Redemption Without Permission

Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast. I'm Brian G. Murphy. And I'm Father Shannon T. Elkerns. We're the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and your hosts. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how. Tune in each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness and how they can enrich one another. We're glad you're here. This week, we're looking at the lectionary readings for Sunday, and specifically, we're going to be tackling the Galatians passage. That's Galatians 1.11-24. So, Shay, when you read this passage, what comes up for you? I think one of the first things that comes up for me is really identifying with Paul and with the person that he used to be, you know, growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical church. I definitely held theology and did types of evangelism and missions, trips and stuff that now I cringe at. I mean, I even protested things that now I would support. And I spent a lot of years feeling like super guilty about that and feeling like I have no right to preach the Gospel or to be in the church because I had done all of those terrible things. And so there's some resonance for me here in looking at Paul's life and feeling like I can be redeemed from that and I can repent from all of those things that I did and can still now preach a new Gospel. Yeah, that is, I hear you on that one. I was really fixated on, we were the ones that were saved, and so I had to get all my friends saved, which comes from a good place. But I also told my friend that her dad was going to hell because he was Jewish. And that's a really messed up thing, a messed up thing to do to someone. I also, it's not in this passage, obviously, but resonate with the story of Paul and his conversion experience that coming out and realizing that I was queer was part of my conversion to a new type of Christianity. And I can sort of look at the Christianity that I followed pre-coming out and the Christianity that I followed post-coming out. And then when I compare that to the Gospels actually that, you know, we talked last week about the Gospel of Jesus and these different Gospels. My post-coming out Gospel lines up closer with the Gospel that we see Jesus preaching. And so I also resonate with this idea of conversion experience and I'm going forward and doing a new and a different work. Yeah. Yeah, the other piece of this passage that really inspires me is when Paul talks about how, when he felt called by God that he didn't bother to ask for permission from any human being. He didn't go up to check it out with the other apostles. He didn't ask for permission or for authority to come from other people. And that really inspires me as a queer person to think that I don't have to ask for permission to do queer theology. I don't have to entrust the queer story or the queer narrative to straight Christians because they're more trustworthy, right? That I can really trust my own narrative and that that's really an inspiring thing for me. Yeah, so if you're gonna preach on this text, what are some of the key points that you want to hit? I would definitely talk about redemption and the fact that what you've done in the past doesn't necessarily need to dictate your future. But also, so there's some tension in there for me that I would also want to preach about like you need to make amends if you can. That's not always possible, but as much as possible, make amends. It doesn't mean that you can just like do whatever you want now that your past is forgiven. Right. And then I would also preach about telling people to like go for it. Don't ask permission from your church necessarily. Like if you need something and it doesn't exist, create it. If the gospel that you're being told isn't inspiring to you, then like grasp what's inspirational and go for it. I think that's a really inspiring message that to hear from a preacher or a pastor in particular that so often we feel like we're supposed to follow their lead. So we've touched on this in other podcasts actually, but it's permission from the pulpit to go and create your own thing and make the gospel your own. I think it was an important message to hear as someone sitting in the pews. The queer theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at queertheology.com, which provides resources, community and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters to dive into more of the action. Visit us at queertheology.com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. We'll see you next week.