Peculiar Faith

Sacred Scandal

I don’t care very much about Anthony Weiner’s, um, wiener. But the “flame-stream” media can’t seem to get enough of it. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, count your blessings.) What a tragedy that a congressman can get far more media attention with his genitals than he ever could with his passionate work to end poverty, provide access to health care, and rein in the military-industrial complex.

I am so tired of media flare-ups over the sex lives of our politicians. Sure, those lives are riddled with stupidity, but have you peered over the fence into your neighbor’s life lately? Tracked your teenager’s texting trail? Watched nearly any Hollywood movie? Read any issue of People magazine? American culture is simultaneously enthralled and repulsed by sex, and that surely contributes to the unending appetite for scandalous news.

In a bloated world of 24/7 instant media, there’s no better way to secure market share than fanning the flames of outrage; and sex scandals are the best fuel for the fire. But where’s all the outrage over the scandal of a dissolving social safety net, or the scandal of wasted lives in an endless war on terror, or the scandal of treating women’s bodies as pawns in a game of political brinkmanship, or the scandal of decimating the environment on which all of us depend for life itself?

That’s just a short list of the scandals that everyone, but certainly Christians ought to find outrageous. Sadly, the only time most people read the words “scandal” and “church” in the same sentence is when they’re reading about the latest case of clergy sex abuse.

If flame-stream media want religious scandal, let’s give them Pentecost, which many Christians will celebrate tomorrow, June 12. I mean something more than a neat and tidy liturgy done decently and in order (though there’s nothing wrong with that).

In the biblical account of Pentecost, previously fearful disciples of the risen Jesus are dramatically empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach good news to a whole bunch of diverse people who may not have known they needed to hear it. The disciples were so outrageous about this that some observers thought they were drunk (Acts 2:13).

The courage to be outrageous came from the Spirit, who rested on the disciples’ heads like tongues of fire (Acts 2:3). And these fired-up disciples did more than preach. They rearranged their households, disrupted local economies, challenged both religious and civil authorities, and shattered social and cultural taboos. Read all twenty-eight chapters of Acts – it’s not a story of respectable, law-abiding, church-going folk. Propelled by the Spirit’s queer energy, they “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

That’s what I call a queerly Pentecostal agenda, which is still fueling world-changing work. The project currently underway for the blessing of same-gender relationships in the Episcopal Church is one example. So is the Fellowship, a multi-denominational network of congregations and clergy devoted to the radical inclusivity of the Gospel, linking amazing worship with transformative social ministries. The Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations is yet another. But that queerly energizing Spirit also shows up in less “churchy” locales too — among the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco, for instance, or in theatrical performance artists like Peterson Toscano.

Those are just a few among many examples – and all of them are certainly more newsworthy than a lusty congressman.

If flame-stream media won’t cover the sacred scandal of Pentecost, then it’s up to us. Let’s make sure the queerly Pentecostal agenda goes viral. Facebook it, tweet it, blog it. And if you’re going to church tomorrow, wear something red, not just to commemorate an event of the past. Wear red as a sign of your commitment to turn the world upside down today.

Redeem Regret, Sin Boldly

Some Christians talk a lot about the forgiveness of sin, but I don’t know many people who actually worry about that very much. I do know quite a few who can’t imagine overcoming their regret.

The difference between sin and regret appears quite readily in those moments (surely we all have them) when we’re plagued by the “might have been, but wasn’t” or the “could have happened, but didn’t.”

To be sure, sin and regret are deeply intertwined, but I still think there’s a distinction worth making between them, not only for our personal spiritual lives but also for the planetary quandaries and crises we face today.

Consider the Easter lectionary for this coming Sunday, which gives us a regretful Jesus. The scene comes from the “Farewell Discourse” in John’s Gospel (chapters 14-17), right before the crucifixion, when Jesus is saying goodbye to his friends and giving them some parting thoughts.

I don’t read much “job well done!” in that discourse. I do see a lot of Schindler in it.

In Schindler’s List, Stephen Spielberg’s film portrayal of Oskar Schindler’s life, the final scene depicts Schindler surrounded by hundreds of Jews, the ones he’s helped to escape from Nazi Germany. One of those gathered there thanks Schindler for what he’s done. Schindler realizes, however, that he could have done more – “I didn’t do enough,” he says. He begins to weep, realizing how many more he could have saved.

I do think John’s Jesus was feeling much the same thing as Schindler; it’s a moment of poignant regret. I can certainly sympathize.

As I write this blog right now I realize that I might have arranged my day differently and accomplished more. I could have taken less time for that so I could do this better (just fill in the blanks for “that” and “this” any way you choose). All those “might have” and “could have” phrases can terrorize us, especially at 3:00 in the morning.

John’s Jesus can help because he’s not just poignantly regretful but also, queerly enough, buoyantly hopeful. In what many of us will hear on Sunday, just one week from Pentecost, Jesus promises that all his friends will be one, united with him and God (14:20) and that all of them – and us – will receive the Spirit of truth (14:16-17).

I take those convoluted verses in John’s gospel to mean at least two key things. First, none of us can bear regret alone, and shouldn’t, because none of us can do everything. In fact, the only way the really important stuff ever gets done is if we do it together – united to Christ and one another in the power of that Spirit.

Second, each of us will always need to pass the torch on to others even though all of us play indispensable roles in God’s wild, crazy, loving, and gracious plan for the world. No matter how big or how small you think your role is, it’s absolutely necessary.

So what does any of this queerly Christian stuff have to do with the global conundrums we all presently face? Quite a lot, actually.

Regret often surfaces in the wake of risk avoidance. If you’re plagued with regret (like I am), you know exactly what I mean. The “might have been” moment usually occurs because we gave in to one of three fears: 1) the fear of losing something; or 2) the fear of looking foolish; or 3) the fear of making a mistake. Or perhaps all three at the same time.

If the queerly regretful Jesus teaches us nothing else about God and faith, surely it’s this: none of it comes with guarantees. We simply have to plunge in and forge ahead with the vulnerability of trust and take risks. Or as Martin Luther once reportedly said, “Sin boldly – and throw yourself on the mercy of God!” Constantly worrying about the possibility of failure, in other words, will usually prevent us from doing anything at all. (I like to think that the tagline for Pacific School of Religion, where I work – “A Tradition of Boldness” – reflects Luther’s insight.)

Our politicians, elected leaders, legislative bodies, international consultations – everyone, really – needs to start sinning boldly. Holding back, avoiding risk, not taking chances, worrying about what people will think – we don’t have time for that anymore. The planet itself is begging us to be bold. If we don’t do that, the regret really will be unbearable.

Sure, mistakes will happen and everyone will fail now and then. But we don’t have to worry about that. God is always more ready to forgive than we are to take risks. And the confidence Jesus offers about forgiveness also just happens to be the way to fend off regret for good.

Peculiar Pentecost: An Agenda

The tide is turning. Can you feel it? Newscasters and sports figures alike are “coming out.” Marriage and/or civil unions are taking root in more and more jurisdictions (the latest polling numbers now show a majority of Americans supporting marriage for same-sex couples). The Presbyterians will welcome openly gay and lesbian clergy. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed and the U.S. Justice Department won’t defend the “Defense of Marriage Act” in court.

That’s pretty heady stuff. The prize, it would seem, really is within reach.

But I’m not popping the champagne cork just yet. Sure, backlash is a real possibility. But I worry more that the sights are set too low. Legislative and judicial victories rarely change hearts and minds, for example. And changing an ordination policy doesn’t automatically change congregations. And what kind of change do we want, really?

A similar dynamic seems to have seized the first disciples of Jesus. On the brink of the risen Jesus’ ascension, they ask him whether that profound moment of resurrection signaled at long last the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel (Acts 1:6).

The disciples’ question is not quite so random as it might appear. The “kingdom” they had in mind was the only benchmark they had ever known for the good life. Surely in that moment, when even crucifixion can’t thwart God’s mission in the world, it’s time for the “happily ever after” moment and roll the credits. I mean, really, after death is conquered, what’s left?

Quite a lot, apparently.

Here’s the peculiar part: the resurrection of Jesus was not the end of the story, not by far. According to Acts, those disciples still had an amazing adventure stretching before them. The Spirit they received on Pentecost empowered them to take up the Jesus-revolution where Jesus had left off – and take it even farther.

A short list from Acts offers a glimpse of what that looked like: overturning economic systems that keep the poor in poverty (4:34-35); resisting institutional authorities jealous of their own power (5:17-26); dissolving social and class boundaries (8:25-40); and reshaping cultural and religious standards of propriety (10:9-30). In what is perhaps the best shorthand description of what a peculiar faith can do, Acts declares that those early Christians turned the “world upside down” (17:6).

That’s pretty heady stuff, too – and that work isn’t finished yet either, not by far.

Prior to that Spirit-led adventure, the disciples seemed stuck in a first century version of the “gay agenda.” Since the 1980s, that agenda could be summed up with a single phrase: “demanding a place at the table.” I’ve worked hard on that agenda myself. Yet I’m haunted by that “Holy Ghost” who seems much more bent on overturning tables than adding a few more chairs.

The Feast of Pentecost (June 12 this year) offers a great opportunity for an agenda set by that peculiar Pentecost. Maybe “vision” is better than “agenda” – a vision where not everyone looks the same or acts alike or buys into the institutional systems that are, actually, killing us.

A Pentecostal agenda begins with some peculiar if not impertinent questions: Why are health care and tax benefits attached to marriage at all? When will more of us resist the forces of global capitalism that seek to turn everyone into a market niche so we can buy still more stuff while the planet slowly dies? Why are there so few LGBT-identified people at immigration reform rallies and labor union meetings? Now that openly gay and lesbian people can serve in the armed forces, when will we start dismantling the military-industrial complex that compels so many low-income people to enlist because they have no other job prospects?

Even that short list of peculiar questions makes the so-called gay agenda seem rather tame.

Those first disciples asked the risen Jesus the wrong question (as I’m sure I would have, too). Wrong, because the resurrection doesn’t “restore” anything; but it does make everything new – or rather, that’s the promise. And the promise starts to take root when we hear Jesus say this to his disciples: ”You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Acts 1:8).

Well, power to do what, exactly? That’s the question Pentecost ought to pose to every Christian community. Not every community will answer it in exactly the same way and the peculiar visions that emerge will need the insights from all the others. Those first-century disciples quickly discovered something similar, and something else as well: that peculiar Pentecost turned the world upside down.Thank God.

Apocalypse Now or Later?

Harold Camping and his fervent followers in Oakland, California believe that the world will end this Saturday, May 21. (Read about the prediction here.) It’s rather easy to ridicule such beliefs and dismiss this group as just bizarre. But have you read any church history lately? The whole history of Christianity, from the very beginning, brims over with peculiarities, with one bizarre moment after another.

And what about the Bible? Are those ancient texts really less strange than Camping’s sermons? This Sunday, many Christians will hear a portion of John’s Gospel from the Easter lectionary, including this promise from Jesus: “if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (14:3). To me, that sounds only just a little less peculiar than what Harold Camping is preaching. (Read my take on the queerness of the Bible here.)

Given the trendy enthusiasm for atheism these days, some would insist that just believing in God at all is really peculiar if not downright queer.

So I’m not troubled by the oddity of Camping’s predictions. If you’re not odd in some fashion, then you’re really not Christian. I do worry, however, about those among his multiracial, multi-generational community who have forked over their life savings to bankroll the multi-million dollar media campaign that has brought all of this to our attention. For the sake of argument, let’s say the world does not come to an end on Saturday. Well, who’s going to manage all those really angry, newly-poor people?

But there’s something else I worry about even more: the severe division of humanity between those who will escape the catastrophe and those who are left behind. That’s the core of Camping’s message and why we see his billboards along Bay Area highways.

Philosopher of religion Edith Wyschogrod identified the root of this problem as the “great sorting myths” of Western culture. She means those grand narratives that divide the saved from the damned, or the sheep from the goats (Mt. 25:32-33). Those myths, Wyschogrod argues, have inspired some of the most distressing moments in Western history, fiercely punctuated by Nazi Germany’s concentration camps and gas chambers.

To be sure, one can read the Bible as supporting those sorting myths, just as Harold Camping is doing right now. But there are just as many, if not more ways to read the Bible quite differently.

In that same portion of John’s Gospel for this coming Sunday, Jesus declares that in God’s house there are many mansions (14:2). Don’t skip over the queerness of that image too quickly. (Think of Dr. Who’s phone booth that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.) That Gospel image ought to stretch our credulity far enough to imagine that there really is enough divine grace to go around for everyone and not just a select few.

(For you theology geeks out there: I do subscribe to the “doctrine of election,” but it’s Karl Barth’s version – everyone belongs to the elect. And if that isn’t queer, I don’t know what is.)

I find it helpful to recall that the original meaning of the word “apocalypse” does not demand some kind of doomsday catastrophe. That Greek word just means “revelation” or “unveiling.” In that sense, what we read in John’s Gospel is thoroughly apocalyptic: the unveiling of God’s wildly generous hospitality that will make room for everyone, no exceptions.

Queerly enough, I consider myself an “apocalyptic Christian.” Worlds actually do come to an end, and quite regularly – the world of one’s personal relationships, the world of professional work, the world of economic stability, the world of thriving ecosystems. All of these “worlds” and many more do on occasion come to an end.

The question all those world-ending moments pose is not how to find the “escape hatch” where we can scramble out with our friends and loved ones and let everyone else go to hell. The question is rather how to live in and through world-ending moments with others, and to do so with faith, with hope, and most especially with love (1 Cor. 13:13).

I pray for Brother Harold and his community, just like I pray for all of us. In this Easter season, may we find the faith and the hope to live into that love that is stronger than our many divisions and disagreements; stronger than any world-ending moment; stronger than death itself.

Jesus Would Run the Ad

Jim Wallis has now responded to the brouhaha. Sojourners Magazine recently refused to run an ad that shows two lesbian moms and their child being welcomed in a church. (Read the back story.)

As one of the key voices in “progressive Christianity” in the U.S., this decision by Sojourners is obviously disappointing but not terribly surprising. Sojourners’ position reflects a common though bizarre incoherence at work in many Christian communities. It comes down to this: we’ll support civil rights for lesbian and gay people; we just don’t want them in our churches.

Do Christians really hope and work for a civil society that is more welcoming than their own churches? Christians will insist on inclusive legislation but not an inclusive Gospel? Really?

Wallis offers six points in his response, most of which sound pretty good. (Read his full response.) He notes, for example, the position Sojourners has taken on anti-bullying and the commitment Sojourners has made to civil rights for lesbian and gay people. Sojourners has even welcomed gay staff members!

Points five and six, however, buried at the end of his response, offer a reminder of how easily even moderately supportive language can beguile me in a hostile religious culture.

Point #5: Sojourners’ commitment to ending the war in Afghanistan, addressing the national budget, and securing immigration reform take priority over engaging with the controversy the lesbian ad would provoke. The logic here is foreshadowed in Point #4. There he reiterates the “core” of Sojourners’ calling, which is focused on poverty, racism, and the stewardship of creation. Alas, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to add on the concerns of LGBT people.

The “if only we had more time” argument highlights the Achilles heel of most self-proclaimed progressive organizations. Let’s call it the “laundry list” approach to social justice, and it goes like this: We’ll address poverty first, then move on to race, and then we’ll try to squeeze in the environmental issue.

A far queerer and therefore more Christian approach would recognize all these “issues” as tightly interwoven with each other, including LGBT concerns. Poverty is always already gendered; race is always already sexualized; budgetary policy (can you say “marriage”?) and immigration policy cuts to the heart of many lesbian and gay families and their children.

Point #6: Sojourners is committed to engaging in dialogue in its editorial pages but will not take advertising about divisive concerns that have become, for people of faith, “political wedge issues.” Here, apparently, we are invited to suppose that racism, economic injustice, military interventions, monetary policy, saving the environment, and border enforcement have all lost their edge as political wedges. How about this instead: two women raising a child are not a wedge; they’re a family.

Wallis concludes by noting that Sojourners always tries to ask what Jesus would do, and that Sojourners will continue to ask that question about LGBT concerns.

Brother Jim, the queerly Christian answer is clear: Jesus would run the ad.

The Queer Promise of Easter in a Culture of Death

Any society that celebrates death is in cultural trouble, and I would say rather deep trouble.

This particular kind of trouble is not new to the United States, though it would take much more than a short blog post to catalogue the many examples. The recent eruption of jubilation across this country to celebrate just one man’s death halfway around the world only adds to the list.

Let me be clear: I am not sorry that Osama bin Laden is dead. He was a fomenter of violence and terrorism across the globe and a mass murderer (even of his own people). Whether rightly or wrongly (probably a combination of both), bin Laden catalyzed two major U.S. war efforts, drained the financial resources of more than one country, and caused untold heartache in dozens of countries. The statements from the families of 9/11 victims that have been broadcast in the wake of his death bear witness to the deep wounds, the scars, the grief that this one man, in some fashion, has caused.

So I’m not sorry he’s dead. But I don’t celebrate his death, either.

That distinction, though subtle, is an important one for Christians who claim to be an “Easter people.” Easter celebrates God’s decisive victory over death. We taint that celebration if we find anyone’s death a cause for celebration and jubilation, and perhaps especially when that death is violent.

Just over a week ago, Christian communities gathered for an Easter vigil celebration. On that night, many heard the story of how God rescued the ancient Israelites by leading them across the Red Sea on dry ground. This divine act of salvation, however, came at the price of drowning Pharaoh’s entire army, both horse and rider, in that same sea.

The Israelites celebrated their rescue in song (Exodus 15:1), and I would have done the same thing. But then, I have to wonder: did any of them grieve for the dead Egyptians and their families?

We don’t know. What we do know is that the Israelites spent the next forty years wandering in the desert. I’d like to think that they spent that time learning how to mourn the deaths of their oppressors. Perhaps their wilderness sojourn inspired a broader vision of divine liberation – a vision in which both oppressed and oppressor alike would come home to the Promised Land.

Isaiah seems to have been inspired by that kind of expansive vision when he writes about all the nations (not just a select few) streaming to the Holy Mountain, where swords are beaten into ploughshares and people learn war no more (Isaiah 2:2-4).

The trajectory from Exodus to Isaiah marks a remarkable evolution from tribal warfare to universal peace. I wonder what happened to that vision when I see college-aged students celebrating bin Laden’s death outside the White House by chanting “USA! USA!” as if we had just won the World Cup. I don’t know how else to describe such a scene except with words like “ghoulish” and “ghastly.”

The life-changing, world-altering insight that violence only breeds more violence is of course not new. In more than one gospel account, Jesus says, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27).

The risen Jesus practiced what he preached as he came back from death, still bearing the scars of his torture. To the very ones who had abandoned him, he said, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19-22).

A second century theologian by the name of Origen took that peace still further, and rather dramatically, by declaring that not even Satan and all his fallen angels would be excluded from the eternal offer of love and grace.

How queer can Christianity get? No, really. How far are we willing to take this? I honestly don’t know. I do know that throwing a party because someone was shot in the head falls a bit short of the queer promise of Easter. I’m not trying to be facetious; I’m genuinely appalled by the specter of dancing on someone’s grave.

Let me suggest this, and not without a little trepidation: The queerly good news of the Christian Gospel invites us to imagine that someday, somehow, not only the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Israelites, and not only the Roman soldiers and the disciples of Jesus, but also all the victims of terrorism and al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden himself, will find themselves gathering in the same banquet hall, preparing for the same feast, and deeply engaged in the kind of reconciliation none of us can presently conceive.

I’m not sure any of us – myself included – can really bear the queerness of that vision. But quite frankly, I’ll take the discomfort and offense of that queerly Christian posture over the jingoistic, even blood-thirsty ejaculations of so many of my fellow US citizens over these past twenty-four hours.

Surely, Easter queerly promises something different, something better than that. Surely it does.

Christ is risen! A Call for TRANSformation

By Queerly Christian contributor, Jakob Hero

To celebrate Holy Week, I gathered with a small group of friends and an excessive amount of nail polish for a “We aren’t supposed to paint our fingernails” party. The idea came from a conversation with a transmasculine, genderqueer friend about the harsh reality of gender policing.

As a post-transition female to male transsexual, I am often “helpfully” informed by others that because I am now male, various things that might potentially link back to my female birth sex are off limits. So a small group of queer folks, most of us male or masculine identified, got together the night before Easter and painted our fingernails. Christ is risen! Alleluia!

So here I sit at my keyboard, with fingernails that just happen to shine with an iridescent purple and green (with a top coat of glitter), and I tell you shamelessly and with no uncertainty: there is such a thing as resurrection. Christ really did die on that cross. And he truly came back from the dead.

Why do so many of us on the liberal side of the Christian spectrum get squeamish at the mention of miracles, particularly this big one at Easter? Christians of a particular stripe can become terribly complacent about the radical and bizarre foundations of our faith. Why is it so hard to believe that Christ’s death and resurrection actually happened?

Christ conquered death! That is incredibly queer! I don’t know of an embodied act that is more peculiar, strange, or odd than Christ coming back from the dead. It isn’t just the oddity of this that makes it queer. This is a story about love. Christ died and came back, and he did this for his beloveds.

We must not let this incredibly queer story be co-opted by fear-based and exclusionary theologies. Please do not let the misuse of the Cross take away from its queer power. Yes, this story has been used to frighten many of us into submission and conformity. Yes, too many have been told, “Christ suffered for your sins; believe in that or burn in hell.” Yes, this story has been used to justify hatred of the Other, and particularly to fuel Christian anti-Semitism. Yes, it has been used to create the “us versus them” rhetoric, and yes, that has led to a tragic rejection of many from the very table where Christ’s death and resurrection is commemorated.

No wonder so many prefer images of bunnies and brightly colored eggs for Easter! Look, the whole idea of a rabbit laying an egg (not to mention the cross-species copulation that would require!) is totally queer. But much more than that is this: Christ’s death and resurrection is the craziest and queerest love story ever told!

Jesus came back, not to utopia but to the people who betrayed him. These are the ones who couldn’t even stay awake long enough to pretend that they were in solidarity with him. But he came back to them, to the ones who had turned away in fear and deserted him in his hour of need. Even then, the ones who loved him most greeted this return with doubt, fear, and incomprehension.

Jesus did not cross over from death to life to give us a morality lesson. He crossed over for love, with love, and to give love. It was a transformative love, as the gospel writers so clearly portray.

Those of us who live queerly transformed lives know exactly what this means. Those of us who have experienced transformation in our own bodies are especially able to testify to the power of this queer calling to love. This blessing will not be silenced, shamed, or hidden.

Far too often trans-people are left out of gay and lesbian advocacy movements for fear of “diluting” the message. Progress requires instead a more “respectable” presentation of queerness. I remember clearly when this point was raised at a gathering of lobbyists and how the wonderful trans-activist, Kate Bornstein, declared: “I did not have my peepee cut off so I could dress and act respectably!” Now there’s a declaration everyone could cling to in our journey toward queerly Christian transformation.

As a man who used to be a girl, I have wasted way too much time worrying about the expectations of my own embodiment. You want to talk about queer performativity? Great – let’s read the Gospels.

Jesus broke the rules of life and death! Right there is the queerly good news for progressive, liberal Christians who may have shifted uncomfortably in their pews on Easter morning. You don’t have to feel awkward. You don’t need to feel obliged to explain away the resurrection of Jesus as allegory or fantasy or legend. Your faith doesn’t need respectable packaging.

Resurrection is not about conformity or respectability. Resurrection is our call for radical change, fearless acceptance, and queer love. It’s a call for TRANSformation!

Let us proclaim the Easter announcement with a queer sense of joy, now and always: Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed!

And don’t forget the “alleluia!”

The Morning After

Christ is risen – but the clergy are dead tired.

That’s one version of an old joke about the grueling schedule of Holy Week services leading up to Easter morning. Not just clergy, of course, but choir members, flower arrangers, brass polishers, administrative assistants – just about everyone dealing with Easter preparations can feel a holy hangover coming on the morning after.

In the wake of all the liturgical fuss – and I do love the fuss – I start to reflect on what everyone was thinking. Kind of like hoping everyone liked the New Year’s Eve party while you throw out the empty champagne bottles. How many different views of resurrection, we might wonder, resided in our various congregations this Easter Sunday? Did they believe “it” – I mean, really?

I, for one, can believe nearly anything in a beautifully decorated church with an angelic choir providing a divine soundtrack to an inspiring sermon. But what do I really believe in the still, quiet aftermath?

Resurrection is difficult, much more so, it seems to me, than incarnation. Proclaiming “God with us” at Christmas feels good, especially with a cuddly baby as a prop. A battered, tortured body that won’t stay put in the grave where we put it feels, well, unsettling.

Other than the inevitability of taxes, Easter breaks the one rule everyone is taught to accept as inviolable: the finality of death. Few find that rule pleasant, but at least it maps out the playing field with tidy boundaries. Human life stretches from cradle to grave; that’s it. For the fortunate among us, the span between those two borderlines is long and full. But blur those boundaries, even just a little bit, and the queerness of Christian faith starts to shimmer.

For me, the queerly good news of Easter is just this: it dissolves certainty.

If we really can’t count on death like we used to, then the playing field expands toward a new horizon over which none of us can presently see. For me, that’s unnerving and exhilarating at the same time.

Among the queerest of the queer biblical stories are the ones about Easter. Consider the account in Luke 24. There we read about two grieving disciples who encounter a stranger as they travel to a village called Emmaus. After inviting the stranger to share a meal with them, they finally recognize him as none other than the risen Jesus; and in that very moment, he vanishes.

No reunion hug. No war-story swapping. No debriefing of all those betrayal moments. No orchestral swell of music for the Hollywood ending. Jesus instead slips through their fingers. There’s no “there” there. Nothing to hold on to.

And that, it seems to me, is queerly good news.

If we know something with absolute certainty, we can be tempted to take it for granted; ask no more questions; set it aside; move on to something else. We might believe that we can control and manipulate it; use it; own it.

The risen Jesus will have none of that – no shrines, no monuments, no treatises, no creeds, no liturgies, no institutional gate-keeping. The risen Jesus instead starts sprinting away from us over that inscrutable horizon, egging us on to follow, giving us no compass points to do so.

I’m a full-throated Easter Christian – I believe death was not the final word for Jesus. And because I believe that, I believe that death is not the final word for any of us. But I have no idea what that means or what it looks like. That faith (which is not certainty) expands my playing field well beyond a game and into something like an adventure, where the next chapter is always waiting to be written – always.

That’s not a hangover you’re feeling; that’s the tug of morning-after energy. It’s urging you to step into life. New life.

A “Foot Note” in Holy Week

What Jesus did and what he lived through in this most holy week on the Christian calendar is utterly, shockingly, and wonderfully queer in many ways. Not least among those queer moments is when he washed his disciples’ feet (John 13:1-5) – an act that many Christian communities will re-enact today, Maundy Thursday.

But I worry that many of those re-enactments will fail to capture the subversive character of that moment in John’s gospel – the only one of the four gospels to include that story. Not for any fault of the communities engaged in the ritual, but for a much more pervasive problem – sentimentality.

Just to be clear, I’m not squeamish about feet and I do appreciate the tenderness and intimacy of washing someone’s feet or having my own feet washed. But if the point of this story is intimacy, I fail to understand why Peter so strenuously objected to what Jesus was doing (John 13:6-8). There’s more than just a hint of scandal in this story, which is easy to miss today.

For the vast majority of modern western people, the only time we ever wash feet is just once a year, in church, on Maundy Thursday. In first century Palestine, by contrast, people did have their feet washed quite regularly, by servants or slaves. We don’t – and that makes the scandalous subversion of John’s story difficult to grasp.

The Eucharist, or Holy Communion, is different. While contemporary western society is slowly losing the significance of eating food together (one in five meals in the U.S. is eaten alone in a car), we haven’t lost entirely the power of sharing meals. Jesus eating a final meal with his disciples thus has at least some traction in western cultural life today. Washing feet? Not so much.

Stanley Hauerwas, theologian and ethicist, once remarked that the greatest danger facing Christianity today is not heresy but sentimentality. Sentimentalizing the power reversal that Jesus performed by taking on the role of a slave is a good example of Hauerwas’ caution.

So let’s find some creative ways to perform the kind of social revolution and queerly good news that the writer of John’s gospel seemed to have in mind. Many Christians live that queerly Christian life already (by subverting social hierarchies, or eradicating poverty, or resisting an imperial military-industrial complex, or dismantling racism, to name just a few ways) but they rarely if ever do so by washing feet.

I dream of finding some kind of ritual that’s faithful to the queerness of Jesus and which also has some traction in today’s social, ethical, and political quandaries. Making that dream a reality will likely mean ritualizing Christian queerness in multiple ways and not just one.

A good place to begin might be talking about the effects of social power in a multicultural, globlalized world. If more Christian faith communities did that, we’d help to ensure that the scandalous Jesus isn’t just a footnote in holy week.

What’s So Peculiar about Christianity?

Christianity itself is really quite peculiar, and always has been, though not always in the same way in every time and place.

The peculiar character of Christian faith never occurred to me in the Evangelical, nearly fundamentalist subculture of my childhood. And it didn’t occur to me when I came out as a gay man, either. The wonderfully peculiar and transforming character of Christian faith has been unfolding in my thinking and living over the last 20 years or so.

To be sure, most Christians today in the North Atlantic rarely think about their faith as “peculiar.” Most of the time, Christianity just blends in with the wider culture and occasionally surfaces among political candidates as a kind of litmus test for elections. This seems rather far removed from the personally transforming, world-altering character of the Gospel that shaped the first few centuries of Christianity and which can still inspire renewal and transformation today.

I never really thought about it that way growing up in the American Midwest. Even though I heard and read the gospel story many times over my life, I can’t quite imagine why I missed just how peculiar it is.

Just to recall, the story of Jesus that inspired the gospel writers was a story about a Jewish prophet living in a conquered, backwater province of the Roman Empire; about an unmarried, itinerant teacher in a society constructed on marriage and family relations; about the scandalous practice of sharing meals and daily life with the ritually unclean and socially misfit; about a humiliating, public execution at the hands of an occupying army; and reports from hysterical women who seemed to be talking about grave robbers and an empty tomb.

Now, really, that’s a pretty strange, odd and, well, very peculiar story. It’s out-of-the-ordinary, culturally unwarranted, socially unreasonable, religiously radical, philosophically suspect, and politically dangerous. And precisely for all of those reasons, the gospel writers insisted that this story is “good news.”

Notice that I didn’t mention anything about human sexuality in that account. Given some of the academic work I do at the intersections of sexuality and religion, one might expect to read a bit more about that here. But I believe the Christian Gospel is already quite peculiar all on its own without any help from all the debates around sexuality and gender with which so many churches live today. To be sure, those debates can help highlight some important issues and questions, but they only scratch the surface of the Gospel’s potential for renewal and transformation.

Given the ongoing legacy of the “wedding” between Christianity and western cultural values, I would say we need to retrieve that peculiar Gospel energy to address the social and political mess we find ourselves in today regarding race, ethnicity, economics, class, and a planetary environment on the brink of collapse.

The biblical writer who wrote the first letter of Peter was on to something by referring to Christians as “peculiar.” The whole biblical book of Acts provides story after story of the wonderfully transforming energy of the Gospel. As Luke (presumably) described it in Acts, those early Christians “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

I’m convinced that the Christian Gospel still carries that potential today — to turn the world upside down with a peculiar faith, that inspires hope, and transforms the world with love (1 Corinthians 13:13).