A friend just E-mailed me this:
Brokeback Mountain Christmas Message
Fr. Richard Chilson
The Chronicles of Narnia would seem the obvious choice for the gospel to appear this year. Aslan the lion is a Christ figure who dies and rises for his people. But the Christ myth is not the gospel of Jesus.
CS Lewis is part of that multitude who tried to translate the gospel out of the poor and rejected to the comfortable middle class. This lion is an acceptable figure for Christ if you keep in mind Christ the King. The problem is that Jesus is a “king” of shreds and patches, and his people are shepherds, whores, and tax collectors, not upper middle class children. A truer telling would have Christ as a broken down jackass who restores the varmints to God’s accepting creation.
The good news was proclaimed this night not to the wealthy but to shepherds. Real shepherds – not those on Hallmark cards. My friend Fr. John Collins celebrated Midnight Mass for the gay community at the Castro theater in San Francisco. In his last homily there he began by looking around the crowded space, “We, all of us, we are the shepherds. It is to us that the Good News is proclaimed. People of Jesus’ time treated shepherds just as many treat us today. They say we are thieves. We corrupt the young. We have no morals. To such a people the angels appeared with Good Tidings.”
Who are the shepherds today? No need to look far – they are not only shepherds but gay. Don’t call Brokeback Mountan the gay cowboy movie. Jack and Ennis are not cowboys. Cowboys are mythic and romantic. They are shepherds and their lives are just as poor, barren, broken and forsaken as biblical shepherds.
These shepherds may be gay, but it is not just the possibility of gay kisses or sex that is drawing in such numbers. The story speaks to a place deep in our tender souls. There we sense the wondrous gospel that hides behind every tale that breaks our heart.
Ennis is severely damaged. He is inarticulate. At one point he speaks for a minute or so and Jack, his friend, tells him “That may be the most I have heard you say not only at one time but at all time.” I can claim Ennis for my own. So can most men – it’s a guy thing to be tongue tied about what is most important. And although they may be better at it, women too are inarticulate about who most matters to them.
Jack comes into Ennis’ life and he brings love. It is a savage love, laying waste to everything they hope for. They cannot name it for what it is. The most they can say to one another is, “I’m not queer.” “Me neither.”
Jack will not surrender to Brokeback Mountain – what a name – being the most of heaven they can know. When he demands that he and Ennis make a life together Ennis bloodies him with a punch.
After Jack’s murder when Ennis finally realizes his loss, he takes Jack’s bloody shirt home with him and hangs it in his closet. His daughter visits to tell him of her upcoming marriage and to invite him to give her away. Ennis uses the same excuse he gave Jack, “I’ve got to be on the round up then.” But then something melts. “Damn the roundup. I’ll be there. My daughter is getting married.”
When she has left he goes to the closet and opens it. There on the door is a photo of Brokeback Mountain, the site of their happiness. And next to it hangs Jack’s shirt with the blood still on it, the pledge of love. A pledge bought with blood, and a pledge that will never give up, will never go away.
Christmas is our pledge that Love will never go away, will never forsake us. Like Jack, God is unable to let go no matter how violent the refusal. God waits for an opportunity to meet us in the cracks of our life not as a noble lion but as a brokeback shepherd who now can speak the Word for who we are and where we dwell – Love.
