Gifted by Otherness: 5 of 6

June 10, 2008

We are the face of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer to the church.

I’m passionately crazy about the content of this post so be prepared for a full-fledged rant. Do not attempt to operate heavy equipment immediately after blog consumption.

I went to the local Christian Bookstore on Saturday to pick up a packet of Jesus stickers for Sunday’s children’s craft. I seldom go for any other reason than sticker purchases since I get a little crazy when I’m trapped in a small area surrounded by tins of Sacra-mints, racks of clothing with catching sayings like “In case of the rapture this teeshirt will be empty” and shop clerks who say “bless you” if you so much as glance in their direction. I clearly need to find an online resource for preschool Christian swag.

Anyway, while waiting for the “Christ for Life” tee-shirt clad youth behind the counter to ring up my all too Anglo-Saxon stack of Jesus stickers I went to the magazine rack and flipped through the current edition of Relevant Magazine, drawn over by the very hip cover art emblazoned with “Seven Burning Issues” across the glossy finish. Yes, homosexuality was one of the burning issues and if you’re interested, the article is available here in its entirety.

There’s nothing in the article particularly surprising though for the most part the contributors come from a more compassionate position than what’s normally found in Christian media and to that end I respected and appreciated what most of the contributors had to say although at first glance Cindy Jacobs read like she could have benefited considerably from a nap.

In the article Brian McLaren offers this:

…we can never forget that we’re dealing with more than a theory or issue: We’re dealing with people with breakable hearts—sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, and colleagues and pastors, too. According to my research—and my experience as a pastor confirms this—it appears that about 7 percent of the population are gay across cultures and denominations and generations. If that’s more or less true, when you add parents and siblings and friends of gay people, you’re very quickly up over 30 percent of the population who are affected directly and indirectly. So the gay person is my neighbor, whatever I think about homosexuality, and so are his or her parents and friends and siblings and children. And the person who sees all gayness as a sin is also my neighbor. In my view, to be a follower of Jesus means to live in that relational tension and not try to solve it by writing off some percentage of people as lepers or Samaritans or Pharisees or enemies.

Brian says it well and on this we agree; homosexuality is more than a hot topic, a burning issue, or a controversy, it’s people. It’s those of us who are gay and it’s our families and friends, so that when our sexual orientation is vilified as the great evil and when GLBTQ people are painted with broad brush strokes dipped in prejudice and ignorance it impacts not only us but the lives of our loved ones. And when the church rejects our relationship with God based solely on our sexual orientation we stand unshaken in Christ (howbeit a tad bit perturbed) but it causes needless pain and instills groundless fear into the lives of our families and friends. If the church wants to know what’s tearing apart our families, what’s causing father and mother to turn against son and daughter, it’s not homosexuality. It’s how the church in its obsession over homosexuality is widening the chasm between Christian families and their gay family members as it continues to rail against homosexuality from a closed impenetrable position while ignoring the very real lives and testimonies of GLBTQ people.

So Brian gets kudos from me for reminding Christians that any conversation on homosexuality affects far more people than they might ever imagine and to that end one of the gifts we bring to the church is in being the face of GLBTQ people in an attempt to remove the impersonal it of homosexuality from the conversation, but not only are we to be the face of homosexuality but we are to offer a particular face the church seldom sees or fails to recognize when it’s right before them. A story shared by Shane Claiborne in the same article highlights what I’m talking about:

If we don’t simply talk about the gay issue but we are living in relationship to people who are working out their sexuality and struggling with it, the question changes. I had all these ideas about homosexuality and civil union and gay when I was in high school, and then I met a kid who was attracted to other men and he told me that he felt God had made a mistake when He made him and that he wanted to kill himself. If that brother can’t find a home in the Church, then I wonder who have we become. So for me, that’s a starting point—we need to attract the people Jesus attracted, and Jesus attracted the broken, the confused, the hurting, the abused, the people who walked away angry at Jesus, the people Jesus called a brood of vipers, the people Jesus ticked off—they were the self-righteous, the arrogant, the pretentious, the teachers of the law. I’m OK with that.

I grew up in conservative Christianity. The church was the center of our family and social life. Church was our world and in that world there were no happy homosexuals. Homosexuals in theory were miserable people, struggling with their sexuality, overwhelmed in self-loathing, and separated from God. They were portrayed as angry and resentful, miserable and guilt-ridden. They abused alcohol and drugs and searched for love in empty relationships too numerous to count. Homosexuals were broken people; damaged goods. The few gay people that dared to show their cards in the church often like the gay man Shane encountered. They were broken, downhearted souls but not because they were gay but because they grew up consuming the same dire stereotypes of homosexuals that everyone was being fed so when they came to the realization of their own sexuality they knew no other option than to fulfill the role that had been handed them. These were the only gay people I knew, just in case anyone wonder whether I was lured into the life, tempted by the glamor.

The fact remains that the gay man, woman or youth who steps forward and exposes their inner turmoil to a conservative pastor or faith community will more often than that be compassionately embraced. These are the gay people the church loves; the ones the church thinks can be fixed through ex-gay ministries, prayers of deliverance and healing, or reparative therapy cloaked as Christian counseling. These hurting, wounded people are held up as the walking breathing manifestation of the churches tragic characterization of gay people and in some sick way their suffering and despair gratifies those who oppose homosexuality because they think their suffering makes them right. I’m not bitter that it’s this way but I am angry, and I believe it’s a righteous anger.

I need to be clear about something. I don’t question that there are well-meaning people in the church who reach out to those struggling with their sexuality and faith motived by nothing but genuine love and concern. They believe homosexuality is sin and they believe what they’ve been told about some one-size-fits-all homosexual lifestyle, and so they want to help. They have no other motive than this and while we stand on opposite ends of the question of homosexuality, I admire them for their willingness to get personally involved and doing what they truly believe God would have them to do. It’s not that slice of the church I’m thinking of when I write about those who use the suffering of a gay person to promote their agenda or reinforce their narrow viewpoint. Okay? Okay. With fingers poised over the keyboard, I continue on…

To the extent that a suffering, conflicted homosexual is the recipient of the churches compassion, a joyful GLBTQ Christian is the recipient of it’s ire. We simply cannot exist if the churches view of homosexuality is right. We must be miserable. We must be living in sin. We must be this and that and the other. And. We. Can. Not. Be. Christians.

Surprise!

Hi there Church! Despite everything that comes our way in this world, there are some of us out here living wonderful lives. We’re happy, fulfilled, and grateful. We help care for our aging parents. We’re there when our siblings need us.  We’re great parents to our kids. We aren’t alcoholic or drug addicts. We’re faithful to our spouses. And we love Jesus. We grew up singing the same hymns as you did, read the same Bible, prayed to the same God. Our faith language is spotted with words like salvation, redemption, reconciliation, justification, and grace as is yours. We go to church. We sing in the choir. We teach Sunday School. We serve on the church board. We stand next to you at the table and sometimes we’re even the ones who bake the bread. And as it is with you, our faith is everything to us and seeking God’s will determines everything in our day. Yes, we’re sinners saved by grace but homosexuality is not our sin; it’s only our sexual orientation

So this is it.

As GLBTQ people we’re the face and presence of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, and queer so the church can be confronted with the flesh and blood component of an issue that’s been depersonalized for far too long. I’ve always been moved by homelessness as a theory but when I had the opportunity to work on the streets of San Francisco for three months with the homeless; listening to their stories, shaking their hands, seeing their tears and hearing their laughter; that changed everything for me. It took homelessness and poverty to an entirely new level and forever I will owe each man and woman I met a world of gratitude for opening my eyes and heart. They were a gift to my life, and this is the same gift we bring to the church. By personalizing homosexuality we give those in the church the opportunity to grow in their humanity and compassion.

But more than that, we’re the face of GLBTQ Christians to the church so that when they talk about homosexuality they know that they’re not talking about people out there beyond the doors of the church but they’re talking about people who love them and who they stand side by side with at the table of Christ. There are GLBTQ Christians who aren’t wrestling with their sexuality and faith. They aren’t in turmoil, wounded or broken. There are GLBTQ Christians who proclaim their faith boldly and live their lives in quiet assurance and peace. There are happy homosexuals. And when the church talks about homosexuality they’re talking about their brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the queer face we bring to them and it’s the face they need as desperately to see as we need to show it to them.

During worship last Sunday we sang a song in closing called “Open the Door.” The chorus are words with hand gestures familiar to anyone who grew up in Sunday School.

“Here is the church, here is the steeple,

Open the door and see all the people.

Everyone welcome, everyone equal

Open the door and see all the people.”

The verses that follow went on to describe all the people that fill the church.

“…We are the women and we are the men,

We are the stranger and we are the friend

We are the walking, we are the lame

We are the different and we are the same

We are the straight and we are the gay,

We are what we do, we are what we say,

We are the single, we are the wed

We are the hungry, we are the bread…”

When the song came to the phrase “we are the gay” the pastor nodded and offered a little silly salute in our direction and a few people in the church smiled in our direction. It was a lighthearted moment, both amusing and sweet. D and I have accepted we’re among the few token lesbian couples in the church though sometimes being a token anything gets a little wearisome. The responsibility of educating and informing others often falls on the token gay, African-American, single mother or physically challenged person in any group and always being the one called on to teach and being watched as a model of your people isn’t what you signed up for especially when you just want to live your life. But I choose to not look at it as being a token, even if it’s only a difference of semantics; rather I see it as a calling and a gift God has given us that we in turn give to the church. In doing so the sense of it being a burden is replaced with holding it as an opportunity to participate in bringing change within the walls of the church by participating in God’s work as God changes one heart at a time.

Oh. One more thing. When I told D what I was writing about today she reminded me of a wonderful line we heard in a documentary on queers in the church that went something like this… “Our best revenge for all that’s been done to gay and lesbians is to live our lives joyfully.”

Live joyfully today.

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Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series