I confess: I still enjoy dancing to “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People, complete with all the goofy hand gestures that accompany each of those four letters. A dance floor filled with people, arms stretched above their heads to make a “Y” – it looks like a prayer meeting.
That song became something like a gay anthem way back in the disco days of the late 1970s. Earlier this year, some activists suggested including that song in the opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics in Sochi, to protest Russia’s stance toward LGBT people. But Victor Willis, the song writer, insisted that he really didn’t have gay men in mind at all when he wrote it.
Willis’ protests notwithstanding, The Village People have endured as gay icons, not least for their costumes. The biker, the sailor, the soldier, the cowboy, t
he American Indian, the construction worker, and the cop – these hunky cultural stereotypes fueled the erotic fantasies of many gay men (including me). This might make The Village People rather gay, certainly kitschy, but not terribly queer.
Something far queerer happens toward the end of Luke’s gospel account, a story that features another kind of village that many Christians will hear about this weekend, as we always do on the third Sunday of Easter.
An alluring stranger joins two disciples of Jesus traveling along a road toward a village called Emmaus. When they arrive, they invite this stranger to join them at the village inn. There, sitting at table, the stranger breaks bread. In that moment the disciples finally recognize the stranger as the risen Jesus; in that same moment, he disappears (Luke 24:31).
But wait! What happened to the joyful reunion part? If not a Hollywood-style orchestral soundtrack why not at least a hug? Or as Dorothy put it in the Wizard of Oz, “My! People come and go so quickly here.”
Luke’s village people underscore the peculiar character of Christian faith and indeed its queerness. “Queer” not so much for its LGBT sensibilities but for its refusal to give what so many of us want: a clearly defined God we can grasp and control.
Luke set the stage for that moment several chapters earlier, when Jesus appeared in glory on a mountain. There, Peter did what I would have done and excitedly proposed to build a booth, a place to capture and contain the glory (Luke 9:33). But Jesus refused to be boxed in and captured, just as he did in a village called Emmaus.
First-century Emmaus and twentieth-century Village People – together they can remind us about the risks and dangers in trying to categorize, classify, and capture both God and humans. On the one hand, we risk living with little more than an idol, and on the other, all the dangerous cultural divisions drawn by race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender of the kind NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling just recently displayed.
Black men play basketball. Asian women are bad drivers. Gay men lust after American Indians, especially if they just happen to be construction workers. Familiar stereotypes are easily dismissed but they linger, fortifying the categorical assumptions most of us adopt nearly every day.
The familiar made strange.
The reliable unraveled.
The status quo ecstatically undone.
These are the peculiar hallmarks of Christian faith and they invite us into queer moments of encounter. In the midst of what we think we already know – racial profiles, sketchy neighborhoods, exotic cultures, the familiar stench of decay and death – right there strange new life awaits. Queerly enough, according to Luke, hospitality is the best way to see it.
For Luke, it takes a village to raise the ensign of Easter over the familiar categories of our despair. Even The Village People can help when we see their campy costumes as parodies and we dance not with categories but with people, our arms raised in the shape of a “Y” – or even better, as a “V”.
God’s victory over death appears when we break bread with strangers, and even more in the courage to dance with them.