#lpts

Wednesday’s student-sponsored worship service showcased the diversity, the commitment, the love for God and community that characterizes the best parts of Louisville Seminary. I had already known logically what a monumental thing it is to be ushering in our first Black president – our first president who is anything but a white man! – but this service made me really feel that fact. The joy and energy that radiated from the choir quite literally moved me; it was impossible to keep still as they sang their hearts out. (And to inspire members of the “frozen chosen” to sway and call out is no easy feat!)

I was happy to be part of this year's LPTS More Light (LGBT+) chapel service -- here's the reflection I gave on Mark 8:27-36! Our overall theme was letting go of the world’s views and embracing God’s views.

The sound quality of this video is horrendous -- not through any fault of the one who recorded it but because 1) my phone is old and 2) a horrific buzz always pervades the chapel and I tried to dampen it at the expense of further sound quality.

There is a special look of revulsion that people save for particularly unsavory, offensive things: the slug stepped on with a bare foot, the man convicted of astoundingly brutal crimes, the person who dares to be queer in public.

I have heard the same story, too many times, from too many transgender friends – whether it happens in a public bathroom, in the street, in church, at work

the look is the same: disgust.

Revolting, that’s what we are. We are breaking the rules, are flaunting…something, I’m not sure what, in public, and that makes us disgusting. Less than human.

I wonder if Jesus ever got that kind of look.

Probably not for the gender thing. Choosing to squeeze Their divinity into a human body, Jesus was assigned male at birth, and probably that was never questioned by anyone. He likely started growing facial hair in his teens. Probably wore “men’s” clothing.

But at the same time, he did break many rules of gender in his society – men were supposed to settle down, take a woman, have children who could pass on their name. As far as we know, Jesus did none of that – instead he left his human father’s profession behind and traipsed around the region saying dangerous things with twelve other men and a faithful train of women who were not related to him. Disgusting!

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks his closest friends here in Mark, and so we discover that he was talked about, that people debated his identity, about who or what he was – probably without bothering to ask him about it.

and then, “…Who do you say that I am?” he asks those same friends. I’ve been in similar conversations. I know the whispers, and I know that vulnerability, that flicker of anxiety when you dare to ask people whose opinion matters intensely to you how they see you. Will they get it right? Do they really know you?

Peter responds, “the Messiah.” And we think that’s good, right? That he got it right….right?

Maybe he got the title right. But based on his reaction to Jesus’s next statement, he clearly had no real idea what being the Messiah meant to Jesus.

Jesus foretells suffering and death, so Peter takes Jesus aside and tries to set him straight. “This is what Messiah means, Jesus. So what you think is part of your future, your identity, can’t be right.” In a way, he’s saying, “I know you better than you know you.”

With priests, with friends, with people who claimed to know something of biology, I’ve had  similar talks about my identity – “What you think about your gender can’t be right. I know how gender works, what God or science has planned for your gender, and it’s not what you think. I know you better than you know you.”

Jesus’s response to Peter’s lack of understanding is to gather a crowd and explain what it means to follow him: We must deny ourselves. We must take up our cross.

But he doesn’t explain just what that means, to deny ourselves, to take up a cross. I know what the world has told me it means – what they say it means for LGBT people in particular.

The world tells me these things — my gender, my love— are just my cross to bear – and to bury, that I need to suffer because somehow these things are sins, that’s right – my love, love! the pair of wings God fixed on my shoulders to help me fly to Them is actually a heavy weight, a sin, a sickness –

but God knows I have seen far too many of my people nail themselves to that cross, bleed out as you watched

to think for a moment that God is the one who placed that cross on our shoulders.

That’s not how crosses work! The Cross of Jesus, the one he urges us to take up, was fashioned by worldly hands, not Christ’s.

After all, his yoke is easy, his burden light.

The cross is a consequence of following Jesus, yes, but not something delighted in by him— to follow Jesus means to deny ourselves a certain safety, the easy life lived when we go along with the status quo, when we don’t challenge authority as Jesus did. When we take up our cross and become visible signs against oppression the world stops tolerating our existence. When we dare to follow Jesus – it’s the world that throws the cross over our backs.

God does not bid us suffer for suffering’s sake the way humans do when they tell us to stuff ourselves into boxes we were never made to fit, to bury our way of loving and relating to other people and bear a cross of shame and fear of hell on our shoulders every day, every minute, of our lives.

When we do this, when we accept what they say about our sexuality, our gender, it’s not ourselves we’re denying – it’s God’s call, God’s vision of us.

I can attest to this as one who tried it – who tried to carry my queerness like a burden and resisted when the Spirit tugged it from my shoulders and unrolled it at my feet to behold the beautiful vision, the gift, that it is.

I can attest to this as one who finally denied myself by redefining myself, not in the paradigm of the world with its rigid binaries and its distrust of difference but according to the call of the Spirit, the Spirit of abundant life, of overflowing love, of broken-down boundaries, of diversity!

When I followed that call, I did take up the cross— rejection followed just as it followed Christ, and grief at the pains of my siblings struggling beside me. I did take up the cross – not for suffering’s sake, and not for my own sake, but to share its load with every person this world tries to crucify.

…In Jesus, divinity kissed humanness and the two became one, and while I don’t claim my story is anything like that, like God’s,

I will declare that there is something queer in the identity of Jesus,

something that resonates in a unique way with queer people, with transgender people especially, and with all who are shoved to the margins by this world, whose God-given identities are crushed and not allowed to flower.

…So, will you take up this cross with me? It is not easy to stand up to the world in this way. You will die to the world in one way or another. But friends, truly, as Jesus says, what does it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?

I'm applying for Seminary (LPTS and also BSK) and am going to start on my essays this weekend. The essays feel overwhelming to me. I'm Autistic and disabled and I feel like they want this big faith journey with lots of signs from God or something when for me it was more like: raised Evangelical, left the church, stayed out of church for 10 years, met someone who introduced me to Queer Theology and everything clicked and Christianity very much became my Special Interest and now *of course* I want to help other people see that what we were taught isn't right and *of course* I want to help people put their faith into action towards justice. I don't know if I've ever "heard a calling" because I don't even know if I "hear God" but I do know that it's been 3 years of me thinking "I really want to go to seminary and learn everything I can and help other people on their paths" so is that enough? Does this make sense? Am I overthinking things?

Hey there, I'm excited to hear a fellow trans Autistic person is applying to seminary :D

I can't speak to BSK, but for LPTS at the very least, you're totally on the right track. They don't require that you have your Exact Vocation figured out; or that you have a "classic" call story (you don't actually even have to be Christian at all, at least not to attend LPTS).

What they're looking for in your essays is largely

Does it seem like you fit the requirements for masters-level work? (and even then, the school has lots of assistance available like a writing center and tutors); and

Do you seem serious about getting this degree and committed to some of the core values held by LPTS, like doing justice and learning from and alongside a diverse community of people centered on Christian tradition?

In my application, I definitely didn't have any big "come to Jesus" moments. (In the Catholic & Presbyterian traditions from which I hail, we don't do the "What's the Exact Moment you Accepted Jesus Into Your Heart?" thing.) No direct voices from God. I just talked about how I've always had a passion for scripture, how coming into my queerness transformed my faith; the work I'd done with the little church I'd joined; what I was hoping to find in a seminary community. I think I noted that I wasn't positive whether I was going to be a pastor or what, too.

So anyway, everything you're saying seems perfect. That seminary is something you've been thinking about for several years demonstrates that you're serious about it. And your general goal of helping others on their paths totally fits with what you can expect to get out of a seminary education.

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One of my favorite things about my time at LPTS was that I was with people at very different points in their faith and life journeys, with different perspectives on Christian tradition and ideas of what they hoped to do next. Some were fresh out of college like me; for others, this was a second career. Some had a firm grasp on what they were working towards — being a pastor, chaplain, counselor, professor — and others were figuring it out on the way.

And when it comes to your personal beliefs, there's a classic joke that for many people, attending seminary completely upends your faith — and then rebuilds it. So your starting point isn't as important as your willingness to be challenged and changed.

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All of that to say, I think there's a very good chance you'll get in! If you'd like any assistance as you go, I'm happy to read over your essays or answer any further questions. You can DM me if you're comfortable with not being on anon.