Preached at La Jolla United Methodist Church, August 26, 2007
I suppose I suspected from the first time that I met him that Lorenzo Salgado must be gay. He was wearing a shock of colored hair – purple, pink or red, I can’t remember which because every few weeks the color would change. He was obsessed with Madonna – an obsession which seemed as out-of-the-blue as any obsession possibly could in a place like Calexico, so far removed from American popular culture. And every so often Lorenzo would strike a dramatic pose, or affect an accent of one kind or another, as if there was a part of him that was trying to escape – which, of course, there was.
… even through these early years he knew he was gay. “In the second grade,” he told me, “I literally found the definition in a book, so I knew there was a label for it and that’s what I was, at which point I would pray on a nightly basis for God to either change me or to kill me, so that things would change, and I could get out of that trap.”
Around fourth grade, stories of AIDS began to circulate in the popular media, and Lorenzo, thinking as a small child, thought, “so is this some kind of genetic thing, where it’s like at a certain point in your life, because you’re gay, something just sort of turns on inside of you and you get sick?” He explained: “They didn’t know what caused the disease … they just knew that all these gay men were dying. So I was really freaked out that that would happen to me. It was terrifying.”
I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Lorenzo to grow up gay in the conservative culture of the border, so dominated by Mexican machismo and Catholic and Christian homophobia. There was no chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) at Calexico High School, as there were at so many other high school campuses in Southern California. In fact there were no openly homosexual youth at all in town – as Lorenzo put it, “to be ‘out’ in Calexico would be to subject yourself to extreme harassment or worse.”
Lorenzo describes himself as “basically friendless” from about 7th grade until his senior year in high school: Then one day … Ken asked Lorenzo a bunch of questions. Lorenzo remembers, “Out of the 20 questions, I had like 18 of the symptoms. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve been living inside my head.’
*****
When I arrived in Calexico in the summer of 1992, Lorenzo was just beginning to show the signs of emerging from his profound depression, but it was still exceedingly rare to see him smile. He would wisecrack and sneer and poke fun, but from the way he walked and the way he talked, from the way he looked and the way he hung his head, it was obvious that Lorenzo was carrying a heavy, heavy load.
One day after youth group, Lorenzo asked if he could talk to me, and as we sat in my office, he said the words out loud for the first time: “I’m gay.” I don’t know why, but in response to his telling me, I told Lorenzo about one of my best friends, Wade Buchanan, who had stayed in the closet through our years together as Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University – only upon our return to the United States had Wade had come out to me.
Years later Lorenzo told me: So you were really the first person in my life who I ever told. I was freaked out … like “OH MY GOD!” And I remember you telling me about your friend, “Big Wade.” And I was like: “If this big burly guy from Colorado can be gay, maybe I can be, too.” And that you weren’t judgmental, or freaked-out by it – well, that really kind of set the tone for how I decided people should take it, or if it was really going to matter to me. Because I was like, “If a man of God is not troubled by it, you know what, I’m not going to freak out about it either.”
There are, of course, a great many Christians who believe that erotic same-sex relationships are intrinsically sinful. I find this position entirely inconsistent with my own experience.
My experience teaches me that God gives varying gifts of sexuality to human beings. Most are gifted with a heterosexual orientation, but some are gifted with a homosexual orientation, perhaps something akin to left-handedness. An even smaller minority are gifted with a sexuality that can be called bisexual – think of people who are intrinsically ambidextrous – and similarly a small minority of people seem to have been gifted with the sexuality of celibacy.
The question for people of faith – no matter what their sexual orientation – is “how can I best use the gift of my sexuality? How can I exercise this gift in some way that it serves God’s larger purposes?” Historically the church has counseled those not gifted with celibacy that marriage is the most responsible exercise of the gift of sexuality. It is precisely because I believe in the institution of marriage that I am hoping for and working for and praying for the day that the church will allow its pastors to bless the marriages of gay and lesbian people.
*****
Lorenzo was one of the last people to speak with me before I left Calexico. He stayed at church after youth group that last Sunday, and we sat in silence in the Sanctuary for a good long while.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?” I asked. Lorenzo waited a little while to respond.
“You probably saved my life.”
There was no air of pretense in his voice – no drama, no edge. Such a simple statement, so plainly said. It shook me to my roots.
What had I done, I thought, that Lorenzo might think that perhaps I had saved his life? After that one, revealing conversation, I had not talked with him at any great length about his sexual orientation. I had never agitated, nor indoctrinated, nor exhorted, nor done any existential “counseling” with him.
I remember remarking in the moment how much Lorenzo had grown up in the four years I had known him. He had passed through adolescence, a time that is for so many people the hardest time of life. But Lorenzo’ adolescence had been marked by a challenge that most people will never know: the challenge of accepting God’s love while surrounded by voices suggesting that you are, in your very being, beyond its reach.
It dawned on me what had happened in my relationship with Lorenzo. I had loved him for who he was – a kind, gentle, generous, sensitive, courageous and gay young man. And cloaked – as I was, for him – in the authority of my position as the pastor of the church, my loving him had felt to him something akin to the love of God.
“Hmmmm,” I said, nodding my head. “It’s been a joy for me to have gotten to know you at this time in your life.”
I looked at Lorenzo sitting next to me in the pew. His head was down, but I could tell he was smiling. I couldn’t tell, at first, if it was the ironic smile I had sometimes seen, the smile he used when he was goofing off with his friends. But when he lifted his face to catch my eye, I could see it was a different kind of smile. I remember thinking that it was a profoundly human smile.
I didn’t say anything more to Lorenzo in that moment of his confessing to me how desperate he once had been. I didn’t give him a lesson in theology, and I didn’t mount a defense of homosexuality. I remembered what a wise mentor had one time advised as an effective counseling strategy: “Don’t just say something. Sit there.”
That’s what we did, Lorenzo and I. We just sat there, the two of us, our heads lowered as if in prayer. We just sat there, smiling.
Hebrews 12:25-29
25 See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? 26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, "Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." 27 The words "once more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken--that is, created things--so that what cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29 for our "God is a consuming fire."
Luke 14:7-14
7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: 8 "When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.' Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. 10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." 12 Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
I suppose I suspected from the first time that I met him that Lorenzo Salgado must be gay. He was wearing a shock of colored hair – purple, pink or red, I can’t remember which because every few weeks the color would change. He was obsessed with Madonna – an obsession which seemed as out-of-the-blue as any obsession possibly could in a place like Calexico, so far removed from American popular culture. And every so often Lorenzo would strike a dramatic pose, or affect an accent of one kind or another, as if there was a part of him that was trying to escape – which, of course, there was.
… even through these early years he knew he was gay. “In the second grade,” he told me, “I literally found the definition in a book, so I knew there was a label for it and that’s what I was, at which point I would pray on a nightly basis for God to either change me or to kill me, so that things would change, and I could get out of that trap.”
Around fourth grade, stories of AIDS began to circulate in the popular media, and Lorenzo, thinking as a small child, thought, “so is this some kind of genetic thing, where it’s like at a certain point in your life, because you’re gay, something just sort of turns on inside of you and you get sick?” He explained: “They didn’t know what caused the disease … they just knew that all these gay men were dying. So I was really freaked out that that would happen to me. It was terrifying.”
I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Lorenzo to grow up gay in the conservative culture of the border, so dominated by Mexican machismo and Catholic and Christian homophobia. There was no chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) at Calexico High School, as there were at so many other high school campuses in Southern California. In fact there were no openly homosexual youth at all in town – as Lorenzo put it, “to be ‘out’ in Calexico would be to subject yourself to extreme harassment or worse.”
Lorenzo describes himself as “basically friendless” from about 7th grade until his senior year in high school: Then one day … Ken asked Lorenzo a bunch of questions. Lorenzo remembers, “Out of the 20 questions, I had like 18 of the symptoms. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve been living inside my head.’
*****
When I arrived in Calexico in the summer of 1992, Lorenzo was just beginning to show the signs of emerging from his profound depression, but it was still exceedingly rare to see him smile. He would wisecrack and sneer and poke fun, but from the way he walked and the way he talked, from the way he looked and the way he hung his head, it was obvious that Lorenzo was carrying a heavy, heavy load.
One day after youth group, Lorenzo asked if he could talk to me, and as we sat in my office, he said the words out loud for the first time: “I’m gay.” I don’t know why, but in response to his telling me, I told Lorenzo about one of my best friends, Wade Buchanan, who had stayed in the closet through our years together as Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University – only upon our return to the United States had Wade had come out to me.
Years later Lorenzo told me: So you were really the first person in my life who I ever told. I was freaked out … like “OH MY GOD!” And I remember you telling me about your friend, “Big Wade.” And I was like: “If this big burly guy from Colorado can be gay, maybe I can be, too.” And that you weren’t judgmental, or freaked-out by it – well, that really kind of set the tone for how I decided people should take it, or if it was really going to matter to me. Because I was like, “If a man of God is not troubled by it, you know what, I’m not going to freak out about it either.”
There are, of course, a great many Christians who believe that erotic same-sex relationships are intrinsically sinful. I find this position entirely inconsistent with my own experience.
My experience teaches me that God gives varying gifts of sexuality to human beings. Most are gifted with a heterosexual orientation, but some are gifted with a homosexual orientation, perhaps something akin to left-handedness. An even smaller minority are gifted with a sexuality that can be called bisexual – think of people who are intrinsically ambidextrous – and similarly a small minority of people seem to have been gifted with the sexuality of celibacy.
The question for people of faith – no matter what their sexual orientation – is “how can I best use the gift of my sexuality? How can I exercise this gift in some way that it serves God’s larger purposes?” Historically the church has counseled those not gifted with celibacy that marriage is the most responsible exercise of the gift of sexuality. It is precisely because I believe in the institution of marriage that I am hoping for and working for and praying for the day that the church will allow its pastors to bless the marriages of gay and lesbian people.
*****
Lorenzo was one of the last people to speak with me before I left Calexico. He stayed at church after youth group that last Sunday, and we sat in silence in the Sanctuary for a good long while.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?” I asked. Lorenzo waited a little while to respond.
“You probably saved my life.”
There was no air of pretense in his voice – no drama, no edge. Such a simple statement, so plainly said. It shook me to my roots.
What had I done, I thought, that Lorenzo might think that perhaps I had saved his life? After that one, revealing conversation, I had not talked with him at any great length about his sexual orientation. I had never agitated, nor indoctrinated, nor exhorted, nor done any existential “counseling” with him.
I remember remarking in the moment how much Lorenzo had grown up in the four years I had known him. He had passed through adolescence, a time that is for so many people the hardest time of life. But Lorenzo’ adolescence had been marked by a challenge that most people will never know: the challenge of accepting God’s love while surrounded by voices suggesting that you are, in your very being, beyond its reach.
It dawned on me what had happened in my relationship with Lorenzo. I had loved him for who he was – a kind, gentle, generous, sensitive, courageous and gay young man. And cloaked – as I was, for him – in the authority of my position as the pastor of the church, my loving him had felt to him something akin to the love of God.
“Hmmmm,” I said, nodding my head. “It’s been a joy for me to have gotten to know you at this time in your life.”
I looked at Lorenzo sitting next to me in the pew. His head was down, but I could tell he was smiling. I couldn’t tell, at first, if it was the ironic smile I had sometimes seen, the smile he used when he was goofing off with his friends. But when he lifted his face to catch my eye, I could see it was a different kind of smile. I remember thinking that it was a profoundly human smile.
I didn’t say anything more to Lorenzo in that moment of his confessing to me how desperate he once had been. I didn’t give him a lesson in theology, and I didn’t mount a defense of homosexuality. I remembered what a wise mentor had one time advised as an effective counseling strategy: “Don’t just say something. Sit there.”
That’s what we did, Lorenzo and I. We just sat there, the two of us, our heads lowered as if in prayer. We just sat there, smiling.
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