Stories do change us

This might be one of my #1 public policy issues: As a human right, every single kid needs to be exposed to a wide range of diverse examples of people who thrive in all sorts of different ways. People of all different geographies and neurologies and physical shapes and abilities and ethnicities and gender identities and sexualities and careers and partnered statuses and a whole bunch of other ways humans are different. We don't know who will connect with what examples, but seeing a giant range of ways to thrive and helping kids imagine that just because of where you start, there are lots of "where you can go"s is absolutely life-saving. If we allow any parent on the planet to opt their kid out of exposure to stories about diverse models of thriving, we are complicit in child abuse.

I'd argue the book banners who want to prevent this are partially correct: stories DO make someone queer. But the alternative isn’t “straight”; it’s hopeless or perhaps dead. Make the book banners say it out loud: to deny queer kids stories about queer thriving is to say they would rather said kids be hopeless or dead than thriving as queer people.

Cis kids need to learn about trans people too, but wow, I *really* needed more examples of trans people much much earlier in my life.

We queer folx never had a chance of succeeding at being straight, but in an urgent way, exposure to stories and roles DOES change who we are. It changes us from dysfunctional, hopeless people doomed to fail in an attempt to conform to a hegemonic norm we can never successfully fit into people with hope because there are other models of success that are actually congruent with our core identites.

Self awareness *does* create an existential difference between a ugly ducklings and swans. Just because I wasn't successful at being straight, I wasn't queer yet. I was just hopeless. Exposure to another archetype of success changes people -- changed me -- from a hopeless doomed failure of a straight person into a queer person with hope. Stories changed me from a hopeless doomed miserable cis person to a trans person with hope (I mean I'm still terrified and far from thriving as a trans person, but having other stories to hope for makes living possible).

National Coming Out Day

 It's national coming out day.

I feel like I've done nothing but coming out this year. Other people can come out or reaffirm their coming out today. It's an ongoing process; I'm not done coming out, and I'll have more to say about it. But not right now. Happy coming out day to all who celebrate; for now, I'm tired and I've done far too much "coming out" and today I'm just going to think about what to fix for dinner for me and my amazing kid.

But I will say this to anyone who thinks it might be safe to come out but you're scared to do it: yes, it's terrifying. Yes, there are things and people and contexts you'll lose, and it will be heart-wrenching. But to be yourself and not hide who you are is one of the most amazing things ever. 

And I think the answer might be grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Change and hope

 There’s a disturbing big number of questions that start with “I never used to want to __; I wonder why I’m starting to feel differently now” for which the answer is “oh, that was a response to gender dysphoria.” I guess the good news about the past is wow, I developed a lot of coping mechanisms and the good news about the present is being able to begin to imagine possibilities beyond them…

I've always understood myself as an introvert. But as I'm rediscovering myself, I'm realizing that gender dysphoria led me to just be uncomfortable in a lot of social settings because I felt like I was present as the *wrong person,* and as I'm trying to grow into my more authentic self, I'm surprised how much more comfortable I am in social settings. But also I have some sort of audio processing bug in my brain, so too many people talking at once does cause my brain to shut down.

Mark 9:38-50

Interesting to contemplate this coming Sunday's gospel in light of the concept of gender affirming surgery. Especially when we think of sin not as individual bad actions, but that which impairs our relationship with our creator. I can certainly testify to the experience that having the wrong body parts can cause one to live in a hell, where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

The reign of God

The reign of God is a way of living in love, in contrast with the way of this world, in which people either oppress others, themselves live under oppression, or most frequently, both. The good news is that there is a way to live in God’s reign of love, both now and eternally, that involves neither oppressing nor oppression. The task of the church – the only worthwhile task of the church – is to come together as the people of God and begin living this new reality here and now. Everything else is vanity, and a chasing after the wind.

Pentecost Sermon: Strange Fire

This is a message: A message of love

Love that moves from the inside out, Love that never grows tired

I come to you with strange fire

This sermon is indeed inspired by the words of Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls' first album in 1987.

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them

Not tongues OF fire. Tongues "as of fire." Tongues that at first glance appear to be fire, but on further examination, are not of the same substance, but of a similar substance. Tongues that fall into that uncanny valley where they seem like fire, but are somehow off.

I come to you with strange fire

And strange fire is a scary thing.

In Leviticus, we read: Now Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his censer, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered strange fire before the Lord, such as he had not commanded them And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.

Holy Scripture is a record of humankind's wrestling with the divine, an account of our attempts to find meaning in the records of our existence. Nadab and Abihu made strange fire and offered it to God, and they were consumed by flame. And so humankind took the lesson to fear strange fire. To fear that which was *like* the holy, but uneasily dissimilar. To draw a sharp distinction between the holy and the profane; between the unclean and the clean. If the sin of Nadab and Abihu was to offer strange fire, the lesson humankind, led by those who would call themselves religious leaders -- the lesson we took away was to eschew strange fire. To cut off any expression that is like the canonical examples, and yet somehow eerily dissimilar. We mercenaries of the shrine, the ones who draw our pay by interpreting the divine record and teach God's people what they ought to do have seized upon this account to draw border lines between who is in and who is out. If your offering matches the canonical example, you are in. But to any who find themselves not quite in the proper box, our leaders have ordered them cast into the outer darkness, to protect the purity of the holy. Anathema to those whose offering is strange fire.

The Pentecost event is here to tell us that maybe we took away the wrong lesson.

In the third chapter of Exodus, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. In the second chapter of the second of book the Kings, Elijah was taken up to heaven by a fire in the strange form of a chariot and horses of fire. And now on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples in the form of tongues somehow like and yet not like fire. Strange fire is not unholy, not unclean, not foreign to God. Strange fire burns with the motion of love. Strange fire is indeed of God.

But if strange fire is holy, why then were Nadab and Abihu condemned and consumed? If offering strange fire to God is not inherently wrong, if their sin was not improper worship that offended the divine by being like and yet not the same as the divinely appointed offering, what did they do wrong? This is no idle question, for we hope to avoid their fate.

The Pentecost event and the subsequent revelations in Acts are a redemption of strange fire in Acts 2, of unclean food in Acts 10, of those whose sexuality is rejected in Acts 8, if the category of "unclean" or "abomination" is categorically rejected when God tells Peter in the 10th chapter of Acts, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."

But this is very much NOT a proclamation that anything goes. God's judgment is not removed. In Acts 5 we have spontaneous death meted out by the Lord just like in Leviticus 10. When Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and kept back some of the proceeds, bringing only a part and laying it at the apostles' feet, claiming it to be the whole thing, they immediately fell down and died!

Perhaps what Nadab and Abihu did was the same as what Ananias and Sapphira did centuries later: they tried to hold power over God. Idolatry is not the worship of false gods, but rather trying to control the power of God. Not surrendering to the power of God, but rather trying to force God to accept our agenda. So many of the ancient rites involving incense and strange fire were idolatrous rituals that attempted to manipulate the divine, to dictate to God what the divine power must do, because humans cranked the handle, we expect God to jump up on cue like a mighty Jack-in-the-box to do our bidding. When Ananias and Sapphira retained money that they said they were offering to God, they claimed control over the divine agenda. This goes to the heart of idolatry: attempts by human kind to invoke divine power for our own ends.

Perhaps the Pentecost is to redirect our understanding of Nadab and Abihu. We ought not call offerings of strange fire unclean. Rather, attempts to manipulate the divine are wrong. But what cost has come to those whose offerings of strange fire have been rejected over the centuries? What damage have we gatekeepers done to those whose only offerings they could bring were *like* the canonical examples, but not the same as the canonical examples?

I speak today of those who would stand before God's altar and make a holy offering, an offering of love, an offering brought from the integrity of who God created them to be, who were turned away for so many centuries because they didn't perfectly match the canonical image the church held of what the offering and offerer should look like.

Of Simeon Bachos, the Ethiopian Eunuch who would have been cut off from the assembly of God's people because his body didn't match the canonical norms for gender presentation, and yet whom God commanded Philip to proclaim the Good News and baptize into the Church.

Of the Philadelphia Eleven, whose priestly ministry was rejected by so many because their bodies did not match canonical expectations about gender roles.

Of gay and lesbian people whose offering of love the church so long refused to bless because their bodies did not match canonical expectations about pairings.

Of trans folx today whose very existence is strange fire, so similar to the canonical examples, and yet in that uncanny valley that for so long we have been taught to suppress, to eschew as strange fire.

I come to you with strange fire 

I make an offering of love 

The incense of my soil is burned 

By the fire in my blood 

I come with a softer answer 

To the questions that lie in your path 

I want to harbor you from the anger 

Find a refuge from the wrath

For the Pentecost event tells us that strange fire is not unholy; rebelling against God is unholy. It is not in offering our strange fire, but in trying to suppress who God created us to be, that we commit the sin of Nadab and Abihu. Sin is not being our strange selves whom God created and proclaimed as very good. Sin is trying to control that strange fire and fit God into the box of normality. Sin is calling profane that spark of strange fire in ourselves that God has made clean.

When you learn to love yourself 

You will dissolve all the stones that are cast 

Now you will learn to burn the icing sky 

To melt the waxen mask 

I said to have the gift of true release 

This is a peace that will take you higher 

Oh I come to you with my offering 

I bring you strange fire

The Pentecost event shows us that while the attempt to control God is not holy, the strange fire that God continues to create is indeed very very good. The Pentecost event shows that indeed, God shows no partiality to those who perfectly match the canonical examples of holiness, but that in every people anyone who worships God and does justice is indeed acceptable. The Pentecost event shows us that even those of us whose offering must be strange fire, as long as we serve the Lord, are indeed agents of God's holiness in the world.

This is a message 

A message of love 

Love that moves from the inside out 

Love that never grows tired 

I come to you with strange fire

Transfiguration

 The Reign of God, that for which we pray for each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, always stands in contrast to the reign of the powers and principalities of this world. When we call Jesus King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and Prince of Peace, we use titles that Caesar had claimed for himself. When the Angels proclaimed to the shepherds outside Bethlehem that they carried good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people, they drew on the formula used to announce the ascension of a new Roman Emperor. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on a donkey and the people waved branches and threw their coats on the ground to make a path for him, shouting “Hosanna to the King of Kings,” the whole scene was a subversion of a Roman military procession that would have likely happened before passover each year.

The Pax Christi, the peace of Christ, stands in direct contrast to and subversion of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace carried out through the establishment of widespread fear across the known world of Rome’s ability to dish out death to any who dare to defy them. The Roman peace through strength and fear is the polar opposite of the peace of God which passes all understanding and operates not through the fear of death but through the life-giving power of self-sacrificial love. Jesus is precisely the anti-Caesar (which is very much to say that Caesar, and his imperial successors today, are the anti-Christ).

When Christians make the sign of the cross to mark our lives as being God’s, we subvert the greatest weapon in Caesar’s arsenal of terror, a dreaded instrument of torture unto death the mere threat of which could cower peoples into line with the Roman dictates. When we make the sign of the cross, we proclaim that love is stronger than death, that hope is stronger than fear, and that the worst the powers and principalities of this world can do to us cannot break us nor destroy us, because Christ has beaten down death by victory, and death’s sting is gone.

As you might realize by checking the calendar, though, today is neither Christmas nor Palm Sunday nor even Easter. So why, today of all days, am I emphasizing the contrast between Imperial Peace and Christian Peace?

The theological influences who most shaped my life so far have established August 6 as something of the moral axis about which the modern world revolves. Today is the feast of the Transfiguration, Jesus’s transformation in dazzling light into a glorious preview of the splendor of the Reign of God. But 78 years ago today, in dazzling brightness accompanied by a towering mushroom cloud that reached up to the heights of the heavens, the city of Hiroshima was transfigured to oblivion in a radiant display of the apex of humankind’s death-dealing powers.

From the days of Moses, God has called heaven and earth to witness that humankind has been offered life and death, blessings and curses, and invited us to choose life so that we and our descendants may live. Do we seek to thrive by increasing our grasp on the mechanisms that can deal out death to those we would seek to control (the essence of idolatry), or do we seek to thrive by emptying ourself and submitting to a life of humble service and even to death – death on a cross! – for the wellbeing of all God’s creation, even those who would call us enemies? Do we seek what Caesar calls “peace” through power over others, or do we seek the true peace of Christ through love and service? Does peace come from our capacity to nurture life, or from our capacity to dole out death?

From the theological perspective that shaped me, August 6 is where these two worldviews collide: from the moment of the Transfiguration onward, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, toward the death on the cross that he knew was the destination ordained by the life of liberation he led, knowing that the powers and principalities of this world would not consent to coexist with his ministry that set the prisoner free and proclaimed good news to the poor. This feast marked Jesus’ pivot from the gathering phase of his ministry to the final showdown with the forces of death, a showdown that could only lead to the resurrection, but could also only lead there through immense suffering. August 6 marked Jesus embrace of the vulnerability that would lead to his ultimate triumph.

But also August 6, 1945 marked a milestone in humankind’s ability to kill one another, to transfigure our world into an uninhabitable hellscape of fire and brimstone beyond Dante’s imagination with the added feature of deadly radiation bring painful later death upon those who survived the first wave death or even visiting its deadliness upon the children of survivors, themselves warped by the deadly impact of the bomb’s radiation.

If Moses set before us the choice between life and death, the nuclear arms race marked humankind’s fullest embrace of the capacity to kill – to overkill with an arsenal whose lethal capacity numbers beyond the population of the world, with a nuclear arsenal that could kill each person on the planet multiple times over and still have more bombs in reserve.

Given that the wages of sin are death, the embrace of nuclear arms makes the modern era most firmly the fruit of the most capital of sins, the capacity to kill of not a single person, as Cain first did, bringing murder into the human story and God’s curse upon himself, but the capacity to kill all of humankind and render the earth uninhabitable.

Thus, I was shaped to believe that as sin is equated to dealing in death, nuclear war is the ultimate sin and the chiefest moral problem of our age.

What people in the generations that have come after me have known almost instinctually but it took me much longer to figure out is that humankind’s capacity to make choices that could render our world uninhabitable do not stop with the atom bomb. Climate change is the new atom bomb. Humanity’s collective ability to kill of so much of life on earth no longer relies on someone deciding to pull the trigger, to launch the missiles, to fail to reach the conclusion that when it comes to nuclear confrontation, the only winning move is not to play. Every day that goes by without dramatic action to reign in greenhouse gasses is taking a step toward the equivalent of a nuclear missile launch that will someday (but we do not know when) become irreversible.

I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t seen how the moral urgency behind preventing nuclear war is the precursor to the same moral urgency behind preventing catastrophic climate change. And as individuals, we feel powerless in both struggles, able to shape neither national policy about nuclear weapons nor global policies that shape the emissions that could be destroying our livable world. But in each case, God calls us to faithful resistance to the powers and principalities of death. In both cases, God calls us, on this feast of the Transfiguration, to be transformed into glowing agents of God’s love and light, to resist the forces of death and denial that would deny our collective human descendants the chance to live in the glory for which God created us.

On this August 6, God has set before us life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that we and our descendants may live.