Gay people need to get over their fear of St. Paul. You know, he was not homophobic, that is a stance that has been put on him (schol.: attributed to) by the right wing. Look at this lesson from the letter to the Romans, but first look at the whole of the letter to the Romans, in which his circular argument is that a) some people are homosexual; b) it scares us because we are uninformed; and c) sexuality is irrelevant, the true law is Christ’s law of loving one another.
So let’s look at this Romans 8:26-39.
“The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray … but the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
Sighs, too deep for words. How many times have you had sighs too deep for words? Many times, of course; we all have. This is how we know that we are part of God; our God has sighs too deep for words, they are the wings of the prayers of our souls borne to heaven by the Spirit. On the other hand, God hears also those sighs of ours that are too deep for words. It means it is okay, words are not necessary. God hears. God knows.
“God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit.” Well, what more explanation do you need? God searches your heart. God knows how to match what is in your heart, with what is in the mind of the Spirit. Does that seem fantastical to you? Try to think of it in concrete terms. God, who is the energy and spirit of everything, knows exactly where you plug into the everything, just like a circuit map knows where every synapse in a network lies. And, God, who is the Spirit of everything, knows how what is in your heart is the flow along the circuit of the Spirit.
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul does not answer this question with a list of “whoms” but rather with a series of rhetorical questions. His conclusion is that “no, in all these things we are more than conquerors.”
And here is the entire sum of the Gospel of Paul, the founder of Christianity, the interpreter of the mind of God who became Man so that we might understand the mind of God:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. “
So, what does that mean? It means that you and me, gay and lesbian people, need to stop keeping ourselves from the love of God. It means that nothing on earth can separate you from the love of God in Christ. Nothing. Nothing, but, of course, us. It is only we ourselves who can prevent us from knowing the love God stretches out for us.
In Matthew’s Gospel this week we have the famous parable of the mustard seed. It is like last week’s parables, in that on the surface the reader easily thinks that the meaning is about good and evil. But I want you to think back on what I said last week. The meaning is, that everything is all mixed up. Look at it. A tiny seed, planted in a huge field, still grows into a tree. A tiny yeast, mixed in with a huge measure of flour, still makes bread. A treasure buried in a field still comes to fruition. A single pearl is enough. A net thrown into the sea captures a huge mess, but the good fish are there too. The key is that the good lways overcomes even the mess that surrounds it.
Of course, we are this tiny treasure. We are a few gay and lesbian people in a vast see of over-confident people who think that they are “normal.” My heart sank to see Saturday’s column from “Dear Abby” featuring a letter from a man who in his teens was beaten by his father for being gay, who married and pretended to be straight for 25 years until his wife died. And now in his fifties he wonders whether gay people will accept him? But of course, the question is, can he accept himself? And what of the sexless marriage his deceased wife had to endure for 25 years? Talk about burying your treasure.
God wants you to bring out your treasure, your gayness, your lesbianness, your natural nurturing love. God wants you to bring that out into the open and use it to nurture all of the mustard seeds of the world.
*Proper 12 (Genesis 29: 15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 