Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:38:42

Yesterday during the children’s sermon I brought a picnic basket to the circle and opened it up to show the children each item I had packed for D and I to enjoy for lunch after church. I pulled out the blanket we would sit on, plates, utensils, napkins, cups, a cheese board and knife, storage bags to put any leftovers in, a tube of sun block, a bottle of insect repellent, paper towels, disposable wet towelettes, and stain removal for the food I always seemed to spill on my clothes. It was only after everything had been removed from the basket and piled in front of the children that I came to the “shocked” realization that in the distraction to pack everything I thought we might need for the picnic I had forgotten the most important thing of all….the food.

Jesus didn’t call Martha out because she was doing anything wrong. She was just doing what she believed was essential to extend hospitality to a special guest. Jesus was coming and she wanted him to know his presence in their home was honored. She wanted to be sure their humble home was clean and that when he arrived everything would be in place to meet his needs and make him comfortable. Fresh water and clean towels needed to be prepared to wash and dry the road dust from his feet. The table needed to be set with a warm home-cooked meal and the best of wine to nourish him and his traveling companions. And then were all the people who would pass through their home during Jesus’ stay that would need to be welcomed and fed a little something before they went on their way.

While there was nothing wrong in any of the things Martha was doing, the problem was that in doing them she had become distracted from the one most important and essential thing of all and that was simply being….being with Jesus, being quiet and still in his presence, being available to hear God speak. Martha was living a distracted life and much of the time so are we. Not only are we distracted by life’s demands and all the duties that come with being a responsible grown-up in the world but we’re all too often driven to distraction with the idea that doing more, making more, and giving more will make our lives more meaningful and our worth more valuable in this world and to God. All these distractions make us forget where our real value lies and what really matters.

Then we come back to this story and see Jesus lifting up the sister who’s doing nothing more than being in his presence and in doing so is receiving what she will never lose and can never be taken away. Looking at Jesus Mary knows she is loved. In welcoming her in his presence she knows Jesus considers her and the relationship they share as being of great worth. As she listens to his words she knows who she really is; that she is a beloved child of God, the apple of God’s eye, and precious in God’s sight.

Creating space and time for God each morning isn’t for the purpose of making our requests that God do something for us or through us in the hours that follow, but for the purpose of connecting our spirit with the Spirit of God so we can then go through our day remembering who we really are in God. There’s no one living in this world who doesn’t need reminding but as GLBTQ people we need to be reminded more than most of who we really are in God’s eyes since hearing who others have concluded we are is only the morning newspaper or a click of the TV remote away. Every day we’re hit with words that diminish our worth as human beings, the value of our relationships, and our identity as those equally loved and cherished by God and so we need to fix our minds and hearts on what we know in Christ so we can move through the day in the truth of our lives rather than in the lies of others.

So who are you really?

Hey, don’t ask me.

There’s only One who can tell you so tomorrow morning, be still, be quiet, and listen.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you. But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.  And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.  -Luke 1

She was perplexed and wondered what sort of greeting this might be.

How can this be since I am a virgin?

Here am I, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

Mary’s response to the angel’s pronouncement is an understatement on so many levels. Even before dealing with the content of what the angel is saying Mary has to take in the context; that being that an angel has shown up in her room in the middle of the night. Though I’m not a scholar of ancient history I’m going to go out on a limb and postulate that angel appearances weren’t a common occurrence in the lives of young Palestinian Jewish girls in the first century. I could be wrong but I’ll take the risk. Whether Gabriel glowed with heavenly light and feathered wings flapping or made a nondescript appearance like Earl, my preferred variety of angel, it was a moment like none other in the young girl’s life. Surprising to say the least and yet the story doesn’t go on to recount how Mary ran screaming from the room or went weak in the knees, swooning to the ground in a heap. No external reaction on her part is revealed; only that internally Mary was perplexed and wondered why the angel had addressed her as favoured one and assured her of God’s presence.

While Mary might have been baffled about it all, why was there no fear on her part? Why no running or screaming or fainting or trembling, all of which I would have done in no particular order or more likely would have done all at the same time? My best guess is because from the moment the angel appeared, despite the extra-ordinariness of what was unfolding, Mary simply accepted what was. There was nothing in her that denied the reality of what was happening or that said no to the moment. You can almost hear the gears in her mind turning over;“This isn’t a dream. This is real. There’s an angel in my room and the angel is speaking to me. Now what?”

Mary’s acceptance allowed Gabriel to get right to the point of why he had come and where he began was by offering Mary the assurance that she had found favor in the eyes of God so she would know that the news to follow wasn’t a punishment for wrongdoing or a test of her faithfulness but instead he had come to tell her that because she had found favor, because God loved her and trusted her faithfulness God had chosen her for a special calling above all others. Mary had been chosen. By God.

And with assurance given the angel went on to round out the details of God’s calling; that she Mary, a young Jewess occupying a humble station in life, born to a family of simple means, engaged to a blue-collar worker, had been chosen to give birth to Messiah, the Promised One, the Hope of her people from the infancy of their beginnings, the King who would reign over the House of Jacob forever and the One whose kingdom would have no end. The angel’s pronouncement was the fulfillment of a promise from God that her people had longed to hear and hinged their lives upon from generation to generation. The angel is revealing that the promise of God to the people of Israel was just on the horizon. The moment had come. The time was now.

And Mary’s response? Now here is the part I love. Don’t miss it. Mary may have been young, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew where babies came from and so she knew it was impossible for her to give birth since she’d never been with a man. What the angel was saying was ridiculous. It was inconceivable. It was out of the question. Nope, not her. Not now. No way. And that’s just what she could have said. “No Gabriel. What you’re saying is impossible because I’m a virgin.” Period. End of story. Yet  instead of making a closed statement Mary asked the question “How can this be since I’m a virgin?” Mary didn’t say no to the impossibility of what God is revealing through Gabriel but instead she asked how it can be possible and in doing so Mary left the door open for the impossible to become possible. She left her heart open to receive the divine revelation for what in her human understanding was inconceivable.

And with her heart and ears open, she received the angel’s explanation for how it will be and answered in simple faith, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Here I am. Yes. I will accept this calling. Though I may be condemned as a sinner in violation of the law. Though I may lose face among my people. Though I may be rejected and cast out by my community. Though my parents may be ashamed. Though Joseph may abandon me. Though there will be certain pain and labor and blood. Though I will be stepping into the unknown, here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

That’s all I’m saying. Let God’s Spirit say what God would have you hear.

Spread the Word!

]]> http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/what-you-said-mary/feed/ 3 http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/jesus-said-it-first/ http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/jesus-said-it-first/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:19:18 +0000 anita http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/?p=3986

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. ^“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”) He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’ ” - Mark 7:1-8, 14-23

I’m a sharp enough whip to understand the context. The Pharisees had their tunics in a bunch because the disciples had ignored a basic purity law. They ate food with unclean hands and in doing so they set off a icky dirty chain effect: unclean hands made the food they touched unclean and the unclean food they put into their mouths made them unclean. They were defiled. Unclean. Impure. In other words, the disciples had unholy cooties.

Jesus responded in pure Jesus style which I now offer courtesy of my own translation “Knock it off you chuckleheads! The prophet Isaiah had your number when he said ‘you talk the talk but your hearts are shut away from me. You’re pushing your conditions and traditions on others as though they were doctrine and all the while you’re totally ignoring what God said.’ Wise up everyone! Nothing outside of you will defile you. Pay attention instead to what comes out of you because that’s what really matters.” As is often the case in the Gospel of Mark, the disciples are portrayed as so thick around the ears they don’t understand what Jesus’ teaching means and so once again he has to spell it out for them. “I’m going to say this slowly for you guys. Whatever food you eat goes into your stomach and then it leaves your body, so that’s why no food is to be considered unclean because none of it stays with you.  No. What matters to God is what comes out of your heart and if what comes out of someone is evil, then that’s what makes that person unclean. Capice?”

Everyday we take what’s unclean into ourselves from outside ourselves. Every diminishing word that’s spoken about us, every name we’re called, every condemning word and judgment, the disapproving looks of family and friends, the legal assault on our rights, the verbal debate in society and the church about who and what we are. All those words and looks and actions come at us and into us through our eyes and ears and there are times when worn down and weary we begin to wonder if the unclean things we’ve taken in to ourselves are who we really are.

But that’s not who we are. Your worth will never be determined by what’s outside of you. Your worth is found in who God says you are (Does child of God ring a bell?), in the content of your heart (Evil thoughts or thoughts of God?) and in what proceeds out of your life through the words of your mouth and the actions of your hands.

Your worth is determined by your heart and by the day to day living of your life and by who God says you are. Those three things say everything about you and all the rest, all that unclean rubble whirling around you from outside you doesn’t belong to you. It says nothing about you and no one has the power to determine your worth and no one has the right to call you unclean.

Now, if you have a problem with what I’m saying don’t take it up with me. Take it up with Jesus because I’m only repeating what he said. “ There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

Do you think Jesus was just talking about food? Oh. I don’t. Not for a minute.

I went over to the city last week and by the city I mean theee city, San Francisco. When you say the city in the Bay area or in Central California for that matter, it’s basically an interchangeable term for San Francisco. No other details needed. And while I’m at it, it would be ever so helpful if you folks would make note of this so I don’t need to go over it again with you in the future. Much appreciated. Thanks.

Okay, so I went over to the city to meet up with Jim, my first boy crush when I was all of sixteen years old. Do you want to know how he made me giddy with puppy love? Oh please. Let me tell you. He chased me screaming like a girl (because I was one) through the dining hall at church camp with a piece of raw chicken skin dangling in his hand that he had convinced me was actually a dead unhatched baby chicken from a freshly cracked egg. I’ve always been a sucker for romance. I was in fact so smitten by his charming ways that a decade later we ventured into the world of dating. Oh wait. Did I mention he’s gay too? Oh please. Stop laughing. It’s not as if we’re the only gay man and woman to delve into that quirky area.  Anyway, today we have the kind of friendship that no matter how many months or years pass between sightings it always feels comfortable and easy to be together again. And we laugh. We always laugh.

So for an hour or two the other day we sat on a pier bench in the city (refer to your notes from above) overlooking the Bay sipping on the brewed nectar of some mellow brown beans from Blue Bottle Coffee, and catching up on each others lives with the conversation coming back around time and again to snippets of faith and grace, God and worship.

Jim and I have a long shared history beyond that of the chicken fat episode. We were raised within the same denomination, went to the same church camp every summer, attended the same regional youth gatherings and eventually both found our way to the same Bible College. It was only years later when we were both in the same congregation where I was serving in ministry that we ventured from long time friends into a romantic relationship and then back to friends again, and through most of those years I knew Jim was gay because he’d been honest with me. I also knew Jim’s same-sex attraction had caused him tremendous internal conflict for a number of years and because of the conflict between the reality of his life, the teachings of his church, and his desire to be right before God he made a genuine effort time after time to abandon those attractions. I never really knew the lengths to which Jim went to try and “change”, I only knew he went through more than a few dark nights of the soul, and when I finally saw the conflict he had lived under for so long begin to melt away under an ever-deepening encounter with God’s grace, no one was more happy than me. You see, somewhere in the middle of all those years Jim was struggling to reconcile his faith with his sexuality, I came to the self-awareness of my own sexuality, but unlike Jim it didn’t take years or even months for me to come to peace as a gay Christian. It took a few short weeks and while I rejoiced in the peace of God that came so quickly to me, I ached for the day when Jim would know it too.

And I couldn’t help but wonder given all Jim and I shared in terms of our faith tradition and upbringing why the journey to God’s peace took him years when my own struggle toward reconciliation could be counted in days. All my wondering led me to an all too obvious conclusion; that despite all the similarities in our backgrounds and faith, we both had to arrive at peace in God’s grace in our own way and in our own time. I told you it was nose-on-the-face obvious.

Over the years I’ve extended that same wondering to all those who have written to share their ongoing and seemingly unending struggle to reconcile their faith and sexuality. And now I extend it to include you. Why is it that you continue day after day to remain troubled in your heart over your sexuality? Why do you continue to wander lost in a spiritual desert where you question God’s love for you because you’re attracted to the same sex or because the gender your body reflects doesn’t match the true gender you know that you really are? Why is it that you can’t accept once and for all that your very life, including your sexuality or true gender is a glorious gift designed and crafted by the hand of God? Why can’t you finally recognize that God’s thumbprint is all over you and that the very capacity your heart holds to love another of the same sex springs directly out of the wellspring of God’s love?

Take in whatever you can in what I’m about to say. You don’t continue to struggle because you lack faith. It’s not because you don’t love God enough, fail to trust enough, or haven’t sought God earnestly enough. It’s not because you’re less spiritual than the Christian next to you or that your relationship with God isn’t quite up to par with those who have already reconciled their faith and sexuality. You’re not a slow learner. The reason that you are where you are today in all this is for no other reason than that you can only travel the path that you’re on. You can’t travel mine. You can’t travel hers. Or his. God created you uniquely you. You think differently, feel differently, understand differently than anyone else and so the path you travel will be unique to you. Your journey is your journey alone, and while we don’t get to choose what path to God’s peace our lives will travel, we have the choice of whether we’ll continue to travel down the road or give up. We get to say with determination “I will continue on until I have an answer from God,” or cry out “Uncle!” in resignation and defeat. Oh, the courage, faith, and commitment it takes to continue on a journey when so many obstacles have been laid in the path.  You my friend, honor yourself and you honor God with your perseverance. I applaud you as I am humbled by you.

The path to reconcile your faith and sexuality is a hard one and in the most difficult moments it can seem less a path than a ledge that leaves you dangling over an abyss of uncertainty and fear. Just hold on and keep walking. Keep looking ahead because the peace of God is just up there on the horizon and even now the grace of God is coming to meet you where you are. I don’t know how much longer it will take for you to arrive at the place you’ve been earnestly seeking. I only know that it will take as long as it takes and that in God’s time there’s always enough time to get there. And remember, please remember, you aren’t walking alone. God’s Spirit is within you, the Risen Christ walks besides you, and even now there are countless GLBTQ Christians and friends who are praying that you feel their encouragement and support along the way.

May you know the peace of God that surpasses all understanding and may it by God’s grace be sooner than later.

In recent days many of us have heard reports from a study conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden that used MRI and PET scans to compare the brains of 90 people (25 straight men, 25 straight women, 20 gay men, 20 gay women), and found that the brains of gay men were more like those of straight women than of straight men and that brains of gay women tend to be more like straight men than straight women. The areas of similarity involved the size of various portions of the brain, and how a particular section of the brain (the amygdala) was connected to other regions of the brain; in gay men and straight women the connectors are more strongly tied to areas involving emotions; for gay women and straight men the strong connectors lead to the part of the brain that controls motor functions. I think it’s interesting but not all that important in the faith-based conversations of homosexuality.

Whenever homosexuality is the topic among people of faith, whether in friendly conversation or in heated debate, you can anticipate that at some point the question of choice will bounce to the top often in some variation of “Does a person choose to be gay or are they born that way?” While conservative Christians argue that gays and lesbians have chosen a sinful homosexual lifestyle, most gay and lesbian Christians answer back that being gay was never a choice for them. The conflict breaks down to pitting biology against choice. If homosexuality is genetic then same-sex attraction could be understood as an intrinsic and natural characteristic for a certain percentage of humans and thus an argument could be made that homosexuality is a matter of biology rather than moral choice or sin. On the other hand, if homosexuality is a deliberate, or even unconscious choice, then the line of reasoning goes that what can be chosen can be un-chosen, leading some gay and lesbian Christians into ex-gay ministries that for far too many set in motion the soul-wrenching hamster wheel of gay/ex-gay/ex-ex-gay and tragically there are times when the wheel doesn’t stop spinning until someone is ex-alive. We’ve lost so many good and young lives because they were led to believe that which they’d never chosen could be unchosen, leading them to try time and again to be what they were never meant to be in the first place.

There are things each of us know about ourselves that are unquestionable truths of our lives. One of those absolute facts, like day follows night, is that I never made a deliberate choice to be gay. That’s not to say I had no choice at all in the matter. I did. I made a long list of choices. I chose to trust my relationship with God. I chose to believe there was another way to understand the few Scriptures that were being used to condemn homosexuality. I chose to not see myself as sick or sinful but as beloved and holy. I chose to place my assurance in God and not in those who claimed to speak for God. I chose to love. I chose to live boldly. I chose to live openly as a Christian and a lesbian. These are the choices I’m accountable for and the ones I gladly take full responsibility for having made.

That’s my story and I’m sticking by it, but it’s my story and not necessarily shared by every other queer roaming the planet. In fact, I know it’s not because there are plenty of queer people who claim choice in their sexual orientation. This can be problematic for those GLBTQ Christians who’ve made the “it wasn’t a choice” line of reasoning a key component to their discourse on homosexuality and religion. I would have had a hard time of it myself in the early days of my own reconciliation journey had I heard there were gays and lesbians who actually chose to be gay and lesbian. *

As I realize how true what I’m about to say is, I can catch a glimpse of how far I’ve come in digging through the onion layers of my own internalized homophobia, and what I’m going to say is this; it no longer matters to me whether sexual orientation is rooted in nature or nurture, whether it’s genetic or environmental, learned or innate. It no longer matters to me because I don’t believe a person’s sexual orientation matters one iota to God anymore than it matters to God whether we’re left-handed or right-handed. Where I believe it matters to God is how we choose to use our left or right hand to bring either harm or healing to another human being. The action of our dominant hand, regardless of which hand it might be, is where God pays close attention. In the same way, whether we’re gay, straight, or bi, God’s interest isn’t in the object of our affection but in the expression of our affection. God cares about our motives and intentions and how we tend to the well-being and wholeness of others and that includes in sexually intimate relationships.

So what are your thoughts on all the whole nature-nurture, choice or non-choice rigmarole?  I wait expectantly. In the meantime, this seems to be leading us toward the bigger conversation around the much requested topic of queer Christian sexual ethics but give me a day or two to pull that puppy together!

—-

*Afterword:

Despite having no personal experience in choosing my sexual orientation, I can readily accept the claim of others to have chosen theirs in light of the variances between being exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual [Refer to my post on Fluidity and the Sexuality Scale]. The large space in between allows for the possibility that these individuals could maintain choice in self-identifying and then living as gay, just as it allows for those individuals who maintain they were once gay and now choose to self-identify and live as straight or in their terminology, now identify as “ex-gay.” I don’t believe however that someone who is exclusively heterosexually-attracted can choose to be gay anymore than someone who is exclusively homosexually-attracted can choose to be straight, unless that choice is made with a willingness to settle for a painfully conflicted life where external actions and internal inclinations are at continually odds with one another.

Whenever I speak, I cry out
proclaiming violence and destruction.
So the word of the LORD has brought me
insult and reproach all day long.

But if I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot.

I hear many whispering,
“Terror on every side!
Report him! Let’s report him!”
All my friends
are waiting for me to slip, saying,
“Perhaps he will be deceived;
then we will prevail over him
and take our revenge on him.”

But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior;
so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail;
They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced;
their dishonor will never be forgotten.

O LORD Almighty, you who examine the righteous
and probe the heart and mind,
let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause.

Sing to the LORD!
Give praise to the LORD!
He rescues the life of the needy
from the hands of the wicked.

Put a curse on the day I was born!
Don’t bless my mother.
Put a curse on the man
who told my father,
“Good news! You have a son.”

Jeremiah 20:7-15

Isn’t it something how you can know a passage in the Bible, hear sermons preached on it, stumble across it time and again in your devotional reading, and yet it never really sinks in until one day when something in it speaks so real and close to the place you’re at in your own life that it leaves you undone? Jeremiah 20 is one of those passages for me. I was in my third year of seminary when another seminarian presented it for the opening devotional in class, and as I listened that morning it was as though the words pierced through me for the first time in my life; so near to expressing my own heart at the time that the words could have been written by someone who had eavesdropped on my secret prayers of the heart.

Since that morning five years ago, I’ve reflected on Jeremiah’s complaint countless times. It was the Scripture reading and theme for my ordination into Christian ministry on Pentecost Sunday 2004, and when it was read this past Sunday as part of the lectionary reading, it grabbed me all over again. My intention is to share a few personal reflections on the passage as a beginning to a conversation I hope you’ll continue.

By the time Jeremiah came onto the scene, Israel was no longer a united nation but had been divided between Israel in the north and Judah, with Jerusalem as it’s capital in the south. Israel had already been destroyed, taken captive by its enemies because they had ignored the words of the prophets God had sent to them and had refused to repent of their sins. Judah had remained faithful, but her faithfulness was limited to adherence to religious traditions rather than devotion and obedience to God and God’s Word. This is how it came to be that God called Jeremiah to be a prophet to Judah, to warn the people that unless they repent of their sin, return to their first love, and again pledge themselves to the covenant they had long ago entered into with God, their fate would be no different than that of Israel.

And what followed was both good news and bad news. The bad news was that the word God gave to Jeremiah wasn’t a particularly popular message to deliver to the people. They didn’t want to be told, from one of their own no less, that all their religious works and rituals weren’t what God wanted from them. They balked at Jeremiah’s prophesies. He was ridiculed and made into a laughingstock. Their taunts ring out in Jeremiah 20:10; “Oh we’re sooooo scared Jeremiah. Destruction and terror is all around. Big bad scary God is gonna get us because you say so.” Though Jeremiah had once been their neighbor and friend, they conspired and plotted ways to trip him up and destroy both he and his message. Even the priests from his hometown, who would have watched Jeremiah grow from boy to man, looked for ways to kill him. For the sake of the message Jeremiah suffered. He was mocked, ridiculed and betrayed, dropped into a deep muddy hole at one point in his life and dragged against his will into Egypt at another. They hated the message and the messenger who brought it to them.

The good news? When God chose Jeremiah he didn’t choose a people pleaser. For more than twenty years Jeremiah spoke the word of God without ceasing despite the less than favorable response it received. God said “Go into the streets of Jerusalem and into all the towns of Judah and declare what I’ve told you,” and that’s what Jeremiah did. Kings came and went but Jeremiah remained, never yielding. False prophets came and went but Jeremiah remained, never silent. Though he suffered constant hardship and was condemned as a false prophet, and even though no one believed and responded to the message God had given him, Jeremiah persisted.

I love this guy. I love him for following God’s call, for his courage, his faithfulness, his integrity, and his passion and commitment to God. And I love him because when he was overwhelmed by it all, he complained. Now that’s someone I can relate to. Call it a prayer of lament, or holy whining. Either way, I love the realness of it and I love that Jeremiah names the real problem behind it all, the cause for all his suffering and hardship. Look no further. God was to blame for the mess Jeremiah was in.

Jeremiah had loved God all his life and had heard God call him in his youth, placing words on his lips and a truth in his heart that he was to take to the people. They weren’t words written in ink and bound up in paper. The truth given to Jeremiah wasn’t the truth being preached in the temple at Jerusalem. The words were an offense, a scandal to all who heard them. No way was Jeremiah speaking God’s words. Impossible! But whatever others thought, no matter how they doubted and ridiculed the message, Jeremiah continued to speak the words and believe the truth placed in his heart Jeremiah had recognized the voice as the One he loved and with confidence that it was God speaking to him, he had no choice but to declare the message. He had no choice because it had come from the God he worshiped and the only God he would follow in obedience.

And so it was God’s fault. God had lured Jeremiah with his word and his truth and because he did as God had commanded he was the brunt of everyone’s jokes, an object of ridicule and the target for persecution. If he could just keep his mouth shut. Say nothing. Stop with all the God said this and God said that, life would be easy again. He could fit back in and life could return to normal. “Hey there Jeremiah! How you doing? Fine, you say? Oh, that’s good to hear. Have a nice day now.” What a relief it would be to exchange a few pleasantries on the road, and yet, as much as Jeremiah might have longed for a break, to just have a moment’s peace, he couldn’t be quiet about God. He couldn’t shut up because all that he knew of God and had heard from God burned in him like a fire that couldn’t be contained, and so despite it all, Jeremiah kept speaking what God had said to him and only to him because it was impossible for him to do otherwise.

And when it got bad, so bad he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, Jeremiah would air his complaint to God. “God, I’m miserable. This is your doing. They won’t leave me alone. They won’t listen. I’m a joke and a laughingstock and I don’t want to play anymore!“ And then, right in stream of lament, Jeremiah declares, “But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior.” There’s trouble on every side, no relief in sight and yet Jeremiah has confidence in God. Oh, and it goes even further than that. Watch. ONE, Jeremiah complained which led to TWO, an expression of confidence in God that anticipated THREE, deliverance by God that resulted in FOUR, praise to God. And then what? FIVE, more complaining, because in Jeremiah’s life time praise wasn’t the final word for real life was then as real life is now; a roller coaster. Even when life is grounded in faith. Even for a prophet.

When you realized you were gay why did you tell anyone? Why did you tell your Christian friends and family when you knew they’d disapprove? Why did you tell your pastor or put the word out in your church when you could have guessed their reaction and the consequences that would follow? Why didn’t you just keep your mouth shut and keep it to yourself? Nobody needed to know. Keep private business private they say. And just why do you bother to share an non-condemning interpretation of the Scriptures to those who stand behind a traditional interpretation that condemns it as a sin and abomination? Why be bold in your love for someone of the same gender when people will devalue and ridicule it? For goodness sake, why do you insist on blogging about being a Queer Christian of all things or about affirming the lives and faith of Queer Christians? Really. What are you thinking?

Maybe you’re thinking what I’m thinking when you open your mouth to declare the truth of your life and how it is that you encounter and rejoice in the presence of God in all your days. Maybe we share the same reason for not backing down from declaring the love and grace of God that extends to all and embraces all. I wouldn’t be surprised for a minute if it’s because you don’t have a choice. Not really. If that’s the case then remember you stand in good company with one another, and with those in the faith who have gone before who couldn’t shut up either.

But if I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot.

This cartoon is from Bizarroartist

No. Wait. I’m probably the only one.

Or am I? Maybe I’m wrong.
Do you think I’m wrong?
I wonder if you think this is a weak opening. Do you think it is?
Maybe it’s not good enough and I should start all over again.
Should I start all over again? Do you think I should?
Huh? Do you?

I admit it. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life seeking approval from others to validate just about everything about me from the decisions I made, to the way I thought, to the person I was. No matter what I did if someone else noticed and gave a positive response I ended up feeling a little more smart, talented, interesting, funny, or insightful than I did before someone noticed. I loved that my mom and dad were proud of me as their daughter, that the parents of the church praised my ministry with their children, and that I received glowing feedback following workshops and various speaking gigs. I’ll even confess, since it’s just you and me here and I know you won’t tell anyone else, that it was a major ego-rush when I’d get a room full of children giggling and one of them would look up at me and say with an all too adorable, sweet, and adoring face, “Teacher Anita, you’re so funny! You make me laugh!” Maybe it was the clown costume, or the time I tossed a ball up in the air and a ceiling panel came crashing down on my head, or running around the room pretending I was an ape in the jungle complete with sounds and accompanying gestures and gyrations….so many choices to choose from.

People-pleasing, to one extent or another is a normal human quirk we all share but in my own life growing up in the church seemed to crank it all up another notch. Et tu? It wasn’t just about feeling a little smarter or prettier or funnier, but when people in the church approved of my actions and agreed with my words it meant they were not only validating my worth as an individual but my worth as a member of the community. I was one of them and I belonged. I was living in a way that matched the way they were living and believing as they believed, and should I have questions about what we believed, when our answers didn’t seem to fit the questions, I brushed my doubts aside. After all, everyone in my world, a very conservative evangelical world, were all on the same page with their answers and because I admired and loved them, then surely they must be right which could only lead to one conclusion; I was wrong, and if not wrong, at least weak for being uneasy with the certainty of the answers.

It’s funny really, or tragically sad that the Christian faith, supposedly centered in an individual’s personal relationship with Christ in reality seems to judge the personal in comparison to the community norm. What I mean to say is that our relationship with Christ and the way we flesh it out is expected to conform to the rest of the community and when it doesn’t conform, that’s seen as a red flag, a signal that something isn’t quite right with the one who does or sees things differently. Could it be that the church has come to be more interested in the individuals relationship to Christianity (their group) than to Christ? I’m just wondering this out loud.

So all that to say, there was a message that played around in my head as I confronted the realization I was a lesbian, a message that argued “Everyone in your world, all the people you love, your family, your friends, your church, and kabillions of Christians believe homosexuality is a sin. They read the Bible and say it’s message on homosexuality is clear. They can’t all be wrong so you must be wrong.” Of all the old messages this is the one that stayed with me the longest and played the loudest and I came to realize over time it plays for a whole lot of people in the church, gay, straight and polka-dot, and it continued to play for me until I came to recognize that a vocal majority of Christians (and the institutional church) have historically have been wrong about a boat load of other issues beginning with the prohibition of Gentiles into Christian community, enforcing slavery, second-class status for women, segregation and apartheid. Anyone heard of a little oops known as the Crusades? The thing is, we can vilify past and present generations of Christians for their wrongs or recognize that most were and are good and sincerely-motivated people, guided by their commitment to the Christian faith and grounded in their understanding of the Scriptures and sometimes they were simply wrong, individually and corporately. As they are today. Just as committed to their faith and just as likely to come to mistaken conclusions. I say that without judgment but with the understanding that I’m just as human and open to being in error as anyone else.

The message that plays telling you must be wrong because they must be right also disregards that the church (other people) aren’t the only source for guiding us to truth. Yes, we give attention to church tradition, past and present, but we hold it along with consideration of the Scriptures, human reason, and our personal life experience. Residing within evangelical Christianity I wasn’t familiar with John Wesley’s Quadrilateral or utilizing this method to guide my theological reflections. Truth had always been limited to the first, that being what my denomination and church espoused as truth, and while they referenced all they believed as being established in the Scriptures, it was according to their interpretation of the Scriptures. Reason was viewed as a lack of faith and human experience was seen as untrustworthy and corrupted by emotions and human desire. Reconciling my sexuality and faith was the first time I knowingly considered other factors apart from the view of the church and their interpretation of Scripture. It was the first time I paid real attention to my own life experience or brought reason into the discussion. I might have posted this before so stop me if you’ve already heard it but during a seminary discussion on biblical authority, the professor said “If as Christians we’re willing to give our lives to Jesus, why aren’t we willing to give him our mind at the same time?” I love that and give it to you as a freebie. No charge kids.

Ramble, ramble, ramble. What am I trying to say? Just this.

My long answer to this outworn message is that yes, a whole lot of Christians can be wrong about the same thing but regardless of whatever everyone else is saying I can’t build my life on their convictions and expectations. I have to base my life, actions, and words on what is the truest and most real thing I believe in faith.

And my short answer is that of Paul’s in Galatians 1:9-11.

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

When I wrote the other day that I believe we are who we are and we love who we love because it’s by God’s design and for God’s purpose that we’re GLBTQ people; when I called being gay a divine calling, a holy vocation and for the sake of the Gospel, I was saying I believe all that today but I haven’t always.

I didn’t believe being gay was a gift when after 15 years of full-time ministry as a children’s pastor the senior pastor called me into his office and said “For your remaining two weeks as the children’s pastor at the church, I need to ask that you not be alone with any of the children; that you do what you can to avoid being with them at all.”

I had no confidence that being queer was a divine calling when the Christian publishing company called to inform me that while they still wanted to purchase my Christian Education program for national distribution it could only be under the condition that my name not appear as the author because they couldn’t risk having their evangelical market discover the material had been written by a homosexual.

I couldn’t have imagined it was God’s plan I was a lesbian when a Christian educator’s organization passed along word to me that despite having been one of their most popular workshop presenters over the previous six years, they were putting me on notice that they knew I was gay and therefore never again would be asked to speak at their annual conference or participate in any manner whatsoever.

I didn’t dare believe my sexuality was for the sake of the Gospel when it came time to receive the annual application to renew my denominational ministerial license in the mail and my mailbox remained empty; when a loved one who had supported my ministry from the beginning coldly said I should never have entered the ministry at all; or when I closed the door for a final time on an emptied church office where I’d counseled with parents and loved on their children through the main part of my adult years.

For all these reasons and for others held too close to my heart to openly share, I know that calling our sexuality a divine gift, a holy calling, God’s plan, and our purpose can be a challenge when the internal messages and external circumstances seem to reflect a different reality. I really do get it which is all the more reason why I admire you for taking on the challenge to believe something different if only for four days or for two.

All that I mentioned above came about in the first two months following my own coming out as a lesbian. While I had already come to peace concerning being a Christian and a lesbian, I understood my sexuality at that time as something more akin to a burden than a blessing, an oops of God rather than a gift of God. After all, it was coming at such a high price and then there was all that had been lost around my ministry. I had loved the ministry and that my greatest responsibility in my call had been to simply love people and tell of God’s even greater love for them. I couldn’t help wonder if the most meaningful and rewarding years of ministry were behind me.

Haman had tricked King Xeres into issuing a decree that would lead to the destruction of all the Jews. When Mordacai learned of Haman’s plot he sent a messenger to Queen Esther his niece, a closeted Jew, that she should petition her husband the king for the salvation of the Jews. When fear caused Esther to resist the idea, the message Mordacai sent back to her was this:

Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

Uncle Mordacai dares to suggest that the reason Esther had ever become queen, gaining privilege and renown might well have been for this very moment by placing her into a position where she could save her people, bringing relief and deliverance to the oppressed.

I read this passage one evening during my personal devotional time and something about it grabbed hold of me. Several weeks later I went to a GLBTQ Christian gathering where Marsha Stevens was the keynote speaker. Marsha told of her early years in Christian music when the Jesus Movement exploded and we (the currently middle-aged we) were all listening to Christian groups like Love Song, Second Chapter of Acts, and Children of the Day. She’d written the song, “For Those Tears I Died” while still in her teens, a song that was part of my own youth, playing it over and over again on my clunky 8-Track, strumming it’s simple chords on my acoustic guitar, and carrying the alto line in the church youth choir. Marsha recounted how after coming out as a lesbian she began to receive packages in the mail from churches around the country, filled with copies of her song torn from church hymnals and song books in angry protest upon learning the song writer was gay. In the midst of what must have been a devastating time in her life, Marsha turned to the story of Esther and the words “For such a time as this” rattled inside her, and rather than grieving the past success in ministry she’s once experienced, Marsha continued on to sing and proclaim the Gospel message as an out lesbian Christian and to establish a ministry that’s taken her around the world, healing and blessing the lives of countless GLBTQ and straight people. Marsha believed that all her past successes and accomplishments had been to prepare her for such a time as this.

For such a time as this. The phrase bounced around in my heart for days and then months and when it came to finally rest the idea that being gay was the purposeful intention of God for my life replaced the sense that my sexual orientation was merely a fluke or a flaw. I could never have imagined doing anything in ministry more rewarding or meaningful than all those years of pastoring children and their families, but then I could have never imagined the utter joy of the opportunities I’ve been given in recent years to proclaim God’s unconditional love to GLBTQ people or to anyone for that matter who needs to hear the message of the love of God, the message of the Gospel.

So many doors closed years ago but even more have been opening ever since. I’m an ordained clergywoman. I officiate at the table. There have been opportunities to preach in church and lead workshops designed for GLBTQ Christians. Every Sunday morning, I scrunch down onto a small carpet circle in the front of the church and gather another generation children around me to tell them how precious they are to God and how great is God’s love for them. And then there’s this online ministry. How would have thought this up but God? I could never have imagined or thought to ask to be part of anything like this nor can I ever tell the joy I feel when even one woman writes to say that something here has helped her draw a little closer to God. It makes my knees weak every time. In the end I lost nothing in coming out that wasn’t given back to me in extravagant abundance.

Everyone is called by God and we spend our lives seeking to live into that calling; to discover our way of being the presence of Christ in the world. The calling doesn’t stop the day we come out. The voice of God isn’t silenced even in the closet. God’s hand is on you. God’s spirit within you. God’s anointing upon you. Who you are is the very person God needs for you to be in this world. You have a way of speaking and living God’s love that will touch someone in a way that my life and others lives simply couldn’t do. Your life reflects a particular angle of God’s character and being that’s the exact angle someone else needs desperately to see. These might sound like sentimental words but they’re also very real. Nothing in your life is unusable to God. Nothing is less than a gift when devoted to God’s glory.

Whatever you’ve done in the past, wherever the present finds you, God has called you…for such a time as this.

You back? Okay…

After Jesus called Lazarus forth from the grave, he remains close to him, so much so that on his way to Jerusalem Jesus makes time to stop in Bethany for no purpose other than to break bread with his dear friends. In Jerusalem he’ll eat a final meal with his disciples. In Jerusalem Judas will betray him. In Jerusalem he’ll be arrested and tried before the people. In Jerusalem Peter will deny him. In Jerusalem he’ll be beaten and mocked. In Jerusalem he’ll be nailed to a cross and hang there suffering until death takes him. Before the week is over it will have all unfolded but for now it can wait because he loves Lazarus and wants to spend this time with him, this one who he raised from the dead who will in a few days mourn his own death. How tender is that? I can never imagine what was going on in the heart and mind of Jesus but imagine the affection, love and gratitude that must have been flooding over Lazarus as he looked across the table at Jesus.

When I imagine Lazarus and Jesus breaking bread together at the table in Lazarus’ home, I don’t see there being a lot of conversation. I don’t hear Lazarus going on and on in trying to express his appreciation to Jesus for what he did anymore than I hear Jesus telling Lazarus it was his pleasure to help out. Instead, I just picture them sitting quietly near each other, enjoying being in each others’ presence and feeling in their hearts all they held for the other that didn’t even need to be spoken out loud.

Spend time with Jesus. Whether you’re in the midst of the struggle or in the closet shadows, just spend time with him. No prayers. No Scripture reading. No Bible study. Just be still in the presence of Jesus as though he were sitting across from where you are right now. Enjoy his company. Try to feel the love and thankfulness you have for him. Don’t express it. Just be in it. And then try and feel the love and affection Jesus has for you and if possible, try to allow that to bring some peace to you in your struggle, let it embrace you in your loneliness, and let it strengthen you for your journey.

The story of Lazarus ends in John 12:9,10 where it reads

Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.

What Jesus did in the life of Lazarus couldn’t be ignored. A man was dead, buried and rotting but with a word from Jesus, he was alive again. Living, breathing, walking, talking…alive! Cut off from the land of the living and then thrown right back into the heartbeat of the universe. Is this God at God’s best or what?! And more than the joy of a dead man coming to life again is the exceedingly glad news that all those who saw and heard of it came to believe in Jesus. Those who were without faith came to faith because the glory of God in this one act couldn’t be denied or explained away. They came to believe not only because of the miracle of that one day but they came to believe because everyday Lazarus walked among the living testified to the power of God in Jesus. Lazarus was a walking testament and a living miracle.

And such are you. The church condemns homosexuality and says it has no place in Christianity. GLBTQ people are ridiculed in society, excluded by the law, and rejected by the church and yet we live! We worship God, we have loving relationships, we participate in our world, and in doing so we stand as testament to the grace and glory of God. We can live our lives in a way that will cause those, gay or straight, who are yet without faith or fear faith or have been wounded in its name to believe in God because the God we love is the God they long for. This is when our being gay is more than our sexual orientation but our calling. Could you believe that for the sake of others and for the witness of Christ you are just as called to be queer as Lazarus was called to come out? I do. To the bone I do.

But as the passage reveals, it’s not all victory and light for Lazarus. After all, the religious leaders wanted to kill him because his life was too loud to drowned out. How could their religious rituals and requirements ever compete with life coming from death? Not a chance. But even in this, it’s cause for rejoicing because their pursuit to silence Lazarus was evidence to the presence of God’s glory his life proclaimed to the world. So it is. So it is.

Okay. Now I’m done.