God loves our whole, embodied selves

I also reference Revelation 21:1-6 and John 13:31-35.

 

A reading from Acts 11:1-18

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard

       that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God.

²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem,

       the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying,

              “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”

⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them,

       step by step, saying,

              ⁵“I was in the city of Joppa praying,

                     and in a trance I saw a vision.

                     There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven,

                            being lowered by its four corners;

                            and it came close to me.

                                   ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals,

                                          beasts of prey,

                                          reptiles,

                                          and birds of the air.

                     ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me,

                            ‘Get up, Peter;

                                   kill and eat.’

                     ⁸But I replied,

                            ‘By no means, Lord;

                                   for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’

                     ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven,

                            ‘What God has made clean,

                                   you must not call profane.’

                     ¹⁰This happened three times;

                            then everything was pulled up again to heaven.

              ¹¹At that very moment three men,

                     sent to me from Caesarea,

                            arrived at the house where we were.

                     ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them

                     and not to make a distinction between them and us.

              These six brothers also accompanied me,

                     and we entered the man’s house.

                     ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel

                            standing in his house and saying,

                                   ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon,

                                          who is called Peter;

                                          ¹⁴he will give you a message

                                                 by which you 

                                                        and your entire household 

                                                               will be saved.’

                     ¹⁵And as I began to speak,

                            the Holy Spirit fell upon them

                                   just as it had upon us at the beginning.

                                   ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord,

                                   how Jesus had said,

                                          ‘John baptized with water,

                                                 but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’

              ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift

                     that God gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,                                                                 who was I that I could hinder God?”

¹⁸When the apostles and believers heard this,

       they were silenced.

              And they praised God, saying,

                     “Then God has given even to the Gentiles

                            the repentance that leads to life.”

Word of God, word of life.

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It is good to be back with you all.  The last two weeks of vacation and continuing education were good and yet it is good to be back here.  As my continuing ed while I was gone, I attended the yearly Proclaim Gathering.  Proclaim is a professional community that I am a part of for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Lutheran leaders in the church. 

This community not only proclaims the gospel to me, but also embodies the gospel with me.  As part of our opening Eucharist this year, we took our calling as members of Christ’s body to heart.  We read through the names of those gathered and as each person’s name was called, that person would stand or raise their hand and call out, “this is my body,” echoing Jesus’ words at the Last Supper. 

As people were named into the space, we tossed or passed balls of red yarn—I like to think of it as our Holy Spirit yarn—to each other, making a messy, interwoven mass of red as we sat together.  As LGBTQ people of faith, we claimed the very bodied space—our embodied place—in the body of Christ, a space that has, in recent history, been denied to us.

While there are many ways that we all embody our faith, physically living into and living out our member-ship in the body of Christ, for me as a queer pastor, Proclaim brings my whole self into ministry and faith.  I don’t need to parse out which parts of me belong—to church, to home, to friends.  My whole being belongs and is celebrated as part of the body of Christ.

In today’s reading from Acts, Peter and the apostles and believers in Judea are confronted with a challenge, a new embodiment of their community of faith.  Up until that point, Gentiles—those who were Greek and didn’t identify as Jewish—had to be circumcised and convert to Judaism before they were considered members of the community of faith.  Their own culture and their unique differences didn’t fit within the community’s understanding of themselves and so they were forced to assimilate, to adapt to the dominant culture of the group, leaving part of who they were at the door.

But that is not God’s will for any of us.  Just as it was for the Gentiles in Acts, our own Presbyterian-ness, our Lutheran-ness, our Christian-ness, is not rooted in our cultural heritages, in how much lefse we eat or when bagpipes are present, how we make tamales, organize our congregation, or even how many pies we bake.  What unites us, the thing that roots our faith, is God, made known through Jesus Christ.   And it is God who loves our whole beings, our whole selves, even when we struggle.

As with the early church in Acts, it takes time to figure out as a community what it means for different groups or types of people to truly be a part of us.  We have to wrestle with how our culture and our identities impact the group.  Does the language we speak force others to leave a part of who they are at the door?  Is our grief or loneliness, still present after so many years, out of place here?

We each have unique gifts, identities, and perspectives, some of which clearly fit, no questions asked, in this part of the body of Christ.  And I imagine many of us have passions or interests or parts of our identity that we haven’t shared with others.  We’re unsure if they make us unfit or too different for the community of faith.   

Maybe we keep things on the surface during fellowship so we don’t have to risk the pain and hurt of opening up and being vulnerable only to have our community abandon or denounce us.  Maybe we just ask and share about the weather and the busy-ness of life instead of asking and sharing what we’re most passionate about.  Maybe we’re afraid of the vulnerability in naming our continuing grief over a loved one’s death, or loneliness without them here.

The community of believers in Judea start out unsure of these uncircumcised believers that Peter baptized—unsure if they really belong, since they are so different.  Even Peter was unsure at the beginning!  He thought he knew the rules.  He thought he knew which food and which people were in and which were out—until God came and shook things up.

Peter says, “the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.” And as the Holy Spirit fell, it turned Peter’s understanding upside down.  His faith remained.  He still trusted in the loving God made known to him in Jesus, but now his understanding of God’s expansive, radical love had to change, because “If then God gave [the Gentiles] the same gift that God gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

Ultimately Peter realized that he couldn’t hinder God, but he could embrace God’s expansive love, and share his experience of transformation with others.

When we come together to worship or serve or learn, we too get to ask “who am I that I could hinder God?”  and we are given the opportunity to embrace God’s expansive love, beginning even with ourselves.  Being with other LGBTQ Lutheran church leaders helps me live into God’s expansive love.  And being able to share stories from that time with you all also helps me live into it.

What helps you embrace God’s expansive love for you? and for others? and for all of creation?  What do you risk in bringing your whole self into this part of the body of Christ?  Do you know—do you trust—God’s expansive, radical love for you?  Do you know that the Holy Spirit falls upon you just as it did upon Peter and the other apostles at the beginning?  I do.  I know it because I see it in each of you.

God is always coming to us in love for our whole flawed and perfectly loved selves. 

Our whole bodies and our whole lived experiences are the body of Christ, together with the great cloud of witnesses, spanning all of time and space.  The things that make us different and the things that can make us question whether we or another person can really bring our whole selves into the body of Christ                        are also the things that make us more truly the body of Christ together.  Our grief and our loneliness, our differences, are all signs of God’s love for us and God’s love at work through us.

God’s home is among mortals.  Jesus declares, “This is my body.”  God comes to you just as you are.  And just as you are, you are a part of the body of Christ.   

Because love wins.   

Because grace triumphs.   

Because Christ is risen!   

Christ is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!