Storms about sex and gender increasingly rage around, and, importantly, within us. In the face of this, what stories are we telling ourselves, and living into? How are we negotiating the tempests of faith, fact and false news? Where are we headed and what hope do we have? Let us take time to consider. For the sea of faith of which we are a part is in much turmoil because of sex and gender waves. It is likely to remain so, and even grow more turbulent. What options are among us then, and, most vitally of all, where is God in all of this?
The Inconvenient Truth of Sex and Gender
Perhaps we might begin with Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. I guess most of us know the story. A king, in his arrogance, lack of knowledge and self-reflection, is fooled into paying for a set of clothes which actually consist of absolutely nothing. Yet, out of fear, false adulation and a desire to ingratiate themselves, almost everyone goes along with them. Expressions of admiration for the clothes pour in, no doubt including many learned theological treatises on their value and biblical grounding, as well as great prayers of thanksgiving. How wonderful it is that the king has such fabulous clothing and how vital it is to the whole world that all concur. Everyone it seems is happy. The new clothes bring order and harmony, and woe betide anyone who disagrees: even if - secretly, and in closeted groups - many doubt and act otherwise. Then, a little child pipes up, ‘but the emperor has no clothes’, they say, and the truth is out. Cue panic and pandemonium everywhere. For we may not hear about the storms from Hans Christian Andersen. Yet we can imagine they were very real. The little child, above all, would have had all kinds of pressure upon them to come back into line. Truth however, if inconvenient, cannot be hidden. Transformation must eventually, if painfully, ensue.
Nakedness and Myths
Now the metaphor is not exact, but I would suggest that today LGBTI+ people are somewhat like that little child who voices the inconvenient truth. For the reality about so-called ‘traditional’ ideas of sex and gender is that they are vanishing before our eyes. They simply do not stand up to the scrutiny of an honest, truthful gaze, informed as it should be today by decades of medical, psychological, scientific and other human studies, and, above all, by the evidence of our own experience. No wonder then that the right-wing kings of this world and their acolytes are so angry, and increasingly furious, with us. We LGBTI+ people and our allies are exposing their nakedness. In that way, like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, heterosexist and cisgender narratives are out-of-date myths, in the technical (linguistic and theological) sense. For a ‘myth’ is really just another word for a grand story which overarches or underpins a person, group or whole society. It is a big connecting story which helps give meaning and purpose, order and harmony. We all have such narratives. Throughout history there have been many of them, including what used to be called ‘the divine right of kings’, and ideas about Creation - the flatness of the Earth, the supposed circuit of the Sun around our planet, and so on. For years, even centuries, such grand stories helped give form and shape to people’s lives, until one day someone called the myth empty and more and more people agreed. That is what happened - wasn’t it? - when people started believing another ‘myth’, or ordering story, called ‘democracy’, or when we started trusting in ‘equal rights for women’ rather than other myths of ‘separate spheres’ and ‘complementarity’. It was not that the earlier grand narratives did not work in their own way in their own day. They had simply outlived their times and people had seen through them. Their God, in other words, had been shown to be naked.
Transforming the myths
This is at the heart of today’s great struggles over sexuality and gender. For some times LGBTI+ people say ‘why do they hate us so much?’ Maybe you have asked that question yourself? The reason is not simply personal failings. We will not help ourselves, and denigrate others unnecessarily, if we think that. The answer lies more deeply in the way LGBTI+ lives challenge powerful embedded understandings of the way Creation itself works: the myths, or connecting grand stories, which have provided some order to human lives. That is a major reason why religion has often been so particularly resistant to LGBTI+ inclusion and affirmation. It is not, as some secularist LGBTI+ people say, because religion in itself is irredeemably oppressive or evil. In the face of so much abuse and oppression, that is a very understandable, but ultimately mistaken, view. It is more that religion is fundamentally about seeking and nurturing meaning, not least through myths and symbols. Sometimes the ones it uses are liberating, at least for some, in some places, times and contexts. When however it becomes fixed on certain myths about existence and does not respond to change, it becomes the perpetrator of dangerous and destructive narratives. It confuses ideas of God’s order for the reality of God in God-self. Instead of being more or less useful life-bearing icons, they become death-dealing idols. Like denying the emptiness of the emperor’s clothes, too many people then cling to old empty myths in misplaced honour for God. God must not be shown to be naked. Yet, fortunately, there are ways out, and some them are religious – and have to be partly religious, or the old myths will continue to hold sway. For, hard though it is to hear for some secularists. we will not have full equality for LGBTI+ people until all aspects of our world, not least the religious, have been transformed. We must change law, and outward forms, but the spirit, and the inward aspects of human life, must also change – which brings me to Jesus and the ‘sea of Faith’…
Jesus and the Parabolic Path
For, religiously speaking, whilst Jesus is not against life-giving overarching stories, helpful ‘myths’, what he typically offers us in his teaching are parables – a different genre of stories which do not so much order our lives as ask questions of them and help transform them and all the ‘myths’ we hold, or are tempted to hold. Significantly too, so many of Jesus’ myth-transforming parables are drawn from nature. For nature, whilst it does exhibit order, is always changing in search of greater harmony and diversity of life. This is at the heart of the Gospel, not least the powerful metaphor and realities of the sea.
The Sea as a metaphor of Faith
Think about it: where does Jesus’ ministry begin and flourish and, after it has seemingly died, begin again? It is not in the human-made temple and its mythic order, is it? It is, above all, on and around the sea of Galilee. At the sea, according to the Synoptic Gospels, he calls the first disciples. By the sea, he teaches and heals, and, after his death, he appears again at the Resurrection. On the sea, he challenges and encourages his followers: at, by, and on, the sea. For the sea is so redolent of the nature of life and faith. It, and not least the sea of Galilee, is not fixed but unpredictable. It is not capable of simple mythical order. It is a parable of harmony which often emerges from waves of turmoil. It is an invitation to three special divine gifts of courage, calm, and creativity.
Rising waves
Courage, calm, and creativity: that is what we currently need, isn’t it? For, I don’t know about you, but living as a Christian today, not least an LGBTI+ Christian, is like living on an unpredictable changing sea. The old myths are passing. For though some cling desperately to them, the waves are rising. Those waves and the reactionary responses to them disturb and often threaten to overwhelm us. Isn’t that how it has felt for so many of us, not least over the last year or so: with the dreadful postal survey, the crest and falls of marriage developments, religious freedom debates, ’conversion therapy’ campaigns, so called ‘gender whispering’, backtracking on ‘safe schools’ work, school student and teacher controversies, and so much else?
A sea change of compassion
What we are experiencing today is a massive sea-change in understanding, and in the creation of new stories, new myths, about how to live together in this world. If we view it that way, we will find it much easier to find courage, calm and creativity – and also greater compassion for ourselves and for others, even perhaps those most bitterly opposed to us. For this sea-change is born out of the compassionate movement of God’s Spirit.
The Holy Spirit like a tide
How do you picture God’s Spirit? Recently, after a setback in advancing LGBTI+ people in my own Anglican diocese, many of my friends, especially straight allies, were quite despondent. I was disappointed too but slightly less crushed. After all, I thought, what’s new?! It seemed like some allies had only just begun to catch on to the size of the spiritual challenge we face and the depth of the opposition and their silencing, oppressing ways. Some also seemed to assume that progress happens in a straight line, when it is actually much more of a queer thing. It is like the tide coming in, isn’t it? It doesn’t come in all at once, or in neatly ordered stages. Instead, one wave will come in quite a way, maybe even reach high on the beach. However the next wave, and the next, may end far away: so far away, it may even seem that the tide is going out again. It is like that with the Holy Spirit in the sea of faith. When we have a big wave – like the wave, for example, which took us to marriage equality options in the Uniting Church, we must celebrate, but also be wary. The next wave may seem to betray us, and perhaps even the next, and the next. Yet the Holy Spirit is invincible. The tide has turned and is irresistible. Even when the waves seem unkind and the shore seems particularly far off, rejoice and take courage, for it is still coming in.
Flailing options – take Courage
Firstly, take courage then - the sea of faith is stirring for us. We are offered options in our churches to try to believe otherwise. Some for instance are like the famous King Canute who sat on a beach to display his supposed godly power by commanding the waves to retreat. Some, more aware of the power of the sea, try to build fortifications on the beach to keep it out. Yet, like sandcastles, they are doomed to failure. Others simply try to keep the rickety old ecclesiastical boats afloat, or take to lifeboats, or cling to driftwood, or flail about waving when they are really drowning. The truth is that we are called to take courage, and, like Jesus, to learn to walk upon the water: trusting in Jesus, so that, unlike Peter, we do not become overcome with fear and begin to sink. Be not afraid: is that not the constant biblical refrain whenever the waters are stirred, whenever liberation is offered, whenever the Spirit is at work?
At the ‘fighting us’ stage
Do you know those remarkably true but hard to hear words: ‘first they ignore us, then they ridicule us, then they fight us, and then? – then we win,’ That is what is happening for LGBTI+ people, isn’t it? First of all they ignored us, and then they ridiculed us, but now? – well they are definitely fighting us now: which is a very good sign, even though it is so uncomfortable. So don’t be downcast, or afraid. This is all part of the sea-change. God’s Spirit will overcome.
Calm – ‘in the eye of the storm, sing alleluia and keep on walking’
For, secondly, with the call to courage. God in Jesus also offers us calm in the midst of the sex and gender storms on the sea of faith. Do you remember that fabulous story where the disciples are out on the sea and a huge storm whips up: so that they are not only afraid but even begin to think they may be destroyed? Jesus, we are told, simply remains asleep in the boat until he is roused to bring profound calm. The story is a metaphor - isn’t it? - for the way in which, even in the greatest storms and tsunamis of our lives, we are to listen for the still small voice of God’s peace. As many commentators have pointed out, the disciples’ boat in that story is a symbol for the church itself. Sure it will be tossed about and tempested, but it will never be overcome, if it looks to Jesus. So much rocks our boats today, doesn’t it?! Therefore, can we find inner calm in God’s peace even in the turmoil? Can we, as St Augustine of Hippo encouraged us, even ‘in the eye of the storm, sing alleluia and keep on walking’?
The Cross and transformation – the way of Jesus
To do so – to take courage and rest in God’s calm – is to live more fully as Jesus lived. For just as Jesus taught us parables of transforming love, not myths of oppressive order, so he walked through the storm singing alleluia. Jesus did indeed bring peace, but this involved being transformed, and transforming the world. A great mentor of mine who was involved in some mighty struggles used to put it this way: ‘the cross comes’, he would say, ‘when you try to change things.’ It is tough being queer and a Christian, or bring a Christian standing with queer people. We will be tempested. Yet we will not be overcome. For beyond the cross there is always resurrection.
Becoming New Waves of Creativity
Thirdly, we need creativity. For we do not know how long our struggles in the church over LGBTI+ issues will last. Maybe some of us will never see some of what we long to see. Who knows how long it will take for the tide to roll in. Yet we may be surprised. For we are not only to take courage and have inner calm in God amid the waves. In doing so, we become waves of transformation ourselves, and that makes such a difference. For courage and calm breeds a third gift, creativity, doesn’t it? As we have the courage from our inner calm to come out as queer Christians and allies, so we help God create new waves, new stories, new ways of being church and world.
‘those who have eyes to see’
Do you see that creativity at work around us, in us? I see it in every stirring of the Spirit in the midst of our sea of troubles: I see it in our truly amazing LGBTI+ elders who have forged the way and still encourage us; I see it in the people who, on every new day, come out courageously, calmly and creatively in different ways; I see it, wonderfully, in those fabulous gay and lesbian Anglicans in Sydney – in Sydney’s Anglican Church of all places, God be praised! - who have stood up so courageously, with such inner calm; I see it in the courage of the Brave Network in Melbourne and in the survivors of ‘conversion therapy’ who are now speaking out; I see it in the emergence of the Equal Voices national network and its growth every day; I see it in the extraordinary faith and gorgeous diversity of my transgender Christian siblings; and I see it in the MCC and other fully inclusive Christian communities, and, not least, I see it in you – this fabulous Rainbow Christian Alliance before me. That is what I see and give thanks for every day. That is a major part of what helps to give me courage and bring me calm –what about you?
We are the ones we are waiting for
Do you know that wisdom saying – ‘we are the ones we are waiting for’? That is the truth, isn’t it? Jesus said something very similar when he told us ‘the kingdom of God is among you (is within you)’. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the waves. We are the sea of faith. We are God’s transformation. So take courage, rest in God’s calm, and be creative! The tide is coming in, and she/he/it/they/we are unstoppable! – even if there are further huge struggles to come.
Our stories our strength
Let me summarise then. The key to our hope on the sea of faith is are those gifts of courage, calm and creativity – and not least our divine creativity. You see what the old Emperor, the old God of Christendom, and his cronies, fears most is our creativity, born of courage and God’s calm. He, and they, will argue until the cows come home about isolated bible texts, and about their mythic constructions, and about how terrible it is to suggest that the Emperor, and his God, has no clothes. If we worry about all of that, then we are lost, and we will sink, and maybe even drown. Like the Emperor with New Clothes however, what they fear is our naked truth and our naked God. They dread the telling of our stories and they will do all they can to silence us, and encourage even some of our supposed friends to keep us quiet. They are so scared of our experience, of what we see, and what we hear, and what we feel. They are so anxious about our naked, and to them, our indecent theology. For if others begin to see that the emperor, and his horrible old God, is naked, they too will hear and feel like us. They too will see and know and own the new story which the only true God is bringing into being.
Beyond shame– the power of Christ-like vulnerability
To conclude: what is hidden must be revealed. Our nakedness is our strength. Our supposed indecency is today’s renewing love and decency. Brené Brown tells it so well. If you were to put shame in a Petri dish, she says – and my God, we LGBTI+ people have known shame and had it inflicted on us, haven’t we?! – for shame to grow exponentially in a Petri dish, she says, it needs three things: secrecy, silence and judgement. Secrecy, silence and judgement - isn’t that especially what the Church has inflicted on LGBTI+ people?! If however, Brené says, the same amount of shame is put into a Petri dish and doused with empathy, it cannot survive. Forget the old myths. Tell our stories. Share our experiences. Explore our theology, our spiritual gifts. Make waves. For Brené Brown is right, isn’t she? - not least in saying that vulnerability is our greatest strength. We sadly over-associate vulnerability, she says, with emotions like fear, shame and uncertainty: emotions which, of course, the sex and gender storms on the sea of faith may also make us feel. Yet our naked vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity and love: in other words, our place of resurrection. So let us not be afraid of the storms but trust in the irresistible tide of God’s love. For after all, the deepest reality of all is that God, in Jesus, is not a king with old or new clothes, but a servant who is always naked. The power of Christ is always in the naked one, the crucified one, in whose vulnerability even unto death we are set free. Like the little child who draws attention to the nakedness of power, we also witness so wondrously to the nakedness of love. In Name of Jesus, our naked saviour. Amen.
Some questions for discussion
by Josephine Inkpin, for Rainbow Christian Alliance, Tuggeranong, ACT, 11 November 2018
Perhaps we might begin with Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. I guess most of us know the story. A king, in his arrogance, lack of knowledge and self-reflection, is fooled into paying for a set of clothes which actually consist of absolutely nothing. Yet, out of fear, false adulation and a desire to ingratiate themselves, almost everyone goes along with them. Expressions of admiration for the clothes pour in, no doubt including many learned theological treatises on their value and biblical grounding, as well as great prayers of thanksgiving. How wonderful it is that the king has such fabulous clothing and how vital it is to the whole world that all concur. Everyone it seems is happy. The new clothes bring order and harmony, and woe betide anyone who disagrees: even if - secretly, and in closeted groups - many doubt and act otherwise. Then, a little child pipes up, ‘but the emperor has no clothes’, they say, and the truth is out. Cue panic and pandemonium everywhere. For we may not hear about the storms from Hans Christian Andersen. Yet we can imagine they were very real. The little child, above all, would have had all kinds of pressure upon them to come back into line. Truth however, if inconvenient, cannot be hidden. Transformation must eventually, if painfully, ensue.
Nakedness and Myths
Now the metaphor is not exact, but I would suggest that today LGBTI+ people are somewhat like that little child who voices the inconvenient truth. For the reality about so-called ‘traditional’ ideas of sex and gender is that they are vanishing before our eyes. They simply do not stand up to the scrutiny of an honest, truthful gaze, informed as it should be today by decades of medical, psychological, scientific and other human studies, and, above all, by the evidence of our own experience. No wonder then that the right-wing kings of this world and their acolytes are so angry, and increasingly furious, with us. We LGBTI+ people and our allies are exposing their nakedness. In that way, like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, heterosexist and cisgender narratives are out-of-date myths, in the technical (linguistic and theological) sense. For a ‘myth’ is really just another word for a grand story which overarches or underpins a person, group or whole society. It is a big connecting story which helps give meaning and purpose, order and harmony. We all have such narratives. Throughout history there have been many of them, including what used to be called ‘the divine right of kings’, and ideas about Creation - the flatness of the Earth, the supposed circuit of the Sun around our planet, and so on. For years, even centuries, such grand stories helped give form and shape to people’s lives, until one day someone called the myth empty and more and more people agreed. That is what happened - wasn’t it? - when people started believing another ‘myth’, or ordering story, called ‘democracy’, or when we started trusting in ‘equal rights for women’ rather than other myths of ‘separate spheres’ and ‘complementarity’. It was not that the earlier grand narratives did not work in their own way in their own day. They had simply outlived their times and people had seen through them. Their God, in other words, had been shown to be naked.
Transforming the myths
This is at the heart of today’s great struggles over sexuality and gender. For some times LGBTI+ people say ‘why do they hate us so much?’ Maybe you have asked that question yourself? The reason is not simply personal failings. We will not help ourselves, and denigrate others unnecessarily, if we think that. The answer lies more deeply in the way LGBTI+ lives challenge powerful embedded understandings of the way Creation itself works: the myths, or connecting grand stories, which have provided some order to human lives. That is a major reason why religion has often been so particularly resistant to LGBTI+ inclusion and affirmation. It is not, as some secularist LGBTI+ people say, because religion in itself is irredeemably oppressive or evil. In the face of so much abuse and oppression, that is a very understandable, but ultimately mistaken, view. It is more that religion is fundamentally about seeking and nurturing meaning, not least through myths and symbols. Sometimes the ones it uses are liberating, at least for some, in some places, times and contexts. When however it becomes fixed on certain myths about existence and does not respond to change, it becomes the perpetrator of dangerous and destructive narratives. It confuses ideas of God’s order for the reality of God in God-self. Instead of being more or less useful life-bearing icons, they become death-dealing idols. Like denying the emptiness of the emperor’s clothes, too many people then cling to old empty myths in misplaced honour for God. God must not be shown to be naked. Yet, fortunately, there are ways out, and some them are religious – and have to be partly religious, or the old myths will continue to hold sway. For, hard though it is to hear for some secularists. we will not have full equality for LGBTI+ people until all aspects of our world, not least the religious, have been transformed. We must change law, and outward forms, but the spirit, and the inward aspects of human life, must also change – which brings me to Jesus and the ‘sea of Faith’…
Jesus and the Parabolic Path
For, religiously speaking, whilst Jesus is not against life-giving overarching stories, helpful ‘myths’, what he typically offers us in his teaching are parables – a different genre of stories which do not so much order our lives as ask questions of them and help transform them and all the ‘myths’ we hold, or are tempted to hold. Significantly too, so many of Jesus’ myth-transforming parables are drawn from nature. For nature, whilst it does exhibit order, is always changing in search of greater harmony and diversity of life. This is at the heart of the Gospel, not least the powerful metaphor and realities of the sea.
The Sea as a metaphor of Faith
Think about it: where does Jesus’ ministry begin and flourish and, after it has seemingly died, begin again? It is not in the human-made temple and its mythic order, is it? It is, above all, on and around the sea of Galilee. At the sea, according to the Synoptic Gospels, he calls the first disciples. By the sea, he teaches and heals, and, after his death, he appears again at the Resurrection. On the sea, he challenges and encourages his followers: at, by, and on, the sea. For the sea is so redolent of the nature of life and faith. It, and not least the sea of Galilee, is not fixed but unpredictable. It is not capable of simple mythical order. It is a parable of harmony which often emerges from waves of turmoil. It is an invitation to three special divine gifts of courage, calm, and creativity.
Rising waves
Courage, calm, and creativity: that is what we currently need, isn’t it? For, I don’t know about you, but living as a Christian today, not least an LGBTI+ Christian, is like living on an unpredictable changing sea. The old myths are passing. For though some cling desperately to them, the waves are rising. Those waves and the reactionary responses to them disturb and often threaten to overwhelm us. Isn’t that how it has felt for so many of us, not least over the last year or so: with the dreadful postal survey, the crest and falls of marriage developments, religious freedom debates, ’conversion therapy’ campaigns, so called ‘gender whispering’, backtracking on ‘safe schools’ work, school student and teacher controversies, and so much else?
A sea change of compassion
What we are experiencing today is a massive sea-change in understanding, and in the creation of new stories, new myths, about how to live together in this world. If we view it that way, we will find it much easier to find courage, calm and creativity – and also greater compassion for ourselves and for others, even perhaps those most bitterly opposed to us. For this sea-change is born out of the compassionate movement of God’s Spirit.
The Holy Spirit like a tide
How do you picture God’s Spirit? Recently, after a setback in advancing LGBTI+ people in my own Anglican diocese, many of my friends, especially straight allies, were quite despondent. I was disappointed too but slightly less crushed. After all, I thought, what’s new?! It seemed like some allies had only just begun to catch on to the size of the spiritual challenge we face and the depth of the opposition and their silencing, oppressing ways. Some also seemed to assume that progress happens in a straight line, when it is actually much more of a queer thing. It is like the tide coming in, isn’t it? It doesn’t come in all at once, or in neatly ordered stages. Instead, one wave will come in quite a way, maybe even reach high on the beach. However the next wave, and the next, may end far away: so far away, it may even seem that the tide is going out again. It is like that with the Holy Spirit in the sea of faith. When we have a big wave – like the wave, for example, which took us to marriage equality options in the Uniting Church, we must celebrate, but also be wary. The next wave may seem to betray us, and perhaps even the next, and the next. Yet the Holy Spirit is invincible. The tide has turned and is irresistible. Even when the waves seem unkind and the shore seems particularly far off, rejoice and take courage, for it is still coming in.
Flailing options – take Courage
Firstly, take courage then - the sea of faith is stirring for us. We are offered options in our churches to try to believe otherwise. Some for instance are like the famous King Canute who sat on a beach to display his supposed godly power by commanding the waves to retreat. Some, more aware of the power of the sea, try to build fortifications on the beach to keep it out. Yet, like sandcastles, they are doomed to failure. Others simply try to keep the rickety old ecclesiastical boats afloat, or take to lifeboats, or cling to driftwood, or flail about waving when they are really drowning. The truth is that we are called to take courage, and, like Jesus, to learn to walk upon the water: trusting in Jesus, so that, unlike Peter, we do not become overcome with fear and begin to sink. Be not afraid: is that not the constant biblical refrain whenever the waters are stirred, whenever liberation is offered, whenever the Spirit is at work?
At the ‘fighting us’ stage
Do you know those remarkably true but hard to hear words: ‘first they ignore us, then they ridicule us, then they fight us, and then? – then we win,’ That is what is happening for LGBTI+ people, isn’t it? First of all they ignored us, and then they ridiculed us, but now? – well they are definitely fighting us now: which is a very good sign, even though it is so uncomfortable. So don’t be downcast, or afraid. This is all part of the sea-change. God’s Spirit will overcome.
Calm – ‘in the eye of the storm, sing alleluia and keep on walking’
For, secondly, with the call to courage. God in Jesus also offers us calm in the midst of the sex and gender storms on the sea of faith. Do you remember that fabulous story where the disciples are out on the sea and a huge storm whips up: so that they are not only afraid but even begin to think they may be destroyed? Jesus, we are told, simply remains asleep in the boat until he is roused to bring profound calm. The story is a metaphor - isn’t it? - for the way in which, even in the greatest storms and tsunamis of our lives, we are to listen for the still small voice of God’s peace. As many commentators have pointed out, the disciples’ boat in that story is a symbol for the church itself. Sure it will be tossed about and tempested, but it will never be overcome, if it looks to Jesus. So much rocks our boats today, doesn’t it?! Therefore, can we find inner calm in God’s peace even in the turmoil? Can we, as St Augustine of Hippo encouraged us, even ‘in the eye of the storm, sing alleluia and keep on walking’?
The Cross and transformation – the way of Jesus
To do so – to take courage and rest in God’s calm – is to live more fully as Jesus lived. For just as Jesus taught us parables of transforming love, not myths of oppressive order, so he walked through the storm singing alleluia. Jesus did indeed bring peace, but this involved being transformed, and transforming the world. A great mentor of mine who was involved in some mighty struggles used to put it this way: ‘the cross comes’, he would say, ‘when you try to change things.’ It is tough being queer and a Christian, or bring a Christian standing with queer people. We will be tempested. Yet we will not be overcome. For beyond the cross there is always resurrection.
Becoming New Waves of Creativity
Thirdly, we need creativity. For we do not know how long our struggles in the church over LGBTI+ issues will last. Maybe some of us will never see some of what we long to see. Who knows how long it will take for the tide to roll in. Yet we may be surprised. For we are not only to take courage and have inner calm in God amid the waves. In doing so, we become waves of transformation ourselves, and that makes such a difference. For courage and calm breeds a third gift, creativity, doesn’t it? As we have the courage from our inner calm to come out as queer Christians and allies, so we help God create new waves, new stories, new ways of being church and world.
‘those who have eyes to see’
Do you see that creativity at work around us, in us? I see it in every stirring of the Spirit in the midst of our sea of troubles: I see it in our truly amazing LGBTI+ elders who have forged the way and still encourage us; I see it in the people who, on every new day, come out courageously, calmly and creatively in different ways; I see it, wonderfully, in those fabulous gay and lesbian Anglicans in Sydney – in Sydney’s Anglican Church of all places, God be praised! - who have stood up so courageously, with such inner calm; I see it in the courage of the Brave Network in Melbourne and in the survivors of ‘conversion therapy’ who are now speaking out; I see it in the emergence of the Equal Voices national network and its growth every day; I see it in the extraordinary faith and gorgeous diversity of my transgender Christian siblings; and I see it in the MCC and other fully inclusive Christian communities, and, not least, I see it in you – this fabulous Rainbow Christian Alliance before me. That is what I see and give thanks for every day. That is a major part of what helps to give me courage and bring me calm –what about you?
We are the ones we are waiting for
Do you know that wisdom saying – ‘we are the ones we are waiting for’? That is the truth, isn’t it? Jesus said something very similar when he told us ‘the kingdom of God is among you (is within you)’. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the waves. We are the sea of faith. We are God’s transformation. So take courage, rest in God’s calm, and be creative! The tide is coming in, and she/he/it/they/we are unstoppable! – even if there are further huge struggles to come.
Our stories our strength
Let me summarise then. The key to our hope on the sea of faith is are those gifts of courage, calm and creativity – and not least our divine creativity. You see what the old Emperor, the old God of Christendom, and his cronies, fears most is our creativity, born of courage and God’s calm. He, and they, will argue until the cows come home about isolated bible texts, and about their mythic constructions, and about how terrible it is to suggest that the Emperor, and his God, has no clothes. If we worry about all of that, then we are lost, and we will sink, and maybe even drown. Like the Emperor with New Clothes however, what they fear is our naked truth and our naked God. They dread the telling of our stories and they will do all they can to silence us, and encourage even some of our supposed friends to keep us quiet. They are so scared of our experience, of what we see, and what we hear, and what we feel. They are so anxious about our naked, and to them, our indecent theology. For if others begin to see that the emperor, and his horrible old God, is naked, they too will hear and feel like us. They too will see and know and own the new story which the only true God is bringing into being.
Beyond shame– the power of Christ-like vulnerability
To conclude: what is hidden must be revealed. Our nakedness is our strength. Our supposed indecency is today’s renewing love and decency. Brené Brown tells it so well. If you were to put shame in a Petri dish, she says – and my God, we LGBTI+ people have known shame and had it inflicted on us, haven’t we?! – for shame to grow exponentially in a Petri dish, she says, it needs three things: secrecy, silence and judgement. Secrecy, silence and judgement - isn’t that especially what the Church has inflicted on LGBTI+ people?! If however, Brené says, the same amount of shame is put into a Petri dish and doused with empathy, it cannot survive. Forget the old myths. Tell our stories. Share our experiences. Explore our theology, our spiritual gifts. Make waves. For Brené Brown is right, isn’t she? - not least in saying that vulnerability is our greatest strength. We sadly over-associate vulnerability, she says, with emotions like fear, shame and uncertainty: emotions which, of course, the sex and gender storms on the sea of faith may also make us feel. Yet our naked vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity and love: in other words, our place of resurrection. So let us not be afraid of the storms but trust in the irresistible tide of God’s love. For after all, the deepest reality of all is that God, in Jesus, is not a king with old or new clothes, but a servant who is always naked. The power of Christ is always in the naked one, the crucified one, in whose vulnerability even unto death we are set free. Like the little child who draws attention to the nakedness of power, we also witness so wondrously to the nakedness of love. In Name of Jesus, our naked saviour. Amen.
Some questions for discussion
- How are we each personally negotiating the storms of sex and gender,
and where do we experience God in the midst of this? - What stories of faith are speaking to us afresh and what stories do we have to tell?
- What will be our next steps in nurturing courage, calm and creativity among us?
by Josephine Inkpin, for Rainbow Christian Alliance, Tuggeranong, ACT, 11 November 2018
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