“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ended this week. It was always a dreadful policy, dreamed up by some policy wonk someplace who figured compromise with human rights was a step forward, forgetting altogether that to compromise any human’s rights is to deny them the respect God demands for them. Well, that said, the policy has ended, but of course, discrimination has not. Serving openly won’t end the discrimination; there will still be snickering and lost promotions and low priority for housing and on and on. But at least the government no longer officially sanctions discrimination in this regard.
It is a useful lesson to hold up next to that story from Exodus, about the angry exiles wandering in the desert cursing Moses and demanding tests of God. Libertation doesn’t just happen, exodus doesn’t just happen, equality for lgbt people isn’t going to just happen. Rather, it takes a million steps, like Confucius’ famous journey, some forward, some sideways, a few back. Like most journeys there is plentiful time to pause for reflection. I think of all of the ways in which equality has come to be—marriage for instance where it is available. I remember marveling at my own wedding that it was even possible. This week I’ve spent in Amsterdam I’ve noticed a remarkable number of gay couples who’ve just been married. Marriage has been available in the Netherlands for more than a decade, but something has shifted in the consciousness of gay people such that young couples now grow up and fall in love with the expectation that marriage is a real possibility. That is the blossoming of equality in the hearts and souls of gay people. This is the outpouring of God’s grace, like the waters at Massah and Meribah, through the lives of lgbt people living into the fulfillment of God’s call to them.
I suppose that makes me like those angry exiles yelling at Moses. (More likely, I’d have been standing behind them shaking my head.) But it has happened several times this week that a couple has walked into a room and been applauded waving their rings and grinning ear to ear. Part of the beauty of it is being able to witness the shift in the community attitude. And that is a lot like what happened at Meribah too. Look at that psalm, written generations later, recounting the flowing of water as a praiseworthy deed and a wonderful work, the ire of the moment completely past in the fulfillment of the reality of the presence of God in everyday life.
And God is in the reality of everyday life, even when we grumble, maybe especially when we grumble and moan and then do the right thing. Like the first son in Jesus’ parable, who says he will not work but goes anyway, most of us push through life in a kind of reverse swim, instead of sweeping water behind we fend off whatever comes at us. And then in a moment of intense clarity we see that we need not struggle so much, because God is with us in every thing.
God is with us in the struggle for lgbt equality. We know this because we see the fruits of God’s mercy in our lives. We know this because we know God created us in God’s own image. We know this because we see God’s love in each other’s eyes.
Proper 21 (Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 Attendite, popule; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32)
©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 