May the image of Matthew we dedicate this night
be a reminder of the love which surrounded him in life,
and the affection which holds his precious memory in the hearts of so many.
May this portrait be a teacher for those who have yet to learn Matthew’s story,
and a beacon of hope for those facing oppression.
May it be for all of us a symbol of the beloved community for which we strive,
the community where all your children are accepted, embraced, and loved.
Prayer used at a service of dedication of a portrait of Matthew Shepard, at Washington Cathedral, in 2018
MATTHEW SHEPARD was an American student at the University of Wyoming. Twenty-five years ago, at the age of 21, he went out for a drink, and, at the end of the evening, two men offered to give him a lift home. They did not take him home. Instead, they drove him to a remote, rural area. They hit him on the head with blunt weapons, tortured him, and then tied him naked to a fence. They left him there in freezing temperatures.
He was there for 18 hours in a coma, until a cyclist saw him and thought he was a scarecrow. Getting closer, he saw a young man with his face completely covered in blood, except for where his tears had partially cleansed his cheeks. Matthew was taken to hospital. His injuries were too severe for him to be operated on. He lay connected to a life-support machine for six days until, at 12.53 a.m. on 12 October 1998, he was pronounced dead.
Matt was gay. His killers knew that. His killers did not like that. Other people did not like that. At Matt’s funeral, his parents had to walk past members of the Westboro Baptist church holding placards that said “Matt’s in hell” and “God hates fags”. His parents decided not to bury Matt’s ashes anywhere, because they believed that his grave would be defaced. They kept Matt’s remains at home.
Then, five years ago, at Washington Cathedral, 20 years after his death, Matt’s ashes were carried into a full church. At a service full of lament and colour, sadness and resolve, Matt’s remains were finally laid to rest in the cathedral. The preacher was Bishop Gene Robinson. Matt had been an Episcopalian, and served in his local church. At the end of the sermon, the Bishop spoke to Matthew. “Gently rest in peace here,” he said. “You are safe now. Welcome home.”
FOUR months ago, the cathedral commissioned a portrait of Matt, to be placed in the crypt near his remains. Matt is depicted wearing his favourite shirt, given to him by his parents. He is surrounded by the messages of love and support that his parents received; one hand lies on his heart, saying “Thank you” from a place of pain, while the other is extended in offered friendship and solidarity.
A short service of dedication took place, at which this prayer was prayed. It begins by using the word “Image”, recalling that we are all made in the image of our Creator, and asks that the painting will celebrate the love in which Matt was held by his family, his church, and his friends. “Though lovers be lost, love shall not, and death shall have no dominion,” Dylan Thomas wrote.
The prayer asks that this portrait teach people Matt’s story, and that it will provide hope for any who are suffering the humiliations and shaming that evil destructively channels through hate and prejudice. The prayer ends by asking that Matt’s image will be a symbol of the “community for which we strive”, in which all God’s children are finally “accepted, embraced, and loved”.
This is a prayer that recalls that we are all skilled at labelling people for who they are not. Matt was not straight. Others of us are not white, not British, not physically the same, not sporty, not able to live safely at home, not clever, and so on. Unable to see the image of love placed within them all, we, instead, define people for what they are not, making it easier to isolate, bully, or even destroy them. The sign over the Cross, “King of the Jews”, was saying, in effect, “He’s not sane.” The community that Christ comes to shape, though, is born in seeing exactly who we are, not what we aren’t.
Whatever our view about recent developments in the Church of England towards LGBTQ people, it must be a Christian imperative never to use language that belittles, degrades, or threatens children of God, because such words can fuel the hate and justifications of those such as the two men in Wyoming who, one evening, were able to end a life, because it was not like theirs. The prayer’s desire for a “beloved community”, a school for loving better, is one to keep praying. We pray to be a Church where people don’t “fit in”: they belong.
MATT’s story and that of Holy Week have their similarities, in that each seems to end with a young man taunted, ridiculed, tortured, and strung up for all to see. They are also stories in which hope is painfully forged through very deep wounds, and we are invited to share in God’s loyalty to the future.
Jesus and Matthew are both victims of crimes born of fear in the heart. “What we have here is very typical of what God does,” Bishop Robinson said at the dedication of the portrait. “God takes a terrible thing, like Good Friday, and brings something amazing and miraculous out of it, like Easter. . . In the end, love wins. It may not look like it right now. The odds may be against it. But our confidence as Christians is that, in the end, God gets the last word, and that last word is love.”
The police officer who was called out to the scene of Matt’s attack said in her report that, as she approached the fence, she saw something next to his body. It was a deer, lying quietly beside him. It looked as if it had been there all night long. She said the deer saw her, stood up, looked her in the eyes, and then ran away.
“That was the good Lord, no doubt, no doubt in my mind,” she wrote, “that was the good Lord.”
The Revd Dr Mark Oakley is the Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, and Canon Theologian of Wakefield Cathedral.