Friday in the First Week of Lent; The Cross: Foolishness or Power?

"The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Corinthians 1: 18)

This past Wednesday night St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minnesota began their weekly Lenten Series called: "Jesus Jargon". The topic of discussion for this year's series is: "The Truth and Fiction in Christian Cliches". Pardon me if I am not able to come up with the apostrophe above the e in cliches. The speaker for the first discussion talked about the ever famous cliche "Let go and Let God be God." The speaker gave some really good remarks about the first phrase, suggesting that being asked to let go is a way of giving up. The speaker suggested that telling people to "let go" is not always the best advice, because God certainly does not give up on us.

Cliches are an interesting building block or stumbling block to intimacy. Most of us when we are meeting someone for the first time or even when talking to someone we might know a bit about, use cliches in our conversations. Hi, how are you? I'm fine. How is the weather? It's cold. How was your day to day? It was okay. Now cliches can also be used to edge a conversation forward and invite intimacy. When some people respond with "It was okay" to the question "How was your Day?" There might be someone who says: "Okay? Well, what happened?" And onward the conversation might go. Cliches can also protect us from unwanted intimacy with someone who may be trying to get closer to us whether for the right reason or the wrong one.

The question I would like to ask on this Friday of the first week of Lent, is the subject of the Cross too cliche for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. The Scripture verse I chose from 1 Corinthians 1: 18 happens to be one of my favorite verses about the Cross. Yet, for LGBT people, the subject of the Cross can be a very touchy subject and not without good reason. I keep referring to the bad messages of the religious right, because at times I do think that we LGBT people are not fully aware of how their Jesus jargon affects us. How many stories do we hear of LGBT Youth committing suicide? How many times might we hear of someone from our community struggling with alcohol addiction or drug addiction, or allowing themselves to remain in an abusive relationship? There are so many LGBT individuals who are being treated for depression, anxiety disorders and all kinds of psychological and psychiatric problems. Why are the numbers of LGBT people with such issues so large? The answer quite frankly is heterosexism. Name me a State in these United States of America that is going to refuse to marry a man and a woman just because they are heterosexual. Tell me one county that is going to refuse child adoption or challenge the legitimacy of a child adoption to straight men and women because they are not gay or lesbian? Please name for me one soldier from our United States Military who has been discharged because he or she is straight? Have you ever heard of a straight married couple where one of them got fired because of his or her sexual orientation? Can you name me one man or one woman who has ever experienced violence because she or he wanted to remain the same gender they have always been? Can you point me to a religious leader in Protestantism or Catholicism who will tell a heterosexual that he or she was not born that way, and needs to attend an ex-straight ministry to change who they are? Why can we answer no to all of these questions? Because of the heterosexism that has been spread through out our world and country by those who say that they cling to the Cross for their salvation. The religious right with their destructive use of the Cross as a means to convert LGBT away from what we know to be true about ourselves, and work us into ex-gay ministries such as Courage, Exodus or Love Won Out. And the anti-gay religious right says that LGBT people are those who see the Cross as foolishness because we are perishing if we are living in same-sex relationships or if we are transgendered people.

Just before Lent began a really great Episcopal Priest challenged me to begin seeing myself as God sees me. That is a message that I think all LGBT people can take some time to reflect on. How does God see me as an LGBT person? A new question to add to that one is what is the relationship between LGBT people and the Cross? For LGBT people is the Cross foolishness (a cliche) or is the power of God by which we are being saved? To help us explore these questions let us look a bit more about what the Cross is and what it is not.

The Cross is the universal symbol of Christians. The Cross is not the universal litmus test to make one Christian look any better or worse than another. Every person who is saved by the death of Jesus Christ on that Cross is a convicted murderer. Our sins, every bodies sins put Jesus on that Cross. No matter how sincere we are, or how sincere we think we are, or how insincere we think someone else is, all of us have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23). Jesus Christ took upon himself the sins of all of us and was crucified upon that Cross. Every person that is or was created in the image and likeness of God has been loved so much, that God allowed God's Son Jesus Christ to be crucified upon that Cross to save us from our sins. Whatever our sins are, they are crucified by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. There is no one person greater or less great than anyone else in the eyes of God. All of us are loved, all of us are wanted and all people are worth saving to God. The crucifixion of Jesus says that God certainly did not give up on any one of us. God put in God's universal deposit of love and grace on our behalf through the death of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. God's savings account on our behalf is always full, and we can draw on it's interest at any time. Therefore, there is no litmus test and there are no limits to how Jesus can work in and through our lives.

The Cross is the universal symbol of love. The Cross is not our universal excuse to hate anyone. Even though the most profound hate and discrimination took place upon the Cross, that hate and discrimination was against God's unique way of loving all human kind. Using the Cross as an excuse to write a kill the gays bill in Uganda, or set up ex-gay ministries so that Christian churches could set up their own concentration camps where they work to annihilate LGBT people is not a good use of the message of the Cross. Setting up an organization such as NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) to spread false scientific data to justify so called reparation therapy for LGBT people is not using the universal symbol of the Cross in a loving way.

The message of the Cross becomes a message of foolishness when LGBT people are told that they must become straight or non-transgendered in order to be saved by it, when it really is the power of God to those of us LGBT people who are being saved by it's message of loving acceptance. The power of God in the Cross for LGBT people is that God loves us all, regardless and God wants to save us all from our sins. LGBT people suffer from the same sins of everyone else. We all get jealous from time to time, and want to get revenge on someone who has hurt us, or commit adultery by being with someone who belongs to someone else. We need the power of the Cross to save us from those times when we use someone else for our own personal pleasure without any regard for them being daughters and sons of God who should be loved, respected and cherished for more than just their sexy bodies. We need the powerful message of the Cross to save us from those false messages we have recorded within ourselves that the religious right has put there in one form or another. The Cross helps us to face the reality of who we are and to know that God loves us no matter what circumstance has placed us where we are. The Cross says that there is no issue too great, that God cannot love us and help us to see the truth about who we are. There is no depression too big for God, that God cannot help us to learn to be happy and say that being LGBT is not only good, but is down right wonderful.

So, is the message of the Cross foolishness to us or is it the power of God? How are you answering that question?

There is a green hill far away, outside a city wall,
where our dear Lord was crucified who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear,
but we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven, he died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven, saved by his precious blood.

There was no other good enough, to pay the price of sin,
he only could unlock the gate of heaven to let us in.

O dearly, dearly has he loved! And we must love him too,
and trust in his redeeming blood, and try his works to do.
(Hymn #167, Hymnal 1982).