The title of this blog post: "God Wants Your Life to Be Fabulous" comes from a post by Rev. Susan Russell in the LA Diocesan Program Group on LGBT Programs. In the post is Susan Russell's "It Gets Better" in response to the tragedies of the last few weeks. In the post Rev. Russell said:
God who doesn’t just want your life to get better – God wants your life to get fabulous!
It is by no accident that this National Coming Out Day falls on the Episcopal Church's commemoration of St. Philip the Deacon and Evangelist. Today's reading from Acts gives us the episode of Philip's life and ministry.
Acts 8:26-40 (NRSV)
An angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
- "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
- and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
- so he does not open his mouth.
- In his humiliation justice was denied him.
- Who can describe his generation?
- For his life is taken away from the earth."
The eunuch in Biblical times can very easily be interpreted as the homosexuals. There are numerous references to the eunuchs in the Bible.
Isaiah 56: 1-8
Thus says the Lord:
Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my deliverance be revealed.
2 Happy is the mortal who does this,
the one who holds it fast,
who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it,
and refrains from doing any evil.
3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’;
and do not let the eunuch say,
‘I am just a dry tree.’
4 For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
5 I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.
6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
and hold fast my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
8 Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered.*
Here we see God saying that the eunuch will be be given a monument and a wall of honor by the new Covenant. This appears to be what Jesus did in Matthew 19: 11-12:
"Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been made so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can."
In a previous blog post I wrote using the story of Philip and the eunuch I wrote:
What is this? A story about an Apostle of the early Church associating with a eunuch? A (gulp) homosexual? Not only a gay person, but a gay person from Ethiopia. This just cannot be! There it is right in the Acts of the Apostles. A narrative about Philip the Apostle sharing the Gospel with a eunuch who would have been someone who is gay in Biblical times. Keep in mind that the age in which the Bible was written the words heterosexual and homosexual were not part of the vocabulary of the day. Sexuality was about the strong vs the weak. Gray Temple addresses this at length in his book Gay Unions In Light of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. The Bible does tell us a lot about what sexuality was like in the time in which it was written.
In the same blog post written by Susan Russell she wrote:
And as a priest and pastor I want you to know that anybody who tells you that God condemns you is wrong.
And if anybody says to you “But the Bible says …” I want you to remember this: God gave us the Bible as a tool for us to live our lives -- not as a weapon to beat up other people – and history is full of people who were wrong about what the Bible says … using it to support slavery, to oppress women and to condemn Galileo for discovering that the earth revolved around the sun instead other way around.
And it turns out that the same people who were wrong about what the Bible said about slavery, about women’s equality and about astronomy are wrong about what the Bible says about homosexuality.
Jesus said love your neighbor – not love you neighbor unless your neighbor is gay.
Homosexuality doesn’t grieve the heart of God – homophobia does. Bullying does. Violence against any beloved child of God does.
And you are a beloved child of God. Created in God’s image exactly as God intended you to be.
Today's Gospel for this commemoration is the ever famous commissioning of the Church after Jesus' resurrection, just before his ascension in Matthew 28: 18-20.
Jesus came and said to the disciples, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Jesus does not say in this Gospel: "Only do not baptize LGBTQ people." Jesus tells the disciples to make disciples of all nations, which means all people, including LGBTQ.
What Susan Russell said in her blog post that "God wants your life to become fabulous" is totally true. Coming out is about learning to love ourselves and others exactly as we are. When we come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and/or queer people we are telling God, ourselves and others around us that we are created in the image of God's graciousness and love for all people. We carry within the beauty of who we are, the very stamp of God's approval. Within each of us is a person so precious to God that God gave God's Son for each of us to find our way back to God, being none other than who God created and redeemed us to be. "Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:11).
Yesterday, Dean Spenser Simrill of St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral remarked about the recent tragedies of the youths who have taken their own lives due to bullying. Dean Spenser so correctly stated that these young people and all LGBTQ people are victims of "spiritual malpractice and doctrinal abuse". Whenever any Christianist group or arch-conservative Catholic Bishop or anyone else for that matter makes use of the Bible to suggest that LGBTQ people are "intrinsically disordered", they are making LGBTQ people victims of "spiritual malpractice and doctrinal abuse". Jesus certainly does not see us that way. Jesus sees us as God's children with whom God is well-pleased. When we come out as LGBTQ people, we are saying we will not accept "spiritual malpractice or doctrinal abuse" to denigrate who we are, or who and how we love. We are saying we are proud of who we are, who and how we love other people including our partners. When we come out, we empower ourselves to depend upon God for the reality of who we are and who we love. When we come out, we live our lives in thanksgiving to God for making us who we are and for making so many wonderful people for us to love and work besides as we work towards equality.
I really love the Collect for the Commemoration of Philip the Deacon and Evangelist. For today, it is the only prayer I am going to use. I want us to both listen to the words and make them our prayer for today.
Holy God, no one is excluded from your love, and your truth transforms the minds of all who seek you: As your servant Philip was led to embrace the fullness of your salvation and to bring the stranger to Baptism, so give us all the grace to be heralds of the Gospel, proclaiming your love in Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect for Philip, Holy Women, Holy Men, Celebrating the Saints, page 635).Before my blog is completely finished, let us all remember today Matthew Shepard on the anniversary of his death. Today, may we remember his family, friends as well as those who still commit acts of violence towards LGBTQ people.
No comments:
Post a Comment