#queer stake

Jesus’ resurrection can be read as a coming out story. Jesus came out into a changed body and new way of life. The resurrection was a transgressive move from death to life, defying expectations and norms, it is full of the hope of possibility. Christ went beyond the boundaries of the binary categories of life or death.

Likewise, queer people come out into a new identity and can never go back to what it was before. Thanks to queer people, the binary categories of gender and gender roles are expanded.

Death that tells us we are limited. Death that tells us that we have to conform. The resurrection tells us there are options. The resurrection tells us there can be life by defying expectations.

Jesus' resurrected body was scarred, it had the wounds that were part of his transition from life to death and back again. Those who pursue medical and surgical transition are sometimes told they are mutilating their bodies, but no, it is part of the process of transitioning. Physical bodies are important, they show our journey. We're all wounded and that doesn't affect the heavenly perspective of perfection.

Others may look back and see the empty tomb that contains your deadname & the misgendered identity of how they saw you, but they’ll also see your life reborn as you move forward in your new identity.

Many queer people constructed a persona to survive and fit into a world that only accepted being cisgender and heterosexual. We buried our true selves under layers of performance and denial. That identity has die in order for our queer selves to come forward and bring us into authentic life. There is no freedom like walking out of the tomb of shame into the light of authenticity and pride. Friends and family may mourn the version of us they thought they knew, but what’s really dying is the mask. What’s being coming forward into new, truer and committed versions of ourselves and a new way of living. In order to live fully, the false self must die.

Speaking of the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene was witness to the resurrected Christ, and she wasn't believed. It took the apostles having their own experience for them to believe. Likewise, not everyone will believe the truth of our lived experience as we witness and testify of our queerness since they don't have that experience, but it doesn't make our truth any less true.

The LGBTQ journey is sacred. It is a journey of trials, transformation, and return. It’s a path only a small percentage of people walk. It's a journey into self, into courage, into joy. When we make that journey, we find peace, resolution, pride, and a deeply rich life. It is a path we didn’t choose, but that life is gifted to us.

And what it means for us personal like do some of us see it as a day off, are we happy to get out of a week of Sunday school seminary etc

Look twice, you’re a sinner

But look once at a man

And we’ll vomit our innards

-

I looked at a man

Only his mother had seen

And felt with my hands

Where hers had not been

-

Look again and find brimstone

Turn away to find fault

I looked at his hip bones

Dear Lord, how long will you suffer your queer children to cry out to you for succor? How long will you allow your ignorant straight children to exclude us? How long until we can be free? How long until you explain that their hatred towards us is antithetical to Christ's gospel and that they've been wrong and need to repent for their treatment of us? For driving so many of us to suicide? For failing to mourn with us and failing to comfort us when we wept before them as they had covenanted?

Why do you spare the feelings of your straight children who "would be shaken to hear about a change in doctrine" while your queer children grapple with knowing the truth before our octogenarian leaders are willing to look past their human frailties, their prejudices and biases, and ask with real intent for the truth?

Will it be like your black children that were excluded by Brigham Young's racism and the racism and cowardice and human frailty of every other prophet and apostle who did not rectify it for over a century? How many of your children were excluded and derided for being who you made them to be? For pushing against church authority and doctrine for racial equality and knowing the truth long before 1978, a scant 40 years ago? How many of us must suffer the same fate today? How long must we suffer at the hands of your ordained servants, as did so many of your black children for so long, for simply being as you made us?

How long must we suffer exclusion from church blessings? How long must we suffer the epithet "apostate" from those who have never understood the gospel, who for their entire lives have spurned the stranger, the sick, the afflicted, the poor, and the marginalized with violent political rhetoric and self-righteousness? Who draw near unto you with their lips on Sunday yet their actions and politics deny you every other day? Who preach "Love one another" from the pulpit and then preach Fox News from their hearts and hate anyone who is different and has lived different lives, loved different loves?