In the Epiphany Gospel we see several characters. We will meet Herod the old king wanting to hang on to his power. We will meet three wise men seeking to find the Messiah who has been born and follow the star to where Jesus, Mary and Joseph are. We will meet and be affected by the Child Jesus and we will be asked to meet him, greet him, worship him and love him.
In St. Luke's Gospel story we will meet Mary and Joseph who work hard to keep the laws and traditions by which they have been raised. They want to pass this wisdom on to Jesus. However, Jesus has left them and later is found in the Temple listening to the elders and asking them questions. Mary and Joseph search for Jesus for three long days. When they finally find Jesus he responds: "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Luke 2:49).
Both of these Gospels have their particular, yet similar message. They call us to look at where we are on our journey of faith. We are asked two questions as we explore these two Gospels. Where do we see ourselves, and how and where do we meet and see Jesus interacting with us?
Most us spend our lives searching for meaning and hope. We wander through this world of violence, disease, discrimination and marginalization. There are the have's and the have not's of the world. If you are a male, white, heterosexual, wealthy, healthy, you are someone who has life just about all set. If you are a female, or a male who is more like a female than others would like you to be, if you are of a different skin color, race, class, a homosexual, bisexual, transgendered, unhealthy, and poor basically, you are just out of luck. There are the Herod's of our time who want to be sure that they can keep their profits and they are lobbying against health care reform and Wall Street reform. There are the Herod's of our day who are heterosexual's, part of christian right wing hate groups and racists and wealthy who will do everything they can to keep gay rights out of the spot light and create fear for people who are trying to get out of their second class citizenship.
Many of us are like the wise men or even Joseph and Mary. We are looking for that one thing that will make our lives happier and give us meaning and direction, like the Magi in Matthew's Gospel. Or perhaps we might have left Jesus behind somewhere in our faith journey. For lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, when we first start to face our sexual orientation and/or gender identity or expression we are full of fears and questions. In his amazing video Growing Up Gay and Lesbian Brian Mc Naught so correctly says that discovering that one is gay or lesbian means that "You have this secret about yourself that you don't understand, nor do you share. If you do share it, people won't love you anymore." For many people who come out, they are rejected and they are not loved anymore. And so they begin a journey of knowing that something about themselves and trying to find love in and for their life. They try to talk to Priests, pastors, very devoted church folks only to be told that there is something "intrinsically disordered" about them. Many parents might send their children to an ex-gay ministry or for reparative therapy. LGBT individuals want to find God, they want meaning in their life. They want to encounter this Jesus that was born in Bethlehem and find peace for their souls. Yet people like Dr. James Dobson tell them that they can only go to Jesus if they agree to work on changing their sexual orientation and/or gender identity/expression.
If we truly want to find Jesus, then we must look for him not through the words of anti-gay right wing Christians. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people must find Jesus in and through positive means. We must look for Jesus and invite him as he invites us, all of us as we are. Jesus looks at us from the Manger, from the Temple, from the Cross and from the empty tomb and invites us into a relationship with God. We are invited as we are, because when Jesus was baptized the voice from heaven said: "This is my beloved with whom I am well-pleased." (Mt. 3:17). We are God's beloved through Christ, and yes we as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are also God's beloved. In today's second reading from Ephesians, Paul writes:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." (Ephesians 1:3-6).
The Child Jesus comes to us in the midst of our trouble, broken and power hungry world. Every one of us is a person searching for truth, meaning and a Savior whom we can trust and believe in. Every one of us has a King Herod within us that wants to control everything for our benefit at someone else's expense. And all of us are wanted by that Child Jesus so that we can know that God loves us in the midst of our broken and harsh world, full of darkness and doubt. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons are welcome to worship, know and love the Christ Child so that we all may know that God loves us unconditionally and completely. God wants to heal us in those places where we hurt. God wants to love us, where we feel rejected. And God wants us to love ourselves as God created us and to love another as God created us. In Jesus, God lived on the dangerous margins of society. Yet Jesus trusted in God for everything in the greatest humility, and was exalted because of his desire to serve those who had been stigmatized by society and the Church.
As we walk this week to the Epiphany of the Lord when we will celebrate the Manifestation of God into our world, let us meditate on the reality of how much we are loved by God. As we face those difficult challenges in the week ahead, may we pray for one another, serve one another and allow others to serve us. God came in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh to tell us we are loved and cherished by God. Let us be the loving presence of God as Christ's Body, broken for the world so that through Christ using us, the broken world we live in can be healed through love.
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share in the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your 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 Day, Book of Common Prayer, Page 214).I would like to draw some attention to a wonderful new web site that I discovered last night. It is called Christian Gays.com. In this incredible resource for LGBT Christians you will find so many other resources to help reconcile the idea of Christians and Gays together. There is even a chat room, social groups and a Yahoo Listserv group that you will just enjoy. I highly recommend it. In my blog page there are two links to Christian Gays.com. My new friend Mary is just a delightful person who is so wanting to help Christian Gays find a place to talk and create community and friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment