A sermon based on the Gospel of John 19:25-29 (FYI: the word “home” is NOT in the Greek text):
*
As Jesus is dying on the cross, the disciple he loves—the boy he loves—the one, we are told, who is responsible for the Gospel of John, is on his mind. In the final moments of Jesus’ life, his beloved’s future is his ultimate concern.
We don’t know the identity of the man Jesus loved, but what we do know is that he is the only disciple Jesus is explicitly said to have loved.
We also know that he is the kind of guy who prefers the company of women. He is with the women at the foot of the cross.
We know too that the relationship between Jesus and this man is one characterized by physical and emotional intimacy. And their intimate connection is no more pronounced—or obvious—than it is in this moment, in the final moments of Jesus’ life.
As he is dying on the cross, Jesus no doubt feels like a motherless child: ripped from the circle of maternal security, cursed and abandoned to the whims of colonizers. Maybe he is even second guessing himself. Why could he not just be normal, act like every other king? In his moment of despair, doubt, questioning—Jesus is concerned that his man learns the lessons that will ultimately result in his resurrection.
Jesus makes sure that the man he loves is adopted by the maternal figure. Jesus declares, “Woman, here is your son.” To his beloved he says, “Here is your mother.” The text tells us that Jesus’ beloved “from that hour took her into his own.” In other words, the man Jesus loved accepted being placed under the exclusive care of the one the narrator calls Jesus’ “mother,” the one Jesus calls simply “woman.”
This text—indeed, the Gospel of John—clearly reveals Jesus as a lover of another man, as one who is concerned in his final hour with the well-being of his boyfriend. Here at the end of Jesus’ life, we are once again reminded that Jesus is not like all the other boys, like all the other rulers and kings. We are reminded that Jesus is a “mama’s boy,” more like a queen than a king.
And that is what the Romans were getting at when they plastered, in the languages of both the colonized and the colonizer, “King of the Jews” above the crucified Jesus’ head. They were calling Jesus the F-word, the 6 letter homophobic slur. The message of Rome is clear: the cross is where not being like all the other boys, not being like all the other kings and rulers, the cross is where being queer will get you; the cross is where being a mama’s boy will get you.
Not much has changed. Consider how we are taught to think about a boy’s secure attachment to his mother.
There is a tradition that is made up of the writings of primarily white psychologists talking about white boys and their relationship to their mothers. Their fear is that a white boy left under the care of his mother will become chronically effeminate, a hopelessly effeminate boy, a monstrosity, one who lacks a positive masculine self-regard.
There is also a tradition of primarily white scholars talking about African American boys and their relationship to their mothers. In this tradition, the dangers multiply: African American boys cared for by their mothers become incapable men—not only gender deviant but also unable to take care of themselves and their families economically, and so end up in jail.
These are the white lies we are told about our secure attachments to the maternal—and their power should not be underestimated. They clearly tell us that if we are mama’s boys, we will be defined as monsters, demons, Satan himself. They teach us that our particular lives and loves are hellish and evil, cursed, and that we will be treated accordingly. Hell is for queers.
But as Lil Nas X has shown us, hell is not such a bad place—especially if you’re the King of it.
In his now in/famous music video, Lil Nas X, judged and condemned, descends—in fact, he slides down a stripper pole, into hell. He feigns interest in Satan before ultimately wringing Satan’s neck.
Lil Nas dethrones Satan and becomes the king of hell, Satan himself. Lil Nas X becomes what Rome said he should fear: the face of damnation itself.
In his music video, Lil Nas fully embraces what Rome names as a hellish lifestyle. He quite literally puts himself in Satan’s shoes. This is his liberation, his resurrection.
Lil Nas X perfectly understands his situation. He knows that he is not really a hellish creature. But he also knows that that is how Rome sees him—really.
And not just him. You will recall that when Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Michael Brown, testified before a grand jury, he described the young African American man he killed this way: “It looks like a demon.”
Lil Nas X understands his situation. Like Jesus, he descends into hell, and he embraces fully what Rome condemns, tortures, and murders. In fact, Lil Nas X and Jesus may have learned this from their mothers.
As Hortense J. Spiller argues in her now classic essay, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” speaking specifically of the symbolic situation faced by African American women, an African American mother may “[actually claim] the monstrosity . . . which her culture imposes in blindness, . . . might rewrite after all a radically different text for a female empowerment.”
Hellish creatures: that is what we are to Rome, that is how Rome sees all of us who dare to defy its laws in the name of Justice. Why not claim it? We know the truth; we know the Gospel, that “now, apart from the law, Justice is revealed.”
But where we see Jesus, where we see Justice, Rome sees Satan.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Michael Brown is a child of God.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Lil Nas X is a preacher of the Gospel.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is the Messiah.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is the Word of God.
Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is our Salvation.
What Rome thinks is foolish, we know as the wisdom of God.
To those of us being saved, Jesus Messiah is the wisdom of God. Jesus Messiah is the way, the truth, and the life.
And what he wanted for the man he loved is a secure attachment to the maternal figure. That is what he wants for all of us who love him: that we may be(come) what Rome fears most, the desecration of its power over us.
May it be so.
Amen.
