A Faith That Finds Us Where We Are

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. Before we dive into this episode, we just wanted to remind you that our new book, Reading the Bible Through Queer Eyes, good news for LGBTQ plus people from Genesis to Revelation is available for pre-order now. You can buy it anywhere books are sold. We're super excited to share these quintessential stories from our decades of work, queering the Bible and making this work accessible to people. So the book is available for pre-order now. It comes out in December and we hope you'll grab a copy. We're going to be taking a look at Luke 15.1 through 10. I'll read to you now. It's all the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling saying, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Jesus told them this parable. Someone among you had 100 sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn't he leave the other 99 in the pastor and search for the lost one until he finds it? And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. When he arrives home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, Celebrate with me because I found my lost sheep. In the same way I tell you, there'll be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over 99 righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives. Or what woman if she owns 10 silver coins and loses one of them won't find a lamp and sweep the house, searching her home carefully until she finds it? When she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, Celebrate with me because I found my lost coin. In the same way I tell you, joy breaks out on the presence of God's angels over one sinner who changes both heart and life. Shea, what do we do with this? I am so intrigued to read this passage again. This is one that was read all the time when I was growing up in my church. I mean, I feel like I have heard sermons on this passage for years and years and years and years and years. They often centered on converting people and this is the need to evangelize and witness and share faith. Or it just a lot about that. I'm struck by in both of these stories that Jesus tells, the message isn't be really great and get a lot of people to come into your congregation. It's like there are lost people out there go and find them and be where they are. And so I'm struck by that kind of turnaround especially for the kind of liberal mainline church who are not comfortable with ideas like witnessing and converting people of what does it look like to then live in the world in such a way that you're going out after people who are lost. And I don't think of lost in a sense of non-Christians. I think of lost in a sense of people who are experiencing despair or who are searching for meaning and don't know how to find it or who are trapped in their lives and feeling depressed about that of what is it that we have to offer that could be helpful for them. And it's about going and being with people in those spaces and not necessarily bringing them in to our congregation. And I think that that has to be the conversation. These ideas can't be transactional anymore. It can't be I'm going to be nice to you so that you join my church and save it from dying. It's going to have to be what does it mean to live out in our faith in new ways when so many people don't want to come to church on Sunday morning. That's not exactly a queer take but that's something that I'm really thinking about from my own context for this Sunday. What about you? Yeah, I also heard this passage a lot growing up. And sometimes it was, they would tell us that we were supposed to be excited about when we converted people. If we were good Christians our whole lives and some terrible person became a Christian at the end of their life, they still got to go into heaven and God would almost be more happy. And we were like, well, like it was like, it sounded like a good thing. But also there was, I was kind of sometimes it felt like twinged with this like, I don't know, weird jealousy or something. And I was like super, super involved in Young Life growing up and they have these summer camps for a week at a time where like bringing out high school kids from all around the country. And the target audience is people who are not evangelical Christians to try and convert them. And literally at the end of the week, they had people who have like decided to like quote, unquote, give their life over to Jesus, like stand up and everyone like claps and they play music and it's like a literal celebration. And so I, you know, I'm sure I say this all the time that the waters that we swim in are sort of like tainted by conservative fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. And so it's really tempting to feel like, like that's the like real version of Christianity and our understanding of it is somehow like an adaptation. And I want to push back upon that, that like evangelical Christianity, as we know today is like a relatively modern invention, like within the past 100 200 years, right? And I remember a few years ago, one of my boyfriends friends from college had been not out for a long time. And we were like in our late 20s and he came out. And I remember saying like, Oh, like the angels are celebrating in heaven today that so and so came out. And I think that like, that there's there, I do see this parallel right between coming out or embracing your LGBTQ identity and being found right that like before we come out were, were like literally separated from, from the queer community were literally separated from any of us who were in like anti LGBT versions of Christianity were like separated from a faith that is giving us life. So we're like, we're in this place of metaphoric darkness. We need a woman to come bring her lamp out to come find the coin that's missing, right? That it's it's dark and scary and depressing. And there's all sorts of like research that shows right that that not being accepted and affirmed in your queer identity has negative mental and physical health repercussions. And so like, we've got this good news of like the gospel of the queer Jesus Christ. And so I think like a, like to your point earlier, it's like a good thing to share it and not share it in a like, say this prayer with me and then they become a Christian and then like it stops there but that like, we have light, we have healing, we have community. We if you're alone or hurting or in despair, as you were saying, have needs that need to be meeting, as Jesus will say elsewhere that like, this is a place that we should like come together and, and celebrate this sort of like beloved community. And so yeah, that's my, I guess, more slightly more queer take on this passage. I also find some real insight into coming back to these passages and realizing like, oh no, like the Bible is alive, all of it from Genesis Revelation for LGBTQ people. And there is a good word in there for us to we hope you enjoyed this episode. If you would like to go deeper into the ways that queerness can enrich faith and faith can enrich queerness, then you have got to check out our new book, reading the Bible through queer eyes, which comes out December 1st. It is available for pre-order now everywhere books are sold. 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.