Exodus 20:1-4; Luke 8:19-25
It was an impressive group gathered around the conference table at Bay Path Elder Services in Marlborough. There was a hospice nurse and a hospice chaplain, a social worker from a senior center, the director of an elder services network, an entrepreneur who started his own organization matching volunteers with isolated lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elders, an activist who galvanized her town against hate, a retired journalist who coordinates weekly lunches for LGBT elders in Worcester, and more. Many of the folks identified themselves as lesbian or gay; some named a connection with a faith community and others expressed a broad interest in spirituality. Everyone was there because they care deeply about the well-being of LGBT folks.
As I listened to their introductions, I began to relax. I had been asked to lead a conversation on LGBT aging and spirituality. There was a lot of expertise in that room. All I needed to do was frame the issue and allow the wisdom of the group to emerge.
I had written four phrases on the white board when I arrived, and I started off by pointing to them as components of spirituality. Identity and self-worth; community; grief and healing; connection with something greater than ourselves. It seemed to me, I began, that the experiences many LGBT folks share bring particular challenges to each of these aspects of spirituality, and also offer unique opportunities.
The group was off and running. We started with community. We heard stories of isolated elders who had been rejected by their families and their faith communities. We talked about how deep that wound can cut. Those in the room who have found or created spiritual communities where we are valued talked about our sadness that people don’t know places of welcome exist. We acknowledged our anger that many people have been so badly hurt in the past they do not believe the welcome could be real.
A couple of social workers talked about their efforts to create new communities–coffee hours especially geared to the LGBT community, Friday night line dancing, rainbow flags on their office doors. The response has been slow. Their frustration shifted the conversation to identity. Some folks, depending on their age and where they grew up, may not, as young adults, have had the language to make sense of their feelings. How do you gather a group together when the words and symbols mean different things to different people? We talked about the word “queer,” which some of us claim as a freeing expression of our uniqueness and which makes others cringe as we remember painful name-calling.
We touched on self-worth: how messages about perversion or sinfulness can drown out the message of our worth as God’s beloved.
A young hospice nurse’s story turned the conversation toward grief and healing. She told about a family who came together to support a dying father. The female spouse of the daughter was one of the primary caregivers. When the nurse went to the funeral a few weeks later, she saw that caregiver sitting in the back row alone, while distant cousins and uninvolved siblings sat in the front. The nurse sat down beside her and took her hand, a gentle honoring of her grief.
We named how hard it is to grieve when your relationship is not acknowledged, or when you feel alienated from the rituals a church or synagogue or mosque or sangha offers. We also celebrated the healing power of that young hospice nurse’s outstretched hand.
The conversation was moving–personal, honest sharing. It was sobering–as we grieved that so many beloved children of God have suffered because of judgments made in the name of God. And it was deeply hopeful–as we celebrated resiliency and creativity, as we claimed our shared commitment to be part of the healing. The conversation made me so grateful for faith communities like Edwards Church, who boldly proclaim a welcome that changes lives.
It was an amazing conversation, and through it all, I had a sense that something was missing. An off-hand comment clarified my discomfort. One of the participants, a courageous, self-assured activist, said, “My wife and I have always felt accepted in our community, even though we’re lesbians.”
“Even though.” Her words rang in my ears, because I can imagine myself saying them unintentionally, because the assumption that we should be grateful to just be accepted is so deep-rooted.
Mere acceptance is not enough. Acceptance “even though” is not enough. Neither is acceptance that pretends we are all alike when our experiences are different. LGBTQ folks bring unique perspectives that are gifts to our faith communities, prophetic gifts that call us all to greater faithfulness.
One of the reasons LGBTQ folks face judgment and discrimination is that who we are challenges conventional and comfortable ways of perceiving the world. Two women who love each other challenge old assumptions that there needs to be a man at the head of the household. Two men who marry threaten ingrained notions of masculinity and femininity. Bi-sexual men and women push all of us to ask questions about feelings we may have that we have hidden away. Our transgender kin urge us to examine one of the most basic ways we define ourselves and identify one another. By virtue of who we love and who we are, LGBTQ folks challenge some of the most deeply rooted ways we are taught to make sense of the world.
This is a prophetic gift. Central to our faith, proclaimed in the beginning of the ten commandments, is the conviction that God is beyond our capacity to comprehend, beyond all the images and constructs we are inclined to create. That means human beings, created in the image of God, are also beyond our comprehension and beyond all our constructs.
In order to make sense of the world and the people around us, we all create categories to put each other in–that person is black and this one is white; this one is good at math while that one is an artist; this one is a friend and that one is dangerous. We can’t help it. The categories come from culture and tradition and personal experience; our scriptures remind us that they are NOT ordained by God.
I’ve talked a lot in recent years about Jesus’ disciples as examples for our lives. They dedicate themselves to following Jesus; they try their best; they fall short; they get confused; and then they try again. Every time they think they have got Jesus and his message figured out, he makes another statement that confuses them, in order to lead them deeper into the good news.
Our reading from Luke’s gospel is one example of that. Jesus takes a commonly accepted way of putting people into categories–family–and redefines it. He does this over and over again in his ministry, challenging his disciples’ understandings of who is a neighbor and who is holy, who is first and who is last.
I imagine that the author of Luke’s gospel intentionally followed this story of Jesus redefining family with the story of the stilling of the storm. Over and over again, Jesus turns our comfortable ways of making sense of the world upside-down. That can sometimes throw us into a storm of confusion and chaos. We do not need to be afraid, for the promise of our faith is that Jesus is with us to still the storm.
Jesus reminds us that we do not perceive the world the way God does. Over and over, he calls us to tear down the boxes we have created to put each other in. He insists that we move deeper than the assumptions that limit us, that we honor the rich complexity of each human being.
As I was writing this, I had to put down my pen and laugh. Here it is Pride weekend, and my reflection leads me to the concept of humility. I’m not talking about false humility–not that “oh, not little old me” excuse for inaction. I’m talking about humility that is connected with humus–with the earth. Humility is the acknowledgement that we are created in the image of God from the dust of the earth. We are blessed with the capacity to create, to learn, to grow, to make choices about what we do with all those blessings. And our feet are firmly planted on the earth, which means we can never see the whole picture. Our lives are short, so our wisdom is limited. Each of us is unique, so we can never fully know each other.
Humility is a corrective to our inclination to pretend we can be God. It is also a rich, glorious way of life. To move through the world with humility is to celebrate that our limitations are also our blessings–for they lead us to work together, to keep trying to learn more, to wonder at a world that is infinitely more amazing than we can ever grasp.
That definition of humility leads me to a new definition of pride. Pride is the celebration that we are each beloved children of God, blessed with gifts to enrich our world. Pride is a rejoicing in the unique perspectives LGBTQ folks–and our allies–bring from our experience. With pride that we have been called, and with humility, for the task is daunting, we accept our calling to be prophets of transformation.
Whoever you are, whatever humanly-constructed category you fit or don’t fit into, this calling is for you. God sees you with all your potential and knows that you have a gift our world needs. You are called to be a prophet of transformation, to use your life and your actions and your voice to bring healing, to challenge old ways that limit our potential, and to awaken us all to wonder. Let us all accept that calling with pride.
Thanks be to God. Amen.