can i be a christian and not be part of the church?

My professor asked this question toward the end of class last Tuesday. My hand immediately shot up to say something to the effect of, "yes please, let's try to answer this question." I know it isn't that simple. I know he was trying to get at the complexity of the question and the nuance of the answer. My point in making that statement was that this question is relevant for me.

A little background: in 2014, I left the congregation I had devoted myself to, the church I found my family in. I left because this organization is abusive. Let me be clear, I am not calling the individual people involved abusive. I felt abused by the systems and structures that are put in place, that individuals are forced to adhere to. It wasn't until I left that I realized just how oppressive this environment was. It wasn't until I left that I began to feel free enough, safe enough, to be honest with myself. It wasn't until I left that I was able to see myself for who I have been created to be. I have been in seminary since 2012, and having that journey coincide with leaving church has been difficult to say the least. I have felt my faith expand and open in ways that some deem unacceptable. Simply setting foot on campus is an act of courage for me most days.

So this question means something to me.

Hozier, an Irish musician, released a song called "Take Me to Church" in 2013. It deeply resonated with me at the time, and still does in rich and challenging ways. His lyrics can offer a powerful reflection on the meaning of the Church and the ways that it can limit and even harm those of us who do not quite fit the mold. I'm using some of his lyrics to guide this conversation.

This is hungry work

This is a question about immanence. This question has present reality. You can make it about who gets into heaven, but you would be wrong to do so. It is a bodily question and it must deal with all of our lives: sex, pleasure, mental illness, aging, isolation, poverty, disability, racism, and our need for each other and the earth. If it does not deal with these things, it is incomplete, dishonest, hopeless even. If the gospel does not speak to these things, then being a "Christian" is irrelevant.

My church offers no absolutes

"Church" is often associated with a set of beliefs, doctrines, dogmas. If you do not assent intellectually to these "truths," you don't get in. Sometimes these beliefs are explicitly stated in a Statement of Faith, and sometimes they are implicit in our attitudes, actions, decisions, worship. Either way, they function as a filter, those who differ are weeded out. The second approach is particularly harmful because it makes people feel that they don't belong without it having to be directly stated. There's no accountability.

If there is anything post-modernism has taught us, it's that our categories - our absolutes - are limited. So perhaps this question isn't about the absolutes, whether we fit into the binary of yes-no or in-out. Perhaps this is a question about belonging. Perhaps it is asking "is there space for me, my body, my experience, in your theology?" Do we find God in dogmatic assent or do we find God in the encounter between two or more bodies who bring their authenticity with love and reciprocity?

No masters or kings when the ritual begins

Maybe the sacraments would help in considering this question. Baptism and Eucharist are the two primary sacraments that form the Protestant life. The specifics of the practice of each vary between denominations and congregations, but the basics carry through.

Baptism is a mark of conversion, an act of participation, an initiation into community. Christians celebrate this moment with water, as Jesus did. But baptism exists in many forms and in many communities. It is a rite of passage. Baptism is about belonging. I experienced a baptismal moment the first time I stepped into a queer night club. Christians do not own the idea of Baptism. Our guiding question is asking whether my Christian baptism and my queer baptism can co-exist. It is asking whether a Christian baptism and a disabled baptism can co-exist. Does all of me get to belong?

Eucharist is a communion of the faithful across space and time. It is the sharing of a meal, a meal that invokes the presence of Jesus and all that entails. But what does our Eucharist mean if it does not feed the poor, if someone is left out, if someone is denied access (either implicitly or explicitly)? The Eucharist is an equalizer, or at least it should be. We participate in the body and blood of Christ in the same way as the saints through the ages, and on equal footing. This is what we proclaim, but if my body does not fit, if you won't hear my voice, am I really equal?

Good God, let me give you my life

A set of criteria for who is in or out would be easy. But life is not easy. Faith is not easy. Things are never that simple. We have been arguing from the beginning about the right way to do and be, but we'll never have the answers. What we can do is love, make space, invite, celebrate. It is so easy to do these things with people who look like, sound like, feel like, and agree with us. But at no point is that what we are called to. At every turn we are called out of our comfort zones. We are called to welcome the outsider in. There is no line between being in and being out anymore.

Instead of asking "can I be a Christian and not be part of the Church?" perhaps a more helpful question is "how am I limiting access to belonging?"

christmas

god is with us, so let’s get naked and love
christmas

for unto us, a child is born. the child who reveals that human and divine are eternally entwined and coexisting.

the light is here, it is time to wake up. it is time to open our eyes, remove our fig leaves, and act like people who have god with them.

when i started these reflections, i told you i was going to “queer” advent. i didn’t actually use the word queer, and i didn’t talk about any characters in the story being LGBTQIA, so you may be wondering whether i even accomplished my goal, and if i did, how did i queer advent?

one of the primary approaches of queer theology is undoing dualism. dualism is the idea that there are only two categories that things can fall into. here are some common examples when it comes to christian theology:
sin vs righteousness (or holy vs unholy)
male vs female
chosen vs other
human vs divine

dualistic thinking is normal and healthy, up to a point. our minds need to make categories that things fit into because it helps us make sense of the world around us. but at some point, we must progress into the world of abstract thought, of understanding that our categories are limited and can’t handle the nuance that we begin to see around us. things are never black and white.

---

religion in general is an attempt for humanity to make meaning of our existence in the world, to understand what it is that is bigger than ourselves and how we fit with that. in the christian story, taken as a whole, we can see this narrative play out. we are constantly trying to figure out how to connect to or relate to the divine. i believe this is true in other religions, regardless of what the divine means to you. we share in the creation of meaning with the divine. it is a conversation, mutual meaning-making.

when i look at the whole story, i see that in the beginning humanity and divine existed together fully, and that something happened along the way that changed how we understood that. most christians would call that sin followed by god’s punishment, but i think that’s too simple. hopefully the point that i made is that the mutuality and reciprocity of relationship between human and divine has always been there, and rather than separation being a punishment for sin, it is the natural consequence of human decision to change the terms of relationship and institute our own systems and structures that force a separation.

god is love, and all one has to do is take a look at the news to see how our laws, our structures, our systems are not loving. but that does not mean that we do not still have access to the divine. i think that’s why the story of jesus matters. in him we see what love in human form looks like. we see him love without discrimination, and we see him challenges the systems that oppress. jesus is our invitation to participate in divine love again.

---

i “queered” advent by doing away with the dualistic idea that human is separate from divine. and therefore, if this is the case, every single human possesses the divine presence. and this is why we must wake up to our privilege, to our power, to the ways we oppress others, and figure out how to love like we have god with us.

advent week four

power and presence
advent week four
2 samuel 7:1-11, 16

this bit of samuel brings us the story of king david. david wants to build god a place to live. (chronologically, this is before the destruction of the temple in jerusalem, and before the exile in babylon.)

david looks around at his beautiful home and says, “what a great house i have here. I should build god a house.”

god responds, “you’re gonna build me a house? listen here, i have been with you since the beginning, since egypt, through the wilderness; i was with you when you were ruled by judges, and i am with you now, and i have never asked for a house. but you want to build me a house? ok. fine.”

and then god clarifies things. god says, “i will make you a house.” god speaks in the metaphor of kings that Israel has demanded, and it is easy to assume that this word from god means that god will build a “house” or lineage of david’s kingdom (prophecy foretelling jesus, perhaps). but i think it is bigger than this.

i think god is saying that Israel itself is god’s house. god doesn’t need a house because god already dwells within the people themselves.

and lest we think that god dwells only with the Israelites, let us remember that god blesses Israel to bless all nations, that the good news is for the jew and the gentile, and most of all that god was with adam and eve before god’s covenant with abraham and before the existence of the Israelites.

---

this bit in samuel also reminds us of some of the stages of Israelite society and interaction with god. so, here’s a quick review of some of the highlights we’ve covered so far: god and humanity begin with a close, intimate, shameless, mutual-knowing kind of relationship at creation; god appoints judges to rule over the Israelites (at their request); god appoints a king to rule over Israel (at their request); god allows david to build god a house (at david’s insistence); the house that david built in jerusalem is destroyed and the Israelites are sent away from their home.

at each turn in the story, humanity changes the terms of relationship with god, and god obliges. and it all starts with the fig leaf.

the fig leaf is humanity’s attempt to take control of the narrative. the fig leaf consists of the structures and systems that we put in place to categorize, describe, codify, our relationship to the divine. the fig leaf is power, and humanity’s attempt to wield it.

the law is a fig leaf.

the temple is a fig leaf.

the exile is a fig leaf.

dogma is a fig leaf.

denominations are a fig leaf.

USAmerican nationalism is a fig leaf.

heteronormativity is a fig leaf.

patriarchy is a fig leaf.

racism is a fig leaf.

because god was, and is, and always will be present.

in each of these moments of the story, we changed the terms of relationship, and the divine found a way to show up and love us anyway.

the truth, beauty, love and freedom of the incarnation, of the story of the divine dwelling with humanity - the gospel, if you will - is not that god is doing a new thing. the incarnation reveals that god always was with us. there was never a point at which our humanity was separate from the divine. we covered ourselves with a fig leaf.

emmanuel, a name for jesus, means “god with us.” and if that is really true, we don’t get to decide who god meant by “us.”

advent week three

the fig leaf
advent week three
genesis 3:7-13

i’m going to cheat here a little. instead of reflecting on one of the week three readings, i’m going back to the fig leaf in genesis 3.

immediately after adam and eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they knew they were naked - and they covered themselves. nothing physically changed, they had been naked the whole time. naked and unashamed. naked and fully known. in fact, the idea of nakedness didn’t have meaning because naked is just how they existed.

what changed is not reality, but their relationship to it, their understanding of it.

the fig leaf was a solution to a perceived problem. adam and eve crossed a boundary, and even before attempting to negotiate repairs to the relationship with god, they took matters into their own hands.

the fig leaf is a covering. they realize they are naked, they feel vulnerable, they are afraid. so they react by hiding, isolating, and making assumptions about how god will react. they take matters into their own hands. they act unilaterally and without consideration of the other party in the relationship.

today, many christians call this “original sin.” but the word sin does not appear in this part of the story. what adam and eve do here is not named as sin.

i absolutely hate the idea of sin. sin has been used for thousands of years to elevate one set of rules for behavior over another. the idea of sin is for powerful people, and it keeps them in power above folks who “sin” against the set of rules that belongs to the powerful people.

so how about we reframe the conversation. the idea of sin comes from relationship, originally (in this context) attributed to the relationship between god and humanity. we like to convince ourselves that relationships follow predictable patterns and have rules for how people should behave in them. perhaps that’s why so much stake was placed in the law of the Torah. humanity realized the relationship with god had changed, but they didn’t know how to reconnect. having a set a rules to follow, something straightforward and specific, should make things easier, right? but people are nuanced and storied in a way that cannot be predicted. every person is different, every relationship is different.

if people are nuanced and hard to predict, how much more is god, the divine, the infinite, the incomprehensible?

sin is an attempt to make the unpredictable predictable, to control, to exert power. it is a construct, it is not universal law. if we must hold onto the idea of sin (which I actually think we don't need to do), let's think of it differently.

relationships are a constant negotiation of connection. it is a dance of moving towards and away from others as our circumstances, needs, and desires allow. if we conceptualize it this way, then “sin” can be thought of as a transgression of a boundary that a partner in relationship has set. most of the time, the transgression can be dealt with through repentance and renegotiation. but in order to do this healing work when a transgression happens, all parties need to be involved to find a solution that works for everyone, and according to god, involves both justice and mercy.

to bring this conceptualization back to the fig leaf, adam and eve did not include god in the solution they found to the transgression of boundaries. what they did changed the terms of the relationship, and instead of going to god to negotiate repair and reconciliation, they created a covering, something that moved them away from being fully known, seen, and loved by the divine.

they could not stand to remain naked and vulnerable - powerless - so they covered themselves.

advent week two

when comfort for one means destruction for another
advent week two
isaiah 40:1-11

the book of isaiah within the Hebrew scriptures is nothing short of a masterpiece. say what you will about the content and the millennia of interpretation that is heaped upon it, but the text itself weaves together multiple genres of poetry and prose to tell an agonizing story of a people separated from their god, their sense of meaning in the world.

first things first, isaiah is a prophet. no, a prophet is not a fortune teller, they do not predict the future. a prophet, particularly in the time(s) isaiah was written, is someone who speaks on behalf of god, someone who speaks the truth to the people. truth, in scripture, is something that equally and always challenges those in power and comforts those who are oppressed.

second, it is widely held that isaiah is written by at least three people, living at three different times, and was later compiled into one volume. during the course of the timelines of the writers, the Israelite people saw jerusalem (their home, and the city where the temple housing the presence of god was built) utterly destroyed. they were forced into exile (separated from what they understood as the presence of god) in the city of babylon. and finally, they returned to jerusalem after their exile to rebuild.

isaiah 40:1-11 is written during this exile. it is written to a people that has felt separated from their god, who long to return home, and who feel they have been punished more than enough. this passage is a commissioning for this second prophet (writer) of isaiah, god is calling this isaiah to comfort the people in this time, to let them know that what they desire will come to pass.

this bit of the story is also filled with the same apocalyptic imagery that we saw last week in mark. this is the kind of imagery that mark was echoing from the old stories. the prophets set the precedent for the movement of god to be heralded by events that change the landscape of the world as we know it.

---

during the exile, Israel believed that god was not with them. and yet there are prophets who continue to share the word of god during this time. there is the story of shadrach, meshach, and abednego, who are visited by a mysterious figure when they are thrown into fire. god has not left them alone in babylon, god is simply doing something different.

what strikes me about the exile, and the arc of Israel’s story in general, is the way meaning is made. these stories were written down by men, and i believe they are inherently limited. i simply cannot believe that any of what we call scripture was divinely dictated. i do, however, believe that there is something about these stories that have been given life, the freedom to grow and change and interact with our world still. and i by no means believe that this is the only set of stories that have this power.

despite their limitations, the story of Israel is a story of a group of people trying to understand what it means to exist in this world, in all of its beauty and pain. it is an acknowledgement that there is something special about humanity, and still something so much bigger that seems to be at work. this set of stories is this community’s attempt to reckon with this.

they way they make meaning of the stories, of the way they understand god to be interacting with them along the way is fascinating. they keep changing the terms on god, and god continues to oblige.

the Israelites in exile are a conquered people. their existence has been laid low, and they were marched to a foreign land. the book(s) of isaiah are filled with images of terror that the israelites experienced. and in the midst of all this pain, the prophets implore Israel to pursue justice and mercy.

and yet, in isaiah 40, what seems to be comforting to the Israelites is release and freedom at the cost of the babylonian empire. the conquered people await the conquering of others. there is no mercy in this, it is perpetuating a cycle of violence based on the promise of redemption.

despite it being the voice of the prophets “on behalf of god,” i don’t think the cycle of redemptive violence that is portrayed here is what the god of Israel had in mind. i think Israel is taking some liberties with the concept of god to suit their own needs.

the story that scripture presents to us is that of a relationship between human and divine. it is a dance, a series of movements back and forth, of negotiation.

let me be clear in what I am claiming here: we are made in god’s image, and we make god in our own image.

and that’s okay.

advent week one

stay awake
advent week one
mark 13:24-37

take a moment to read mark 13:24-37 if you are not familiar, as this reflection follows pretty closely to the outline of the text. i’m also setting some stuff up that we will come back to in future weeks, so bear with me.

wtf even is advent? logistically, it is the four weeks leading up to christmas. spoiler alert: in USAmerica, we like to think that christmas starts right after thanksgiving (or for some strange folks, after halloween). we bust out the red and green, sing songs about baby jesus, put up christmas trees. but christmas time doesn’t even start until christmas day.

for four weeks before christmas, we wait. we bust out the purple (most commonly), we light candles, and we let the anticipation build. advent is the season of waiting with bated breath.

--- (when you see this marker, it is intended to be a spot for you to pause and take a breath before moving forward. it might mean i’m about to say a bunch of stuff, or it might mean i just said a bunch of stuff and i want to give you a moment to process before we move on. either way, it is important and intentional, so take a breath)

and that is the space that this first text invites us into. initially, it seems a bit scary. the sun and the moon lose their light, stars fall from the sky, some dude called the son of man comes out of the clouds, and angels run amuck.

that is not actually what is going to happen. the writer of mark is using imagery that is used in other places in the story that let us know that god is about to do something, and we need to shut up and pay attention.

and then there’s a fig tree? where did this come from? again, the writer is using a symbol that is rich with evocative imagery. the fig tree comes up all over the story, but it goes back to the beginning. if you remember the poem at the beginning of genesis, you remember there are a few trees. the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then a fig tree. i swear the fig tree is there. It is how adam and eve make clothes for themselves after “the fall” (which is problematic language for this bit of the story, but that’s for another post).

let’s spend a second with this old fig tree. before adam and eve find this fig tree, they are naked before god, there is no shame. only unconditional, open and reciprocal love and knowledge. but after they transgress a boundary (we can unpack the problematic language of sin in another post as well), adam and eve feel the need to cover themselves. the garments made of fig leaves become the first thing that humanity creates to separate themselves from god. they do this before god dishes out any punishment, they hide from god, they react with fear. before this, there is no separation of relationship (we will come back to this in future weeks).

back to mark. the writer tells us that the fig tree is a sign that something is going to change. that thing that you know so well, that thing that shows up in your stories, that you pay attention to because it has meaning to you, that thing that tells you things are changing...that’s what the sun and the moon and the stars are doing here. something is changing.

the writer makes it clear that there are signs that we need to be paying attention to. a change is going to come, and we better be ready.

then the writer of mark says something interesting. “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” this sentiment is expressed over and over again in the story, just like the fig tree keeps coming up. and there’s lots to unpack here. but i’m going to save that for next week. for now, keep it in the back of your mind.

the rest of this passage, we are told that we don’t know when the time will be. we don’t know when this new thing is going to happen. we have to pay attention. we have to stay alert.

if you are reading the NRSV, as i am inclined to do when i am able to open a bible, the next verses can be shocking. we are given an analogy for why it is important to keep awake. “it is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. therefore, keep awake - for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly (mark 13:24-26).” it would be easy to skip past this and focus on the idea of staying awake. but i’m not really a fan of easy.

there are a couple important things to remember as we encounter these verses. first, it was written to a specific group of people, in a specific time, for a specific purpose, and we should consider it as such. second, scripture is also living and dynamic, and we should also consider it through our modern eyes with all of the context that we bring to it.

that said, the people the writer of mark is addressing had slaves. this text is trying to instill a sense of fearful anticipation. slaves who are left to tend a master’s house while they are gone must stay vigilant so as not to be caught failing at their duties. because what happens if they don’t do what they are supposed to? they are punished. to read this through our current context, in USAmerica, we must acknowledge our own history of slavery, and the ways in which we subjugated an entire group of people through fear, power, and control. and the ways in which we continue to do this in our country.

this metaphor sucks. despite intending for the reader to identify with the position of the slave in the story (as god is the “master”), it is written from the privileged position of the master in reality. it is painful, it should force us to be honest about our complicity, because we can at once identify as the “slave” as well as the “master.” the plain sense meaning of this text and our identification with the slave’s position in the story is pretty straightforward. so can we put ourselves in the shoes of the master? and what does it mean for us to keep awake?

as a master, staying awake means realizing the ways in which your presence and privilege devalues, is hurtful to, or outright oppresses another. staying awake means educating yourself about the things that are happening around you in the world that you have the privilege of being insulated from. staying awake is about removing our fig leaves and making ourselves vulnerable and open to god’s movement.

--- (don’t forget to take a breath here)

the phrase “stay woke,” may have come to your mind in reading this. the association is fair, it is worded very similarly. the ubiquity of the term, however, is the direct result of cultural appropriation on behalf of ignorant white people. the term is originally a black term used to describe a consciousness of the apparatus of white supremacy, and it gained traction in a broader context after the murder of Trayvon Martin and the beginning of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. after that, white people made it a meme, attached it to nonsense, and there was no turning back.

but i think the association of the term isn’t necessarily a bad thing here, as this sort of awareness is what i am calling us all to this advent. but don’t forget where this term came from, and don’t trivialize it. in “staying awake,” as the writer of mark implores us to do, we need to wake up to systems of oppression and our participation in them. we need to wake up to realities that we get to ignore most of the time. because advent is about waiting for the moment of change. advent is about realizing that something big is on the horizon, god is about to do a new thing, and we are invited to participate in it. but we need to wake up, we need to be aware.

so at the beginning of this season, ask yourself what you need to wake up to in the world around you. ask yourself what change might be coming (or should be coming, perhaps with your help) in these areas. and if you are unsure, consider some of these things:

LGBTQ+ rights in USAmerica and the rest of the world
blatant corruption of USAmerican politicians
police brutality, particularly toward people of color
the prison industrial complex and the ways in which it perpetuates a modern form of slavery
systemic oppression of white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism
rampant terrorism in the middle east that has millions of people living in fear every day
Rohingya refugees and their daily struggle for survival
there is more...there is always more.

this list isn’t meant to depress you. advent is primarily about hope. but we can’t truly have hope until we can be honest about our current reality and what discover what it is we hope for.

advent is queer, y'all

this is the introduction to a series i am doing through advent 2017

i used to be a christian. i am a theologian. i am also queer. this is a bit of a venn diagram sort of situation, to be sure. but it doesn't take much observation to realize that chrtistian spirituality and queerness do not often exist in the same spaces.

i'm working on holding these two things together. i probably would not call myself a christian anymore, for three big reasons (and several more small ones). first, i have little faith in the institution of the church and think it needs to be dismantled or radically and irreversibly changed. second, i think christians tend to ask the wrong questions of jesus, scripture, and their faith. third, most christians would probably call me a heretic, and that's fine because frankly, i would rather avoid the baggage that the label carries.

these things said, i obviously can't deny where i have been. i have christian language, and i have access to christian spaces. i still have a stake in the conversation. the bits and pieces that i do hold onto make me who i am and inform how i exist in the world. and i don't think jesus is useless.

there are also so many queer, trans, and closeted people with some connection to christianity who are suffering and dying because of oppressive beliefs. i simply cannot stand for that. because i exist somewhere in the overlap of the venn diagram, i feel i have a responsibility to use my skills and training to do something about the pain and injustice that have been caused because of this tradition.

so here i go. i'm starting with advent. because i think jesus is queer AF. and advent is where it all begins.

here's how it will work: each week, i will choose one of the advent readings from the revised common lectionary, and i will reflect on it with an eye toward queerness. this is reflection. if you are looking for exegesis, this ain't it. maybe i'll get to that somewhere down the line, but that is not where i'm going to begin.

i'll post these reflections on sundays. i welcome conversation, but i do not welcome bigotry, queer/transphobia, racism, assholes or trolls.

buckle up. open your mind. pray, if you will. be humble.