Do We Allow God to Use Us As We Are?

John 9:1-12,35-38 (NRSV)

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbours and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’ They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshipped him.

If lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are not careful, we can at one time or another discover that we have allowed the negative messages of right winged Christians affect how we see ourselves. The message that LGBT people are "intrinsically disordered" and people who are not going to enter the kingdom of heaven that was appeared to be alluded to in today's reading from Ephesians 5:1-20 that we absorb it and it can weigh us down.

One of the things that drove me into the Courage Apostolate a few years ago was all of the negativism that I was seeing within the LGBT Community. I was someone who was looking for a long term monagomous relationship and all I was finding was men who wanted to use each other for that one night stand. I wanted to find someone who was a Christian like I was, yet all I was finding was people who rightly so wanted nothing to do with organized religion. I say "rightly so" because, religion is a very discouraging topic for LGBT people. Sometimes even in congregations that are welcoming to LGBT people, we can find politics and people that are not as receptive as they could or should be. In my case, I found myself so weighed down with all of the negative things I was seeing that I began to question about how good was it that I was gay. Many people who often enter ex-gay ministries face these and other tough issues.

What often needs to be changed is not our sexual orientation or gender identities and/or expressions. What does need to be changed is what we do with them. How we use our sexual orientation and/or gender identities and/or expressions needs to focused in a healthy and life-giving way. Each person needs to find out how their uniqueness can serve the common good of humanity, while leading them to fulfilling and wholesome lives. What works for one person may not work for someone else. Ultimately seeking to serve the common good of every person by being a loving person and wanting nothing more than to love and be loved is usually a good way to use what God has given us. We can choose to use our sexual orientation and/or gender identity/expression to love ourselves and others and do positive things and become happy, and help build the kingdom of Christ on earth. Or we can be destructive, negative, unhealthy and unproductive. As I have entitled this blog entry do we allow God to use us as we are? Another question is do we allow God to use us as we are to do good things? Or do we allow the negative voices of the religious right to shape our attitudes towards ourselves and as a result become destructive or unloving?

In our Gospel today, Jesus meets a blind man. Jesus' disciples want to know if visually challenged man's blindness is caused by his own sins or the sins of his parents. Jesus amazingly points out that: "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. (John 9:3-5). Now much of this sounds a bit familiar? When a young woman or man comes out to his family. One of the first questions parents often ask themselves is "What did we do wrong?" A good PFLAG group will correctly point out that they did nothing wrong and that their child's being LGBT is a wonderful, good thing. However, an organization such as Focus on the Family and the Catholic church's counter to PFLAG called "Encourage" will tell parents of newly outed LGBT Children NOT to accept their child's orientation or gender issues, and that as parents they have done something wrong.

The reality is that LGBT people and their parents did not do anything wrong, we were made this way by God, for the glory of God and the benefit of humankind. However, like "all" who "have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), LGBT people are born with the same original sin as anyone else. Through the grace given by our common Baptism we are reborn through water and the Holy Spirit and made whole through the death and resurrection of Christ. All that we have been created and redeemed with can be used by God to do wonderful and holy things, if we are willing to allow God to use them that way.

The blind man in our Gospel was healed of his visual challenge because God made use of it to glorify God's Self in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word. The blindness was something God was able to use to show God's Self to the world through what Jesus was able to do with and for the man who was visually challenged. The man who was born unable to see, who was different, on the margins of society was given a place of honor because in Christ, God made use of his uniqueness to do something marvelous.

God desires to use that which is different in all of us to do wonderful and marvelous things. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people have something wonderful to offer, their desire and ability to love in a different way. Used by itself to be destructive we will not achieve good things. But allowing God to use us as we are, to love people in a good and holy way is something that all of us can accomplish when God uses us to do great things. In this way, the Divinity of Christ shares itself with and through our humanity.

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, you Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas, Book of Common Prayer, Page 214).