#queer lent

Saturday, 2/21 — Matthew 18:1-7

[Jesus] called a little child over to sit among the disciples, and said, “I assure you that if you don’t turn your lives around and become like this little child, you will definitely not enter the kingdom of heaven. …Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” - vv. 2, 5 

When you are disabled, neurodivergent and/or chronically ill, you constantly feel that your needs are an imposition. You learn not to ask for “special” accommodations. That is what the world teaches you. 

What Jesus teaches us is the exact opposite: The most vulnerable ones are the standard. The ways of the Kingdom are built to serve them. Because the simple logical truth is: when their needs are met, everyone’s needs are met.  

“When Black lives matter, all lives will matter.”  When a place is accessible, everyone profits.  We won’t be free until we are all free. 

Growing up, especially when you are a part of a marginalized group, you internalize bit by bit that your most essential needs will never be the standard. Jesus is very clear that this is a sin committed against you. It is hard work “turning your life around” and unlearning those things. It can help to remind yourself that by demanding your own rights, you are actually helping everyone.

- Laura Sommer

Saturday, 4/4 — Matthew 27:57-66

So Joseph took Jesus’ body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. - vv. 59-60

There was a tomb ready to go to receive Jesus’ body — one Joseph of Arimathea had hewn for himself, intending it for Joseph’s own eventual burial. But Joseph still lives, and Jesus (at this point) does not.

Deconstructing Christians who leave the death cult they were raised in can and do meet the living God they hope exists when they do as Joseph did: lovingly placing the lifeless body of the [version of] Christ they met in church into the tomb intended for their own demise. Because Joseph lives, there is room for Jesus to be dead, and because He dies Joseph lives.

So it is with you. The Body of Christ you had known has to not just die to you, but be buried by you, in the tomb you yourself laboriously carved out, expecting to make your home there. Seal that place and walk away from it.  Look elsewhere for Him.

Saturday, 3/21 — Psalm 130

If you kept track of sins, Lord—     my Lord, who would stand a chance? - v. 3

Tuesday, 2/24 — Psalm 32

While I kept silent, my body wasted away     through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;     my strength was dried up, as by the heat of summer. You are a hiding place for me;     you preserve me from trouble;     you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. - vv. 3-4, 7

When I kept who I really was inside of me, hidden away, I carried a heaviness that felt relentless. The nudging of God saying “It’s not only okay but beautiful to be yourself,” sometimes felt both impossible to name and impossible to keep silent. I ran out of strength and felt dried up. 

I had been hidden from the world so long that when I finally decided to come out and be open to the world, sometimes I felt tremendously exposed. In my un-hiddenness I was able to hide in the Almighty — to be sheltered in the shadow of safe wings — to find respite from hateful speech. God sent me hiding places in many ways — my chosen family mostly — who loved me unconditionally and helped keep me safe.

Now I try to keep myself attuned to the moving of the Spirit so that I might be, often unknowingly, a hiding place for those who need it.

Wednesday, 3/25 — Luke 1:36-38

“And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”  Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. 

Mary’s response to Gabriel’s announcement is NOT the famed magnificat where she praises God for what is about to happen through Jesus.  Instead, she says the ancient equivalent of, “I hope you turn out to be right.”  Next she seeks a second, human opinion on this claim — corroboration from someone she trusts that this impossibility is maybe actually happening.  

Gabriel says Elizabeth is also expecting?  If so, she should be showing by now, and Mary should be able to see for herself whether any of the angel’s message is true.  She feels entitled to that verification.  So if you, in your mundane nobody existence have trouble believing in the power of the Divine, have trouble trusting in the character of the Divine, you are not alone!  So did the literal mother of God.  Doubt is your birthright, and the hope you hold onto until that transforms into belief is Mary’s gift.

Friday, 2/27 — Micah 7:18-20

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity     and passing over the transgression     of the remnant of Their possession? … You will cast all our sins     into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob     and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors     from the days of old.

This passage from Micah ends not with denial, but with trust forged in long, ancestral memory. Who is a God like this: one who does not cling to anger, who delights in mercy? 

The prophet speaks to a people who know failure and fracture, and still dares to believe in faithfulness that outlasts it all.

This is a commitment to restoration. What has weighed us down is not ignored, but carried, then released into depths where it no longer defines us.

In Lent, we practice remembering this kind of mercy. We journey honestly, without despair, trusting that God’s steadfast love is patient enough to meet us again, and again, and again.

Sunday, 3/15 — John 9:

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man who was blind from birth. Jesus’ disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned.” - vv. 1-3a

John 9 tells the story of “the man born blind,” whose social role is to serve as an object lesson about the supposed consequences of sin. But Jesus breaks him free of this role by declaring, “Nobody sinned!”

And I imagine that that Truth spoken aloud — someone finally recognizing that he’s a human being, not sin embodied — brings more healing to this man than the subsequent receiving of sight.

After all, his sudden sighted state subjects him not to newfound welcome, but further suspicion from his society. “Surely” this transformation, conducted on the Sabbath, is the result of sin just like his blindness supposedly was.

But as religious leaders continue to debate his existence while mostly ignoring his testimony about his own lived experience, this man continues to assert his humanity. They can suspect him, judge him, even exile him, but the Truth has set him free: His existence is not and never was a sin.

Friday, 3/6 — Ephesians 2:11-22

For [Jesus] himself…has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. … Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of God’s household. … And in [Jesus] you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by Their Spirit. - vv. 14-22

Blessed are you, binary-breaking God, Jesus Christ! you who are both fully human and fully divine; you who demolish divisions to make the many one — both fully united and fully ourselves, in you!

Ignite in us a brand new way of looking at the world — a Kin-dom lens — so that we might break down the walls between “us” and “them,” upend the boxes that confine and constrict.

When we join the struggle to ensure that no human is treated as unworthy, untouchable, or illegal, then we become co-builders of this divine dwelling that is us — not us individually, but all of us together, founded on your Spirit of justice and love. Thanks be to God.