to hide parts of who God made you to be. It’s not community to demand someone deny, hide, be less who they are. Every weird, wonderful, even uncomfortable part of you. Being out, being honest, is letting us love you as you are and not as you think you are. It is being worthy as you are not as you.
And sin as shame is so similar. When Jesus met people in their shame or sin, he didn’t reject them, he didn’t guilt them, he didn’t bully them, he loved them. He made room for them, he allowed them to be themselves. Pride in contrast to shame is not a sin. Shame is what tells you are wrong and it’s your fault. Pride owns what is yours but doesn’t say you are terrible, wrong, bad, evil. Pride says you are beloved of God, just like everyone else.
Here’s the thing, I think we always need a reminder to love our neighbor sometimes, because sometimes our neighbors are unlovable. They cut us off while we’re driving, they stand in the way at the supermarket, they get annoyed when you can’t keep up, or they’re internet trolls and scripture bullies.
But, sometimes we need to remember the “as yourself part,” to love yourself, too. To not hide yourself, not to shirk yourself down, not to beat yourself up for the past or things that weren’t even yours to carry, love God with everything you are and have and trust, you are loved in return, fully and honestly and completely. Because it is also hard to love others when you don’t like yourself.
I think that’s the difference between the bullies in the show and the others, and the bullies in the world and, I hope, I believe, us: who is using what they’ve learned about life, and religion to keep the some from the table and who is making the table bigger and bigger until it fits everyone, as they, as we are, imperfect, and weird, and beautiful.
At the end of the show, at the final prom for everyone, even the high school bullies and the PTA mom are there singing and dancing. Is it an easy ending, too perfect, with forgiveness and hugs, with a song and big group dance number? Yes, it’s why we love musicals. But it doesn’t mean that maybe it can’t be a vision of the world we hope for. It’s possible we could start the whole musical with Jesus saying, “The good path or kingdom of God is like high school planning a prom…”
So we build a prom for everyone, metaphorically speaking, and we pull up another chair until all have a seat, and we build a church for everyone. And we eat of this one bread and do our best to love God, and each other, and our neighbors around the world and down the street, and ourselves well. You are loved. Be love.