Texts: Genesis 1:31, Luke 9:28-36

Speaker: Bethany Davey

“God saw everything [God] had made: it was supremely good. There was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.” Genesis 1:31, Common English Bible (CEB)

“About eight days after Jesus said these things, he took Peter, John and James, and went up on a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes flashed white like lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, were talking with him. They were clothed with heavenly splendor and spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he would achieve in Jerusalem. Peter and those with him were almost overcome by sleep, but they managed to stay awake and saw his glory as well as the two men with him.

As the two men were about to leave Jesus, Peter said to him, ‘Master, it’s good that we’re here. We should construct three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ –but he didn’t know what he was saying. Peter was still speaking when a cloud overshadowed them. As they entered the cloud, they were overcome with awe.

Then a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!’ Even as the voice spoke, Jesus was found alone. They were speechless and at the time told no one what they had seen.” Luke 9:28-36, CEB

Happy Pride Sunday! What an honor to preach today, and what joy it brings me that our CMC community honors June’s Pride season each year. Across Columbus, Pride flags wave in the breeze, businesses rainbow-fy their windows and community events abound. Many of us will join in the Pride Freedom March and celebrations this coming Saturday, June 20th.

This year, Stonewall Columbus chose the Pride theme, “Until We’re All Free,” which begs the question: who is the “we” longing for freedom?

“We” certainly refers to LGTBQ+ individuals and communities. This particular cultural, political moment inflicts upon our LGBTQ+ selves and siblings innumerable violences and devastations, threatens livelihoods and possibilities for thriving. This LGBTQ+ “We” remains in the midst a source and site of tremendous protest, resistance and vibrance. Definitely, this “We” is primary and integral in Stonewall Columbus’s all-too-apt Pride theme: “Until We’re All Free.”

And yet, I believe this “We” is a both-and “We”: it is both in reference to our LGBTQ+ selves and siblings and, ultimately, this “We” refers to us all. “Until We’re All Free.”

The term queer, too, can invoke an all-encompassing “We.” In the US, “queer” had once been used as a derogatory term for someone considered strange, odd or peculiar in some way society deemed unacceptable. Those who exhibited gender or sexual identities and expressions outside the day’s cultural norms fell under this umbrella of queerness. “Queer” functioned as a shorthand for romantic, sexual and gender expressions and identities considered strange and socially “other.”

In recent decades, LGBTQ+ communities have reappropriated the “queer” descriptor, proudly reclaiming queerness as a valid, normative and vital way of being in the world. We’re here! We’re queer! Reclaiming the word refutes its inherent violence and infuses it instead with nourishment and possibility: we’re here! We’re queer!

“Queer” is now commonly used to broadly describe gender and sexuality identities and expressions. “Queer” may be used as a shorthand for those of us on the LGBTQ+ spectrum: “queer” might describe someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or identifies in combination or beyond these listed descriptions. And, queer can also be used in a more sweeping way, to describe someone or something that refuses the status quo and lives in ways that challenge society’s rigid expectations, boundaries and categories.

This broader usage of queer is not intended to “flatten” the vibrance of LGBTQ+ selves and siblings, nor is it intended to dismiss the lived risk, violence and harm LGBTQ+ selves and siblings face. The status-quo-refusing usage of “queer” works to enhance and deepen self- and communal understanding. It works to clarify the ways in which rigid sociopolitical structures restrict life’s oxygen and limit collective possibility. It is for these reasons that I use the term queer to describe myself. I am partnered with a man, but my sexual attraction has never been limited to men, so “queer” matches my sexual identity. While other words–like bisexual or pansexual–provide a similarly helpful description, I prefer “queer” because it also encompasses a broader spirit of refusal, resistance and creativity. We’re here! We’re queer!

It is to this broader understanding of “queer” that I beckon us today. I find this more expansive understanding of “queer” reflected in today’s scriptures.

We enter Genesis 1:31 in the midst of God’s creation. God is creating, making, bringing divine imagination into being. We bear witness to a sacred beyond-ness: in the midst of what is…let us breathe, reach, grow far beyond the realms of existence thus far. The very act of creating is itself a challenge to the status quo, a queer imagination brought into reality. “God saw everything [God] had made: it was supremely good.”

Let’s consider the “supreme good[ness]” of the gingko tree. Trees are understood to have what are termed male and female reproductive parts. Some trees have both male and female reproductive parts simultaneously, but the gingko tree does not: the gingko grows with only male or female reproductive parts. What makes the gingko tree so remarkable is that it has been known–particularly in times of environmental strife–to undergo a transition of its reproductive parts, most commonly from male to female. The gingko’s capacity for transition has led queer communities to understand the dear gingko as a transgender companion. The gingko originates from China, and is one of the oldest living tree species, likely owing its longevity to its transitioning capacities. It would seem that the gingko trees who have transitioned their reproductive parts have played an integral role in the survival of the tree species.

The “transgender” gingko has much to teach humans. What if transgender human siblings and selves are not an exception to human vitality, but a necessary life force in our survival, as is the case with the gingko tree?  

“God saw everything [God] had made: it was supremely good.” 

Among theologians and biblical scholars, queer is often used as a verb to describe practices that engage faith or text in ways that invite uncertainty, boundary-blurring and ambiguity. We might say, “This person is queering the text” to mean they are reading and interpreting scripture in a spirit of curiosity, expansion and possibility.

Let us together queer Luke’s text.

To practice queering these verses feels particularly apt, for a section some translations title, “The transfiguration of Jesus.” Even the title invites a posture of intrigue and curiosity: what are we to make of a Jesus whose very body is transformed–transfigured–in the dream-like presence of Jewish ancestors? The “trans” of transfiguration indicates transition, movement, change, just as it does in transportation, transpose, transgender. The Jesus present at the passage’s start shifts–his body presents differently than it had before. He is brightness embodied, flashy as lightning and–if I may–fabulous. The physical presence of Jesus is queered in its capacity to change. He no longer fits a static description, nor an expected presentation.

The boundaries of time, too, are blurred, queered as we encounter the ancestors of the Jewish faith, Moses and Elijah–long ago dead, yet embodied in this moment. Past-present-future become simultaneous, one. Moses, ancestor of Law and Elijah, ancestor of Prophecy, interweave themselves with the leader of this fledgeling Jewish sect that would come to be called Christianity: all that has come before is now and will be. Clouds surround, a dream-like mood descends, Jesus is divinely named. An imagination of what will be stuns the disciples into silence. The passage refuses the status quo, reaches for possible futures and blurs the boundaries of body, identity and time. This passage practically queers itself, and as we engage it in a spirit of curiosity, we queer it, too.

When we understand queer as both about and beyond gender and sexuality, what possibilities might this unveil in our scripture reading, our faith practices, ourselves, our communities? And, what might be revealed if we understand Christian faith itself as queer, in its boundary-blurring, status-quo-refusing, possibility-creating communal practices?

Firstly, such a queer-ing of ourselves and our faith might enhance and deepen solidarity with queer and transgender siblings and selves. We’re here! We (too) are queer!

Secondly, such a queer-ing may enable us to more clearly understand the breadth of anti-queer violence. While anti-queer violence most directly targets LGBTQ+ siblings and selves, anti-queer violence ultimately harms us all.

For the men and boys in the room who resist or feel ashamed of your softness, your tears, your tenderness, your capacities to nurture: this resistance and shame is an understandable response to the anti-queer violence of toxic masculinity and heteropatriarchy, that attempts to sever you from the heart parts of yourself.

For the women, femmes and girls in the room who feel we must quiet our loudness or sacrifice our bodies and beings or be “good” by snuffing out the heat of our inner fire: may we recognize our tendencies to hide, to martyr ourselves, to “behave” as the anti-queer violence of heteropatriarchy that seeks to silence the fire of our power.

For anyone in the room who feels pain, constriction, limitation because our body and being do not “match” the societal norms imposed upon us all: may we recognize the violence of anti-queer heteropatriarchy in the rigidity of boundaries and categories that hem us in, that keep us from the fullness of our communal lives, that hamper our imaginations of what could be.

All of these assumptions and “norms” are directly linked to the violence of anti-queerness, to the violence that insists that my and your gendered body must exist within the strict confines of society’s determined normativity.

In what ways do you long to refuse the status quo? Which rigid boundaries or categories do you wish to blur? What possibilities do you ache to bring into being?

When we expand our understanding of queerness, we expand our understanding of anti-queer violence, making clear: we all need freed. Pride celebrations are for the surviving and thriving of each and all: We’re here! We’re queer!

Embracing queerness within and surrounding us all allows us to celebrate the fullness of our individual and communal selves, and the fullness of queer, divine imaginations. We live in a reality that needs queerness. We need what lies beyond the violence and death grip of the status quo. We need the rupture of racial, ethnic, geopolitical borders. We need the curiosity and vitality of imaginations that move us collectively through and beyond the ache of Now into the possibilities of the Not Yet. This is queer existence, queer faith. This is queerness that gives life and queerness that might save us all.

We’re here, we’re queer!

May we celebrate the divine queerness in each and in all.

Until we’re all free…