Preached at Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Atlanta, Ga.
Reading: Mark 6:14-29

Today’s Gospel reading takes us to one of those biblical scenes that has become such the stuff of legend that most people are able to recite, or at least reference, parts of it whether they truly know it or not.

At is core is the request by Salome that results in the head of John the Baptist being delivered on a platter – maybe even a silver one – after the nubile young woman performs a… dance? Belly-dance? The dance of the seven veils? All of which are variations that have become part of the story as it’s been told through the ages in plays, musicals and film.

It’s possible that the request was delivered as nonchalantly as one might imagine requesting a refill of one’s goblet. Salome is the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, who married his half-brother’s widow, thus earning the condemnation from John that we hear of in this passage. It’s this condemnation by John the Baptist that leads to to the grudge carried by the widow, Herodias, who seizes the opportunity to get even when her husband, in a moment of weakness, puts himself in a position to be manipulated.

The scene itself is packed with so many themes: Power. Lust. Innocence. Tragedy. Manipulation. You have a room full of bored, powerful people playing games with each other for sport, except they’re using actual people – the young, the innocent – as their pawns. And all of this while real people suffer and starve under brutal repression in conditions that could be waved away with about the same level of effort that the ruling class expends to live in their little made-up soap opera.

Instead, it’s with a wave of a hand that a prophet loses his head. And all he was calling for was repentance, which we in this congregation understand to be the simple act of changing direction.

# # #

Fast-forward to the late 1700s, and for the people of France at least, not much had changed in the intervening 18 centuries. You had a Third Estate of commoners suffering under a feudalist system dominated by a ruling elite that was resistant to reforms, and a king and government reluctant to stand up to the Second Estate, the nobility, in the name of the people. The result being that the burden of funding the government of the fast-growing nation fell largely on peasants.

It all came to a head on July 14th of that year when an angry mob, fed up with the current regime’s lackluster attempts at reform, attacked the Bastille fortress and set in motion a series of events, now known as the French Revolution, that led to the abolition of feudalism, the formal separation of church and state, and the authoring of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Among other things, this Declaration said:

• Article I – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
• Article II – The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.
• Article III – The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
• Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.
• Article V – The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.
• Article VI – The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents.
• Article VII – No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the law must obey at once; he renders himself culpable by resistance.
• Article VIII – The law should establish only penalties that are strictly and evidently necessary, and no one can be punished but under a law established and promulgated before the offense and legally applied.
• Article IX – Any man being presumed innocent until he is declared culpable if it is judged indispensable to arrest him, any rigor which would not be necessary for the securing of his person must be severely reprimanded by the law.
• Article X – No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law.
• Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.
• Article XII – The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen necessitates a public force: this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all and not for the particular utility of those in whom it is trusted.
• Article XIII – For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenditures of administration, a common contribution is indispensable; it must be equally distributed to all the citizens, according to their ability to pay.
• Article XIV – Each citizen has the right to ascertain, by himself or through his representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to know the uses to which it is put, and of determining the proportion, basis, collection, and duration.
• Article XV – The society has the right of requesting an account from any public agent of its administration.
• Article XVI – Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no Constitution.
• Article XVII – Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.

# # #

It was a massive repentance, you might say. An entire nation changed direction and produced a new national character embodied in the revolutionary motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ” that decades later became the republic’s official motto.

It’s a turnaround that’s been celebrated as the French national holiday every July 14th since 1880.

But let’s go back to that Declaration thing for a moment. Because much like our own Declaration of Independence, as revolutionary as it was for its time, it had the effect of excluding more people than it included. Just as our Declaration of Independence confined its notion of equality to men, the French Declaration went a step further and declared that the rights it enumerated were limited to a class of people called “active citizens.”

And just what was an “active citizen”? A French man at least 25 years of age who paid taxes equal to three days’ work and couldn’t be defined as a servant. In other words, a non-foreign male property owner. So while 4.3 million French citizens enjoyed a newfound freedom, they constituted less than one-sixth of the fast-growing nation.

The playwright and activist Olympe de Gouges attempted to remedy that by penning the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen exactly two years to the day after the storming of the Bastille, and she paid with her life at the guillotine after being accused, tried and convicted of treason — all on the same day.

And just what was in this feminist Declaration that was so dangerous that its author had to be dispatched with in such haste?

• Article I
  The first article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaims that “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.” The first article of Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen responds:[citation needed] “Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may only be based on common utility.”[13][14]
• Article II and Article III
  Articles II and III extend the articles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to include both women and men in their statements.[13]
• Article IV
  Article IV declares that “the only limit to the exercise of the natural rights of woman is the perpetual tyranny that man opposes to it” and that “these limits must be reformed by the laws of nature and reason”. In this statement, de Gouges is specifically stating that men have tyrannically opposed the natural rights of women, and that these limits must be reformed by the laws of a political organization in order to create a society that is just and protects the Natural Rights of all.[13]
• Article V
  Article V is unchanged from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.[13]
• Article VI
  De Gouges expands the sixth article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which declared the rights of citizens to take part in the formation of law, to: “All citizens including women are equally admissible to all public dignities, offices and employments, according to their capacity, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.”[13]
• Article VII through Article IX
  Articles VII through IX again extend the articles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man to include both women and men in their statements.
• Article X
  In Article X, de Gouges draws attention to the fact that, under French law, women were fully punishable, yet denied equal rights, declaring: “Women have the right to mount the scaffold, they must also have the right to mount the speaker’s rostrum”.[15] This statement would go on to be well-known and spread to wide audiences.
• Article XI
  De Gouges declares, in Article XI, that a woman should be allowed to identify the father of her child/children. Historians believe that this could relate to de Gouges’ upbringing as a possible illegitimate child, and allows women to demand support from fathers of illegitimate children.[16][page needed]
• Article XII
  This article explains that the declaration of these rights for women is a great benefit to society, and does not only benefit those protected by it. According to her biographer, Olivier Blanc, de Gouges maintained that this article be included to explain to men the benefit they would receive from support of this Declaration despite the advice to her of the Society of the Friends of Truth.[16][page needed]
• Article XIII through Article XVI
  Articles XIII through XVI extend the articles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to include both women and men in their statements.[13]
• Article XVII
  The seventeenth article of the Declaration expresses sexual equality of marriage, and that upon marriage, women and men are found equal in the eyes of the law – this means that upon divorce, property is split evenly between the involved parties, and property cannot be seized without reason from women (as it is not seized from men).[13]

# # #

Fast-forward to 1944, when French women were granted the right to vote — and by the time this came to pass, they were the last Western country to do so by about a decade.

And now here we are in 2024, and this day, July 14th, is not just Bastille Day in France, but in a global sense it’s now also the 13th annual International Non-Binary People’s Day, chosen as such because it falls exactly halfway between International Women’s Day on March 8th and International Men’s Day on November 19th.

So do we have a Declaration of the Rights of Non-Binary People? Not that I’m aware of. When I search for it on the internet, what I get instead are references to the Trans Bill of Rights, first introduced in Congress in March 2023 (and co-sponsored by Georgia Representatives Hank Johnson and Nikema Williams), which calls on the federal government to provide protections for transgender and nonbinary people by:

1. 1. Ensuring that transgender and nonbinary people have equal access to services and public accommodations by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include gender identity and amending Title IX to clarify that it protects students from discrimination based on gender identity and sex characteristics.
   2. Recognizing the right to bodily autonomy and ethical healthcare by expanding access to gender-affirming medical care, codifying the right to abortion and contraception, protecting transgender people from discrimination in healthcare, and banning forced surgery on intersex children and infants in violation of ethical standards of care.
   3. Promoting the safety of trans and nonbinary people by investing in community services to prevent violence against trans and nonbinary people and expand services for survivors, investing in mental health services designed for transgender and nonbinary people, and banning “conversion therapy” practices.
   4. Enforcing the civil rights of transgender people by requiring the Attorney General to designate a liaison within the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice dedicated to advising and overseeing enforcement of the civil rights of transgender people.

I couldn’t find any references to any forward progress for the bill since its introduction, and my guess is that it’s been going nowhere fast — even while hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills continue to see the light of day at every level of government. But we have to start somewhere, and we have to send the signal that we’re not going to take it sitting down, even if it feels like we’re powerless in the face of all the suffering.

In the words of Nelson Mandela, “It always seems impossible, until it’s done.”

Simple democracy once seemed impossible, until it was done.

Women’s suffrage once seemed impossible, until it was done.

Marriage equality once seemed impossible, until it was done.

Trans and non-binary equality right now seems impossible — but one day it will be done. One by one, our brothers and sisters to our left and right are repenting, changing direction, turning around. One by one they’re contributing to the same moral arc of history that has seen the truly inalienable rights of all God’s children come increasingly into focus.

# # #

In the meantime, if you’re feeling powerless in the face of the forces lined up against us, you’re not alone. There’s a very real malaise happening in our society, and The New York Times last Sunday gave it a name: Stucktopia. We’re seeing it fictionalized on our TV screens in shows such as “Fallout,” “Severance,” “Andor” and “Silo,” where “what’s being portrayed is not exactly a dystopia. It’s certainly not a utopia. It’s something different: a stucktopia. These fictional worlds are controlled by an overclass, and the folks battling in the mire are underdogs — mechanics, office drones, pilots and young brides. Yet they’re also complicit, to varying degrees, in the machinery that keeps them stranded. Once they realize this, they strive to discard their sense of futility — the least helpful of emotions — and try to find the will to enact change.”

Sound like Judea under Roman occupation? Or pre-Revolutionary French peasant life? Or maybe the closet?

The New York Times article concludes:

We aren’t just cogs in the machine because that’s our assigned role. We’re cogs because breaking out from our prescribed slots seems deeply difficult and uncomfortable.

We’re not stuck in our circumstance. We’re stuck in the ways of living that perpetuate it.

If enough of us give up the sense that things are inevitable — that we’re stuck — it’s possible that we can course-correct humanity, or at least nudge it toward a hopeful path.

Does that sound like a call to repentance or what? But what exactly are we called in this modern era to turn away from? What’s distracting us from God? What modern cages do those fictional underground silos on the sci-fi TV shows represent?

Here’s what I think they could represent: Facebook. Instagram. TikTok. X. Nextdoor. Politics.

I think they could represent our newfound addiction to notifications, and to the dopamine rush of social-media approval.

So what does modern repentance look like? For starters, I think it looks like actually talking to a neighbor instead of scrolling on Nextdoor.

In a world where 65 percent of Gen Z describe themselves as video content creators, I think it means making less “content” and making more connections. It means embracing the real instead of the comforting and the superstition-reinforcing.

In other words, this kind of post-modern, post-digital repentance means connecting with God’s children instead of with the pixels that purport to represent them.

At least partially, it means embracing time spent in the company of co-workers, because fully remote work isn’t fully the answer.

Globally, one in five employees report experiencing loneliness a lot the previous day according to Gallup’s new “State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report.”

Loneliness is more prevalent among employees younger than age 35 than it is for those aged 35 and older. The same percentages of working men and working women report loneliness: each 20%. Job levels also seemed to have little association with loneliness.

Of all the variables Gallup analyzed, work location shows the biggest differences in employees’ experiences with loneliness. Fully remote employees report significantly higher levels of loneliness (25%) than do those who work exclusively on-site (16%) — hybrid workers fall in between at 21%.

# # #

We LGBTQ+ people know from generational experience how powerful actual human connection is. It’s why bars, bookstores and even bathhouses were so crucial to our survival in the early days of our liberation. It’s easy today to forget, or at least underestimate, how lonely our existence was until only recently — and how hard, if not downright impossible, it was for us to find a positive role model anywhere in our families, our schools, our communities, our culture, our entertainment. So often, when we did see ourselves represented, it was tragically.

Another thing we learned in the pre-internet days of our early liberation was that coming out was the single most powerful weapon each of us had to instigate societal change for LGBTQ+ people. It’s one of the many ways that the personal became the political as we joined the ranks of those on the margins who were fighting for the visibility that could save us.

So as long as we could — and can — figure out how to stay safe, our coming out has been one of the single most impactful contributors to the ever-increasing likelihood that the average non-LGBTQ+ person knows of at least one LGBTQ+ person in their lives.

And over time, they’ve changed their minds. They’ve changed direction. They’ve repented.

I don’t know if we’ll have a trans or non-binary bill of rights by July 14, 2025. Something tells me we won’t. But I do know that there will come a July 14th, hopefully in my lifetime, when it will have come to pass.

When it comes to the evergreen struggle for the true liberty, equality and fraternity our society needs in order for everyone to be truly free, I do love the symbolism of the storming of the Bastille.

Even though we’re likely to remember it as being about the freeing of a bunch of prisoners who were held unjustly for things like being unable to pay common debts, the reality is that there were only seven prisoners there, and what the revolutionaries were really after was the stockpile of munitions they believed were there, so they could fuel their fight against the Crown.

The Bastille also represented royal authority itself. Even though it was already scheduled for demolition, to the revolutionaries it was a symbol of the monarchy’s abuse of power, and its fall became the flashpoint of the French Revolution.

You could say the Roman Empire was also scheduled for demolition, in the sense that all things must come to an end eventually. And it did. So was the temple in Jerusalem.

For our part, we have some modern-day Bastilles we should be storming, both externally and internally — both societally and personally.

If you don’t think you’re in a prison right now, consider the fact that in today’s “attention economy,” the amount of time your eyeballs are trained on ads, content or apps is being converted to cash even as we speak. Have you ever counted the number of times you glance at your phone?

And somewhere, in a glittering city on one of our coasts, there is probably a modern Salome dancing for a tech billionaire. What’s old is new again.

If you don’t think you’re in a prison right now, take out your Bible and practice transposing every God-reference that employs the word “Father” or the capitalized He/Him/His pronouns with the word “Mother” and the pronouns She/Her/Hers and see how that feels.

Are you squirming yet? Good. You’re starting to feel the sides of the prison of gender — that artificial binary that has been the source of so much heartache, ruin and pain.
Here’s what my version of liberty, equality and fraternity looks like:

• Honoring the gender expression of the people in my midst.
• Spending less time talking and more time listening.
• Practicing the use of gender-neutral pronouns and references.
• Celebrating the brave folks who continue to come out as their true selves.
• Remembering that everyone I encounter is a child of God, wonderfully, uniquely and equally made in God’s image.
• Trusting that anything that may seem impossible right now will eventually be done, according to God’s will.

God bless you this morning.

Lance Helms

An adult convert to Christianity who somehow managed to grow up largely unchurched in the South but was always a spiritual seeker, Lance Helms (he/him) was baptized at age 28 and since 2006 has been a member of Gentle Spirit Christian Church of Atlanta.