#queer god

Tuesday, 3/31 — 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

By ordinary human standards not many [who have joined the church] are wise, not many are powerful, not many are from the upper class. But God chose what the world considers foolish to shame the wise. God chose what the world considers weak to shame the strong. And God chose what the world considers low-class and low-life — what is considered to be nothing — to reduce what is considered to be something to nothing. - vv. 26-28

I am again struck by the queerness woven into the Church’s very foundations. 

To queer as a verb is to constantly question and subvert The Way Things Are — in other words, to declare the world’s wisdom, its status quo, foolishness, uplifting instead what the world considers foolish, weak, “low-life”!

(id in alt text)

The rising flood of anti-trans messaging, legislation, and violence has me floundering in grief, rage, fear, hopelessness…but still, still I thank God for making me trans.

I thank God for the unique insights, particular ways to participate in my own creation, and beautiful community that my transness opens me up to.

I thank God for the incredible diversity of those She made in Her image — how only all together does humanity come close to mirroring the infinite vastness of the Divine.

I thank God for all who join in solidarity with the trans community.

We are not alone.

We cannot be legislated out of existence.

She first learned the taste of smoke in the foster home, along with the sounds of love and pain that money could buy. The mothers used to put her in the corner to play while they shared a cone of bittersweet herbs at the window. Then, down in the streets, she learned the shouts and the taste of candy – her nails grew sharp but the sweetness never left her tongue.

Then came school. It wasn’t easy at first, children were curious, but they weren’t curious like her. They prodded and poked and giggled when things were in place they thought they weren’t supposed to be. She learned the difference between the him and the her in that school, learned what the walls had never hidden at the house. The mothers didn’t care, after all, bodies were bodies – only the touching changed.

He put the her on the side during a cold winter night, and put a him in her place.

The next summer, kids played in the park at sunset with sweat gleaming down their backs and dampening their hair. They were bright and wild and so vivid, he followed them everywhere they went, drank every breath of life and youth on the edge of their laughter. One night, they poured beverages like amber in a can for him when it was dark and warm and humid, and he learned to like the taste of it too.

At the house, the mothers drank from fine glasses of red, and they said why not share with him after all? Isn’’t he old enough?

Youth didn’t linger in these places, but neither did innocence.

The first kiss he received, he cherished it like a treasure, like the sweetness of the candy and the heady taste of the ambers. The boy was shy and in love, later the girls were the same, just like the other boys were. He wondered where he fit between them, though, their shapes were clear and beautiful even though they weren’t finished just yet but he – he wasn’t like them.

His edges were blurry, her mouth was too thin, their face didn’t match, their hair was too long, too short too red or blue or black or golden. Her waist was too small, too wide, too thick, too skinny, but his legs were too long, too strong, or not enough. When it wasn’t his body it was his mind – why don’t you like dresses? why do you wear make-up? why don’t you close your legs? why do you paint your nails? – it didn’t have an end, and he wondered, and she suffered, and then they gave up.

Now Dionysus is everything and nothing at once, she laughs and he dances and they kiss the lips of those worthy of their love through the taste of smoke and the sweetness of alcohol on both hair and skin.

At night, when the party is loud and wild, children ask why, and he smiles. They ask again – they’re young, small, never cease to be children with starlight in their eyes and wonder at the edge of their lips. They ask and he laughs because it’s not about the wine, not about the fizz, not about the warmth, not about the feeling, not about the freedom – he doesn’t care, and that’s why.

Careless he is, careless she lives, and carless they drink to commune with the stars. Careless seems like a word for fools, for children, for idiots, but she isn’t a fool, he isn’t a child, they aren’t stupid – they’re careless, they’re alive.

By Amy Cerniglia, set to the tune of "Be Thou My Vision"

God of many faces, we offer our praise, singing your glory through all of our days, Hear ever-growing voices, once fragile, now strong carrying melodies in expansive new songs. God of many genders, our world reflects you, sunrise and sunset uniting our hues woven into a city with jewels of all shades, houses of ruby and walls rowed with jade.

God of many names, we invite you to show us the new names that reflect our true souls. Breathe your Holy Spirit to give us the Word that will in-dwell dry bones, granting new life once heard.

During an era infamous for its severe measures against any hint of unorthodoxy, one 16th-century nun managed not only to write about but actually preach sermons on how God — and human beings, as made in the Divine image — both encapsulates and transcends gender.

Madre Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534; note, this is a different figure than the probably more famous & also queer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz) believed that every person contains both feminine and masculine attributes within themselves; that God the Father and God the Son are pregnant with one another; that Christ comes to us in many forms, be it husband or wife, father or mother, brother or friend; and so much more than I can fit in this post.

I’ll include sources for further reading at the end, but for now, let’s start with Juana’s personal experience of gender.

A PRENATAL TRANSITION

According to her own testimony, Madre Juana experienced a transition in the womb: “God was already forming a male child when the Virgin Mary intervened. Needing a woman who would eventually reform a convent dedicated to her, the Virgin persuaded God to mould the embryonic Juana into a female instead” (Elphick, p. 94).

Surely enough, Juana was assigned female at birth — however, as an adult she had a prominent Adam’s apple and was able to pitch her voice very deep. She would point to her throat as a sign of the miracle of her pre-birth transition.

Many scholars find a parallel here to transgender experience; I believe this story may also resonate with intersex persons, who often naturally develop secondary sexual characteristics that society does not assign to the same binary category as the sex they were assigned at birth.

I can imagine a teenage Juana, upon developing an Adam’s apple and finding her voice lowering in a way her world considered masculine, musing on why such a change was happening to her — and envisioning that prenatal transition to conclude that God simply made her that way. She came to understand her Adam’s apple not as monstrous, but miraculous!

Both trans and intersex persons can be uplifted by Juana’s affirmation that existing outside of binary sex & gender expectations is holy. As Kevin Elphick puts it in his 2021 article “Juana de la Cruz: Gender-Transcendent Prophetess”:

“Mother Juana de la Cruz (d. 1534) offers a medieval model for modern LGBTQ people, exemplifying radical authenticity to the queer and holy truth of her own identity. Juana’s gender combined masculinity and femininity, and she proclaimed the presence of God she found inherent in that identity. Her sermons invited her listeners, too, to discover God in their own experiences of gender” (Elphick, p. 87).

[ID: an icon of Madre Juana by Lewis Williams. Juana wears the brown robes, knotted belt, and habit of a Franciscan, with a halo behind her head. She holds a brown hen in the crook of one arm, which symbolizes St. Francis; with her other hand she points towards her throat. / end id]

FURTHER TRANSITIONS

Her prenatal transition is not the only time Juana experienced gender fluidly: her call story also involves shifting between genders. One day as she prayed before a picture of St. Veronica, Juana witnessed Veronica’s face miraculously shift into that of Jesus. Jesus proposed marriage to her, and then returned “to the former likenesse” of Veronica, reverting “back to a woman’s guise” (Elphick, p. 95).

continued under the readmore...

Trans Jesus: gender nonconforming Mother Hen; self-identified eunuch; God beyond gender assigned male at birth, who longed to be truly known by those they loved.

I was honored to be invited onto Kings and Queens, a podcast hosted by Joseph & Nicole Peterson, to talk about Jesus through a trans lens! The full episode is over on their podcast and includes more of my own personal story as well. 

“To try to define the Divine in human words is a fool’s errand – but luckily for us, God delights in making the foolish wise...”

I wrote and recorded this Affirmation of Faith in a Queer God, with its joyful affirmation of God’s queerness -- from God’s soft spot for outcasts to Jesus’ gender nonconformity -- for my church’s upcoming More Light Sunday service.

More Light Sunday is celebrated by many PC(USA) churches every October on the Sunday nearest to National Coming Out Day, as a chance to celebrate LGBTQA+ persons and lift up how important their full participation in the life of our faith communities is. 

I figured I’d share this piece here for two reasons:

First, to invite you to come worship with us this Sunday! 

This service celebrating the LGBTQA+ community is at 11am CST on October 11, on Facebook live. 

Several really cool people -- Rev. Erin Swenson (who was the first openly trans pastor in the USA), Michael Adee (former executive director for More Light Presbyterians), and Trice Gibbons (on the More Light board for many years) -- will be sharing their reflections in place of a sermon. I’m pumped! 

And yeah, my affirmation will be shared :)

There will also be communion, for any who wish to partake -- our congregation does not gatekeep God’s table. 

Second, I wanted to let y’all know about my new website, Binary-Breaking Liturgy!! 

Its purpose is to share worship materials that use inclusive language for people & expansive language for God. 

(Basically, it’s where I’m compiling all the liturgy I’ve written over the years)

I’m gonna start posting some of my poems there too, and all my sermons, just so all that will be finally in one place

Incomprehensible God! The ones we call “unwanted” you call Beloved. The ones we call “broken” you call whole and holy.

Impossible to think you look upon our frail flesh and even frailer hearts overgrown with greed and desperation and fall in love with our potential! Deepest desire of our hearts! Come! Lift our burdens from our shoulders and take us in your arms as your Beloved.